Google tells bloggers to disclose & nofollow links when reviewing gifted products

Google issues new best practices to bloggers who receive free products. Is Google about to send out a new manual action for paid links in exchange for product reviews? The post Google tells bloggers to disclose & nofollow links when reviewing gifted products appeared first on Search Engine...

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Using Related Topics and Semantically Connected Keywords in Your SEO - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

[Estimated read time: 8 minutes]

Back in February, we explored balancing keyword targeting with concept targeting. This time around we're looking at using your knowledge of related topics and semantic connections in your on-page SEO processes. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand talks about applying those ideas in ways that will boost your ranking potential and inform your keyword research.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about using related topics and semantically connected keywords, not just for keyword research — although that is a potential use and application — but also for some of the on-page SEO processes that we run.

Now when I say "related topics and semantically connected keywords," I'm not actually talking about the things that you would find through a traditional keyword research process. The idea here is not to say, "What other things are people searching for that I could target?"

This is really trying to define two different, unique kinds of use cases or extractions for keywords.

Those are: What are keywords (well, words and phrases overall), unique words and phrases that are used on more pages and paragraphs and phrases that contain the query you're going after across the Web, and what are terms and phrases that are used by more pages that rank for that particular query?

This may sound a little technical, but it's not too hard. Once I show you these examples, I think you'll grasp it real quick.

Let's say for example that I'm trying to target the word "food processor." I've chosen that as a good keyword for me. It's something that I want to rank for. I know that if I can rank for it, I'm going to do well. My keyword research is done.

At this point, I'm doing on-page SEO. I'm trying to make my page more relevant and my site more relevant. I'm trying to rank better for this, and it could be the case that using certain words and phrases on the page where I'm targeting "food processor" is very important.

Google might look at a page that's ranking for "food processor" and say, "Gosh, it's weird that this page doesn't have this keyword, this keyword, this keyword on it. We would expect that a page that's targeting 'food processor' should have these things."

So I want to find two things. I want to find, in the top 10 or top 20 results that Google already has for "food processor," what are words and phrases that are on those pages more frequently? And across the entire Web, the corpus of the whole Internet that Google crawls or at least the important parts of the Internet that Google crawls and indexes, what are words and phrases that are used more on those pages when the phrase "food processor" is present?

That's what this chart is showing me. Essentially, these are things that are used more across the whole Web. These are things that are used more on pages that already rank for this term.

I've done this with two examples — food processor and rainforest. Rainforest keywords in orange, food processor keywords in purple.

For example, you might see that the word "recipe" is used across the Web on lots of pages that contain "food processor," which makes sense. Lots of recipes that call for a food processor have the word "recipe" on the page. But those aren't necessarily the ones that rank very well. So it's over here. It's high up on the "Yes, used across the Web" but low down on "Used by pages that rank well."

Is it important to use it on the page that I'm trying to target? Well, maybe. It depends on how comprehensive I'm trying to be. Maybe I should think about targeting that on a different page, these kinds of things.

Something like — let's go over to our example for rainforest — a word like "temperate rainforest," which are less popular and commonly used both on the Web and in the results that rank than the more commonly thought of "tropical rainforests." So Washington State, for example, near Seattle has some temperate rainforests, where you get lots of rain, but you don't think of them as traditional rainforests. They don't have like thousands of creatures in them. They're not all hot and wet like they are in Brazil or Costa Rica or those kinds of places. So "temperate," less commonly used across the Web and less common in the ones that rank well.

But something like "Amazon," very common in things that rank well and in the middle of pages that use it and don't. Many pages that use rainforests don't describe specifically the Amazon rainforest, but many do.

Got it. Now what?

So now you've got this concept. What do I do with these? Well, there are really two big things that you can do that are pretty awesome.

1. Use semantic connections AND related topics to boost ranking potential

So if I have a page that's targeting rainforests, I want to think about: What are the topics and concepts, words and phrases that Google probably wants me to cover, that users and searchers probably also want me to cover? Those could be things like rainfall, ecosystem and biome, tropical, Amazon like we talked about. Maybe even a competing brand, like National Geographic, which is on here. It's used on a lot of pages that rank well. Maybe Google has an association between rainforests and Nat Geo, and I should potentially reference them or link to them or talk about them, pull a photo from them, that kind of thing. Brazil.

These words, using them on the page can help me to be more relevant, more comprehensive, potentially more useful, and more high-quality. This is especially true for informational style searches, but potentially true for commercial searches too.

2. Use this to expand keyword research

Instead of just saying like, "Hey, I'm going to look for things that people also search for. I'm going to use Google suggest and related searches. I'm going to use KeywordTool.io, or I'm going to go Google AdWords and see what are the other high-volume searches."

I might broaden my thinking to, "Huh, I wonder if things like 'food processor recipes,' or very specific things, like 'pesto made with food processor,' are interesting things for me to target additionally deeper in my site so I can build authority around all the topics and concepts that are related to the word 'food processor.'"

Not every one of these semantic and related topics is going to be a good choice for you. That's definitely the case. You have to use good judgment and the traditional metrics that you would use for keyword research — volume, difficulty, opportunity — to discover the right ones.

What's kind of cool and one of the reasons I'm covering this, this week is that some tools have come out in the recent past, a bunch of NLP, Natural Language Processing tools, and APIs that let you do some cool stuff around this. Those include people like Alchemy, Sysomos, OpenCalais, and a number of others.

Then it's also the case, and this is slightly self-promotional, but Moz Analytics [Moz Pro] recently released their Related Topics feature. So you can now go to the on-page section of Moz Pro and see a list of things. The Moz Pro one is going to be more like the stuff here. Think words and phrases that are used by pages that also already rank for the query you're targeting. Then, in about a month, Keyword Explorer will be launching, which I've talked about a number of times, and that will have more of these things. It's used on pages across the Web that also feature this.

But you can get this stuff currently through some of these tools. You can do your own analyses. There's lots of code out there in code repositories that you can pull from the Web. So I encourage you to give this a try. We've seen some good results from people who are trying this stuff out, who are including these terms and phrases, and who are broadening their keyword research with it.

Look forward to your comments, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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SearchCap: Google PLA test, Google app indexing study & more

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Google PLA test, Google app indexing study & more appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Moz Local Now Syncs with Google My Business (Plus, a Sweet Free Tool!)

Posted by dudleycarr

Until now, I was confident that developing a software service had never been compared to assembling furniture from Ikea (no Google searches were done to prove this assertion).

Believe it or not, we unlocked this achievement while working on the Google My Business API. The piece of "furniture" we constructed? We built the recliner that allows you to sit back and have your locations automatically imported from Google My Business to Moz Local. And like most things built with tools meant for hands far smaller than the average human hand, we’re proud of the end result and excited to announce this amazing (and comfortable) feature today in Moz Local!

Taking a step back, we looked at our fine construction and realized that there were a number of spare parts laying on the floor. We took those Google My Business API spare parts and built Moz Local’s new My Business Console. In furniture-speak, it’s like a nifty baby gate that actually allows adults to operate it without reading the instruction manual. In seriously-tell-me-what-this-thing-is terms, My Business Console gives you fine-grained bulk permission management for Google My Business.

Sync locations from Google My Business to Moz Local

Importing locations from Google My Business into Moz Local can now be done with a single click. This fancy feature replaces the CSV upload process that's been a part of Moz Local since day one.

Although Moz Local has always accepted CSVs exported from Google My Business, the process was still quite manual and thus more cumbersome and error-prone than it needed to be.

Users can setup the import process via the Add Listings button in your Moz Local Dashboard starting today!

Moz Local’s new free tool, My Business Console!

My Business Console works with your Google My Business account and lets you, as a Google My Business owner, audit, add, and remove managers in bulk. For brands, agencies, and franchises that have hundreds of locations and dozens of GMB Business Accounts, permission management either gets in the way of collaboration or potentially exposes capabilities to people who shouldn’t have them.

Can't wait? Check it out now!

Today, there are two ways within Google My Business to collaborate with others. You can add a person as a manager on the Business Account, giving them owner access to all locations in that account, or you can add the person as a manager on each location. The former provides a ton of power to whomever you add; the latter is mind-numbingly tedious to do.

With My Business Console, you can easily choose to audit/add/remove people in bulk, either at the Business Account level or at the Google My Business location level, allowing you to dial just the right level of sharing. Easy permission management, coupled with visibility across lots of locations and business accounts, should allow groups to better collaborate on location data.

Before we dive into how it works, a couple of really important things about My Business Console:

• First, it’s completely free now and forever for businesses small and large. Just like with our Check Listing functionality, we believe in providing important and accessible tools to help the Local community.
• Second, since this is a free tool, you do not need a Moz account. You simply log in with the Google account that you’d like to use to manage your locations.

So, how does it work?

First, you log in using your Google account from the My Business Console homepage.

There are two primary views: Locations and Managers. The "locations" view shows all of the locations that you have access to in Google My Business for your Google account.

Here you can quickly see which managers can modify a location:

To add or remove managers, you need to be the owner of a location. You can use the handy toggle to see exactly which locations those are:

Adding a user to two locations requires selecting the locations and then clicking the "Add" button:

The "managers" view shows all managers across all locations. This view is primarily to remove a person without having to find all of the locations containing that manager. Removing a person with a single click is necessary when that person leaves an organization.

Similar to location management, it’s easy to add and remove managers for your business accounts. Adding a manager to a business account will automatically give them access to all the locations under that account.

Try My Business Console out for yourself and let us know how we can make it even better:

No manual required!

Have more questions? Check out the FAQ.

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