Infographic: 2017 Voice Assistant Trends

The popularity of voice assistants has seen a phenomenal rise in the last few years. In fact, we’re quickly closing in on one million voice assistants connected to IFTTT! So, we know you love them — and love using them with IFTTT to control everything from smart lights to your social media. But, we wanted to learn more about how exactly you’re interacting with your assistants. So, in April, we reached out and asked you. Here’s what you had to say:

 Alexa and Google Assistant are honorary for IFTTT Headquarter — always ready to help out with a question, find a phone, take a note, track a to-do — or start the party. There’s more on the way, too: new assistants are building with IFTTT! Watch this space to hear about them as soon as they hit the platform. In the meantime, check out our latest collection, Applets for voice assistants, to see some of our favorite use cases.

What We Know About The June 25 Google Update

Google updated their search results algorithm in late June, and over the holiday weekend. A significant Google algorithm update happened on June 25. This update has had webmasters and SEOs buzzing in all past week about the significance of its effects on websites across the world.

Not all the tracking tools are showing massive changes. Mozcast has been overheating for the past couple months now, SERPMetrics seems to have declined a bit, Algoroo is somewhat calm now, Accuranker shows activity, RankRanger is showing major swings and SEMRush is also showing major changes.

Google's June 25 Algorithm Update - High Fluctuations, Low Chatter

Despite the length of the current update, the initial chatter, per Barry Schwartz of SERoundtable, was quite light. This is obviously peculiar, not only in light of the length of the update, but the fluctuation levels themselves as well. The risk levels on our Rank Risk Index have risen above moderate, and show a continuous series of high fluctuation levels.

With rank fluctuations being what they are, a voluminous degree of chatter would be the norm, or at minimum the expectation. What then is behind the slow development of industry chatter in this instance? This question, oddly as it may be, plays a significant role in understanding (of course partially, as only Google knows the full picture) what transpired with this update.

It’s no secret that Google updates its algorithm often, and based on what we’ve seen since 2000, it will likely continue to do so for years to come. If you’re noticing the reduction of impressions in Google Search Console over the default view of 28 days, expand the range to 90 days.

June's Algorithm Update Ranking Positions Hit Analysis

RankRanger, another tracking tool, provided further analysis of the June 25 update in a blog post published today. The company says this appears to be a long running update, the likes of which has not been seen since October 2016.

Analysis from RankRanger indicates Google’s recent algorithm update primarily targeted sites that were ranking in positions 6-10.

• Top 3 Results - Exact Match (%)
• Top 5 Results - Exact Match (%)
• Top 10 Results - Exact Match (%)

RankRanger also broke down its analysis by niche. While there were fluctuations across all niches, the food & beverage industry appears to have been hit the hardest. This is followed by sites in the health & fitness, gambling, retail, and travel niches respectively.

Google's June Update - What You Should Do Now

Being able to accurately identify the root causes plaguing your website can seem like a scary proposition for some. Using the scientific method can help you figure out whether you have a big SEO problem.

For those who want to know, How to tackle this situation, follow this guide:

• Start With Hypothesis
• Make Ranking Observation
• Conduct an Website Analysis
• Update Your Content Regularly
• Publish Relevant Content

Does Organic CTR Impact Google Rankings?

Does organic click-through rate (CTR) data impact google rankings? This has been a huge topic of debate for years within the search industry.

Several tests seem to have shown that the click-through rate Influence the Google Organic Ranking. A new test seems to show the opposite. Who to believe?

According to Rand, Click-through rate is a Ranking Factor

Rand Fishkin ( co-founder of Moz.com ), has several times used moz's large subscribers (mainly via social networks) to carry out SEO Tests. A test in July 2015 seems to have shown that the Organic CTR (Click-through rate) Improve Google Search Ranking, and that a better CTR led to a better position in search.

But be careful, his test was biased, like all tests, and the CTR was not the only variable. He talked about this again in a video referring to a patent you should read. He had already been interested in this in 2014.

According to Bartosz Góralewicz, Google no Longer Uses CTR in Their Ranking Algorithm

Bartosz Góralewicz conducted a test in March 2015 to try to prove the same, but he came to the opposite conclusion! According to Bartosz, Google no longer take into account CTR in their Organic Ranking Algorithm. You can read hiss explanations on Search Engine Land (as well as in more detail on its own site ).

In summary, Bartosz used click bots, which simulate users doing Google searches and clicking on results. He explains that he had trouble getting there, but after weeks of work he could simulate visits that Google apparently did not identify as Bot user. To prove this, He shows that the visits were recorded in Google Analytics and Google Search Console (which is not easy for simple clickbots ). And most importantly, he was able to influence Google Trends and Google Ad Planner. In his conclusion, he believes that it is finally safe to tell that that Google has abandoned CTR from their core algorithm, because this metric can be easily manipulated.

According to Google, CTR is not a Ranking Factor

Besides, Gary Illyes ( Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google ) said in 2015 that Google do not use CTR as a Ranking Factor.

My Personal Opinion

Well then, if Google does not use CTR as a Ranking Signal, why other tests have positively shown Organic CTR Does Improve Google Ranking? And why do we read That Higher Organic CTR Lead to Higher Position on Search Engine?

Here are some thoughts I would like to share with you about tests I Mentioned Earlier:

• Rand's Test Conducted By Real Human Users: Real Human Google Visitors, with Browsers cookies enable. Conversely, the experiments of Bartosz were made with software. Although he ensured that google were unable identify this as artificial visit, But it does not prove that Google's algorithm has not "decided" to ignore these types of queries and clicks. In reality, it seems probable that Google checks if the CTR increases for people not connected to their Google account as for others (Ditto for many other things such as the type of desktop / mobile device, Operating system, browser, etc.).
• It is also possible to surmise that the actions performed by human visitors at Rand's test to increase the CTR have involved other criteria which may also influence the search ranking.
• Bartosz conducted the test for a short amount of time (2 weeks if I understood correctly). In my opinion, to improve the CTR results in improved positioning, it takes a much longer period. And if one day there is a peak of traffic (it can happen, buzz or other), the CTR must keep high after that, otherwise it does not confirm the interest of Internet users.

What is Your Opinion About Organic CTR Impact on Google Ranking?

How to Remove 404 Errors in Google Search Console

If you having issue with 404 Error in Google Search Console, this tutorial is for you! Follow the Steps to Improve your Website Usability and Organic SEO.

The Framework is as Follows: Despite your efforts, Google lists 404 errors (And other types of HTTP Errors) in the "Crawl Errors" report in your website Search Console Account.

Is 404 Error Bad For My Website?

How to correct them and make HTTP Errors disappear from GSC?

Do 404 Errors Bad For My Website SEO?

Here are the explanations provided by Google:

In general, 404 errors do not adversely affect your site's performance in search results, but they can help improve the user experience.

In the help, you will find additional tips:

They often occur as a result of typos or configuration errors, for example in the case of links generated automatically by a content management system. They can also be the result of the growing development of our services to detect and explore links in integrated content such as JavaScript.

This last sentence is not very clear, but basically we understand that Google sometimes seeks to access URLs that simply do not exist, but its interpretation of JavaScript codes makes Google believe that these URLs may exist.

I End with the latest tips from Google about 404 error:

It is quite normal, even desirable in some cases, to encounter 404 error codes on the Web. You will probably never be able to control all links that redirect to your site or resolve any 404 errors that appear in the Search Console. Focus on the most important issues, solve the problems you can, then move on to another step.

So? The purpose of my article is precisely to help you understand 404 error impact on organic seo and how to fix them.

My Point of View:

• If a user land 404 page by clicking search engine organic result then you should fix the link ASAP. Because this 404 error (404 or other) will negatively impact your website search ranking.
• If a page is in error 404 because of a link coming from other website, you can do nothing and it does not degrade your SEO performance. But if the link is coming from quality site, as long as it landing in a broken page, you're not getting any seo advantage of this link, so you should correct the link.
• If you have too many 404 errors in your internal links, it degrades the user experience so you should fix them to improve user experience.

Steps to Fix 404 Errors

In your place, I would follow these steps.

Step 1- Fix 404 Errors Generated by Internal Links

If 404 errors are caused by internal links, they must be corrected because:

• These errors degrade the user experience
• These errors interfere with your SEO since a page does not receive the link you had planned to make
• It's easy to detect and correct :-)
• It will do a first cleaning of the list of errors 404 indicated in Search Console

Step 2- Fix 404 Errors Generated by Sitemaps

Use an HTTP header checker tool to check that each and every URL in your Sitemap actually returns a 200 status code (which means everything is OK). There should be no redirection.

If you are lost in all these codes: see the list of HTTP codes .

Step 3- Fix 404 Errors Generated by backlinks

Some 404 errors may be linked to backlinks, that is, links from other sites, pointing to a wrong URL on your site. To identify them, use your favorite backlinks analysis tool (Majestic, Ahrefs or Moz) and retrieve the list of backlinks pointing to a 404 error. Majestic has published an article on this topic, it's up to you to exploit it for your own Site instead of that of a competitor. If you do not arrive at all, and you ask me kindly , it is possible that I will do it for free ;-)

If the one who made the link was slightly mistaken in the URL, it is a pity and it must be corrected:

• Contact the webmaster of the site that makes you the link in error to ask him to correct it. Introduce him in a positive way by explaining that he has a broken link on his site ...
• If it does not respond, set up a 301 redirect from the wrong URL to the right one

Step 4- Fix other HTTP Errors

Once you have validated the previous steps, wait 1 or 2 weeks for Google to update your Search Console account. Next, see the Crawl Errors report, click the "Not Found" tab in the "URL-level Errors" sub-section.

Google lists Errors in Order of Priority, so enjoy.

If it's easier for you to manage the list in Excel, simply download the table in CSV format (or Google Docs). In the case of CSV, here are the columns that you will retrieve:

• URLs
• Response code: 404 for pages not found
• Google News error: only applies to sites in Google News
• Detected: date of first detection by Googlebot (the robot of Google)
• Category: error type (here "not found")
• Platform: Googlebot version encountered error (computer, smartphone or multimedia phone)
• Last exploration: date of last crawl by Googlebot

Depending on the different cases that remain listed, you may need to repeat one of the previous steps. To see more clearly, you can check the box in front of the URL processed and click on the button "Mark as correct".

Tip : If you have a lot of errors, you may get to the limit set by Google, which is 1000 URLs. To circumvent it, simply declare a subpart of your site as a new property in Search Console. This technique works only if you have directories at the root, for example / blog /. In this case, you can declare http://www.example.com/blog/ as a new property; It will be validated immediately and you will be able to consult the list of errors 404 concerning only this directory. Convenient !

Redirect to the Reception: bad solution!

I still regularly encounter badly configured sites, on which in case of page not found we are redirected to the homepage. Do not do that!

Indeed Google's online help confirms that a web server must return a 404 code when a resource can not be found:

It is quite normal, even desirable in some cases, to encounter 404 error codes on the Web.

You may have configured a custom 404 error page (that's fine). However, check that the HTTP returned is a 404 code, and not 302 (temporary redirection). Use an HTTP code test tool on a non-existent URL on your site. If you have a 302 redirect, you may have specified an entire URL in your .htaccess file for the custom error page.

How often should you check for 404 errors?

You should be checking your 404s at least once every month and on a bigger site, every week. It doesn’t really depend on how much visitors you have but much more on how much content you have and create and how much can go wrong because of that. The first time you start looking into and trying to fix your 404 error pages you might find out that there are a lot of them and it can take quite a bit of time. Try to make it a habit so you’ll at least find the important ones quickly.

Need Help?

If you do not get there or something is not clear enough for you, feel free to ask the question in the comments

13 Errors to Avoid with Canonical URL

The canonical URL is used to tell the engines what is the official URL of a page; This is useful in some cases to resolve duplicate content issues. But beware: misused, canonical URL can hurt your SEO!

Why is it necessary to monitor the canonical URL?

Since the time I do audits (2003!), I have encountered many kinds of errors with the canonical URL. I will summarize them here, which will save you from doing them too ...

Maybe you do not realize the large number of instances where a site contains errors at the canonical URL (which is not necessarily indicated via a URL, by the way).

13 Errors to Avoid with Canonical URL:

1. The same URL is indicated as canonical for a very large number of pages on the site (yet having different contents)
2. Several canonical URLs are indicated in string (A indicates B, which indicates C, etc.)
3. A indicates B as canonical, but B redirects to A
4. No canonical URL is specified for a page that is called with different URL parameters (eg utm_source and utm_medium, or "sort", "orderby", etc.)
5. No canonical URL is specified on a non-responsive mobile site (for example, with m.example.com)
6. A indicates B as the canonical URL, but B is in error 404 or forbids crawl (disallow in robots.txt) or indexing (meta robots noindex)
7. The actual URL and the canonical URL indicated differ by a slash at the end (present or absent)
8. The canonical URL is indicated in relative and not in absolute (begins with http), which is not a problem in itself, but sometimes the reconstructed URL is different or wrong
9. The actual URL uses one or more uppercase letters but not the canonical URL (or vice versa)
10. The actual URL uses URL rewriting but not the canonical URL (or the reverse)
11. The canonical URL always corresponds to the URL consulted, without verification, whatever is added in the URL
12. A indicates B as canonical, and B indicates A as canonical
13. In case of pagination, on each URL (page 2, page 3, page 4 ...) one finds as canonical URL that of page 1

It does not look like anything, but by force it can really hurt your SEO, not only on Google for that matter.

Both check and correct if necessary! And do you know of other errors with the canonical URL?