100+ ways to get backlinks for your blog in 2016

This method will help you to earn quick backlinks from high-quality pages. Broken link building technique is to find broken links on a website (related to your niche) and email the content owner and notify them about broken link. Along with that, give them a similar link from your website (Similar content which you already have to create one), and ask them to update their post.

1. Submit Guest Post to Other Blogs.
2. Comment on do follow blogs and make sure these blogs are relevant to your own blogs. They might not carry too-much of link value, but it will still be beneficial for overall link-profile of your blog.

3. Start Relevant Threads in Forums and Link to Your Blog Posts
4. Link to Your Blog in Your Forum Signatures (Only high quality forums)
5. Social bookmarking is also considered as backlinks and you should target following network: Google plus, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest to name a few.

6. Make Use of Discussion Boards by Linking to Your Blog in threads. Quora is one such HQ discussion board.
7. Make Use of Blogging Communities by Submitting Your Blog Posts to Them, some great places to start are Blog Engage , Inbound
8. Ask Questions related to your blog in Answer Sites like Yahoo Answers and Link to Your Blog in your questions
9. Answer Questions in Yahoo Answers and Cite Your Blog as the Source
10. Interlink to your blog and other posts on your blog when writing on your blog.

11. Exchange links with other bloggers in your niche. Make sure to form link pyramid and keep it natural.
12. Submit Your Blog to Top Blogging directories (Again quality mattes here) (Find a list of Blog directories here)
13. Write a mail to influencer who write on the same topic and encourage them to share it on social-network. You never know how much one sweet email can make a huge-difference.
14. Submit your blog to top niche directories

15. Network with other bloggers in your niche (Online and offline) and links will automatically follow you.
16. Submit your blog posts to all social bookmarking sites you know
17. Submit your blog to your top social networking sites
18. Submit your articles to stumbleupon
19. Submit your blog to digg, it is dofollow and Google crawls most of its submissions
20. Work on making your blog go viral on top social bookmarking sites, this alone can bring you tons of quality backlinks from authority sites.
21. Submit your rss feed to feeder sites
22. Make use of press releases, and send press-release about important updates from your blog. You can also compare best product in your niche and send a press-release on the same.
23. Submit your rss feed to rss directories, here is a list of rss directories to get started.
24. Most forums have a website review forum, review your blog on this forums.
25. Release a free theme and include a link to your blog in its footer. (Not recommended)
26. Release a free WordPress plugin and include a link to your blog in it. But don’t keep it sitewide, as sitewide anchor text links are bad. Example:
Floating social share bar WordPress plugin
27. Release a software or compile your ebooks to .exe and submit them to top software sites like brothersoft
28. Convert your blog posts to pdf and submit it to document sharing sites, here is a list of document sharing sites for you to get started.
29. Review top companies and products and they might link back to you
30. Do a weekly link love post and link to many bloggers, they will most likely return the favor. Take advantage of
outbound link SEO .
31. Interview top bloggers and ask them to help you share it on their favorite social networks and their fans will link to your interview.
32. Provide testimonials for marketers and also provide your link when doing so, they will most likely link back to you.
33. Make use of web 2.0 sites to promote your blog
34. Submit your blog posts to blog carnivals.
35. Write high quality content and you will get strong backlinks
36. Write Controversial posts
37. Write news posts and try to be one of the first people to write it.
38. Submit your blog to CSS directories.
39. Ask other bloggers to interview you.
40. Write linkbait posts.

41. Write top list posts because they can go viral easily.
42. Write a post comparing some top gurus in your niche.
43. Write a post featuring some upcoming bloggers and why you like them, they will most likely link to it.
44. Trade articles with other bloggers in your niche.
45. Submit your site to Dmoz , many other directories use this directory and that alone is enough qaulity backlinks for you.
46. Submit your blog to .edu and .gov forums and blogs, Google so much loves backlinks fom this sites and regards them as authority.
47. Make use of groups like Google Groups and Yahoo Groups
48. Create a Wikipedia Page For Yourself and include your link in the resource section.
50. Write posts that have “the ultimate” in the title, each of these type of post I wrote got over 20 backlinks each.
51. Start a blogging contest and make linking to your blog one of the requirements.
52. Sponsor blogging contest and you will get a lot of backlinks from this.
53. Donate to charity sites, many of them will link back to your site.
54. Build a great tool and many people will link to your tool and your blog.
55. Do a big product launch.
56. Make the news at any cost.
57. Release your own firefox extension and have a page dedicated to it, many people will link to it!
58. Blog about celebrities.
59. Render your services to top people in your niche.
60. Write 101 posts, they tend to get more social and natural link love.
61. Design a top bloggers award and give it to as many bloggers as you can in your niche, they will link back to you.
62. Contact your theme designer and tell them to use your website as an example in their portfolio, they will most likely include a link back to your blog.
63. Create manuals and long tutorial posts on your blog, this type of post do receive lots of backlinks.
64. Create a great ebook or membership site and make linking to your blog the requirement to get it.
65. Submit your resume to resume directories while linking to your blog in your resume.
66. Write how to posts, they also tend to get more backlinks.
67. Write posts that starts with numbers e.g. “7 ways to…”, these type of posts do tend to get backlinks.
68. Submit your images to image directories and include a link to your blog in its copyright notice and as a requirement to use it. Ex: How to use Flickr to drive traffic
69. Join blogging contest and you will most probably get backlinks if you win.
70. Have a “link to us” or “spread the word” page on your blog while asking your readers to link to you – it is important to make it easy for them by putting your direct html code there using your desired anchor text.

71. Submit your website to local business directories, backlinks from these sites are regarded by Google as authority.
72. Write on about.com and link to your blog in it, this will likely be crawled and used by a lot of websites thereby increasing backlinks to your blog.
73. Make effective use of april fool .
74. Do very costly jokes on your blog but indicate it is a joke underneath the post (tricky? ahah!), e.g., “Apple has bought Google for $260Billion”, something like this will get tons of links and retweets before people even know that it is a joke.
75. Create niche specific tutorials, which are not only unique but help the community. Such tutorial articles get lots of backlinks.
76. Create viral youtube videos and include links to your blog in the video and its description.
77. Create Lots of Websites and
Interlink Them to each other. (Avoid private blog network)
78. Offer lots of free downloads on your blogs.
79. Update your blog regularly because this will make more people trust your website and it will also make you rank for more keywords which means more traffic and eventually more backlinks.
80. Write a great post with a lot of pictures in it – let the post be pictures only.
81. Write a post comparing various companies and services and which is the best, the best company will most likely link to it.
82. Compare different top products and link to them, people will most likely link to it e.g. You can compare a Mac with a PC. Ensure you compare products which are related to your niche.
83. Get a collection of high quality paid things and make them available for free (make sure you are not violating the copyright of the owner in any way!)
84. Create a directory for your blog and make it important to reciprocate links with you by giving those who link to you higher placement and giving them free featuring on your homepage.
85. Beta test a lot of products and give your review and tips on improving the product, the owner might just link to you.
86. Run surveys on your blog and publish the results for everybody to see, if the survey is good and helpful you will definitely get a lot of backlinks to your blog.
87. Write a list of the “top 10 myths” or “top 10 mistakes” about something.
88. Position yourself as an authority in your niche and try to get attention from the media.
89. Offer to speak at events and seminars related to your niche, don’t forget to mention your blog while introducing yourself, this will most likely help you get some backlinks.
90. Have a special writing style that attracts people.
91. Be transparent on your blog.
92. Get listed in top paid Directories like the Yahoo Directory
93. List your product on Ebay or Amazon and include a link back to your blog.
94. Create a podcast and submit it to iTunes , link back to your blog from it.
95. Create web apps and submit them to app directories such as Producthunt .
96. Write a great and very useful whitepaper and ask your blogging friends to help you distribute it around the web, make sure you include a link to your blog in the whitepaper.
97. Run a contest giving people physical products for free, make linking to your blog a requirement to join.
98. Try to know which stories are hot (Trending stories) at the moment and make sure you blog about them.
99. Blog about very important events such as the independence day and the likes.
100. Start your affiliate program .
101. Create a news section on your blog with regularly updated news in your niche and you will begin to get links fast.

Bonus!

102. Take note of newspapers and magazines that are willing to feature experts in many fields and try to write about your niche while linking back to your blog.

You don’t necessarily have to practice unethical marketing to make it online, the above are 101 (+2) ways to get quality backlinks to your blog
Do share your tips to get sure shot quality backlinks?

How To Submit Blogger Sitemap To Google Webmaster Tools?

To be successful in your blogging career you must have to generate decent organic traffic for your blog.By the term “organic traffic” I mean the traffic which comes to your blog through search engines like Google.

If you are a new blogger then you should be aware with the Google Webmaster Tools. This is a great tool which is provided by Google itself. It is useful for bloggers and webmasters to get their blog or website index by the Google and it also help to improve our blog’s crawling rate.

You just need to verify your blog ownership in Google Webmaster Tools and then submit a simple sitemap. It is very important to submit blogger sitemap to Google in terms of SEO which tells Google about your blog and its content.

Whenever you update your blog with new posts, your sitemap helps to index them easily in search engines. This is what we are going to discuss in this post. Let see how to add blogger sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.

Submit Blogger Sitemap To Google Webmaster Tools

Below are some easy steps you have to go through in terms to submit your blogspot blog sitemap.

• Sign in to Google Webmaster Tools.


• Click on the blog title for which you want to add sitemap.


• Click on Sitemaps button as shown below.

• At the top right corner of the page, press Add/Test sitemap button.

• Once you click the button, a small box will appear as shown in the screenshot below.

• Add the below code in the text field.

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

This is the sitemap code for your blogger blog which you need to add.

• Press “Submit Sitemap” button.


• Refresh the page.

Congratulation! You have finished the process of submitting your blog sitemap.

Note: The above sitemap will work for 500 posts only. If you have more than 500 posts published in your blog, then you have to add one more sitemap. The Whole procedure will be same but at this time you have to add this code.

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=500

The sitemap which we submit to Google Webmaster Tools is a XML sitemap which is used by search engines to find our content easily. There is HTML sitemap too which is for our blog readers. We should add sitemap page to our blog so that our readers can easily view all of our blog posts at the single location. It’ll be easy for them to read the post which they want to.

Comments
This was the step by step guide on how to add blogger sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools. If you found it worth reading, then please share it with your social media friends. If you have any feedback, suggestion or any query then feel free to comment below this post. Your comments will be answered as soon as time allows. Happy Blogging! 🙂

How To Rank In Google Without Links

Everyone suffering ranking in Google Search Engine. Because Google Search Engine is Main Source of Traffic. Rank Without Backlinks, How to Rank to the fore Less Links,
Can You Rank in Google Without Links, How Many Backlinks We craving To Rank not quite the 1st Page of Google, Where Do I Rank regarding Google, How to Rank First Page very more or less Google With Zero Link Building, Can we rank in Google without associates.Yes you can rank adeptly behind no connections. BUT you will deserted rank on long tail or low competition terms.

How To Rank In Google Without Links

Google Trends

Work On Google Trends.Write Post About Trend Your Post and Your Blog Automatic Rank in Search Engine.Your Blog Drive Good Traffic From Search engine.

Social Media

Social Media is a Best Way Of Traffic taking into account social Media Traffic we can layer.From personal research conducted and from case studies from very recognized alert webmasters, it is generally concluded that Google places premium attention upon social media signals.

Send out emails

Make Email List after Share Blog Post Also send to your Email list.it is Also Help you to in Ranking and Increase your Blog p.s. ranking in Search Engine.

Write delightful content

Write Original content and Write occurring to 500 words content and Related to Post and be in Proper On Page Seo.

Write a guest declare

Write Guest pronounce upon adding together Blogger blog it is as well as Help you In Ranking Because your Build Relationship by now association Blogger.

Focus upon improving enthusiast-experience

Focus upon User Experience it is as well as main Factor of ranking.

Long Tail Keyword

If you use Long Tail keyword and Write Good content About Topic Google Rank your Post Easily.

External connections

Use External connections in your Blog pronounce these Things Also Help in Ranking. Do not Ignore These Things

Zero Competition Keywords

Find a keyword when 1000 to 2000 searches per month and rank for it and Low Competition.

if you Face any hardship or Need any Help just roughly to Post freely door us. Give your Feedback.

Full SEO tutorial For Your Wapka Site

SEO is the most important to getting a huge
visitor from search engine. Manually submit
your wapka site to major search engine like
google,yahoo,bing. Once you submit your site,
it could take several days to index your full
website page.
Everybody we know that google is the best
search engine in the internet world.Now i talk
how to add your wapka site in google search
engine and able to find huge visitor for your
website…

Submit your site to google

Step 1: First Go to this site Google webmaster tools.

Step 2: Then Click ADD A SITE
Step 3: Then write your website name in box
then clickcontinue.
Step 4: Then clickAlternate method
Step 5: Then tick HTML TAG box.

Step 6: Then you will show a meta tag like this
(Every website content code is different)
Step 7:Copy this code and paste it in
yourHEAD TAGS(Like For wapka
user:Login>EDIT SITE>Global Setting>HEAD
tags (meta,style,…)>Then paste this meta
code>Click set)
Step 8:Then go step 6 and click VERIFY.
Step 9:Then you will show
Congratulations, you have successfully
verified your ownership of http://
yourdomain.com or Any Subdomain.Then
clickContinue.
Step 10: Then click Sitemaps.

Step 11:Then click ADD/TEST SITEMAP.
step 12: Then you will show a box.Just write
sitemap.xml
step 13: Then Click Submit Sitemap.
step 14:Then you show your sitemap submitted
then click Refresh the page.
step 15:Now okay, your sitemap submitted.
ENJOY!
step 16: Now this step is most important.
Now
i will give you a meta code which code help
google robot to index your site regularly.Before
paste this code change your keywords n discretions. then just paste it in HEAD
TAGS.
Edit Robots File (robots.txt)
This I’ll say that it plays the greatest
role in SEO because with this tool you
can tell the google bot,what to Nofollow
and
Follow.you can also set the action of
crawler etc.
wapka has this tool as a default tool.In
the past i saw some post teaching that
wapka default robot text file is not
sending away google bot but that’s a
lie because uptil today am still using
wapka default robot text file.
Below is my robot text file.

User-agent: Slurp
Disallow: /
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Crawl-delay: 60

Edit sitemap file (sitemap.xml)
link

p>Go to Global Settings> Edit sitemap file (sitemap.xml)
Insert only site ID, of sites, which you want to
place in the file sitemap.xml for google SEO.
You can add also links of forums in form fID .
For example: 0,1,2,10,223,f123,f456
Now all is done,your site is now index
google.To see his just go to www.google.com
and write google search box like this
site: yoursite.com or any subdomain like
site: yoursite.wapka.mobi
If you don’t see your site pls wait 1-2 days
google robot index your all site properly in
google search box.

3 Reasons Why Responsive Web Design is the Best Option For Your Mobile SEO Strategy

As smartphone and tablet adoption rapidly increases, so does the importance of mobile- friendly websites. If SEO is a core component of your digital marketing strategy, having a mobile–friendly website is becoming essential. Mobile sales have already overtaken desktop sales, and mobile Internet usage is predicted to overtake desktop internet usage by 2015. It is only logical that mobile search will overtake desktop search at some point in the near future as well.If you want to make a responsive blog or website,my advice is to contact with Best website designers in Mumbai.

However, the truth is that both options have their pros and cons. The option that is best for your business depends on many factors. If SEO is a factor, here are three reasons why responsive web design is the best option for your mobile SEO strategy.

1. Recommended By Google

With 67 percent search market share, when Google speaks, search marketers listen. Google states that responsive web design is its recommended mobile configuration, and even goes so far as to refer to responsive web design as the industry best practice. This is because responsive design sites have one URL and the same HTML, regardless of device, which makes it easier and more efficient for Google to crawl, index, and organize content. Contrast this with a separate mobile site which has a different URL and different HTML than its desktop counterpart, requiring Google to crawl and index multiple versions of the same site. Additionally, Google prefers responsive web design because content that lives on one website and one URL is much easier for users to share, interact with, and link to than content that lives on a separate mobile site. Take for example a mobile user who shares content from a mobile site with a friend on Facebook who then accesses that content using a desktop, which results in that user viewing a stripped down mobile site on their desktop. This creates a less than optimal user-experience, and because of the large emphasis Google is now placing on user- experience as a ranking factor, this is essential to take into account with regards to SEO.

2. One Website, Many Devices

One of the most appealing aspects of responsive web design is that a responsive website can provide a great user-experience across many devices and screen sizes. This is an important characteristic, since it is impossible to anticipate all the devices and screen sizes searchers will use to access your site. A site that works well regardless of these variables will provide a better and more consistent user-experience than a separate mobile site that is designed for a specific device and screen size. Let’s take the following example. Someone searches for a product on their smartphone during a lunch break at work. They find a site that has the product they’re looking for, and decide to continue researching this product on the same site when they get home. Except, when they get home, they will use their desktop instead of their smartphone. If the site in this example is responsive, this person will have a positive user-experience when transitioning from mobile to desktop because they will view the same site on their desktop as they did on their smartphone. On the other hand, if the site is a dedicated mobile site, this person will become frustrated with the fact that they have to locate the desktop version of the site, and find the product all over again.

3. Easier to Manage

Having a separate desktop and mobile site requires having separate SEO campaigns. Managing one site and one SEO campaign is far easier than managing two sites and two SEO campaigns. This is a key advantage a responsive website has over a separate mobile site. That being said, there are benefits to having a mobile-specific SEO strategy, such as optimizing for keywords that are more likely to be searched when someone is on their smartphone. For example, someone performing a mobile search for a local restaurant may be more inclined to use the word “nearby” in their search query. However, a separate mobile site is not a requirement for a mobile SEO strategy, and there’s no reason why mobile-specific keywords can’t be incorporated into a responsive design site as well.

Conclusion

Responsive web design is recommended by Google, it allows one website to provide a great user-experience across many devices and screen sizes, and it also makes managing your SEO strategy easier. For these reasons, responsive web design is the best for Yur website seo.

3 Reasons Why Responsive Web Design is the Best Option For Your Mobile SEO Strategy

As smartphone and tablet adoption rapidly increases, so does the importance of mobile- friendly websites. If SEO is a core component of your digital marketing strategy, having a mobile–friendly website is becoming essential. Mobile sales have already overtaken desktop sales, and mobile Internet usage is predicted to overtake desktop internet usage by 2015. It is only logical that mobile search will overtake desktop search at some point in the near future as well.If you want to make a responsive blog or website,my advice is to contact with Best website designers in Mumbai.

However, the truth is that both options have their pros and cons. The option that is best for your business depends on many factors. If SEO is a factor, here are three reasons why responsive web design is the best option for your mobile SEO strategy.

1. Recommended By Google

With 67 percent search market share, when Google speaks, search marketers listen. Google states that responsive web design is its recommended mobile configuration, and even goes so far as to refer to responsive web design as the industry best practice. This is because responsive design sites have one URL and the same HTML, regardless of device, which makes it easier and more efficient for Google to crawl, index, and organize content. Contrast this with a separate mobile site which has a different URL and different HTML than its desktop counterpart, requiring Google to crawl and index multiple versions of the same site. Additionally, Google prefers responsive web design because content that lives on one website and one URL is much easier for users to share, interact with, and link to than content that lives on a separate mobile site. Take for example a mobile user who shares content from a mobile site with a friend on Facebook who then accesses that content using a desktop, which results in that user viewing a stripped down mobile site on their desktop. This creates a less than optimal user-experience, and because of the large emphasis Google is now placing on user- experience as a ranking factor, this is essential to take into account with regards to SEO.

2. One Website, Many Devices

One of the most appealing aspects of responsive web design is that a responsive website can provide a great user-experience across many devices and screen sizes. This is an important characteristic, since it is impossible to anticipate all the devices and screen sizes searchers will use to access your site. A site that works well regardless of these variables will provide a better and more consistent user-experience than a separate mobile site that is designed for a specific device and screen size. Let’s take the following example. Someone searches for a product on their smartphone during a lunch break at work. They find a site that has the product they’re looking for, and decide to continue researching this product on the same site when they get home. Except, when they get home, they will use their desktop instead of their smartphone. If the site in this example is responsive, this person will have a positive user-experience when transitioning from mobile to desktop because they will view the same site on their desktop as they did on their smartphone. On the other hand, if the site is a dedicated mobile site, this person will become frustrated with the fact that they have to locate the desktop version of the site, and find the product all over again.

3. Easier to Manage

Having a separate desktop and mobile site requires having separate SEO campaigns. Managing one site and one SEO campaign is far easier than managing two sites and two SEO campaigns. This is a key advantage a responsive website has over a separate mobile site. That being said, there are benefits to having a mobile-specific SEO strategy, such as optimizing for keywords that are more likely to be searched when someone is on their smartphone. For example, someone performing a mobile search for a local restaurant may be more inclined to use the word “nearby” in their search query. However, a separate mobile site is not a requirement for a mobile SEO strategy, and there’s no reason why mobile-specific keywords can’t be incorporated into a responsive design site as well.

Conclusion

Responsive web design is recommended by Google, it allows one website to provide a great user-experience across many devices and screen sizes, and it also makes managing your SEO strategy easier. For these reasons, responsive web design is the best for Yur website seo.

How Google's AMP Will Influence Your Online Marketing

What is Google AMP?

The Google AMP Project is a way of fast-tracking content to mobile devices. It improves upon the traditional model of serving mobile content because it relies on a specific form of HTML, called AMP HTML, to strip down the presentation of content. Here’s an example of what an AMP page looks like when rendered on an iPhone 6.

The net effect is that the mobile user will see articles with comparatively basic text and images, but that content will load up to 10 times faster (or more!) over traditionally formatted content.

Why is Google AMP important for SEO?

As Google often preaches to the industry, page speed and mobile-readiness are high-quality ranking distinctions that determine the placement of a site’s content link in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The faster a site is (among other ranking signals), and the more it caters to mobile devices, the more likely it is to be seen and clicked on by Google search users.

Since 2013, Google has been evolving from being the company that provides links to other sites in search results to the company that provides answers to questions in search results.

For example, the “featured snippets” aspect of Google, shown below, has been a method of providing quick answers in search results to simple questions such as “Who won the 1969 World Series?”

But featured snippets don’t work well for more complex questions, like “What are the main issues in the 2016 presidential election?” Those types of questions lend themselves more to in-depth articles. Unfortunately, when simple answers are not plausible, one must load another page that may be slow to load on mobile devices. As a result, Google has been developing ways to make the links you click on in search results load more quickly. And now, with Google’s AMP Project, they have been making those appear more prominently in SERPs.

How does Google AMP work?

There are three parts to Google AMP:

1. AMP HTML


2. AMP JS


3. AMP Cache

AMP HTML has a strictly defined set of pre-processing tags. Those are mainly limited to text formatting and image embedding tags such as amp-ad, amp-embed, amp-img, amp-pixel, and amp-video.

AMP JS is a severely limited Javascript file. It loads all external resources in an asynchronous (in the background) way. This keeps “render blocking” from interfering with how quickly what the user came to see renders on the screen. Everything extraneous to the actual words and images in the article loads last. AMP JS also grabs and pre-renders the content by predicting which DNS resources and connections will be needed, then by downloading and pre-sizing images. This is all done to alleviate work for the mobile device to economize data use.

AMP Cache, or the AMP Content Delivery Network (AMP CDN), is Google’s system of servers doing the heavy lifting of grabbing your most recent content and pre-positioning it around the globe. This ensures that a page requested from, say, Italy doesn’t need to be sent over the wire from Mountain View, California each time it’s requested. Instead, Google places a pre-rendered, optimized copy of that AMP page on a server close to or in Italy. The CDN is refreshed each time an article is updated or added.

The positive impacts of AMP on SEO & online marketing

Faster-loading articles improve the publisher/reader relationship. Speed is the most obvious benefit to publishers using AMP for improved SEO. That speed translates into more page views and fewer frustrated readers, which also translates to more ad views, sharing, and engagement with content.

1.) AMP-enabled articles will rank higher in SERPs.

AMP content will have the advantage of being shown above the fold, at the top of Google searches, unless Google changes how and whether it displays all AMP results in this way. An example of how AMP pages displayed in search results is shown below.

Currently, AMP articles appear in a swipeable carousel. For now, there is not a paid placement option, but it may appear in the future. AMP-enabled articles do have an icon in the SERPs indicating that they are built on AMP.

2.) Paid search impressions will likely increase.

After viewing an AMP-based piece of content, the most common thing users do is click back to the SERP to see what else there might be. This will positively affect the number of paid search impressions over time.

3.) Google AMP is for every publisher.

Facebook limits participation in its Instant Articles feature to just a select set of publishers. With Google AMP, anyone with a little know-how or willingness to learn can format his or her content to be accessed quickly by a potentially enormous number of readers.

4.) AMP is open source.

This means that contributions to its evolution are not limited to the world of Google’s best and brightest developers. Anyone who has an idea for making it better can contribute to the specification. AMP’s feature set will more readily adapt to a changing publishing world.

5.) Analytics are coming for AMP.

According to Google, several analytics providers — including comScore, Adobe Analytics, Parse.ly, and Chartbeat — are gearing up their services to tell publishers how well their AMP content is doing. In fact, the AMP specification provides instructions for supporting current AMP analytics vendors, as well as how to support your own custom analytics solution for AMP.

6.) Content gets to more readers.

Even though AMP mainly benefits Google in that it helps them compete with Facebook’s Instant Articles, that improved reach benefits publishers because their content can now be more widely read when users click on them in Google’s SERPs — not just in Facebook’s walled garden.

7.) More features and formatting options are coming.

Even though AMP deals in a limited set of tags for formatting pages, all's not lost. There are still plenty of extended components and even some experimental components to be released as they become available.

The negative impacts of AMP on SEO & online marketing

1.) There are no forms in AMP content.

That means that if a publisher’s goal is to generate leads by inviting a reader to subscribe or submit his contact information, it’s going to have to wait until AMP provides an upgrade to the specification that allows publishers to have forms in their AMP-optimized content.

2.) AMP doesn’t solve the problem of page speed SEO for non-publisher sites.

It really only covers “news”-type articles and blog posts and is not intended for speeding up general e-commerce or brand sites. An e-commerce site that doesn’t focus on articles or blog posts as its main content will probably find the design constraints of AMP much too restrictive and will want to stick to traditional HTML.

3.) The number of paid search result item impressions could go down.

If the search term is broad or general (i.e. “news,” “fashion,” or “food”), AMP articles will probably appear more frequently than paid search results items. Only time and analytics will correct for assumptions here.

4.) There are no external style sheets or Javascript.

Because of a lack of external stylesheets and external Javascript, the design and user experience (UX) of pages is lackluster. Publishers and non-publishers alike will have to decide if it’s more important to their brand to have the design complement the content to attract return visitors (in which case they might opt out of AMP for now), or if their content stands on its own and their visitors only care about rapidly loading pages (in which case they’ll want to start implementing it now). Use of experimental components as a hedge against dull pages carries the risk that the component will have bugs or will be rejected by the next release of the AMP specification.

5.) Domain Authority may suffer.

From their Learn SEO page: "Domain Authority is a score (on a 100-point scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines." One of the factors included in the calculation is the number of linking root domains. An indirect negative effect would be that a publisher’s site would earn fewer links. That’s because other sites linking to AMP content will not be linking to the publisher’s domain name, but to google.com. For example, here's a screenshot of an article loaded on an iPhone 6 as accessed from an AMP carousel search.

Note that the URL, https://www.google.com/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/35800232#, begins with “www.google.com/amp/” and then tacks on the article’s originating domain. When viewing the article, visitors will still be on Google.com, not on the publisher’s website.

6.) The way publishers serve ads inline with content will necessarily change.

This could be a good thing, in that it will force publishers to rethink their ads so that they no longer annoy the 16% of customers who block their ads anyway. It could be a bad thing for publishers who rely on high-bandwidth, over-designed ads to capture attention, though. They’ll have to either opt out of AMP or find another advertising strategy. Of course, if a publisher is part of the Google AMP ads partnership of Outbrain, AOL, OpenX, DoubleClick, and AdSense, the publisher’s own burden of improving its ads is greatly reduced. More ad partners are being brought into the fold as they come into compliance with the AMP spec for their ads.

7.) Budgeting for content development will need to increase.

If you don’t have a CMS that already supports AMP, you’ll need to budget for developing in AMP or build into your custom or extensible CMS as an additional feature.

8.) Publishers can’t get away with poorly-constructed HTML pages with AMP.

This is actually both a positive and a negative aspect of AMP. On the positive side, every page has to be free of errors before Google will even pick it up and put it in the AMP caches. This means that users will have a better experience downloading the content on a variety of devices. However, on the negative side, publishers will need to budget time (and developer hours) to further debug every page. Fortunately, Google has provided a validator with AMP.

Conclusion

Page speed is a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. The fact that Google has come out with its own way of constructing and displaying content faster and more concisely speaks to its desire to make page speed an even more important indicator of a page’s value in SERPs.

If a site deals primarily in long-form, news-type content (as opposed to marketing or selling its products), then it's a good candidate for an AMP overhaul. If publishers only add AMP to get ahead of the emerging trend towards mobile-optimized content, they’ll be doing themselves and their SEO ranking a favor.

By now, you may be wondering what you can do to boost your page speed, given its increasing importance. We've got an awesome free performance report you can use to get actionable intel on how to optimize your site for speed and performance. Feel free to check it out if you're interested in learning steps you can take to improve your website’s performance.

Thoughts or questions about Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages? Let us know in the comments!

How to Optimize Your Content for Google's Featured Snippet Box

In the past few years Google have been refining the way that it displays results to users. In particular, Google has been increasing the number of Featured Snippets that it displays for queries.

What's a Featured Snippet? And more importantly, what do you have to do to appear there? Well, that's what I set out to explore. 

How to Optimize for Competitors' Branded Keywords

It's probably crossed your mind before. Should you optimize for your competitors' branded keywords? How would you even go about it effectively? Well, in today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains some carefully strategic and smart ways to optimize for the keywords of a competitor — from determining their worthiness, to properly targeting your funnel, to using third-party hosted content for maximum amplification.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about optimizing for your competitors' branded terms and phrases, the keywords that are your competitors' product names or service names. This gets into a little bit of a dicey area. I think it's challenging for a lot of SEO folks to do this and do it well, and so I'm going to take you through an approach that I've seen a lot of folks use with some success.

A strategic approach

So to start off with, let's go to the strategy level. Is it actually the case — and sometimes it's not, sometimes it is not the case — that branded keywords are driving high enough volume to actually be worth targeting? This is tough and frustrating, but basically one of the best thing that I can recommend in this case is to say, "Hey, if we are..."

Are branded keywords driving high enough volumes to be worthwhile?

Essentially what you might want to do here is actually go ahead and use AdWords to bid on some of these keywords and get a sense for how much traffic is really being driven. Can you draw any of that traffic away? Are people willing to consider alternatives? If there's almost no willingness to consider alternatives — you can't draw clicks here, you're not getting any conversions, and it is the case that the volume is relatively low, not a lot of people are actually searching for Evernote, which is not the case, there are tons of people searching for Evernote and I'd probably tell Wunderlist they should go ahead. Evernote is actually bidding on Wunderlist's terms, so turnabout is fair play. Bidding on AdWords can answer both of these questions. That can help them get us to:

What do you need to solve?

All right, now what is it that we need to solve? What are potential customers doing to compare our products or our services against these folks, and what are they interested in when they're searching for these branded names? What makes them choose one versus another product?

Related searches can help us here, so too can normal forms of keyword research. So related searches is one form, but certainly I'd urge you to use search suggest, I'd urge you to check out Google's AdWords Keyword Tool, if you like keywordtool.io or if you like Huballin or whatever it is that you think is a great keyword tool, check those out, go through those sources for your competitor's keywords, see what's coming up there, see what actually has some real volume. Obviously, your AdWords campaign where you bid on their branded terms can help tell you that too.

Then from there I'd go through the search results, and I'd see: What are people saying? What are the editorial reviews? For example, CNET did this Wunderlist review. What does their breakdown look like? What are people saying in forums? What are they saying on social media? What are they saying when they talk about this?

Ask the same questions of your competition

So if I'm seeing here's what Wunderlist versus Evernote looks like, great. Now let me plug in Evernote and see what everyone's saying about them. By the way, you don't just have to use online research. You can go primary source on this stuff, too. Ask your customers or your audience directly through surveys. We've used here at Moz Google Custom Audience Surveys, and we've used SurveyMonkey Audience's product. We like both of those.

Once you've got this down and you say, "Hey, you know what? We've got a strategic approach. We know what we need to talk about in terms of content. We know the keywords we're targeting." Great. Now you get to choose between two big options here — self-hosting some content that's targeting these terms, or using third-party hosting.

Self-hosted content

With self-hosted content we're going to try and go after those right terms and phrases. This is where I've seen some people get lost. They essentially go too high or too low in the funnel, not targeting that sweet spot right in the middle.

1. Target the right terms & phrases

So essentially, if someone's searching for "Evernote review," the intent there is that they're trying to evaluate whether Evernote is good. Yeah, you know what? That's right in the middle. That's right in the sweet spot, I would say that is a good choice for you targeting your competitors' keywords, anything around reviews.

"Evernote download," however, that's really at the bottom of the funnel. They're trying to install at that point. I don't think I'd tell you to go after those keywords. I don't think I'd bid on them, and I don't think I'd create content based on that. An Evernote download, that's a very transactional, direct kind of search. I'd cross that one off my list. "How to use Evernote," well, okay that's post-installation probably, or maybe it's pre-installation. But it's really about learning. It's about retaining and keeping people. I'd probably put that in the no bucket as well most of the time. "Evernote alternative," obviously I'm targeting "Evernote alternative." That is a great search phrase. That's essentially asking me for my product. "What is Evernote," well okay, that's very top-of-funnel. Maybe I'd think about targeting some content like, "What do apps like Evernote, Todoist and Wunderlist do?" Okay. Yeah, maybe I'm capturing all three of those in there. So I'd put this as a maybe. Maybe I'd go after that.

Just be careful because if you go after the wrong keywords here, a lot of your efforts can fail just because you're doing poor keyword targeting.

2. Craft content that delivers a superior user experience

Second is you need to craft that content that's going to deliver a superior user experience. You're essentially trying to pull someone away from the other search results and say, "Yeah, it was worth it to scroll down.

It was worth it to click and to do the research and to check out the review or check out the alternative." Therefore, you need something that has a lot of editorial integrity. You need that editorial integrity. You can't just be a, "Everything about them is bad. Everything about us is great. Check out why we kick their butt six ways from Sunday." It's just not going to be well-perceived.

You need to be credible to that audience. To do that, I think what's smart is to make your approach the way you would approach it as if you were a third-party reviewer. In fact, it can even pay in some cases to get an external party to do the comparison review and write the content for you. Then you're just doing the formatting. That way it becomes very fair. Like, "Hey, we at Wunderlist thought our product compared very well to Evernote's. So we hired an outside expert in this space, who's worked with a bunch of these programs, to review it and here's his review. Here are his thoughts on the subject."

Awesome. Now you've created some additional credibility in there. You're hosting it on your site. It's clearly promoting you, but it has some of that integrity.

I would do things like I'd think about key differentiators. I'd think about user and editorial review comparisons. So if you can go to the app stores and then collect all the user reviews or collect a bunch of user reviews and synchronize those for folks to compare, check out the editorial reviews — CNET has reviewed both of these. The Verge has reviewed both of these. A bunch of other sites have reviewed both of them. Awesome. Let's do a comparison of the editorial reviews and the ratings that these products got.

"Choose X if you need..." This is where you essentially say, "If you're doing this, well guess what? We don't do it very well. We'd suggest you use Evernote instead. But if you're doing this, you know what? Wunderlist is generally perceived to be better and here's why." That's a great way to do it. Then you might want to have that full-feature comparison breakdown. Remember that with Google's keyword targeting and with their algorithms today they're looking for a lot of that deep content, and you can often rank better if you include a lot more of those terms and phrases about what's inside the products.

3. Choose a hosted location that doesn't compromise your existing funnel

This is rarely done, but sometimes folks will put it on their main homepage of their website or in their navigation. That's probably not ideal. You probably want to keep it one step away from the primary navigation flow around your site.

You could conceivably host it in your blog. You could make it something where you say, "Hey, do you want to see comparisons? Or do you want to see product reviews?" Then we're going to link to it from that page. But I wouldn't put it in the primary funnel.

3rd-party hosted content

Third-party hosted content is another option, and I've seen some folks do this particularly well recently. Guest content is one way to do that. You could do that. You could pay someone else, that professional reviewer and say, "Hey, we want to pitch this professional reviewer comparing our product against someone else's to these other outlets."

Sometimes there are external reviewers who if you just ask them, if you just say, "Hey we have a new product or we have a competing product. We think it compares favorably. Would you do a review?" A lot of the time if you're in the right kind of space, people will just say, "Yeah, you know what? I'll put that on my schedule because I think that can send me some good traffic, and then we'll let you know." You kind of knock on wood and hope you get a favorable review there. You could contribute it to a discussion forum. Just be open and honest and transparent about who you are and what you're doing there.

Native ads

Today you can do sponsored content or what's called native ad content, where essentially you're paying another site to host it. Usually, there's a bunch of disclosure requirements around that, but it can work and sometimes that content can even rank well and earn links and all that kind of stuff.

Promotion & amplification

For promotion and amplification of this content, it's a little trickier than it is with your average content because it's so adversarial in nature. The first people I would always talk to are your rabid loyal fans. So if you know you've got a community of people who are absolutely super-passionate about this, you can say, "Hey, guess what? We released our comparison, or we released this extra review comparison of our product versus our competitor's today. You can check it out here."

You can pitch that to influencers and pundits in your space, definitely letting them know, "Hey, here's this comparison. Tell us if you think we were honest. Tell us if you think this is accurate. Tell us if this reflects your experience." Do the same thing with industry press. Your social audiences are certainly folks that you could talk to.

Give them a reason to come back

One of the key ones that I think gets too often ignored is if you have users who you know have gone through your signup flow or have used your product but then left, this is a great chance to try and earn their business back, to say, "Hey, we know that in the past you gave Wunderlist a try. You left for one reason or another. We want you to see how favorably we compare to our next biggest competitor in the space." That can be a great way to bring those people back to the site.

Consult your legal team

Last thing, very important. Make sure, when you're creating this type of content, that you talk to your legal professional. It is the case that sometimes using terms and phrases, trademarked words, branded words, has some legal implications. I am not a legal professional. You can't ask me that question, but you can definitely ask your lawyer or your legal team, and they can advise you what you can and cannot do.

All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and we will see you again next week. Take care.

A Beginner's Guide to Google Search Console

If the name "Google Webmaster Tools" rings a bell for you, then you might already have an idea of what Google Search Console is. Since Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) has become a valuable resource for so many different types of people besides webmasters—marketing professionals, SEOs, designers, business owners, and app developers, to name a few—Google decided to change its name in May of 2015 to be more inclusive of its diverse group of users.

If you aren't familiar with GWT or Google Search Console, let's head back to square one. Google Search Console is a free service that lets you learn a great deal of information about your website and the people who visit it. You can use it to find out things like how many people are visiting your site and how they are finding it, whether more people are visiting your site on a mobile device or desktop computer, and which pages on your site are the most popular. It can also help you find and fix website errors, submit a sitemap, and create and check a robots.txt file.

Ready to start taking advantage of all that Google Search Console has to offer? Let's do this.

Adding and verifying a site in Google Search Console

If you're new to Google Search Console, you'll need to add and verify your site(s) before you can do anything else. Adding and verifying your site in Search Console proves to Google that you're either a site's owner, webmaster, or other authorized user. After all, Search Console provides you with all sorts of incredibly detailed information and insights about a site's performance. Google doesn't want to hand that kind of information over to anybody who asks for it.

Adding a site to Search Console is a very simple process. First, log into your Search Console account. Once you're logged in, you'll see a box next to a red button which says "Add Property."

Enter the URL of the site you're trying to add in the box and click "Add Property." Congratulations, your site is now added to your Search Console account!

Next, you will be asked to verify your site. There are a few different ways you can go about this. Which method will work best for you depends on whether or not you have experience working with HTML, if you have access to upload files to the site, the size of your site, and whether or not you have other Google programs connected to your site. If this sounds overwhelming, don't worry—we'll help you figure it out.

Adding an HTML tag

This verification method is best for users and site owners who have experience working with HTML code.

From the Search Console dashboard, select "Manage Property," then "Verify this property." If the "HTML Tag" option does not appear under "Recommended method," then you should click on the "Alternate methods" tab and select "HTML tag." This will provide you with the HTML code you'll need for verification.

Copy the code and use your HTML editor to open the code for your site's homepage. Paste the code provided within in the <Head> section of the HTML code. If your site already has a meta tag or other code in the <Head> section, it doesn't matter where the verification code is placed in relation to the other code; it simply needs to be in the <Head> section. If your site doesn't have a <Head> section, you can create one for the sake of verifying the site.

Once the verification code has been added, save and publish the updated code, and open your site's homepage. From there, view the site's source code. The verification code should be visible in the <Head> section.

Once you're sure the code is added to your site's homepage, go back to Search Console and click "Verify." Google will then check your site's code for the verification code. If the code is found, you will see a screen letting you know the site has been verified. If not, you will be provided with information about the errors it encountered.

When your site has been verified by Search Console, do not remove the verification code from your site. If the code is removed, it will cause your site to become unverified.

Uploading an HTML file

To use this method, you must be able to upload files to a site's root directory.

From the Search Console dashboard, select "Manage site," then "Verify this site." If "HTML file upload" is not listed under "Recommended method," it should be listed under the "Alternate method" tab.

When you select this method, you will be asked to download an HTML file. Download it, then upload it to the specified location. Do not make any changes to the content of the file or the filename; the file needs to be kept exactly the same. If it is changed, Search Console will not be able to verify the site.

After the HTML file has been uploaded, go back to Search Console and click "Verify." If everything has been uploaded correctly, you will see a page letting you know the site has been verified.

Once you have verified your site using this method, do not delete the HTML file from your site. This will cause your site to become unverified.

Verifying via domain name provider

The domain name provider is the company you purchased a domain from or where your website is hosted. When you verify using your domain name provider, it not only proves you're the owner of the main domain, but that you also own all of the subdomains and subdirectories associated with it. This is an excellent option if you have a large website.

From the Search Console dashboard, select "Manage site," then "Verify this site." If you don't see the "Domain name provider" option listed under "Recommended method," look under the "Alternate method" tab.

When you select "Domain name provider," you will be asked to choose your domain name provider from a list of commonly used providers, such as GoDaddy.com. If your provider is not on this list, choose "Other" and you will be given instructions on how to create a DNS TXT record for your provider. If a DNS TXT record doesn't work for your provider, you will have the option of creating a CNAME record instead.

Adding Google Analytics code

If you already use Google Analytics (GA) to monitor your site's traffic, this could be the easiest option for you. But first, you'll need to be able to check the site's HTML code to make sure the GA tracking code is placed within the <Head> section of your homepage's code, not in the <Body> section. If the GA code is not already in the <Head> section, you'll need to move it there for this method to work.

From the Search Console dashboard, select "Manage site," then "Verify this site." If you don't see the "Google Analytics tracking code" option under the "Recommended method," look under the "Alternate method" tab. When you select "Google Analytics tracking method," you'll be provided with a series of instructions to follow.

Once your site has been verified, do not remove the GA code from your site, or it will cause your site to become unverified.

Using Google Tag Manager

If you already use Google Tag Manager (GTM) for your site, this might be the easiest way to verify your site. If you're going to try this method, you need to have "View, Edit, and Manage" permissions enabled for your account in GTM. Before trying this method, look at your site's HTML code to make sure the GTM code is placed immediately after your site's <Body> tag.

From the Search Console dashboard, select "Manage site," then "Verify this site." If you don't see the "Google Tag Manager" option listed under "Recommended method," it should appear under "Alternate method."

Select "Google Tag Manager" and click "Verify." If the Google Tag Manager code is found, you should see a screen letting you know your site has been verified.

Once your site is verified, do not remove the GTM code from your site, or your site will become unverified.

How to link Google Analytics with Google Search Console

Google Analytics and Google Search Console might seem like they offer the same information, but there are some key differences between these two Google products. GA is more about who is visiting your site—how many visitors you're getting, how they're getting to your site, how much time they're spending on your site, and where your visitors are coming from (geographically-speaking). Google Search Console, in contrast, is geared more toward more internal information—who is linking to you, if there is malware or other problems on your site, and which keyword queries your site is appearing for in search results . Analytics and Search Console also do not treat some information in the exact same ways, so even if you think you're looking at the same report, you might not be getting the exact same information in both places.

To get the most out of the information provided by Search Console and GA, you can link accounts for each one together. Having these two tools linked will integrate the data from both sources to provide you with additional reports that you will only be able to access once you've done that. So, let's get started:

Has your site been added and verified in Search Console? If not, you'll need to do that before you can continue.

From the Search Console dashboard, click on the site you're trying to connect. In the upper righthand corner, you'll see a gear icon. Click on it, then choose "Google Analytics Property."

This will bring you to a list of Google Analytics accounts associated with your Google account. All you have to do is choose the desired GA account and hit "Save." Easy, right? That's all it takes to start getting the most out of Search Console and Analytics.

Adding a sitemap

Sitemaps are files that give search engines and web crawlers important information about how your site is organized and the type of content available there. Sitemaps can include metadata, with details about your site such as information about images and video content, and how often your site is updated.

By submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console, you're making Google's job easier by ensuring they have the information they need to do their job more efficiently. Submitting a sitemap isn't mandatory, though, and your site won't be penalized if you don't submit a sitemap. But there's certainly no harm in submitting one, especially if your site is very new and not many other sites are linking to it, if you have a very large website, or your if site has many pages that aren't thoroughly linked together.

Before you can submit a sitemap to Search Console, your site needs to be added and verified in Search Console. If you haven't already done so, go ahead and do that now.

From your Search Console dashboard, select the site you want to submit a sitemap for. On the left, you'll see an option called "Crawl." Under "Crawl," there will be an option marked "Sitemaps."

Click on "Sitemaps." There will be a button marked "Add/Test Sitemap" in the upper righthand corner.

This will bring up a box with a space to add text to it.

Type "system/feeds/sitemap" in that box and hit "Submit sitemap." Congratulations, you have now submitted a sitemap!

Checking a robots.txt file

Having a website doesn't necessarily mean you want to have all of its pages or directories indexed by search engines. If there are certain things on your site you'd like to keep out of search engines, you can accomplish this by using a robots.txt file. A robots.txt file placed in the root of your site tells search engine robots (i.e., web crawlers) what you do and do not want indexed by using commands known as the robots Exclusion Standard.

It's important to note that robots.txt files aren't necessarily guaranteed to be 100% effective in keeping things away from web crawlers. The commands in robots.txt files are instructions, and although the crawlers used by credible search engines like Google will accept them, it's entirely possible that a less reputable crawler will not. It's also entirely possible for different web crawlers to interpret commands differently. Robots.txt files also will not stop other websites from linking to your content, even if you don't want it indexed.

If you want to check your robots.txt file to see exactly what it is and isn't allowing, log into Search Console and select the site whose robots.txt file you want to check. Haven't already added or verified your site in Search Console? Do that first.

On the lefthand side of the screen, you'll see the option "Crawl." Click on it and choose "robots.txt Tester." The Robots.txt Tester Tool will let you look at your robots.txt file, make changes to it, and it alert you about any errors it finds. You can also choose from a selection of Google's user-agents (names for robots/crawlers) and enter a URL you wish to allow/disallow, and run a test to see if the URL is recognized by that crawler.

If you make any changes to your robots.txt file using Google's robots.txt tester, the changes will not be automatically reflected in the robots.txt file hosted on your site. Luckily, it's pretty easy to update it yourself. Once your robots.txt file is how you want it, hit the "Submit" button underneath the editing box in the lower righthand corner. This will give you the option to download your updated robots.txt file. Simply upload that to your site in the same directory where your old one was (www.example.com/robots.txt). Obviously, the domain name will change, but your robots.txt file should always be named "robots.txt" and the file needs to be saved in the root of your domain, not www.example.com/somecategory/robots.txt.

Back on the robots.txt testing tool, hit "Verify live version" to make sure the correct file is on your site. Everything correct? Good! Click "Submit live version" to let Google know you've updated your robots.txt file and they should crawl it. If not, re-upload the new robots.txt file to your site and try again.

Fetch as Google and submit to index

If you've made significant changes to a website, the fastest way to get the updates indexed by Google is to submit it manually. This will allow any changes done to things such as on-page content or title tags to appear in search results as soon as possible.

The first step is to sign into Google Search Console. Next, select the page you need to submit. If the website does not use the 'www.' prefix, then make sure you click on the entry without it (or vice versa.)

On the lefthand side of the screen, you should see a "Crawl" option. Click on it, then choose "Fetch as Google."

Clicking on "Fetch as Google" should bring you to a screen that looks something like this:

If you need to fetch the entire website (such as after a major site-wide update, or if the homepage has had a lot of remodeling done) then leave the center box blank. Otherwise, use it to enter the full address of the page you need indexed, such as http://example.com/category. Once you enter the page you need indexed, click the "Fetch and Render" button. Fetching might take a few minutes, depending on the number/size of pages being fetched.

After the indexing has finished, there will be a "Submit to Index" button that appears in the results listing at the bottom (near the "Complete" status). You will be given the option to either "Crawl Only This URL," which is the option you want if you're only fetching/submitting one specific page, or "Crawl This URL and its Direct Links," if you need to index the entire site.

Click this, wait for the indexing to complete, and you're done! Google now has sent its search bots to catalog the new content on your page, and the changes should appear in Google within the next few days.

Site errors in Google Search Console

Nobody wants to have something wrong on their website, but sometimes you might not realize there's a problem unless someone tells you. Instead of waiting for someone to tell you about a problem, Google Search Console can immediately notify you of any errors it finds on on your site.

If you want to check a site for internal errors, select the site you'd like to check. On the lefthand side of the screen, click on "Crawl," then select "Crawl Errors."

You will then be taken directly to the Crawl Errors page, which displays any site or URL errors found by Google's bots while indexing the page. You will see something like this:

Any URL errors found will be displayed at the bottom. Click on any of the errors for a description of the error encountered and further details.

Record any encountered errors, including screenshots if appropriate. If you aren't responsible for handling site errors, notify the person who is so they can correct the problem(s).

We hope this guide has been helpful in acquainting you with Google Search Console. Now that everything is set up and verified, you can start taking in all the information that Google Search Console has for you.