If you’re a food blogger, most likely you will be familiar with the jump-to-recipe button. And you may also know that this little button is often the cause of heated debates.
These debates evolve around SEO and advertising revenue. Some say you should never use that button, as it negatively impacts ad revenue. Others say that there are SEO benefits in having that button at the top of your recipe articles.
There are tons of myths doing the rounds in the world of SEO that just never seem to fade away. The main reason why SEO myths exist is because Google itself is still a bit of a mysterious beast.
The Internet is the perfect breeding ground for these myths and misconceptions. Some SEO myths get busted quickly, others are much more stubborn and just never leave the building.
Links, either internal or outbound, can be marked as Dofollow or Nofollow. A Dofollow link is the default. It’s just a normal link. No attribute is required to make a link follow.
A Nofollow link is the alternative. By making a link Nofollow, you’re basically telling Google that this particular link should not be be given any credit in regards to rankings in search results.
So when should you make an outbound link Nofollow? Let’s find out.
You’ve probably heard it a million times before. Write long-form content if you want that content to rank!
I call bullsh#t.
If someone tells you to always publish long-form content, without any further explanation or context, then that is very poor advice.
I know many may not agree with me, but please read on to find out why I think publishing long-form content is actually, in many cases, bad practice.
Read moreWhy Publishing Long-Form Content Is Often Bad Practice
Most of us bloggers and Internet marketers will know that backlinks are one of the major organic ranking factors. But we also dislike building links. At least, I do.
And that’s perfectly fine. If you just focus on publishing quality content, your site will rank eventually. It may take a bit longer, but good things will happen to those who are perseverant and patient.
WordPress Tags, some love them and others strongly dislike them. Personally, I never use tags. When I started blogging though, I used to create multiple, random tags each time I published a new blog post. And as I got older and wiser, I’ve learnt to step away from using WordPress tags.
And I’m not the only one. Slowly but surely, bloggers and Internet marketers are coming to the conclusion that tags are a bit out of fashion and don’t serve much purpose anymore. And there are certainly no SEO benefits either.
Backlinks are as old as the Internet. In fact, you can argue that backlinks are the foundation of the Internet. Outbound links hold the Internet together.
The algorithms of search engines have always relied heavily on the existence of backlinks. For a long time, backlinks were by far the most important ranking factor. And some SEO’s think that links are still the number one ranking factor to focus on.
As such, it’s no surprise that backlinks have turned into a commodity. They are valuable, they cost money, they can be sold, they can be bought. And because they are so important and valuable, a lot of bloggers and Internet marketers are hesitant to include outbound, external links in their content.
Moz DA score has been a popular SEO metric for many years, used by lots of bloggers, agencies and SEO practitioners to get an idea of a website’s authority and organic traffic. I’ve always tried to ignore it because in my opinion Moz DA is flawed, irrelevant and inaccurate.
There are other, much better ways to determine how authoritative and well-established a website is and how much organic traffic it roughly attracts. Moz DA simply doesn’t add much value anymore in this regard.
You may or may not already know what the Google Featured Snippet is. It’s that little box of content on top of the search results that highlights the best possible answer to a user’s query with a link to the website that has provided that answer.
The Featured Snippet is designed such that it provides an immediate answer to a user’s query, without having to actually click on the link to the article that provides the answer. Or otherwise, it is designed in a way that the user is very likely to click through to the featured website INSTEAD of choosing the website in the classic number 1 spot.
Read moreHow to Earn the Google Featured Snippet with Simple HTML Tweaks
If you’ve been running a WordPress blog for some time now, you probably know already that HTTPS and SSL are a hot topic. Google has been pushing hard to get all blog owners and webmasters out there to migrate their blogs and websites from HTTP to HTTPS.
As with anything in life, security is a big thing. Having a proper SSL certificate installed and having your domain configured as HTTPS is now officially a search engine ranking factor.
Read moreHow to Migrate Your WordPress Site from HTTP to HTTPS