Daily SEO Tips
Daily SEO tips by SEO veteran, Katherine Watier Ong
Episode 154: Semrush has a new Keyword Difficulty measurement
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Hello and thanks for listening to SEO tips todayÂ
In May, Semrush changed its keyword difficulty.Â
Keyword Difficulty (KD) is a metric that tells you how much SEO effort it might take to organically rank a page in the top 10 results on Google for a certain keyword. And overall with keyword difficulty, the higher the percentage is, the harder the competition will be.
They launched an infographic walking through how they now calculate KD which might be worth printing and putting on your wall.
The new...
Episode 153: Can mixed content sites perform well in organic search?
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Do you have a site with mixed content - both YMYL (Your Money or your Life) and other types of content? Do you know if that is best for organic traffic?
Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Here’s the takeaway: for that YMYL content to rank (and that’s content where Google thinks could have an impact on the searcher’s current or future well-being (physical, financial, safety, happiness, etc.). You need to break the site in two.
As you probably know, YMYL co...
Episode 152: Google updates its CTR Patent
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Google updated its User CTR Patent
Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Yes, they say that they don’t use click-through rates, but they just filed an update to their CTR patent. You should read Bill Slawski’s analysis to make up your mind. I’m in the camp of using user signals (and we know that Bing does), so I think it’s worth adding to your SEO processes.
Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.Â
Here are the w...
Episode 151: Google knows writers
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Did you know that Google can figure out *who* wrote your site content?
Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
John Mueller says they use something called recognition where they spot writing patterns that they know comes from a particular author, even if there isn’t a bio on the site.Â
However, Google still recommends a biography and links to your author’s social media profiles.Â
Now is the time to develop even deeper relationships with subject matter experts to write your conten...
Episode 150: Sharing Spotify Podcast for more exposure
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Spotify had made sharing podcast content easier
Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Spotify lets you share a specific timestamp from a podcast. When you tap the share button, you’ll see a toggle option that enables you to create a link for the particular spot in the podcast you want to share. This is also helpful as a host if you’re going to share specific mentions of resources or other people in your marketing promotions for each episode. Learn more here.
Than...
Episode 149: Subfolder vs Subdomain - Which is best for organic traffic?
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Subfolders vs subdomain - which is more effective when you’re consolidating your website?
Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Here’s the tip (and is what I recommend to clients): moving to a subfolder almost always increases traffic
But don’t take my word for it. Rand Fishkin recently shared 14 case studies around how moving a subdomain to a subfolder (almost always) increases search traffic
And how moving from a subfolder to a subdomain (almost always) decreases search traffic. I’ve added...
Episode 148: RSS feeds and brand follows
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Let’s talk about RSS feeds.
Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Google recently announced an updated use for RSS - allowing users to follow brands
I spotted this announcement on the Chromium blog - an option to enable Android users (using Chrome Canary) to follow their favorite websites and opt into RSS feed updates via a “follow” button. Just when you thought RSS had died - here’s another reason to keep it alive and up to date. I kid, of course, as Bing...
Episode 147: Google I/O updates that impact SEO
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Let’s talk about the Google I/O Updates that impact SEO
Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Here’s a quick overview of the updates from Google I/O that impact SEO.
1. Google announced their new natural language engine - that they call MUM (the Multitask Unified Model). This model will allow them to answer sophisticated queries such as:
Â
"I’ve hiked Mt. Adams and now want to hike Mt. Fuji next fall. What should I do differently to prepare?"Â
It a...
Episode 146: Heads up on a few different terms in GA4
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Let’s talk about GA4 and its different terminology
Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Let’s talk about two different terms you’ll find in GA4 that are not in the older version of Google Analytics.
Google Analytics 4 Bounce Rate (Why It Isn’t In GA 4)
In GA4, Google has flipped it to engagement rate, which is “engaged,” a session must either result in a conversion, last over 10 seconds, or have multiple screens or page views. This article also goes into an explanati...
Episode 145: The marketing value of Facebook Groups
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Let’s talk about Facebook Groups
Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
1.8 Billion People Use Facebook Groups Every Month
This is a HUGE amount of potentially untrackable visits to your site - Facebook groups are a part of that “dark web” you heard talked about - unless, of course, you’re in the group, and you’ve shared a link with UTM tracking.Â
So how do you take advantage of this audience?
Well, If your audience is active in Facebook groups, you can oft...
Episode 144: Creating a Hub to build topical authority
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How to Create a plan to build a Page or Hub that sets you up as a Topical Authority
Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
This article from OnCrawl was an intense read, but the most helpful part I picked up is the following tips around creating a topical map before creating a content hub, which includes:Â
Crawl your competitors’ sitemaps to understand their topical maps.Pull Google Trends - the related queries and related topics.Collect data from autocomplete and search suggestions.Notice how you...Episode 143: The potential impact of mobile only indexing
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Let’s talk about whether Mobile Only Indexing might be impacting your site.
Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
If you were not aware, Google announced that they would crawl all sites (desktop or mobile) with the mobile-only crawler. This announcement means that if you have anything on your desktop site that is not on the mobile view (content, comments, reviews, etc.) - those will not be in the new index. They started dropping desktop-only sites (March 2021) out of their index, but the last batch of si...
Episode 142: Impacts of Web Core Vitals update on your site
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How much of an impact will Web Core Vitals have on your organic traffic? Learn more in today's SEO tip.
View podcast show notes at:
https://wostrategies.com/podcast/seo-tips-flash-briefing/web-core-vitals-impact-on-website
Here are the ways you can support the SEO Tips podcast.
You can send me a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katherinewong. Any and all levels of donations are appreciated and will help offset the cost of producing the podcast. You should also subscribe to our newsletter so that you don't...
Episode 141: Optimizing your podcast for multiple players
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Let’s talk about optimizing your podcast
Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
First of all, did you know that (based on the State of Podcasting Listening 2021 report) the number of Americans listening to a podcast (80 million) is more than the number of Americans who reported ever using Twitter, TikTok, or Snapchat?Â
And Spotify’s US podcast listenership is on track to be larger than Apple’s! According to a new market forecast, Spotify’s U.S. podcast listenership will surpass Apple Podcasts for the f...
Episode 140: Google is now measuring heart and respiratory rate
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Google’s newest data set
Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Let’s talk about Google’s newest data set and how I think they might apply it to search.
Google is going to offer heart and respiratory rate measurements using just your smartphone’s camera. I think this is creepy. I wonder what they will do with this data? They already have patents filed around keeping the user’s voice and emotional state in mind when providing search (or voice) results. If you are...
Episode 139: New episode on Digital Marketing Victories Podcast - Public speaking in 2021
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Free public speaking tips
Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Last month I also released a new podcast episode on the Digital Marketing Victories podcast. If you're interested in public speaking tips, or how to speak persuasively on Zoom meetings, or need suggestions about how to improve your soft skills but are introverted, this episode is for you!Â
https://digitalmarketingvictories.com/podcast/episode-8-brenden-kumarasamy/
Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.
Here are the ways y...
Episode 138: Business at CoWorking Locations and Google My Business
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Google Has Updated My Business Guidelines For Co-Working Spaces
Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
The update mentions that if your business location is out of a co-working space, it must have signage, accept customers, and have staff at the site eligible to have a Google My Business listing with a coworking address. This change is an improvement over the outright ban on coworking spaces as business locations.
Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.
Here are...
Episode 137: March new SEO tools and resources
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Let’s talk about the SEO tools and resources that I discovered last month.
Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Today’s tip is just going to be a quick rundown of the new tools and resources that I’ve discovered and bookmarked. Let’s get into it.
Here are the newly released SEO tools that are worth checking out:
SEOAsked.com - This is a directory of quotes from Googlers from SEO’s questions. This site makes my homegrown Trello board, whe...Episode 136: Do audio files provide a ranking boost?
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Today’s tip is going to focus on whether any benefit to adding audio files to your website.
Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
And the latest from Google, No. There is no SEO benefit to audio versions of text posts.
Unlike photo and video, Google doesn’t do anything special with audio content that is not part of a podcast, and it’s not processed separately by Google.Â
However, IF you have audio in a podcast format and surface it via an RSS...
Episode 135: Brand Associations in Google Search Console
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Curious about the new brand associations in Google Search Console? We are going to talk about what they are in today’s tip.
Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
This new feature lets you link your Google Search Console account to any other Google property (Analytics, YouTube, etc.) and “ can unlock more functionality for your site.” This feature helps Google associate your entities together. Every webmaster should go ahead and associate all of your Google properties together. There’s more about the new feature in the Google S...
Episode 134: Is your direct traffic actually Google Discover?
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Do you know much of your direct traffic is actually Google Discover?
Are you suspicious that your direct traffic might instead be Google Discover traffic? Learn more about how to get a sense of this in today's tip.
Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Unfortunately, Google Discover is recorded as “Direct” in your analytics, though you can add a filter to your Google organic traffic in Google Analytics to find out how much. You can go to your traffic report, flip to Goog...
Episode 133: A website's topical expertise and ranking
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Topical expertise and ranking
Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Google’s John Mueller said they could recognize if a site has a good reputation on a specific topic area. Websites should work to build a reputation within a particular topic area. Additionally, I’ve seen via the various search algorithm updates over the years that being too broad topically for a website could be more challenging from a ranking perspective.
If you’re curious about your current topical authority, it turns out that y...
Episode 132: New to me tools and resources - March 2021
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Let’s talk about the SEO tools and resources that I’ve recently discovered.
Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
So today’s tip is just going to be a quick rundown of the new tools and resources that I’ve discovered and bookmarked. Let’s get into it.
I found a great case study around strategically allowing indexing of your faceted navigation based on search volume to increase organic traffic. I also found case study from Deloitte on how improvements in mobile site speed posit...Episode 131: How to conduct YouTube keyword research
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Let’s talk about Keyword Research Tips For YouTube Videos
Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
This tidbit comes from the YouTube Creator Insider channel, where members of YouTube’s search and discover team answer questions from users.Â
In their video about search and discovery, they shared the following.Â
Here are their three recommended tactics for keyword research:
Audience InsightsGoogle TrendsCompetitor AnalysisAudience Insights are found within YouTube Analytics and show creators what other videos your audience is watching. Smart optimizers would...
Episode 130: Finding missing URLs that need redirects
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Finding missing URLs that need redirects during website migrations
We are going to talk today about all of the ways you can find URLs with backlinks to your site that might need redirects during website migrations.
Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
All week I’ve been living in spreadsheets over the past month- tracking down the links that were missed during the original round of redirect mapping for a client’s recent website migration. This client site has been migrated quite a few times...
Episode 129: Where should your sitemap and robots files be located?
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Tips around robots.txt file and workarounds
Hello, and thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Just last week a client asked me where the best place to put an XML sitemap file was, which made me curious as to whether there are best practices for robots.txt file locations as well.
When it comes to an XML sitemap file, the best practice is to have it at the root of the domain it covers, and usually, it’s at domain.com/sitemap.xml. BUT if yo...
Episode 128: March 2021 and why your site needs to be mobile friendly
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Today we are going to highlight a few stats focused on how important it is to be mobile friendly.
Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
So I wanted to share some great insights on our increasing mobile use here in the US from App Annie.
The highlights:
We collectively spent 4.2 hours on our phones in 2020 (a 20% YOY increase).This increase is the greatest in the Gen X/Baby Boomer dynamic.And as a reminder, Googlebot is crawling mobile-first, and all desktop-only content...
Episode 127: Deciphering the Google News Reports in Google Search Console
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Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Today’s tip is from Brody Clark. (or @BrodieSEO on Twitter)
There are now two reports in Google Search Console that reports on your site’s news performance, but they measure different things.
The first report is under the Search Results tab where you can filter to news queries. That will show you results returned in the “news” tab and will show a sampled version of these queries.Â
The second separate Google News report you can see on the ri...
Episode 126: How Big Tech is potentially using voice data in search results

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Big Tech is using your voice to personalize
Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Let’s talk today about how the big discovery algorithms might be using aspects of your voice to personalize to you and the impact on marketers.
Spotify was granted a patent (originally filed in 2018) for technology that analyzes listeners’ voices and background noise to suggest content based on their mood, gender, age, accent, or even social setting.Â
The patent outlines that it uses the speaker’s pitch to determi...
Episode 125: Submitting your content to search engines

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How to request that search bots index your content
Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
After months of the “request indexing” tool being unavailable, the feature returned right before the end of 2020. Many SEO’s praised its return, but that was about it; SEOs went on about their day. We didn’t hear much about how the feature changed or any limitations it might now have.
You can submit about 10-12 a day before it throws you an error. Of course, both search engines also lea...
Episode 124: Google's Question Hub

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Google’s Question Hub
Today, let's talk about Google's question hub.
Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Google has released https://questionhub.google.com/. By creating a free account SEOs can use the tool for content generation. In their announcement, they said that:
“We collect unanswered questions directly from users to identify content gaps online.”
You sign in with your personal Gmail account (as it’s not available for Google Workspace users, just as an FYI).
And then, you brow...
Episode 123: Your Entire Website Matters

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Your entire website matters.
Today I’m going to talk through all of the ways Google looks at your ENTIRE website when it determines what type of search equity your site can expect. I often work with clients where different teams manage different parts of their website, and this tip is for them.
Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
I was inspired to create this tip based on Google’s John Mueller’s comment that slow URLs can potentially impact the ranking of other faster...
Episode 122: New Free Tools inside Bing and Google search accounts

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Updates on free Google and Bing Tools
Let’s talk about the tools that have disappeared, and the new tools that are available.
Google temporarily disables issue validation in Search Console.
They are updating the criteria for the issues provided by the coverage report.
And here are a few that have come back:
'Request Indexing' is now back in Google Search Console.
You can find it under the URL Inspection navigation. Here’s Google’s announcement.
Goog...
Episode 121: Page Experience Update - Core Web Vitals Resources

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Page Experience Update - How to audit, measure and improve
Page experience and performance (measured via the core web vitals) will be a ranking factor in May 2021. Here are some great resources on how to audit, measure, and create an improvement plan below.
How to audit your site’s Web Core VitalsÂ
This presentation by Rachel Costello from SEO Nerds Switzerland’s Meetup is excellent.
The deck is here, and the recording is here.
Her tips include:
A l...Episode 120: New tools inside your search engine accounts

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Stay up to date on the new tools inside your search engine accounts. Learn more in today's SEO tip.
Here are the ways you can support the SEO Tips podcast.
You can send me a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katherinewong. Any and all levels of donations are appreciated and will help offset the cost of producing the podcast. You should also subscribe to our newsletter so that you don't miss a future episode.Â
Episode 119: Video tips and resources from Google and YouTube

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Trying to up your video game? Listen to today's SEO tip to learn more about new tools and resources to help you pivot your video strategy.
Here are the ways you can support the SEO Tips podcast.
You can send me a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katherinewong. Any and all levels of donations are appreciated and will help offset the cost of producing the podcast. You should also subscribe to our newsletter so that you don't miss a future episode.Â
Episode 118: 307 Redirects are not real redirects

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Confused about 307 redirects? Listen to today's tip to learn more about why and how to fix these redirects.
Here are the ways you can support the SEO Tips podcast.
You can send me a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katherinewong. Any and all levels of donations are appreciated and will help offset the cost of producing the podcast. You should also subscribe to our newsletter so that you don't miss a future episode.Â
Episode 117: Optimizing podcast audio

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Learn more about how to optimize your audio assets in today's SEO tip.
Here are the ways you can support the SEO Tips podcast.
You can send me a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katherinewong. Any and all levels of donations are appreciated and will help offset the cost of producing the podcast. You should also subscribe to our newsletter so that you don't miss a future episode.Â
Episode 116: Creating a plan to rank in voice search

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Creating a plan to rank in voice searchÂ
Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
In previous episodes, we talked about knowing the source of the answers is key to rank in voice search, and the vast majority of answers provided come from either Bing or Google search engines. Today we are going to talk about what it takes to rank once you’ve determined that your audience and query are being provided voice answers from Google’s ecosystem (keep in mind that with Alexa’s reliance on Bing...
Episode 115: Core Web Vitals 411

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Page Experience Google update
We now have a deadline around when the Core Web Vitals measurements impact rankings - May of 2021. Let’s talk about how to prepare.
Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.
Google has announced that the metrics measured in their Core Web vitals report data will impact rankings in May 2021, as well as previous metrics like web usability, web safety, and interstitials.
It will be an aggregated ranking signal.Â
Here's the announcement:
<...