Buying a pre-owned domain? Check these things first

Purchasing a previously owned domain can be risky, but columnist Stephanie LeVonne has some tips to help you vet the domain and ensure a smooth site migration.

With over 1 billion websites on the World Wide Web today, it comes as no surprise that the domain name you may want to use is already owned by someone else. Luckily, in some cases, the current owner might be willing to part with it — for the right price.

Acquiring a pre-owned domain can have a drastic impact on your SEO efforts, so it is important to approach such a purchase with caution. It is recommended that you do your due diligence — it’s not uncommon for a domain name to have changed hands many times, and just like buying a used car, it’s often difficult to get the full history.

While examining the SERPs and scanning for any spammy links may be a good first step, it’s important to conduct a thorough assessment to ensure that the domain does not have a manual action penalty or warning from Google. There are many small issues that may not initially be cause for concern; however, in aggregate, these problems can seriously hamper your domain’s ability to rank.

If you’ve bought, or are looking to buy, a pre-owned domain, read below for 10 things you should check before proceeding with a site migration:

1. Google Search Console

Obtaining access to the Google Search Console account is critical for analyzing the health of the domain you’re looking to acquire. If you don’t have the credentials to this account, it’s worthwhile to reach out to the current admin and request access. Likewise, if this property hasn’t been set up, you can request forOnce logged into the Search Console account, you’ll want to go to Search Traffic > Manual Actions and look for any notes on the account.

You can also click on Security Issues, which will notify you if Google suspects that your website has been hacked.

While you can still make a valid assessment about the domain’s health by performing other checks, it’s highly recommended that you access Google Search Console if possible, since this is the only way to see manual action penalties on the domain.

2. Google Analytics & Bing Webmaster Tools

If you have access to Google Analytics (GA), poke around the account and make note of any abnormal traffic patterns or unusual URLs receiving organic traffic. You can also look at referral traffic to determine if spammy websites are mainly responsible for driving traffic to the site. If the site does not have GA set up, you won’t be able to backfill the data, therefore making this check null and void.

Similar to Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools has a site security section that will alert you about malware, phishing attempts and changes in your sites SSL certificate status. You can also visit the “Page Traffic” report under Reports & Data to assess the top landing pages, much like GA.

3. Site indexation (SERP analysis)

Use the site search operator [site:yourwebsite.com] to conduct a Google search, and check for any spammy or malicious landing pages in the SERPs. You can also add on the search operator [inurl:keyword], replacing “keyword” with red flag terms like “online games,” “gambling,” “porn” and so on.

While Google typically displays a warning in the SERPs when it detects a hacked site, not all content may be flagged. Read here for a more comprehensive look at a hacked site.

4. Blacklist status

Your domain may be blacklisted if there is a history of sending spammy emails, which may in turn lead to your email server’s IP address getting blocked. You can check the Blacklist status of the domain you seek to acquire by using Site Securi.

5. Internal & external linking

One telltale sign of domain misuse is link manipulation. A compromised domain may use overly specific anchor text phrases to link out to other spammy content. In some cases, when hackers want to remain even more elusive, the anchor text will remain unchanged, making link manipulation even harder to detect.

Fortunately, you can use a tool such as Screaming Frog, which allows you to crawl up to 500 URLS for free. Once in the program, click the “outlinks” tab at the bottom to see what a specific URL links to.

When looking at external linking, you can use a tool like Majestic to get a snapshot of the backlink profile. From here, you can take a deep dive into other off-page factors, such as the referring domains which send the most backlinks to the site.

You can even get as granular as seeing which TLDs (top-level domains) your backlinks are coming from. For example, if you have a US-based website and notice that 90 percent of your backlinks are coming from Taiwan, that may be cause for concern.

Similarly, having a disproportionate amount of backlinks coming from one or more sites that may imply that the domain used a pay-to-play strategy to acquire those links, or perhaps the site has been the unfortunate recipient of negative SEO.

6. Anchor text usage

Another important but often overlooked off-page factor is anchor text usage. Anchor text is simply a word or phrase that is hyperlinked and takes a user to your website. Anchor text signals topical relevancy to Google — for example, if you have a page about women’s fleece pajamas, it would be ideal for other sites to link to that page using that phrase or something similar.

f you plan to wipe all content off the domain you are purchasing, these anchor text phrases will lead to 404 pages, thus having no effect on the site. However, if there are any links pointing to the home page that use anchor text that is not in line with your content, it’s recommended you reach out to webmasters to update their anchor text or remove the links altogether.

This could be a problem if numerous sites are linking to the domain you plan to acquire using location-specific anchor text. For example, if you sell women’s designer shoes in the US, and most of the anchor text says “Designer boots Paris,” then you may be sending Google mixed signals and implying that your company is based in France.

7. Local citations

Local citations that reference your business’s NAP (Name, Address and Phone number) are a critical local ranking signal. A citation is whenever your NAP information shows up on another website or directory. Before migrating to a pre-owned website, you should identify all instances of NAP that appear on the web and update them. There are several ways to make these updates:

Identify which, if any, big data providers (e.g., Localeze, Factual, InfoGroup) were previously being utilized. Updating citations via these local content managers allows you to concisely manage your local listings across the web.

Reach out to webmasters directly and ask them to update their citations.

Perform outreach to gain new local citations.

8. Hosting location

While hosting location is not a direct SEO ranking factor, it’s important to at least make sure your website is hosted in the same country where you do business in. In fact, IP location has been shown to impact page speed, which in turn can impact your site’s SEO performance. You can use an IP location tool to determine your hosting location.

9. Domain Authority

Domain Authority (DA), a proprietary metric coined by Moz, aims to predict the “ranking potential” of your website. In an ideal world, the site you are looking to migrate to would have a higher Domain Authority than your current site. The higher the Domain Authority, the more likely you are to appear in the SERPs.

While the formula for calculating Domain Authority is proprietary, we know that backlinks tend to play the biggest role in growing your DA score.

If you are acquiring a site with a DA lower than yours, know that rebuilding this score will be a long-term effort. You can expect to see some movement around the three- to six-month mark; however, it may take up to 12 months, or even longer, to match your site’s previous DA.

This shouldn’t deter you from migrating to a pre-owned site; however, you will need an ongoing SEO strategy over the course of the next 12 months to make sure you are moving the needle.

10. Page speed

Last but not least, one of the most important factors to benchmark prior to any migration is page speed. There are a host of free SEO tools to help you gauge page speed, such as Google PageSpeed Insights, Web Page Test, and GTMetrix, for those looking to get extra granular.

While page speed will be influenced by your site’s architecture, if you plan to stay on the same CMS (content management system) as the current domain, ensure that you’re using the most up-to-date version before migrating any content. CMS updates typically include patches for any vulnerabilities –- and many CMSes are constantly optimizing for speed as well.

Final thoughts

Once you’ve completed these 10 checks and resolved any issues, you should feel confident to proceed with your domain migration. Before you begin, there are a few important properties you should make sure are set up correctly so you can start collecting data from the get-go:

Reference link: http://searchengineland.com/buying-a-pre-owned-domain-here-are-10-things-to-check-first-280992

Google Maps local listings can now have videos uploaded

Google announced in the Local Guides Forum that they now are rolling out support to upload videos to Google Maps local listings on Android devices.

The help document explains the feature is currently only available to Android users. Google wrote, “To add videos, you must use an Android device. To remove videos, you must use an Android device or a computer.”

You can add videos from three different areas:

• Add a video from a place’s page.
• Add videos from “Your contributions.”
• Add video using Google Photos or your Gallery app.

Meg from Google announced this first to the Google Local Guides who earn points when they add videos or photos to local listings. Meg from Google wrote:

Today, Local Guides on Android have the chance to add the first-ever videos to millions of places. The possibilities are really exciting: Take viewers on a mini tour of a store you love, or show the bustling scene at your favorite neighborhood restaurant. You can even do a quick review where you showcase a place’s best item or offer tips for visitors.

How to promote to get top rank of Youtube Video??

Marketers were learning that they couldn't just publish a high volume of content -- it also had to be high-quality and optimized in ways that made it as discoverable as possible through search engines.

And once upon a time, that content was largely limited to the written word. Eleven years later, that's no longer the case -- a comprehensive content strategy includes written work like blogs and ebooks, as well as media like podcasts, visual assets, and videos.

That last part -- video -- continues to be on the rise. According to the 2017 State of Inbound, marketers named video as a huge disruptor. "I mostly write content right now," one respondent said, "but I'm afraid it may begin to diminish more and more with video."
Check out our interactive guide to creating high-quality videos for social media here.

And with the rise of other content formats comes the need to optimize them for search. One increasingly important place to do that is on YouTube, which is a video distribution website used by the masses

But how does that work? What are the steps you need to take to optimize your YouTube channel for search? We've outlined some major tips below. And if you're short on time, no problem -- check out the video summary here.


1) Title

When we search for videos, one of the first things that our eyes are drawn to is the title. That's often what determines whether or not the viewer will click to watch your video, so the title should not only be compelling, but also, clear and concise.

It also helps if the title closely matches what the viewer is searching for. Research conducted by Backlinko found that videos with an exact keyword match in the title have a slight advantage over those that don’t. Here's a linear representation of those findings:

So while "using your target keyword in your title may help you rank for that term," report author Brian Dean explains, "the relationship between keyword-rich video titles and rankings is" weak, at best.

Finally, make sure to keep your title fairly short -- HubSpot Content Strategist Alicia Collins recommends limiting it to 60 characters to help keep it from getting cut off in results pages.

2) Description

First things first: According to Google, the official character limit for YouTube video descriptions is 1,000 characters. And while it's okay to use all of that space, remember that your viewer most likely came here to watch a video, not to read a story.

If you do choose to write a longer description, keep in mind that YouTube only displays the first two or three lines of text -- that amounts to about 100 characters. After that point, viewers have to click “show more” to see the full description. That's why we suggest front-loading the description with the most important information, like CTAs or crucial links.

As for optimizing the video itself, it doesn't hurt to add a transcript of the video, especially for those who have to watch it without volume. That said, Backlinko's research also found no correlation between descriptions that were optimized for a certain keyword and the rankings for that term.


Dean is careful not to encourage ditching an optimized description altogether, though. "An optimized description helps you show up in the suggested videos sidebar," he writes, "which is a significant source of views for most channels."

3) Tags

YouTube's official Creator Academy suggests using tags to let viewers know what your video is about. But you're not just informing your viewers -- you're also informing YouTube itself. Dean explains that the platform uses tags "to understand the content and context of your video."

That way, YouTube figures out how to associate your video with similar videos, which can broaden your content's reach. But choose your tags widely. Don't use an irrelevant tag because you think it'll get you more views -- in fact, Google might penalize you for that. And similar to your description, lead with the most important keywords, including a good mix of those that are common and more long-tail (as in, those that answer a question like "how do I?").

4) Category

Once you upload a video, you can categorize it under “Advanced settings.” Choosing a category is another way to group your video with similar content on YouTube.

It might not be as simple as it looks. In fact, YouTube's Creator Academy suggests that marketers go through a comprehensive process to determine which category each video belongs in. It's helpful, the guide writes, "to think about what is working well for each category" you're considering by answering questions like:

Who are the top creators within the category? What are they known for, and what do they do well?
Are there any patterns between the audiences of similar channels within a given category?
Do the videos within a similar category have share qualities like production value, length, or format?

5) Thumbnail

Your video thumbnail is the main image viewers see when scrolling through a list of video results. Along with the video's title, that thumbnail sends a signal to the viewer about the video's content, so it can impact the number of clicks and views your video receives.

While you can always pick one of the thumbnail options auto-generated by YouTube, we highly recommend uploading a custom thumbnail. The Creator Academy reports that “90% of the best performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails,” recommending the use of images that are 1280x720 pixels -- representing a 16:9 ratio -- that are saved as 2MB or smaller .jpg, .gif, .bmp, or .png files. If you follow those parameters, it can help to ensure that your thumbnail appears with equally high quality across multiple viewing platforms.

It's important to note that your YouTube account has to be verified in order to upload a custom thumbnail image. To do that, visit youtube.com/verify and follow the instructions listed there.

6) SRT Files (Subtitles & Closed Captions)

Like much of the other text we've discussed here, subtitles and closed captions can boost YouTube search optimization by highlighting important keywords.

In order to add subtitles or closed captions to your video, you'll have to upload a supported text transcript or timed subtitles file. For the former, you can also directly enter transcript text for a video so that it auto-syncs with the video.

Adding subtitles follows a similar process, however, you can limit the amount of text you want displayed. For either, head to your video manager then click on “Videos" under “Video Manager.” Find the video you want to add subtitles or closed captioning to, and click the drop-down arrow next to the edit button. Then, choose “Subtitles/CC.” You can then select how you’d like to add subtitles or closed captioning.

Google has provided great instructions on how to do that here, as well as in the video below.


7) Cards and End Screens 

Cards

When you're watching a video, have you ever seen a small white, circular icon with an "i" in the center appear in the corner, or a translucent bar of text asking you to subscribe? Those are Cards, which Creator Academy describes as "preformatted notifications that appear on desktop and mobile which you can set up to promote your brand and other videos on your channel."

You can add up to five cards to a single video, and there are six types:

Channel cards that direct viewers to another channel.
Donation cards to encourage fundraising on behalf of U.S. nonprofit organizations.
Fan funding to ask your viewers to help support the creation of your video content.
Link cards, which direct viewers to an external site, approved crowdfunding platform, or an approved merchandise selling platform.
Poll cards, which pose a question to viewers and allow them to vote for a response.
Video or playlist cards, which link to other YouTube content of this kind.
For detailed steps on adding a card to your video, follow these official steps from Google, or check out the video below.


End Screens

End screens display similar information as cards, but as you may have guessed, they don't display until a video is over, and are a bit more visually detailed in nature. A good example is the overlay with a book image and a visual link to view more on the video below:

There are a number of detailed instructions for adding end screens depending on what kind of platform you want to design them for, as well as different types of content allowed for them by YouTube. Google outlines the details for how to optimize for all of those considerations here.

It's important to note that YouTube is always testing end screens to try to optimize the viewer experience, so there are times when "your end screen, as designated by you, may not appear." Take these factors into account as you decide between using either cards or end screens.

5 massive SEO and content shifts you need to master right now

Google has thrown a lot at marketers in just the last five years. All of these big changes — from rolling out major algorithm updates to shifting to mobile-first — have essentially had the same goal: to provide the best possible search experience to users. Google wants to show users the best content at the right time on the right device as quickly as possible.

Some marketers have struggled to keep up with and adapt to these huge changes. Meanwhile, other brands are thriving. Why? Because they have learned to stay ahead of Google’s ever-evolving algorithms by focusing on content and quality.

Smart marketers know that they must have similar goals to Google. That means providing content that resonates, engages and converts — wherever, whenever and however consumers discover it.

It’s important to not just look at where Google is today, but where Google is heading over the next six months, next year and beyond. If you can stay ahead of these momentous shifts, you can stay ahead of Google and your competition to dominate online in your industry.

The future in search is now. It’s time to start thinking forward — and fast! Below are five SEO shifts that you need to master as we head into the latter part of this year.

1. From SEO to ‘SEO and content convergence’

Just as content alone isn’t enough to guarantee SEO success, SEO alone isn’t enough to guarantee that people will find and engage with your content. Data is helping marketers understand consumer intent to create intelligent content that aligns with the customer journey to deliver a successful and memorable experience.

How marketers can master this shift:

• Ensure your content creation is based on data. Content marketing without data lacks purpose. Define the audience, engagement and conversion metrics that matter to your brand. Track and measure these to gain the insights you need to create meaningful content that people want to consume and improve future content marketing efforts.
• Foster search, social and content synergy. In combination, organic search, social and content help brands achieve their goals and objectives. Creating high-quality content with SEO in mind from the beginning boosts search visibility. That great content can then be further amplified via social media, which creates demand you can later harvest via search.
• Maximize your search engine results page (SERP) footprint. Create and optimize high-ROI content like articles, videos and infographics to help people (by answering important or popular questions or providing practical information) or capitalize on trendy topics. Then help your brand further stand out in the SERPs by winning real estate with featured snippets, site links, related questions, images, videos and tweets.

2. From mobile to mobile-first

For years, Google told marketers about the coming shift to mobile first — and it finally arrived in 2015, when mobile searches surpassed desktop. Today, optimizing for mobile search, devices and usability is no longer optional. It’s mandatory. Your brand must be mobile-ready if you want to capitalize on mobile micro-moments.

How marketers can master this shift:

• Recognize that this is a mobile-first world. Brands that aren’t mobile-optimized see 68 percent less traffic, according to BrightEdge research (my company). This means that understanding mobile user behavior and intent is essential today. Make sure your mobile experience meets (but ideally exceeds) expectations, or you risk losing market share and revenue to the competition.
• Make your mobile SEO fast and furious. In addition to being attractive and easy to navigate, mobile websites must be fast. According to Google research, 53 percent of mobile users leave sites that take more than three seconds to load. Following technical mobile SEO best practices (e.g., image optimization, redirects, JavaScript and CSS) is a necessary barrier to entry in today’s digital world.
• Consider contextual mobile content. Focus on creating content that mobile users want and will find valuable. Typically, mobile users are in research mode — they are searching for information they need or they need some inspiration. Make sure your brand is there and influences that decision when they’re ready to convert, which is more likely to be on desktop or in store than on a smartphone.

3. From local to hyperlocal

The hyperlocal opportunity has never been greater for marketers. Hyperlocal targeting lets you reach people based on their location. This is an excellent way for brands to capitalize on “near me” searches and “I-want-to-go” micro-moments and become hyperrelevant and hypervaluable.

How marketers can master this shift:

• Own local search. Make sure critical contact information that people search for is prominent or easy to find. This includes name, address, phone, hours and directions.
• Hyperlocal optimization = hyperimportant. Google’s personalized hyperlocal results give more visibility to smaller geographic locations. Optimize your Google My Business page, create localized content and landing pages, use local business Schema markup and monitor the performance of your local keyword rankings.
• Understand the intersection of local and mobile. People who do local searches on smartphones have higher intent: 50 percent of smartphone users will visit a business or store within a day, according to Google. Optimizing for local also means optimizing for users who are on the go. These people have different needs and expectations than those doing local searches on other devices.

4. From text to voice

About 20 to 25 percent of mobile queries are voice searches, depending on who you believe at Google. Although it’s clearly far too soon to declare the death of text searches, voice search is an emerging area marketers need to pay attention to heading forward. Voice search will continue to rise as consumer adoption of virtual assistants (e.g., Siri, Alexa) increases.

How marketers can master this shift:

• More voice searches, more answers. Voice search will bring different types of search results because the majority of voice searches are questions (who, what, where, when, why, how). Fortunately for marketers, these questions also reveal user intent. Identify high-intent keywords, and optimize content that answers these questions to ensure your brand will be found in the changing SERPs.
• Urge to voice search rising. People are adopting voice search because it is now more accurate and useful than ever — it is faster and easier than typing on a smartphone keyboard. By 2020, 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches, according to a forecast from comScore. Identify and provide content in a format that meets the needs of these types of searchers.
• Get smart about intelligent agents. Many voice searches happen at home, in addition to in the car or on the go, resulting in a more connected world. These intelligent agents are using semantics, search history and user interests and behaviors to provide the best results. So, make sure content is aligned with the intent and interests of customers at the right moment of the decision journey. Be the best answer. Forrester analyst Collin Colburn shares some great insights on this topic in this Forrester blog.

5. From data to machine learning

Google relies in part on machine learning, in the form of RankBrain, to make sense of the massive amounts of data and deliver the best possible search results for users. As marketers, we, too, must turn to machine learning to understand the intent, interests and behavior of our audience so we can deliver and personalize content that they want.

How marketers can master this shift:

• View data as a source of truth. Martech stacks are being built around data integrations and performance because we simply have too much data and not enough analysts or hours in the day to make sense of it all. To capitalize on demand, spot patterns and stay ahead of the competition, marketers need to go beyond the “what” of data to understand the “when” and “why” of analytics.
• Utilize AI & machine learning. Machine learning helps marketers spend less time analyzing data and more time creating content that will engage and influence prospects and customers. Let AI and machine learning deliver actionable insights about your audience and content performance.
• Define metrics and measurement. Data allows marketers to make better and more accurate decisions more quickly. Define the metrics that matter to your brand, and monitor your search and content data. This will allow you to track your progress, iterate and improve your content production and organic search optimization for greater visibility and greater share of voice.

                                

                                   Reference site: http://searchengineland.com/5-massive-seo-content-shifts-need-master-right-now-274647