Rising organic traffic from your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts feel pretty darn good to see–but have you ever asked yourself how many of those visitors actually contribute to the bottom line of your business?

If you’re seeing a surge in traffic, but continue seeing near-zero conversions, you have a big problem on your hands. The good news is that it’s easily solvable by supplementing your SEO efforts with Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) practices. 

Let’s get into how to start using both SEO and CRO for your website.

CRO and SEO: What Are They? 

SEO and CRO are two significant pillars of digital marketing, each with a distinct focus and objective.

SEO is the process of increasing a website’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) by optimizing different elements of a website, including its content, design, and technical aspects. This is all done to draw in more organic traffic in your website’s chosen niche or market.

CRO, on the other hand, is similar in that it’s all about testing and optimizing the elements on your website. However, its goal is not to improve your rankings or draw in more people. Rather, it’s all about converting visitors into customers.

The misconception that many people have is that they have to focus on one or the other. However, I consider both to be crucial for a successful online strategy. When done right, these two practices work in tandem to enhance your overall digital marketing effectiveness.

How is CRO Different from SEO? 

SEO – Casting the Net

Think of SEO as the engine behind your brand’s visibility in the vast ocean of the internet. Using SEO, you can improve your pages’ look, performance, and rankings in the SERPs. The more these improve, the wider net you can cast on organic traffic. 

Think about it: when you search for something on Google, don’t you take a look at the results on the first page at the very least? If you’re ranking at #1 for some pretty good keywords, then you’re going to be getting more traffic than if your website stayed on the 2nd page or lower in Google’s search results. 

Take the search results for “seo rates philippines,” for example. If I were looking for a SEO service with good rates, I wouldn’t look past the first page since they’re already giving me the information I need. 

CRO – Making the Catch

While SEO casts the net wide to increase traffic, CRO is how you persuade these new visitors that have just opened your pages to do something for your business. That might be to make a purchase, fill out a form, or sign up for a newsletter. Here’s some of the things we do for CRO on our other website:

Through techniques like improving user experience, optimizing landing pages, and using compelling call-to-actions (CTAs), CRO is the attempt to answer your user’s intent (i.e., why they even clicked on your page in the first place) and speak to their interests and needs. This influences them to buy your products, message you, or otherwise engage with your website.

What Happens When You Combine CRO and SEO?

When SEO and CRO are approached separately, their impact is limited. Sure, you might be gaining tons of traffic from your SEO, but if the pages they’re seeing aren’t using the best CRO practices, then you might not see any value from these visitors. On the flip side, a site optimized for conversion is pretty meaningless if it’s not found by potential customers on Google. 

Merging SEO and CRO effectively forms a formidable digital marketing powerhouse. SEO strategies become more targeted and purposeful when combined with conversion data, while conversion strategies are much more effective when they build on the strengths of a strong SEO foundation. 

It’s all about ensuring your website isn’t just found, but is also compelling enough to convert those who find it, ensuring that your digital marketing strategy is truly a force to be reckoned with.

How Do You Make SEO and CRO Work Together?

So, how do you make sure your website not only ranks well–but also converts your visitors? 

Here are some key steps to make your SEO and CRO strategies work together effectively:

1. Prioritize User Experience: Always put user experience first in both SEO and CRO. Ease of navigation, site aesthetics, informative content, and site speed are all factors you need to consider for your SEO and CRO strategy. 
2. Be Thorough With Your Keyword Analysis: Make sure to understand the search intent behind the keywords you’re targeting. This information should influence not only the content you create (for SEO) but also the language you use on landing pages, calls to action, and product descriptions (for CRO).
3. Test & Optimize: Regularly run A/B tests on different site elements like headlines, CTAs, content, etc. Use these insights to improve both search ranking (SEO) and user engagement (CRO).
4. Write High-Quality Content: Ensure your content is useful, relevant, and valuable to your users. Good content increases the odds of higher search engine ranking (SEO) and encourages users to stay on your site and convert (CRO).
5. Don’t Forget Mobile Optimization: Since most searches happen on mobile devices, ensure your website is mobile-friendly. Remember this is also an SEO ranking factor, too, so putting this as a priority can improve both your ranking and conversion rates.
6. Create Enticing Meta Descriptions: Although meta descriptions may not directly impact SEO rankings, a well-crafted one can increase click-through rates from the SERP, providing an opportunity to win conversions.
7. Landing Page Optimization: Use your SEO data to understand what users are looking for and tailor your landing pages (CRO) to meet those needs. The congruency between the user’s search intent and your landing page offering can significantly boost conversions.
8. Use Clear, Persuasive Call-to-Actions (CTAs): A great CTA can guide users and encourage them to take desirable actions. This helps in achieving your CRO goals.
9. Avoid Common Mistakes with CRO and SEO: the A/B testing you need to do for these two practices can lead to some pretty costly mistakes if you’re not careful. I covered what to avoid in my guide on how to do CRO without damaging your SEO. 

Key Takeaway

When you pour your resources into just SEO, the organic traffic you gain might not convert into sales or leads, ultimately leading to an inefficient use of resources. If you focus on just CRO, then you might have a site that too few people visit because it’s lost in the depths of the SERPs–wasting your CRO efforts.

One thing is crystal clear–for your business to profit, it’s not enough to merely have an online presence; you need to make that presence work for you. 

That’s why SEO and CRO need to go hand-in-hand. By combining these two strategies, you can make your website all that more visible and engaging for your online audience.

The post How to Maximize Your Online Presence With SEO and CRO appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Here’s a straightforward answer. Yes, internal links CAN help build topical authority for your website.

Internal linking is a very important aspect of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) that helps build topical authority on your website. Here’s what you need to know, and how to use them strategically.

What is Internal Linking and Topical Authority? 

Internal linking is when you link to the other pages on your website within your content. Topical authority in SEO refers to the establishment of your website as an authoritative source of information on a specific subject or topic. 

For example, if I’m writing a blog post that mentions the best SEO tools, I would link to another post where I discuss them in detail. This helps your readers find more relevant and useful information for your website. 

By using links strategically, you can signal to search engines the relevance and importance of your content, which can improve your ranking and visibility in search results. 

Internal Links vs External Links

The differences between the two are as their names imply: internal links are those that go between pages of the same domain, while external links direct you toward different sites. We call external links pointing from other sites to your site backlinks. See my posts on link building techniques if you’re interested in also optimizing the external links pointing to your site.

Why are Internal Links Important?

You should care about the internal links on your site because they’re pretty valuable to your SEO. 

As advanced as the Google algorithm is–and how demanding their core updates can be–there are still fundamentals that, once optimized, will give you an immediate boost in topical authority, and subsequently, rankings and traffic. Internal linking is one of them. 

Types of Internal Linking

There’s only two types: navigational, and contextual. The first are the links you see in headers, footers, and any other navigational bar or menu on a website. The second are in-text links, which point users from one page to another. This kind of link includes anchor links in your articles, a related posts section, and any other relevantly linked URLs. 

How Internal Links Improve The Topical Authority of Your Website

By using internal links effectively, you can improve the topical authority of your site in the following ways: 

1. Internal links help create a logical and hierarchical structure within your website. By linking to related pages and topics, you show search engines that your site has extensive coverage of a specific subject. This organization improves user experience and makes it easier for search engines to understand the context and relevance of your content. 
2. Internal links allow search engine crawlers to discover and index your content. If search engines find internal links when crawling your website, they can follow those links to access and index additional pages. This helps search engines understand the depth and breadth of your content, resulting in better visibility in the search results. 
3. Internal linking allows you to distribute the authority of the highest-ranking pages to other pages on your site. When you link to a page that needs a boost in visibility from a page with high authority, you are giving some of that authority to the linked page. This can improve the topical authority of the linked page and improve its chances of ranking well in search results. 
4. Internal links make it easier for the user to navigate within your site, allowing visitors to easily access related content and explore different aspects of a topic. When users spend more time on your site, interact with multiple pages, and find value in related content, it sends positive signals to search engines about the quality and relevance of your site. 

How To Use Internal Linking To Build Topical Authority in SEO

So how do you use internal linking to build topical authority in SEO? It’s not gaming the system, it’s not gray hat, and it’s not a sly trick. It’s also definitely one of the easiest things to do for your website. 

Here are some best practices to follow:

• Use descriptive anchor text. Anchor text is the clickable text that links to another page. Instead of using generic phrases like “click here” or “read more”, use descriptive words that tell your readers what the page is about. For example, instead of saying “Click here to learn more about this topic”, say “Learn more about using anchor text effectively for your SEO.” See what I did there?
• Link to relevant pages. Don’t just link to any page on your site, link to pages related to the topic of your current post. For example, if you’re writing about how to grow tomatoes, don’t link to a page that talks about how to knit a scarf. Link to pages dedicated to gardening, tomatoes, or farming tips.
• Link to quality webpages. Don’t link to pages that have low-quality content, outdated information, or broken links. Link to pages with high-quality content, up-to-date information, and working links. This improves the credibility of your website and its user experience.
• Link strategically. Don’t overdo it with internal links, or you could annoy your readers and weaken your topical authority. Only link when it makes sense and adds value to your content. For example, don’t link to the same page multiple times in the same paragraph, and don’t link to all pages on your site in a single post. Link strategically and with a grain of salt.

What is the Optimal Format for Internal Linking?

For more bonus tips on how to do internal linking right, you might want to read our in-depth post about the do’s and don’ts of internal linking. 

By following these tips, you can use internal linking to create an up-to-date SEO authority and boost your site’s performance. Internal linking is a powerful technique that can help you create a better user experience, grow your traffic, and increase your authority.

What is the Best Internal Linking Strategy?

Now that you understand the best practices when it comes to internal linking, you’re ready to see the basic steps to setting up your internal linking strategy:

1. Determine the structure you want for your site. Think of your website in terms of categories, then work your way down to subcategories (and even sub-subcategories, if needed). Keep internal links within categories.
2. Figure out your cornerstone content. A.K.A. your landing pages, these are the most important content on your site, and the ones that you want users to find when searching for your industry, products, or niche on Google. Direct most of your internal links toward them.
3. Add contextual links. If you already have tons of posts on a certain topic, then you should try linking them together. You can use in-text links or recommend topically related posts for reading at the end of your post.
4. Work down from the hierarchy you establish. Link parent pages to child pages, and sibling pages to each other. Parent pages are those at the top of each category you create for your structure. 
5. Use navigational links. I highly recommend adding links to your most important pages from your homepage or adding them from your navigation menu. This denotes importance in Google’s eyes and gives them a lot more link value. 
6. Insert links to your most recent posts. Adding links to newly published posts from existing content on your website is a good way to improve topical authority.
7. Insert links in your most popular posts. Since these posts draw in the most traffic, adding links from these posts to related ones can also improve your topical authority. 
8. Create umbrella posts. If you’re on a roll with writing for a specific topic, consider making an umbrella post. This can be used to interlink all of the posts you’ve written for the topic so far, boost topical authority, and serve as a catch-all of sorts for related keywords. Take, for example, our technical SEO guide, which references a bunch of our other technical SEO topics.

Setting up the right internal linking strategy depends on what you want to do with your website and your SEO goals. But, these steps are a good place for you to start.

Key Takeaway

Do take note that while internal linking can add to the topical authority of your site, it should be done carefully and naturally. 

Focus on being intentional about your strategy, making meaningful links between relevant pages, and steering clear of spammy linking practices to reap the most benefits possible while avoiding penalization. 

Ultimately, providing valuable, well-organized, and interconnected content is key to building topical authority over time.

The post Can Internal Links Help Build Topical Authority? appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Here it is, Google finally announced their own AI chatbot— Google Bard. Like its presumed rivals, ChatGPT and Bing Bot, Bard can understand queries and generate human-like answers in response.

But is this the start of a new way of how we search the web in the future? 

This unveiling is just the next stage in the AI arms race between Google and OpenAI and Microsoft. And, with a recent update–and many more features to come–Google is already promising to transform the online search landscape as we know it.

Now that it’s widely available, here’s all you need to know about Google Bard.

What is Google Bard?

Google Bard is an experimental conversational AI chat service from Google that serves like a ChatGPT. It is Google’s own AI chatbot that can generate human-like responses to any prompt you wish to tell the AI. 

But unlike ChatGPT, Google Bard was initially based on LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications)–a family of conversational large language models (LLM). LaMDA is trained on massive data sets and parameters, which has allowed the AI to “learn” useful information, as well as our language. 

Recently at Google’s I/O 2023, it was revealed that Bard was now powered by their other, most advanced LLM: PaLM 2. This, as they stated, will allow Bard to be a highly efficient bot, and even fix previous issues (likely linked to their misinformation blunder when they first announced Bard a few months ago).

Powered by their LLMs, the result is that Bard can perform tasks such as answering questions and following instructions, and can carry a conversation with users in a surprisingly natural way. 

Aside from that, it can do what most AI chatbots nowadays can do: write and debug code, and answer math problems. A more popular use is helping with one’s writer’s block by creating outlines, collaborating on essays, or even providing more details for articles. The sky’s the limit, it seems, with a powerful AI chatbot like Bard. 

What is Google Bard used for?

This experimental, conversational AI is trained to communicate with users and provide the answers or results they’re looking for. As I said, the sky’s the limit for this kind of tech, but here are a few examples of how you can use Google Bard: 

1. Get information–Bard generally can provide easy-to-understand and factual answers to the questions you have. As long as your prompt does not violate any content guidelines from Google, Bard will respond with the information you would like to know. You can even ask strange questions such as “What is the meaning of life?” and it will give you an answer.
2. Generate different kinds of writing–from poems to emails to blog articles, Google Bard can help you with your writing. Bard’s answers can range from formal, creative, and even casual, depending on your prompt. The pieces or ideas you can get from Bard’s content responses can help you build ideas for your craft or job.
3. Translate–It can function pretty similarly to Google Translate. It even knows informal words or phrases in foreign languages, such as slang, which can be pretty useful. But, Google can only answer in English, with support for Japanese and Korean languages. The expansion of language support beyond English is planned and part of a 40-year expansion plan for Bard. 
4. Code–A more recent feature, Bard is now able to help users with simple programming and software development tasks. This includes code generation, code debugging, and explanation.
5. Summarize data–Bard can quickly digest and summarize the most important points from articles, blog posts, and web pages for you. You can also ask it to help you compare data or research.

This, of course, is not an exhaustive list of what this AI chatbot can do. You can ask it to find a recipe, write your CV, and even help you prepare for a presentation. 

It would be impossible for me to list all of Bard’s use cases here, and what you’ll use it for will depend on what you’re looking for. 

Is Google’s Bard available?

Yes, Google Bard is now available. Google announced Bard and its functions and features back in February 2023 and they announced that it is now available for everyone to use in May 2023 at Google I/O. It is currently accessible in 180 countries and territories.

How can I access Google Bard?

Bard can be accessed by searching bard.google.com, using the Google Bard Chrome Extension, or just by searching it up in any browser you use. 

When accessed, you will see this page and you can now start using and providing whatever prompts you want. 

How to use Google Bard

The user interface (UI) of Bard is pretty easy to navigate. Simply type in your prompt in the text box, press enter, and a conversation with the AI chatbot starts. 

Longer answers are broken down and can also use rich text formatting, often in bullet points or lists, which makes it easy to scan. 

If you want more information, If you’re not happy with Bard’s first response, or if you want more information, it provides the option of viewing its other drafted answers. This can provide a more detailed response or more context. You can also like or dislike the draft to let Bard know if you preferred its other answers or not. 

If you want to see other topics or look at more information online, you have the option to Google it. This shows related search topics that, when clicked, lead to organic search results.  

Is Google Bard Safe to Use?

Google Bard, while pretty powerful, isn’t infallible. 

When generating answers, Bard typically follows prompts from the user and can remember past instructions and questions (similar to Bing Bot). However, it doesn’t follow every prompt, as it has built-in safety controls and strictly adheres to Google’s content policies and AI principles. 

This reduces the chances of it producing “bad” results, such as offensive dialogue. 

That said, there’s still a chance that it can provide misleading information or potentially malicious answers. 

It’s important to understand that Google Bard is a still-developing AI tool that may at times produce bad results. Understanding this will lessen the risks for us users.

Bard is also trained to learn from its users, as it provides a way to rate its responses. On the UI, there is also the option to report legal issues with its response, which includes the following:

Are Google Bard’s Answers Accurate?

No. Bard is still considered an experimental AI, meaning that its accuracy is still flawed—Google Bard itself disclosed that it might produce false or misleading information from time to time, and encourages users to fact-check.

This statement above is important because, unlike ChatGPT, Google Bard has access to all of the internet. That means it can see information about current events and modern context, and therefore reference them in its answers. However, this doesn’t mean that the AI is fully updated with real-time information.

So while it can provide relevant answers to topical questions, it doesn’t mean that the answers it provides are 100% correct–hence the need for a disclaimer. 

Does Google Bard Cite its Sources?

As of May 2023, Bard now cites its sources. Announced by Google’s representative, Jack Krawczyk, he says this update is part of their goal to make Bard more useful, while also increasing the reach of the original publishers it gets its information from. 

This is a very welcome update for web publishers and SEOs like me and me. If Bard decides to cite your article, users can easily navigate to it, if they’re interested in learning more. But we have yet to see if this update does lead to more traffic, or if users will ignore these citations.

That said, Bard’s citations don’t seem to be successfully implemented, as of the time of writing. Bing Bot, in comparison, has been providing citations for a while now, and does so more reliably. But still, it’s a step in the right direction.

What Does Google Bard Mean for SEO?

As I hinted earlier, the release of Google Bard effectively ushers in the new age of search, which many are calling the new Search Generative Experience or SGE. 

An experimental version of search as we know, it deprioritized the 10 blue links that have defined Google’s first page for years. 

How? Well, Bard does the heavy lifting for you. Instead of sifting through several articles or pages to get the answer you want, Bard can potentially present it to you in a more concise manner. It even allows you to ask follow-up questions. 

It might be incredibly useful and time-saving for many, but it now means that users have the option to not visit multiple sites to get their answers or make their decision. These clicks are what our websites rely on–and are very important for SEO. 

What does this entail? We might see less traffic for the next few months, especially if more and more users adopt and prefer Bard over organic search. 

But, ultimately, Google will be pushed to find ways for traffic (and revenue) to continue reaching creators and their sites, so there’s still an incentive for us to create content. 

Key Takeaway

The race towards AI and the new age of search shows no signs of stopping with the official release of Google Bard. 

While appealing to many, and offering several use cases, Bard is still in its early stages and has a few limitations that we need to be aware of. 

I will continue to test Bard’s features as they are rolled out, but for now, all we know about this AI is covered in this article–and with several implications to SEO that we have to consider as the chatbot may become more mainstream in the coming months.

The post Google Bard: Everything You Need to Know About It, and How it Redefines the Way We Search appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Over the years, we’ve seen some epic battles between search engine giants. We’ve watched as Google, Bing, and Yahoo have gone head-to-head, each vying for market share. And now, a new challenger has entered the arena–Bing’s chatbot AI. 

Launching this experimental tool last February 7, 2023 put Microsoft ahead of the race–and forced Google to take Bing seriously as a challenger for the future of search. 

But, the question is this: can Bing’s Chat AI take down Google Bard? Let’s probe further.

How Bing Chat AI Fares Now

Powered by OpenAI, Bing’s new chatbot was designed to deliver better search results and provide a new search experience for users–and it worked. 

Bing now has 100 million daily active users. While that seems like a tiny number compared to the millions that still use Google today, it’s enough to make them declare a “code red” with their own experimental chatbot, Bard.

On March 8, 2023, Yusur Mehdi, Microsoft’s Director of Marketing, shared that Bing surpassed its 100 million daily active users after their Chat AI was launched a month ago. Here’s what Yusur Mehdi has to say about their progress on Bing’s new addition:

“Of the millions of active users of the new Bing preview, it’s great to see that roughly one-third are new to Bing. We see this appeal of the new Bing as a validation of our view that search is due for a reinvention and of the unique value proposition of combining Search + Answers + Chat + Creation in one experience.

Secondly not only are we seeing growth in new users, but we are seeing engagement growing as more people are conducting more searches daily. “

What can we glean from this? First, that Bing has greatly benefited from its launch first-debug later strategy, which Google failed to establish as a pioneer in the AI chat field. Safe to say that Google lost ground when it delayed its Bard launch over Bing’s ChatGPT. 

And second, that Bing’s on the right track in reinventing the search experience. With more than a month of beta testing (and a few weeks of open testing for everyone who signed up for their waitlist), we can now take a better look at how Bing’s Chat AI performs.

How to Access Bing’s AI Chatbot

You’ll find Bing’s AI Chatbot as a new feature on their search bar. It’s under the “Let’s chat” button or the “Chat” button at the bottom of the search box. You can also click the “Chat” option on the Bing homepage.

Doing so will bring you to the chatbot page. Here, you’ll see that it’s quite different from your typical search bar–and more like chatting with another person in something like Google Teams or Slack.)

I’ve been testing it out myself for the last two weeks, and I consider it to be a significant improvement over the functionality and user experience of ChatGPT. 

How Does Bing’s AI Chatbot Respond?

The ability to access the internet and current data is a significant improvement for New Bing. And it takes this a step further by including sources and footnotes in search results, which addresses one key issue when you use ChatGPT.

It’s also content-aware, much like ChatGPT. It will remember your previous searches, so you can ask follow-up questions for more information on your topic of interest, without having to start over. However, there is a limit of up to 2000 characters per question.

New Bing also includes chat prompts for other search options. When users select a prompt, such as “What is the meaning of SEO? “, it also provides some follow-up questions, such as “What is online reputation management.” This can lead to a more engaging conversation experience that scrolls to a different area of the website.

After testing New Bing over the last few days, I’m finding that the results are pretty helpful when choosing a prompt after searching.

Recent Updates with Bing’s AI Chatbot

Following the weeks since its initial launch, Microsoft has introduced several updates to the AI chatbot. 

One of them is that it now offers replies in three different tones, in response to some of the earliest criticisms of the chatbot. 

The default is set to “Balanced,” which generally creates neutral responses that do not take sides on a specific topic. Other options are “Creative,” which generates more playful and original responses, and “Precise,” which generates the most concise and factual responses. 

Microsoft has also given another feature: the ability to generate images (which, at the time of writing, is currently a work in progress). Built on the DALL·E model, it allows users to generate images by typing the prompt “create an image,” followed by your instructions. 

Lastly, the search function on the chatbot itself is still limited to only 15 queries per session, and 150 queries per day. You can keep track of how many you have left in each topic at the bottom-right of the most recent response Bing provides:

How Does Bing Chat AI Compare to Google Bard? 

Building from the substantial amount of search behavior with ChatGPT, Bing comes out strong, showing a new paradigm of what users can gain from using a search engine.

At present, it also presents a new method of search that isn’t possible on Google, which means it can take some potential traffic away from Google–though that would only make a small dent in Google’s search volume.

And this isn’t to say that Google won’t contend with Bing. Google has long been the gold standard when it comes to finding information online. Its algorithm is sophisticated and efficient, able to sift quickly through vast amounts of data to provide relevant results in a matter of seconds. 

At the time of writing, Google has just opened up its waitlist for Bard–but has yet to share anything substantial about its AI chat results. All we’ve seen so far is a very basic walk-through of Bard, and it doesn’t show much. 

The one interesting thing that we do know is that Google wants Bard to improve on the Knowledge Graph Cards you often see in their SERPS, particularly when asking questions that have simple answers. 

They’ve also stated that Bard’s responses are designed to answer NORA questions – queries with No One Right Answer. This is different from the approach being used by New Bing. You can check out a preview of how this works on Brodie Clark’s Twitter thread.

Comparing the two at face value, I think that the approach used by Bing centers on publishers, whereas Google centers the content itself. But then again, as these two tools are still under development, we’ll just have to see how far they go with their implementation.

Can Bing Chatbot AI Take Over?

When it comes to the question of whether Bing AI Chat can take over Google Bard, there are several factors to consider.

The most important is this: Google may not develop Bard in the same direction that Bing’s AI is going. It’s entirely possible that both AIs will end up providing completely different search functions. And if they do, then it is no use comparing the two.

But we can evaluate them from a tech standpoint, since both Bing Chat AI and Google Bard will be chatbot technologies that use artificial intelligence to interact with users and provide information or assistance. So here are some points to consider:

• User Experience: The success of any chatbot is greatly influenced by its user experience. A chatbot is more likely to be effective if it is simple to use, offers reliable information, and can comprehend user queries. In terms of user experience, Google has a long history and a more well-established track record of excellence. Bing Chat AI is constantly developing, though, so it might be able to catch up in terms of user experience.
• Features and capabilities: Each chatbot’s features and capabilities should be taken into account. Google Bard is currently under development to “distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats,” and may be compatible with other Google products, like Maps and Search. Google Bard reportedly also has a “Google It” button which is used to fact check the bot’s sources. In comparison, Bing Chat AI is likely not compatible with Microsoft’s other products, so may not have as many features and functionalities as Google Bard might have.
• Market share: Finally, market share is another factor to consider. Google is the dominant search engine, and Google Bard will be built into its search functions. This gives Google Bard a significant advantage in terms of visibility and accessibility. However, Bing Chat AI is also backed by a major tech company and has the potential to grow its market share over time.

It’s hard to say definitively whether Bing’s chatbot AI will eventually overtake Google Bard in terms of market share or popularity. However, one thing is certain—chatbots are becoming increasingly popular in search, and are already being used by some major companies like Amazon and Microsoft. 

As more companies begin integrating them into their customer service systems, they will likely become even more commonplace in the near future.

What Can We Learn From Bing’s Chatbot?

Bing is the first search engine to showcase what AI-powered features–such as a chatbot function–could mean for search. This means that it’s also the first to show just how difficult and unpredictable it is to work with new AI tools. 

Just take the beta tests with Microsoft’s Bing chatbot, which have been extensively documented by many over the past few weeks. This argument in particular is a good example of the surprises and mistakes it committed early on. 

But thanks to the open beta tests, Microsoft was able to put in additional content-generation safeguards, beefing up OpenAI’s own built-in restrictions. And as Microsoft learns its lessons, I’m sure that the rest of the Search Engine industry is following along.

Microsoft’s new AI also presents a novel way to search. It opens a new era of interacting with information online because it’s conversational AI that taps into both a huge search database and powerful AI language models.

That said, there is still the looming risk of potentially serious consequences–AI models, even one as complex and as tested as Bing’s chatbot, may not be able to reliably sort fact from fiction. And we’ve yet to see any AI who can do so. Bard, fueled by Google’s extensive resources and development, also presented misinformation on the day of its big reveal. 

Even so, there is now an open AI arms race amongst just about every Big Tech company. Meta just announced its intent to focus on generative AI, while Snapchat announced that it has an ongoing experiment with OpenAI, the same firm that Microsoft is working with for its AI-powered chatbot.

While I am interested to see where this takes us, I fear that the speed at which these companies are going might result in “experimental” features that are ultimately less credible or functional than standard search. 

So, as fascinating as these tools are, I’d have to caution users on how they take in and interact with the information these conversational AIs provide.

Key Takeaway

Bing Chat AI’s early release has the potential to change the search landscape and SEO as we know it. It even has the potential to catch up to tech giants in terms of user experience, features, and integration capabilities. 

But when it comes to Google Bard vs. Bing AI, the success of each chatbot will ultimately come down to how well it meets the needs of its users and how effectively it can differentiate itself in the market. 

While it had a good start, the outcome is still uncertain as Google Bard is yet to be released to the public. We can, however, glean some very interesting insights as to how AI can transform search from Bing AI’s beta testing to its initial release.

Only time will tell if Bing Chatbot AI will be able to successfully compete with its rivals, but there’s no denying that its capabilities make it a tool worth investigating!

The post Can Bing Chat AI Take Over Google Bard? appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Just when we thought that we could use everything AI to write all of our content, developers went and dropped AI writing detectors on us, too.

The creators of ChatGPT themselves released one just a few weeks ago, amidst new Google statements and updates on the whole issue of generative AI and content. 

It’s looking hard out there for these writing tools—but can engineers really develop a way to detect whether text has been by AI writers and conversational chatbots? Can Google detect AI-generated content? And, should you be worried about penalization if you’ve been using these tools yourself?

Let’s get into what this all means for your content production, and what you can do to avoid getting hit by Google’s algorithm. 

Is AI Content Bad for SEO?

Yes, AI-written content can be bad for your SEO. 

Google has said multiple times in the past that purely AI-written content goes against its guidelines. We’ll get into why and how it can be a problem for you later on.

Google also has a long, long history of using and developing AI tech. So, it’s safe to say that they do have ways to tell if your articles are written by an AI tool. 

Why AI-Generated Content Goes Against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

Is using AI assistance in writing explicitly prohibited by Google’s Webmaster Guidelines? No. But, there are guidelines that strongly condemn ‘spammy automatically-generated content.’ Specifically, they call out any article written by AI for the “primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results,” which they state is a violation of our spam policies.

This is a mistake you can commit if you’re trying to churn out the most content simply to climb the ranks as fast as possible. 

So, it’s not that AI-generated content is, by default, something that Google will punish you for. But, if you’re just mass publishing content using AI, then it may ultimately hurt your rankings, rather than help. 

Danny Sullivan—a renowned SEO expert and representative of Google—made this clear in a past statement:

“We haven’t said AI content is bad. We’ve said, pretty clearly, content written primarily for search engines rather than humans is the issue. That’s what we’re focused on. If someone fires up 100 humans to write content just to rank, or fires up a spinner, or a AI, same issue…”

How Can Google Detect AI Content?

To understand how Google can detect AI content, it’s important to understand how AI writing tools work.

Jasper, ChatGPT, and other similar AI use a process called Natural Language Generation (NLG) to generate copies and responses. NLG uses algorithms, trained on a large corpus of data, to generate human-like text. 

Google on the other hand can use machine learning algorithms to learn the different signals in content—such as text structure, grammar, and syntax in the text. This will help it detect patterns in the content that are indicative of AI generative writing. 

In short, if it falls within a structure that is noticed by the algorithm, Google can flag it.

This is entirely possible because AI writing is missing the natural variation, nuance, and complexity found in human writing. Plus, AI writing tends to be repetitive, and the facts and data they present may also be outdated or misinformative. 

So, Can Google Detect AI Content?

Yes, even if it’s been run through your AI tools a couple of times. It can possibly even detect it if it reads naturally.

However, even if Google recognizes some of your content being AI-generated, it may not affect your rankings, so long as the content is primarily designed to be helpful, useful, and valuable for users. That means, your AI-written content may only be penalized if Google feels that you’re using it simply to manipulate your rankings. 

That’s not to say that Google’s algorithm is 100% accurate, though. When asked in an interview if Google was able to automatically detect the difference between human and AI content, Google’s John Mueller responded “I can’t claim that. However, if the web spam team sees anything that is automatically generated, they will take action.” 

So, it’s clear that there is no foolproof way of detecting AI-generated content, at least not yet. As AI technology and machine learning continue to develop, it’s safe to say that they will develop a highly reliable way to detect and penalize it.

Other AI Writing Detectors

As I mentioned earlier, there are several AI detection tools out there that can catch AI-generated content. 

The one developed by Open AI, which they’re temporarily calling “AI Text Classifier,” is just the latest in the long line of tools you can use. Originality AI is a premium tool that charges you 0.1 cents per credit and checks your content for both originality and AI. Another option is AI Content Detector from Writer, which you can use for free—though only for 1,500 characters at a time.  

I tried the free tools myself. I first asked ChatGPT to write me an article:

Then, I put it into the AI detector tools, without any edits:

Here’s what AI Content Detector had to say:

So, these tools seem pretty reliable in finding purely AI-written content.

Should You Stop Using AI for Your Content?

“I’m using an AI writing tool, should I be worried?”

A lot of people are asking this question now. After all, with the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022, and the explosion of AI software adoption, we all saw the incredible capabilities of AI. Suddenly, we all had free access to a tool that could replace a lot of the legwork and money that usually goes into content writing. 

How could we not use this technology in our SEO strategies, when it was so good? 

And now, months later, many are wondering if their AI-written content puts them in danger of a Google penalty. 

So, should you be worried if you used an AI writing tool for your site? The answer is—it depends. 

The situation as I see it is this: when you use things like ChatGPT to make content, you either publish it as is, or edit it before doing so. 

The first puts you in a bad position because you’re putting out bad content. And like I mentioned earlier, it may be downgraded by Google because it’s low-quality content that doesn’t provide a helpful, valuable experience for readers.

Why? Because tools like this only scrape and remake content that was fed to them. They do not provide anything novel, since you’re not adding your expertise, your thoughts, or your interpretations to the content. When you take the content they spit out and post it without a second thought, you’re essentially doing black hat SEO, spamming users with useless posts with the intent of boosting your rankings.

So the name of the game now is knowing how to use these tools efficiently, while still adding quality (and a human touch) to your content. Always offer that expertise to it that makes it valuable to readers.

How Does This Affect AI-Generated Content?

You might still be skeptical, and feel safer if you’re writing content purely without AI.

However, what you should be worried about is choosing the best content writing tools, and making sure to use them properly. After all, given how much time and money you can save with this in your toolbox, it’s worth taking the risk—with a few guidelines set in place.

Google even supports this (in a way), in their updated page on AI-generated content:

On the same page, they also said this: “This said, it’s important to recognize that not all use of automation, including AI generation, is spam. Automation has long been used to generate helpful content […] AI has the ability to power new levels of expression and creativity, and to serve as a critical tool to help people create great content for the web.

This is in line with how we’ve always thought about empowering people with new technologies. We’ll continue taking this responsible approach, while also maintaining a high bar for information quality and the overall helpfulness of content on Search.”

So no, you don’t have to stop using your tools. But you might have to revisit how you’ve been using them.

For starters, I suggest working with the right team. If the people using them are complete novices, then it might do your content more harm than good. 

Why? Because if they don’t know how to use these tools properly, then they might end up producing low-quality content that will, at best, be ignored by users (and at worst, get penalized by Google). Either way, the result is something you need to avoid.

Plus, if they keep churning out that kind of content on your site, you’re probably going to see a dip in your traffic and engagement.

On the other hand, if you’re able to train them to use these tools in such a way that creates great content for your audience with less time and effort spent, then it will become an extremely valuable asset for your site. In the right hands, it’s a powerful thing. 

So if you’re going to use an AI writing tool, invest some time in learning how to use them, and figure out what you should avoid doing with your content creation. 

What to Do When Using AI for Content Creation

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Check the writing style, tone, flow, and grammar of the generated content. Nothing turns off a reader more than something that is poorly written—or sounds odd.
• Use the tool to generate the bulk of the text. You could start with an outline, and ask for a paragraph or two for each point. This will make it easier for you to target as many relevant talking points as possible with less effort on your end.
• Provide clear guidelines. Without proper instructions, AI tools can struggle to generate quality content. If you don’t do this, you’ll probably waste time trying to re-generate the content you’re looking for. 
• Understand what prompts you can use. AI tools are programmed to respond a certain way to prompts, which can help you generate content in different formats, or for a dedicated focus. Knowing what prompts to use in a given situation can help cut down the time you spend trying to create the right content with your tools.
• Your content should be relevant and informative. Don’t just push out articles and blogs for the sake of it. If it isn’t relative and informative, it has little to no value for any reader. 
• Make sure to add your own take on the content—add in your expertise, your thoughts, and your comments on the matter. This human touch not only displays your knowledge of the topic but also transforms the content into something that will be uniquely yours. 

What to Avoid When Using AI for Content Creation

And here’s what to avoid doing completely with your tools: 

• Relying completely on AI for your content. As I said earlier, doing this will do you more harm than good, especially since the tools (and Google’s algorithm) can sniff out purely AI-written content. 
• Substituting AI-generated content for human creativity. Use these tools to cut down on writing time so you and your team can invest in something more valuable—your human creativity, insight, and expertise. Always insert that into your writing.
• Using AI for complicated, niche topics. Depending on your industry, you might not always be able to use it for your content. While AI is pretty sophisticated in what it can answer, it often cannot answer questions that require inference, a nuanced understanding of language, or a deeper understanding of multiple topics. 
• Keyword stuffing. This is an SEO content best practice as old as time. When you stuff your writing full of keywords, it will make your work sound spammy, and may even get you penalized by Google for being spam content.
• Forgetting to proofread and fact-check. Don’t expect AI to be perfect. Always proofread and fact-check. Any data, statistics, or facts given by your tool should be checked for accuracy. 

Conclusion

Can Google detect AI-generated content? The answer is yes, but that doesn’t mean that you have to stop using it in your SEO. 

Though several AI writing detectors are out there—many of which are free to use—it’s clear to me that AI-generated content won’t be going away anytime soon. In fact, there are several ways for it to be used ethically for SEO. 

With the proper guidelines, you can add AI writing tools as a valuable addition to your content creation arsenal, without fear of penalization.

The post AI Bust: Can Google Detect AI Generated Content? appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

AI is no longer limited to science fiction, and has gone way beyond what conversational AI like Alexa and Siri are capable of. In fact, AI tools are now the frontier of every digital industry–including, of course, SEO. 

But aren’t these AIs slowly taking over your job as an SEO Specialist? Trained to process massive amounts of data on a scale and level of accuracy that simply can’t be achieved by humans, many in the field are beginning to feel threatened. 

You, as an SEO Specialist, should NEVER see AI tools as a threat to you. Instead, consider them as effective means to help step up your game in this field.

AI and SEO?

The concept of AI in SEO is not new. After all, we all know Google uses it’s own AI bots to scrape, scan, and rank millions of websites per day.

How does Google deal with AI in SEO?

The research project “Google Brain,” plus the acquisition of the AI specialist Deepmind back in 2014, the announcement of an “AI First” approach in 2016 by CEO Sundar Pichai, their most recent announcement of their own AI chatbot “Bard”–it’s very clear that this technology is something that will shape all areas of Google search. 

And whatever Google deals with, SEO follows. AI and machine learning are becoming increasingly influential in our strategies today. We can expect AI to be embedded in how queries are understood, and how answers will be presented to users. It’s already being done by the likes of Bing AI.

The State of AI in the SEO industry

What’s different now is that there are now a plethora of technologies–the newly popular ChatGPT included, that are at the disposal of SEO Specialists today. And, their capabilities and features are constantly evolving and improving.

Their ability to extract insights from data at scale makes it perfect for SEO. Plus, many tools specialize in either the on page, off page, or technical aspects of SEO. 

How is AI Being Used in the SEO Industry?

While generating and optimizing content is the most popular use of AI in SEO, there are several other areas that it has influence, including:

• Algorithm changes and updates. Major search engines are integrating (or have already integrated) elements of AI and machine learning into their algorithms. This will help refine their ability to provide relevant, authoritative search results; and better understand user intent in ambiguous queries. 
• GPT-3 and AI-based writing. ChatGPT and other similarly built AI copywriting tools will be used to tackle repetitive writing jobs. Content is the heart of any SEO strategy, and certain machine learning algorithms are becoming increasingly proficient at generating human-like writing at scale. 
• Data analytics, predictive models and recommendation tools. AI can analyze tons of data at once, allowing you to size up your competition, do your keyword research, rate the technical aspects of your website, and much more in much less time. These tools can even recommend specific changes to your site to see better results. 
• Task automation. Repetitive tasks, like product write-ups, meta descriptions, and more, can be automated with the right tools. This function is often found in the same AI writing and copywriting tools mentioned earlier. This is particularly useful if the tasks follow a specific and replicable formula.

Right. SEO Specialists nowadays take advantage of the AI tools they can use to create effective website contents, better user experience, gather data, and even analyze the data gathered. In short, AI potentially equals increased productivity, saved time, and money for your SEO. 

But of course, such advantages are only possible when you know what to change, what to use, and what to optimize for your SEO. Which begs the question: what can you do with the right AI tools? Let’s see how AI is affecting SEO exactly:

Better Content Creation

Content creation for your website indeed takes time. Filtering themes and relevant search results manually can take up entire days of your time. But, thanks to AI, it will shorten your time on brainstorming which relevant content you should focus on for your website.

With AI tools that can analyze and collect massive data for you, you can easily determine which relevant queries and content your audience is searching for. 

It is a must nowadays to use AI tools to determine the market’s behavior, analyze how audiences behave, perform keyword research, or do site audits in order to come up with the best theme and content for your audiences and, of course, to rank in the first page of SERPs.

Here are some of the AI writing tools you can use for content creation:

Content Creation using Jasper AI

For content writing purposes, one of the best tools to use nowadays Jasper AI. It is an AI copywriting tool that can help you create unique content for your website. Unique generated content from an AI may seem impossible since most of these tools we know usually scrape content from different sources online, right? 

Jasper AI team confirmed that this particular tool is trained to “almost always generate unique content.” It is also capable of pattern recognition, which allows it to write similar but not replicated content based on the template and information you give it. 

One of the top features of this AI tool which I find helpful for SEO is the One-Shot Landing Page. This generates content for your landing pages, starting from H1 to H3 and with sample paragraphs you can use. You can also change the tone of voice depending on the article you are writing.

But of course, as an SEO Specialist, we need to make sure to add a human touch to whatever content it generates. That means editing, adding valuable and relevant details, and checking for plagiarism. This last step I recommend for any AI-written content, whether it comes from Jasper or another AI writing tool. That human touch not only makes sure it’s SEO-friendly–but that it’s also factual, helpful, and valuable to readers. 

Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant

One of the tools I recommend when checking the quality of the contents you wish to publish is Semrush. This tool has a SEO Writing Assistant that you can use to check which parts of your contents need improvement, if it is easy to read, and if it has a high quality SEO-friendly content.

This AI tool grades the readability, SEO quality, originality, and the tone of voice of your content–and it provides recommendations on how to improve them. It can also suggest which keywords to include to optimize and make your content relevant to the topic you are writing about.

What I like most about this tool is that you can make it as an extension or add-on to your WordPress, Google Docs, and MS Word to easily navigate its features without changing windows or tabs.

With this AI tool, you can improve the overall quality of your work, giving it a better chance at ranking on the SERPs, and reaching your audience.

But keep in mind that it is an AI “assistant” tool–take every recommendation that it makes with a grain of salt. As an SEO Specialist, you should see it as more of a guide towards creating great content, and not simply something to copy and paste onto your articles. 

AI-Powered SEO Strategies

Can AI tools help you create an effective strategy for your SEO? The short answer is yes, it absolutely can. 

AI can help you set up an effective strategy for your website and help you rank at the top of search engines. Using powerful and proper AI tools for your website can enhance your team’s productivity, and help you reach SEO goals in a shorter time frame.

You can also use your AI tools to help you determine what you should improve for your website, from your technical SEO, to your off-page strategy, to your content gaps. All this can help attract more people to your website. 

One of the best AI-powered strategic moves you can do is doing a competitive analysis using your AI tools.

By this, you can easily determine how your competitors are ranking in the SERPs, what keywords they’re using, and what content they’re creating. Some tools can even analyze the outlines they use, how much website traffic they’re attracting, and more. 

All this data can reveal where you can compete, and what these competitors are missing in their site. These unnoticeable weaknesses are something you can turn into your strength by making the right additions and optimizations to your website. 

From this, I recommend using these AI tools for their insights. Then, use that to create a roadmap, so you can track your goals and productivity in each AI-powered task your team does. 

Remember, these tools can present some pretty powerful data–but you will know how to best leverage it to your advantage. So it’s still important to look over that data and consider where it can be used. 

Improved User Experience

User experience (UX) is vital to your ranking so you need to make sure that your website is appealing 24/7 aside from its basic functionalities. 

Yes, even user experience can now be analyzed by AI. Much like Google’s own crawlerbots, AI can scan your site, and determine if the users are satisfied with the website functionalities and appearance. If not, then for sure, your content will rank down in Google.

To determine which factors you need to consider regarding your website’s UX, there are powerful AI tools to help you with it. 

You can start with checking your website speed by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights. With this tool, you can determine both mobile and desktop’s performance and other onsite speed factors for your website, based on data collected over a 30-day period.

AI can improve your website’s UI/UX which is vital to rank on the first page of SERPs. You should optimize AI tools to quickly respond to errors that your audiences might encounter on your website or just easily avoid these inappropriate UX factors on your website that might make you rank down on Google.

Most importantly, these AI tools can help you create the best UX for your audiences and to increase website traffic to make your pages rank on the first page of Google.

Greater Ranking Results

Several tools also use predictive AI–a method of data analysis that finds patterns that might predict future behavior. In simpler terms, these tools forecast what kind of changes you should expect in performance. 

With this, you can anticipate how your current strategy performs in the SERPS, and what changes you might need to make to weather (or take advantage of) jumps in SERPs.

Tools like SERanking predictive AI capabilities, through their traffic and search visibility forecasts. These tools can be used for individual pages, as well as for your entire website.

Here, you can check if your traffic is growing at a reasonable rate for your industry or niche. If it is, then that’s a great sign that your current strategy is paying off–so continue what you’re doing, or strengthen your efforts to reap the benefits.

If you’re seeing some stagnation or a decline, then this is a warning sign that your strategy needs revisiting. I recommend auditing your keywords, competitors, and content. Find what’s lacking, and optimize content and assets that are not pulling their weight. You can also use this tool to learn what topics and channels should be used less in the future.

Impact of AI to SEO

The days of tedious data analysis, slugging through research, and waiting for results are coming to an end. AI tools are changing the market–and offering increased relevance and visibility, and greater efficiency than ever before. 

Previously unnoticed gaps in your SEO can be identified and fixed faster than ever. More complex, more ambitious strategies are now entirely possible for SEO as well. Heavy tasks like content development, conversion and usability optimization can be handled by AI–reliably and at scale.

But as SEO professionals level up with the use of AI, the pace of the industry is sure to speed up as well. Even today we see AI in SEO increasingly dominating the market, though this technology is, arguably, still in the early stages of what they could achieve.

Utilizing AI in Your SEO Efforts

Any SEO Specialist that has been in the field for several years now noticed that any AI updates never affected SEO in a negative way. As user intent nowadays gets refined, AI algorithms keep up with the search engine results—it should go the same way with us SEO Specialists. We should keep up with the up-to-date AI tools and practices so we can take advantage and make it as an edge against competitors. So we should not be afraid of AI taking over SEO.

Though it will change how SEO goes. AI can perform SEO tasks but the results from the tasks they have done cannot always be accurate according to our SEO needs. As I have mentioned, it should be seen as an assistance because you are the specialist and they are just tools to help you get better results in this field.

Key Takeaway

AI will change SEO as we know it. From optimization to writing to building sites, it will significantly impact every aspect of the job. 

As AI continues to develop, SEO will have to adapt. Us in the field have to consider adopting the best tools to stay ahead of the curve, and supercharge our SEO strategies. Soon enough the competition will be tighter. So adopting sooner rather than later will give you a long-term advantage against your competitors.

The post The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Technology to SEO appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Search engines, as we know them, are about to move into a whole new era with artificial intelligence chatbots. 

We saw it first with ChatGPT and its record-breaking adoption and how it opened up a wealth of new opportunities in the field of generative AI. We saw it again with Microsoft’s move toward an AI-powered search setup.

And now, with the upcoming launch of Bard, Google’s entry into the artificial intelligence chatbot race, the conflict between AI chatbots have already begun. 

We can see it now, in real-time: companies are rapidly expediting their research and development on how they can augment AI in hopes of further improving their current search engines and platforms.

In this article, I will be discussing where we are currently in the ‘AI war’. I will also be comparing the recently launched ‘Microsoft AI-powered Bing’ to Google’s AI-integrated offering – ‘Bard’.

State of Artificial Intelligence Chatbots

Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are a fascinating tool, trained to have human-like conversations using a process called natural language processing (NLP). 

This allows the chatbot to both interpret and respond with human language naturally—which enables them to understand language and provide responses based on existing data. And, they can be trained to do just about anything. 

There are, in fact, various AI chatbots that exist today that you are probably using daily, the best examples being Apple ecosystem’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. 

AI chatbots are the greatest proof of the evolution of artificial intelligence and machine learning throughout the years. 

And its use cases keep on growing—and we’ve all recently seen one gain massive popularity: which is to answer specific questions. And, a great example of this is ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI.From its launch in November 2022 up to writing this article in February 2023, it was reported that it reached the 100 million active users milestone. Its rise in popularity has pushed companies like Microsoft and Google in developing their own AI-powered chatbots.

Now back in January 2023, Microsoft announced their collaboration with OpenAI that will allow their own search engine ‘Bing’ to have capabilities and features like what ChatGPT offers to their users, and they will be launching it by March 2023.

And a few weeks later, Google directly responded by announcing that they, too, were currently developing their own “experimental conversational AI feature” called ‘Bard.’ This one was initially released in February 2023 to testers, with no set date for a public release.

Microsoft vs. Google: Who has the better AI Chatbot?

Since AI chatbots seek to give answers or solutions to their users, it makes sense that both Google and Microsoft (Bing) are making moves to bring features of it to further improve their current search engines.

But what about ChatGPT? Well, it wouldn’t make sense to compare this to the other two. One, because it finished training in 2022 (which means its information is not up to date). Two, because ChatGPT is unable to crawl the web.

Now here are some of the important information in Google’s and Microsoft’s AI Chatbots so far:

Microsoft Bing:

Microsoft started investing with OpenAI way back in 2019, and since then Microsoft has moved fast in bringing in the artificial intelligence chatbot in Bing. 

Just last month, Microsoft opened the new AI-integrated Bing search in a limited preview for users to test, and the feedback from it was overwhelmingly positive—71% of the users gave it a thumbs-up.

However, despite the good words and praises, there were some issues that came up during the testing, especially for long chat sessions ranging from 15 questions and up. Some users said that Bing became repetitive and gave unhelpful responses to their prompts.

Microsoft later addressed this problem with these changes:

• The AI Chatbot will now be limited to 50 chat turns per day for every user, with just 5 chat turns per session.
• When a user reaches the 5 chat turns in a session they will be prompted to start a new topic, and the context of the conversation with the chatbot will be cleared. This is to avoid the AI chatbot being confused.
• They also added a ‘broom’ icon to the left side of the search bar to manually clear the previous conversation to start a new topic.

Microsoft also introduced its new AI-powered search engine to its Bing search engine and Edge browser for mobile devices. They also added these new features to Skype.

So, we can also expect that these AI-powered capabilities will be added to the rest of Microsoft’s communication applications—like Teams—in the future.

Google Bard:

While Microsoft was agile in launching its improved AI-backed search engine, Google in comparison seems to be taking their time in developing their own AI chatbot. It was only back in January 2023 that they even announced that they would be adding a conversational AI feature to their search engine.

This announcement was made by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. These founders were brought back to Google by its CEO Sundar Pichai, after the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which posed direct competition in the world of search engines.

Since their initial announcements, we still have limited knowledge about Google Bard. None of this AI chatbot’s abilities have been revealed nor confirmed, and how it will work is a mystery. But, it does look like it will function similarly to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Here are some of the relevant (and Google-confirmed) information you might want to know:

• Bard’s conversation capabilities will be powered by a language model created by Google called ‘LaMDA’ (Language Model for Dialogue Applications)
• LaMDA was trained on a dataset called ‘Infinset’
• ‘Infiniset’ is a mix of internet content that was intentionally chosen to improve the model’s ability to engage in conversation or dialogue.
• According to LaMDA’s research paper, it is pre-trained with 1.56 trillion words of “public dialog data and web text.”

With regard to AI, Google is also planning to launch 20 new AI products this year – alongside Google Bard. This demonstrates Google’s commitment to improving its ‘search engine’ more effectively and intuitively for its users.

So Who Wins?

For probably the first time ever, Bing seems to be taking the lead against Google. By launching first, and integrating conversational style answers into their system, they’ve managed to get ahead. In fact, Bing has already opened up a waitlist and is gradually rolling it out—garnering more traffic than ever.

At the same time, Bing’s AI chatbot seems to provide more accurate answers, compared to Google’s (who gave an inaccurate answer in their promotional tweet ).

But while Bing is ahead at this early stage in the race, Google has never taken its competition lightly. They will likely figure out a way to become a significant player in the AI arena in the coming months.

What does Google Bard (and other Artificial Intelligence Chatbots) Mean for the Future of SEO?

Speaking from a Google-centric standpoint, having an AI chatbot implemented could significantly impact our SEO practices.

From the little we’ve already seen, it looks like Bard will replace the spot of the featured snippet. Much like ChatGPT, it could consolidate information from many sources, and provide a personalized answer to the user’s query. It could also provide additional insights, such as articles from the SERP, videos, and more.

For example, someone looking for a step-by-step guide on how to tie-dye a shirt would receive a guide from Bard, rather than a set of articles that may or may not have the design or style that they were looking for.

This could end up changing standard SEO practices, particularly those geared towards gaining a featured snippet. This, in turn, could shift the focus on providing more high-quality, relevant, and informative content for people looking to gain additional perspective or fact-check the answer that Bard provides.

Will Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Replace Organic Search Results?

The picture I painted in the previous sections might look bleak—but it is unlikely that Bard would completely replace all organic search results, once it is fully launched. 

After all, as powerful as they can be, AI-powered tools always have limitations and may not always provide the most accurate or comprehensive answer.

Furthermore, Google already understands that not all queries are looking for one, specific answer. Sometimes, people are looking for a variety of sources to come to their own conclusions. Take, for example, if you’re looking for different types of swimsuits for your next vacation. That variety of information and content is something that they can’t get rid of.

What I think is that these new generative AI features being added onto search engines will help users gain access to answers much quicker, as they help organize complex information and multiple viewpoints right in the featured snippet. 

So, will Bard, Bing, and other AI chatbots make us SEO professionals obsolete? I don’t think so. They’ll undoubtedly play an important role in delivering information to users, but SEO will not become obsolete.

Key Takeaway

With the rise of Bard, Bing, ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots pushed a shift in the industry of search engines and its development, and even two of the biggest pillars in the industry— Microsoft and Google—have pivoted their focus on it. 

Let this be an important reminder for us SEO practitioners that we should be able to adapt and keep up with the rapid advancement of technology to maintain our competitive edge in the industry.

Lastly, I want to emphasize that SEO and AI are not mutually exclusive. AI will continue to change the landscape of search, but it can also be used to enhance the quality and delivery of information.

The post Artificial Intelligence Chatbots: Bard, Bing, and What They Mean for SEO appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

The rise of everything AI makes it logical that there would also be dozens of AI-powered SEO copywriting tools designed to create content for your blog, social media, and website.

And why not? The amount of content you need to produce to secure that coveted first-page position on the SERPs is unprecedented in history, and there is no stopping that.

But when you rush to use these tools to meet a growing demand for content, what will you end up with? Crappy work, for sure.

So how do you meet the growing demand for creating SEO-friendly content in a more efficient way, without risking penalties from Google? Can an AI writing tool really help you here?

Well, I’ve come across Jasper AI, which markets itself as exactly that. It’s been gaining traction as a powerful force in helping writers create SEO-friendly content quickly and easily.

Let’s take a close look at its features, and most importantly how it’s going to affect your SEO.

What Is Jasper AI?

Jasper AI is a content creation tool that was created for content creators, writers, and marketers. It even claims to help you, quote, “create content 5x faster with artificial intelligence.” What’s more, this AI bot apparently is capable of generating, “original, creative content.”

Sounds pretty far-fetched–after all, doesn’t AI just rehash data and information its developers feed it? Well, here’s what Jasper’s team has to say about it:

“Jasper doesn’t scrape URLs but instead generates content from pieces of words previously recognized on the internet.”

“[…]He is trained on a trillion data points that use pattern recognition and not previously written sentences or phrases. If he sees something similar, he does not write the same thing again. Jasper is trained to detect patterns and phrases that people have already written, so the styling is similar, and then optimize your output to match those patterns but not replicate them.“

It also has a built-in natural language processing (NLP) feature that analyzes the user’s search intent in order to create tailored content that can rank higher in search engine results pages.

In addition to optimizing existing content for SEO purposes, Jasper AI can also be used as an editorial assistant when creating new pieces from scratch.

What Can Jasper AI Do?

Users can access several different templates, which can help streamline your content. Some of Jasper AI’s templates that I find helpful in terms of SEO are:

• SEO – Blog Posts
• SEO – Homepage
• SEO – Product Page
• SEO – Services Page

All of these templates help you write SEO-optimized title tags and meta descriptions that can help your blog posts, homepage, product page, and services page rank well in Google.

Another template that is also considered helpful for SEO is its One-Shot Landing Page, which can generate a full landing page with headings or H1, H2, and H3, elements that Google highly considers for your web page to rank in the search results.

So I tried the One-Shot Landing Page Template to see how Jasper AI fares in generating H1, H2, and H3 for landing pages. While some content writers might find this template will come in handy, it’s best that you don’t completely rely on letting any AI tool do the heavy lifting when writing content.

With Google still against spammy, low-quality content, it’s critical to still have humans edit and fact-check anything this tool creates for you.

How Can Jasper AI Help With Content Creation?

Simply put, it helps generate content that resonates with your target readers. Because of its natural language processing (NLP) feature, it understands human language. Meaning, it can suggest content that reads as if it was written by an actual human–and for humans.

Writing, as we know, is one of the most difficult aspects of SEO. You need a lot of creativity and skill to churn out content. You’ll also need to do plenty of research into anything you write about. It’s crucial if you want to hit all the topics in your niche, and do so in a way that is enticing and engaging to your audience.

Essentially, this tool will always come in handy in overcoming writer’s block, speeding up the more tedious parts of writing, and leveraging ideas for your content.

What you should be taking note of if you’re new to SEO and you’re going to use this tool is this: it can help make your writing more efficient. With all the functionalities that come with the platform, it’s common sense that you make the most of it to your advantage, especially in terms of SEO.

Utilizing Jasper AI: Some Points To Take Note Of

I’ve found that, while AI-powered tools are pretty useful, it’s a good idea to follow a plan when using them. Doing so can make sure the content it generates is both high-quality and the best fit for your website.

Here are a few things I recommend you do when using Jasper AI:

• Do your keyword research beforehand

Any self-respecting SEO specialist knows the importance of keyword research for a successful SEO strategy. Look for search terms or keywords your readers will most likely use when they research online. Keyword research not only gives you a better understanding of your readers but also gives you better insight when creating your outline.

Your keywords should not only be limited to one term or word. It’s also recommended to add long-tail keywords and questions in your keywords list for your content creation.

• Utilize the template for generating title and meta description

This is one of the most helpful templates in the tool. They say that coming up with a title or meta description for your content can be quite daunting to do, especially if you have written long-form content.

When you’ve got a title and meta description that clearly describes what you’ve just written–and hits all the right notes to entice the reader–you can expect more people to click on your article.

While click-through rate isn’t technically a ranking factor (a hotly contested topic almost as long as I’ve practiced SEO), it does help with organic traffic and rankings, which is a good thing! It’s why I also wrote a guide on how to raise your organic CTR.

• Proofread and edit your work

What I also need you to take note of is that even if you use Jasper, you still need to edit and proofread your work. Though the tool claims to generate original content that won’t get flagged for plagiarism, it doesn’t hurt to be careful. If you will completely rely on Jasper AI doing the writing work for you, it might do your content – more harm than good.

Going over it before publishing is also a great time to make some tweaks, add some flair, and insert some unique insights into your content. The last part is important–adding some of your expertise on the given topic is something I believe helps you rank for Google’s helpful content update.

How Does Jasper AI Affect SEO?

Content writing is a central pillar for SEO, making well-written, rank-able content one of the most important tasks in any SEO strategy.

AI tools, like Jasper, are geared towards making this process a whole lot faster and easier for us in the industry. And, it does so in many aspects–from creating outlines to providing whole paragraphs.

Since AI tools can process data at scale and use a number of methods to generate text (including deep learning, sentiment analysis, and NLP), they can also guide you towards content that is highly relevant to your audience’s needs.

That said, there is a lot of trepidation about using AI writing tools. After all, isn’t it against Google’s guidelines?

Google’s Danny Sullivan said this about AI:

“We haven’t said AI content is bad. We’ve said, pretty clearly, content written primarily for search engines rather than humans is the issue. That’s what we’re focused on. If someone fires up 100 humans to write content just to rank, or fires up a spinner, or an AI, same issue…”

In Google’s Search Essentials, AI isn’t directly mentioned either. But, it does warn against using “spammy automatically-generated content,” which is why it’s best that you use any AI writing tool out there with a grain of salt.

Key Takeaway

With all these features combined together in one single platform, Jasper AI can be a pretty powerful SEO copywriting tool to add to your toolbox.

Whether you’re looking for ways to optimize existing pieces or starting from scratch with new material; whether you need help finding relevant keywords or just want an extra pair of eyes on your work; Jasper AI has the potential to make that task much easier for you.

But, always do what any self-respecting content writer does best: edit your work.

The post How Jasper AI Fares As SEO Copywriting Tool appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Zero Traffic from Google—that is what more than 50% of online content gets everyday. Ahrefs found this out last 2020.

And yet, countless websites continue to put them out regularly—a problem made even worse with all the AI-powered content tools out there. The result is an endless flood of low-quality blogs and posts that are, ultimately, not useful for anyone who reads them. 

So, what did Google do in response? They put out another addition to their algorithm, called the “Helpful Content Update.” Their goal with this one was to help make sure that valuable content that actually helps their users (a.k.a., people-first content) would be able to rank. 

Much like with every update, SEO professionals like you and I need to revisit our strategies to stay ahead of the game. In this article, I will show you some tactics I use to write content for people first, while maintaining good SEO practices. 

What We Know About Google’s Helpful Content Update

The Helpful Content Update algorithm update by Google was designed to improve user experience by putting high-quality content written for people higher up in the SERPs. 

Here’s how Google put it in their own words: 

“The system generates a site-wide signal that we consider among many other signals for ranking web pages. Our systems automatically identify content that seems to have little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful to those doing searches.

Any content—not just unhelpful content—on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that’s better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.”

While this update was first announced back in September 2022, it has now progressed into a global update, impacting all languages. Google also announced that the system will continue to publish new signals over the coming months, helping their site identify more content created primarily for search engines versus people.

What does this mean for your website? Well, there are a lot of changes that others have documented in the last few months, which I summarize for you here: 

• Purely AI-generated content is considered spam, and Google will be using its machine learning algorithm to detect it.
• Content made for clicks (i.e., ad monetization) won’t work anymore. 
• There may be no manual penalties, but sites have experienced losing organic visibility. 
• It seems to affect the overall site performance, rather than hitting specific pages—and Google won’t be telling you which pieces of your content it has deemed as not useful.

Google’s Danny Sullivan also talked about this update possibly working in connection with future updates:

So, like Hummingbird, this update may become fundamental to ranking algorithms—which means that its exact effects could be only observed over the next few years.

Even so, it already puts a stronger emphasis on your content. Writing with a “search engine first” approach should no longer be your angle. 

After all, Google is, primarily, a space for users to learn. So, it makes sense that they’re making no room for unhelpful content.

While this update will undoubtedly be more damaging for poor-quality sites, it also presents an opportunity for well-maintained sites to take a second look at their content strategy. 

How Does Google Evaluate my Content in this New Update?

Google’s complete guidelines on creating helpful, reliable, and people-first content can easily be found on Google Search Central. But, I’ve gone through the list and summarized it into the five most important criteria:

1. Content and quality: Does your content have original, substantial information? Does it avoid copying and rewriting existing content? And, does it provide value, compared to others in the search results?
2. Expertise: Does your content demonstrate your expertise, as well as clear sourcing of supporting evidence? Is it factual? Is it written by someone who knows the topic well?
3. Presentation and production: Is the content written well, free of any spelling or stylistic issues? Does it avoid excessive ads or marketing? Does it display well on mobile devices?
4. People-first approach: Does the content have a clear purpose or focus? Does it meet that purpose or focus? Does it provide useful information  that helps create a a satisfying experience for the reader?
5. Avoidance of search engine-first content: Was the content written with the reader in mind first, rather than search engine rankings? Does it avoid manipulation of search algorithms (such as through extensive automation, summarizing others’ content without adding value, etc.)?

How to Optimize Your Content—and Make it More “Helpful”

With this update, we have to start thinking about our content holistically, rather than just trying to gain as many clicks as possible (or maybe even a featured snippet).

To achieve this, you have two main action points to consider: improving your intent and processes, and providing high-quality content.

Let’s go over some tips I’ve come up with in the last two months to better tackle these points (and enhance your writing): 

Review Your Intent and Your Audience

Before you even start on your next blog post, you need to know who your audience is. 

Ask yourself, who are you writing for? What are their needs, and why are they asking these questions? What do they need help with?

These questions will help you tailor your content to help your target audience. Otherwise, it’s likely that whatever you write won’t be considered helpful by Google—and you won’t be able to reap the benefits from your work. 

If you’re having trouble understanding who your audience is, then take a look at your Google Analytics data, under your demographic details report. This is the best place to gain some insight into who is currently looking at your content, as well as other things they might be interested in. 

So, beyond inserting your keyword into your blog post, consider factoring both your intended audience and relevant adjacent content. 

Provide Real Expertise, Insights, and Experiences

When it comes to making helpful, valuable content, it’s a big plus if you have some first-hand expertise to add to your writing. 

Avoid writing on topics that are trending, but you know nothing about. I also highly recommend against simply regurgitating information you’ve seen in other posts. Instead, your insights and experiences with the topic should be the main focus of your writing.

Not an expert on the particular topic you’re currently drafting? That’s okay—not everyone can be one. You can still produce helpful content by doing your due diligence, diving deep into research, and sharing what you’ve learned. 

Remember, readers can see right through you if you’re faking being an expert, so avoid making false claims at all costs. 

Use AI Content Strategically

Though this update may be primarily aimed at reducing the amount of AI-generated content out there, that doesn’t mean your tools no longer have a place in your work. 

AI tools, such as the increasingly popular ChatGPT or our recently-reviewed Content Marketing Platform from SE Ranking, can still be used to improve your work and productivity. The key is to use them strategically. 

Use them to lighten your workload, and avoid depending solely on them. For example, you can use your tools to help you generate better titles or introductions—but always remember to add a human touch to whatever they make. And, make sure that the bulk of the ideas come from you! 

Try to Hit Related Queries (Such as the People Also Ask (PAAs))

I mentioned that we have to start approaching our writing holistically, and that means providing as much valuable information to our readers as possible. 

Now that being helpful is the name of the game, it’s a great time to take a look at all the related queries users have for your intended topic. Here’s what comes up when I google ‘wedding catering:’

Check the PAAs and related searches that pop up when you type in your keyword. These aren’t just generated questions Google thinks people might ask—they’re actually being searched up by real people! These will provide good subheadings to include in your next blog article.

Ask Yourself: Will Readers Be Satisfied After Reading Your Content?

Things like word count and keyword density are now a thing of the past with this update. The most important thing now is that your audience enjoys what they’re reading, or they learn something of value from your article. 

In short, they leave your site feeling satisfied. 

So, always gauge your writing by asking this question: will people be satisfied after reading this?

For example, if you’re writing an article on how to properly brew specialty coffee, will the reader come away from your article with more knowledge than before? Will they have all their questions answered? Will they know how to properly brew their new coffee beans?

If the answer is yes, then you’re doing great. But, if you’re unsure—or the answer is a resounding no—you must make some changes. 

That said, not every reader that comes across your work will be happy with what you’ve written. It is, after all, impossible to please everyone each time you publish something. However, as long as a majority of your audience is satisfied, then you’re doing something right! 

Revisit Your Old Posts

Lastly, because this update affects you sitewide, it’s a good idea to look at your previous work. 

If you’re like me, then you’ve been blogging for upwards of a decade—and that might mean some of your posts aren’t as valuable to readers today. The content might be outdated, or not up to snuff with newer guidelines, but either way, this bank of legacy content can bring your traffic down.

So, revisit your work and review its ability to provide your readers with the answers and experience they’re looking for. Take the time to check if you need to make some additions to make it useful once again, or redirect them to newer content. I highly recommend prioritizing evergreen content, which is something I covered in my Blog Writing 101 guide.

This is especially important if you’re in any industry that moves fast (think fashion or tech). Content here usually goes from helpful to obsolete in a matter of months! 

Key Takeaway

Google has always favored people-first content, and this recent update is just the latest in many of their attempts to make sure the right content gets to their users. 

The Helpful Content Update will continue to release tweaks to their signals over the coming months, so it’s prime time for us SEO specialists to take a second look at our content and writing strategies.

Luckily, this update could be a win for you—just keep these tips in mind, and you’re on the right track to getting the most value from your content efforts. 

The post Optimizing Your Content for Google’s Helpful Content Update appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

January 25, 2023, the day that Yandex—Russia’s search engine—was hacked. 

Its complete source code was leaked online. And, it may not be the first time we’ve seen hacking happen in this industry, but it is one of the most intriguing, groundbreaking events in years.

But Yandex isn’t Google, so why should we care? Here’s why we do: these two search engines are very similar in how they process technical elements of a website, and this leak just showed us the 1,922 ranking factors Yandex uses in its algorithm. 

Simply put, this information is something that we can use to our advantage to get more traffic from Google.

Yandex vs Google

As I said, a lot of these ranking factors are possibly quite similar to the signals that Google uses for search.

Yandex’s algorithm shows a RankBrain analog: MatrixNext. It also seems that they are using PageRank (almost the same way as Google does), and a lot of their text algorithms are the same. Interestingly, there are also a lot of ex-Googlers working in Yandex. 

So, reviewing these 1,922 ranking factors, which come from the “Kernel” archive (and are only just one of the many sets of factors in the Yandex codebase) is a must. Understanding how they play into search rankings and traffic will provide some very useful insights into how search engines like Google work. No doubt, this new trove of information will greatly influence the SEO industry in the months to come. 

That said, Yandex isn’t Google. The chances of Google having the exact same list of ranking factors is low — and Google may not even give that signal the same amount of weight that Yandex does. 

Still, it’s information that potentially will be useful for driving traffic, so make sure to take a look at them here (before it’s scrubbed from the internet forever).

An early analysis of ranking factors

Many of their ranking factors are as expected. These include:

• Many link-related factors (e.g., age, relevancy, etc.).
• Content relevance, age, and freshness.
• Host reliability
• End-user behavior signals.
• Clicks.

Some sites also get preference (such as Wikipedia). FI_VISITS_FROM_WIKI even shows that sites that are referenced by Wikipedia get plus points. 

These are all things that we already know.

But something interesting: there were several factors that I and other SEOs found unusual, such as PageRank being the 17th highest weighted factor in Yandex, and the 19th highest weighted factor being query-document relevance (in other words, how close they match thematically). There’s also “spam karma” for dubious sites,  based on Whois information. So sites used for spam and link farming and such are likely to take a hit.

Other interesting factors are the average domain ranking across queries, percent of organic traffic, and the number of unique visitors.

You can also use this Yandex Search Ranking Factor Explorer, created by Rob Ousbey, to search through the various ranking factors.

The possible negative ranking factors:

Here’s my thoughts on Yandex’s factors that I found interesting: 

FI_ADV — this factor means having tons of adverts scattered around your page and buying PPC can negatively affect rankings. 

FI_DATER_AGE — this one evaluates content age, and whether your article is more than 10 years old, or if there’s no determinable date. Date metadata is important, so if it’s missing from your content, it can lower your rankings. 

FI_COMM_LINKS_SEO_HOSTS — this can be a negative factor if you have too much commercial anchor text, particularly if the proportion of such links goes above 50%. Pay attention to anchor text distribution. I’ve written a guide on how to effectively use anchor texts if you need some help on this. 

FI_RANK_ARTROZ — outdated, poorly written text will bring your rankings down. Go through your site and give your content a refresh. FI_WORD_COUNT also shows that the number of words matter, so avoid having low-content pages.

FI_URL_HAS_NO_DIGITS, FI_NUM_SLASHES, FI_FULL_URL_FRACTION — urls shouldn’t have digits, too many slashes (too much hierarchy), and of course contain your targeted keyword.

FI_NUM_LINKS_FROM_MP — always interlink your main pages (such as your homepage or landing pages) to any other important content you want to rank. Otherwise, it can hurt your content.

FI_HOPS — this factor shows us that the longer it takes to get to an important page, the less likely it will rank. So, reduce the crawl depth for any pages that matter to you. No important pages should be more than a few clicks away from your homepage. I recommend keeping it to two clicks, at most. 

FI_IS_UNREACHABLE — likewise, avoid making any important page an orphan page. If it’s unreachable from your homepage, it’s as good as dead in the eyes of the search engine.

The possible positive ranking factors:

FI_IS_COM— .com domains get a boost in rankings.

FI_YABAR_HOST_VISITORS — the more traffic you get, the more ranking power your site has. The strategy of targeting smaller, easier keywords first to build up an audience before targeting harder keywords can help you build traffic.

FI_BEAST_HOST_MEAN_POS — the average position of the host for keywords affects your overall ranking. This factor and the previous one clearly show that being smart with your keyword and content planning matters. If you need help with that, check out these 5 ways to build a solid SEO strategy.

FI_YABAR_HOST_SEARCH_TRAFFIC — this might look bad but shows that having other traffic sources (such as social media, direct search, and PPC) is good for your site. Yandex uses this to determine if a real site is being run, not just some spammy SEO project.

This one includes a whole host of CTR-related factors. 

It’s clear that having searchable and interesting titles that drive users to check your content out is something that positively affects your rankings.

Google is rewarding sites that help end a user’s search journey (as we know from the latest mobile search updates and even the Helpful Content update). Do what you can to answer the query early on in your article. The factor “FI_VISITORS_RETURN_MONTH_SHARE“ also shows that it helps to encourage users to return to your site for more information on the topics they’re interested in. Email marketing is a handy tool here.

FI_GOOD_RATIO and FI_MANY_BAD — the percentage of “good” and “bad” backlinks on your site. Getting your backlinks from high-quality websites with traffic is important for your rankings. The factor FI_LINK_AGE also shows that adding a link-building strategy to your SEO as early as possible can help with your rankings.

FI_SOCIAL_URL_IS_VERIFIED — that little blue check has actual benefits now. Links from verified accounts have more weight.

Key Takeaway

Yandex and Google, being so similar to each other in theory, means that this data leak is something we must pay attention to. 

Several of these factors may already be common knowledge amongst SEOs, but having them confirmed by another search engine enforces how important they are for your strategy.

These initial findings, and understanding what it might mean for your website, can help you identify what to improve, what to scrap, and what to focus on when it comes to your SEO strategy. 

The post Yandex Hack: How it Affects SEO appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.