OK TidBITS Talkers, it’s time to start pitching in. Incoming links are are critical to search engine optimization. If you’ve got a blog, website, Twitter feed, Facebook page, etc. and you see something on TidBITS you find informative or interesting, then give it a shout out and a link. Google finds and ranks pages by crawling other pages. The more connections, the better the chances are a site will be found and the higher it can rise in rankings. It will really help to do this on an ongoing basis, and it doesn’t have to take up much of your time at all. Facebook friends and Twitterers also click on links, and that social media can really build traffic too. (I don’t have any of the above items, so I can’t help with this one).
Some suggestions for Adam & Co. and anyone else interested in search optimization:
A thumb up “Like” button at the bottom of articles (it’s different from the “F” thingy to that allows comments along with a link in Facebook). As much as I don’t like Facebook tracking me, I know that clicking the button will help the author and publisher. Content that gets thumbs up can get shared more, and it’s an opportunity for someone who read the article to easily “like” it.
Is the new site AMP optimized? Google is emphasizing AMP, especially for mobile - it is a huge big deal and the crawlers have been trained to scrutinize AMPed up sites and consider load speed:
There’s a good summary of the importance of AMP in this article from CIO:
AMP is not directly a search engine ranking factor, and sites that adopt AMP won’t “get a massive boost in search ranking,” according to Richard Gingras, senior director of news and social products at Google, who spoke to AdAge.com. “All of the other (search engine ranking) signals need to be satisfied as well,” he said.
However, “speed matters” in search engine ranking, according to Gingras. “If we had two articles that from a signaling perspective scored the same in all other characteristics but for speed, then yes, we will give an emphasis to the one with speed because that is what users find compelling.”
AMP can also indirectly influence where Google places pages in search results, according to Petty. If an AMP gets more clicks and fewer bounces because it’s faster to load, Google determines that the page is valuable to users, and it’s likely to get higher placement in search results.
“Google is constantly changing up the rules of what performs best in search,” says Miné Salkin, digital marketing manager of Absolute Mobile Solutions, a digital marketing agency. “Is your website mobile-friendly and does it pass the speed test? If not, your business might be adversely effected by the search engine page results.”
https://www.cio.com/article/3091071/search/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-google-amp.html
There are more, and larger graphics on the TidBITS site now, and crawlers do look at meta tags, and having concise and informative meta tags can help. But it’s also important to consider load times for graphics on mobile phones, as this is critical for Google, who is paying Apple $3 billion a year to be the search engine on iOS, and this price will probably be jacked up when Apple negotiates the next contract.
And think about promoting to the editors at Apple News.
Marilyn