Delighted to kick off the week by announcing that we have been nominated for 12 European Search Awards, it’s great to see everyone’s hard work rewarded over the last 12 months & to be recognised for some of the great client achievements we’ve had in this time!
Some of our nominations include:
๐ Best SEO Agency ๐ Best Use Of PR In Search ๐ Best Use Of Search (Finance) ๐ Best SEO Campaign ๐ Best PPC Campaign
Looking forward to seeing everyone at the event in Lisbon in May! โ๏ธ ๐ท๐น You can find a full list of nominations here
Link acquisition has been around in many forms for years and has often been seen as one of the most important elements within an SEO campaign. Links are a great way to showcase to Google that people trust your website and find it useful โ after all they are linking to it โ and theyโre also a great way to drive referral visitors to your website, in addition to building a great neighbourhood for your website to be in โ but itโs not enough to just build links into your website and leave it at that, you need a strategy to maximise the impact of link building by looking at which pages you are directing your links into.
Many people focus exclusively on building links to the homepage, but in many instances this misses out a lot of value that can be created from deeper page linking.
Deeper page linking is something that has been discussed widely โ but in practice itโs something that we need to actively incorporate into our campaigns. We can help to guide this by developing effective/thematic strategies to target specific sections of our website with targeted campaign to help grow authority within these sections and improve overall performance.
Why Is Deeper Page Linking Important?
So you might be asking โ is it not enough for me just to build great links into my website? While building great quality links into a website definitely helps performance, if we look at the mechanisms of link flow and equity we can see why targeting these campaigns to specific sections can help to add value.
Think of your website as one entity โ any link juice that comes into that entity is received by the page the link is pointing to โ as such, if 80% of your links point into your homepage then this will likely be one of the strongest pages on your website. This is great if you want your homepage to rank well, but in most instances, the pages with the best user intent match and the pages we want our users to go to sit further within our website, usually on product or service pages โ and these are the areas we really want to give an equity boost.
With so many pages often on your website and usually some form of navigation to link all your key pages to the homepage, by the time you get to these pages a lot of link equity has been lost along the way and therefore the value from these links can often be heavily deprecated from what it was when it initially reached the website โ as such, the value of getting link equity from the homepage to your sub-pages is far less than getting value directly from the source โ hence deeper page linking is a popular option. By building the link directly to the page you are maximising the equity that you are passing to this page and helping to give that sub-section a boost.
Building links to deeper pages on your website can provide several benefits for your SEO strategy. One of the most significant advantages is the improved visibility and authority of individual pages on your site. When you build links to deeper pages, you signal to search engines that these pages are valuable and relevant, which can boost their rankings in search results.
This is especially important for websites with a large number of pages, as it can be difficult for search engines to identify and prioritize the most important pages on the site. By building links to deeper pages, you can help to ensure that these pages are given the attention they deserve.
Another benefit of deeper page link building is the potential to increase traffic, conversions, and revenue. When you improve the rankings of individual pages on your site, you make it more likely that people will find and visit those pages. This can lead to increased engagement with your content, more leads or sales, and ultimately a stronger bottom line.
How Do I Know Which Pages To Target?
If you arenโt sure which pages to target then a good start is to look at the pages that you are trying to rank/optimise or the pages that are the most valuable/important on your website.
There are several techniques and tools that you can use to identify which pages on your website to build links to for SEO. Here are a few:
๐ก Analyze your website’s analytics data: One of the best places to start is by analyzing your website’s analytics data to identify which pages are already receiving the most traffic. By building links to these pages, you can help to improve their rankings and drive even more traffic to your site. Tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics can provide you with detailed information about your website’s traffic, including which pages are the most popular.
๐ก Use a backlink analysis tool: Another option is to use a backlink analysis tool like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush to identify which pages on your site are already receiving links from other websites. These tools can help you to identify the most authoritative and relevant pages on your site, as well as opportunities for building additional links.
๐ก Conduct keyword research: Conducting keyword research can also be helpful in identifying which pages on your site to target with link building. By identifying the keywords that are most relevant to your business and your audience, you can create content that targets those keywords and build links to the pages that contain that content. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, and SEMrush Keyword Research can help you identify relevant keywords.
๐ก Conduct a content audit: Conducting a content audit of your website can also be helpful in identifying which pages to target with link building. By reviewing your existing content and identifying gaps or opportunities for improvement, you can create new content that is optimized for search engines and build links to those pages.
Overall, there are many techniques and tools available to help you identify which pages on your website to target with link building for SEO. By taking a strategic approach and focusing on building links to your most authoritative and relevant pages, you can improve your website’s search engine rankings and drive more traffic, leads, and revenue.
What Tools Can I Use To Evaluate Which Pages I Should Build Links To?
There are several tools you can use to evaluate which pages you should build links to for SEO. Here are a few options:
๐ก Ahrefs: A popular SEO tool that allows you to analyze the backlinks of your competitors and see which pages are getting the most links. You can also use it to analyze your own website and identify pages that are lacking in backlinks.
๐ก SEMrush: Another popular SEO tool that allows you to analyze backlinks and identify the most important pages on your website. You can also use it to track your rankings and monitor your competitors.
๐ก Moz: This tool provides a backlink analysis feature that allows you to see which pages on your site are getting the most links, as well as identify opportunities for new links. You can also track your rankings and monitor your competitors.
๐ก Majestic: This tool has a comprehensive backlink analysis feature that allows you to see which pages on your site are getting the most links, as well as identify opportunities for new links. You can also track your rankings and monitor your competitors.
๐ก Google Search Console: This free tool from Google provides insights into your website’s performance, including which pages are receiving the most traffic and which pages are linking to your site. This can help you identify pages that are important for SEO and prioritize them for link building efforts.
Ultimately, the best tool for evaluating which pages to build links to will depend on your specific needs and preferences. You may want to try out a few different options to find the one that works best for you.
How Do I Get Started?
It’s not hard to get started with deeper link building, with a couple of quick steps. Firstly, identify the pages on your website where you need to build internal authority, secondly create effective digital PR campaigns to drive links into these and finally, outreach your great campaigns. In no time you’ll be building authority into the website and reaping the rewards of it.
E-E-A-T contributes to a high quality web page, which is extremely important for Google and therefore extremely important for SEO. E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trust and in terms of Google, these are the elements that they think make a high quality web page and in order to rank and gain organic traffic, your web page needs to demonstrate all four of these factors.
E-E-A-T is a set of guidelines used by Googleโs Search Quality Raters to ensure search results are relevant, useful and trustworthy for the users. Updating E-A-T to E-E-A-T helps Google to maintain the quality of their search results. By demonstrating experience, expertise, authority and trust, you are improving the quality of your website which is extremely important for Google. So, by incorporating E-E-A-T and improving the quality of your website, you are creating a better user experience which is what Google is looking for so this could lead to higher rankings and a more engaged audience.
Letโs take a closer look at what the acronym E-E-A-T actually means for SEO and how it will impact your web page.
Experience
As we have discussed. The new โEโ that stands for experience was rolled out in 2022 and this means that Google wants to see if the content that has been written demonstrates that it was produced with some degree of experience. For example, having actually used a product, or having actually visited a place. Google realises that there are some situations when users are searching and the most valuable content is content that has been produced by someone who has first hand experience on the topic that they are writing about. Google wants valuable experience to be included in your content because it is making sure that the content on the search engine is reliable and useful so that the results on the search engine are providing searchers with what they are looking for.
Expertise
The second โEโ stands for expertise and this refers to the level of knowledge and skills that the author of the website has in the subject matter they are presenting on the web page. The level of expertise can be demonstrated through the quality of the content that has been written by the author. The depth of the information that has been provided by the author, the use of authoritative sources and the authorโs credentials and qualifications can all factor into the expertise of the web page. In order to establish expertise, the author and the website must demonstrate a high level of knowledge and understanding of the topic that they are presenting. This can help to build trust with the user and will establish the author or website as a credible source of information in their specific field.
Authority
The โAโ in E-E-A-T stands for authority and this refers to the level of authority and reputation that the author or website has in the subject matter that they are presenting. The level of authoritativeness of a page can also be demonstrated by the quality and depth of the content and the authorโs credentials but the amount of engagement and shares the content has received can also demonstrate authoritativeness. Any signals that indicate that the content is widely respected and trusted in the field will prove authoritativeness. For example, if a medical website is written by a team of qualified doctors and the content is cited from other reputable medical websites, it will be considered an authoritative web page.
Trust
The โTโ in E-E-A-T stands for trust and it is key for Google to understand whether your website is trustworthy for its users. The trustworthiness of a page refers to the level of reliability, accuracy and transparency that the content on the website has. The level of trustworthiness on a website can be demonstrated through various factors such as the use of reputable sources, gaining great backlinks and reviews. By establishing trustworthiness, the author or website can build trust with the user and can establish themselves as a credible and reliable source in their specific field.
Why is E-E-A-T important?
When it comes to E-E-A-T, all areas are extremely important, but in the search quality rater guidelines, Google regards trust as the most important member of the E-E-A-T family.
Googleโs ultimate goal is to provide users with relevant, accurate and trustworthy information. By evaluating the E-E-A-T on your website, Google will be able to determine the quality and credibility of the content on your website and will therefore rank it accordingly. And although E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor for Google like page speed or mobile-friendliness, the concept of E-E-A-T will be used by Google to evaluate the quality and credibility of websites, which they consider to be an extremely important factor of your web page, so will in turn affect the ranking of your web pages because the if the quality of your website is high then it is making for a better overall user experience.
Googleโs quality rater guidelines explicitly state that evaluators should consider E-E-A-T when they are assessing the quality of websites. Pages with a low level of E-E-A-T will be regarded as a low quality page and pages with a high level of E-E-A-T will therefore be regarded as a high quality web page. Pages with high levels of E-E-A-T are more likely to rank well but it is important to remember that this is just one of the many factors that Google uses to determine their search rankings.
As well as promoting a high quality web page to Google, optimising your E-E-A-T signals will help to improve the user experience on your website. Websites with a high level of E-E-A-T are more likely to engage users and encourage them to spend more time on their website. This can in turn lead to increased traffic, higher engagement and ultimately, a better SEO experience.
It is therefore extremely important for website owners to focus on improving E-E-A-T signals by producing high-quality content that is based on experience and that is informative, accurate and trustworthy and, by establishing the author’s authoritativeness and trustworthiness in their specific field.
How to improve E-E-A-T on your website
Having now discussed the importance of E-E-A-T for SEO, you can see that improving your E-E-A-T can have a big impact on your web pageโs rankings because it is directly linked to improving the user experience. So, here are some things you can do to improve the E-E-A-T of your website.
โก๏ธย Write high quality contentย
โก๏ธย Provide accurate information that covers the topic in depth
โก๏ธย Include the authorโs first hand experience relating to the topicย ย
โก๏ธย Include tips and hacks that demonstrate first hand experience of the subject
โก๏ธย Review and update your content regularlyย
โก๏ธย Cite reputable sourcesย
โก๏ธย Earn backlinks from other reputable sources in the same fieldย
โก๏ธย Include reviews on your websiteย
โก๏ธย Include the authorโs credentials and qualificationsย
โก๏ธย Include an โAbout Usโ section on your website including credentials and qualificationsย
By improving these areas, you can improve the E-E-A-T of your website and this can lead to a better user experience for your users, and therefore a higher ranking because Google will see your web pages as more valuable for the users.
E-E-A-T for YMYL pages
E-E-A-T is especially important for YMYL (your money or your life) web pages, which include content that provides information that could significantly impact a personโs health, finances or safety. Google holds these web pages to a higher standard of quality and accuracy because the information that is included on these pages can have a significant impact on people’s lives. Therefore, Google uses E-E-A-T as a critical factor when they are evaluating these pages. YMYL pages that demonstrate high levels of E-E-A-T are more likely to rank higher in the SERPs because Google knows that the quality of these pages will be extremely high.
For YMYL content, E-E-A-T is extremely important, Google will expect the authors of these pages to have relevant expertise, education and experience in the specific area that they are providing information on. Additionally, Google will look for authoritative sources to support the YMYL content and the websites must have a high level of trust throughout the website.
YMYL websites that do not meet the E-E-A-T standards are less likely to rank for these types of queries so it is crucial for these websites to focus on E-E-A-T factors when creating YMYL content to ensure it meets the quality rater standards and provides accurate and reliable information to the users.
Summary
To summarise, E-E-A-T is an important concept to understand when it comes to SEO. By demonstrating experience, expertise, authority and trust, you can improve the quality of your website and content, which will therefore provide users with helpful content, which in turn can help your website to rank better.
It is extremely important to optimise your E-E-A-T signals when it comes to SEO because ultimately, providing high quality content is going to improve your users’ experience which is highly important for Google. Hopefully, this blog has helped you to understand E-E-A-T and how you can improve it for your website so that you can create that better user experience.
We’re delighted to announce that our Director Amanda Walls will be speaking at the April Brighton SEO event in front of an audience of thousands talking everything SEO & Digital PR.
Amanda will be speaking on the Wednesday afternoon at the Online PR Show with her talk discussing “Using Digital PR To Enhance Your EEAT Signals” – a great talk for anyone looking to use digital PR to enhance their overall SEO – or for anyone who particularly works in a YMYL industry, where this is held to an even higher standard – to get a better understanding of how they can utilise digital PR in this way.
The talk will have:
๐ฅ Lots of great Case Studies which show how digital PR can help boost your SEO
๐ฅ Great ideas on how to think outside of the box when it comes to newsjacking & thought leadership
๐ฅInsight into why digital PR matters for EEAT
๐ฅ Ideas on how to get journalists to come to you!
So if that sounds of interest get yourself booked on or check the talk out online when an online version of the conference day is released the week after.
Digital PR is probably one of the most popular services that we offer at Cedarwood and we were early to market with this product – starting our offering back when our business began around seven years ago. Back then, Digital PR was referred to as โlink buildingโ (they are very different!), certainly wasnโt the buzzword it was today and it was a rare occurrence in a world of paid for link acquisition.
Today, thanks to the rise of Google tightening its link spam algorithms and a number of agencies (and SEO experts) championing the values of Digital PR, we find that EVERYONE is talking about it (even John Mueller!) – but we still find that in many situations when we are approached by clients they can be a little unsure as to what it is and how it differs from traditional PR.
So letโs take a look at what Digital PR is, how it differs from traditional PR and how you can combine tactics from both to deliver a great link acquisition campaign.
What Is Digital PR?
Digital PR is an online form of PR, which essentially looks to promote visibility and awareness for your business through digital platforms and online. Digital PR takes a lot of the elements from traditional PR and puts an online spin on them – so that still includes coverage for your clients, increasing brand awareness and making sure that you land all important links, but with digital PR you really have to consider what is going to land in the online space.
Digital PR is a slightly different skill set because it’s really focuses on online only with offline being a secondary consideration. It’s widely used for businesses that are online first and are looking to gain traction amongst their target audience as well as build those all-important links back to their website.
What Is Traditional PR?
By contrast, traditional PR has more of an offline focus or as you could say a combined focus, think events activation, newspapers, integrated campaigns, tv, radio, newspapers, billboards – everything that you have come to associate with this timeless form of PR. Thatโs not to say that you canโt combine elements of this for a very effective Digital PR campaign – itโs more that these are what you would traditionally associate with a Digital PR campaign.
Traditional PR doesnโt necessarily focus on attracting a digital presence and as such, for businesses that are online only it can often be seen as missing their target demographic. That said, there is no reason why traditional PR techniques canโt be used effectively to help drive success across Digital PR campaigns.
What Is The Biggest Difference?
The biggest difference between traditional and digital PR is the platform that itโs generally targeted at, with traditional PR focused on a more traditional offline audience, whereas digital PR being targeted at a predominantly online audience. Itโs this targeting strategy that also contributes to whether or not one is more effective than the other for your ideal audience.
There are many other differences between traditional and digital PR including:
Feedback & engagement – due to the advent of online โcommentโ posts itโs a lot easier to get feedback on your content through Digital PR than it is through traditional PR, this can give you a good insight as to how your content has performed and also inspire you if you are to continue with that type of content in the future
Audience sizes – although traditional PR can give you a good audience size, the digital world is infinitely larger and digital campaigns can reach an international audience at a much greater scale than a traditional campaign.
Intent & Interest-Based targeting – one of the main differences between digital and traditional PR is the ways you can target your audience. With Digital PR you have the option to choose between interest and intent-based audiences – thatโs the option to actually put your product in front of the user at the time they are searching for it, whereas with traditional PR this is mostly limited to the userโs interest by placing it within a specific magazine or publication
Purpose – the purpose of the two campaigns is often very different. In a lot of instances, Digital PR is designed to drive visitors and awareness to a website – and in many cases to support SEO through effective and targeted link acquisition. By contrast, traditional PR can be more about brand awareness and driving visibility – it can also be used as a direct sales platform but this is often slightly more difficult to attribute.
Measurement – Last but not least, one of the main differences between digital and traditional PR is the way that you measure it. Digital PR is in most instances a little easier to measure – you can rack based on link and link quality as well as reach and various other key metrics, traditional PR by contrast is just that little bit more difficult to measure – but it can still be done by coverage, reach etcโฆ
Does This Change The Skill Set?
Many people think that you need a completely different skill set for traditional digital PR and this isnโt entirely true – but it definitely helps to have the online connections and contacts when you are trying to run a digital PR campaign. Digital PR is also incredibly fast paced and there are elements like newsjacking which do require experience and also an understanding of where to go to seek out an effective story – as a result this can become an important skill set to develop if you are looking to make the transition from traditional through to digital PR.
Are Traditional PR Skills Transferable to Digital PR?
100% you can transfer many traditional PR skills over to digital PR very effectively, but itโs important as with any campaign to take the time to understand what the client is trying to achieve with their campaign – and it might be that with digital PR that differs from what a standard traditional PR client is looking to achieve.
There are also a number of super valuable skills that traditional PRs can bring over to digital PR, in particular established journalist relationships – many of whom may now work for digital publications in addition to traditional offline publications and many of whom will have stories that they have written for print published online. In addition, an eye for a good story/angle in addition to a strong press release hook and timing for outreach are all important skills for digital PR which are carried across from traditional PR.
Is Digital PR More Popular Than Traditional PR?
I wouldnโt say that one type of PR is necessarily more popular than the other, but it would be fair to say that digital PR has seen a significant rise in interest over the last 24 months mainly due to its support for SEO and also that it has a proven track record of helping businesses to grow particularly in the online space.
The trend of digital PR took off massively during COVID-19 when businesses were forced online due to physical stores and properties being closed. At this time, people were looking for ways online to market their products and services – predominantly as this is where the audience was – and as such, digital PR took off.
We can see how the growth of digital PR has evolved over time, so itโs not that traditional PR is necessarily less popular, I would rather say that digital PR has evolved to be even more popular than it was before.
Is Digital PR Or Traditional PR Right For My Business?
Choosing the right type of PR for your business plays an important role in getting the most out of your campaign and itโs important to ensure that you understand your target market and which type of PR might be most effective.
If you are looking to attract a traditional audience and grow offline brand awareness and visibility then traditional PR is a great option. By contrast, if you are looking to grow your business online then digital PR is a great choice. To find out more about digital PR and how it could work for you get in touch!
We’re delighted to announce that we have been nominated for four awards in the PR Moment Awards 2023 for our work across Digital PR.
Digital PR has been the biggest growth area of Cedarwood over the last 12 months so we are delighted to have our work recognised by the PR industry, in addition to the work we undertake for SEO!
We’ve been nominated in:
๐ Best Digital PR Campaign Of The Year:
Cedarwood Digital & Little Loans – Driving Digital PR In A Competitive Vertical Cedarwood Digital & Patient Claim Line – Building E-A-T Links Cedarwood Digital & Hayes Garden World – Building Visibility Through Effective Digital PR
๐ Low Budget Campaign Of The Year:
Cedarwood Digital & EZ Shopper – Driving Ecommerce Success Through PR & Referral Sales
Looking forward to seeing everyone at the ceremony next month ๐น
In my opinion, log file analysis is one of the most underrated pieces of SEO analysis you can conduct – a fairly bold statement for sure – but if you have the ability to see how Google is actually crawling and understanding your website, as opposed to โemulating itโ through tools like Screaming Frog, then this data is one of the most valuable insights that you can have to really understanding how Google views your website and more importantly how it sees the different sections connecting together.
Now Iโm not saying there isnโt value in emulation tools, thereโs a lot, and over the years Iโve used them significantly to help uncover potential technical issues across websites with great success – but in recent years Iโve really come to understand the value of Googleโs direct crawl data and how when used properly, it can really help you to uncover potential blockers, issues and challenges on the website, in addition to understanding how to overcome these – thatโs why I think that log file file analysis is an essential element of any complete technical audit.
What Is Log File Analysis?
Log file analysis for SEO is a process of examining the server log files to gain insights into how search engine crawlers and bots interact with a website. When a search engine crawls a website, it records the activity in the server log files, which can provide valuable information about how the site is being crawled, what pages are being visited, and how often. By analyzing these log files, SEO professionals can uncover issues that may be hindering the site’s performance in search engine results pages (SERPs) and identify opportunities to improve it.
Log file analysis involves a range of tasks, including identifying the search engine bots that are crawling the site, analyzing the frequency and duration of their visits, and monitoring the crawl budget allocated to the site. Additionally, log file analysis can help identify crawl errors, such as broken links or pages that return a 404 error, and ensure that search engine bots are able to access and crawl all of the site’s important pages. By using log file analysis to optimize a website for search engines, SEO professionals can help ensure that the site is easily discoverable by search engines and ultimately improve its visibility and rankings in SERPs.
Why Do I Need Log File Analysis?
Log file analysis is valuable for SEO for several reasons:
๐ก Discovering crawl issues: Log files can help SEO professionals identify crawl issues that may be preventing search engine bots from discovering and indexing important pages on the site. This includes identifying broken links, pages returning a 404 error, or pages that are too slow to load, among other issues.
๐ก Understanding crawl behavior: By analyzing log files, SEO professionals can gain insights into how search engine bots are crawling the site, such as which pages are being crawled most frequently, how often the site is being crawled, and which bots are crawling the site. This information can help inform SEO strategies and optimize the site for better search engine visibility.
๐ก Improving crawl efficiency: Log file analysis can help optimize crawl budget by identifying pages that are being crawled unnecessarily or too frequently. This allows SEO professionals to prioritize the crawling of important pages, ensuring that they are crawled and indexed by search engines.
It provides valuable insights that you canโt get elsewhere and as a result, can help you uncover errors which might have previously been missed.
What Do I Need For A Log File Analysis?
To perform log file analysis, you will need access to the server log files that record the activity on your website. There are different types of log files that can be used for log file analysis, depending on the server and the software used to generate the logs. The most common types of log files are:
๐กApache log files: Apache is a popular web server software, and Apache log files are commonly used for log file analysis. Apache log files are typically stored in a plain text format and contain information such as the IP address of the user, the timestamp of the request, the requested URL, and the status code of the response.
๐กNGINX log files: NGINX is another popular web server software, and NGINX log files are similar to Apache log files. NGINX log files typically contain information such as the IP address of the user, the timestamp of the request, the requested URL, and the status code of the response.
๐กIIS log files: IIS is a web server software developed by Microsoft, and IIS log files are commonly used on Windows-based servers. IIS log files typically contain information such as the IP address of the user, the timestamp of the request, the requested URL, and the status code of the response.
Regardless of the type of log file, it is important to ensure that the log files contain the necessary information for log file analysis. This typically includes the user agent string, which identifies the search engine bots that are crawling the site, and the referrer, which identifies the source of the request (such as a search engine results page or a backlink).
What Should I Use For Log File Analysis?
There are several log file analysis tools available that can help you efficiently and effectively analyze your server log files. The choice of which tool to use will depend on your specific needs and preferences. Here are a few popular options:
๐กGoogle Search Console: Google Search Console provides a range of SEO tools, including log file analysis. The log file analysis feature allows you to upload your server log files and view reports on how Google crawls your site. You can see which pages are being crawled most frequently, identify crawl errors, and optimize your crawl budget.
๐กScreaming Frog Log File Analyzer: Screaming Frog Log File Analyzer is a desktop application that allows you to analyze log files from multiple sources, including Apache, NGINX, and IIS. The tool provides detailed reports on crawl behavior, including the frequency and duration of bot visits, and allows you to identify crawl issues and optimize crawl budget.
๐กLogz.io: Logz.io is a cloud-based log management platform that offers log file analysis as part of its suite of features. The tool allows you to collect and analyze log data from multiple sources, including web servers and applications, and provides advanced analysis and visualization features, such as machine learning-powered anomaly detection and customizable dashboards.
๐กELK Stack: ELK Stack is an open-source log management platform that includes Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. The platform allows you to collect, analyze, and visualize log data from multiple sources, including web servers, applications, and network devices. The ELK Stack offers advanced analysis and visualization features, such as machine learning-powered anomaly detection and real-time data monitoring.
These are just a few examples of the many log file analysis tools available. When choosing a log file analysis tool, consider factors such as your budget, the size of your log files, the complexity of the analysis you need to perform, and the level of technical expertise required to use the tool.
Can I Use Excel To Analyse Log Files?
Yes, Excel can be used to perform log file analysis, although it may not be the most efficient or scalable solution for large log files. Excel can be used to open and sort log files, filter data based on specific criteria, and perform basic calculations and analysis.
To get started with log file analysis in Excel, you can open the log file in Excel and use the “Text to Columns” feature to separate the data into different columns based on delimiters such as spaces or tabs. You can then use Excel’s filtering and sorting features to isolate specific data, such as search engine bot activity or crawl errors.
However, keep in mind that Excel has some limitations when it comes to handling large log files, such as performance issues and the potential for data loss or errors. For larger log files, it may be more efficient to use specialized log file analysis tools that are designed for handling large amounts of data and providing more advanced analysis and visualization features.
What Are The Main Things I Should Look For In Log File Analysis?
When analyzing server log files, there are several key metrics and insights that you should look for to optimize your website’s SEO performance. Here are some of the main things to look for in a log file analysis:
โก๏ธ Crawl frequency: Look at how often search engine bots are crawling your site, and which pages are being crawled most frequently. This can help you identify pages that are being crawled too frequently or not frequently enough, and optimize your crawl budget accordingly.
โก๏ธ Crawl errors: Identify any crawl errors or issues that search engine bots are encountering when crawling your site. This can include broken links, server errors, or blocked pages.
โก๏ธ Internal linking: Analyze the internal linking structure of your site by looking at which pages are linking to each other and how often. This can help you identify pages that may need more internal links to improve their SEO performance.
โก๏ธ Response codes: Look at the response codes in your log files to identify any pages that are returning errors or redirects. This can help you identify pages that may need to be fixed or redirected to improve your site’s user experience and SEO performance.
โก๏ธ User agents: Identify the user agents in your log files to see which search engines and bots are crawling your site. This can help you optimize your site for specific search engines and understand how different bots interact with your site.
โก๏ธ Referrers: Look at the referrers in your log files to see where your traffic is coming from, such as search engines, social media, or other websites. This can help you identify which sources are driving the most traffic to your site and optimize your marketing efforts accordingly.
These are just a few examples of the main things to look for in a log file analysis. Depending on your specific needs and goals, you may also want to analyze other metrics, such as page load times, click-through rates, or conversion rates.
How Much Time Does It Usually Take?
The time it takes to analyze log files for SEO purposes can also vary depending on various factors such as the size of the log files, the complexity of the website or application, the level of detail required, and the tools and methods used.
For smaller websites, log file analysis for SEO purposes may only take a few hours or a day. However, for larger and more complex websites or applications, the analysis may take several days or even weeks.
In addition, the level of detail required in the analysis will also affect the time it takes to complete. A high-level analysis that provides a general overview of website traffic and user behavior may take less time than a detailed analysis that requires deeper insights into specific user actions and behavior.
It’s also worth noting that log file analysis for SEO is an ongoing process that requires regular monitoring and analysis. As such, the time it takes to complete the analysis may depend on the frequency and extent of analysis required for your specific needs.
How Many Files Do I Need?
The number of log files you need for log file analysis for SEO will depend on the size of your website or application, the volume of traffic and user interactions, and the level of detail you require in your analysis.
Ideally, you should analyze all the log files generated by your web server to get a comprehensive view of user behavior and traffic on your site. However, this may not be practical or necessary for all websites.
In general, it’s recommended to analyze at least a few weeks’ worth of log files to get a good understanding of user behavior and traffic patterns. This will help identify any issues or opportunities for improvement in your website’s SEO performance.
You can also consider filtering the log files to focus on specific sections of your website or specific types of user behavior, which can help reduce the volume of data you need to analyze and make the analysis process more manageable.
Ultimately, the number of log files you need for log file analysis for SEO will depend on your specific needs and goals. It’s important to work with a knowledgeable SEO professional or use reliable SEO tools to help you determine the best approach for your website or application.
How Do I Get Started?
If after reading the above you want to get started on log file analysis then get in touch with your web developers (or your clients!) to get the files you need and get started. This valuable insight can really help you to identify any potential issues within the crawl and most importantly help to ensure that Google is crawling the website in an efficient manner – and getting to the pages that you need it to!
To find out more about log file analysis or for help with your SEO get in touch!
If you have an ecommerce store, then chances are that SEO will be close to the top of your priority list. After all, getting traffic – and more importantly, high intent traffic to your website plays an important role in driving sales and the success of your store.
Tackling SEO for ecommerce websites, particularly those with thousands of individual products can be a challenge especially when you add in elements like filters, faceted navigation and infinite scroll – so if you are looking to put your best foot forward and get ahead of your ecommerce SEO, weโve put together a handy checklist for you below to help you improve your SEO performance and drive those all important sales to your website.
Here are the top things that you need to review to ensure that your ecommerce website has the best possible chance at SEO performance:
Crawl & Indexation
Effective crawl and indexation is one of the most important elements of an ecommerce SEO strategy as if your website or its content isnโt in Googleโs index then it wonโt be found by users who are searching. Ensuring that your website is indexed and then checking that Google can effectively crawl your pages is important to ensuring that your content is available to Google and has the best possible chance of returning in the search results. To help with this you can use the following:
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a really effective way to check on the indexation of your website and it has a super easy to use interface which can show you how your website is being indexed in the eyes of Google.
The โPage indexingโ functionality shows how many pages are indexed and any potential indexation issues for the website, this can include pages which are excluded by โnoindexโ tags, pages which are canonicalised any other potential indexation issues.
The report can be a great way of understanding any potential indexation issues or evaluating why pages havenโt appeared within Googleโs index – in particular, the โCrawled – currently not indexedโ column highlights pages which Google has accessed but not indexed as it has chosen to exclude these pages from the index – this is often valuable insight for an ecommerce store as in many cases product variations such as colours, flavours, sizes etcโฆ can be seen as duplication so by reviewing this you can identify the best way to index this content.
Log File Analysis
Log File Analysis is a great way to evaluate how Google is actually crawling your website and to identify any potential pain points or areas that Google canโt crawl (alternately also looking at which pages Google is crawling too frequently) – it can also help you identify if you have any orphaned content or content which has become unlinked from your main website and could therefore be problematic.
To do a thorough log file analysis we recommend at least 2-4 weeks of log files and to do them over several months to really understand how Google is crawling your website. Spider data is useful, but log files will really allow you to see whatโs going on.
Crawl Analysis
In addition to log file analysis weโd also recommend undertaking a crawl analysis to evaluate how Google is crawling and indexing the website through an external tool such as Screaming Frog. By undertaking crawl analysis you can emulate the Google crawl, understanding how it reaches different pages and also the internal link value and structure of these pages – this approach can also help to identify any dead ends or issues where the Googlebot might not be able to get through.
Crawl analysis through a tool like Screaming Frog will help you to understand how effectively your website is being crawled and if there are any potential crawl issues which could be hampering your website from being effectively indexed and returned within the search results. It can also give you a good insight into the websiteโs crawl behaviours and if thereโs any updates that you need to make to the internal linking to help improve the crawl path.
2. Page Titles & Headings
Page titles and headings are a hugely important part of your on-site SEO as they play an important role in signposting what content is on your website and what the content is about – think of them as a synopsis of the page. If you are trying to rank for โSEO agencyโ on Google then having a page title โSEO agencyโ with the heading โSEO agencyโ will definitely help to showcase to Google that that page exists on your website.
Page titles and headings should be clear and only focus on 1-2 keywords max – and thereโs no harm in creating new pages for products that have reasonable search volume – in fact this is a great approach, especially when it comes to having a super-targeted page for specific categories or products. Undertaking fresh keyword research to identify where there is the opportunity to target new pages, and also undertaking research to evaluate if you are targeting the right keywords (i.e. should it be a cashmere โhatโ or โbeanieโ based on product and search volume) will allow you to maximise the reach of your website and also ensure that you are gaining as much visibility as possible for your brand.
3. Page Copy
Page copy is incredibly important as it tells Google and the user about your products, brands or even your services. Ensure your copy is unique but also make it as helpful as possible – put yourselves in the shoes of the user to understand what it is that the user is looking for – have you answered their questions? Have you given them the chance to compare products? Have you given a guide to help them buy a particular product? These are all questions that the user will likely have so ensure that you are on hand to help them out.
As Google says in section 3.2 of the Page Quality Rater Guidelines, the โquality of the MC (main content) is one of the most important considerations for PQ (page quality) rating. Put simply, content is king and the quality of the content that you are putting onto your website, in addition to the reputation of the writer and the website that itโs published on, all play a key role in ensuring that your website is seen as trustworthy in Googleโs eyes.
Google recently updated its Page Quality Rater Guidance to introduce the concept of E-E-A-T and at the centre of it all, was trust. Well-written content which is factually accurate and links out to good sources is a key component of trust on a website, so take the time to invest in creating effective content which is well-researched and factually backed, to ensure that you are giving yourself the best possible chance of adhering to strong on-page E-E-A-T.
4. About Us / Clear & Satisying Website Information
In the Page Quality Rater Guidelines one of the things that Google encourages raters to do is to look at a companyโs โAbout Usโ page to find out more about the company and the people who are behind the content on the website. Customer service is also an important aspect – particularly for an ecommerce website – and when it talks about โclear & satisfying website informationโ that means ensuring that a user can contact you if they need to – do you have a clear way for users to contact you? (either through a clear Contact Us page on the website or through a phone number in the top right hand corner) – are they able to get in touch if they need help or to return a product? Being able to offer effective customer service plays an important element in the trust of an ecommerce store, so ensuring that you offer โclear and satisfying website informationโ isnโt important only to Google, but also to your users.
5. Returns & Shipping Information
Which brings me onto the next point about returns and shipping information. While this is a staple on many ecommerce websites, ensuring that your returns & shipping information is clear and easily digestible is an important part of giving the user what they need.
Do you offer international shipping? Let your users know. What is your returns process like? By showcasing the information to Google and users you are not only giving them the โhelpfulโ information that they need, you are also helping to build trust in your brand. Make sure this information is displayed clearly and easily accessible from both the main navigation of your website and also on specific product pages – pop outs can also help to detract users away from their user journey and this can also play an important role in boosting conversion rate.
6. Internal Linking
In our opinion one of the most under-rated SEO optimisation opportunities, internal linking, plays a key role in telling Google about your most important pages and ensuring that the Googlebot can effectively crawl through your pages, in addition to linking your content together semantically so that Google can understand what your pages are about and any supplementary content that you might have around them.
Internal linking is important to creating content clusters and pillar posts which help to group together your content themes – allowing Google to see that you have a depth of knowledge and trust about a particular topic when it comes to ranking you for it. Additionally, given that ecommerce websites often contain such a large amount of pages, internal linking can help to indicate which of these pages are most important, so if you are selling garden benches for example, linking different content such as bench buying guides, product launches and brand information into your key garden benches page, plays an important role in helping you to showcase your expertise around garden benches.
You can utilise Screaming Frog and other tools to help you gather a list of pages where there are internal linking opportunities – often blog content or category pages where you mention particular products, brands or categories but donโt link – and utilise this to pull together a linking strategy to help boost your internal navigation and link signals.
7. Schema Mark-up
Another invaluable SEO technique for ecommerce stores is the use and implementation of Schema and structured data mark-up, particularly product mark-up across products that are for sale in your store. The utilisation of schema helps Google to understand what is on your page and the implementation of key schema such as product mark-up and FAQ mark-up can also help you to pull key information about your products and services through to the search results.
FAQ schema is one of the most popular types of schema implementation and involves marking up questions or FAQ content on your pages. Including FAQs across category and product pages is a great way to give users additional information about your product or category range while also providing effective โhelpful contentโ, by marking these up with FAQs you can also give Google the opportunity to present them within the search results as such:
By allowing you to see the FAQs within the search result you can get an understanding of the level of experience of a particular brand and their expertise.
Product schema is another great option if you are an ecommerce store or if you are selling a product online and in addition to giving valuable information to the user, this can also help to advise Google around important information pertaining to your products, this can include:
Price
Availability
Offers
Reviews
By implementing schema correctly, Google can pull this information through into the SERPs which can allow it to be displayed effectively and help to encourage users through to your website – especially if you are competitively priced and they have a price in mind.
Schema implementation can be relatively straightforward but it plays an important role in helping Google and users to understand more about your website and can be a real value add.
8. JavaScript & Code
Understanding how Google sees the JavaScript and code on your website plays a really important role in ensuring that your website is correctly indexed and that both Google and the user can understand what the page is about
In particular there have been a number of situations with JavaScript that has been incorrectly implemented has caused problems for Google across both crawl and indexation, most specifically this happens when JavaScript is implemented in a way that it blocks Google’s crawlers from effectively accessing the content therefore leading to Google not being able to see the content and therefore not valuing it as part of the page.
If you are unsure how Google is viewing the JavaScript on your website there are a number of ways that you can evaluate this in particular one very effective way is through using a tool to fetch and render your website in the way that Google would so that you can see if there are any render-blocking resources within your JavaScript which might be blocking the Googlebot from accessing your website. JavaScript can play an important role in the function of your website so it’s important to consider the impact that might have on your SEO when utilising it within the code, by using fetch and render it allows you to understand how Google sees this and allows you to ensure that your content can be effectively crawled and indexed.
9. Site Speed
Site speed plays an important role in your user experience and as such it plays a very important role and how effective the SEO on your website is. Google has for many years spoken about how important site speed is and in many cases it used to be true that if a website took over three seconds to load 50% of users would leave, this obviously isn’t ideal if you’re looking to attract and retain users on your website.
If you aren’t sure how your site speed currently performs then you can use the Google page speed insights tool to really understand how your website stacks up and a number of different speed metrics. The pagespeed insights tool also explains how your website performs on the core web vitals test, this is an important metric to Google and they have an algorithm update which specifically looks at how well websites perform against the core web vitals – weโll talk about this a little bit more in next section.
Ultimately site speed plays a key role in user satisfaction so it’s important that you try and make your website as fast as possible so you’re delivering a good user experience as well as adhering to Googleโs guidelines.
10. Core Web Vitals
Core web vitals playing important role in understanding how Google sees your website from a user experience perspective. There are three key considerations – LCP – that is how long it takes the largest element on your website to load CLS – that is looking at any images or areas of content on the website which is subject to shift when the user moves throughout the page and FID – that’s looking at how long it takes for the website to load from the first point of load.
A number of years ago Google introduced an algorithm update which was designed to ensure that websites performed well on the core web vitals test. The main purpose behind this algorithm was to encourage webmasters to create websites that drove a good user experience, had decent page speed and also ensured that when a user moved throughout the website the experience was seamless.
Although initially the majority of websites failed the core web vitals test, we are starting to see more and more websites take this seriously and as such, a higher percentage of websites pass this test than ever before. As a result, if you are building a new e-commerce store or you’re simply looking to upgrade your existing e-commerce store, then looking into core web vitals and how you can optimise to pass this test is an important SEO consideration
11. Image SEO
Image SEO is an important but often overlooked facet of effective SEO performance. This involves looking at the imagery in on your website and understanding how we could optimise this to appear within the Google image search and can be particularly useful if the product that you’re selling is driven by great image or if users are often searching for images on your website subject or topic.
To optimise for image SEO, one of the most important elements is the image alt text, this piece of code that often sits behind the image is the one descriptor that enables you to tell Google what that image is about. remember Google doesn’t always understand what an image is so we need to tell it in plain text form. The image alt text is a great way to tell Google what the image is about so make sure that you make your alt text as keyword rich and clear and concise as possible.
Another way that you can improve your Image SEO is through the naming of the images that you upload to your website. This doesn’t often have a huge impact but it can add to your Image SEO optimisation. As a result, when you’re uploading an image to the website we do recommend that you name the image with a keyword friendly format that again is clearly descriptive in plain text form of what is inside the image.
12. Sitemap
Sitemaps play an important role in helping Google to understand the structure of our website which can be very important when it comes to delivering an effective crawl. By creating an XML sitemap we are able to submit the sitemap to Google Search console and have Google effectively crawl the sitemap that we have created.
Submitting an XML sitemap to Google can also help us to identify where there are pages within the sitemap that haven’t been indexed or even pages in the sitemap which shouldn’t be indexed – this is really valuable in enabling us to give Google a really effective crawl and making sure that we maximise our crawl budget.
A sitemap will usually be created dynamically by the webmaster or the website itself and if you have an e-commerce store where you are frequently changing products or products might be going in and out stock, we would recommend setting up a dynamic type which refreshes at midnight each day, to ensure that the information that you’re sending to Google is relevant and correct.
13. Robots.txt
The robots.txt file on a website is one of the most important files that you can have to give guidance to Google and how you want it to crawl your website. within this file you can give guidance to the Googlebot to understand how it needs to crawl your website, this can include files and folders that you would like it to avoid crawling, or it can include areas of the website that you would like to block from the crawl altogether.
This particular file is very valuable for e-commerce stores who may have a filtering system in place such as faceted navigation – in this instance Google will naturally crawl every link that is created and that could be thousands and thousands of variations of a product such as size, colour, shape etcโฆ and this could lead to a significant waste and crawl budget and it may also mean that Google doesn’t reach the most important pages on your website as frequently as it should. In this instance we would recommend implementing a robots.txt file to ensure that Google is crawling the right areas of your website and to prevent it from wasting crawl budget in areas that you would prefer it to avoid.
14. Product Information
Your product information pages are some of the most important pages that you’ll have on an e-commerce website. these pages give your users the information that they need to understand what type of product you’re selling, what the particular features of that product are and also important elements like what that product is made of and what size it is available in.
It’s important to be clear and concise with your product information and to make sure that you make as much information available as possible to the user to help them to make an informed decision. At the end of the day we want the user to purchase the products when they are on our website, rather than going to a competitor, so it’s important that we are giving them all of the information that they need to make an informed purchase.
Where possible try and make your product descriptions unique as this can help to add value to the user and avoid the duplication of many other retailers who will be selling the same products. Although we do understand that in many instances it’s difficult to do this and in some cases you will need to use the manufacturerโs copy on your website. If this is the case then try to add a unique element to your website in another way, this could be looking at implementing FAQs or pulling in some USPs of using your shop against a competitor.
15. FAQs
We mentioned FAQs in the last point as one of the most important ways to add unique content onto your website, but more than this they have the ability to answer your userโs questions and easily match your user purpose and intent, this is an important element in Google’s quality rater guidelines and something that you should be looking to add to your e-commerce store.
If you aren’t sure where to start with FAQs then looking at the types of questions that people are searching for using keyword research tools to understand conversational queries is a great place to start. In addition, you could look at the people also ask section at the bottom of the Google Search results to get an idea of what other users have been searching for related to your specific product or category group.
Once you have an idea of the questions that people are asking, you can then start to generate great copy that answers those questions directly and put it into faq format to fit into the website. We also recommend implementing FAQ schema which can help Google to understand that your content is in FAQ format and also that it’s answering a user’s question which is always super valuable to the content of the page.
16. Clear Titles & Headings
Clear targeting plays an important role in helping Google to understand what your e-commerce pages are about, this means ensuring that all product and category pages are clearly labeled with clear titles and clear headings telling the user what is on that page. We generally recommend that you only focus each page with one or two maximum keywords to ensure that those pages are seen as super relevant for that term and additionally this helps Google to understand that you are relevant for that term and may help you to perform better in the search results.
If you aren’t sure where to start with titles and headings then undertaking keyword research to understand what uses are searching for and the types of search volumes around those keywords can help you to choose the right keyword for that page. In many instances we see the e-commerce pages are set up to target the wrong keyword and in this instance they could be missing out on a great deal of opportunity. An example of this could be targeting a cashmere sweaters page with the keyword cashmere knitwear – on review we might find the cashmere sweaters has a higher search volume than cashmere knitwear, but as we have chosen to target it with the latter we are missing out on the opportunity to capitalise on that search volume. This is a great example of a situation where looking at how we are targeting the page and page title is important to ensure that weโre maximising the visibility for our website.
17. Product Information
Most e-commerce stores will have a mega nav or a main menu with very clean navigation and this allows Google to understand what the main pages on that website are and when it usually lands on the homepage, it helps to direct Google through the website to ensure that it lands on some of the most important pages on the site first.
This is one of the main reasons why having a good main navigation is so important – and much time and detail should be put into researching the right pages to go into the navigation, to ensure that you’re really maximising the opportunity here both from the user and an internal link equity perspective.
If you aren’t sure where to start with evaluating your navigation and your crawl, then a great place to start is with a log file analysis. Log file analysis allows you to understand how Google is crawling through your website and to identify which pages are most frequently called and which pages perhaps aren’t getting much of a visit at all. Once you’ve undertaken a log analysis you can have a really good idea of where you might need to improve the internal navigation of your website. If some of the most important pages arenโt being reached very frequently or there are a number of pages which are being repeatedly crawled perhaps indicating that Google is stuck on those pages, then updating your main navigation will help to ensure that Google can continue one it’s way and that the appropriate pages on your website are getting indexed as they should be.
18. Internal Linking
Internal linking plays a very important role in allowing Google to move through your website. Connecting your pages together and allowing the Googlebot to move effectively throughout the website without getting stuck in a particular area or without missing out on key pages plays an important role in ensuring that your website is effectively crawled and indexed giving it the best possible chance to return well within the search results. Internal linking also helps Google to understand what the most important pages on your website are, and building an effective internal linking structure can help to send positive page signals to ensure that Google understands which pages they need to consider as most significant on your website.
19. E- E-A-T
Last but not least we have the concept of expertise authority and trust, these words are perhaps some of the most mentioned words when we talk about SEO and the three of the most important elements when it comes to Google evaluating how your website performs in the search results. Google has told us time and time again how important it is for websites to showcase expertise, authority and trust through everything that they do both on-site and off-site and it’s no different for e-commerce stores which are often held to a higher standard due to the transactional nature of the website.
E-A-T can come in a number of different formats and there’s a number of things that you can do on your website to really push and exude these key signals, but in general on e-commerce stores there’s two areas that we focus on the most, these are the About Us page and the Contact Us page – as they both showcase important information to the user and to Google regarding who is behind the website and how they can be contacted if an issue arises.
Your About Us page should do what it says on the tin and that is it should tell people about you, it should tell people about your brand, your background, your expertise and why they can trust to make a purchase from you. This is also a place to talk about any achievements, awards, accreditations or other recommendations that you’ve had that can help to add to that trust side of the business. It’s also nice to include a meet the team page so that people can understand the names and faces behind the brand that they are purchasing from.
Your Contact Us page is also important – this provides your customers with the ability to connect with you if there’s a problem with the order or if they need to ask a question and this plays an important role in matching user purpose and intent and allowing the users to make an informed decision before they make their purchase. It gives them peace of mind if they do make the purchase and there’s an issue with it that they are able to resolve it quickly and easily so having a clearly visible contact us page with a number of ways to communicate with you effectively is always a bonus here. From an SEO perspective this is a big tick in both the authority and the trust boxes as it helps to build trust with the user knowing that they can communicate with you if there is an issue.
20. Mobile Optimisation
Mobile optimisation is critical, as the majority of e-commerce traffic often comes from mobile devices. Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, has a responsive design, and is optimised for mobile search. Check the mobile usability report in Google Search Console to identify any issues and ensure a smooth user experience.
21. Canonical Tags
E-commerce websites often have multiple URLs for similar or identical content (e.g., product variations). Use canonical tags to avoid duplication issues and tell search engines which version of a page to prioritise. Proper implementation of canonical tags can help consolidate link equity and avoid keyword cannibalisation.
22. Breadcrumb Navigation
Breadcrumb navigation is a great way to help both users and search engines understand the structure of your website. It aids user experience by providing a clear path back to previous pages, and search engines can better grasp your siteโs hierarchy. Implement breadcrumb navigation, especially on category and product pages, to improve crawlability and SEO.
23. User-Generated Content
Encourage and showcase user-generated content, such as product reviews, testimonials, and ratings. This not only builds trust with potential customers but also creates fresh, unique content that Google values. Ensure that reviews are crawlable and well-structured, potentially using review schema markup.
24. HTTPS For Security
If you haven’t already, make sure your website uses HTTPS. Google prioritises secure websites, and customers are more likely to trust and complete transactions on secure sites. An HTTPS certificate improves your SEO and provides a safer experience for your users.
25. Pagination
E-commerce sites with large product ranges often require pagination. Make sure your paginated pages are properly indexed and optimised. Use the rel="prev" and rel="next" tags to inform Google about paginated content, and ensure that the most important category pages are easily accessible by both users and search engines.
26. Optimised URLs
Ensure your URLs are short, descriptive, and keyword-rich. Avoid dynamically generated URLs with lots of unnecessary characters. Instead, opt for clean, static URLs that describe the content of the page, such as www.example.com/mens-sneakers instead of www.example.com/category?id=123&product=456. This improves click-through rates and SEO visibility.
27. Content Silos
Group your e-commerce content into silos by creating well-organised categories and subcategories. This not only helps users navigate the site but also allows search engines to understand the relationship between your products and categories. A well-organised silo structure can improve your siteโs relevance for specific search queries.
28. Alt Tags For Images
Ensure that all images on your website, particularly product images, have relevant and descriptive alt tags. Alt tags help search engines understand the context of the image, improving your chances of appearing in image search results. Descriptive alt text also improves accessibility for users with disabilities.
29. Local SEO For Ecommerce
If your e-commerce store has a physical presence or if you offer local services (e.g., store pick-up), consider local SEO optimisation. Create a Google My Business profile, ensure your NAP (name, address, phone number) details are consistent across the web, and optimise product listings for localised keywords to capture local search intent.
30. Social Proof Integration
Integrate social proof, such as customer testimonials, influencer endorsements, and social media engagement, into your product pages. This not only increases trust with potential customers but also contributes to SEO by encouraging users to engage with your site and share content, which can generate backlinks.
Summary
SEO is hugely important for e-commerce websites but in order to get the most out of your website it’s important to follow the right guidance and to understand what you need to do to get the most out of the search engine results. So if you are working with an e-commerce store or if you’re planning to launch one in the near future, take time to invest in understanding how you can get SEO to work for you and it will pay off in the long run. If you’d like to know more about how we can help you with your SEO for an e-commerce store then please get in touch!
Alternately if you are looking to approach ecommerce with a more immediate return then you may want to consider looking for a Google Shopping agency to support you with your product listing ads.
Search engines such as Google and Bing crawl billions of pages in order to discover and organise the content that appears on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). They exist to understand content in order to give users on their SERP the most relevant results to answer the questions that users are asking. Understanding how search engines work is crucial for SEO because if your website can not be found then it will not show up on the SERP and users will not be able to find your website.
Customers are increasingly searching online for products and services and it is now more common for users to access a website through a search engine rather than just searching for a web address. It is therefore important to be ranking highly on the search engine results pages and in order to do this it is important to understand how search engines work so that you can optimise your website for SEO and get ranking on SERPs so that you can increase the amount of visitors to your site.
What Are Search Engines?
So firstly, letโs look at what a search engine actually is. A search engine is a software program that allows users to find information that they are looking for based on keywords or phrases. They are able to return results extremely quickly by constantly crawling websites and indexing every page that they find. They will then rank these websites based on their algorithms so that when users search for keywords, the most relevant and helpful websites will come up first.
Webmasters will need to optimise their SEO to help search engines recognise their website as helpful in order for it to rank when users are searching for a particular keyword.
One of the most popular search engines is Google and it has over 200 ranking factors in its algorithm. The algorithms are an extremely complex system which are used to retrieve data from its search index and deliver the best results for a query instantly. Google uses a combination of algorithms and makes thousands of changes to these algorithms every year. Most of these changes are very small so will go unnoticed, however, Google occasionally rolls out major updates that will significantly impact the SERP, so companies will need to alter their website in order to keep ranking on the SERP. It is important to keep up with all of Googleโs algorithm updates so that you can keep your website optimised at all times. Below you will find a list of search ranking updates that Google released in 2022:
Search engines go through three main stages so that the best search results will be shown on the SERP, these three stages are crawling, indexing and ranking. Unfortunately, not all web pages will make it through each stage.
Search Engine Crawling:
Crawling is the process of finding out what web pages exist on the web. Google will use automated crawlers, known as spiders, to download text, images and videos from web pages that it has found on the internet. There is no registry of all web pages, so Google has to constantly look for new and updated pages and add them to itโs list of already known web pages, when Google finds a new web page, it is called URL discovery. Google will be able to discover new pages by following links from already known pages or they can be discovered if you submit a list of pages, known as a sitemap, for Google to crawl.
Google will not only just crawl new URLs but they will also crawl pages that are already known by Google to check for any updates that have been made to the page since they last crawled it. If they detect a change on the page then they will update the page on their index so that search results are up to date when users are searching for information. Google will use their algorithms to determine how often they crawl a page and how many pages on the website will be indexed. It is likely that pages that are often updated and changed will be crawled more frequently than pages that are rarely updated.
Search Engine Indexing:
After Google has crawled a page, it then tries to understand what the web page is actually about so that they are able to answer users’ queries. Google will analyse text, images and video files on the web page and then store that information in the Google index. The Google Index will contain billions of web pages on thousands of machines so that when a user searches for a query, the web pages are already indexed and they will be able to instantly return those web pages on the SERP.
The index will include all of the URLs that Google has discovered and indexed, and all of the relevant information about the content of the URLs. This will include the keywords of the page, telling Google what the page is about, the type of content that is included on the page, the freshness of the page – when it was last updated, and the previous user engagement of the page.
Google will not index all of the URLs that it finds and this can be due to a number of reasons:
โก๏ธThere could be signs on your web page telling Google not to index a particular page – this is where a noindex tag will be signalled on your web page – this is telling Google not to index this page even if there are links pointing towards it.
โก๏ธGoogle could deem the page to be of low quality and they will therefore not index the page.
โก๏ธThe URL could return an error page, for example 404 not found. If this occurs then Google will not index the page.
If you want your web page to gain organic traffic, then it needs to be indexed by Google, so you need to make sure that you optimise your web page for SEO and ensure that none of the above things that we have talked about are happening. We will go into more detail about how to make your web pages more search engine friendly below.
Search Engine Ranking:
When a user searches for a keyword on Google, Google will look through their index for content that is relevant to that keyword in the hope that they will answer the user’s query. They will rank the content with the content that they think is the most relevant at the top, so, it is likely that the higher a website is ranking, the more relevant Google thinks that website is in relation to the keyword/ query.
This is where Googleโs algorithms come into play. Search algorithms are systems that are used to rank data from the search index and deliver the most relevant web pages for a query. Google uses many ranking factors in its algorithms to ensure the most relevant web pages will be ranking highest on the SERPs:
โก๏ธBacklinks – Backlinks are links from one web page to another and they are a very strong ranking factor. Having quality backlinks will tell Google that your web page is trustworthy and will give users accurate information. When it comes to backlinks itโs important to remember that quality always wins over quantity – one super relevant backlink which really showcases your expertise will be far more beneficial to the authority of your website than a number of backlinks from irrelevant sources
โก๏ธRelevance of content – Google will analyse the content of a web page to assess whether it will contain the information that a user is searching for. One of the basic ways in which Google does this is by looking whether the content and the search term contain the same keywords. Beyond keywords, Google will analyse the content in other ways such as using aggregated and anonymised interaction data to see whether or not the content is relevant to the search term and whether other users have found it useful.
โก๏ธUsability of web pages – Google will consider the usability of the web page and how easy it is to navigate. Aspects that they will look at include page speed, whether it is mobile and desktop friendly, and how quickly the content loads. The Core Web Vitals algorithm also plays into this and further reinforces how important on-page user experience is to Google.
When ranking web pages, Google will also use the userโs location, language, previous search history and what device they are using to personalise the results and make them more relevant to individual users.
How To Make Your Website Search Engine Friendly
From the above, you can see that Google prioritises certain factors in order to provide users with the best overall experience when they are using their search engine. This is great, as it means that you can optimise your website in order to allow Google to, firstly, crawl your web page, secondly, index your web page and thirdly, rank your web page. So, here are some points to make sure your website is search engine friendly:
โก๏ธCreate and submit a sitemap – submitting a sitemap will ensure Google crawls all of your web pages.
โก๏ธEnsure your website is indexableย
โก๏ธTarget the relevant keywords – when choosing your keywords, you should make sure that it is what users are searching for, you can find this out by looking at the volume of any keywords on AHrefs.
โก๏ธInclude your keywords in your content, headers and URLs – once you have chosen a keyword to target, you need to make sure that you include it in your website, use the keyword as part of your sentences but make sure you avoid keyword stuffing. You can also use semantics – look at keywords that are related to the keywords you are trying to focus on to add value and expertise
โก๏ธEnsure your content is usefulย ย
โก๏ธEnsure your website includes internal and external links
โก๏ธEnsure your site loads fast
โก๏ธEnsure your website is optimised for mobile and desktop browsers
Summary
To summarise, search engines exist to give users the most relevant information when they are searching for a query. Search engines will crawl and index your web pages and then rank them based on the key ranking factors.
By optimising the SEO on your web page, you will ensure that Google and other search engines can easily crawl your website, make sure that your content will be indexed for the right keywords, and finally it will help you to rank higher on search engine results pages and therefore gain more organic visitors to your site.
2023 has got off to a busy start for our Paid Media team and we are delighted to have been nominated for three awards at the UK Paid Media Awards.
The UK Paid Media Awards recognise the contribution that paid advertising delivers to engagement, clicks, leads sales and ultimately profit, shining a light on the work being undertaken by paid media agencies which is best in class.
We’ve been nominated in the following categories:
๐ข Shopping Ads Campaign Of The Year with Hayes Garden World
๐ข Best Use Of Data with Patient Claim Line
๐ข Best Small Paid Media Agency
The award nominations top off a busy month with January being our busiest month ever for new business and we welcomed five new clients into the fold at the start of February.
The new clients come off the back of our wins at the European Paid Media Awards where we took home:
๐ข Retail Campaign Of The Year with Hayes Garden World
๐ข Best Small Paid Media Agency
Look forward to seeing everyone at the awards night in London on March 15th and you can see the full list of nominations here
Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that Google considers important in a website’s overall user experience, it is an extremely important aspect of SEO because it ensures a great user experience, which in turn helps to improve overall page quality. The Core Web Vitals algorithm update was rolled out in 2021 by Google and it is used to measure and evaluate the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of websites. This was then incorporated into a broader Page Experience update which rolled out in 2022.
There are three main metrics of Core Web Vitals:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – this is how quickly the main content of your web page loads.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – this is a measure of how much your webpage will unexpectedly shift during the loading phase. A layout shift occurs when a visible element shifts position from one rendered frame to another.
First Input Delay (FID) – this will measure the time from when a user first interacts with your website to the time when the browser is able to respond to that interaction.
There are also some non-Core Web Vitals that are included:
โก๏ธFirst Contentful Paint (FCP)
โก๏ธInteraction to Next Paint (INP)
โก๏ธTime to First Byte (TTFB)
It is important that all of these metrics are optimised for your website in order to improve the userโs experience and increase organic rankings. In particular, optimising TTFB plays a key role in ensuring that you have a good page load speed – if TTFB is slow then it slows down the entire loading process which can cover LCP and FID – causing issues for your Core Web Vitals performance, optimising this from the start can help to put your Core Web Vitals on a strong standing.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is one of the Core Web Vitals metrics and it is a measurement of how long it takes for the main content of a web page to load. The largest image or textblock that is visible to the user is what is measured.
In order to provide a good user experience, the LCP should have a measurement of under 2.5 seconds.
Typical elements that are considered for LCP are:
โก๏ธImages
โก๏ธVideo poster images
โก๏ธBackground imagesย
โก๏ธBlock level text
LCP is one of the key metrics for the Core Web Vitals because it can accurately measure how fast your website can be used by users. The speed of a website is very important to users so Google wants to make sure that web pages are loading fast enough for the users. Google states that 53% of visits are abandoned if a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, as such having a good load time across both mobile and desktop is very important.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the visual stability of a website, it is the unexpected shift of webpage elements while the webpage is loading. The metric will measure how often users of a website are experiencing an unexpected layout shift.
In order to provide a good user experience, the CLS should have a score of 0.1 or under.
Minimising CLS is extremely important because if a user experiences a lot of pages shifting around the page, it will lead to a bad user experience.
If your website has a poor CLS score, it is likely due to a coding issue that can be solved by your web developer.
According to Google, the main reasons that your website has a poor CLS will be due to:
โก๏ธImages that do not have dimensionsย
โก๏ธAds, embeds, and iframes that do not have dimensions
โก๏ธDynamically injected content
โก๏ธWeb Fonts causing FIOT/ FOUT
โก๏ธActions waiting for a network response before updating DOM
CLS is one of the key metrics for the Core Web Vitals because having poor CLS will mean that your users are having a bad experience on your website which could lead to users leaving your webpage and not returning. It could also lead to frustration among users who might not be able to find what they are looking for.
First Input Delay (FID)
First Input Delay (FID) is the measurement of how long it takes for your browser to respond to your userโs first interaction with the page. An example of an interaction can be clicking on a link in the websiteโs navigation, choosing an option from a menu or entering your email into a field. FID is important because it is taking into account how real-life users are interacting with your website.
In order to provide a good user experience for your website, the FID should have a measurement of under 100ms.
One of the main reasons for having a poor FID score is due to your browserโs main thread being busy parsing and executing JavaScript code. This causes a poor FID score because the main thread is unable to respond to users’ interactions if it is busy.
FID is one of the key metrics for the Core Web Vitals because speed is one of the main aspects Google considers when they are ranking your website because they know that it is a top priority for their users. So, having a good FID score will improve the overall user experience of your website.
Why are Core Web Vitals Important for SEO?
Google has over 200 ranking factors, with page experience and page speed both being in the top eight, so this probably tells you that Core Web Vitals are extremely important when it comes to SEO. The first impression of your website could be the difference between a user becoming loyal or never returning to your website again, it is important that this first impression is a good one so that you are gaining loyal users that will return to your website over and over. This first impression starts with all 3 Core Web Vitals because the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of a website will likely be the first things that your users will notice when clicking onto your site.
Research conducted by Google shows that users prefer to use websites that have a great page experience. So, Google sees the page experience as a priority when they are ranking websites.
Optimising your Core Web Vitals will inevitably improve the user’s experience of your website and it is likely that you will have fewer users returning to the SERP because they are satisfied and happy with your website. If you improve the user experience, you will likely have happier users and this could lead to more conversions for your website.
How Do I Measure My Website’s Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals show how your website performs based on a set of real-world, user centered metrics that will quantify key aspects of your userโs experience.
In order to pass your Core Web Vitals assessment, you need to score โGoodโ in all three metrics. So, how do you find out if you have passed?
PageSpeed Insights:
In order to find out if you have passed your Core Web Vitals assessment, you need to go to PageSpeed Insights and enter the URL for your web page:
PageSpeed Insights will then show what your real users are experiencing. You will receive an assessment for your webpage and it will look something like this, showing whether or not your website has passed or failed the assessment:
From this report, you will be able to see if you have passed or failed each metric, in order to pass your Core Web Vitals assessment, LCP, FID and CLS must all score โGoodโ. As you can see in the above example, this webpage has failed the assessment because the only section that is currently good is the FID.
You will receive an assessment for both mobile and desktop browsers and these will have different results based on the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of each browser.
PageSpeed Insights will also suggest improvements that you can make on your website in order to pass the Core Web Vitals assessment. These improvement suggestions can be found under โOpportunitiesโ and โDiagnosticsโ:
Using PageSpeed Insights will allow you to see if you have passed or failed the Core Web Vitals assessment for your website for both mobile and desktop. This will then allow you to investigate the main factors that could be causing the Core Web Vitals to fail and how they can be improved. PageSpeed Insights will give you recommendations on how to improve all three metrics, even if you pass one or two of the metrics, there will still be suggested improvements to help you improve your score, therefore improving the overall page experience even further.
Looker Studio:
If you want a more in depth and visual review of your Core Web Vitals, Looker Studio is great. Looker Studio will give you a detailed and visual report of your websiteโs Core Web Vitals and it makes it very easy to see how your website is performing. You will clearly be able to see if your website is doing well for a particular metric.
The main overview page will give you a visual report of all three main metrics:
You can also go deeper into each metric to understand how your website is performing for each one, you can do this by going into the dashboard on the left hand side of the page:
Another great feature of the Looker Studio report is being able to look at your Core Web Vitals for different months, this enables you to see whether or not your vitals are improving or not and whether you need to make any changes. You can do this by clicking on the dropdown in the top right hand corner:
Summary
To summarise, Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that Google considers very important for a webpageโs overall experience. As I’m sure you can see, Core Web Vitals are a very important part of your website and improving them will improve the overall experience for your users.
Google will determine whether or not you have passed or failed your Core Web Vitals assessment based on real-world data. You will be able to see this data in PageSpeed Insights, and it will provide suggested recommendations on how to improve the three main metrics for your website for both mobile and desktop.
Understanding the Core Web Vitals for your website will allow you to create a more optimised web page for your users and will lead to happier users and increased organic traffic.
On-site content is a crucial aspect of SEO, without content, users and search engines will not be able to understand what your website is about, meaning that your website will not rank on search engine results pages so it will not be seen organically. If your content is well optimised for your users, you will rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) and your website will get more organic traffic.
What is On-Site Content for SEO?
On-site content for SEO is any content that is created for your website with the goal of better matching your userโs intent and increasing your ranking on search engine results pages in order to gain traffic to your website and boost your websiteโs trust and authority. The content on your website needs to be user friendly content so that search engines can easily understand what it is about and so that it satisfies the users intent.
There can be many different types of content that you include on your website:
โก๏ธBlog posts – sharing information through blogsย
โก๏ธGuides – longer pieces of content that contain information about a particular topic
โก๏ธProduct pages – defines the products that you sell and allows customers to find out everything about that product
โก๏ธStatic pages – these pages will stay the same for all users of the website – for example an About Us page
โก๏ธLanding pages – this is the first page that users land on when they go onto your website
The overall goal when optimising your on-site content for SEO is to write user friendly content that will fully answer your readerโs question or solve their problem – it should provide them with a specific answer but also it needs to be easily understandable by both the user and the search engine.
How to Optimise your On-Site Content for SEO
Keyword Research
On-site content starts with carrying out keyword research as it will give you the direction of what content should be on your website – you can read our guide to keyword research to find out more about what this is and how to carry it out. Knowing what keywords your target audience are searching for will allow you to identify the specific things users are looking for relating to your website and you can then generate content for your website based on these keywords.
Include Keywords in your Content
When you have found your keywords, it is important to include these keywords from your keyword research in your on-site content so that Google knows what your content is about so that they are able to rank you on search engine results pages. You should use your keywords and long-tail keywords in the title, headings and body of your content, itโs also worth using keywords and topics which are closely related to your key page topic, or semantically linked. When using your keywords, it is important for them to occur naturally throughout your content, do not use lots of keywords where they do not occur naturally as Google may peanalise you for this and it will not be optimised for the user. Always remember that Google wants you to create content that matches the user intent.
Long-Type Content
When writing your content, itโs worth considering writing long-type content. There are many studies that show long-type content performs very well in search engine results pages.
SerpIQ ran a study charting the top 10 results in a search engine results page by content length. The result in first position contained 2,416 words and the result in 10th position contained 2,032 words:
This study is showing that Google prefers longer content. However, this does not just mean that you should write over 2,000 words and think that you will rank higher. The content itself is a lot more significant than the quantity of the content. If your content completely matches the user’s needs and is not over 2,000 words then it will still rank even if there are other posts that are longer in length.
Itโs important to consider user intent here and not just write content for contentโs sake – while chances are that longer articles are more likely to answer any questions that a user has, short-form content can be equally as effective if it quickly matches user intent and answers their purpose in short, effective language – something to keep in mind.
Add Internal Links
Including internal links in your on -site content will help to improve your SEO performance as it helps to identify which are the key focus areas on your website and to cluster topical content together to showcase your expertise on a particular vertical or topic.. An internal link is any link on your website that links to another page on your own website. Internal links are important because they will connect your website and make it a lot easier for users on your site to navigate and find the information that they are looking for. Internal links will also help when Google and other search engines are crawling your site because it will show them new pages that they can rank. They are always looking for new pages that they can rank for users but sometimes they will miss pages that you have on your site, internal linking will make sure that this doesnโt happen, because if Google is crawling one of your existing pages and they find an internal link, they will also crawl the linked page as well.
When Google is crawling your website, any page that has a high amount of internal linking will be seen as important. So, it is likely that your website will have a main page that will focus on a particular topic and then this will be surrounded with other shorter articles that will go into more detail, these shorter articles should all link back to the main page so that Google knows that is the main page. As this main page starts to improve, it will also improve the ranking of the other pages that are linking to that main page, therefore improving the overall performance of your content.
Add External Links
External links are links that are used to direct users to another website. External links can be inbound or outbound. Inbound links are the links that come from other websites and outbound links are the links that are included on your website that direct your users to another website.
If you are correctly including outbound external links in your content, this can help to back up your expertise as well as linking your website to other credible sources – it will improve the credibility of your website. If you add relevant and trustworthy links to your website, Google will know that your content is trustworthy and credible so they are more likely to rank your site because they know that it will answer users’ queries correctly.
When you are including external links in your content, it is important that the links are relevant to the topic that you are discussing on your page. If the content is relevant, then you are improving the overall experience for your users as you are allowing them to find out more information about their desired topic.
Optimise Readability
When writing content for your website, readability is extremely important, this refers to how easy it is to read and understand your content. If your content is easy to read and understand then you are improving the overall experience for the user and it is more likely that your users will be more engaged and potentially spend a longer amount of time on your website. This is an extremely positive sign for Google and other search engines because they will be tracking the behavior of your users and how long they spend on your website. If users are spending a long time on your website, it is indicating to Google that your website has high-quality content that users are interacting with easily so they are likely to rank your website higher, knowing that it will match the users intent. When considering the readability of your content, there are a few things to consider:
โก๏ธUse legible fontsย
โก๏ธEnsure your font is big enoughย
โก๏ธUse short sentencesย
โก๏ธUse headings for your paragraphsย
โก๏ธUse visual content such as images
Why is On-Site Content Important for SEO?
Google and other search engines want to rank websites that are valuable and relevant to what users are searching for. Google often updates their algorithms so that their users are receiving the most relevant and useful information, an example of this is the helpful content update that was designed to help users find high quality content. One of the main aspects that Google will be looking at when ranking websites is the on-site content and whether or not it is useful for the users that are searching for specific information, so it is important that your content is optimised for your users. Optimising your on-site content is extremely important for SEO:
โก๏ธIt will improve your users overall experience – creating high quality content will provide your users with the information that they need and will be easy for those users to navigate your website.ย
โก๏ธTargeting keywords – when you are generating content for your website, this is the only way that you will be able to include your keywords onto your website and make sure that your site is found on search engine results pages when users are searching for your products/ services.ย
โก๏ธImprove online visibility – if you are creating content that is optimised for your users and it is useful content, it is likely that Google and other search engines will increase your rankings and your website is more likely to be found by potential customers.
Optimising your on-site content is crucial for SEO in order to create user-friendly content for your users and for search engines. By creating content that is providing a better user experience, you are showing Google that your website is optimised for your users and this will in turn allow you to rank higher on search engine results pages.
Shopping Basket
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
