Harrison Lemon

EssenceMediacom

SEO Account Manager

Ecommerce Business Owner

Cornerstone Design & Marketing

SEO Executive

Pure Agency

Digital Marketing Executive

Junior Digital Marketing Executive

Incendia Digital

Founder

The Widows Empowerment Trust

Digital Marketer

unit36

Top Brink Inn

Kitchen Assistant

Smoking Gun: PR & Social Media agency 

Work Placement

SEO Account Manager @ EssenceMediacom | SEO & Website Development

Experienced Digital Marketer with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. 6 years of experience in Digital Marketing alongside 4 years of agency experience. 

🚨 Bad SEO Agency: 

Our client sells swimwear, so let's target the keyword "swimwear" — 70,000 searches per month, so ranking for that keyword will drive a ton of sales.

 👍🏽 Good SEO Agency:

Our client sells swimwear, but we're not going to be able to rank them for the keyword "swimwear" — it's too competitive.

Instead, let's build out additional, more specific Product Category pages:

For example:

- bikini
- black swimsuit 
- halterneck bikini 
- glitter bikini

Those keywords still have a large search volume, they're not as competitive, so we'll be able to rank in the top 5 positions for them, and they'll convert better since they're more specific.

🚀 GREAT SEO agency:

We’re going to build out colour, style, and trend categories to capture more specific search intent with still high volume. 

But we’ve noticed something. 

Our average order value of swimwear category is £12, it’s our lowest value product. We want people to buy more from us, so we’re going to build out destination pages. We’ve seen people looking for…

Ibiza outfits 4400 msv
Greece outfits 3800 msv
Dubai outfits 4200 msv 

These are going to include the bikinis, as well as the bag, the beach cover up and shoes. We’re going to execute this with content across Google, Pinterest and, TikTok because they’re the top 3 channels its searched on, and aim to get the average order value from £12 to £100+ because they buy their whole holiday outfit with us not just a bikini

Don’t be surprised when every SEO agency has access to the same keyword volumes, and they recommend the same strategies to go after the same Keywords and you’re having to get a new agency every 12 months 

👙 We did the above for our client for multiple destinations and were pos 1, got over 68 links as a result of it, and average order value on those pages more than quadrupled.

Go on Google Ibiza outfits, pink bikini, glitter bikini - it’s all about dominating attention on the serp

Here's a great example of why SEO entities are important. The query "Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy" returns results for "Inception". 

Without using the term "movie" or using the movie title, Google still knows what the query is talking about. Google is able to connect the actors entities to the movie title.

This means in order to be competitive, results like IMDB need to include these in entities on their content in order to fully optimize for the query "Inception". 

Google clearly associates them with the core topic.

So this is why optimizing for you content for other related topics is important. When used separately, these actor names wouldn't be relevant enough. 

However, collectively Google understands that when they're used on the same page, users are looking for information about Inception.

SEO Tip: Use the Wayback Machine + Diffchecker to spy on how your competitors change content over time: 

This is a process that I like to do when we known high performing competitors are frequently making updates to their pages. For instance in the affiliate space, competitors are known to update their content at least every year, sometimes every month. 

This process makes it extremely easy to visualize these changes: 

1. Go to the article you want to analyze and copy the on-page text
2. Then go to Diffchecker and paste that content in the second column
3. Next, pull up the Wayback Machine and run the article through it. Pick a date that you want to compare againt
4. Once the page is open, copy the on-page text and past in the first column on Diffchecker
5. Then you can compare the two pieces of content. Diffchecker will highlight the changes that have been made from one version to the next. 

For example, I just did this exercise on TechRadar's "Best Coffee Machine" page. I compared it from April 2024 to April 2023. Very quickly I can see that they've: 

- Updated the year in the titles and headings
- Refreshed the timestamp
- Added a "List In Brief" that serves as a table of contents
- Added a "Best Manual Coffee Maker" section
- Changed the author 
- Adjusted the "Best for" section to "Type" for every product reviewed 

Now, instead of manually having to hunt for the content changes, the tool makes it easy to visualize. If you know your competitors frequently update their content, you can use this process to easily determine what types of changes their making. 

Medium just made it against their policies to use AI to generate content - whether labeled properly or not. h/t Adam Singer for sharing this.

My first question: but how will the parasites parasite? 😅 

In all seriousness, Medium - like other publishing platforms - has become subject to rampant AI spam (and other types of spam), especially recently, with their intrinsic ability to rank well on Google, regardless of the quality of the content. Google has been boosting the visibility of many sites with user generated content - not just Reddit - as part of its efforts to elevate "hidden gems" such as UGC, forum content and other first-hand experience.

Well of course spammers have used this opportunity to blast sites like Medium (and even Google's own UGC properties) with AI garbage and affiliate links. It's not surprising Medium made this move. But I see it as a clue for what's coming next. I anticipate many sites will adopt similar policies.

I've been telling friends in person that I think there will be a massive anti-AI tidal wave in society in the coming years. I believe people will protest all things AI and demand content from real people, with mechanisms to know what is AI-generated or not. This might even become some type of social/political party. Anyway, just my wacky ideas, but I do see this as a potential outcome soon, especially when we start to see major job losses due to AI.

#AI #parasiteseo #AI #medium

Google's 'most-read articles' carousel represents quite a significant ranking opportunity for publishers.

When placed within a featured snippet, the standard web search listing is removed below. With the most-read articles carousel, it stays there.

The most-read articles carousel is a test that has been running for the past month across a high portion of informational queries.

An interesting part about some carousels (including the Perspectives and Author carousels) is that they often inherit the heading from the page itself, rather than the title tag.

In the example shown, you can see that Business Insider has two different titles shown in Search - a split test of sorts - with Google preferring the title tag set within the HTML for the web search listing.

As with many of the features that highlight certain results (the Search Generative Experience included), articles that rank a lot lower in web search listings have the ability to shoot up in ranking overnight.

For the Bob Vila article, it was previously ranking in position #9 (still is in this case) and is suddenly catapulted into the 1st position on desktop.

Within Google Search Console, all items that are visible by default in the carousel would automatically yield an impression and would all share the #1 ranking. Knowing this allows you to keep an eye out for unusual ranking fluctuations in your data.

#seo #searchengineoptimization #google

SEO News: Google is now testing out a new featured snippet variant on mobile that provides alternate answers under a 'People also say' heading.

Interestingly, when selecting the 'more results' tab at the bottom, it actually leads to the Perspectives filter which was meant to have been replaced by Forums last month.

While this featured snippet format is new, it does resemble a test that I documented in 2020 that had a section titled 'See what other sites say' that also appeared on mobile.

More details on this test here: https://lnkd.in/gSS22FuX

I am going to be working hard on analyzing patterns and outcomes from the March Core Update and putting together an article (or multiple) and probably some videos, but as you can imagine, this is a process that takes time. Especially this time.

I'll share anything I find along the way but please be patient... can't really answer what I've seen until I properly analyze the data.

In the meantime, here's an interesting finding so far:

Forbes Sites (subfolder), LinkedIn Pulse (subfolder), Substack (full site), and Medium (full site) are all showing the exact same visibility patterns. All technically UGC/contributor content, and a lot of it was spammed.

All shot up during the unconfirmed update in late January, and all fell starting on April 8. 

#SEO #marchcoreupdate

SEO updates you NEED to know [8 Apr]:

💸 Google is considering charging for AI-powered search features, exploring options including adding certain AI-powered search features to its premium subscription services, which already offer access to its new Gemini AI.

🤖 ​Google has begun Search Generative Experience (SGE) trials in the UK with a small proportion of logged-in UK users seeing an AI-generated overview at the top of some search results.

🧑‍⚖️ ​Microsoft Start (it's like Google Discover), released their AI policy saying "Any partner providing unreviewed AIGC content is subject to potential suspension or termination." via Glenn Gabe

🐛 ​Google has confirmed a Search Console data issue between 28th March and 2nd April, which may report a decrease in clicks and impressions during this period for AMP pages and Web Stories. via Barry Schwartz

📈 ​You can now see Microsoft Copilot referrer data (formerly Bing Chat) in your Google Analytics reports. Himanshu Sharma also shared regex that can be used to filter out all the AI traffic in your reports via Himanshu Sharma

🎥 ​Google is now testing a 'Short Videos' menu item on mobile, directing users to a feed of short videos published to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram & more. 'Short Videos' currently appears for ~10% of all queries globally via Brodie Clark

♻️ ​WooCommerce announced they will be reversing their migration to Woo[dot]com after 5 months, citing Google visibility as an issue. Data shows that even if you do everything 'right' on a migration, there is still risk. via Carl Hendy

🏷️ ​Google is now labelling some products within their popular product packs as "Product". It's not yet clear what triggers this badge, or why some of the other products aren't receiving this badge. via Brian F.

🧹 ​Subreddit /r/seo has been removing posts from Googlers showing hostility towards the organisation. This comes a few months after admin control of the sub-reddit was seized by new accounts. via Roger Montti

🗒️ ​Google's new "Most Read" SERP feature offers a significant ranking opportunity for publishers, with selected articles immediately leaping to the top of the SERP, with a similar mechanism to Featured Snippets. via Brodie Clark

📧 If you enjoy these updates, I send them out weekly, along with SEO tips and a deep dive in my free newsletter CoreUpdates[dot]com

Links to everything in my first comment ⬇ 

Here's a little-known fact that SEOs should be aware of: If your robots.txt file is unreachable, GOOGLE WILL NOT CRAWL YOUR ENTIRE SITE. 

The first thing Google does when it goes to a given site is to read the robots.txt file. There it gets its instruction about what content it can crawl and what content it can't crawl. 

However, if your robots.txt returns a 5xx error for whatever reason, Google will simply just elect to not crawl the entire site. Not only will this impact SEO, but it will cause your Google Ads to get disapproved as well. 

In my 10+ years of experience, I can say that I've never known this. We recently just had a client get their ads disapproved suddenly and Google cited this as the reason why. 

Just be aware that if you have a robots.txt file and Google can't access it, this will be an extremely high priority issue. 

Good news this morning for Woo. Their migration roll-back appears to be working, with the old domain picking up search visibility very quickly.

Back-story: They migrated to woo[dot]com and the new domain didn't pick up any significant visibility. After internal discussions they decided that the best thing to do was to roll-back to woocommerce[dot]com. That roll-back started last week and today the Visibility Index looks to have revovered well. 

A sunny start to the week for all at @woocommerce 

Live data: SISTRIX
#searchmarketing

Unsolicited #SEO tip: Here are some of my wider observations and thoughts on the recent (HCU & March) Google updates.

✨ The HCU classifier has targeted ‘patterns’: Many of the examples of sites I’ve seen hit by the HCU have the same tell-tale signs that they were ‘built for search engines’

✨ Google hinted at some of these patterns: Their spam update in March specifically said they were targeting sites "created primarily to match very specific search queries"

✨ The HCU has taken out many good sites too: I have seen examples of sites that have had excellent content but fit this pattern and have lost almost all of their traffic since the HCU.

✨ HCU classifier depends on authority: How aggressively the HCU classifier is applied seems to be in context to how established the brand/domain is.

✨ The second ‘small site goldrush’ is over: Until 2012, any small site could rank with link spam. Recently, Google algorithms were allowing brand new sites to rank for mass ‘longtail’ queries. This is over.

✨ Big UGC sites are the new target for spammers: Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, Medium, et al, will instantly rank for almost any term, so spammers are posting even on threads that are years old.

✨ Even for ‘Your Money, Your Life’ queries: Reddit and discussion forums are ranking for terms such as "weight loss" credit: Lily Ray

✨ May 5th is the next update: Google has specified sites “abusing authority” to get content ranking will be targeted in May, so we may see some of the parasite spam reduced.

✨ Final thought on User signals: It’s clear Google has changed how they are evaluating content, and it seems to be happening faster. I am wondering if actual user signals are less important than previously.

Thoughts on recent Google updates

Here's an SEO fundamental that I think about when compartmentalizing: 

Links = Voting power, more votes, more trust 
         > General Core Updates
         > SpamBrain

Brand = Supports voting power, more people searching, more trust
         > General Core Updates

Query = Sets the intent and expectation of results
         > General Core Updates
         > BERT
         > RankBrain

Result = Set out to be the best fit for the query
         > Helpful Content
         > RankBrain
         > General Core Updates

Best Fit = Determined by intent, content type, ease of use, experience, behaviour
         > Helpful Content
         > RankBrain

Behaviour = Did the user get what they wanted? was the best fit right?
         > Helpful Content
         > RankBrain


--------------------- POTENTIAL BEHAVIOUR MODELLING ------------------

> QUERY INTENT
    The query intent sets the type of SERP and the general base layer / sub layers of evaluation

> APPLICATION OF ALGO BY SERP TYPE
   For example - eCom intent is more likely to rely on trust factors and behavioural factors, brand factors, experience factors

  Informational intent will then have a series of subset types i.e.
     > General information (non specialist)
              > Recipe
              > Best Films

     > Specialist information (I.e. LEGAL)  E-E-A-T / BRAND / RANKBRAIN
              > Divorce Law
              > Legislation

     > Specialist information with risk (Medic/Medical) E-E-A-T / BRAND / RANKBRAIN
              > Taking Medicine
              > Symptom diagnosis

     > Specialist information with risk (Finance) E-E-A-T / BRAND / RANKBRAIN
              > Investing
              > Buying Crypto




No 2 SERPS are ever the same.

No application of ranking factors is going to be uniform.

What people should consider is that SERPS are becoming MORE AND MORE DRIVEN by MACHINE LEARNING!

AI + ML is the way forwards, data at scale.

Google can look at the behavioural aspects at scale to ascertain what's MOST HELPFUL.

Other factors support trust, quality etc - these all work together.

#seo #seotip #seotips

Keyword cannibalization tip
When 2 pages of the same site compete between themselves in the top 10 it's not always a negative sign. But what if a resource page (news, blog, or webinar) ranks above the product page? The conversion rate might be much lower and it will cost you 💰  
Keyword cannibalization audits can be time-consuming, but there is a way to make life easier. If you know how to work with Looker Studio, today's tip is for you. 🚀 You will need only access to GSC and Looker Studio. 
1️⃣  In the Looker Studio dashboard, add a new data source using a native GSC connector (URL impression).
2️⃣  Insert a simple table where the dimension is Query and the metric is a Landing page (count distinct). This table will show you how many pages rank with the same query.
3️⃣ Create and apply filters depending on your project - non-brand filter, country, average position, etc. The more limits, the better otherwise you will spend hours filtering and sorting useless information. Think about what you want to analyze; it will help you understand which filters should be there. 
💡 For example: 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘺𝘻𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘯-𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘬𝘦𝘺𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘱 15 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘜𝘒 𝘥𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 30 𝘥𝘢𝘺𝘴. 𝘐 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘜𝘙𝘓𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘴 # 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭.
So I will exclude non-branded queries, include only UK visits, and exclude landing pages that contain # sign. I will also create an advanced filter to see keywords ranking in the top 15. 
4️⃣ Add another table below: Dimensions are Query and Landing page, metrics: Clicks, Impressions, CTR, and the average position.
5️⃣ Add control - advanced filter with Query Control field. 
Enjoy 🎯 
Be ready to spend several hours or even several days on that analysis 😁 Esport results to Google Sheets or play around with the dashboard. When you get the data, you will need to analyze competing pages and for each case decide whether it's worth changing anything or not. 
#seotips #keywordcannibalization

"What AI can't do will become 10x more valuable, so learn that."

When William Bucket (from Charlie and Chocolate Factory 🍫 ) lost his job screwing lids on toothpaste tubes, he became an engineer that serviced the robots that took his job.

One year ago I called my friend Andrew Holland and he said:
"Start learning AI now, and what it can and can't do."

And, when Andy talks I generally listen.

We're in an AI boom, everything's AI.
But it's not even true AI, it's just prediction software.

It's the infinite monkey theorem,
1000 monkeys on a 1000 typewriters,
Will eventually get the right answer with enough time.

👉 Infinite Monkey Theorem: https://lnkd.in/dpdGfNQn

Using AI to execute creative projects will become the norm,
But creativity will become a high-income skill.

The truth is, there will be things AI can't do.
AI can compute but it's can't create,
And we created it.

-
#seo | #searchengineoptimization | #searchenginemarketing


Happy Friday Everyone! 

Alongside our fantastic client Macklin Motors, I’m pleased to announce that we have been shortlisted for the European Search Awards Don't Panic Events  in Prague.✨🏆 

This is following the win of Best Local SEO Campaign at the UK Search Awards in December last year! 😁 

We have been shortlisted for: 

The award category: Best Local Campaign (SEO) (Small) 🏅

The award entry: Shifting Gears in Scottish SERPs: Macklin Motors’ Road to #1 🏅

Incredibly proud to be shortlisted for this award. A special shout out to George Adams, Daniel Ward, James Mitchell, David S. and Eliot Ferrier 
EssenceMediacom 

Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best at the awards ceremony! 

#EssenceMediaCom #EuropeanSearchAwards #LocalSEOCampaugn

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