Resources
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Google’s Robots.txt Parser is Misbehaving
The newly-released open source robots.txt parser is not, as Google claims, the same as the production Googlebot parsing code. In addition, we have found cases where each of the official resources disagrees with the others. As a result, there is currently no way of knowing how the real Googlebot... Read more
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Emotional Intelligence at Work: Why I’m Trying to be Less Empathetic
If you aren’t yet familiar with the concept of Emotional Intelligence (also known as emotional quotient or EQ), it’s probably time to take note. In his book Emotional Intelligence NY Times science writer David Colman argued that it wasn’t, as previously thought, IQ that guaranteed business success... Read more
Removing SEO Text: SEO Split Testing Lessons from DistilledODN
Across most verticals, websites commonly will have text below the fold that predominantly exists to target search engines, not users. We’ve all seen it and we all know hardly anybody reads it other than Googlebot. Unsurprisingly, John Mueller has previously advised against including this kind of text. The comment, shared in a webmaster hangout, was in reference to e-commerce websites, but it applies more broadly: Many e-commerce websites... Read more
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What Google’s Star Rating Rich Snippet Changes Mean for You
On Monday this week, Google announced that they would be changing their treatment of star rating rich snippets in search results. We already know that Google wasn’t happy with how star rating rich snippets (like those pictured above) were being used in the wild. “Structured data penalties” have... Read more
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Use Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines To Assess Site Quality
What are Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines? To make sure that Google’s search engine is returning the right answers, Google regularly uses human contractors to evaluate search results to make sure that the latest algorithm is returning the kind of results they want. Google’s Quality... Read more
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Technical SEO Audit Checklist for Human Beings: September 2019 Update
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Technical audits are one of the activities that define SEO—we’ve all done them. But audits are only as valuable as their impact. Whether you’re a practitioner or an agency partner, your job really begins when the audit is finished. With that in mind, we asked “Can we design an audit that helps make real change happen?” The result is an aware technical audit checklist. It considers the underlying problems we’re tackling (or trying to prevent). It makes technical audits faster, more effective, and more impactful. Read more
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Distilled Partners with London Charity to Help Young Care Leavers
We’ve joined forces with Drive Forward Foundation, in a charity partnership that aims to get more care leavers into full time employment in London. Drive Forward Foundation is a small London based charity that works to help 16-26 year old care leavers succeed professionally, so they can achieve the... Read more
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“Impressions” is an Undervalued SEO KPI
This post is about a hill I’m willing to die on, but might not need to - I actually have no idea whether the title of this post is a controversial statement, or not. I’m keen to find out! However, from what I see in talks, posts, pitches, and business practices, our industry has definitely not... Read more
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Enjoy SearchLove London with some VIP treatment
The countdown to SearchLove London 2019 is on. Taking place on the 14th & 15th of October, we have 16 awesome speakers gracing the stage including Rand Fishkin, Marie Haynes, Will Critchlow, Jes Scholz, three community speakers and more. Maybe this is going to be your first SearchLove, or maybe you... Read more
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5 Takeaways from Mozcon as Someone with No SEO Experience
This post is written by Ali Howard, who is currently on a three month internship with our US team in Seattle. Before joining Distilled, she worked for Yelp assisting local businesses. She has a degree in International Business from Chapman University with an emphasis on Communication. Ali also... Read more
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Self-Care Strategies for the Workplace
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In an ever competitive workforce, the pressure to be constantly available and online is at an all time high. Even in companies like Distilled that offer flexible working and champion a 35 hour work week, the pressure to yield huge results and increase productivity is greater than ever. And if... Read more
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Adding FAQ Schema: SEO Split Testing Lessons from DistilledODN
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As much as we raise alarm about the constant change in Google SERPs, us SEOs love new things with FAQ schema being the latest example. Some are reporting how much they love it, others are saying they’re losing clicks because of it. Here’s a handful of the Twitter buzz: Naturally, we wanted to test... Read more
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No Words Wasted: A Guide to Creating Focused Content
This guide outlines the essential skills and techniques needed to produce focused content ranging from websites and blog posts, to case studies and white papers. Those new to the content marketing industry may choose to work through the steps from start to finish, while those already versed in content marketing may want to dip into individual chapters to pick up new ideas.
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PPC & SEO Synergy Part 3: Ad Copy Testing & Quality Score Correlation
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Part 3 includes two more synergy ideas, together with a downloadable checklist that you can start using internally. Before reading the post below, I recommend you check part one here and part two here. The two synergy ideas covered in this post will be focused on the following subjects: PPC ad copy... Read more
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We’ve Doubled the Sensitivity of our SEO Split-Testing Platform
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Since you’re reading this on the Distilled blog, you probably know Distilled has an SEO split-testing platform, DistilledODN. One of the important features of the platform is taking care of the statistics and measurement automatically. Any time you set up a test, the platform will automatically:... Read more
