Hey, folks! Jim Boykin here, your favorite SEO guy who loves diving into the depths of Google’s ever-changing algorithm. You know me—I’ve been around this block a few times, poking around, running experiments, and seeing what makes Google tick. And oh boy, have I got something juicy for you today. Let’s chat about the leaked Google documentation and go into one area in a bit of detail.

This time, it’s all about authorship—how Google identifies and values the authors of content, both on your pages and through backlinks. If you’re still stuck in the era where you think authors don’t matter, you’re in for a wake-up call. The way Google is handling authorship these days could make or break your site’s SEO.

So, buckle up, SEO warriors, because we’re going deep. And when I say deep, I mean we’re going into one of the core areas of the Google algorithm leak, dissecting the role of authors in search rankings, and figuring out how we can use this knowledge to boost our SEO game.

What the Leak Revealed About Authors and Google’s Algorithm

Understanding the API features for Author Data Extraction

To get a grip on how Google uses authorship data, you need to understand the different API calls mentioned in the leak. These calls help Google fetch detailed information about authors, link structures, and content relationships across the web. Knowing what these calls mean can give you a leg up in optimizing your content and backlinks. Here’s a breakdown of some of the the most important ones in my eyes.

• GET page_meta_info
  • Definition: Retrieves metadata from a webpage, including the author’s name from HTML <meta> tags. This is crucial for sites that want to ensure proper author attribution.
  • SEO Insight: Ensure all pages have accurate meta tags with author information. This helps Google quickly and efficiently recognize your authors.
• GET /user_profiles/{user_id}
  • Definition: Pulls detailed user profile data from Content Management Systems (CMS) that store author information.
  • SEO Insight: Utilize this for managing multiple authors on a site. Rich author profiles can help build trust and credibility with Google.
• GET /author_info?user_id={user_id}
  • Definition: Retrieves detailed information about an author, including bios, roles, and content contributions.
  • SEO Insight: Make sure your site’s API or CMS can output this type of rich author information to maximize author authority signals.
• GET /link_meta_info?url={page_url}
  • Definition: Analyzes the links on a page to identify authors of the linked content.
  • SEO Insight: Prioritize backlinks from trusted authors and credible sources to boost your site’s authority.
• GET external_meta_info?external_url={link_url}
  • Definition: Fetches metadata from external sites to extract authorship details from links.
  • SEO Insight: Strive for high-quality backlinks from sites with clear, authoritative authorship data.
• ScienceCitationAuthor
  • Definition: A structured data model capturing detailed author metadata, including name, role, and institutional affiliation.
  • SEO Insight: Particularly useful for sites in academic or scientific niches. Use this schema to provide comprehensive author information.
• ScienceCitationTranslatedAuthor
  • Definition: Similar to ScienceCitationAuthor but includes translated names for multilingual contexts.
  • SEO Insight: Implement this if you have authors contributing content in multiple languages to ensure proper attribution.
• NlpSciencelitCitationData
  • Definition: Contains author data connected to citations or articles, indicating its relevance for academic and scientific content.
  • SEO Insight: Helps in building a more credible and authoritative content library for research-based topics.
• NlpSciencelitAuthor
  • Definition: Focuses on basic author information such as first name and last name.
  • SEO Insight: Even simple author details like this can be valuable, especially if consistently formatted across all content.
• NlpSciencelitArticleMetadata
  • Definition: Deals with metadata for articles, including author details.
  • SEO Insight: Ensure article metadata is complete and accurate to enhance the discoverability and trustworthiness of your content.
• VideoVideoClipInfo
  • Definition: Includes author attributes related to video content, which is crucial for video SEO.
  • SEO Insight: Proper author attribution in video content helps in ranking for video search results.
• NlpSemanticParsingModelsShoppingAssistantProductMediaProduct
  • Definition: Relates to media products for purchase, including author information.
  • SEO Insight: If you’re selling media products, proper authorship details could enhance content recommendations and visibility.
• ScienceIndexSignal
  • Definition: Relates author information to scholarly articles and indexing signals.
  • SEO Insight: Important for academic SEO. Ensure authorship details are precise to benefit from indexing signals.
• NlpSaftDocument
  • Definition: Mentions authors within broader document contexts using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques.
  • SEO Insight: Understand that Google may use NLP to interpret authorship even without explicit tags, so the clarity of author content matters.
• OceanDataDocinfoWoodwingItemMetadata
  • Definition: Discusses authorship within item metadata for document management systems.
  • SEO Insight: For sites with complex document management needs, this could be vital in organizing and optimizing content.
• NlxDataSchemaDocument
  • Definition: Includes author data from a document analysis perspective.
  • SEO Insight: Make sure your content management system is set up to provide detailed author data for every piece of content.

These and other  author calls from Google cover both on page factors and backlink factors.

On-Page Factors, are all about your site. Have you properly attributed every piece of content? Are you using structured data? Are your authors real, trustworthy, and experts in their field? If not, you better start cracking.

Backlink Factors, on the other hand, are about who’s linking to you. It’s not enough to just get any backlink; you want backlinks where the content is attributed to respected authors. Google is cross-referencing this stuff, and the days of dodgy, anonymous links are long gone.

Weaving a Web of Trust with Google: The Power of Authorship and Backlinks

So, what’s the big picture here? All these API calls, metadata, and authorship signals aren’t just random bits of code—they’re the threads that weave a web of trust with Google. Let me break it down for you:

1. On-Page Authorship Signals: Every API call that pulls metadata from your page (GET page_meta_info, GET /user_profiles/{user_id}, etc.) is like a thread in a web. When you consistently provide detailed, accurate author information using structured data and meta tags, you’re telling Google, “Hey, this content is written by a real, credible person.” Google then starts to trust that content more.
2. Building Author Authority Across the Web: It’s not enough to just have a great author page on your site. Google wants to see that this author is respected across the web. Calls like GET /link_meta_info?url={page_url} and GET external_meta_info?external_url={link_url} allow Google to analyze backlinks and determine if other credible sites are also recognizing this author. If authoritative sites link back to content written by your authors, it strengthens that author’s credibility. It’s like having a network of endorsements from trusted sources.
3. Creating a Multi-Dimensional Author Profile: Using detailed models like ScienceCitationAuthor and ScienceCitationTranslatedAuthor, Google can see not just who the author is but their affiliations, roles, and even how they are represented in different languages. This multi-layered data adds depth to the web of trust, making it harder for low-quality or spammy authors to fake authority.
4. Cross-Referencing Content Types: Calls such as VideoVideoClipInfo for videos or NlpSemanticParsingModelsShoppingAssistantProductMediaProduct for product media indicate that Google is looking at authorship across various content types. This means if an author is consistently producing credible content in different formats—blogs, videos, products—they gain even more trust from Google.
5. Linking Authors to Knowledge Networks: When you connect authors to the Google Knowledge Graph, or when other sites reference these authors in well-structured and context-rich content, it’s like connecting the dots in a vast network of knowledge. Google’s SQL query patterns like SELECT * FROM calls_table WHERE call_name LIKE
'%author%'; suggest that they’re continuously filtering and analyzing data to connect these dots.
6. NLP and Contextual Understanding: With calls like NlpSaftDocument, Google uses Natural Language Processing to understand the broader context in which authors are mentioned. This helps the search engine verify that an author isn’t just a name slapped on content but is genuinely contributing valuable information to the digital ecosystem.

Crafting the Perfect Author Program in 9 Steps

You want a recipe for success? Here’s one game plan.

1. Develop Detailed Author Bios: Your authors should have rich bios that scream authority. Professional headshots, credentials, and even a little personality. Add links to your social accounts, and add links other places on the web where you have been mentioned.
2. Implement Structured Data Markup: Use Schema.org markup for every piece of content. Make Google’s life easier, and they’ll reward you.
3. Consistent Author Names: Ideally, use real people with real reputation on the web. Non-real names don’t work as well with Google because of all they track.
4. Verify Author Expertise: Keep those bios updated with new achievements and certifications. Show growth and continuous expertise.
5. Encourage Author Engagement: Get your authors involved. Comments, Q&A, social media interactions—it all helps.
6. Link Authorship with Google Knowledge Graph: If you can get your author into Google’s Knowledge Graph, do it. Major credibility boost.
7. Monitor Authorship in Backlink Profiles: Keep tabs on who’s linking to you, and if you’re getting links from other highly trusted authors this can help the value of the link.
8. Maintain a CMS with Author Management: Your CMS should make author management a breeze. Keep everything neat, clean, and accessible.
9. Encourage Authors to Build Their Own Backlink Profiles: Being published on other sites, webinars, and other forms of content where they can build their backlink profile will help you. It all counts.

Conclusion: Trust is the Ultimate Currency in SEO

All these API calls and data points show us that Google is building a complex, interconnected web of trust. The more threads you weave by providing detailed, accurate author information, getting credible backlinks, and consistently publishing high-quality content across various formats, the stronger your position in Google’s web becomes.

Here’s the kicker: if you understand this web and work on building it thoughtfully, you’re not just playing the SEO game—you’re mastering it. Remember, trust is the ultimate currency with Google. So, take this knowledge, implement it, and start weaving your own web of trust. High rankings aren’t just given; they’re earned.

The post The SEO Power of Authorship – On Site and in Backlinks appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

If you want to be on the first page of Google for commercial phrases, should you care about backlinks? Should you be trying to get them, or just ignore backlinks altogether?

Earlier this year, I heard from both Google and a couple of SEOs who are also writers that “links aren’t as important as they once were, and you don’t even need links to rank these days.” I never seen anyone write about a website that only had a few backlinks that was ranking well for commericial phrases, so I decided to find some of these near-mythical sites that don’t have many backlinks but still rank on the first page of Google for phrases where people might be making money.

In my previous study last month, I chose 200 random commercial phrases with the help of AI. For each of these phrases, I gathered the top 10 organic URLs on Google. After analyzing them, I found 1,113 unique websites. My programmer, Matt, added several API calls from sources like Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs, and SEMrush to better analyze this data.

The biggest finding from my previous analysis was that 96% of the websites had more than 1,000 unique domain backlinks. However, I only found 3 sites out of 1,113 that had fewer than 100 backlinks.

I had hoped to find more than just 3 such sites, so this time I decided to expand that analysis tenfold. This time we gathered data on 2,000 commercial phrases which in turn identified 9,337 unique domains that ranked in the top 10 of Google for these phrases.

The primary goal of this data gathering was to answer these three questions:

1. How many backlinks do the websites that rank in the top 10 for commercial intent phrases have?
2. What is the average number of backlinks that sites in the top 10 have for each phrase, and which phrases might require fewer or more links to rank?
3. For sites with fewer than 100 backlinks that still rank on the first page for a commercial/transactional phrase, is it the links, or could other signals be pushing them to the first page?

After digging into this analysis, I stumbled upon a couple of other areas of interest, which I’ll publish after the first three items:

4. Sites that Google loves and why? It it because they have so many backlinks?
5. Major sites using domain authority to rank high with affiliate pages. Is it parasite SEO if you’re doing it yourself?

In the coming months, I plan to release regular studies similar to this one. The next study will explore “How Many Links Might It Take to Rank for Informational Phrases,” followed by “How Many Links Does It Take in 10 Locations for 10 Local Phrases.” Then, I’ll revisit this commercial phrase study to see what has changed—identifying which sites have left or entered the top 10, how many links the new and old sites have, and the dominant sites in the top 10 three months from now. There’s much more to come, but first, let’s address the first question today.

Process to Find the Number of Backlinks the Top 10 Sites in Google Have

To ideally identify a small handful of sites with “few” backlinks, I analyzed ten times the number of sites from my previous study. This time, I used 2,000 randomly AI-generated commercial/transactional phrases, all with non-local intent and a minimum search volume of over 100 searches per month according to SEMrush.

Looking at the search volume (SEMrush’s estimates of monthly searches in Google) of those 2,000 phrases, we found a nicely spread distribution between low search volume (at least 100 searches per month) to high search volume.

Data on the 2,000 phrases and on the 9,337 domains that ranked in the top 10.

You can see the raw list of keywords here, or see the list of 2000 phrases with other data points.

With these 2,000 keyword phrases, we then gathered the top 10 sites that organically ranked in Google for each phrase. This now gave us 9,337 unique domains which we can analyze.

Then, using backlink data from Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs, & Semrush, I looked at the number of backlinks to each of those 9,337 websites.

You can see the full data that we gathered on the 9,337 domains here.

How Many Unique Domain Backlinks Do the Websites in the Top 10 of Google Have for Commercial Phrases?

Here’s what the new analysis revealed about the backlink distribution among these top-ranking sites:

Key Takeaways

• Over 99% of sites in the top 10 have over 100 unique domains linking to them.
• 94% of the top 10 sites have at least 500 unique domains linking to them.
• Nearly half (43%) of the sites have between 1,000 and 10,000 unique domains linking to them.
• One third (33%) of the sites that rank in the top 10 have 10,000 to 100,000 unique domains linking to them.

It is possible to rank in the top 10 of Google with fewer than 100 unique domain backlinks, but it’s less than a 1% chance according to this study of the 9,337 websites we analyzed that ranked in the top 10 for commercial phrases.

Like four-leaf clovers or blue lobsters, sites with few backlinks are pretty rare, making up less than 1% of those sites in the wild. So, I’m not sure I’d want to bet on the “backlinks don’t matter” camp if your goal is to rank on the first page of Google for commercial phrases. Even the Google leaked data was drenched in backlink analysis.

In my next analysis, Part 2, I’ll be exploring deeper into these 2,000 phrases and then making live additional data that I’ve been analyzing so I can share with you the surprising things that I discovered. We’ll also be looking at which phrases you “might” have a chance to rank on the first page for… if you have less than 50,000 backlinks… and which phrases, if you’re a small site, you don’t seem to have a chance, and which phrases might be “easier” to rank for, and why. You won’t believe what I found ;)!

Then, Part 3 will dive into the 9,337 URLs, with a focus on the 92 sites with fewer than 100 backlinks that rank for at least one commercial phrase and will see what these small sites have that might be putting them on Page 1 of Google.

Stay Tuned!

I’m Feeling Lucky Today!

————————————-

• * When I say “Backlinks,” I mean “Unique Domain Backlinks,” which is, for example, if you have 5 links from bob.com and 2 links from sue.com, we would only count 1 link for each site, so 2 links total, one from bob.com and one from sue.com.
• * When I say “Commercial Phrases,” I also mean what people might call “transactional phrases” or “money phrases.” For example, phrases like “antique clocks,” “auto insurance comparison,” or “beard oil for sensitive skin.”
• * When I say “Top Ten,” I mean the first 10 organic results in Google for that search, as we recorded it in early July 2024.

The post Backlink Insights: Analyzing Google’s Top 10 Websites appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

Ok…we must talk about AI….it is here NOW, and I predict that 2023 will be the year that AI will have a major impact on nearly Everything.

With the release of ChatGPT a few weeks ago, the world has moved into new era’s of information. AI will change the world as we know it today – I truly believe that, as it takes our intelligence to a new level.

But, for the sake of business today, and for the sake of Google, we must also look at the opportunities, and the limitations, and goods and the bads when it comes to AI.

AI can help give ideas for topics to write (ie, tell it something like, “I offer internet marketing services and I have a website. what are 50 potential services pages that we could write up that might appeal to prospective clients”…. and wa-la, out comes 50 ideas… some of those will be useful, and some will not… but AI can also take it a step further because you can then tell it to write articles about the ideas that it, or you, came up with that could be useful….. there are advantages to having something 1. come up with ideas, and 2, executing those ideas (by writing the ideas).

So, I know that we have several clients who want “As much content as possible, as quick as possible, as cheap as possible” and AI, at first glance, looks like a dream… so let’s dig in a little….

So, in relation to SEO, we need to talk about what Google thinks about AI generated content first. John Mueller has been saying over and over again, and even recently, that Google doesn’t like AI content, and says that it is against the Google Guidelines and can harm your website.

On August 25th and again on December 6th, Google released their first ever “Helpful Content Updates”. According to Google, this update, “generates a signal used by our automated ranking systems to better ensure people see original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.” I added the bold to “written by people, for people” because finding and penalizing AI content was one of the main focus’s of those updates.

These are worth reading: .

• Google Says AI Generated Content Is Against Guidelines , SEJ – April 6th 2022
• AI Generated Content Google Guidelines: Will Google Really Penalize Your Auto-Generated Content? – July 28, 2022
• What creators should know about Google’s August 2022 helpful content update – Google August 2022
• More From Google On AI Content – It’s About If The Content Is Helpful – SER November 8, 2022
• Google: We Have Algorithms To Detect & Demote AI Altered Plagiarized Content – SER November 30, 2022
• Google Helpful Content Update 2 –  SEL – December 6, 2022

So let’s talk AI programs – below are some AI content programs: 

• ChatGPT https://chat.openai.com/ – * Best AI tool that I’ve seen…can do a lot more than just content…it can also write code, and do more.
• Jasper https://www.jasper.ai/
• Writesonic https://writesonic.com/
• articleforge https://www.articleforge.com/
• WordAi https://wordai.com/
• Ink https://inkforall.com/
• AI Writer https://ai-writer.com/

Here are some AI Programs for Video/Image: 

Create AI Videos/People https://www.synthesia.io/ and https://humanpal.io/
Create AI Pictures https://labs.openai.com/
Text to Image: https://www.fotor.com/features/ai-image-generator/
Image Editing: https://prisma-ai.com/lensa
AI Art Generator: https://creator.nightcafe.studio/
Open AI Examples https://beta.openai.com/examples
Jasper Art https://www.jasper.ai/art

Now, for the scary – and Super Import Part.  Here are the tools that can detect AI content:

• https://huggingface.co/openai-detector/ – ** this one I would recommend the most
• https://writer.com/ai-content-detector/
• https://contentatscale.ai/ai-content-detector/
• https://www.poemofquotes.com/tools/ai-content-detector.php
• https://originality.ai/
• Percent Human: A list of tools for detecting lower-quality AI content – Glenn Gabe
• How to Detect AI-Generated Content (and Can Google Do That) – Ann Smarty

So I’ve been playing with ChatGPT a lot, testing what it can and can’t do. I’ve had it write some simple programs, and also some songs (ie, I’ve asked it to write the words and music to another song on Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album, I’ve had it write Ferris Bueller’s Day off – 40 years later, I’ve had it come up with viral bait ideas, video idea, website ideas, and so much more).

I even asked ChatGPT for what I should tell all of you about AI.

Here are the Instruction that I fed it:
I run an SEO company. if i was sending an email to my clients talking about AI for content creation. What are some of the things that you would recommend that I inform my client about AI content and how to use it or how to not use it for website content. Write this in first person, in the style of hunter thompson and mark twain. Include an original relevant joke. Tell an interesting personal story about AI as well. Put headings above important paragraphs with interesting title headings. Also, include a quote from someone, but get the quote wrong, and make that quote big.

Here are the Results that it gave me:

Hey there,

I wanted to reach out and talk to you about using AI for content creation. As you know, AI technology is constantly evolving, and it can be a useful tool for generating high-quality website content. However, there are a few things you should consider before jumping into the AI content game.

“AI is the future of content creation!”

Someone, probably

The Pros and Cons of AI Content

On the one hand, AI-generated content can save you a ton of time and effort. It’s fast, efficient, and free of spelling and grammar errors. Plus, it can generate content on a wide range of topics with ease.

On the other hand, AI content may not be as engaging or persuasive as content written by a human. It may not capture the tone and style you’re looking for, and it may not be as effective at converting visitors into customers.

The Importance of Human Oversight

While AI content can be useful, it’s important to remember that it’s not a replacement for human-generated content. It’s crucial to have a human review and edit AI-generated content to ensure that it’s accurate and appropriate. AI-generated content may contain errors or inappropriate language that a human would need to catch and correct.

Originality is Key

Google and other search engines value original, high-quality content, and they may penalize websites that use copied or spun content. It’s important to ensure that any AI-generated content is unique and not copied from other sources.

The Future of AI Content

As I mentioned earlier, AI technology is constantly evolving. It’s possible that AI-generated content may become more sophisticated and persuasive in the future. It’s important to stay up to date on developments in the field and to consider how AI may be able to benefit your content strategy going forward.

“AI is the future of content creation. Or maybe it’s just a fad. Who knows?”

Mark Twain, probably

I’ll never forget the time I saw an AI write a poem that was so good, it made me cry. It was about the beauty of nature and the impermanence of life. It was truly a remarkable moment, and it really made me think about the potential of AI as a creative tool.

I hope this information was helpful, and if you have any questions about using AI for content creation, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Best,

This piece of text, FYI, scored a 99.98% fake on https://huggingface.co/openai-detector/

When I asked ChatGPT to “talk about the history of google and ai content and if they might penalize a site for using ai content”

It said, “Google has a long history of using artificial intelligence (AI) in its search algorithms and other products. The company has always been at the forefront of AI research and development, and it has invested heavily in AI technology over the years.

In terms of AI-generated content, Google has generally been open to the use of AI as a tool for creating content. The company’s algorithms are designed to prioritize content that is useful and valuable to users, and this includes content that is generated using AI.

However, it is important to note that Google may penalize websites that use AI to generate low-quality or spammy content, or that use AI to try to manipulate search results in an unethical way. The company’s guidelines specify that websites should not use “automated programs or services to create links to your site or generate large amounts of content.”

Overall, it is important for websites to use AI in a responsible and ethical manner, and to focus on creating high-quality content that is valuable to users. This will help ensure that the website is in compliance with Google’s guidelines and is likely to rank well in search results.

So I guess the big question really is, “Will Google Hurt your site if you use AI for content generation?”
Well, currently, Google is saying “Yes, we will penalize your site for using AI content.”.

Will that change in the future?
…Maybe.
Can Google detect AI content today?
Probability yes they can most of the time…

Will they be able to detect new AI content in 1 year?
…I’m not sure.

AI is not going away, it’s very smart today, and it’s only getting smarter, and in a few month, when it’s connected to the web, and Google, and Amazon, and Microsoft, and others release their AI’s to the public, then a new day of knowledge will be upon us. I believe that AI will effect us as much as The Internet effected our lives.

In the end, AI is just a tool, and it’s how you use that tool that will determine “how smart you are because of AI”. Jobs will be lost, how we do things will change, and new opportunities will arise…there is no stopping what has started, and by the end of 2023, we will be in a new era, an era that takes the knowledge of the world, and the internet, and it will start to “think” and to write and to communicate back and forth with us. We will learn from it, and it will learn from us… It’s about to be a long strange trip into a new era of humans, an era beyond the Internet, and era of AI.

Happy Holiday’s, Peace, Love, and Respect,

Jim Boykin and the Ninja Team.

The post Let’s Talk AI and Google. appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

Jim Boykin, CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Ann Smarty, IMN’s analyst, discuss how link building should work (and how we don’t recommend it working).

Link building starts with creating something linkworthy. This could be a very useful tutorial, a niche report, a free tool or a visual asset (like an infographic).

If you own a big brand with a solid following, that linkable asset will likely attract some backlinks on its own.

However, more often than not, you will need to invest some time into bringing that asset in front of people’s eyes in an effort for it to be seen by those people (journalists and bloggers) who can link to it.

There may be different ways to market your content for it to start bringing links, inducing

• Getting it hot on Reddit or other places that journalists frequent
• Emailing people who have written on similar topics or linked to similar pages
• Getting it rank in Google (which is used by journalists and reporters looking for sources to link to)

Some assets can bring in links quickly, others will take months or even years to attract links, and some will not bring any links at all.
Not each of your content assets will get linked.

But don’t give up. Sometimes it takes more time and new channels to find people who will link to it.

There is another way link building works: Business owners buy links from spammy blogs and blog networks (often not realizing those links are worthless). Google has already mapped these blog networks out, and links form them will hardly do any good to your site.

This is a link building method we don’t recommend.

The post How to Do Link Building in 2022-2023 appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

And the reason for important content getting buried is usually the inherent way blogs work: As you add new and new content, older content goes down its archive and provides less and less value to the site.

And that content can make an effective part of a conversion funnel driving sales and leads.

Jim Boykin, CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Ann Smarty, IMN’s analyst, are bringing up an important question: How to create a well-planned content strategy that never lets important articles get lost and lose its value?

One common problem with many business blogs that just about any content goes there. This results in that content never bringing desired results.

To surface your important ever-green content, keep your blog to newsworthy and seasonal content, and create a separate section for your ever-green how-to articles and tutorials:

Set up a Knowledge Center

A well-structured knowledge center keeps all the content on the same level without letting it get buried.

This “expert area” should be well interlinked with matching products and product categories to keep related commercial and informational pages tied together.

It is also a good idea to list your most useful content in the main navigation, in the same folder as your product categories solving the same problem.

Create more specific blog categories matching your product categories

If you decide to use your blog for all your content, make sure to set up specific categories that would match your product categories and provide a context for them.

This way you can separate your newsworthy content from ever-green tutorials.

Whatever you do, make sure to interlink your ever-green content with your commercial pages to create topical link circles and ensure that nothing gets buried.

To create a well-planned content strategy, contact ninjas. We have years of experience in identifying important sections of the site and creating both SEO and conversion strategy to make the most of them.

The post Many sites aren’t using their blog correctly – are you? appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

To discuss local rankings, Jim Boykin, founder and CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Ann Smarty, IMN’s analyst, were joined by Ben Fisher, Google’s trusted Business Profile Product Expert.

Ben Fisher is Co-Founder of Steady Demand and Diamond Google Product Expert with over 25 years of experience in Internet Marketing.

The fundamental rule remains the same:

1. One business
2. One address
3. One phone number

If you do open a physical location that is staffed in every city, you can have multiple Google Business Profiles.

If you are a florist and you do local delivery (but not an actual office), you cannot create multiple Google Business Profiles.

If you become an abusive player, Google has the right to shut you down and on top of that, they have the right to never let you back.

Location is #1 local ranking signal, but there is currently no good way to show Google that you can actually help customers in a nearby town or county. This is especially true for service-based businesses that work across multiple cities or counties.

In fact, even specifying a service area is not going to be helpful. Adding a service area is a visible designation only. It is not a ranking factor.

The only definitive way for a business to rank for local searches is to actually establish a real office in that neighborhood.

It is a good idea to test a location first before you decide to invest into a long-term office. Get a short-term lease and see if your target customers are there.

The address controls your local rankings.

The only other way to help your business show up for searches outside of your physical address is to create location pages on your website. This will at least help you rank organically at least.

Hire ninjas if you want us to research your local keywords and create on-site optimization strategy to rank for multiple location-based queries.

The post Location and Proximity: How to Rank Your Business for Multiple Location-Based Queries with Ben Fisher appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

How does it work and how to optimize your Google Business Profile?

To discuss Google Business Profile, Jim Boykin, founder and CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Ann Smarty, IMN’s analyst, were joined by Ben Fisher, Google’s trusted Business Profile Product Expert.

Ben Fisher is Co-Founder of Steady Demand and Diamond Google Product Expert with over 25 years of experience in Internet Marketing.

Any time you do a search that has a local intent, you will end up finding Google Business Profiles. Whenever Google detects local search intent, Google will rank the results based on proximity standpoint and relevancy standpoint. In other words, Google will find relevant Google Business Profiles that are closest to you.

About 46% of Google Business Profiles are not claimed.

Many years ago, Google has a deal with Yellowpages to import their database and create a database of local businesses. These days Google uses many more sources of data (both online and offline) that help them create detailed and trustworthy business profiles.

Businesses can claim their local listings to add more details, upload photos and interact with their customers from their Google profile.

Creating a well-optimized and details Google Business Profile is key to being found by Google searchers who are looking for a related business nearby.

Being on Google is crucial for accelerating local sales.

Google Business Profile is free to create and it can boost your sales by 90%

Don’t forget that 65% of Google searches have local intent.

If you look at these two numbers, claiming your existing profile or creating a new one is no-brainer.

Once you have access to it, make sure to fill every aspect of it.

When optimizing your Google Business Profile:

• Don’t stick your keywords everywhere you can. It is not going to help
• Think about creating a detailed and helpful for your customers

The two big signals for Google local rankings are:

• Name (keywords in your business name do help)
• The primary category: Just choose the category and subcategories that apply to your business.
• Google Business Profile engagements: views of your photos and videos, comments on your posts, questions in your Q&A section, reviews, etc.

As for external signals:

There are local ranking factors that go beyond the actual Google Business profile but can still be controlled by you:

• The links you build to your site do play a huge role in your local rankings (organic and local search algorithms are connected)
• Your website content is going to help your local rankings as well.

The post What Is Google Business Profile and How to Optimize Your Profile in Google with Ben Fisher appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

But it also leaves a business vulnerable to blackmailing.

Fake reviews remain a huge problem not just for Google but for Facebook as well.

To discuss local customer reviews and dealing with fake reviews, Jim Boykin, founder and CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Ann Smarty, IMN’s analyst, were joined by Ben Fisher, Google’s trusted Business Profile Product Expert.

Ben Fisher is Co-Founder of Steady Demand and Diamond Google Product Expert with over 25 years of experience in Internet Marketing.

There’s actually a lot of organized crime around leaving fake reviews because:

• They negatively impact your business average ranking
• They are also a ranking factor in local ads.

To avoid becoming a target of fake reviews, avoid ever paying for reviews.

Business buying reviews usually become the target of fake reviews and blackmailing.

Getting rid of bad reviews is very difficult.

They have a strict number of guidelines that explain what they define as an abuse.

But in many cases, it remains very challenging to get rid of fake reviews.

For example, removing a fake review from a past employee is a nightmare and it will only work if they have you as a past employee on their Linkedin profile.

In other cases, it is very difficult to prove that a certain review is probably attack from your competitor unless there are signals of abuse:

• Location: Someone from India is reviewing a local company in California
• Multiple similar one-star reviews a user leaves
• Referring to a competitor in their reviews
• Brand new account leaving a negative review

To get rid of a bad (fake, abusive) review on Google Business Profile:

• Report it from within your dashboard (which will probably not going to help but that’s a required step anyway)
• Request an appeal (which is human moderated)
• If your appeal gets rejected, go to Google’s support community and make a post with a link and screenshot (no backstory). From here, this can be escalated to Google.
• At this point you’ll get a final decision from Google (after a week or so)

There’s no way to request a call back from Google to request a review removed. And there’s no way to request a review removal using the chat functionality as well.

The post How to Deal with Fake Reviews on Google Business Profiles with Ben Fisher appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

Lots of businesses have their listings suspended.

How to avoid being suspended and how to get reinstated when you are?

To discuss Google Business Profile suspensions and reinstatements, Jim Boykin, founder and CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Ann Smarty, IMN’s analyst, were joined by Ben Fisher, Google’s trusted Business Profile Product Expert.

Ben Fisher is Co-Founder of Steady Demand and Diamond Google Product Expert with over 25 years of experience in Internet Marketing.

Ben is also the world’s leading expert when it comes to local business suspensions and reinstatements. He has done over 3800 of them in the last 12 months, not including all the reinstatements that his company did.

Common reason for suspension on Google Business Profile

1. Suspicious activity: Name and Address Violation

This could be adding keywords to your business name. This often happens when your business is moving and neglected updating your address in a timely manner.

The second common reason is giving an address that you have no association with.

If they suspect that you have maliciously gave incorrect details, they will suspend your profile.

Sometimes your profile can be suspended when there’s an issue with the associated with the website (for example, when your website has malware or returns a 404 error).

2. Users

If all your listings are suspended at the same time, there’s something wrong with the user associated with all those profiles.

Reinstatement process

The process of the reinstatement can be difficult. The main reason is that Google has access to much more data than you do.

Sometimes it takes weeks to hear back from Google.

Make sure your Google Business Profile aligns to Google’s guidelines. Don’t use virtual offices. Don’t expand your territory by opening multiple locations. Make sure your profile is up-to-date.

Reinstatement can take a lot of time and it is much easier to avoid suspension than get reinstated.

The post How to Avoid Being Suspended on Google Business Profile (& Get Reinstated When You Are) with Ben Fisher appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

And yet, too often businesses are not implementing the tactic properly.

What are the most common mistakes businesses make when investing into PPC advertising?

To discuss pay-per-click advertising, Jim Boykin, founder and CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Ann Smarty, IMN’s analyst, were joined by Truman Hedding, the branding expert with years of digital marketing experience.

Truman Hedding is a growth hacker, PPC  and video marketing expert, speaker and a successful agency founder.

Being lazy is the most common mistake businesses make when investing in PPC ads.

Google is doing a very good job making their platform easy to use. They have powerful conversion optimization tools.

Not putting enough work

And yet too many businesses are not using all those tools. They don’t invest enough money into testing lots of ads to accumulate the data, they don’t to A/B testing, etc.

It’s all about willing to do the work, and do it well.

Not excluding negative keywords

Defining your negative keyphrases is another common mistake which is also a result of not putting enough work into a PPC strategy.

You should exclude keywords that are not relevant to your business on a weekly basis. And this can save your business a lot of money which you can invest into more effective ads.

Not using any other CRO tools except for Google’s

Another common mistake is relying only on Google’s conversion optimization tools.

You need to always use additional tools to build better-converting pages.

Not learning from results

Finally, most business are not willing to learn from their own results and adjust their tactics accordingly. For example, businesses are not measuring or monitoring their branded search queries to evaluate the effectiveness of their PPC campaigns.

The post PPC DO’s and DONT’S with Truman Hedding appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.