Google Announced A New Core Update After Seven Months

Google is rolling out a new core update, called December 2020 Core Update. This is the third time that Google announced a core update in the year 2020. The first one was released in the month of January 2020 and the second one was in May 2020.

SEOs and Webmasters know that Google has released a core algorithm update after every few months. It has been just about seven months since the May 2020 core update, which took place on May 4, 2020. So this one took a lot longer than previous updates to roll out.

The Announcement:

Here is that tweet in which Google announced and said “later today, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the December 2020 Core Update.”

Previous Updates:

The previous core update was announced in the month of May 2020, which was big and broad and took two or three weeks to fully roll out. Before May 2020 Core Update, Google announced January 2020 core update, which was analyzed by many SEOs and Webmasters and said that it didn’t have a big impact like the previous September 2019 core update. Google also released an update in November 2020, but that was specific to local rankings.

What To Do If You Are Hit?

Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update in the past. There aren’t specific actions to take to recover, and in fact, a negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages. However, Google has offered a list of questions to consider if your site is hit by a core update. Google did say you can see a bit of recovery between core updates but the biggest change you would see would be after another core update.

Why Do We Care?

Whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms, it means that your site can do better or worse in the search results. Knowing when Google makes these updates gives us something to point to in order to understand if it was something you changed on your website or something Google changed with its ranking algorithm. Today, we know Google will be releasing a core ranking update, so keep an eye on your analytics and rankings.

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Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update 23 November 2020

Google Search Ranking Shuffles on Thanksgiving 2020

As we all know that the search giant Google always makes changes in the algorithm and search ranking fluctuate. Same like this on November 23rd, many SEOs and Webmasters noticed that Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update like 23rd January 2020.

But I am seeing that SEOs are chattering about the latest changes in the Ranking Algorithm on Thanksgiving Day. Also, there are many search engine monitoring tools are showing big signals.

I just want to remind you that Google has not confirmed any update prior to Thanksgiving and it seems wrong on so many levels. So I also do not know that this is a real big Google update or if some websites are having issues.

Let’s first start with the tracking tools, again, most of them show big swings.

MOZCast:

SERPMetrics:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Accuranker:

RankRanger:

Cognitive SEO:

SERPstat:

SEMRush Sensor:

Here I like to share the screenshot that what SEOs are chattering at WebmasterWorld:

I want to say that this is not normal because these tracking tools are showing really big changes but right now the SEO community is pretty cool. Maybe webmasters are taken off due to Thanksgiving week and not obsessing over it. I am not 100 percent sure about this Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update. I did ask a few SEOs who track a lot of sites and they said it seemed pretty calm.

If you have noticed some big changes in the Ranking Algorithm Update so, please share them with me here in this post. Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update on 18 June 2020

Grow your Business and Reach More Customers

Google My Business has added a new option that says “Connect in real-time, with video conferencing.” It says you can “grow your business and reach more customers when you use video conferencing providers.” Then a “set up” button to start to configure it.

I guess this is activated if you have updated your service availability option in Google My Business to specify you offer video appointments but it is not 100% confirmed.

Here is a screenshot of the box on the main home dashboard of Google My Business after you sign in and select a specific business:

After you click on “Set up” you are given these online video service providers including Google Meet, Webex, Skype, and Zoom. Here is a screenshot:

But after that, there does not seem to be a way to set it up more beyond that yet. When you click on Google Meet, it takes you to google.com/meet which I already use all the time. In fact, all the links take you to those service providers. Google does link to this help document with more details on how to configure it. There is a lot of Local SEOs that are chatting about this as well in the Local Search Forums.

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Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update 18 June 2020

Google Search Ranking Shuffles on Thursday, June 18th

Like we all know that Google always changing search results and update algorithm continuously. Right now I am seeing over the past couple of days that Search Engine Monitoring Tools showing usual changes in the Google search results and also SEO community is chattering at WebmasterWorld about the latest Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update on Thursday, 18 June 2020.

Search Engine Monitoring Tools Tracking Google Algorithm Update:

RankRanger:

CognitiveSEO:

As you can see, the above two show changes, bigger changes, around June 17th. But not all are seeing such big changes on the 17th or this week:

SEMRush:

Accuranker:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SERPMetrics:

Mozcast:

Are you noticing any changes since around yesterday, Thursday, June 18th?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Also Read: 

Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update on 23rd Jan 2020

Important News For Google Ads Partners Program

New requirements for agencies to achieve and maintain Google Partner status take effect starting in June 2020. Many Google Advertisers has received an email on Thursday about substantial changes coming to Google Ads Partners Program – the badge and certification program for agencies that meet certain criteria.

As far as I have read the news and understood the most important news are:

• Performance criteria for maintaining Partner’s badge will be more transparent and will directly refer to the optimization score highlighted in the “Recommendations” tab of each account (excluding ignored suggestions).
• It will no longer be enough to have 1 certified administrator/standard user to be able to display the Google Partner badge (2 for Premier Partners), but at least half of the administrator/standard users connected to your company’s account manager will have to pass the Skillshop certifications (the accounts on this platform must be connected to the company’s one).
• Growth of invested budgets and new accounts managed will no longer be a requirement to obtain the badge, but you only need to spend more than 20,000$ (it was 10,000$) in your managed accounts in the last 3 months. These requirements will stay still for Premier Partners, who will be chosen among the 3% of the best partners in terms of expenditure, growth of invested budgets and customer retention.

Below is Google’s comparison chart look at what’s changing, which you can find on this help page.

The first consideration I have to make about these new Google Ads Partner Program is starting to get serious about the recommendations tab. All of us PPC Professionals had long noticed that the quality of suggestions has been definitely improving. Now ignoring that section may also have important consequences on the Partner badge (as well as on the performance of the campaigns). So, do it at your own risk.

For now, Google is still not so sure of all its automatic optimization suggestions to consider also the wrong / ignored ones among those used to evaluate the account, but I could bet that there is where we are going.

They have finally understood that more transparency was needed in the evaluation criteria of the managed accounts to obtain the Partner badge and that this has nothing to do with increasing budgets and new customers. This is one of the main reasons why I left the program in 2017, given that in my opinion the added value of a PPC Expert lies in the the fact that he/she has to be independent from the platforms used. The very reason for us being on the market is that we are free to suggest the best solution for each customer, without necessarily having to “push” one or the other for reasons different from expected performance.

Unfortunately, this underlying opacity remains for Premier Partners, but Google has already taken a step in the right direction by withdrawing this criterion for the bulk of Partners, I hope that sooner or later they will also drop it for top spenders.

Note:

Google Ads Partner Program will select based on a number of factors, including but not limited to: annual Ads spend across managed accounts, client growth, client retention, and other information. Evaluation is done on an annual basis and status may not be available in all markets.

There is no doubt about that Google is continuously updating and make a lots of changes in Search Ranking Algorithm. I saw in the SEO community and also search engine monitoring tools are lighting up. These are all signs that there was a Google search ranking algorithm update. But truth is, this algorithm update can be directly related to the featured snippet de-duplication change on January 22nd.

What I am saying is that the tools might not be ready to process the change and thus are showing changes to what is listed in the Google search results for the queries they track. Also, SEOs might be noticing those changes in those third-party tools and potentially also noticing changes in traffic because of the de-duplication efforts.

Some of the tool providers need to make updates:

So what you will see below is likely related to the Google featured snippets change and not necessarily a ranking algorithm update.

Search Engine Monitoring Tools Tracking Google Algorithm Update:

Mozcast:

SERPMetrics:

Advanced Web Rankings:

RankRanger:

Cognitive SEO:

SEMRush Sensor:

So I really doubt Google did an algorithm update, outside of the featured snippet de-duplication change. But if they did, it would be hard to know. I will suggest to all SEOs, Webmasters and Site Owners that keep monitor your daily traffic in Google Analytics and manually check your Keywords Ranking. If you see any changes, please share it here regarding this unconfirmed update. Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Also Read: 

Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update on 4 Dec 2019

A complete step-by-step guide to create your own Shopify store

Do you want to create your own online store from scratch but do not know where to start? If you’re interested in creating an online shop with Shopify, you have come to the right place. In this blog post you will get a step by step guide on how to set up your e-commerce store with Shopify. This will help you choose options that give you and your project greater advantages.

What is Shopify

The truth is that today, Shopify is one of the most used e-commerce platforms in the world. There are currently more than 600,000 businesses that use this software to sell their products and services online.

As with WordPress, Shopify is considered to be an ideal platform for beginners and people that have limited technical knowledge. Much different from eCommerce platforms like Prestashop and Magento, Shopify is much easier to use and operate.

Shopify technology allows you to manage your online store without hiring a web hosting service, and also, if you wish, without having your own inventory of products to sell. Now, let’s start how Shopify works.

How to register on Shopify

Upon landing on the Shopify website, you will see that you have a free 14-day trial period.

Unlike other online tools, Shopify does not ask for your credit card information, which is very good since this allows you to test the system and see if it works out for you before you make up your mind.

To access this trial period, you must enter your email, a password, and the name of your store.

Once you have provided this information, you’ll be able to move forward and start the creation of your online store.

They will ask for information about your business, but you are not required to give it if you do not want to.

Once you fill out the details, you will be provided with other options that will help Shopify define your project in the best way possible (create your logo, think about names for your business, a free online seminar, find products to sell, etc.).

The next step, before going to the management panel of your store, is to submit your personal data and a business address.

The first step in Shopify: Add products

Following the order of the starting tips, so first go to “Add product,” where a form is open with the fields to add items that you want to sell.

If you already have the products you want to sell, you will only have to fill in the fields/forms of each item (name, images, price, inventory, supplier, variants, shipping, SEO optimization, etc.).

In case you do not have a catalog of products or have them and want to import them, click on the “Discard” button, which you can see in the upper right part of your screen.

You can simply import your products into Shopify by uploading them using a CSV file.

The other alternative is to find products with the help of the platform.

For that, we are going to click on the “Find Products” button, which takes us to Oberlo, the Shopify app, with which we can add items to our store through the dropshipping system.

Dropshipping in Shopify

Dropshipping, in very simple terms, is a way of selling online with a store that does not need to have its products in its inventory.

When you sell a product, you buy it from a third party, and it directly ships it over to the customer. You are, therefore, a kind of intermediary who does not need to have the item in-store.

It is a model that attracts the attention of many entrepreneurs who seek to start their online business with a very limited budget.

Having said that, it looks and sounds like affiliate sales, but there’s are a couple of differences between the two.

The fundamental difference is that with dropshipping, you can set the price or, in other words, mark what your profit margin will be for each sale.

The problem is that the products you are going to sell will already be available in other online stores, and they might be selling those articles at lower prices than yours.

Another difference is of product listings. Unless you give yourself the challenge of changing them by hand, your product/s will be the same as in other tens or hundreds of eCommerce stores, so in the eyes of Google, these items will be considered as “duplicate content,” and it will be very difficult for you position them in the organic search.

If starting a dropshipping business something that you’re looking for, you can start the creation of your online store directly from Oberlo and enjoy the same 14 days of free trial that Shopify provides.

How to use Oberlo

To install this app, we will first have to go to the Applications tab. Oberlo is the first of those applications that will appear in the promoted or featured section. You have a free plan available. This free-trial period will be more than enough for you to test its features.

There are two ways to find products in Oberlo.

1. If you already have an idea of ​​what you want to sell, you can use the search bar at the top.

2. If you’re just looking for ideas, you can click on one of the categories and see the product catalogs.

Once you have already accessed a category, you just have to hover your mouse over a product and click on the “Add to import list” button.

You can continue browsing after adding the desired products to your import list.

Once you have finished browsing, you should go to your import list. That’s where you’ll find all your products.

From there, you can edit the text, images, and other variants for your collections.

Once you are done, click on the “Import to store” button and the product/s will be automatically imported over to your Shopify store.

Choose and customize the template of your Shopify store

Here you will be able to choose a template, add a logo, and a sliding carousel of products and colors that identify with your brand.

By default, its “star theme,” called Debut, will be suggested to you, and by clicking on the “Actions” button, you will be able to see a preview of how it looks. You can duplicate it, download the template file, edit the languages ​​or code if you know how to use HTML, CSS, and Liquid:

If you like the theme but want to make changes to it, click on the “Customize” button and you will go to an editor where you can customize any page or item you want (typefaces, colors, favicon, social networks, shopping cart, etc.) using the drag system.

In addition, you can also go “live” with the theme and make changes as you see fit. You will also have the option to visualize the theme, both in the desktop and mobile versions.image

If you do not like the default template offered to by Shopify, return to the “Customize” page where you will find access to choose from other free themes on the bottom of the page. You can also visit their store to buy a premium theme if you want.

You can also load a previously downloaded Shopify template if you want.

Add your store’s domain

Now that we know how to choose the template, let’s talk about the last tip: add a domain.

If you don’t have one, Shopify will automatically assign one to your store with the name you have chosen and add myshopify.com/ at the end of it. We don’t need to tell you why it is better to have your own domain associated with your store rather than picking something up randomly.

By clicking on the “Add domain” button, you can acquire a new domain from the Shopify platform itself or connect to an existing one that you have previously purchased.

The “Buy new domain” section will show us the names of those domains that are available. Be sure to check the annual price if you decide to acquire it:

In “Connect an existing domain,” we will have the option to indicate our URL or transfer it to Shopify.

Shopify’s Plans and Prices

In principle, it is normal for those who begin to do so start with a $29 per month basic plan. If you plan to opt for Shopify for the whole year, you can get the plan for $312.

At this point, we must bear in mind that hosting a whole year of a WordPress website may cost you less than what Shopify costs you a month.

In addition, Shopify charges a commission (a variable percentage according to the plan) plus $0.25 for the use of a credit card in its payment system.

This is something you should keep in mind when setting the prices of your products, especially if you are going to resort to dropshipping, as it will narrow your profit margin.

Under the plans, you have the option of eliminating your online store to sell exclusively through a purchase button on Facebook, or in-person from the point of sale, for 9 dollars a month.

We are done with the options on the “Start” page (we suggest that you research and read the Shopify blog and watch video tutorials to get yourself familiarized with the platform’s features.)

The Shopify management panel

The “Orders” section is where you will manage your sales. Logically, to process your sales and track orders, you must select one of the Shopify payment plans.

In “Preliminaries“, you will determine aspects such as whether you are going to accept orders by phone, sending invoices by email to your customers, and accepting payments.

Finally, within the Orders submenu, you will have a section where you can manage the abandoned cart orders.

In the next menu item, “Products“, we will be able to add or find products for your store.

The second option is “Transfers”, which is where you will manage the inventory you have purchased from your suppliers.

From “Inventory”, you can track the stock of each of your products to know when the stock levels are low.

In “Collections”, you can group your products so that the customers can find them by categories: by size, by color, on offer, seasonal, etc. The visuals on the collection pages will vary depending on the template you have chosen.

The next item on the menu is “Customers“. This is where you can add customers and check the data and purchase history of each of them, or import them to your new store through a file in CSV format.

In “Reports and statistics“, you have a panel with a multitude of useful information about the progress of your online store. Here, you can monitor everything in real-time: from the conversion rate or the average price of the orders to the traffic sources of your visits or your sales, among other information of your interest.

You can obtain a report on any of the concepts that the statistical panel shows you, and even customize them with the criteria that you consider necessary.

In “Live View“, you can check in real-time the number of visitors your store has at each moment, the behavior of customers in the last 10 minutes, and the page views per minute in that same period.

We now move over to Marketing, where you can create campaigns and monitor the results without leaving the Shopify tool.

Also from there, you can set up Facebook ads or add your products to Google Shopping:

In “Codes“, you will be able to create and configure discount codes for your customers, in order to reward their loyalty and thus encourage conversions.

You can make your codes/discount coupons “by hand” or set them as automatic so that they automatically appear on the payment screen of the user

“Applications” is where we simply find connect a gateway to the Shopify app store.

The platform itself tells you that more than 80% of stores that use their software use additional applications.

Once you land in the Shopify Apps Store, you can see that a lot of them require, sooner rather than later, monthly payments of different amounts so that you can use their premium features.

NOTE: In WordPress, numerous plug-ins, among which are the most important and popular, are free and offer great benefits without the requirement of entering credit card information.

Sales Channels

You are always allowed to build more than one online store on Shopify. Why build only one sales channel when you can have more.

If you click on the “+” button, you will find a screen that gives you multiple options, each with different possibilities.

These are, in fact, applications in the app store that come with a monthly cost. If you opt to choose one, you can simply add it to your Shopify plan.

Contents and Settings of your online store

If you are going to focus on your eCommerce at the moment, click on the “Online Store” button to make the adjustments and customization you want.

“Themes” is the first option that appears in the submenu. It allows you to select a template (we already talked about it at the beginning of this guide.)

The next one, “Blogs“, takes you to the editor where you can write articles about your business, products or offers. You can use your blog to work on content marketing; Create brand awareness, make yourself known, and attract users to your website.

n “Pages“, you can write titles and descriptions of your visible pages to improve the SEO of your website and thus help customers find your website. You can create a contact page, size guide, FAQs page, etc.

The next section, “Navigation“, allows us to create the menus of our website (main, bottom, side) and link lists.

Also, this is where we can redirect URLs or import the ones we already have by uploading them through a CSV file.

Now, we go directly to the last element of this menu: “Preferences“.

This is the section where you will be able to choose different possible settings for your online store.

First, you can define the title and meta description of your home page, which as you know is very important for web positioning.

You can then insert the Google Analytics tracking code to monitor and analyze the traffic and conversions of your website, and you can also insert your Facebook Pixel ID to track the advertising campaigns you create in this social network.

Finally, you can enable a password so that customers who have it can access your online store.

Shopify Settings

You will find access to the configuration options at the bottom left of the Shopify control panel screen.

Some of the features included in this section are already available in the previous menus, but others are not.

We will only talk about the ones that we didn’t address above.

General
It shows the contact details of the store, the standards, and formats used to calculate product prices, shipping weights, and delivery times. You can also set the default currency for your online store here.

Taxes
Determine the taxes applicable to your products, shipping rates, digital products, etc., and tax regions.

Payment Providers
Here you will activate the payment methods of your online store (Shopify Payments, PayPal, Amazon Pay, alternative payments, manuals), among other types of authorized payment.

Account
This is where it shows you the information related to your Shopify user account.

From here, you can also set up and add multiple employee accounts; Hire a Shopify expert to improve the performance of your store, or give your employees access to see the relevant reports and statistical data.

Payment Screen
Here you decide questions like if you want to ask the client to create a user account on your website at the time of payment; the contact method they can use to pay and receive updates (mail or phone); what information the payment form will require; the way your store will respond to payments and orders; email marketing and the language of the payment screen.

Notifications
From this section, you can configure the notifications that your customers will receive. The templates are editable, so feel free to make it as personalized as possible. Also, this is where you will decide who will receive a notice every time there are orders in your store.

Finally, there is the option to create webhooks that will send XML or JSON notifications to a specific URL.

Billing
Add the credit card from which you want to pay your bills, see the summary of the expenses and income of your account and check if you have Shopify credits available.

Shipping
Control every single shipping detail from this section. Change and set up these options for smooth sailing (pun intended):
The location/s from where your shipments will depart, the areas where you will make deliveries and their rates, the dimensions of your packaging, delivery notes, and alternate shipping methods.

Files
It is simply a section with a file upload button to upload images, videos, and other documents.

Legal
Finally, from this section, you can create your own legal pages such as refund policy, privacy policy, terms of service, and shipping policy.

Congratulations!

You have reached the end of our step-by-step guide on how to set up your online Shopify store.

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SEO vs SEM: What’s the Difference and Why Should You Care

SEO vs SEM: A Never Ending Wrestling Match

Search engines like Google have two types of search results including paid and organic. Paid results show up on top in the SERP when someone pay Google to get clicks. Organic results are the ones that Google deems most relevant for the query. Business owners can increase website traffic by appearing in organic and paid results using SEO and PPC. In this blog post, I will try to cover SEO vs SEM and how to use both for a more comprehensive search engine marketing (SEM) strategy. But see the example of Paid vs Organic Search Results.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimizing content to be discovered through a search engine’s organic results. Google and other search engines look at hundreds of factors to decide which pages to rank first for those queries. Nobody knows what all of these factors are, but the most important ones are roughly divided into three buckets:

On-page SEO:

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages. Here are the examples of on-page tactics include:

• Matching search intent
• Covering a topic in-depth
• Using short and descriptive URLs
• Writing enticing title tags and meta descriptions
• Using descriptive alt tags for images (where appropriate)
• Writing simple and easy to read content
• Including keywords in important places

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is anything done outside of a website to improve its rankings. Following are the off-page tactics include:

• Building citations
• Earning brand mentions
• Earning positive customer reviews
• Getting backlinks from relevant and authoritative websites

Technical SEO

Technical SEO involves making technical changes to help search engines crawl, index, and rank content more efficiently. I am sharing some of examples of technical optimizations include:

• Improving page speed
• Using canonical tags to prevent duplicate content
• Using hreflang tags for multilingual content
• Optimizing robots.txt for crawl efficiency
• “Noindexing” thin content

What is PPC?

PPC (Pay Per Click) is a form of advertising where businesses pay for website clicks from popular platforms like search engines. For example, clicking this ad in Google costs Apple money:

What is SEM?

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is a broad term that encompasses SEO and PPC. May be you are not agrees with this definition. But see some SEM as synonymous with PPC.

Should you use SEO, PPC, or both?

Knowing what we now know about search engine marketing, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that SEO is the way forward because organic traffic is free, consistent, and passive. But this isn’t always the same because sometimes SEO works best and for some time PPC is the better option. And sometimes, it makes the most sense to use both marketing strategies at the same time. Below are four ways to use SEO, PPC, or both for maximum search engine visibility and traffic.

• Run ads for keywords that are too competitive
• Use PPC and SEO for ad-heavy keywords
• Use SEO for informational keywords
• Use SEO and PPC to monopolize the search results

1. Run ads for keywords that are too competitive

It can take years to rank for some keywords. For example, if you have a new supplement store and want to rank for “buy protein powder,” your chances of ranking in the short-to-medium term are slim. This is because you’re going up against established brands like Amazon, Walmart, and GNC.

But this doesn’t mean you should abandon SEO and just run ads. Since ranking for competitive queries will likely be a long-play, there are a few benefits to using PPC while working to rank your pages.

a) You can generate revenue immediately

Paid traffic is instant. It can be turned on or off with the click of a button.

Send that traffic to a relevant page optimized for conversions, and you can make sales in minutes.

Just remember that revenue isn’t the same thing as profit.

If you sell a product for $10, pay $1 per click, and convert at 20%, you’re turning every ad dollar spent into two.

But if your product costs $6 to make, you’re losing money.

There are two ways to fix this without increasing the price of your product:

• Increase your conversion rate
• Decrease your cost per click (CPC)

Achieving both of these can take months, so be prepared to lose dollars while you tweak campaigns and pages to work for you.

b) You can test and optimize for conversions

Most ad platforms have conversion tracking features. They know that if publishers see a positive return on their ad spend, they’ll keep spending.

Use this as an opportunity to gain insights on the average cost per conversion and run controlled tests to improve your conversion rate. As you start producing profit from your ads, scale-out to other platforms (e.g., Bing ads).

c) You can get valuable keyword data

The “Search terms” report in Google Ads shows conversion data for the keywords you’re bidding on. Use this to find high-converting keywords to target with SEO.

Bidding on a popular keyword like “protein powder” might result in tons of clicks but low conversions. For a more specific query like “grass fed whey protein,” you might get fewer clicks but more conversions. Export the search terms report from Google Ads and filter for profitable ones.

2. Use PPC and SEO for ad-heavy keywords

Profitable keywords tend to attract lots of advertisers. Just look at the results for “car insurance”:

Google shows four paid ads at the top, and that leads to fewer clicks on organic results as they get pushed down the page.

How many fewer clicks?

For that keyword, almost 40% go to paid results.

PPC, then, is a great way to get traffic from this keyword, but what about SEO? If we look at estimated organic traffic to the current top-ranking page for this keyword, we see that it gets an estimated 64,000 monthly organic visits.

Bottom line: Invest in SEO and PPC to get maximum traffic from ad-heavy keywords.

3. Use SEO for informational keywords

Most Google searches are informational.

That means people are looking to learn, not buy.

For example, take a query “how to make a protein shake,” which gets 2,100 searches a month.

It’s unlikely that anyone searching for this is in the market for protein powder. Most are probably looking to learn how to make a tasty shake using powder they’ve already bought. That explains why no supplement companies bid on this keyword. It doesn’t make financial sense, even with a low average CPC.

Looking at the search results, however, we see one supplements company ranking organically at the bottom of the first page.

Now it’s clear from the title of the post that this was no accident; they’ve made an effort to rank for this keyword. The question is, why are they willing to put effort into ranking organically, but aren’t willing to pay for traffic to that page?

The answer comes down to cost vs. reward. The top-ranking page for that keyword gets around 9,000 monthly organic visits. The estimated PPC value of that traffic is $16,400.

Given the low Keyword Difficulty score for this query, the dollar-equivalent of the time and effort required to rank organically would almost certainly be less in comparison.

4. Use SEO and PPC to monopolize the search results

It’s not just ads that push down the organic search results. Google now shows SERP features like featured snippets, “People also Ask” boxes and video carousels for some queries.

These can be annoying when your goal is to rank higher, but remember that it’s possible to appear in many SERP features. This is true of many SEO-related keywords because we’re committed to providing the best resources for learning SEO. I also optimize my videos to rank in Google.

Some brands choose to monopolize the search results even further by running ads for keywords they already rank for. For example, one website is running ads for “how to start a blog” despite already ranking organically and owning the featured snippet.

Final Thoughts

SEO vs SEM: this is a never-ending wrestling match between Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. Knowing when and where to use each tactic to achieve the desired results is the game. Sometimes SEO is the answer, sometimes PPC, and sometimes both. Please give your feedback which will help me to improve.

Bing is going to rolling out user-agents for BingBot. According to the announcement, Bing is updating its user agents to be dynamic based on the version of the browser it is using to crawl your web site. The new Microsoft Edge as the engine to run JavaScript and render web pages. With this change, Bing will start the transition to a new user-agent for websites which require it for rendering and then gradually update for all sites.  

Today’s Bingbot User-Agents:

• Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)
• Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0
• Mozilla/5.0 (Windows Phone 8.1; ARM; Trident/7.0; Touch; rv:11.0; IEMobile/11.0; NOKIA; Lumia 530) like Gecko (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

Following are the New Evergreen Bingbot user-agents

Desktop:

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Safari/537.36 Edg/W.X.Y.Z

Mobile

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 Edg/W.X.Y.Z (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

According to Bing: We are committing to regularly update our web page rendering engine to the most recent stable version of Microsoft Edge thus making the above user agent strings to be evergreen. Thus, “W.X.Y.Z” will be substituted with the latest Microsoft Edge version we’re using, for example “80.0.345.0″.

How to test your web site?

Bing want you to install the new Microsoft Edge to test your website is working fine with it. If your site is working fine then you don’t need to worry about the change. Furthermore, you can register your site on Bing Webmaster Tools to get insights about your site. If there is an issue, Bing will investigate your site with new upcoming tools based on the new rendering engine. 

Also Read:

Bing Make It Simple To Verify Site Using Domain Connect