DEV Community: Search Candy

The 9 Key Questions for Google's Helpful Content Update

Colin McDermott — Sat, 27 Aug 2022 22:39:00 +0000

Google's new AI powered Helpful Content Update is rolling out right now.

SEO experts are predicting it could be quite a big update.

Planning a quick content audit is something you might want to consider.

Here are the 9 questions Google recommend you ask in relation to your content.

Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?
Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you'd write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
Are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don't).
Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you'd get search traffic?
Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there's a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn't confirmed?

If you run an ecommerce site we have put together a guide to the Helpful Content Update that you can read here.

Introduction to Amazon Advertising

Colin McDermott — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 19:48:00 +0000

Amazon dominates the ecommerce market with over 300 million active users. Amazon has also become the de-facto product search engine -- so much so that close to 75% of all USA consumers begin their product search journey on the Amazon.com marketplace.

So, it is no wonder that Amazon Advertising (formerly Amazon Marketing Services) is becoming an increasingly valuable tool for businesses of all sizes. A testimony to its popularity, Amazon Advertising generated a staggering £23 billion ($31 billion) in revenue in 2021 as brands vied to increase their visibility, product awareness, and sales.

Using Amazon Advertising, brands can promote their products through a plethora of sponsored campaign options - to gain visibility, brand awareness, and sales; and to make their product offerings stand out among their competitors.

However, for the uninitiated, Amazon Advertising can be very complicated and ever-changing. Therefore, companies must stay on top of the latest changes and develop winning Amazon advertising strategies for their business.

Read on for our introduction to Amazon Advertising.

Amazon Advertising: Types of Ads

The basic concept of Amazon Advertising is to increase visibility and sales on Amazon.

Tips for successfully setting up Amazon ads

Many factors go into successful Amazon advertising. First, of course, Keyword research helps identify winning keywords people use when looking for products. Based on this, marketers can create an optimized campaign to put things into action.

KEYWORD RESEARCH: Identify the right keywords to target the customers. Maintain a Search term catalog based on current trends, own branded search terms, and competitor analysis.
BIDDING: Use amazon's bidding system to get maximum returns on investment.
- Automated campaigns use product-level bids and Amazon's algorithm to match advertisers with customers.
- Manual campaigns provide more control as it allows advertisers to specify a bid for each keyword, competitor product, or keyword.
AD CREATIVES: Develop ad copy and images that stand out from the competition. Focus on A+ brand content and focus on Reviews and Reviews to drive growth.
REPORTING, ANALYTICS: Closely monitor the Amazon advertising campaigns to optimize results. And perform course correction and benchmarking as needed.

KPIs to focus on while advertising on Amazon

CTR (Click Through Rate)
ACoS (advertising cost of sales)
TACoS (total advertising cost of sales)
ROaS - Return on Advertising Spend
Search impressions
Conversion rate
CPC - Cost per Click

We often get caught up in a variety of shiny new metrics that marketers love but let us not forget classics like click-through rate (CTR).

A low CTR means that ads are not compelling enough for people who see them--and this could be leading companies down an unwanted advertising path!

CTR remains the single most important KPI for most marketers while measuring ad effectiveness. The Click-through rate (CTR) is calculated by dividing an advertisement's clicks by impressions. For example, if an ad campaign gets 100 clicks for every 1000 impressions, the CTR will be 100/1000, i.e., 10%.

When an ad does not successfully engage the buyer, it needs to be further optimized, or we should fix any lingering listing issues on the product detail page.

For example, a low click-through rate means buyers are not finding what they want, so keyword targeting will be essential to see how great of an offer it is on Amazon.

A few of the essential listing quality factors that affect Amazon CTR include:

Main image quality
Title quality
Number of reviews
Review score
Fulfillment method (FBA or FBM)
Pricing
Ad Positioning
Conversion Rate
Earn A Best-Seller Badge

Factors like A+ brand content, SEO optimization, reviews, and ratings are crucial factors -- and when they are optimized, Amazon ads tend to perform better. In addition, the higher a product ranks, the more effective the ad campaign becomes--- saving money and driving sales.

Remember that the first step to success at Amazon is creating a helpful product page. Also, a general keyword, such as "shampoo" will not work as effectively as a specific one like "shampoo for men."

However, the more detailed the keyword is, the higher the eventual search rank, CTR, and conversion rate.

Amazon Ads vs. Google Ads

Although every customer journey will differ from one brand to another, they are mostly made up of the following five stages: Awareness, Consideration, Retention, Decision, and Advocacy.

AMAZON: When someone searches Amazon, they are more likely to be at the end of their buyer's journey (i.e., close enough on a buying decision). This means that people who buy from Amazon already know what they want and need to find out whether any good deals are available!
GOOGLE: With Google, search queries cover diverse topics - covering all stages of a buyer's journey. As a result, the ad campaign strategy on Google can be much more flexible, targeting buyers at earlier stages of their journey. Nevertheless, not every buyer in the early part of the buyer's journey will be ready to buy in the near future (if at all).

Amazon is, therefore, a good (and perhaps optimal) advertisement tool for product-based companies because they can skip the initial stages and directly get in front of interested shoppers.

So what does this mean for ecommerce marketers?

First, Amazon advertising should be a top priority. By not utilizing Amazon's advertising platform, marketers are missing one of the world's largest marketplaces.

And by not being up to date on the latest changes and strategies, they are putting their brands at a disadvantage against competitors.

Related: check out our in-depth guide to ecommerce SEO.

What is a 308 Permanent Redirect?

Colin McDermott — Sun, 10 Apr 2022 21:36:12 +0000

What is a 308 Permanent Redirect HTTP response?

A 308 Permanent Redirect is a server HTTP response status code used for permanent redirection.

A 308 HTTP response is near identical to a 301, and has been confirmed to be treated as such by Google.

The only notable difference between a 301 and 308 HTTP response is that a 308 does not allow changing the request method from POST to GET.

Example 308 Permanent Redirect Response

HTTP/1.1 308 Permanent Redirect Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Location: https://www.example.com/ Content-Length: 356

<!DOCTYPE HTML> <html> <head> <title>Permanent Redirect</title> </head> <body> <p> The document has been moved to <a href="https://www.example.com/">https://www.example.com</a> </p> </body> </html>

RFC

RFC7538, April 2015

Is a 308 response good for SEO?

A 308 HTTP response has been confirmed by Google to be treated as identical to a 301 by its bots/algorithms.

However a 308 response is still a newer and more unusual status code, so it is unknown how all search engines/bots around the world will treat it.

Non-Standard Usage of 308 Status Code

It should be noted that some sites may use a 308 status code in a non-standard way, such as in Google Drive - where a 308 Resume Incomplete status is used to indicate when an incomplete upload has stalled.

What to do if your Development Site gets Indexed in Google

Colin McDermott — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 23:08:41 +0000

We take a look at what to do if your development/staging/testing site has been indexed in Google, including expert advice direct from a Google employee.

Oops! Our Dev site has been indexed in Google

First of all, don't beat yourself up: a development site getting accidentally indexed in Google has happened at least once to every agency, developer, and inhouse team on the planet.

Perhaps you found out about it via an angry email from your client or their SEO consultant, or maybe you discovered it yourself whilst checking for indexed pages.

How did the dev site get indexed?

If Google is able to find its way to your development site unimpeded, and finds there no instruction not to crawl or index the URLs available to it, there is a high chance Google will store the pages in their search engine for users to find.

This can happen reasonably quickly - even if your dev site was only available for a few days or weeks - this could be enough time for Google to index the entire site.

So if your development site does get indexed in Google, what can you do about it, and are there any urgent solutions for situations where for example the client or management is upset?

How to quickly remove a dev site from the Google index

As recommended by Google's John Mu, if you find your staging site has been indexed and there is an urgent requirement to remove it, the quickest way to remove content from Google is to use the official 'Removals Tool' found in Search Console.

I'd do a site-removal request in search console - if the site is verified, it'll be hidden in search within less than a day. After that, you have time to figure out what to do for the long run.

John Mu via TechSEO subreddit

Official video: Removals in Search Console - Daniel Waisberg

To use the Removals tool you will first need to verify the specific domain you want to remove in Search Console if it is already verified.

John goes on to offer some footnotes and warnings regarding use of the tool:

If you make a mistake and need to cancel a removal request, this process should be fast.
Remember that removals apply to both www and non-www, and both http/https.
Using the tool properly should clear the URL from Google for around 6 months.

After temporarily removing URLs from Google, it is sensible to then work towards a permanent removal.

How to permanently remove a development or staging site from Google

The most effective way to request Google no longer indexes a page is to either use a noindex command, or ensure the resource responds with a 410/404 HTTP response to indicate it is no longer available.

Google have stated in the past that a noindex tag and 404/410 should work at the same speed.

If Google returns to a resource following a temporary removal request and finds a 404/410 or noindex tag they will cancel the removal request as it is no longer needed.

You could also set up authentication which would result in Google being unable to access a resource (eg with a 401 HTTP response).

Using a robots.txt block is not a good solution if your site has already been indexed. It can take a long time to have any impact and is not a direct instruction to remove content from the index, so Google can ignore it and leave the page indexed if they wish.

If your site is already indexed in Google, using a robots.txt rule to prevent Google crawling the site will also prevent them from seeing a noindex tag/header if you add one to a page.

How to remove a development site from Google's cache

Using the Removals Tool in Search Console will by default remove the URLs entirely, including the cache.

When using the tool you are given the option to remove the cached URL - which will clear the snippet shown in search results - until the resource is recrawled and a new snippet will be shown.

How to prevent a development site from getting indexed by Google

To prevent your dev site getting indexed in Google there are a variety of methods you can use:

Authentication (password, IP address, CMS/plugin based, etc)
Noindex tag or header
Robots.txt disallow rule (least recommended option) Google's John Mu recommends the use of server side authentication as the best method:

My recommendation is always to use server-side authentication for staging / dev sites, since it's obvious when it's blocked, and obvious when it's forgotten. Robots.txt and robots meta tags are easy to accidentally deploy to your live site.

Note: Robots.txt is not a good option because it can be ignored by Google and other search engines.

How to stop Google indexing a WordPress development site

You can use any of the standard methods to stop Google indexing a WordPress staging site - eg password protection, noindex or blocking Google from crawling the site with robots.txt.

The easiest method if you have access to the WordPress admin dashboard is to set WordPress to enable the 'Discourage search engines' option via Settings > Reading. This method should add a noindex tag to all your pages.