The SEO Blog from cognitiveSEO

Google Updates. We've all heard about them and, to some extent, we all fear them. Even if you're 100% clean and always follow the Google guidelines, you can still suffer from the dirty work of others.   But what do you do when a new Google Update arises? How do you know it's the cause of a traffic drop on your website? What are the steps you need to take in order to determine that?   Well, keep reading, because in this article we'll discuss the steps you should take when a new Goog [...]

We can already see a convergence between digital marketers, SEOs and webmasters. Although they all have their own tasks and responsibilities, at some point all of their work will revolve, more or less, around the concept of link building. This is the topic that we’re going to talk about in today’s article.   While link building, alongside content, might have a bad name in the industry it still is the number one signal Google looks at when deciding to rank a website. There are countles [...]

The subdomain vs. subdirectory question has been around probably ever since Google first appeared. People ask themselves if having one or another affects SEO. The popular belief is that switching from a subdomain to a subfolder of the root domain will help increase the overall rankings of your website.   But is that true?   The short answer is... it depends. But if you're asking yourself which one you should use and you want to make a very documented opinion on the subject before y [...]

The digital marketing industry is full of people worth following, reading, listening to, and eventually learning from. There's no one who could utter the words "I did it all on my own" or "I've got no inspiration other than me, myself, and I, because I know all the digital marketing tips and secrets out there".   Digital marketing influencers, be they men or women, are sizzling in this world of continuous change and wonder, and they have thousands, if not millions of followers who sip fro [...]

Used correctly, structured markup data is a good decision to help websites display correct information on searches and increase the organic search visibility. But what happens if you use it incorrectly?    As we all know it, Google is not a fan of websites that don't comply with quality guidelines and don't offer the best user experience. So it may be that the structured data abuse to mark irrelevant content can potentially hurt your site. If you've been hit by a spammy structured markup [...]

If you don’t have any competitors, there’s no need to read this article. But just in case you do, then you’d better not miss it! Why’s that, you might wonder?   Well… it’s because often times, unethical competitors prefer to blow in somebody else's candle so that they can shine brighter. Instead of working more on their websites to improve user experience, some webmasters attack competitor sites with unnatural, spammy links, or even DDoS (Denial-of-service).   In search [...]

Failure … a rather hard to digest word. Failure is the bad guy everybody avoids. Winning, on the other hand, is a whole different story. But with new beginnings comes the challenge to keep your head above water and not to mess it up.   It is not science per se. It is just sweat, practice and A/B testing based on your data and real data examples. Startups fail at SEO because they aren’t prepared or do other rookie mistakes, but in the next few minutes you’ll find out how to steer aw [...]

The amount of information that Google holds is, beyond any doubt, amazing and this is maybe one of the reasons we are so connected with this search engine. All the functions and functionalities keep evolving, and even though you might know and admire the really creative Google Doodles and you might have already amused yourself with some of the big G's April Fools Day jokes, some of you might not be aware of the different secrets that it holds: the Google Easter Eggs.    Blame it on the s [...]

Link earning is highly connected with trustworthy content and creative digital marketing strategies. It's all about that type of content that has so much value that bloggers, publishers or specialists in the field can’t stop but link to it.  Your piece of content must be not only newsworthy, but also connected to your brand so it can tell a story and, therefore, earn links.     Link acquiring tactics doesn’t mean writing great pieces of content and then crossing your fingers [...]

In the old days of Black Hat SEO, these techniques, tricks, tactics or however you'd like to call them may have worked, until the search engines started taking actions and updating algorithms to penalize websites using such Black Hat SEO Techniques. And, as the search engines don’t like to let themselves and their users be tricked, they took measures to keep the search results as clean and accurate as possible.   Reputation is the New Ranking Factor Auditing your site for toxic o [...]