tools

How to extend a multi-site indexing monitoring system to compare Google-selected and user-selected canonical urls (via the URL Inspection API and Analytics Edge)

Last month I published an article on Search Engine Land explaining how to use the new URL inspection API to build a multi-site indexing monitoring system. By using Analytics Edge in Excel with the new URL Inspection API from Google, you can check the indexing status for the most important urls across multiple sites on … Read more

The Link Authority Gap – How To Compare The Most Authoritative Links Between Websites Using Majestic Solo Links, Semrush Backlink Gap, and ahrefs Link Intersect

While helping companies that have been heavily impacted by Google’s broad core updates, the topic of “authority” comes up often. And that’s especially the case for companies that focus on “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) topics. For example, sites that focus on health, medical, financial, etc. all fall under YMYL. If you’ve read my … Read more

How to identify ranking gaps in Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) SERP feature using Semrush

When performing a competitive analysis, it’s smart to run a keyword gap analysis to determine the queries that competitors rank for that your site doesn’t rank for. It can often yield low-hanging fruit that your content team can execute on. As part of that process, it’s also smart to analyze Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) … Read more

Smart Delta Reports – How To Automate Exporting, Filtering, and Comparing Google Search Data Across Timeframes Via The Search Console API and Analytics Edge

In 2013, I wrote a post explaining how to create what I called a Panda Report, which enabled you to identify landing pages seeing the biggest drop during a major algorithm update. The post explained how to do this based on Google Analytics data, but you can definitely do the same thing with GSC data … Read more

How To Use GSC’s Crawl Stats Reporting To Analyze and Troubleshoot Site Moves (Domain Name Changes and URL Migrations)

For site migrations, I’ve always said that Murphy’s Law is real. “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” You can prepare like crazy, think you have everything nailed down, only to see a migration go sideways once it launches. That’s also why I believe that when something does go wrong (which it will), it’s … Read more

Google Search Console (GSC) reporting for Soft 404s is now more accurate. But where did those Soft 404s go?

On January 11, 2021 Google announced improvements to GSC’s Index Coverage data. With the update, which is clearly apparent in the reporting, Search Console removed the generic “crawl anomaly” issue (and mapped those to more granular issues), changed how urls are reported that are blocked by robots.txt, added a new issue called “indexed without content” … Read more

Exit The Black Hole Of Web Story Tracking – How To Track User Progress In Web Stories Via Event Tracking In Google Analytics

Google’s Web Stories, previously called AMP Stories, can provide an immersive AMP experience across both desktop and mobile. Google has been pushing them hard recently and stories can rank in Search, Google Images, and in Google Discover. On that front, Google recently rolled out a Web Story carousel in Discover, which can definitely attract a … Read more

Image Packs in Google Web Search – A reason you might be seeing high impressions and rankings in GSC but insanely low click-through rate (CTR)

While analyzing performance in Google Search Console (GSC), some site owners have reported a strange situation with impressions and position (and some even believe it’s a bug). I’ve seen this many times and I often get questions about it from site owners left scratching their heads after witnessing those metrics in their own stats. Although … Read more

Web Stories Powered by AMP – 12 Tips and Recommendations For Creating Your First Story

I’ve been following the progression of Web Stories (formerly called AMP stories) since 2018 when the developer preview launched, and they have been hard to ignore recently. Google has been pushing the Story format pretty hard over the past year and I’ve seen stories show up more and more both in Search and in Discover. … Read more

Visualizing The SEO Engagement Trap – How To Use Behavior Flow In Google Analytics To View User Frustration [Case Study]

When thinking about content quality, it’s incredibly important to meet or exceed user expectations based on query. If your content cannot do that, then users can end up extremely frustrated as they search Google, click through your listing in the search results, scan your page, and not find what they were looking for. And that … Read more

How To Remove An Image From Google Search Using The Outdated Content Tool (When The Image Was Published On Another Site)

There are times that pesky image search results stick around on Google even when those images have been removed from the web (or at least you think they have been removed from the web). I’ve received many calls over the years about this very situation. And many times, the images that people want to remove … Read more