Rank Ranger Blog

What do you do when your rank tracker is showing you unstable pages? Firstly...

Don't panic.

Yes, on the one hand, rank stability could be a sign that Google is thinking about demoting your page. However, did you know that rank volatility could also be an opportunity? That being said it is essential that you first diagnose the problem. Knowing what the cause is, will help you figure out the next steps.

In this post, join me in exploring three possible causes of rank volatility and strategies for dealing with each one.

So you’ve got a new website. It’s fab! Like, really, you’re showing it to all of your friends and colleagues, printing new business cards... but nothing really happens. You’ve got some visitors coming in, but something seems to be stuck. What are you missing?

SEO is essential for marketers and is a primary focus of inbound marketing. Since everyone else is already doing it, you should be too. When you don’t, you’re inadvertently losing sales or missing out on them.

However, it’s hard to know where to start. The good news is that a simple assessment of your website is the first step, and it’s quite easy to do with an SEO audit. This allows you to see how your site ranks and what you can do to improve those statistics. In this post, you'll learn what to do and when to do it.

Jason Dodge joins the podcast to share his discovery around Amazon's use of Search Ads to compete with SMBs:

• How Amazon might be leveraging Search Ads to compete with local suppliers in unexpected ways
• What Amazon's paid search strategy implies about the overall direction of the platform
• How Amazon's use of search ads might impact competitor's ad budgets negatively

Hayk Saakian joins the podcast to share novel ways to build links, offer value, and stay within Google's guidelines all at the same time!

• Creative ways to build links and offer added value
• How to think outside the box when it comes to link building
• How to use niche level strategies to legitimately gain links

I'm not one to quote (or even listen to) Katy Perry, but her "adage" of "you're up then you're down" is quite applicable to the rank fluctuations seen on the Google SERP in the recent past. There was some downright bizarre movement on the SERP in August... on multiple occasions... There have also been changes to how Google extends 'Search Journeys' (and how Google promotes its own shopping experience), the schema supported by Google, scroll to text highlights, etc.

I'll be diving into all this and more! This is the September 2020 edition of the SERP News!

Love it or hate it, Google is very good at what it does. While it certainly has had its share of flops (G+), it's main product, search, is head and shoulders above everyone else.

The question is, why?

Sure, I could go into all the algorithmic underpinnings that make Google unique. We could go through a history of Google and how PageRank was entirely novel, and so forth. But instead of that, in this post, I'd like to take a more thematic look at everyone's favorite search engine. Let's pop the hood and take a deep look at Google's traits and how that translates to it being the best search engine and more.

GatherUp CEO Aaron Weiche joins the podcast to share novel ways you can repurpose online reviews!

• How to repurpose your reviews in ways you never thought of
• How to get smart with repurposing the right reviews at the right time
• Where you should be showcasing your Google reviews and how to do it

Plus, why the age-old advice of writing content for Featured Snippets might not be the best idea.

All good things start with observations. In this case, I thought I noticed that Google was showing much longer meta-descriptions towards the top of the SERP. In fact, the more queries I ran the more it seemed that Google was showing longer meta-descriptions at the top of the SERP and shorter ones towards the bottom.

Is this true? Is Google showing longer meta-descriptions for those URLs that rank better?

To find out I analyzed 5,000 keywords... for a month.

The fantastic Nik Ranger joins the podcast to discuss what goes into doing SEO for eCommerce sites:

• From technical elements to content – what should eCommerce SEO focus on?
• How changes in online shopping impact SEO for eCommerce
• A look at structured data and Featured Snippets for eCommerce

Plus, we dive into the entity sites Google shows inside the Knowledge Panel!

Back in 2019, I was trying to please a difficult client. I’m sure you know what that’s like.

At some point, he threatened to fire us. He wanted better rankings. By next week.

Let’s just say he wasn’t the most reasonable person to deal with. Nothing we said could persuade him. Since his site was ranking on page one of Google for many terms, Featured Snippets seemed like a great option that could yield results within a week. After a stressful week of running tests and experiments on my own, I was able to get some impressive looking Featured Snippets for the next meeting. Crisis averted.

Having gone through that experience, I wanted to create a deep and comprehensive guide that could help you come up with strategies for winning Featured Snippets. This is part 2.

It's shocking but in a way not surprising. We have "SEOed" creating authoritative content. What do I mean? We have turned the very task of understanding what it means to create authoritative content into another cliched and superficial analysis filled with endless amounts of buzzwords. It's not only incredibly ironic, but it is quite the accomplishment.

You can already guess what I'm going to do with this post.... I'm going to explain what I think the foundation of actually creating authoritative content is while I rant and rave about some of the outlooks and ideas being floated around out there.

Let's get this fun started.

The wonderful Orit Mutznik joins the podcast to share her thoughts on what makes a commerce blog effective (and what doesn't):

• Aim to sell or aim to inform, what are you really trying to do with a commerce blog?
• How hard do you push your commerce content on your commerce blog?
• What works, what doesn’t, and why so many commerce blogs are ineffective!

Plus, what makes a good SEO study good?