#Query Deserves Freshness (QDF)

[inqnest]

Mastering Query Deserves Freshness (QDF): Your Key to SEO Success

In the ever-evolving world of SEO, staying ahead means understanding the strategies that make search engines tick. One such crucial concept is Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) — a game-changer for ranking in search results. Whether you’re an SEO beginner or a seasoned marketer, grasping QDF can significantly impact your strategy. So, what is QDF, and how can it shape your approach to search engine optimization? Let’s break it down.

What is Query Deserves Freshness (QDF)?

Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) is a concept introduced by search engines to prioritize fresh, relevant content for specific queries. It recognizes that some searches — like those related to current events, trends, or rapidly changing topics — demand up-to-date information. By leveraging QDF, businesses can improve their chances of appearing in top search results, delivering timely value to their audiences.

For instance, when users search for “new iPhone launch,” Google’s algorithm ensures that the latest, most relevant content takes center stage. This dynamic approach helps users access accurate information while offering businesses a unique opportunity to capture attention through fresh content.

Why is Query Deserves Freshness Important?

Search engines aim to satisfy user intent, and QDF is a key tool for delivering real-time relevance. Whether your niche is technology, finance, or healthcare, QDF ensures your content aligns with what’s trending in your industry.

By prioritizing fresh and timely content, search engines reward businesses that stay on top of emerging topics. This is especially critical for businesses targeting trending keywords or localized searches where up-to-date information is essential to engage users.

How Does Query Deserves Freshness Work?

The QDF mechanism evaluates various freshness signals to rank content. Here’s how it works:

Freshness Signals: Google considers factors like publish date, content updates, and user engagement to assess how current the content is.

Timely Content Ranking: Newly created or updated content that aligns with a trending topic gets preference in search results.

User Intent Alignment: QDF prioritizes content that directly satisfies search intent, ensuring users receive valuable insights promptly.

Why QDF is a Must-Have for Your SEO Strategy

For businesses in dynamic industries, QDF can be a goldmine. Regularly publishing fresh content or updating existing posts boosts your visibility for queries requiring the latest information. This not only drives traffic but positions your website as an authoritative source.

Whether you’re focused on national SEO or local SEO, leveraging QDF enables you to connect with users searching for timely, relevant insights. It’s not just about ranking higher — it’s about being a trusted resource for fresh, actionable content.

Top Strategies to Leverage Query Deserves Freshness

Create Timely Content Stay ahead of industry trends by crafting content on emerging topics, breaking news, or hot discussions. This proactive approach ensures your content is primed for trending searches.

Update Existing Content Regular updates keep older posts relevant while boosting their SEO value. For instance, incorporate new statistics, insights, or case studies into evergreen content to maintain its freshness.

Use Multimedia for Engagement Adding videos, infographics, and podcasts not only enhances user experience but also improves your chances of ranking in featured snippets or video results.

Challenges of Implementing Query Deserves Freshness

While QDF offers clear benefits, there are challenges to consider:

Content Saturation: Competitive industries may require extra effort to stand out amidst similar content.

Resource Management: Keeping content fresh demands time and resources, especially for businesses with extensive material.

Over-Optimization Risks: Avoid stuffing trendy keywords or forcing updates that feel unnatural. Always prioritize value for your audience.

Conclusion: Staying Fresh for SEO Success

Optimizing for Query Deserves Freshness is a continuous effort that requires strategic planning and execution. For businesses looking to maintain an edge, partnering with the right SEO agency can make all the difference.

If you’re looking for results-driven solutions, consider working with an experienced team to help you create fresh, engaging content that resonates with your audience. Whether you’re targeting new trends or refining your existing strategy, QDF is your ticket to staying competitive in the fast-paced digital landscape.

For more tips and SEO strategies, connect with us today and take the first step toward a stronger, fresher digital presence!

[the-rankon]

Query Deserves Freshness

Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) is a vital SEO principle that helps websites rank higher for time-sensitive or trending topics by ensuring search engines return the freshest, most up-to-date content. By aligning with user intent and updating content regularly, QDF enhances search rankings, boosts traffic, and improves user experience, ensuring that a website stays competitive in a fast-paced digital environment.

[makemywebsite1]

Best Practices to Ensure Fresh Content on Your Website

Does the freshness of content matter in search engine rankings? This is one question that most website owners ponder over and over again. If you are one of them, this blog post is for you. Read it till the end and elevate your SEO in Geelong.

First things first.

What is Fresh Content?

In SEO, fresh content refers to newly created content such as blog posts or videos. This concept is particularly important for queries that are time-sensitive, like breaking news.

However, fresh content doesn’t always mean something newly published. It can also refer to an older page that has been updated with current information. For example, if you search for “iPhone review,” you’ll see recent reviews of the iPhone 16, not older reviews of previous models. In this case, Google prioritises fresh content.

Freshness vs. Frequency

Freshness pertains to how recently your page was published or updated. For instance, a press release that goes live the morning of a product launch is fresh content.

On the other hand, frequency is about how often you publish content. For example, if you post a blog every weekday, that’s frequency.

While fresh content can be published at any frequency, publishing more often won’t necessarily improve rankings for time-sensitive queries. That said, higher frequency can allow you to cover more topics, helping you rank for various keywords and potentially gain more backlinks. This is great for your SEO in Geelong.

Is Content Freshness a Google Ranking Factor?

Google ranks content based on factors like relevance, quality, and usability. For certain queries, freshness is also a significant factor.

Google explains that content freshness is more critical for current news topics than for timeless queries like dictionary definitions. Fresh content matters for time-sensitive queries, but not for evergreen topics. Here are examples of each.

Queries That Require Fresh Content:

– Next week’s weather forecast

– Last night’s NFL scores

– iPhone review

– Stock market news today

– Upcoming concerts in London

– Presidential election results

Queries That Don’t Require Fresh Content:

– How to bake chocolate chip cookies

– History of the Roman Empire

– Best practices for time management

– What is photosynthesis?

– Classic literature recommendations

– How to change a flat tyre

Understanding Google’s Freshness Updates

Understanding how Google identifies when freshness matters can help you plan and manage your content more effectively.

Initially, it was challenging for search algorithms to recognise when freshness was essential, but now Google uses multiple systems to account for it.

Here’s a brief overview of freshness-related updates:

Query Deserves Freshness (QDF): This update helps Google determine when searchers are looking for the most current information.

Freshness Update: This update focuses on delivering up-to-date results for recent events, recurring events, and frequently updated topics like product reviews. For instance, if you search for “best wireless mouse,” the results will likely show content updated in 2024.

Featured Snippets Freshness Update: Google’s featured snippets update ensures that searchers receive the most recent and helpful information. A good example is the featured snippet for “How do professionals conduct SEO in Geelong,” which provides updated salary information.

Best Practices for Publishing and Updating Content

Here are some tips for ensuring your content remains useful to both readers and Google’s algorithms, ensuring better SEO in Geelong:

1. Publish High-Quality Content

High-quality content should be accurate, helpful, and trustworthy. It will perform better in search results and drive more organic traffic. Google favours quality over quantity, meaning 20 valuable articles will outperform 200 shallow ones.

To create high-quality content, follow these tips:

– Understand your target audience’s preferences and problems.

– Conduct thorough research.

– Involve subject matter experts to offer unique insights.

– Use examples and data to back up your claims.

Use tools like the SEO Writing Assistant to fine-tune your content for better SEO in Geelong.

2. Update Content When Freshness Matters

For time-sensitive topics, keep your content updated. This can include news articles, product reviews, or event listings. How often you update depends on the topic and niche.

For example, the CDC updates outbreak pages regularly, while U.S. News & World Report updates its college rankings once a year.

Use tools like Keyword Overview to analyse search results and determine if freshness is important for your target keywords.

3. Track Content Performance to Know When to Refresh

Evergreen content should still be updated periodically to maintain its relevance. If you notice a decline in rankings or traffic, review the page and consider making updates. Tools like Position Tracking can automate your performance monitoring and help you identify pages that need refreshing.

4. Focus on Useful Content Updates

Whether you’re updating content to improve performance or keep it fresh, the changes should be genuinely useful for your audience. Useful updates include replacing outdated information, adding new statistics, and better aligning the content with search intent.

For example, if your keyword has an informational intent, you’ll want to create detailed, helpful content with visuals, tips, and perhaps a video overview.

By following these practices, you can ensure your content stays fresh and relevant while aligning with Google’s search algorithms.

Final Word:

Now, do you need help in maintaining the content’s freshness on your website? Consider checking out Make My Website, a top agency for SEO in Geelong. With an expert’s help, you will be surely able to see results faster and smoother.

[aimitsolution]

What is QDF? 🧐✨

Ever searched for the latest news and wanted the freshest info? That’s where QDF comes in! It stands for "Query Deserves Freshness." Basically, it helps search engines like Google show you the newest articles when you look something up.

Why is QDF Important? 🤔

Think about it: if you’re curious about a new movie, you don’t want an article from last year, right? You want the latest scoop! Here’s why QDF is super important:

Fresh Info: People love getting the newest updates, especially on trending topics.

Regular Updates: Websites that keep their content fresh show up more in searches.

What People Want: If lots of folks search for something, search engines find the newest articles for them.

How to Use QDF for Your Blog 📚💡

Want more visitors on your blog? Here’s how:

Write About What’s Trending: Share your thoughts on popular topics!

Post Quick Updates: If something big happens, write about it right away!

Use Relevant Keywords: Include keywords related to current events so people can find your posts easily.

Conclusion 🌟

QDF is all about keeping info fresh and exciting. By focusing on new topics, you can help more people discover your blog. Everyone loves the latest news, so keep your content updated!

Want to dive deeper into QDF? Check out my blog here:https://aimitsolution.com/qdf-in-seo/

[michaelandy101-blog]

AMP & Google High Tales Rankings: An Unbiased.ie search engine optimization Case Research

New Post has been published on https://tiptopreview.com/amp-google-top-stories-rankings-an-independent-ie-seo-case-study/

AMP & Google High Tales Rankings: An Unbiased.ie search engine optimization Case Research

Are you able to rank in Google’s High tales with out AMP?

The reply ought to have been no.

However on this column, you’ll study what we discovered by testing non-AMP versus AMP on High tales efficiency and the affect it had on visitors at Unbiased Information and Media, the place I lead search engine optimization.

We’ll discover Google’s documentation on the subject, see what’s occurring within the wild, and try and reply just a few urgent questions in information search engine optimization:

Can non-AMP articles carry out in High tales?

How does the natural search efficiency of non-AMP articles examine to AMP?

How does mobile-first indexing affect High tales efficiency?

Will publishers drop AMP when the Web page Expertise replace rolls out?

Is AMP actually price it?

However first, let’s begin with one essential query.

Is AMP Required for High Tales Eligibility?

In keeping with Google’s documentation,

“To be considered for the carousel section of “Top stories” on cell, content material must be printed in Accelerated Cellular Pages (AMP) format with article-specific structured information”

Google introduced that they’re removing the AMP requirement from High tales eligibility on cell when Page Experience rating indicators are launched.

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I’ll allow you to in on a secret, although; non-AMP pages are already showing in High tales and have been for fairly a while.

Right here’s an instance from Belgian information writer De Standaard, which has not adopted AMP.

Right here. we see them rating above an AMP information article:

We see the identical consequence for one of many publishers in our group, Independent.ie, which additionally ranked within the High tales on cell with non-AMP within the instance beneath.

How is that this doable?

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One phrase: relevance.

Google lately up to date their Core Web Vitals FAQ useful resource to reaffirm the affect of the replace on rankings:

“Intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a page with a subpar page experience may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.”

And in December 2019, Google announced that:

“Publishers no longer need to submit their site to be eligible for the Google News app and website. Publishers are automatically considered for Top stories or the News tab of Search.”

Newzdash lately analyzed the share share of non-AMP tales in High tales and compiled a report analyzing the affect of this announcement.

Their information (reflecting US information publishers) as proven beneath signifies that about 5-Eight% of all cell High tales on Google are non-AMP URLs.

AMP versus non-AMP URLs in high story % within the US

Google typically assessments most main rollouts extensively, which may clarify why we’re seeing much more non-AMP URLs in high tales in 2020 and 2021.

With all of that in thoughts, we determined to look at whether or not non-AMP may produce the identical visitors as AMP.

What would the affect be if we decommissioned AMP?

Concerns for a/B Testing on a Information Website

The problem when testing AMP versus non-AMP for a information writer is that information causes too many visitors spikes.

Not like conventional key phrase analysis, which predominantly makes use of 12 months of aggregated information, information key phrase analysis is predominately primarily based on trending matters or people who haven’t been searched earlier than.

Take [COVID-19] pre-2020, for instance.

Additional, although sure information matters repeatedly seem within the information agenda, these are laborious to foretell.

Take the favored celeb identify [britney spears], for instance. In Eire, Britney final made the headlines with information on her documentary.

Outdoors of that, there was little to no search curiosity.

See the question’s search efficiency on Unbiased.ie:

We see related patterns for many information tales — a spike in visitors adopted by little search curiosity and clicks.

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This can be noticed for the rankings on a information website.

For instance, when a celeb or subject is within the information,  typically, information websites will rank properly. But when that celeb or information subject will not be trending, the SERP will “reset,” inflicting information websites to lose these rankings.

This traditional idea is named QDF – Query Deserves Freshness and it impacts information websites maybe greater than any others.

Google’s Freshness algorithm comes into impact when a subject sees a sudden rise in relevancy/mentions (information reviews) and visitors (search quantity).

On the subject of forecasting with information websites when it comes to visitors or rankings, for probably the most half this idea makes the info much less dependable for predictions or correlations.

Subsequently, it’s important to discover a extra evergreen part on a information website for testing. Even so, I observe that it’s nonetheless not proof against the unpredictable nature of the information agenda.

Learn how to Check AMP Versus Non-AMP on a Information Website

Understanding how AMP indexing works is essential when testing AMP versus non-AMP.

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Following Google’s guidelines on removing AMP, you would contemplate the next steps.

Step 1. Take away the hyperlink tag with the relation “amphtml” from the canonical.

Googlebot discovers AMP articles by crawling the canonical and discovering a hyperlink tag with the relation “amphtml.” See the instance beneath:

Step one in testing AMP versus non-AMP is to take away this tag.

If you happen to had been inquisitive about new articles solely, that is all it is advisable do. However as we had hundreds of listed AMPs, we would have liked two extra steps.

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Step 2. 301 Redirect the AMP variant to the canonical.

As soon as Googlebot has listed the AMP variants, these will stay in Google’s AMP cache and must be redirected to the canonical.

Step Three. Resubmit XML sitemaps.

Though it’s doable to request that Google update its AMP cache, this isn’t scalable because it needs to be achieved one URL at a time.

We discovered it was sooner to resubmit the XML sitemaps. Within the case of a information website, this additionally means resubmitting the News XML sitemaps.

Learn how to Measure AMP Versus Non-AMP on a Information Website

Measuring AMP versus non-AMP is totally different relying in your URL construction.

On this check on Unbiased.ie, we had a separate URL construction (www.impartial.ie) for desktop, (m.impartial.ie) for cell internet, and (amp.impartial.ie) for AMP.

We determined to check the affect of AMP versus non-AMP on Google Search visitors by eradicating AMP from articles in a single part of the location and evaluating it to AMP in one other.

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We had additionally thought-about break up testing articles on the ID stage, and even testing each second printed article using Cloudflare Workers.

However once more, none of these situations would take away the unknown nature of the information agenda. One article might have a excessive search curiosity, whereas one other might not.

The Life part on the location was chosen to check with out AMP, because it was thought-about to be probably the most evergreen part. (We outlined this part evergreen because it had matters driving clicks from search for greater than Three months).

It additionally had an identical common visitors stage month-over-month.

As a management, we selected the Fashion part as a result of it had related common search visitors ranges however was a bit extra “spikey” attributable to celeb information desked in that part.

For measurement, we arrange a easy Google Analytics customized report filtered by hostname and website part.

Person segments had been then filtered by Google search visitors solely:

We set situations to incorporate internet natural visitors and exclude AMP visitors, in addition to internet visitors with AMP visitors after which AMP visitors solely.

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How Does the Natural Search Efficiency of Non-AMP Examine to AMP?

As talked about within the customized report arrange above, the AMP vs non-AMP remoted natural visitors to the AMP variant (amp.impartial.ie/life/.*).

This information was in comparison with natural visitors excluding AMP (www.impartial.ie/life/.*) and (m.impartial.ie/.*), in addition to natural visitors together with AMP (amp.impartial.ie|m.impartial.ie|www.impartial.ie).

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Previous to testing, AMP accounted for about 50% of all search visitors to the location.

Our speculation was that whole search visitors ought to decline with the Life part of Unbiased.ie having non-AMP solely.

On February 1st, 2021, when AMP was faraway from the Life part of the Unbiased.ie web site, the orange line above (customers excluding AMP), merged into the inexperienced line (all customers) with the blue line (AMP) reducing to null.

This discovering means that visitors with out the AMP article variant merely merged into the non-AMP.

Complete search visitors within the Life part remained on par with the earlier interval.

After we examined the identical graph on the Fashion part (the management), which had AMP, we noticed that customers from search remained fixed on each non-AMP (m.impartial.ie/type/.*|www.impartial.ie/type/.*) in addition to AMP (amp.impartial.ie/type/.*).

Our conclusion is that having an AMP variant solely break up the visitors. It didn’t add any additional profit than our non-AMP information articles.

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As talked about above, the check was carried out on evergreen content material. AMP is believed to play a much bigger function in information websites as a result of cell High tales carousel — not a lot in common natural search.

In March 2021, our firm made the choice to decommission AMP throughout all publishers within the group.

If we run the identical report for Google natural search visitors to the information part of Unbiased.ie, we see an identical graph to what we noticed within the check above.

This discovering now provides additional affirmation to our assumptions that AMP didn’t supply extra natural visitors than non-AMP.

It merely break up the visitors between properties.

Nevertheless, as talked about above, measuring visitors alone doesn’t paint the complete image.

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We had been additionally inquisitive about measuring efficiency in High tales and Google Uncover as each of those referrers had been believed to learn from AMP solely. The idea was that we would have liked AMP for these channels.

Learn how to Measure Cellular High Tales Efficiency on Google

To measure cell High tales efficiency when it comes to visitors (clicks), we used the next Google Search Console efficiency report settings.

1. Choose a tool filter to “Mobile”

2. Choose a search look as “rich results”

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Notice that the Google Search Console efficiency report filter ‘Rich Results‘ can provide insights into the search efficiency of High tales.

Nevertheless, it is very important keep in mind that the info is sampled and averaged over a period of time.

Arguably, for a extra correct High tales rating visibility comparability you would take a look at particular High tales rankings instruments comparable to NewzDash or NewsDashboard.

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If we had been to run the check once more, we might discover such instruments.

Right here’s why.

Cellular-First Indexing Impression on High Tales Efficiency

The visibility of stories matters we cowl has remained unchanged. Nevertheless, with non-AMP solely, our efficiency for “news” key phrases has declined since decommissioning AMP.

See the screenshot beneath for our place over time on cell (orange line) for “news” key phrases that article element pages are triggered on.

We’ve got gone from rating on common #2-Three on cell to a median place of Four-5.

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Let’s take a desktop consequence for the question [irish news] we see Unbiased.ie, for instance.

If we examine the web page in incognito and change consumer agent to cell, Unbiased.ie will not be discovered within the High tales carousel for the very same question.

As you’ll be able to see, all publishers are actually AMP solely. Unbiased.ie, now absolutely non-AMP, has been swapped out with one other AMP different.

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For varied different key phrase variations checked outdoors of “news” the SERP is an identical on desktop and cell. It’s because we’re the one main writer in Eire to have decommissioned AMP.

This will likely counsel that Google’s eligibility might solely apply to news-type queries in High tales.

Nevertheless, there’s a caveat. Unbiased.ie has not switched to mobile-first indexing.

On cell in High tales, for recent queries, Google is utilizing our canonical and never our cell alternate.

Nevertheless, for older information (1-2 hours+), Google has no problem discovering and swapping to the cell different.

What this may increasingly imply is that it isn’t a lot an AMP problem as it could be a mobile-first index problem, with Google nonetheless crawling Unbiased.ie desktop first.

Sooner or later, it could be fascinating to check AMP versus non-AMP on a responsive web site to see if related outcomes had been discovered.

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Can Non-AMP Articles Carry out in High Tales?

Above, you see clicks for Life part content material on Unbiased.ie from November 2020 to February 2021.

Much like what we noticed with visitors, impressions and clicks are relative to seasonality. Once more, it’s troublesome to measure trigger and impact on a information website.

A most fascinating discovering is that the common place on Google’s cell High tales remained comparatively the identical at a median place of 2-Three, regardless of the life part of Indepedent.ie solely having non-AMP.

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Additionally, the Life part acquired clicks from High tales.

This discovering suggests to us two issues:

We noticed no noticeable affect on our High tales visitors from not utilizing AMP.

Non-AMP content material can rank on cell High tales on Google.

Can Non-AMP Carry out in Google Uncover?

After we plotted out Google Uncover clicks over time, we noticed the identical form of fluctuations in each November and January as we did with search visitors.

Regardless of the anecdotal assumption that AMP is required for Google Uncover, we discovered that non-AMP within the testing interval of February 2021 for Unbiased.ie acquired 6.9% extra clicks than in February 2020, once they had been AMP.

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In brief, we noticed no affect from eradicating AMP on Google Uncover efficiency.

How does non-AMP examine to AMP with Core Net Vitals efficiency?

As documented within the Core Web Vitals FAQs, we are able to anticipate

“…a signal for ranking will apply only to mobile Search”.

Google Search Console teams web page sorts from CrUX report data.

Subsequently, we felt Google Search Console can be the very best supply to measure this.

We arrange impartial.ie/life/ as a brand new property in its Google Search Console, permitting us to isolate metrics to this part solely.

As you’ll be able to see beneath, there’s a dramatic dropoff at that time of “good” URLs. This represents the interval through which AMP was switched off on this part,  on the primary day of February 2021.

What was most fascinating about this check was that each the article element web page templates on m.impartial.ie/life/.* and amp.impartial.ie/life/.* used the very same code.

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The one distinction was the AMP cache.

Though AMP code is taken into account a “stripped down” model of the web page, the actual profit publishers get is the AMP cache.

See our Lighthouse assessments for AMP html with out the AMP cache:

And AMP html with the AMP cache (“https://www.google.com/amp/s/”):

The outcomes of the above check point out that Google could also be utilizing the model of the AMP cache in its Web page Expertise replace.

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Is it doable that though AMP is now not a requirement for eligibility in High tales, it scores completely with Core Net Vitals?

This is able to imply that every one AMPs might have a ranking benefit with page experience by default.

See this AMP cache instance for Search Engine Journal:

How Will Non-AMP Compete with the Pace of AMP?

AMP was developed with page experience in mind, however that isn’t why all AMP variations completely with Core Net Vitals.

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The explanation AMP has the benefit over the common cell website is due to the AMP cache.

Greatest practices for Core Net Vitals comparable to picture optimization, quick server-response instances, and efficient font-loading can’t be applied client-side.

AMPs that seem on Google Search or Bing are served from the AMP cache. Google’s servers carry out all of those optimizations to your website.

In brief, non-AMP content material would require “hand-tuning” for cell loading velocity, responsiveness, and content material stability.

How Will the Web page Expertise Replace Impression High Tales?

In keeping with the Core Web Vitals FAQs,

“…all web pages irrespective of their page experience status or Core Web Vitals score are eligible for Top Stories carousel.”

Compliance with Google News content policies would be the solely requirement.

I imagine that when Google rolled out its AMP High Tales in 2015, it was very a lot a “carrot and a stick” for publishers.

To entice publishers in, they supplied extra unique cell actual property for information on cell search.

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Again then, it was marketed as Google’s answer to “What could Google do for news?” and got down to assist publishers tackle the change in consumer conduct to cell.

It was meant to assist them present a greater cell internet expertise.

To provide credit score to Google the place it’s due, again then some information publishing cell experiences took a median of 19 seconds to load.

From my perspective, what AMP actually did was present the answer to, “What could Google do for users?”

On the writer facet, there have been quite a lot of improvement and performance sacrifices, error handling, price and advert income losses for a lot of.

Outdoors of the eligibility documentation for High tales, it’s essential to notice that Google has not come out publicly and said that having AMP enabled in your website is a rating sign.

They’ve all the time marketed it as a “framework site owners can use to build performant web pages to help improve page experience.”

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However as we discovered within the experiments above, it’s now doable to rank in High tales with out it.

Is AMP Actually Value It Then?

Having AMP could be a shortcut to reaching velocity and efficiency.

We noticed this when AMP was applied on Unbiased.ie, as total visitors from cell search elevated by ~55%.

This was doubtlessly as a result of first-mover benefit of extra visitors from the AMP High tales carousel, and likewise as a result of at the moment, we had a really gradual cell website.

Nevertheless it’s not all optimistic AMP experiences inside our group.

After we launched AMP on certainly one of our regional title’s belfasttelegraph.co.uk in 2019, for instance, we noticed no measurable visitors affect however a disappointing 49% decline in cell digital advert income.

This was partially attributable to AMP adverts restrictions and errors.

Our titles will not be in isolation. Analysis supplied by Chartbeat together with the Daily Beast reveals that just one in Three publishers analyzed in that examine may see clear statistical proof of a visitors improve on account of AMP.

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Will Publishers Drop AMP When the Web page Expertise Replace Rolls Out?

What it takes to achieve information search engine optimization with High tales hasn’t modified — you continue to want an ideal cell expertise.

Publishers that combine legitimate AMP can “ensure highly performant web pages.” And as we discovered above, non-AMP information articles may rank in High tales. Nevertheless, publishers that don’t undertake AMP can be at a transparent drawback in the event that they ignore their poor cell web page expertise.

Some publishers might want to make investments closely in “hand-tuning” their websites if they’re to compete with AMP in High tales when it comes to web page expertise going ahead.

The excellent news when it comes to rating in High tales is that beginning in mid-June 2021, the High tales carousel function on Google Search will “officially” be up to date to incorporate all information content material.

My prediction is that we are going to not see an excessive amount of shift in High tales, as most publishers have adopted AMP.

What we are going to see are increasingly more high publishers decommissioning AMP.

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Extra Assets:

Picture Credit

Featured picture and all screenshots taken by writer, April 2021

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SEO guide: Content and Search engine ranking factors

Search engine optimization plays a crucial role in the online success of a brand bolstering its business. The aim of SEO is to attract organic traffic from diverse sources and get repeated visitors as well. Almost 68% of online experience begin with search engines. 92.96% of global traffic comes from Google. 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic searches. These statistics point to the importance of ranking for generating traffic with a successful content and SEO. The higher the ranking, more are the closest clicks and customer acquisition.

On page Content and Search engine ranking factors

Content

Content Quality

High quality adds more value to the content encouraging the readers to spend more time on the website. It builds a sense of familiarity and trust which compels the readers to go through the entire piece.

To ensure excellent quality-

·         Artistic content must be unique, original conveying a high degree of skill.

·         Any information from pre published contents should be well cited and accurate.

·         Information should be comprehensive and professionally presented.

·         The content should resonate with the brand.

According to a study though content marketing was up to 300% by 2016 engagement was only 5%. On top of that, people tend to spend only 37 seconds on a page which is why quality is important to attract as well as retain the readers.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is at the fundamental of creating good content. A proper keyword research helps to understand the language that customers are commonly using for searching particular products and services. It provides an insight into the audience’s pain points such as the informational, navigational or transactional needs that help create the perfect content for customer acquisition.

Keywords also help the search engines link search queries to the published contents. Effective choice of keywords as well as distribution boosts SEO ranking which is very important for brand awareness and customer acquisition. According to a study 90.63%of pages fail to receive any organic search traffic from Google due to low ranking in the search results.

Wording

The choice of words within the continent should be simple and appropriate to the topic. Just adhering to keywords for better ranking will be detrimental for the SEO health. The keywords or keyword phrases can be varied and synonyms appropriate to the contents can be used for more relevance as well as better optimization.

Freshness

Readers are more attracted to fresh or new contents. It doesn't mean minor updates or continuously churning out low quality pages for a freshness boost.

Contents age with time and they can be updated or the obsolete and expired ones can be remove. This will make the site more useful to readers and also point to the search that the site is well maintained. Since long enough Google has applied quality deserved freshness or QDF as a ranking factor for contents regarding certain types of queries.It is true for featured snippets as well.

Harnessing the power of freshness boost will help increase the brand visibility on the search engine results page by creating content relevant to popular trends, news, upcoming events etc. Caution must be taken for the fact that a QDF related boost subsides overtime and the page may get shuffled deeper within the search results.

Vertical Search

All the other ranking factors cover the web page content within the search engines.But only these are not enough; web page listings also hold vertical results. Having a hold particularly over this area through video, images or news will make the content show up in the special sections of the search results page.

Content length

The length of the content is also a factor for search engine optimization. Though it is not advisable to write more words just for stretching the length, content should have sufficient depth if the subject requires so. According to a research, contents with over 2000 words usually make it to the top ten positions in search engine rankings such as Google as depicted in the graph below.

This is not a concrete rule and there are obviously exceptions. But in general, a piece of content should be around 2000 words or more to be competitive on the SERP. Besides contents with such a length also attract more links and shares which contribute to the optimization efforts.

The above graph shows the relationship between the rank and length of the content. It can be seen that the first one typically has 2416 words while the 10th one has 2032 words. This points to the fact that Google prefers content rich sites and none of the content fall below 2000 words.

Direct Answers

Direct answers boost the trust factor which later proves fruitful for other inquiries. Besides, concerns come in evidence, so direct answers tend to drive the traffic.

It is often experienced that search results pop up before searching for a particular thing. These are meant to provide direct answers as to what one might need. It is all about results which are trending licensed or gathered by search engines.

Architecture

Crawl

Search engines crawl the websites. They shift from one website to another very quick. Sometimes they even store the pictures after getting copies of them. This is how contents are stored like a web book that is very easy to access along with a vast collection on the web. This data store activates whenever someone inputs a search query. The search engines cross check it with index for finding out relevant pages and put them forth.

This forwards conform to a sequence of appropriation. So this crawling works only when the content exists in index. Conversely the index will contain them only when crawled. It’s like a continuous cycle which can be taken advantage of if a published content is on the list first.

A common issues with crawls is-

·         They have a budget and everything works in an order. Besides there is also time limit along with every crawl etc.

Crawls can be improved by-

·         Properly using the internal link structure.

·         An idea about particular URL based pages which have not been crawled etc.

·         Properly using Robots. TXT

·         For avoidance as well as betterment, sitemaps are considerable. HTML and XML both can be brought to consideration for sorting the issues and improving the crawls.

Mobile friendly

A study has shown that more searches happen on mobile approximately accounting for 52% of the searches online. A mobile friendly content refers to such a content that is optimized for the readers who use smart phones. The site should be designed in such a way that these users are also able to access everything the desktop users can.

Simply having a mobile site is not enough. Caution must be taken to avoid common mistakes such as faulty redirects, unplayable content, interestitials, blocked JavaScript, CSS or images, incorrect view port, small font size and touch elements at anunusable proximity.

User experience is an important part of SEO and so optimization for mobile is a must so that users leave with a joyful experience.

Duplication

As Google maintains the index,often it becomes a case that the index becomes a mess. Every flip leads to the same content as an issue occurs regarding which page shows up in the search results. Besides, issues also arise when the same page is linked to different versions. This leads to a distortion in results lowering the value of the page.

A duplicate version can exist with or without www. Rather than redirecting, they act like an existence creep. It is to be noted that, there could be indexation of pages in search engines by the e commerce sites. The page will lack a proper appearance. This is because everyone searches for a content with the URL, not a particular page.

Addressing this issue through proper implementation and results become possible when-

·         URL parameters are managed.

·         301 redirects are implemented.

·         There are effective and better Pagination Strategies, etc.

·         There are rel=canonical tags.

Speed

Google is always aiming for a faster web and a heightened user experience. This is why speedy sites get a small ranking advantage over the slower rivals. But then, just a faster speed is not enough for ranking, it just bolsters it.

Another SEO advantage is the fact that speed is intertwined with user experience. A speedy site reduces the rate of bouncing by potential customers and improves the engagement and conversation rates as well. There are many tools available for identifying areas of improvement of a site like Google's page speed insights.

URLs

URLs are not a major ranking factor but it’s useful to use descriptive words in the page's URLs for the users and search engines. As the URLs appear on the search engines, an easy to understand URL helps searcher have a better idea as to what’s on the other end. Some easy tips to follow are-

·         Name the pages with words that describe the content.

·         Include keywords within the URL; use hyphens for separating the words.

·         Utilize directions for organizing the pages. Directories describe the content as well as the site’s architecture.

·         Care should be taken to avoid over stuffing the URL with keywords and incomprehensible strings of numbers and characters in the page address. Besides, for evergreen contents, dates should be avoided within the URL.

HTTPS

Google is always striving for a secure experience and that is why it has pushed websites for migrating to HTTPS servers so that a better security can be provided to the users. Typically, Google will index HTTPS over HTTP. If both are present and there’s no canonical, HTTPS will be chosen when it can.

HTML

HTML tags send cue to the search engines about a published content and enables it to render quickly.

Titles

It is the most important HTML signal that search engines use to understand the content. Titles should be accurate and concise to reflect the content and only the keywords that one wishes to rank should be featured. It should be noted that keyword stuffing is a toxin.

Descriptions

The meta description tag can be used for suggesting how one would like the pages to be described on the search results. Though technically it is not a ranking factor, a well crafted description helps to entice the readers into clicking the result.

Structure

Search engines get a better understanding of the content on a page due to structured data; for users it’s like an eye candy. Structured data talks to the search engines in their own language. Specific schema markup makes it easier for search engines to understand and digest the page structure along with the content. A properly structured data is translated by Google as a rich snippet which is more useful and attractive to the users.

Headings

They are a hierarchical way of organizing and identifying key sections of a content. Typically any page has a headline. In the HTML code behind the scenes, the headline has an H1 tag, the sub headings have H2 tags. Caution must be taken to not spam the headings with keywords. The ultimate goal is to make the content easy for searchers as well as search engines to navigate.

AMP

AMP gives super fast pages. It stands for accelerated mobile pages. As the importance of speed and mobile friendly content has been discussed before, AMP is necessary for the content to get a privilege on the page which ultimately increases engagement and mobile conversions.

Emerging verticals

Search engines are continuously upgrading with new features. The emerging verticals in SEO factors that affect content and SEO success are videos, images, local and voice.  These do not require a special set of SEO skills but need to be kept in mind for optimization.

Off page success factors

Off page ranking factors are out of the creator’s direct influence. Search engines evaluate the backlinks, reputation, location, authority etc. for delivering the most relevant results. These need to be taken into account while optimizing a site for search.

Thus, off page SEO and content ranking factors are Trust, Links and Users.

Why are we the best content writing company for you?

Content writing and SEO are the key determinants of the online success of your business which initiates customer interaction that help to connect them to the sales funnel after acquisition. We, Inteliqo Research and Services, are a professional content writing agency catering to international clients for their success online for years. Our content writers are hired based on their excellence and regularly trained by experts to be always a step ahead of the changes in the market trends and search engine intelligence. We have cost effective solutions for content writing services and SEO for companies of all sizes.

Want the best content writing services and SEO writing agency to harness the power of search engines for boosting your brand? You are at the right place so don’t delay any longer and contact our customer success agents at +61488871422(Australia), +917002941316(India) or email at support@inteliqoservices.com.

[flyingvgroupca]

How We Grew Organic Impressions 735% in One Year With SEO Friendly Content

Content plays a significant role when it comes to determining whether you are going to achieve your business goals and aspirations. The correlation between content generation and search engine optimization/scoring is powerful and impossible to ignore. If you are capable of creating high-quality content, then you are also capable of generating a reliable search engine optimization foundation and overall online exposure for your business. At Flying V Group, we would even argue that content marketing is the most essential and critical effort you can make for trying to be successful online. Take a look at the following chart:

We started a concerted content marketing effort at the beginning of 2018. If we were to bookmark a specific day in early 2018 and compare it against the same day in 2019, here would be the results: January 23rd, 2018 - 316 Organic Impressions and 3 Clicks January 23rd, 2019 - 2,641 Organic Impressions and 21 Clicks So, as you can see above, that is quite an improvement over the course of one year for a new business (less than 4 years old) in a very competitive market. Flying V Group competes with other firms that  know what the hell they are doing. This chart also only shows organic traffic from Google searches. The chart does not include social media impressions, paid ads, or any other exposure from other mediums. Impressions mean how many times your result was seen. The amount of exposure that we receive on any given day vs. last year is 735% higher year-over-year. Now obviously we have a long way to go to reach our goals, but this is a great start for a firm that is only three years old! Now, one must consider, what factors do search engines use to determine successful content to display in search engine results. Let's take a look at how you too can create content that search engines love!

The Quality of Your Content is Very Important

The type of content you provide determines the kind of audience that you attract to your website or blog. If you are not producing quality content, then it should not come as a surprise that you lack engagement, newsletter subscriptions, and overall effectiveness of website visits and traffic. If you have plans to sell something on your website you need to convince visitors that what you have to offer is better than anything else on the marketing. Is there a better way to convince a customer to do business with you other than showing how your product or service is better? If you are providing content that is not unique and "cookie cutter", then you are bound to go unnoticed. Your audience should have a reason to stay on your site for some time to read and engage with your content. Quality content should be able to provide something substantial that is unique and useful and not available anywhere else. Quality content might include deeply researched think pieces, transparent case studies, helpful tutorials, or emotionally driven personal experiences.

Be Sure to Do Keyword Research Before Writing Your Content

Keyword research is a very significant part of the process when planning to create content for your website or blog. Your content depends on the keywords and search terms that are used to promote your brand or keywords that are used to "find you" online. Keywords are search terms used by internet users to search for information on search engines like Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo. We often find that content our partners write may be of high quality, but, due to the absence of keyword research and placement, the content is not visible on search engine results (especially the first page). So, it is vital that proper research is done on keywords or search terms that should be infused into the content piece of the site to make the pages easily searchable. Here's a great tool for you to use - The Ultimate Guide to Keyword Research.

Use of Keywords in Your Content

Merely doing a thorough study of keywords is not enough to get you on top of search results. You will also need to infuse the researched keywords into the content that you publish online and make sure that you organically use the keywords. Organic infusion of the keywords means that the keywords flow as if you were talking to someone and do not feel forced. If you have published content before without researching keywords, don't hesitate to edit your old content to infuse keywords in an ideal manner. If you are creating new content, then do not forget to insert keywords in the content. You should insert a maximum of two keyword phrases or search terms for every 100 words written in your blog post or article. However, do not be paralyzed by keywords. Write a great article that serves a purpose, and keyword infusion will more than likely take care of itself.

Freshness of Content on Your Website

The freshness of your content is another important factor to keep you ahead of the competition. New material has more credibility on search engines and shows that your website is up to date, relevant, and a site that is still improving. Search engines value fresh content and also gets the search engine bots back on your site to understand more about your product or service. If it is not possible for you to create and add new content pages regularly then look to update old content or try and build a schedule knowing that content creation will pay off in the long run. Google uses something called “Query Deserved Freshness (QDF).” If there is a sudden search on a particular topic that is not popular, then Google uses QDF to look for fresh content on that topic. If new content is available, then Google search gives priority to that content. If there is no related content on the subject, then search engines generally show content from government sites or reference sites. However, if related material is available, then searches show the relevant content. For this reason, if you have new and relevant content when QDF hits, then you may have the chance to be seen on search page results quite quickly. You can make use of this event by creating relevant content that matches the demand of the market and is unique compared to what other content your competitors are providing. You can also submit your new URL's for indexing to Google!

Medium Based Search

Medium based search is a search that helps you get discovered in different medium results like images, news, local, maps, and video. You can gain visibility on these mediums if you have relevant content for these segments. For example, did you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world behind Google? Providing users with content in these segments can help you get more visibility for your business website and blog. So, make sure you are creating content in many different mediums to get increased traffic to your site.

Creating SEO Friendly Content

When creating a content-based SEO strategy, remember these five key points: Writing quality content that can teach users something. Do keyword research to include relevant search terms in your content. Use the keywords in your content that you find during your research. Continually crank out fresh, relevant, and creative material regularly. Focus on more than one vertical to diversify your content offering. Read the full article

[kevinalevine]

Content Freshness & Rankings | Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

You keep hearing around that the same way true fans like their Apples fresh (I’m talking about iPhones), Google likes its content fresh. Well, it’s somewhat true, but not for the reasons you might think of!

  Google doesn’t necessarily favor “fresh” content. Some search queries definitely deserve freshness, while others not so much. However, fresh content can impact SEO through some indirect “freshness” factors.

    What Does Fresh Content Even Mean?

Freshness & Frequency

What the Google Freshness Update Was All About

The First Google Update (Caffeine)

The Second Google Update (Freshness)

Who Does the Freshness Update Actually Affect?

Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

Queries that Deserve Freshness (QDF)

Updating Old Content (Keeping It up to Date)

Publishing New Content

What Actually Affects SEO

CTR (Possibly Impacted by ‘Freshness’)

Quantity & Targeted Keywords

Domain Performance

  To better understand the concept, we first must detail a little what “fresh content�� actually means.

  What Does Fresh Content Even Mean?

  What do you understand by fresh content? Content that has been published today? Content that is regularly updated?

  The term “fresh content” represents content that is dynamic in nature (especially in meaning).

  Therefore, it’s not as much “new” content in relation to time and when it has actually been created or published, but new in meaning and what the data behind it reflects.

  Many people believe that fresh content is content that has been recently published. Sometimes, they even mix up freshness with frequency.

  Let’s start with content that has been recently published. If I am publishing a piece on “The History of England”, would you call that fresh content?

  Most likely not, because people have been writing about the history of England for probably hundreds of years. It’s nothing new.

  The post is new on my site, of course, but common SEO sense says that new content without any backlinks and amplification will have a harder time ranking, especially in very competitive niches, such as history (where Wikipedia probably dominates). You’ll have to make huge link building efforts to dominate the results with a new page and we all know how risky that is! (it usually results in a penalty).

  Freshness & Frequency

  Now frequency is very similar to freshness and they often intersect, but it’s not always the case. I could post something fresh once per week, or I could post something fresh every day.

  Frequency will ensure that your site gets crawled more often (thanks to Caffeine).

  That means search engines will use more of their resources on sites that publish more often, because they need them.

  If you’ve been publishing once per month for the past year, why would Google check your site daily? It would be a waste of resources.

  However, if your site publishes 25 articles each day, then Google has to make sure it checks your site multiple times per day to index those results as soon as possible (thanks to Caffeine) and be able to display them to the users if they request it (thanks to the 2011 update).

  One common misconception is that stale websites will be negatively impacted. That’s been proven wrong.

  Brian Dean made this pretty clear with his blog. He publishes rarely, so his website is mostly still. However, his content always ranks at the top. I also have a blog in Romanian on which I haven’t posted in over 6 months. 9/10 articles are ranking on the 1st page and 6/10 are ranked in the top 3 positions.

  If there’s something that has changed over time, it’s that those rankings have actually increased.

  You see, you don’t need to publish too often when you can actually go into the Google Search Console and ask Google to immediately index your web pages by hitting a single button.

  What the Google Freshness Update Was All About

  This all started back in 2009, but just like many events, it has developed into a big conspiracy over time.

  The First Google Update (Caffeine)

  If you were in business back in 2009, you’d remember about the Google Caffeine update and how much of a big deal it was. The update is often referred to today as the Freshness Update, because Google used the phrase “fresher results”.

  Although the update was announced back in 2009, it took almost a year until it finally rolled up.

  The thing is, unfortunately, that many people got it all wrong.

  The Google caffeine update has nothing to do with rankings. It’s main focus is indexing. Rankings and indexing are two very different things.

  Indexing is when Google takes a first look at your content and adds it to the index. That means it has the potential to be ranked.

  Ranking however, is a completely different story, with a much more complex algorithm behind it. This algorithm, which was updated in 2011, was actually older than you might think.

  The Second Google Update (Freshness)

  Ranking “fresh content” at the top was actually happening way before that. In 2007, Amit Singhal had developed an algorithm that favored freshness for some particular subjects and queries.

  Note how I say “some specific queries”. Wait, let me make that bigger.

  Google favors fresh content only for some specific queries that deserve freshness, widely known as QDF.

  QDF stands for Query Deserves Freshness. If a particular search phrase is a QDF, then Google will show up the most recent results. This happens a lot in particular areas, as Matt Cutts explains in the following video:

    In fact, in its official post about the update, Google specifies exactly what types of queries the update will impact:

  Recent events or hot topics: Such as celebrity news or natural disasters (kind of one and the same)

Regularly recurring events: Conferences such as Brand Minds

Frequent updates: Anything that keeps having new content added to, such as product reviews or anything in the technology space

  I know there have been some speculations that only by changing the date to an article you could make it look fresh and you could abuse the algorithm changes to make Google keep you at the top. However, they are what they are (speculations) and I promise you that for each example you give me of “fresh” content ranking at the top I can find at least 1 example of “old” content ranking at the top.

  In fact, I’ll give you some examples right now, from the SEO field. It’s a field that frequently changes and you always have to stay up to date in order to be relevant.

  There’s no way a guide from 2015 or 2010 would still be useful, right? Well… Google thinks otherwise:

    And here’s another example:

    You might argue that “fresher” results rank better than those. Well, you’re right but that doesn’t prove anything, because one can say “fresher results also rank below and they even come from big sites such as Hubspot”.

  However…

  There are factors that might influence rankings in this situation and we’ll talk about them soon, so keep reading!

  But thinking that you’ll rank better just by having a more recent publish date is silly. And I’ll crush it even more soon.

  Who Does the Freshness Update Actually Affect?

  Both Caffeine and the 2011 Freshness Algorithm Update affect mostly news sites. This is the broader category, in which you can include celebrities, general news, politics, technology, you name it.

  I’ll give you an example:

    Notice a difference from the SEO examples I gave before? No article from 2009 or 2010 here, right? They’re all from 2019, posted hardly one month before me writing this post. The second article doesn’t even list the date, but instead the number of days it was posted ago. It can also be hours sometimes instead of days.

  Why do you think this is the case?

  Because in this case, a 2009 post would be horrible as a search result. People want to know the latest phones, not the outdated ones from 2009. Google knows the user’s intent so it tries to match the results to fit it.

  Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

  Do we have an official answer? Sort of. And it’s pretty recent:

  No

— John (@JohnMu) August 18, 2018

  I have to say, I’m not quite pleased with the answer, because John has the habit of being very vague in his answers. I mean… I’ve just proven above that Google favors fresh content in certain cases.

  Sure, we also have to get the context of his answer. That question about freshness has been asked after John tweeted this:

  “As a user, recognizing that old content is just being relabeled as new completely kills any authority that I thought the author / site had. Good content is not lazy content. SEO hacks don’t make a site great. Give your content and users the respect they deserve.”

  So, basically, John Mueller, Google’s representative, is trying to tell you that updating the post date every day is a bad digital marketing strategy and it won’t help you rank better.

  I have to admit, I miss those days when Google used to be a lot more detailed and explicit in its answers. Why?

  Because, as discussed, before, Google does favor fresh content, but in certain areas! And John’s answer should’ve reflected this reality, which also includes QDF.

  Queries that Deserve Freshness (QDF)

  Queries that Deserve Freshness is a reality! Matt Cutts talked about this before. There are certain search phrases, such as “best android phones” which I’ve shown above as an example, that deserve freshness. Users want to see the latest posts, so here, you might have the upper hand if you keep everything up to date.

    Does that mean that you can keep ranking at the top by constantly changing the post date? No.

  Does it mean that some articles will outrank other articles because of the date when they were posted? Yes.

  But there are a lot of factors that signal freshness. Not just the date. Is the topic growing popular on social media platforms? Are the articles getting any new backlinks? In other words, is it something that’s happening now?

  Are those answers contradicting one another? I don’t think so. In the end, Google’s not perfect. It’s just an algorithm. Do you think a human person could determine better what the best result for the masses would be? I highly doubt it.

  Updating Old Content (Keeping It up to Date)

  Will updating old blog posts help you rank better? Probably. But not just by changing the date. Google sees those changes and it accounts for “hacks” like this.

  In this article, Search Engine Land stated that Google told them about one of the factors that determine freshness. It’s not the date!

  “Google now tells us that one of the freshness factors — the way they determine if content is fresh or not — is the time when they first crawled a page. So if you publish a page, and then change that page, it doesn’t suddenly become “fresh.”

  One of the factors that determine freshness is the time when Google first crawled the page.

  So no, Google doesn’t care if you keep changing the date.

  Does that mean you shouldn’t update your articles? No!

  You should always keep your articles up to date. But not just with the date. Also with the content, quality and relevancy!

  Has something changed since you’ve first written the article? Go and update it. Make your updates visible. This will allow users to also have a historical view on the events.

  As Cyrus Shepard put it in this article:

  The age of a web page or domain isn’t the only freshness factor. Search engines can score regularly updated content for freshness differently from content that doesn’t change. In this case, the amount of change on your web page plays a role. Cyrus Shepard Owner @ Zyppy / @CyrusShepard

  So the page’s age (when it was first crawled) is important, not just the publish date in the article, which can be faked. If you’re going to make small, insignificant changes, there are small chances that you will see any effects on the rankings.

  If you feel like your post is outdated but you don’t know exactly how to improve it, use our Keyword & Content Optimization Tool.

    On the right side, it will give you a list of keywords that you should use in your article in order to make it more relevant. You can view them as topics you should cover when you’re writing. The ones with dots are the most important ones.

  If you want to know exactly what we did to gain 70% more SEO visibility, you can take a look at our content optimization results.

  Keep in mind that any changes to your content might also result in negative impacts. Be prepared for this in case it happens. If you have an article that’s already ranking #1, it’s probably a better idea to leave it like that!

  Publishing New Content

  As mentioned before,  new content lacks authority, distribution and links. It’s unlikely that it will outrank older content.

  However, publishing new content does expand the number of keywords your site is targeting and thus it results in more traffic.

  It’s just simple math. Will a higher post frequency increase your rankings overall? Probably not, although it can result in more backlinks which leads to higher domain performance over time.

  However, a higher post frequency is almost guaranteed to increase traffic. No matter what others say, if you have 1000 followers and they read you once per week, if you make them read you twice per week, you’ve increased your traffic. It’s simple math.

  But remember, you also need to post good content. You have to structure it well. You have to account for your audience’s needs. Not just blindly post things there.

  Make sure to use the Keyword Tool to maximize your chances of ranking higher on Google when you create new posts.

  What Actually Affects SEO

  I don’t want you to be upset with me, so I’ll tell you some things that will actually impact your rankings and they’re closely related to freshness.

  CTR (Possibly Impacted by ��Freshness’)

  Click Through Rate is a ranking factor. This has been tested and proven countless times. If users click your headline more and stick with your website, it signals Google that your site is a good result.

  But what impacts CTR? Well, mostly it’s the position you’re ranking for, but the 3 things that affect CTR are the Title tag, the URL and the Meta Description, because they’re all shown in Google’s search results.

  I hope you can see where this is going. How many times have you seen the current year or “Updated 20xx” in a title? Probably often. I mean just take a look at the “best android phones” example! It’s full of it! Why?

    Using the current year in your title might positively affect CTR, which can result in higher rankings.

  Should you change your title anually to feature the current year? Probably. But make sure your article is still up to date, otherwise Google’s going to catch that and punish you for it. If the article is still up to date, you can leave it like that. If not, you should probably improve it.

  You can also reshare and redistribute your content as “new” on you social media platforms. This will help you gain new backlinks and traffic if the article was previously successful.

  Quantity & Targeted Keywords

  If you post new content frequently, you can expand your search visibility by targeting new keywords. This is almost guaranteed to bring more traffic if you do it right.

  We’ve started doing this since November 2016 and the results have been promising. Have our rankings improved overall? Yes. Was it because we published more content but with the same high quality? It certainly had an effect (more backlinks, more shares, more topical authority).

  Domain Performance

  Closely related to quantity is the performance of your site’s domain. This is dictated by the number of unique domains that link to your website and, very important, also by their quality. 

  If you publish more content, target and distribute it properly, then you can increase the number of backlinks to your site, which will result in a better domain performance.

  If you want to check your domain performance, you can use the CognitiveSEO Site Explorer.

    The domain performance has a positive impact on all your articles, because Google starts to trust your site as being qualitative. Just think about it. If you buy a domain today and write something about SEO (let’s say it’s the same quality), do you think you can outrank cognitiveSEO right away? It’s hardly the case.

  Conclusion

  Still confused? Here, I’ll summarize everything, just for you:

  Google does favor freshers results, but only in certain cases, such as news sites.

Freshness factors, like the current year in your title, can impact your CTR, which may result in higher rankings.

Publishing more new content can also help you gain more links, which leads to more authority.

  What do you think about fresh content? Are you in a niche where fresh content is vital? How often do you publish on your site? Have you ever tried changing the date to rank higher? Has it worked? I doubt it has, but prove me wrong in the comments section. 

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[alltechtipstricks]

How Does Blogging Help SEO

Why Business Blogging and SEO Matter

Most content marketing strategies are built around creating and sustaining engagement with a target audience. Most brands are looking to develop a relationship with potential customers, and eventually, be viewed as a credible industry authority.

Blogging is a great content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) tactic because it allows you to provide value to potential customers while growing the authority of the website. Visitor benefit from learning more about your industry and products and your content will attract links and new visitors. Proper business blogging is a win-win for everyone involved.

Here are a few reasons why business blogging can be so impactful your online results.

The more quality content your blog has, the more pages Google can crawl and index. As a result, you’ll likely receive more traffic and visibility.

In fact, websites that contain a blog have 434% more indexed pages. Once a page is indexed it has the opportunity to rank. Ranking increases visibility and the opportunity for potential customers to find your website. There is an entire chain reaction that all starts with creating something valuable.

New & Relevant Content

Search engines prefer new, fresh content and see it as an indicator of an active and growing site. After all, Google wants to present the most up-to-date and new content possible for their customers, the searcher.

This is known as Query Deserves Freshness or QDF, where Google ’s algorithms determine if a search deserves an up-to-date result. For example, if you are looking for the score for an NBA game and you search for “What’s the score for the Laker game.” Most of the time, Google will deliver up-to-date results of the score for the current game. This may also be the case for an industry event or topic you are discussing on your blog if it’s timely and popular.

Unfortunately, you can’t keep changing your company’s history and about us page. But starting a blog gives you the opportunity to publish new content, posts, and images to keep your site fresh and top-of-mind for search engines.

Relevance is also critical when talking about quality content. Your content should be useful to your audience(s) and obviously relevant to your industry. Writing about pellet guns if you are a photographer is not going to help you rank.

Link Earning

Once content is indexed and starts to rank in search results, it will naturally start to receive links from other websites. Well, it will if it useful and relevant, which is all the more reason to make sure it is.

A link from a quality and relevant website is like a vote, it communicates to Google your website is trustworthy and someone else thinks so.

But link earning, and building has changed over the years, you can just spam the internet and expect your website or pages to rank anymore. You have to build relationships and promote your content to influencers and people who would benefit. This can be time-consuming, but not as time-consuming if Google determines that you have been trying to manipulate the system.  So, do your best to earn links and find opportunities to promote your best content.

Know there are two different types of links:

External links – are links from other websites linking to your web pages.

Internal links – Internal links connect pages or resources within your website and improved user the experience. You have complete control over these links and should link to other helpful resources within your content whenever possible.

One of the best examples of internal linking is Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia links to other pages frequently and this also improves the time spent on the website and other engagement metrics.

Targeting Different Customers and Audiences

Each blog you post is an opportunity to target a different customer or customer need. The keywords you focus on will help with targeting, but the actual content topic and or theme is what will attract the visitor.

However, if you have a clear idea of whom you are talking and the problems that arise, you can technically target a different customer with every article. For example, if your business audience is both local business and b2b, the same problem may require a different approach. For instance, the two industries may use different keywords to search for answers to their questions. This may lead to a completely different article or angle on the same topic.

Business Blogging and SEO Takes Time

Blogging and SEO is not the cure-all and it will take time, so don’t expect miracles to happen overnight. Developing and publishing a regularly updated blog should be a part of your business blogging strategy. As long as you are committed to creating quality content that better serve your clients and willing to do it consistently, you’ll be in a better position to climb in the search rankings and enjoy the benefits of increased traffic and brand exposure.

Source

https://lunarpages.com/how-does-blogging-help-seo/

[kuwaiti-kid]

How often should I publish a new post on my blog? Hint: It’s probably not every day!

When we first start blogging, a daily new post routine might sound like the best strategy. After all, we are getting our content out there. Delivering new stuff each and every day, and our blog readers want to see that, right?

You might be surprised at how easy it becomes to burn out on new content every day – both for you, the blogger, as well as your readers.

How much is too much?

Your publishing schedule will be highly dependent on the type of content that you're publishing. As usual with blogging, a one-size-fits-all answer to this question simply doesn't exist. It almost never does.

However, we can look at the numbers from around the community to point us in the right direction. And, we can perform some experiments on our own to accurately determine what works best for our blogs.

That's exactly what we're going to do in this post.

Can we safely say that the more we post, the more traffic we'll get?

Source: Moz

Why publishing every day might not work

First, let's debunk a popular myth. To be a successful blogger, you need to publish something new every day. That's not true. Seriously, you just don't.

While Huffington Post publishes something new every 58 seconds, we aren't creating Huffington Post-type blogs with a huge writing staff with the intention of marketing our content through sheer volume.

Almost no blogger has those types of resources.

Publishing every day often kick-starts a cycle of content generation just for the sake of writing new content rather than taking the time and effort required to produce something valuable and engaging for your audience.

And, there are several reasons why publishing every day may not be a good idea:

Your readers feel burnout

Your latest post constantly changes

You reduce the time it takes to market each post

The writing will [probably] suffer because of “content-churn”

Well-said from the Blog Marketing Academy about publishing every day:

In other words, quality vs. quantity. Rarely do both of these exist at the same thing.

And, the basic elements of Search Engine Optimization have absolutely nothing to do with the frequency that you publish new content. Nothing at all.

Let me emphasize again: SEO is not affected by your posting frequency.

The two principles of content publishing

As we look at how often we should publish something new on our blogs, writing new content on blogs ultimately comes down to two major principles.

The goal is to write content that:

People want to read, and

People want to share

…all the while avoiding overwhelm. Giving them something that they want, when they want it, and offering our readers an opportunity to take it all in before they are hit with another piece of content.

Here is a question that you need to ask yourself:

If a blog published a piece of content every day, are you more likely or less likely to look at Monday's post on, say, Thursday? If you're like most of us, you'll probably skip it because there's something else that's newer. More recent.

You, like most of us, get busy with life. You sometimes don't get a chance to check in with your favorite blogs or websites. Finally, on Thursday or Friday, you pull it up and start reading. Most of us will start with the very latest content and, frankly, we might not get to the material that was posted earlier in the week.

The cycle can be relentless.

Quick! What's the #1 reason why people unsubscribe from email newsletters?

Source: GetApp.com

Too many emails is the #1 reason. This is called overwhelm.

And, most of us send out emails whenever we publish something new (the better emails are hand-written). If we publish every day, we risk annoying our audience.

However, if we publish one, two or three times a week, we stand a better chance of hitting the sweet spot with our readers.

Ask yourself two questions:

How much time do I need to produce something of value that's worth both reading as well as sharing? And,

How much time do my readers need to find it, read it, digest it and share it?

If you're like most bloggers, posting weekly is a good idea – though, that does not mean you need to be posting new content every single day.

How often should I publish a new post?

Like I said before, it is impossible to provide a one-size-fits-all answer because it's highly dependent on you, your blog and your readers.

However, most bloggers find that posting once, twice or three times a week works best over the long haul of running a blog.

Why? Because a less frequent posting schedule:

Gives bloggers the time to write in-depth, highly-valuable content that readers want to read. Good content dives deeper than surface-level stuff, and every one of us needs the time to dig a bit deeper with our writing.

Gives bloggers time to properly market and publicize the new post. Most successful bloggers spend more time marketing than they do writing, which is something that many beginner bloggers miss. If we post too often, we simply won't have the time it takes to successfully market our content.

Provides our readers with enough time to find and read the post. Most of us – which probably includes you, don't read each post from your favorite blogs the day it's written, right? Of course not. And, neither do your readers. Posting too often can create overwhelm. Too much content to go through.

Most bloggers – as this study confirms, post between two times a week to two or three times a month.

Experiment to find your blog's content sweet spot

As you probably know, I am a big fan of experimentation. And, I also hate hard and fast rules that supposedly apply to everyone equally, especially in the world of blogging. That's not how this stuff works.

The fact is you could follow the exact template of a highly successful blogger, write the very same stuff, post at the exact times they posted, build an audience of similar size on social but still see drastically different results.

The reason is that blogging isn't a mathematical algorithm that results in the very same answer each and every time. Blogging is organic, and so much will depend on exactly what you're doing, at the time that you're doing it.

Yes, it's true that there are SEO and marketing-specific tactics that generally work well for everyone. Writing content that readers want to read, marketing your content through email, getting involved in your community, etc. But, just doing those things won't automatically turn your blog into the next Wait But Why, or Mark Madson.

So, how can we experiment to find the best answer to how often we should post?

First, take note of your current numbers

Before trying anything new, establish a baseline set of numbers that you're already achieving each month. This could be:

number of pageviews

comments and engagement

email opt-in conversion rates

social media followers

bounce rate

You can find many of these numbers with Google Analytics straight from the Audience > Overview page:

Then, begin experimenting with your content schedule to see how changes affect your numbers. Here are several examples of what you might try.

Reduce weekly postings by one

If you're posting three times a week, try two. Or if you're on a two-a-week schedule now, what happens if you only post one? If your pageviews decrease, then consider reverting back. But, here is where the nuance comes into play.

What if your pageviews decrease but the number of comments and engagement actually increases (because you're giving your readers more time to interact with your content)? Which one is more important?

Or, what if your pageviews decrease a little bit, but your available time to market or do other important things increases more substantially? Maybe the PV decrease is worth it.

Clearly, only you can determine that answer.

If you reduce the number of posts that you publish, use that additional time to increase your marketing efforts of what you do publish. This could mean engaging more on social media, designing Pinterest images for your posts or writing super-clever emails for your newsletter subscribers.

If you're just starting, start with two posts a week

In my experience, two posts per week is a good baseline number to shoot for after just starting. This tends to get enough content out there for Google to see and index but also doesn't completely overwhelm you in the early days of your new blog.

After a while (say, three or four months), try altering your schedule and increase or decrease the number of posts. Then, take a look at how the change has affected your numbers. Adjust accordingly.

It's important to post regularly

All this being said, it is important to post new stuff on the regular. Google generally likes blogs that are updated routinely rather than sites that sit dormant for extended periods of time, updated infrequently.

It's a concept called Query Deserves Freshness, or QDF. “QDF, simply stated, is that for every query (“search term”) a search result list should include one (or more) piece of content that’s been recently published,” wrote Copy Blogger.

And, this tends to be true for individual posts to rank – though, not always. But, blogs that are routinely updated stand the best chance at climbing the ranks in Google, especially in the first couple of years of their existence.

Routine is key. Getting high-quality content out there, regularly, is the name of the game. And in general, the key is to maintain quality.

If you're able to publish new posts more frequently while maintaining high quality, then the more the merrier. But, be careful not to over-publish and sacrifice quality.

If you insist on posting every day…

A quick email tip if you're posting every day: Consider offering a digest version of your emails that get sent less often than daily emails. Some of your readers will get burned out of daily emails, but offering a consolidated email that introduces multiple posts, sent once a week, could be the sweet spot for some of your readers.

The post How often should I publish a new post on my blog? Hint: It’s probably not every day! appeared first on Your Money Geek.

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[thelmasirby32]

Increasing Time on Site

Changing User Intents

Google's search quality rater document highlights how the intent of searches can change over time for a specific keyword.

A generic search for [iPhone] is likely to be related to the most recent model. A search for [President Bush] likely was related to the 41st president until his son was elected & then it was most likely to be related to 43.

Faster Ranking Shifts

About 17 years ago when Google was young they did monthly updates where most of any ranking signal shift that would happen would get folded into the rankings. The web today is much faster in terms of the rate of change, amount of news consumption, increasing political polarization, social media channels that amplify outrage and how quickly any cultural snippet can be taken out of context.

Yesterday President Trump had some interesting stuff to say about bleach. In spite of there being an anime series by the same name, news coverage of the presser has driven great interest in the topic.

And that interest is already folded into the organic search results through Google News insertion, Twitter tweet insertion, and the query deserves freshness (QDF) algorithm driving insertion of news stories in other organic search ranking slots.

If a lot of people are searching for something and many trusted news organizations are publishing information about a topic then there is little risk in folding fresh information into the result set.

Temporary Versus Permanent Change

When the intent of a keyword changes sometimes the change is transitory & sometimes it is not.

One of the most common ad-driven business models online is to take something that was once paid, make it free, and then layer ads or some other premium features on top to monetize a different part of the value chain. TripAdvisor democratized hotel reviews. Zillow made foreclosure information easily accessible for free, etc.

The success of remote working & communication services like Skype, Zoom, Basecamp, Slack, Trello, and the ongoing remote work experiment the world is going through will permanently change some consumer behaviors & how businesses operate.

A Pew survey mentioned 43% of Americans stated someone in their house recently lost their job, had their hours reduced, and/or took pay cuts. Hundreds of thousands of people are applying to work in Amazon's grueling fulfillment centers.

To many of these people a lone wolf online job would be a dream come true.

If you had a two hour daily commute and were just as efficient working at home most days would you be in a rush to head back to the office?

How many former fulltime employees are going to become freelancers building their own small businesses they work on directly while augmenting it with platform work on other services like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Upwork, Fiverr, 99 Designs, or even influencer platforms like Intellifluence?

If big publishers are getting disintermediated by monopoly platforms & ad networks are offering crumbs of crumbs there's no harm in selling custom ads directly or having your early publishing efforts subsidized through custom side deals as you build market awareness and invest into building other products and services to sell.

Wordpress keeps adding more features. Many technology services like Shopify, Stripe & Twilio are making most parts of the tech stack outside of marketing cheaper & easier to scale.

Some universities are preparing for the fall semester being entirely online. As technology improves, we spend more time online, more activities happen online, and more work becomes remote. All this leads to the distinction between online and offline losing meaning other than perhaps in terms of cost structure & likelihood of bankruptcy.

Before Panda / After Panda

Before the Panda update each additional page which was created was another lotto ticket and a chance to win. If users had a crappy user experience on a page or site maybe you didn't make the sale, but if the goal of the page was to have the content so crappy that ads were more appealing that could lead to fantastic monetization while it lasted.

That strategy worked well for eHow, fueling the pump-n-dump Demand Media IPO.

Demand Media had to analyze eHow and pay to delete over a million articles which they deemed to have a negative economic value in the post-Panda world.

After the Panda update having many thin pages laying around and creating more thin pages was layering risk on top of risk. It made sense to shift to a smaller, tighter, deeper & more differentiated publishing model.

Entropy & Decay

The web goes through a constant state of reinvention.

Old YouTube Flash embeds break.

HTTP content calls in sites that were upgraded to HTTPS break.

Software which is not updated has security exploits.

If you have a large website and do not regularly update where you are linking to your site is almost certainly linking to porn and malware sites somewhere.

As users shifted to mobile websites that ignored mobile interfaces became relatively less appealing.

Changing web browser behaviors can break website logins and how data is shared across websites dependent on third party services.

Competition improves.

Algorithms change.

Ads eat a growing share of real estate on dominant platforms while organic reach slides.

Everything on the web is constantly dying as competition improves, technology changes and language gets redefined.

Staying Relevant

Even if a change in user intent is transitory, in some cases it can make sense to re-work a page to address a sudden surge of interest to improve time on site, user engagement metrics & make the content on your page more citation-worthy. If news writers are still chasing a trend then having an in-depth background piece of content with more depth gives them something they may want to link at.

Since the Covid-19 implosion of the global economy came into effect I've seen two different clients have a sort of sudden surge in traffic which would make little to no sense unless one considered currently spreading news stories.

News coverage creates interest in topics, shapes perspectives of topics, and creates demand for solutions.

If you read the right people on Twitter sometimes you can be days, weeks or even months ahead of the broader news narrative. Some people are great at spotting the second, third and fourth order effects of changes. You can spot stories bubbling up and participate in the trends.

An Accelerating Rate of Change

When the web was slower & easier you could find an affiliate niche and succeed in it sometimes for years before solid competition would arrive. One of the things I was most floored about this year from a marketing perspective was how quickly spammers ramped up a full court press amplifying the fear the news media was pitching. I think I get something like a hundred spam emails a day pitching facemasks and other COVID-19 solutions. I probably see 50+ other daily ads from services like Outbrain & similar.

The web moves so much faster that the SEC is already taking COVID-19 related actions against dozens of companies. Google banned advertising protective masks and recently announced they are rolling out advertiser ID verification to increase transparency.

If Google is looking at their advertisers with a greater degree of suspicion even into an economic downturn when Expedia is pulling $4 billion from their ad budget & Amazon is cutting back on their Google ad budget and Google decides to freeze hiring then it makes far more sense to keep reinvesting into improving any page which is getting a solid stream of organic search traffic.

Company Town

After Amazon cut their Google ad budget in March Google decided to expand Google Shopping to include free listings. When any of the platforms is losing badly they can afford to subsidize that area and operate it at a loss to try to gain marketshare while making the dominant player in that category look more extreme.

When a player is dominant in a category they can squeeze down on partners. Amazon once again cut affiliate payouts and the Wall Street Journal published an article citing 20 current and former Amazon insiders who stated Amazon uses third party merchant sales data to determine which products to clone:

Amazon employees accessed documents and data about a bestselling car-trunk organizer sold by a third-party vendor. The information included total sales, how much the vendor paid Amazon for marketing and shipping, and how much Amazon made on each sale. Amazon’s private-label arm later introduced its own car-trunk organizers. ... Amazon’s private-label business encompasses more than 45 brands with some 243,000 products, from AmazonBasics batteries to Stone & Beam furniture. Amazon says those brands account for 1% of its $158 billion in annual retail sales, not counting Amazon’s devices such as its Echo speakers, Kindle e-readers and Ring doorbell cameras.

Amazon does not even need to sell their private label products to shift their economics. As Amazon clones products they force the branded ad buy for a company to show up for their own branded terms, taking another bite out of the partner: "Fortem spends as much as $60,000 a month on Amazon advertisements for its items to come up at the top of searches, said Mr. Maslakou."

Amazon has grown so dominant they've not only cut their affiliate & search advertising while hiring hundreds of thousands of employees, but they've also dramatically slowed down shipping times while pulling back on their on-site people also purchase promotions to get users to order less.

While they are growing stronger department stores and other legacy retailers are careening toward bankruptcy.

Multiple Ways to Improve

If you have a page which is ranking that gets a sudden spike in traffic it makes a lot of sense to consider current news & try to consider if the intent of the searcher has changed. If it has, address it as best you can in the most relevant way possible, even if the change is temporary, then consider switching back to the old version of the page or reorganizing your content if/when/as the trend has passed.

One of the pages mentioned above was a pre-Panda "me too" type page which was suddenly flooded with thousands of user visitors. A quality inbound link can easily cost $100 to multiples of that. If a page is already getting thousands of visitors, why not invest a couple hundred dollars into dramatically improving it, knowing that some of those drive by users will likely eventually share it? Make the page an in-depth guide with great graphics and some of those 10,000's of visitors will eventually link to it, as they were already interested in the topic, the page already gets a great stream of traffic, and the content quality is solid.

Last week a client had a big spike from a news topic that changed the intent of a keyword. Their time on site from those visitors was under a minute. After the page was re-created to reflect changing consumer intent their time on site jumped to over 3 minutes for users entering that page. Those users had a far lower bounce rate, a far better user experience, are going to be more likely to trust the site enough to seek it out again, and this sends a signal to Google that the site is still maintained & relevant to the modern search market.

There are many ways to chase the traffic stream

create new content on new pages

gut the old page & publish entirely new content

re-arrange the old page while publishing new relevant breaking news at the top

In general I think the third option is often the best approach because you are aligning the page which already sees the traffic stream with the content they are looking for, while also ensuring any users from the prior intent can still access what they are looking for.

If the trend is huge, or the change in intent is permanent then you could also move the old content to a legacy URL archived page while making the high-traffic page focus on the spiking news topic.

The above advice applies to pages which rank for keywords that change in intent, but it can also apply to any web page which has a strong flow of user traffic. Keep improving the things people see most because improvements there have the biggest returns. How can you make a page deeper, better, more differentiated from the rest of the web?

Does Usage Data Matter?

Objectively, if people visit your website and do not find what they were looking for they are going to click the back button and be done with you.

Outdated content that has become irrelevant due to changing user tastes is only marginally better than outright spam.

While Google suggests they largely do not use bounce rate or user data in their rankings, they have also claimed end user data was the best way they could determine if the user was satisfied with a particular search result. Five years ago Bill Slawski wrote a blog post about long clicks which quoted Steven Levy's In The Plex book:

"On the most basic level, Google could see how satisfied users were. To paraphrase Tolstoy, happy users were all the same. The best sign of their happiness was the "Long Click" — This occurred when someone went to a search result, ideally the top one, and did not return. That meant Google has successfully fulfilled the query."

Think of how many people use the Chrome web browser or have Android tracking devices on them all hours of the day. There is no way Google would be able to track those billions of users every single day without finding a whole lot of signal in the noise.

Categories: 

publishing & media

from Digital Marketing News http://www.seobook.com/increasing-time-site

[atashalizadeh]

الگوریتم تازگی محتوا

امروز با یکی از جذاب ترین الگوریتم های گوگل می خواهیم شما را در راستای بهبود و ارتقای سایت در گوگل همراهی کنیم. الگوریتم تازگی محتوا یا  Freshness مثل تمام الگوریتم های گوگل با هدف بهبود کیفیت نتایج جستجو طراحی شده که نقش مهمی در رتبه بندی بهتر در نتایج داشته و رضایت کاربران گوگل را به دنبال داشته است.

هدف این الگوریتم ارائه ی اطلاعات به روز و تازه و البته مفید به کاربران است و بر اساس آن هر وب سایتی که اطلاعات جدید ،‌ و مورد نیاز کاربران را ارائه دهد لایق کسب رتبه ی بهتری است !

احتمالا شما هم زمانی که موضوعی را جستجو میکنید به دنبال محتواهای تازه تر هستید، به عنوان مثال شما به دنبال کسب اطلاعات در رابطه با جدید ترین الگوریتم های گوگل هستید تا رتبه سایت خود را بر اساس آن ارتقا دهید. در اینجا اگر وب سایتی مقاله ای جامع ، کامل و منحصر به فرد در سال ۲۰۱۵ برای الگوریتم های گوگل تدارک دیده باشد، امروز در سال ۲۰۱۹ دیگر برای شما مفید نیست ! پس می توان شما را یک مخاطب الگوریتم تازگی محتوا دانست که بر اساس این رتبه بندی نتیجه ی مورد نظر خود را جستجو ها مشاهده خواهد کرد.

توجه داشته باشید که تاریخ محتوا بهتر است که در قالب سایت شما نمایش داده شود و نمایش تاریخ محتوا هم تاثیر مثبتی در مخاطب ایجاد کرده و هم مورد پسند گوگل است.

جستجوی QDF :

اصطلاح QDF مخفف Queries Deserve Freshness به جستجوهایی گفته می شود که نتایج آنها نیازمند مطالب تازه تر هستند ! و به هر قدری که میزان جستجوی آنها بالاتر می رود اهمیت تازه بودن محتوا هم به مراتب بیشتر خواهد شد.

تازگی محتوا بر چه اساسی تعیین می شود ؟

گوگل محتواهای جدید را بر اساس رفتار کاربران مورد ارزیابی قرار می دهد. باید تلاش کنید تا کاربران جذب مطالب وب سایت شده و زمان بیشتری را در سایت شما سپری کنند.

چطور بهترین نتیجه را از الگوریتم تازگی محتوا بگیریم ؟

۱– تمام تلاش خود را در راستای جذب کاربر و سپری کردن زمان بیشتر در سایت شما انجام دهید. 

۲– گرفتن بک لینک از سایت هایی که محتوای تازه تولید می کنند بر اساس این الگوریتم تاثیر مثبت بیشتری دارد.

۳– در لینک سازیو تولید محتوای سایت خود تداوم و استمرار داشته باشید.

۴– حتما محتواها و مقاله های جامع و قدیمی سایت را به روز رسانی کنید

۵– در زمان به روز رسانی محتواهای قدیمی سعی کنید بدنه و بخش اصلی محتوا را به روز کرده و حجم زیادی از تغییرات را اعمال کنید. ( اطلاعات تازه تری را قرار دهید و صرفا به روزرسانی نکنید تا نظر گوگل را جلب کرده باشید )

نکته : در به روز رسانی اولیت را با مطالب قدیمی تر قرار دهید زیرا ارزش بیشتری دارند.  همچنین مطالبی که رتبه و ترند خوبی دارند نیز باید بیشتر به روز رسانی شوند

نوشته الگوریتم تازگی محتوا اولین بار در طراحی سایت وینت پدیدار شد.

[krisggordon]

Content Freshness & Rankings | Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

You keep hearing around that the same way true fans like their Apples fresh (I’m talking about iPhones), Google likes its content fresh. Well, it’s somewhat true, but not for the reasons you might think of!

  Google doesn’t necessarily favor “fresh” content. Some search queries definitely deserve freshness, while others not so much. However, fresh content can impact SEO through some indirect “freshness” factors.

    What Does Fresh Content Even Mean?

Freshness & Frequency

What the Google Freshness Update Was All About

The First Google Update (Caffeine)

The Second Google Update (Freshness)

Who Does the Freshness Update Actually Affect?

Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

Queries that Deserve Freshness (QDF)

Updating Old Content (Keeping It up to Date)

Publishing New Content

What Actually Affects SEO

CTR (Possibly Impacted by ‘Freshness’)

Quantity & Targeted Keywords

Domain Performance

  To better understand the concept, we first must detail a little what “fresh content” actually means.

  What Does Fresh Content Even Mean?

  What do you understand by fresh content? Content that has been published today? Content that is regularly updated?

  The term “fresh content” represents content that is dynamic in nature (especially in meaning).

  Therefore, it’s not as much “new” content in relation to time and when it has actually been created or published, but new in meaning and what the data behind it reflects.

  Many people believe that fresh content is content that has been recently published. Sometimes, they even mix up freshness with frequency.

  Let’s start with content that has been recently published. If I am publishing a piece on “The History of England”, would you call that fresh content?

  Most likely not, because people have been writing about the history of England for probably hundreds of years. It’s nothing new.

  The post is new on my site, of course, but common SEO sense says that new content without any backlinks and amplification will have a harder time ranking, especially in very competitive niches, such as history (where Wikipedia probably dominates). You’ll have to make huge link building efforts to dominate the results with a new page and we all know how risky that is! (it usually results in a penalty).

  Freshness & Frequency

  Now frequency is very similar to freshness and they often intersect, but it’s not always the case. I could post something fresh once per week, or I could post something fresh every day.

  Frequency will ensure that your site gets crawled more often (thanks to Caffeine).

  That means search engines will use more of their resources on sites that publish more often, because they need them.

  If you’ve been publishing once per month for the past year, why would Google check your site daily? It would be a waste of resources.

  However, if your site publishes 25 articles each day, then Google has to make sure it checks your site multiple times per day to index those results as soon as possible (thanks to Caffeine) and be able to display them to the users if they request it (thanks to the 2011 update).

  One common misconception is that stale websites will be negatively impacted. That’s been proven wrong.

  Brian Dean made this pretty clear with his blog. He publishes rarely, so his website is mostly still. However, his content always ranks at the top. I also have a blog in Romanian on which I haven’t posted in over 6 months. 9/10 articles are ranking on the 1st page and 6/10 are ranked in the top 3 positions.

  If there’s something that has changed over time, it’s that those rankings have actually increased.

  You see, you don’t need to publish too often when you can actually go into the Google Search Console and ask Google to immediately index your web pages by hitting a single button.

  What the Google Freshness Update Was All About

  This all started back in 2009, but just like many events, it has developed into a big conspiracy over time.

  The First Google Update (Caffeine)

  If you were in business back in 2009, you’d remember about the Google Caffeine update and how much of a big deal it was. The update is often referred to today as the Freshness Update, because Google used the phrase “fresher results”.

  Although the update was announced back in 2009, it took almost a year until it finally rolled up.

  The thing is, unfortunately, that many people got it all wrong.

  The Google caffeine update has nothing to do with rankings. It’s main focus is indexing. Rankings and indexing are two very different things.

  Indexing is when Google takes a first look at your content and adds it to the index. That means it has the potential to be ranked.

  Ranking however, is a completely different story, with a much more complex algorithm behind it. This algorithm, which was updated in 2011, was actually older than you might think.

  The Second Google Update (Freshness)

  Ranking “fresh content” at the top was actually happening way before that. In 2007, Amit Singhal had developed an algorithm that favored freshness for some particular subjects and queries.

  Note how I say “some specific queries”. Wait, let me make that bigger.

  Google favors fresh content only for some specific queries that deserve freshness, widely known as QDF.

  QDF stands for Query Deserves Freshness. If a particular search phrase is a QDF, then Google will show up the most recent results. This happens a lot in particular areas, as Matt Cutts explains in the following video:

    In fact, in its official post about the update, Google specifies exactly what types of queries the update will impact:

  Recent events or hot topics: Such as celebrity news or natural disasters (kind of one and the same)

Regularly recurring events: Conferences such as Brand Minds

Frequent updates: Anything that keeps having new content added to, such as product reviews or anything in the technology space

  I know there have been some speculations that only by changing the date to an article you could make it look fresh and you could abuse the algorithm changes to make Google keep you at the top. However, they are what they are (speculations) and I promise you that for each example you give me of “fresh” content ranking at the top I can find at least 1 example of “old” content ranking at the top.

  In fact, I’ll give you some examples right now, from the SEO field. It’s a field that frequently changes and you always have to stay up to date in order to be relevant.

  There’s no way a guide from 2015 or 2010 would still be useful, right? Well… Google thinks otherwise:

    And here’s another example:

    You might argue that “fresher” results rank better than those. Well, you’re right but that doesn’t prove anything, because one can say “fresher results also rank below and they even come from big sites such as Hubspot”.

  However…

  There are factors that might influence rankings in this situation and we’ll talk about them soon, so keep reading!

  But thinking that you’ll rank better just by having a more recent publish date is silly. And I’ll crush it even more soon.

  Who Does the Freshness Update Actually Affect?

  Both Caffeine and the 2011 Freshness Algorithm Update affect mostly news sites. This is the broader category, in which you can include celebrities, general news, politics, technology, you name it.

  I’ll give you an example:

    Notice a difference from the SEO examples I gave before? No article from 2009 or 2010 here, right? They’re all from 2019, posted hardly one month before me writing this post. The second article doesn’t even list the date, but instead the number of days it was posted ago. It can also be hours sometimes instead of days.

  Why do you think this is the case?

  Because in this case, a 2009 post would be horrible as a search result. People want to know the latest phones, not the outdated ones from 2009. Google knows the user’s intent so it tries to match the results to fit it.

  Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

  Do we have an official answer? Sort of. And it’s pretty recent:

  No

— John (@JohnMu) August 18, 2018

  I have to say, I’m not quite pleased with the answer, because John has the habit of being very vague in his answers. I mean… I’ve just proven above that Google favors fresh content in certain cases.

  Sure, we also have to get the context of his answer. That question about freshness has been asked after John tweeted this:

  “As a user, recognizing that old content is just being relabeled as new completely kills any authority that I thought the author / site had. Good content is not lazy content. SEO hacks don’t make a site great. Give your content and users the respect they deserve.”

  So, basically, John Mueller, Google’s representative, is trying to tell you that updating the post date every day is a bad digital marketing strategy and it won’t help you rank better.

  I have to admit, I miss those days when Google used to be a lot more detailed and explicit in its answers. Why?

  Because, as discussed, before, Google does favor fresh content, but in certain areas! And John’s answer should’ve reflected this reality, which also includes QDF.

  Queries that Deserve Freshness (QDF)

  Queries that Deserve Freshness is a reality! Matt Cutts talked about this before. There are certain search phrases, such as “best android phones” which I’ve shown above as an example, that deserve freshness. Users want to see the latest posts, so here, you might have the upper hand if you keep everything up to date.

    Does that mean that you can keep ranking at the top by constantly changing the post date? No.

  Does it mean that some articles will outrank other articles because of the date when they were posted? Yes.

  But there are a lot of factors that signal freshness. Not just the date. Is the topic growing popular on social media platforms? Are the articles getting any new backlinks? In other words, is it something that’s happening now?

  Are those answers contradicting one another? I don’t think so. In the end, Google’s not perfect. It’s just an algorithm. Do you think a human person could determine better what the best result for the masses would be? I highly doubt it.

  Updating Old Content (Keeping It up to Date)

  Will updating old blog posts help you rank better? Probably. But not just by changing the date. Google sees those changes and it accounts for “hacks” like this.

  In this article, Search Engine Land stated that Google told them about one of the factors that determine freshness. It’s not the date!

  “Google now tells us that one of the freshness factors — the way they determine if content is fresh or not — is the time when they first crawled a page. So if you publish a page, and then change that page, it doesn’t suddenly become “fresh.”

  One of the factors that determine freshness is the time when Google first crawled the page.

  So no, Google doesn’t care if you keep changing the date.

  Does that mean you shouldn’t update your articles? No!

  You should always keep your articles up to date. But not just with the date. Also with the content, quality and relevancy!

  Has something changed since you’ve first written the article? Go and update it. Make your updates visible. This will allow users to also have a historical view on the events.

  As Cyrus Shepard put it in this article:

  The age of a web page or domain isn’t the only freshness factor. Search engines can score regularly updated content for freshness differently from content that doesn’t change. In this case, the amount of change on your web page plays a role. Cyrus Shepard Owner @ Zyppy / @CyrusShepard

  So the page’s age (when it was first crawled) is important, not just the publish date in the article, which can be faked. If you’re going to make small, insignificant changes, there are small chances that you will see any effects on the rankings.

  If you feel like your post is outdated but you don’t know exactly how to improve it, use our Keyword & Content Optimization Tool.

    On the right side, it will give you a list of keywords that you should use in your article in order to make it more relevant. You can view them as topics you should cover when you’re writing. The ones with dots are the most important ones.

  If you want to know exactly what we did to gain 70% more SEO visibility, you can take a look at our content optimization results.

  Keep in mind that any changes to your content might also result in negative impacts. Be prepared for this in case it happens. If you have an article that’s already ranking #1, it’s probably a better idea to leave it like that!

  Publishing New Content

  As mentioned before,  new content lacks authority, distribution and links. It’s unlikely that it will outrank older content.

  However, publishing new content does expand the number of keywords your site is targeting and thus it results in more traffic.

  It’s just simple math. Will a higher post frequency increase your rankings overall? Probably not, although it can result in more backlinks which leads to higher domain performance over time.

  However, a higher post frequency is almost guaranteed to increase traffic. No matter what others say, if you have 1000 followers and they read you once per week, if you make them read you twice per week, you’ve increased your traffic. It’s simple math.

  But remember, you also need to post good content. You have to structure it well. You have to account for your audience’s needs. Not just blindly post things there.

  Make sure to use the Keyword Tool to maximize your chances of ranking higher on Google when you create new posts.

  What Actually Affects SEO

  I don’t want you to be upset with me, so I’ll tell you some things that will actually impact your rankings and they’re closely related to freshness.

  CTR (Possibly Impacted by ‘Freshness’)

  Click Through Rate is a ranking factor. This has been tested and proven countless times. If users click your headline more and stick with your website, it signals Google that your site is a good result.

  But what impacts CTR? Well, mostly it’s the position you’re ranking for, but the 3 things that affect CTR are the Title tag, the URL and the Meta Description, because they’re all shown in Google’s search results.

  I hope you can see where this is going. How many times have you seen the current year or “Updated 20xx” in a title? Probably often. I mean just take a look at the “best android phones” example! It’s full of it! Why?

    Using the current year in your title might positively affect CTR, which can result in higher rankings.

  Should you change your title anually to feature the current year? Probably. But make sure your article is still up to date, otherwise Google’s going to catch that and punish you for it. If the article is still up to date, you can leave it like that. If not, you should probably improve it.

  You can also reshare and redistribute your content as “new” on you social media platforms. This will help you gain new backlinks and traffic if the article was previously successful.

  Quantity & Targeted Keywords

  If you post new content frequently, you can expand your search visibility by targeting new keywords. This is almost guaranteed to bring more traffic if you do it right.

  We’ve started doing this since November 2016 and the results have been promising. Have our rankings improved overall? Yes. Was it because we published more content but with the same high quality? It certainly had an effect (more backlinks, more shares, more topical authority).

  Domain Performance

  Closely related to quantity is the performance of your site’s domain. This is dictated by the number of unique domains that link to your website and, very important, also by their quality. 

  If you publish more content, target and distribute it properly, then you can increase the number of backlinks to your site, which will result in a better domain performance.

  If you want to check your domain performance, you can use the CognitiveSEO Site Explorer.

    The domain performance has a positive impact on all your articles, because Google starts to trust your site as being qualitative. Just think about it. If you buy a domain today and write something about SEO (let’s say it’s the same quality), do you think you can outrank cognitiveSEO right away? It’s hardly the case.

  Conclusion

  Still confused? Here, I’ll summarize everything, just for you:

  Google does favor freshers results, but only in certain cases, such as news sites.

Freshness factors, like the current year in your title, can impact your CTR, which may result in higher rankings.

Publishing more new content can also help you gain more links, which leads to more authority.

  What do you think about fresh content? Are you in a niche where fresh content is vital? How often do you publish on your site? Have you ever tried changing the date to rank higher? Has it worked? I doubt it has, but prove me wrong in the comments section. 

The post Content Freshness & Rankings | Does Fresh Content Impact SEO? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

from Marketing https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/21200/fresh-content-seo/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[philipfloyd]

Content Freshness & Rankings | Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

You keep hearing around that the same way true fans like their Apples fresh (I’m talking about iPhones), Google likes its content fresh. Well, it’s somewhat true, but not for the reasons you might think of!

  Google doesn’t necessarily favor “fresh” content. Some search queries definitely deserve freshness, while others not so much. However, fresh content can impact SEO through some indirect “freshness” factors.

    What Does Fresh Content Even Mean?

Freshness & Frequency

What the Google Freshness Update Was All About

The First Google Update (Caffeine)

The Second Google Update (Freshness)

Who Does the Freshness Update Actually Affect?

Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

Queries that Deserve Freshness (QDF)

Updating Old Content (Keeping It up to Date)

Publishing New Content

What Actually Affects SEO

CTR (Possibly Impacted by ‘Freshness’)

Quantity & Targeted Keywords

Domain Performance

  To better understand the concept, we first must detail a little what “fresh content” actually means.

  What Does Fresh Content Even Mean?

  What do you understand by fresh content? Content that has been published today? Content that is regularly updated?

  The term “fresh content” represents content that is dynamic in nature (especially in meaning).

  Therefore, it’s not as much “new” content in relation to time and when it has actually been created or published, but new in meaning and what the data behind it reflects.

  Many people believe that fresh content is content that has been recently published. Sometimes, they even mix up freshness with frequency.

  Let’s start with content that has been recently published. If I am publishing a piece on “The History of England”, would you call that fresh content?

  Most likely not, because people have been writing about the history of England for probably hundreds of years. It’s nothing new.

  The post is new on my site, of course, but common SEO sense says that new content without any backlinks and amplification will have a harder time ranking, especially in very competitive niches, such as history (where Wikipedia probably dominates). You’ll have to make huge link building efforts to dominate the results with a new page and we all know how risky that is! (it usually results in a penalty).

  Freshness & Frequency

  Now frequency is very similar to freshness and they often intersect, but it’s not always the case. I could post something fresh once per week, or I could post something fresh every day.

  Frequency will ensure that your site gets crawled more often (thanks to Caffeine).

  That means search engines will use more of their resources on sites that publish more often, because they need them.

  If you’ve been publishing once per month for the past year, why would Google check your site daily? It would be a waste of resources.

  However, if your site publishes 25 articles each day, then Google has to make sure it checks your site multiple times per day to index those results as soon as possible (thanks to Caffeine) and be able to display them to the users if they request it (thanks to the 2011 update).

  One common misconception is that stale websites will be negatively impacted. That’s been proven wrong.

  Brian Dean made this pretty clear with his blog. He publishes rarely, so his website is mostly still. However, his content always ranks at the top. I also have a blog in Romanian on which I haven’t posted in over 6 months. 9/10 articles are ranking on the 1st page and 6/10 are ranked in the top 3 positions.

  If there’s something that has changed over time, it’s that those rankings have actually increased.

  You see, you don’t need to publish too often when you can actually go into the Google Search Console and ask Google to immediately index your web pages by hitting a single button.

  What the Google Freshness Update Was All About

  This all started back in 2009, but just like many events, it has developed into a big conspiracy over time.

  The First Google Update (Caffeine)

  If you were in business back in 2009, you’d remember about the Google Caffeine update and how much of a big deal it was. The update is often referred to today as the Freshness Update, because Google used the phrase “fresher results”.

  Although the update was announced back in 2009, it took almost a year until it finally rolled up.

  The thing is, unfortunately, that many people got it all wrong.

  The Google caffeine update has nothing to do with rankings. It’s main focus is indexing. Rankings and indexing are two very different things.

  Indexing is when Google takes a first look at your content and adds it to the index. That means it has the potential to be ranked.

  Ranking however, is a completely different story, with a much more complex algorithm behind it. This algorithm, which was updated in 2011, was actually older than you might think.

  The Second Google Update (Freshness)

  Ranking “fresh content” at the top was actually happening way before that. In 2007, Amit Singhal had developed an algorithm that favored freshness for some particular subjects and queries.

  Note how I say “some specific queries”. Wait, let me make that bigger.

  Google favors fresh content only for some specific queries that deserve freshness, widely known as QDF.

  QDF stands for Query Deserves Freshness. If a particular search phrase is a QDF, then Google will show up the most recent results. This happens a lot in particular areas, as Matt Cutts explains in the following video:

    In fact, in its official post about the update, Google specifies exactly what types of queries the update will impact:

  Recent events or hot topics: Such as celebrity news or natural disasters (kind of one and the same)

Regularly recurring events: Conferences such as Brand Minds

Frequent updates: Anything that keeps having new content added to, such as product reviews or anything in the technology space

  I know there have been some speculations that only by changing the date to an article you could make it look fresh and you could abuse the algorithm changes to make Google keep you at the top. However, they are what they are (speculations) and I promise you that for each example you give me of “fresh” content ranking at the top I can find at least 1 example of “old” content ranking at the top.

  In fact, I’ll give you some examples right now, from the SEO field. It’s a field that frequently changes and you always have to stay up to date in order to be relevant.

  There’s no way a guide from 2015 or 2010 would still be useful, right? Well… Google thinks otherwise:

    And here’s another example:

    You might argue that “fresher” results rank better than those. Well, you’re right but that doesn’t prove anything, because one can say “fresher results also rank below and they even come from big sites such as Hubspot”.

  However…

  There are factors that might influence rankings in this situation and we’ll talk about them soon, so keep reading!

  But thinking that you’ll rank better just by having a more recent publish date is silly. And I’ll crush it even more soon.

  Who Does the Freshness Update Actually Affect?

  Both Caffeine and the 2011 Freshness Algorithm Update affect mostly news sites. This is the broader category, in which you can include celebrities, general news, politics, technology, you name it.

  I’ll give you an example:

    Notice a difference from the SEO examples I gave before? No article from 2009 or 2010 here, right? They’re all from 2019, posted hardly one month before me writing this post. The second article doesn’t even list the date, but instead the number of days it was posted ago. It can also be hours sometimes instead of days.

  Why do you think this is the case?

  Because in this case, a 2009 post would be horrible as a search result. People want to know the latest phones, not the outdated ones from 2009. Google knows the user’s intent so it tries to match the results to fit it.

  Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

  Do we have an official answer? Sort of. And it’s pretty recent:

  No

— John (@JohnMu) August 18, 2018

  I have to say, I’m not quite pleased with the answer, because John has the habit of being very vague in his answers. I mean… I’ve just proven above that Google favors fresh content in certain cases.

  Sure, we also have to get the context of his answer. That question about freshness has been asked after John tweeted this:

  “As a user, recognizing that old content is just being relabeled as new completely kills any authority that I thought the author / site had. Good content is not lazy content. SEO hacks don’t make a site great. Give your content and users the respect they deserve.”

  So, basically, John Mueller, Google’s representative, is trying to tell you that updating the post date every day is a bad digital marketing strategy and it won’t help you rank better.

  I have to admit, I miss those days when Google used to be a lot more detailed and explicit in its answers. Why?

  Because, as discussed, before, Google does favor fresh content, but in certain areas! And John’s answer should’ve reflected this reality, which also includes QDF.

  Queries that Deserve Freshness (QDF)

  Queries that Deserve Freshness is a reality! Matt Cutts talked about this before. There are certain search phrases, such as “best android phones” which I’ve shown above as an example, that deserve freshness. Users want to see the latest posts, so here, you might have the upper hand if you keep everything up to date.

    Does that mean that you can keep ranking at the top by constantly changing the post date? No.

  Does it mean that some articles will outrank other articles because of the date when they were posted? Yes.

  But there are a lot of factors that signal freshness. Not just the date. Is the topic growing popular on social media platforms? Are the articles getting any new backlinks? In other words, is it something that’s happening now?

  Are those answers contradicting one another? I don’t think so. In the end, Google’s not perfect. It’s just an algorithm. Do you think a human person could determine better what the best result for the masses would be? I highly doubt it.

  Updating Old Content (Keeping It up to Date)

  Will updating old blog posts help you rank better? Probably. But not just by changing the date. Google sees those changes and it accounts for “hacks” like this.

  In this article, Search Engine Land stated that Google told them about one of the factors that determine freshness. It’s not the date!

  “Google now tells us that one of the freshness factors — the way they determine if content is fresh or not — is the time when they first crawled a page. So if you publish a page, and then change that page, it doesn’t suddenly become “fresh.”

  One of the factors that determine freshness is the time when Google first crawled the page.

  So no, Google doesn’t care if you keep changing the date.

  Does that mean you shouldn’t update your articles? No!

  You should always keep your articles up to date. But not just with the date. Also with the content, quality and relevancy!

  Has something changed since you’ve first written the article? Go and update it. Make your updates visible. This will allow users to also have a historical view on the events.

  As Cyrus Shepard put it in this article:

  The age of a web page or domain isn’t the only freshness factor. Search engines can score regularly updated content for freshness differently from content that doesn’t change. In this case, the amount of change on your web page plays a role. Cyrus Shepard Owner @ Zyppy / @CyrusShepard

  So the page’s age (when it was first crawled) is important, not just the publish date in the article, which can be faked. If you’re going to make small, insignificant changes, there are small chances that you will see any effects on the rankings.

  If you feel like your post is outdated but you don’t know exactly how to improve it, use our Keyword & Content Optimization Tool.

    On the right side, it will give you a list of keywords that you should use in your article in order to make it more relevant. You can view them as topics you should cover when you’re writing. The ones with dots are the most important ones.

  If you want to know exactly what we did to gain 70% more SEO visibility, you can take a look at our content optimization results.

  Keep in mind that any changes to your content might also result in negative impacts. Be prepared for this in case it happens. If you have an article that’s already ranking #1, it’s probably a better idea to leave it like that!

  Publishing New Content

  As mentioned before,  new content lacks authority, distribution and links. It’s unlikely that it will outrank older content.

  However, publishing new content does expand the number of keywords your site is targeting and thus it results in more traffic.

  It’s just simple math. Will a higher post frequency increase your rankings overall? Probably not, although it can result in more backlinks which leads to higher domain performance over time.

  However, a higher post frequency is almost guaranteed to increase traffic. No matter what others say, if you have 1000 followers and they read you once per week, if you make them read you twice per week, you’ve increased your traffic. It’s simple math.

  But remember, you also need to post good content. You have to structure it well. You have to account for your audience’s needs. Not just blindly post things there.

  Make sure to use the Keyword Tool to maximize your chances of ranking higher on Google when you create new posts.

  What Actually Affects SEO

  I don’t want you to be upset with me, so I’ll tell you some things that will actually impact your rankings and they’re closely related to freshness.

  CTR (Possibly Impacted by ‘Freshness’)

  Click Through Rate is a ranking factor. This has been tested and proven countless times. If users click your headline more and stick with your website, it signals Google that your site is a good result.

  But what impacts CTR? Well, mostly it’s the position you’re ranking for, but the 3 things that affect CTR are the Title tag, the URL and the Meta Description, because they’re all shown in Google’s search results.

  I hope you can see where this is going. How many times have you seen the current year or “Updated 20xx” in a title? Probably often. I mean just take a look at the “best android phones” example! It’s full of it! Why?

    Using the current year in your title might positively affect CTR, which can result in higher rankings.

  Should you change your title anually to feature the current year? Probably. But make sure your article is still up to date, otherwise Google’s going to catch that and punish you for it. If the article is still up to date, you can leave it like that. If not, you should probably improve it.

  You can also reshare and redistribute your content as “new” on you social media platforms. This will help you gain new backlinks and traffic if the article was previously successful.

  Quantity & Targeted Keywords

  If you post new content frequently, you can expand your search visibility by targeting new keywords. This is almost guaranteed to bring more traffic if you do it right.

  We’ve started doing this since November 2016 and the results have been promising. Have our rankings improved overall? Yes. Was it because we published more content but with the same high quality? It certainly had an effect (more backlinks, more shares, more topical authority).

  Domain Performance

  Closely related to quantity is the performance of your site’s domain. This is dictated by the number of unique domains that link to your website and, very important, also by their quality. 

  If you publish more content, target and distribute it properly, then you can increase the number of backlinks to your site, which will result in a better domain performance.

  If you want to check your domain performance, you can use the CognitiveSEO Site Explorer.

    The domain performance has a positive impact on all your articles, because Google starts to trust your site as being qualitative. Just think about it. If you buy a domain today and write something about SEO (let’s say it’s the same quality), do you think you can outrank cognitiveSEO right away? It’s hardly the case.

  Conclusion

  Still confused? Here, I’ll summarize everything, just for you:

  Google does favor freshers results, but only in certain cases, such as news sites.

Freshness factors, like the current year in your title, can impact your CTR, which may result in higher rankings.

Publishing more new content can also help you gain more links, which leads to more authority.

  What do you think about fresh content? Are you in a niche where fresh content is vital? How often do you publish on your site? Have you ever tried changing the date to rank higher? Has it worked? I doubt it has, but prove me wrong in the comments section. 

The post Content Freshness & Rankings | Does Fresh Content Impact SEO? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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Content Freshness & Rankings | Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

You keep hearing around that the same way true fans like their Apples fresh (I’m talking about iPhones), Google likes its content fresh. Well, it’s somewhat true, but not for the reasons you might think of!

  Google doesn’t necessarily favor “fresh” content. Some search queries definitely deserve freshness, while others not so much. However, fresh content can impact SEO through some indirect “freshness” factors.

    What Does Fresh Content Even Mean?

Freshness & Frequency

What the Google Freshness Update Was All About

The First Google Update (Caffeine)

The Second Google Update (Freshness)

Who Does the Freshness Update Actually Affect?

Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

Queries that Deserve Freshness (QDF)

Updating Old Content (Keeping It up to Date)

Publishing New Content

What Actually Affects SEO

CTR (Possibly Impacted by ‘Freshness’)

Quantity & Targeted Keywords

Domain Performance

  To better understand the concept, we first must detail a little what “fresh content” actually means.

  What Does Fresh Content Even Mean?

  What do you understand by fresh content? Content that has been published today? Content that is regularly updated?

  The term “fresh content” represents content that is dynamic in nature (especially in meaning).

  Therefore, it’s not as much “new” content in relation to time and when it has actually been created or published, but new in meaning and what the data behind it reflects.

  Many people believe that fresh content is content that has been recently published. Sometimes, they even mix up freshness with frequency.

  Let’s start with content that has been recently published. If I am publishing a piece on “The History of England”, would you call that fresh content?

  Most likely not, because people have been writing about the history of England for probably hundreds of years. It’s nothing new.

  The post is new on my site, of course, but common SEO sense says that new content without any backlinks and amplification will have a harder time ranking, especially in very competitive niches, such as history (where Wikipedia probably dominates). You’ll have to make huge link building efforts to dominate the results with a new page and we all know how risky that is! (it usually results in a penalty).

  Freshness & Frequency

  Now frequency is very similar to freshness and they often intersect, but it’s not always the case. I could post something fresh once per week, or I could post something fresh every day.

  Frequency will ensure that your site gets crawled more often (thanks to Caffeine).

  That means search engines will use more of their resources on sites that publish more often, because they need them.

  If you’ve been publishing once per month for the past year, why would Google check your site daily? It would be a waste of resources.

  However, if your site publishes 25 articles each day, then Google has to make sure it checks your site multiple times per day to index those results as soon as possible (thanks to Caffeine) and be able to display them to the users if they request it (thanks to the 2011 update).

  One common misconception is that stale websites will be negatively impacted. That’s been proven wrong.

  Brian Dean made this pretty clear with his blog. He publishes rarely, so his website is mostly still. However, his content always ranks at the top. I also have a blog in Romanian on which I haven’t posted in over 6 months. 9/10 articles are ranking on the 1st page and 6/10 are ranked in the top 3 positions.

  If there’s something that has changed over time, it’s that those rankings have actually increased.

  You see, you don’t need to publish too often when you can actually go into the Google Search Console and ask Google to immediately index your web pages by hitting a single button.

  What the Google Freshness Update Was All About

  This all started back in 2009, but just like many events, it has developed into a big conspiracy over time.

  The First Google Update (Caffeine)

  If you were in business back in 2009, you’d remember about the Google Caffeine update and how much of a big deal it was. The update is often referred to today as the Freshness Update, because Google used the phrase “fresher results”.

  Although the update was announced back in 2009, it took almost a year until it finally rolled up.

  The thing is, unfortunately, that many people got it all wrong.

  The Google caffeine update has nothing to do with rankings. It’s main focus is indexing. Rankings and indexing are two very different things.

  Indexing is when Google takes a first look at your content and adds it to the index. That means it has the potential to be ranked.

  Ranking however, is a completely different story, with a much more complex algorithm behind it. This algorithm, which was updated in 2011, was actually older than you might think.

  The Second Google Update (Freshness)

  Ranking “fresh content” at the top was actually happening way before that. In 2007, Amit Singhal had developed an algorithm that favored freshness for some particular subjects and queries.

  Note how I say “some specific queries”. Wait, let me make that bigger.

  Google favors fresh content only for some specific queries that deserve freshness, widely known as QDF.

  QDF stands for Query Deserves Freshness. If a particular search phrase is a QDF, then Google will show up the most recent results. This happens a lot in particular areas, as Matt Cutts explains in the following video:

    In fact, in its official post about the update, Google specifies exactly what types of queries the update will impact:

  Recent events or hot topics: Such as celebrity news or natural disasters (kind of one and the same)

Regularly recurring events: Conferences such as Brand Minds

Frequent updates: Anything that keeps having new content added to, such as product reviews or anything in the technology space

  I know there have been some speculations that only by changing the date to an article you could make it look fresh and you could abuse the algorithm changes to make Google keep you at the top. However, they are what they are (speculations) and I promise you that for each example you give me of “fresh” content ranking at the top I can find at least 1 example of “old” content ranking at the top.

  In fact, I’ll give you some examples right now, from the SEO field. It’s a field that frequently changes and you always have to stay up to date in order to be relevant.

  There’s no way a guide from 2015 or 2010 would still be useful, right? Well… Google thinks otherwise:

    And here’s another example:

    You might argue that “fresher” results rank better than those. Well, you’re right but that doesn’t prove anything, because one can say “fresher results also rank below and they even come from big sites such as Hubspot”.

  However…

  There are factors that might influence rankings in this situation and we’ll talk about them soon, so keep reading!

  But thinking that you’ll rank better just by having a more recent publish date is silly. And I’ll crush it even more soon.

  Who Does the Freshness Update Actually Affect?

  Both Caffeine and the 2011 Freshness Algorithm Update affect mostly news sites. This is the broader category, in which you can include celebrities, general news, politics, technology, you name it.

  I’ll give you an example:

    Notice a difference from the SEO examples I gave before? No article from 2009 or 2010 here, right? They’re all from 2019, posted hardly one month before me writing this post. The second article doesn’t even list the date, but instead the number of days it was posted ago. It can also be hours sometimes instead of days.

  Why do you think this is the case?

  Because in this case, a 2009 post would be horrible as a search result. People want to know the latest phones, not the outdated ones from 2009. Google knows the user’s intent so it tries to match the results to fit it.

  Does Fresh Content Impact SEO?

  Do we have an official answer? Sort of. And it’s pretty recent:

  No

— John (@JohnMu) August 18, 2018

  I have to say, I’m not quite pleased with the answer, because John has the habit of being very vague in his answers. I mean… I’ve just proven above that Google favors fresh content in certain cases.

  Sure, we also have to get the context of his answer. That question about freshness has been asked after John tweeted this:

  “As a user, recognizing that old content is just being relabeled as new completely kills any authority that I thought the author / site had. Good content is not lazy content. SEO hacks don’t make a site great. Give your content and users the respect they deserve.”

  So, basically, John Mueller, Google’s representative, is trying to tell you that updating the post date every day is a bad digital marketing strategy and it won’t help you rank better.

  I have to admit, I miss those days when Google used to be a lot more detailed and explicit in its answers. Why?

  Because, as discussed, before, Google does favor fresh content, but in certain areas! And John’s answer should’ve reflected this reality, which also includes QDF.

  Queries that Deserve Freshness (QDF)

  Queries that Deserve Freshness is a reality! Matt Cutts talked about this before. There are certain search phrases, such as “best android phones” which I’ve shown above as an example, that deserve freshness. Users want to see the latest posts, so here, you might have the upper hand if you keep everything up to date.

    Does that mean that you can keep ranking at the top by constantly changing the post date? No.

  Does it mean that some articles will outrank other articles because of the date when they were posted? Yes.

  But there are a lot of factors that signal freshness. Not just the date. Is the topic growing popular on social media platforms? Are the articles getting any new backlinks? In other words, is it something that’s happening now?

  Are those answers contradicting one another? I don’t think so. In the end, Google’s not perfect. It’s just an algorithm. Do you think a human person could determine better what the best result for the masses would be? I highly doubt it.

  Updating Old Content (Keeping It up to Date)

  Will updating old blog posts help you rank better? Probably. But not just by changing the date. Google sees those changes and it accounts for “hacks” like this.

  In this article, Search Engine Land stated that Google told them about one of the factors that determine freshness. It’s not the date!

  “Google now tells us that one of the freshness factors — the way they determine if content is fresh or not — is the time when they first crawled a page. So if you publish a page, and then change that page, it doesn’t suddenly become “fresh.”

  One of the factors that determine freshness is the time when Google first crawled the page.

  So no, Google doesn’t care if you keep changing the date.

  Does that mean you shouldn’t update your articles? No!

  You should always keep your articles up to date. But not just with the date. Also with the content, quality and relevancy!

  Has something changed since you’ve first written the article? Go and update it. Make your updates visible. This will allow users to also have a historical view on the events.

  As Cyrus Shepard put it in this article:

  The age of a web page or domain isn’t the only freshness factor. Search engines can score regularly updated content for freshness differently from content that doesn’t change. In this case, the amount of change on your web page plays a role. Cyrus Shepard Owner @ Zyppy / @CyrusShepard

  So the page’s age (when it was first crawled) is important, not just the publish date in the article, which can be faked. If you’re going to make small, insignificant changes, there are small chances that you will see any effects on the rankings.

  If you feel like your post is outdated but you don’t know exactly how to improve it, use our Keyword & Content Optimization Tool.

    On the right side, it will give you a list of keywords that you should use in your article in order to make it more relevant. You can view them as topics you should cover when you’re writing. The ones with dots are the most important ones.

  If you want to know exactly what we did to gain 70% more SEO visibility, you can take a look at our content optimization results.

  Keep in mind that any changes to your content might also result in negative impacts. Be prepared for this in case it happens. If you have an article that’s already ranking #1, it’s probably a better idea to leave it like that!

  Publishing New Content

  As mentioned before,  new content lacks authority, distribution and links. It’s unlikely that it will outrank older content.

  However, publishing new content does expand the number of keywords your site is targeting and thus it results in more traffic.

  It’s just simple math. Will a higher post frequency increase your rankings overall? Probably not, although it can result in more backlinks which leads to higher domain performance over time.

  However, a higher post frequency is almost guaranteed to increase traffic. No matter what others say, if you have 1000 followers and they read you once per week, if you make them read you twice per week, you’ve increased your traffic. It’s simple math.

  But remember, you also need to post good content. You have to structure it well. You have to account for your audience’s needs. Not just blindly post things there.

  Make sure to use the Keyword Tool to maximize your chances of ranking higher on Google when you create new posts.

  What Actually Affects SEO

  I don’t want you to be upset with me, so I’ll tell you some things that will actually impact your rankings and they’re closely related to freshness.

  CTR (Possibly Impacted by ‘Freshness’)

  Click Through Rate is a ranking factor. This has been tested and proven countless times. If users click your headline more and stick with your website, it signals Google that your site is a good result.

  But what impacts CTR? Well, mostly it’s the position you’re ranking for, but the 3 things that affect CTR are the Title tag, the URL and the Meta Description, because they’re all shown in Google’s search results.

  I hope you can see where this is going. How many times have you seen the current year or “Updated 20xx” in a title? Probably often. I mean just take a look at the “best android phones” example! It’s full of it! Why?

    Using the current year in your title might positively affect CTR, which can result in higher rankings.

  Should you change your title anually to feature the current year? Probably. But make sure your article is still up to date, otherwise Google’s going to catch that and punish you for it. If the article is still up to date, you can leave it like that. If not, you should probably improve it.

  You can also reshare and redistribute your content as “new” on you social media platforms. This will help you gain new backlinks and traffic if the article was previously successful.

  Quantity & Targeted Keywords

  If you post new content frequently, you can expand your search visibility by targeting new keywords. This is almost guaranteed to bring more traffic if you do it right.

  We’ve started doing this since November 2016 and the results have been promising. Have our rankings improved overall? Yes. Was it because we published more content but with the same high quality? It certainly had an effect (more backlinks, more shares, more topical authority).

  Domain Performance

  Closely related to quantity is the performance of your site’s domain. This is dictated by the number of unique domains that link to your website and, very important, also by their quality. 

  If you publish more content, target and distribute it properly, then you can increase the number of backlinks to your site, which will result in a better domain performance.

  If you want to check your domain performance, you can use the CognitiveSEO Site Explorer.

    The domain performance has a positive impact on all your articles, because Google starts to trust your site as being qualitative. Just think about it. If you buy a domain today and write something about SEO (let’s say it’s the same quality), do you think you can outrank cognitiveSEO right away? It’s hardly the case.

  Conclusion

  Still confused? Here, I’ll summarize everything, just for you:

  Google does favor freshers results, but only in certain cases, such as news sites.

Freshness factors, like the current year in your title, can impact your CTR, which may result in higher rankings.

Publishing more new content can also help you gain more links, which leads to more authority.

  What do you think about fresh content? Are you in a niche where fresh content is vital? How often do you publish on your site? Have you ever tried changing the date to rank higher? Has it worked? I doubt it has, but prove me wrong in the comments section. 

The post Content Freshness & Rankings | Does Fresh Content Impact SEO? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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What is QDF? “Query Deserves Freshness”, in short QDF, is a ranking algorithm by Google. It essentially means: “Search requests that deserve up-do-date search results”. By using QDF Google is trying to identify the topics and search requests where the user has a desire for new and current content, to position up-to-date information on these search results. QDF (Query Deserves Freshness) – a mathematical model that tries to determine when users want new information and when they don’t.– Definition The QDF algorithm was invented by Amit Singhal, Senior VP and Google Fellow, who first talked about it in 2007. QDF has been a ranking factor ever since. How does the Query Deserves Freshness algorithm work? QDF always comes into play when a topic sees a sudden rise in relevancy/mentions (news reports) and traffic (search volume). To do this, Google monitores 3 sources: Blogs and magazines News portals Search requests If all 3 sources cover a specific topic and the mentions and search requests of said topic are higher than average as well as current, the Query Deserves Freshness algorithm ranks new content for this topic, by authorities in the field, higher on the search results. This, however, only lasts for the duration of the “public interest” in this topic. The QDF solution revolves around determining whether a topic is “hot”. If news sites or blog posts are actively writing about a topic, the model figures that it is one for which users are more likely to want current information. The model also examines Google’s own stream of billions of search queries.– Amit Singhal, Senior VP und Google Fellow Keep learning :)