Pedro Dias

Can ChatGPT do SEO for me? It depends…   Whilst ChatGPT is very good for very specific questions or augmenting existing knowledge, it isn’t useful enough yet for insightful analysis or providing nuanced advice—it misses vital context. 

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When is a content management project, not a content management project? When your editors can’t use the content management system! Many developers and agencies forget to spend time with the people who actually use the content management system every day - the editors. When you install most enterprise content management systems like Umbraco, they are blank. There is nothing in them. Everything has to be set up in the backoffice to work for the particular project or website you are building. You need to model and build all the editing components - rich text editors, image pickers, accordions, call-to-action panels, file pickers, related page blocks, etc. - in the backoffice from scratch. While developers are experts at doing this, they sometimes don’t think the same way a content editor does, so they lay out these items in a way they think should work, which may not be the best for a content editor. As a result, when the content editor uses the backoffice, it feels clunky, unintuitive, and cumbersome. It becomes an annoyance and a hindrance, leading to frustration. It shouldn’t be like this. So what’s the answer? Work with editors throughout the project and test things as you go! The quicker you get an editor into the backoffice, the better. - Ask them to play around with it. - Ask them to add some pages. - Ask them - does this feel comfortable? It will save you a ton of pain in the future and prevent the content management project from becoming a failure! For more website project hints and tips, follow me, you won't regret it, sometimes I'm funny too 🙂

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Why is there so much spam on the SERP? 🤯 Hot take 🌶 : It's not as bad as the noise makes it seem and getting it right is not easy - it's a lot of trial and error and algorithmic adjusting. That said, I think the fundamental problem is a lack of long-term thinking. The bill has come due on the internet (and search engines) not incentivizing the right content be created. You want better results? Where is the better content? It doesn't even exist. That's on Google and it's on basically the entire web. We've hit (or maybe hinted at) critical mass and there is no quick fix. But no one can or wants to deal with the immediate pain so Google (and everyone else) kinda kicks the can down the line. How is a company gonna say, "Well, it'll take us a quarter or 2 to get things sorted the right way so expect revenue to be down."? Any other requests while we're on Fantasy Island? That's why the problem, I think, is severe. Not because of the spam and the quality and the AI.... but there's no way for a real correction to happen as it currently stands! Looking for more on this? Check out Search Engine Journal's eBook on Google Ranking Systems with brilliant folks such as Kevin Indig Erika Varangouli Kevin Rowe Helen P. Andrea Volpini and more! Big thanks to Ben Steele for including me in this! (Link in comments) #SEO

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We used to publish 5 articles a month for SEO clients, because it fitted neatly into our 'monthly package'. But then we flipped it... We decided to front-load resource and publish 10-50 articles month 1 (depending on budget). By month 6 it made us look like geniuses. There's no benefit to drip feeding content (besides budget constraints). It's better to start the ranking countdown timer ASAP. It's the difference between achieving results month 6 or month 18.

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Spent my lunch hour (and need a couple more) reading the Rand Fishkin and Mike King write ups about the Google search document leak. Holy moly! I've been doing SEO since 2003 and have watched all the changes over the years. These days, I hardly recognize the Google SERP (or the company, for that matter). Much of the technical SEO analysis goes right over my head. Since 2014 or so, I've stuck with traditional SEO that centers around creating great content for my clients -- content I personally write. (My secret: I listen to my clients -- hahaha. I know, crazy.) And with help from my fantastic web development team, I've focused on creating great websites that drive conversions. My goal has always been to be the Gold Standard for manufacturers. Reading the two articles from Fishkin and King makes me feel vindicated. I've helped my clients move through dozens of algorithm updates without penalties. I've never tried to game the system or do "tricks." I focus on what's best for my clients. What I do isn't fancy nor does it get me any press, but man oh man, it sure does work over time. Take the time and read both pieces -- and have a pen and notebook handy when you do. Wow. Mike King from IPullRank -- https://lnkd.in/eqFm2gTG Rand Fishkin from SparkToro -- https://lnkd.in/eX9Uqfbp Search Engine Land piece -- https://lnkd.in/e_xr_7nA

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🔥 SEO SGE: There's nothing okay about a result like this from Google. NOTHING. [This is a mobile result.] First of all, they're using other people's content directly much of the time, there's a lot of copy and paste in these supposed LLM answers. That's a copyright issue. [Also proof they aren't using a true LLM.] Second, many of these websites probably bought or display ads from Google, but are not going to get a click except from those ads. Aren't that already in court for this kind of manipulation? Google is destroying the web that it's built on and the very websites that feed it. If this is ever to go widespread, in this way, that will be the end of many many websites. You cannot argue, if you have any knowledge about how any of this works, that losing 20%, 40%, 50% of a site's clicks to Google's (copyright infringed) content is not going to be disastrous for sites that aren't massively funded or making lots of money. They won't be able to withstand the drops. What's really horrible this is a recipe. There are many small businesses and sole proprietor people that create recipe sites and that is their living. They create recipes and they test the recipes -- people follow them and like them because they like their recipes. Google has no business creating a summary results of their hard work and placing at the top of search in an auto expanded, probably 700 pixels if this was on desktop, summary answer. Shame on Google --- [Whenever they auto-expand the result like this I always mark it down. If you're in this Google test, do website owners a favor and mark down the results that are bad for websites.]

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CRO weekly #199 - Why you should run AA tests Welcome to a fresh CRO weekly newsletter with an overview of interesting reads and jobs you might have missed. ☚ Smart tooltips: web form optimisation without development from Exatom ☚ What are AA tests and why you should run heaps of them! from Simon Jackson ☚ List of the best Linkedin post from Ron Kohavi ☚ Career interview with Oriol Vila Masip at Experimentation Jobs ☚ 5 reasons why you can’t miss: The Convert x Women in Experimentation Summit from Daphne Tideman ☚ Why doesn’t senior management care about CRO? from Fenil Mangukiya 4 featured jobs: ➽ Growth Analyst at Paired (United Kingdom) ➽ Data Scientist, Product at Figma (Multiple locations, USA) ➽ CRO Lead at New Balance (Amsterdam, Netherlands) ➽ Staff Data Scientist - Experimentation at Instacart (USA) Find 100+ jobs at Experimentation Jobs The next CRO weekly is send out Thursday morning, signup if you don't want to miss the next one. Read the full newsletter in the comments.

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CRO is still widely misunderstood and misrepresented. Misleading agencies are tagging CRO to entirely different initiatives. Do not let them sell you on what is a poorly hidden attempt at boosting their MRR. What’s the incentive for your average digital marketing agency? I mean this seriously. Are they really looking to build a growth function in your organization? Most likely, they think template tests will suffice to you while adding more revenue and profitability to their bottom line. Consider that they already offer paid search, paid social, email, seo, affiliate marketing, organic social…. A fair question to ask is do they really have the competencies with each of those service lines? And do they for CRO? Locally here in Montreal, average retention in agencies is benchmarked under 1 year. You don’t get specialized skills and a dedicated team in these environments. From personal experience, I can also tell they assign clients to staff until they are over capped on bandwidth. And a lot of projects landed on my lap that I was not skilled to work on but had to nonetheless, without tools, coaching or resources. If you consider their offer, here’s a set of questions that will enlighten you on their ability to deliver. - What does client allocation look like for my assigned team? - What sort of tenure in the company do my assigned team members have? - How is the team trained and kept up to date with industry standards? - What is the composition of my assigned team? - How do you come up with test ideas? - What does a test results analysis looks like? From these questions, you will get to understand the intent and incentive the agency has. You’ll get to see what sort of team you would be working with. You will also see if they work tactically or if they operate under a specific process. Most of the time, digital marketing agencies do not have the specialized skills.

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https://buff.ly/3QpoIra brings a mental model to help people draw in a sea of metrics and data 👇 It’s easy to miss the nuance and, therefore, misuse data – but the five data buckets presented here give some much-needed context and will ensure you wield the information more effectively 

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Thought I’d weigh in on the Google leak having had a few days to review it. I've seen plenty of posts with a lot of info but not much practical advice, so here's a few (6) concise takeaways and how we'll be adapting our SEO approach as an agency going forward: 1️⃣ Click data matters 📊 Previously, click data was thought to have minimal impact. The leak reveals it significantly influences rankings. We'll be implementing A/B tests across titles and descriptions to improve click-through rates (CTR). 2️⃣ Site authority is key 🌐 It wasn’t confirmed that Google used site-wide authority metrics. The leak shows “siteAuthority” impacts overall site ranking. This doesn’t necessarily change our approach; we will continue to develop holistic content strategies and pursue high-authority backlinks. 3️⃣ Chrome data utilisation 🔍 SEOs were unaware of the extent Google used Chrome data. The leak confirms its influence on rankings, highlighting user experience metrics. We will continue to optimise page load times, ensure mobile-friendliness, and enhance site navigation. Again, no real change in approach here. 4️⃣ Content freshness is crucial 📝 SEOs knew freshness was a factor but not the specifics. Google uses multiple date-related metrics to evaluate content freshness. We already have resource ring-fenced on a monthly basis to keep key pages up to date for clients so it's good to have this validated as a strategy. We will continue this practice, refreshing old posts with new information and updating key ranking pages with re-optimised content. 5️⃣ Detailed link evaluation 🔗 We all knew links were important but lacked detail on evaluation. The leak shows metrics on link diversity and relevance, with low-quality links potentially ignored altogether. We’ll continue to acquire backlinks from reputable websites through our digital PR activity, but we can maybe start running campaigns to specifically target certain domains where we know average domain authority is high i.e. university and charity sites. Obviously continuing to target the big news sites as well. It could also be worth exploring more ways to create ongoing relationships with the most relevant websites in each niche to ensure we're consistently generating links with high relevancy scores. 6️⃣ Brand presence is essential 📣 The direct impact of brand recognition on SEO was unclear. The leak highlights the importance of building a strong, recognisable brand. An omni-channel approach is potentially the key here and reinforces the point that marketing shouldn’t be a single channel strategy. Display and PPC will naturally improve brand visibility over time, so should probably be considered for clients expecting to see significant results through SEO alone. #SEO #GoogleLeak #Marketing #SEOTips

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My thoughts on the recent Google Update

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Google: Sites Hit By Helpful Content Update Could See Improvements With Next Core Update If... Google's John Mueller was asked when can a site expect to recover from the September 2023 helpful content update, assuming the site took all measures to "fix" their site. John Mueller said you can assume "bigger changes would be visible when the next core updates happen." https://lnkd.in/dGZZzq3r #PPC #digitalmarketing #google #marketing #socialmediamarketing #socialmedia #business #seo #branding #marketingdigital #onlinemarketing #entrepreneur #instagram #advertising #contentmarketing #marketingstrategy #digitalmarketingagency #digital #marketingtips #smallbusiness #digitalmarketingtips #website #marketingagency #startup #motivation #success #ecommerce #onlinebusiness #ads

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No. You can’t use your native CMS for ads monetization. If you are, here are 5 solid reasons why you shouldn’t: 1. CMS is meant to serve content that’s relatively static, like blogs. This is completely opposite to ads, which are supposed to change for multiple ad slots on a page, everytime a page loads 2. Success in monetization relies on detailed campaign analytics. CMS is unable to attribute impressions, clicks, purchases, or revenue to individual ad units or provide real-time analytics. No full funnel analytics = no monetization success 3. Ads need to be relevant to the person viewing them. CMS can’t account for viewers’ demographics or past purchase behavior before serving ads. With CMS you are showing the same ad to every viewer- concept of relevance is non-existent 4. CMS lacks the capability for real-time ad slot auctions. Effective auctions demand an intelligent ad-serving system that can instantly prioritize ads for maximum revenue and relevance. No auction = No competition = Low ad revenue 5. CMS can only be managed by an in-house team. Which means, you cannot offer self-serve campaign management to advertisers. Without self-serve, activation of tail and torso advertisers is unlikely- again, wasted ad revenue potential Of course, all of this applies to retailers, ecommerce marketplaces and other publishers looking to scale their ad monetization programs. If you are ok with a 5 advertiser, managed serve ad monetization operation, please ignore this. #retailmedia #adsmonetization #cms #contentmanagementsystem #adtech #rtb #selfserve #adserver

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Is it time to leave your WordPress website behind? Deploying robust websites is no longer an option for business. It's a requirement. Old CMS platforms like WordPress often can't keep up. In fact, they might be holding you back. Here are some key limitations: Scalability: Traditional CMSs can struggle with large websites or lots of visitors, leading to slow site performance and reduced user satisfaction. Flexibility: These systems are limited to specific themes and plugins, which can block custom features needed for unique websites. Stability: These same themes and plugins require a lot of active maintenance in order to keep them working. Often times when they break your users suffer. Security: Popular platforms like WordPress are common targets for hackers. Staying secure requires constant updates. Speed: A fast-loading page is crucial for keeping visitors happy and improving SEO. Traditional CMSs often have bloated frameworks that slow down websites. Integration Complexity: It can be hard to link traditional CMS with new technologies, limiting your use of the latest tools. Many businesses stick with traditional CMSs because they're familiar and initially cheaper. But as your business grows, switching to a more robust system might be necessary. Feeling the limits of your traditional CMS? Consider switching to a headless CMS and composable architecture for better flexibility, security, and scalability. 💡 Want to update your digital tools? Click the link below and request a demo or our web platform StackShift. #CMS #DigitalMarketing #WebDevelopment #HeadlessCMS #WordPress #TechInnovation #SEO 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eNxWNWzn

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I seriously conducted a Tech SEO audit and built a report without crawling a single page 😅 ... if you disagree with that, please read this and tell me why I believe that it was an excellent Technical SEO audit for an international website with no use of any crawling tool ... Yes it is possible and I will tell you how and why: First and foremost the main issues encountered would not be detected by any tool like: ** IP Geotargeting: I used VPN instead to test the georedirections and find when it works and when it does not, the issue was that users land into the desired content on the homepage, however this content is dynamically created and the URL is always the same!! while the normal way to handle internationalization is to have separate Geo/Language subfolders... Any tool that can detect that ?? ** hreflang attributes: the main issue was a wrong set-up of hreflang, they point to the alternate languages instead of alternate countries. So Google returns pages with the same language of the user browser, but oftentimes with products belonging to another country, who would be interested in shoes for example from a different countries while the page is in set to the user language ... again do you know any tool that can figure out that, and why would I be interested in screaming frog telling me "missing self referencing", and not showing any issue with "x-default" just because they do exist, while they're completely wrong when reviewed by a human eye. **Uncrawable navigation: one drop-down in the menu is a JavaScript button instead of <a href= link. making the link instead of the drop down uncrawlable!! would Screaming frog mention that ?? ... again the answer is no **indexing bloat du to crazy faceted navigation !! **Pagination: It only contains "next" and "previous" pages, making "?page=18" 19 steps away from the homepage which means very high crawl depth ... Yes Screaming frog will highlight that if you look for it. **No use of canonical tag: In this case yes Screaming frog for example would highlight that. Now I am not interested in any tool that tells me things like: duplicate title tags, duplicate meta description ... unless we deal with these major issues.

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In case you missed it, the leak of Google’s API documentation was big news in search engine optimization (SEO) this month. The leak supposedly revealed the secrets behind website rankings in Google’s search engines.    Now that the dust has settled, James Fulford explains that we don't suddenly have all the answers and the fundamentals of an SEO strategy are still just as important as before.     Read James’s blog to find out what we learned (and what we didn’t) from the leak: https://lnkd.in/ejupNp2R #SEO #GoogleAPI #Communications

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🔥 Site hit by the March Core Update after March 14th? You were hit by an actual Core update (not the Spam Brain or solo Helpful Content Update). These can be any Core Ranking Signal issues, including content, BUT they are notoriously technical in nature. Usually, some issue that should have caused massive drops years ago has not—at least not significantly. Then the update comes and BOOM! I was unsure if this one would be the same, but I have reviewed 5 sites, and every single one had massive technical issues, so yes they seem to be the same. Example: One site had 11k redirect loops, another 3 invalid HTML tags in the <head>, etc any Technical SEO KNOWS these can be devastating for a site. So, if you were hit after March 14th, get a site health audit because these are COMPLETELY RECOVERABLE. You need a full site health audit because again it can be ANY CORE RANKING SIGNALS. However, it looks like it has in the past, to be a serious technical problem. [NOTE I have been recovering sites for 12+ years and have done many Core Update recoveries. I am happy to take a quick look for $1250. Ensure you were hit by the Core Update and not something else. Then, see what high-level issues you have. If you need a deeper dive, that amount will apply against the full site audit costs.] But whether you hire me or someone else, get someone to review your site. Just make sure they have recovery experience because recoveries are highly specialized, and the methods are not the same as standard SEO.

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