Getting “Linked from” URLs is a really useful way to find URLs that are linking to pages on your site. This is really beneficial when you want to find and fix URLs that are linking to a page reporting a 404 Not Found Google Search Console, but there’s simply not a great way to get this data out of the Google Search Console interface (in either the old or the new version). Instead, we can use the Search Console API Service programmatic way to access the functionality of the platform), to obtain the information quickly and easily.
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About James McNulty
How to Run Lighthouse Reports for Multiple Pages
This blog post is going to provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to run detailed page-level Lighthouse reports on multiple pages at once (even an entire site).
First of all, what is Lighthouse?
Developed by Google, Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the performance, quality, and correctness of web applications.
When auditing a page, Lighthouse runs a barrage of tests against a page and then generates a report on how well the page did. From there you can use the failing tests as indicators on areas to improve.
I should note here that Lighthouse Reports are not solely referencing page load time. In fact, there are a lot of page speed metrics beyond what the end user experiences and those metrics are very important to Google. These reports are very detailed, and when Google releases a tool like this it helps us see through Google’s lens and help us understand the metrics that they consider important.
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Diving Into Entity Search Results
Recently I was inspired by Mike’s post, ‘Leveraging Machine-Readable Entity ID’s for SEO’, which if you haven’t checked out already you definitely should. Mike’s post shines a light on MREID’s (described as a canonical URI for an entity, issued and used by Google) and how we can look to using them for SEO. To quote Mike’s post:
A machine-readable entity ID is, in essence, a string of characters used to exclusively refer to a single entity.
According to Bill Slawski — and thanks to his tireless work analyzing Google Patents, plus, generally paying more attention than anyone else — we know that Google is using MREID across many services like Google Trends, Google Lens, and Google Reverse Image Search (to keep track of entities within images).
Once I understood what machine-readable entity IDs were (here’s an example of the one for Seattle: /m/0d9jr), I had to know more.
A GDPR Compliance Guide for the Busiest Builder
I know what you’re thinking – oh great, yet another article on GDPR. Believe me, I get it.
But, when clients began to ask about GDPR and what needed to be done, I had no idea how to respond. I wanted to give them some sort of helpful answer, but I just never found the window of time to even digest what was going on for myself, and when I did I couldn’t comprehend anything.
So that leads me here. If I’m going to carve out a window of time to learn about this, I’m going to write it down in plain English for the busiest builders out there.
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What I Mean When I Say “Write Naturally” To Clients
It’s difficult for me to remember sometimes that clients are not in the headspace of everything we SEOs practice and preach. So when posed with the question “how many times should this keyword be on the page?”, I default to some variation of the same answer:
“When creating content, be mindful you are writing for humans as well as machines. Focus on the topic, don’t feel bound to writing the keyword literally, especially if it doesn’t make readable sense, just write naturally.”
Quite an indirect, and ultimately unhelpful answer for someone who isn’t experienced with the nuances of the SEO field. The problem with the answer is the clashing methodology of an older school of thought, and an unbridled set of rules for content-writing in SEO.
At the core of everything, Google wants to know who is providing the most valuable answer for the searchers’ query, and that is indicated by things like the quality and relevance of inbound links, the website’s overall authority in the topic area, and user engagement metrics – not just how many times a target keyword is used on a page.
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