James McNulty

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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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.

[Read more…] about What I Mean When I Say “Write Naturally” To Clients

As Technical Marketers, it’s important that we research and understand the search landscape. It’s time we took a look at voice search.

Let’s first clarify that traditional text-based Google Search as we know it isn’t going anywhere. We all know, the SERP has become an ever-changing robust environment and the days of ten blue links are gone. Voice search is nothing new, it’s been around for quite a while, but with the release of Google Home, it has reignited the way we as search marketers look at it. With machine learning on the forefront, Google’s evolution into AI is rapidly underway, and voice search could be a foreshadowing for us all to prepare.

[Read more…] about OK Google, What Are You Really Saying?