Brian Gorman

Most free SEO audits are worthless. They’re just lists of problems thrown at you like a digital boogeyman that says “hire my agency” or we’re coming to get you. They’re a scare tactic because they never provide solutions, but solutions are what you need. That’s why we don’t do audits at deeproots partners. They're kind of a dirty word around here. Instead, we execute a Strategy & Roadmap. Key Difference: Our Strategy & Roadmap doesn't just tell you what’s wrong. It provides clear solutions. Think of it like turn-by-turn GPS directions to improve your digital health and visibility. Let’s say you have UX issues. We’ll call it out, but we’ll also create a “design mockup” that fixes it. Problem + Solution = Value. That’s the Strategy & Roadmap equation. One more thing. When we provide a potential partner with our Strategy & Roadmap, it belongs to you. That means you can execute it yourself or with a third-party provider.  We’re not here to be the digital boogeyman that scares you with your problems.   We’re here to empower you to solve them.

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There's been a leak in the SEO world from Rand Fishkin, one of the largest I've seen in years. This is essential reading for anyone in our field. https://lnkd.in/gr7tKDms The information here isn't going to change anyone's core SEO strategy, but it will give you clarity on how to "weigh" specific components of your strategy (user data, brand signals, navigation). And yes - I know this is all speculative. But when aligned with 3rd party tests and data from other SEOs over the last several years, it rings true. I've consolidated and simplified the article into the most actionable terms possible. 📌 #1: Build Your Strategy from User Signals \Google has extensive user data from its search engine and Chrome browser. These signals, especially related to Navboost (and glue), should be a continuous "gut check" for our optimization efforts: - Organic CTR - Long clicks (users that click and stay on the domain) - On-page time - Heatmapping Analyze these signals in aggregate from available data sources (GSC & GA4). 📌 #2: Build a Brand That Gets Clicks Evidence shows that small and medium-sized sites rank poorly until their brand name is actively searched and clicked. While we focus on non-branded terms, building your brand is crucial for smaller brands. Here are strategies to recommend to receptive clients: - Traffic diversification (focus on multiple channels, especially social) - Brand mentions in anchor text (internal and external) - Brand in page titles where applicable - Merge accounts with multiple businesses/domains under the most recognizable brand where relevant 📌 #3: Verify Google Claims with 3rd-Party Tests Google is incentivized to keep its algorithm's workings a mystery, often pushing false narratives. That includes pushing out false narratives on the data it collects and uses to major news outlets (SEJ, etc). It’s tempting to use these articles as a source of truth - especially when site owners are asking for an explanation. But major leaks like this demonstrate the huge disparity between what Google says and what they actually do.

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Here are some great resources for content writing, with my fave listed at #8- The Blogsmith. Take a look and see what you think!

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Listen to my #seostrategy advice about how often an #SEOaudit should be performed? Read more here as well... https://lnkd.in/etD-zvci

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Nice tips on structuring your website's resources section for maximum SEO effectiveness. As usual, a blend of thoughtful content strategy and detail-obsessed technical SEO can win the day. https://lnkd.in/eKbnxst6

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Since the August Core Update 2024 has started rolling out, HouseFresh.com has been at the forefront of post-HCU recovery. Here’s what I’ve noted: 📈 Significant Rankings Increase: Their rankings have ascended in this update like no other site I’ve encountered. 🔍 Strategic SEO Efforts: Post-HCU, they’ve made substantial progress—elevating their DA from 43 to 58, refining on-page SEO, and enhancing UX. 🏅 Enhanced EEAT: Their Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EEAT) have notably strengthened. Interestingly, despite similar efforts, many other sites haven't experienced the same positive trend. 💼Possibly Manual Influence: To me, this recovery for HouseFresh.com appears more manual than algorithmic at this stage, especially given the influential article they published on Google’s HCU. Only time will reveal if this pattern extends to other sites. #seo #googleupdate #algorithmic_update #housefresh

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The most up-to-minute information in 2024 doesn't come from Google, or Bing. It's all on Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube. Tory Gray breaks down how you should be using this information to inform your bigger SEO plans 🧠

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More technical SEO is NEVER going to get you out of an algorithmic demotion. If a site has been impacted by an algorithmic update, technical SEO is not the problem, so technical SEO is not the solution. I see agencies making technical SEO recommendations too often for sites hit by Helpful Content Updates. If the content is the issue, improving the technical SEO doesn't address the root cause of the demotion.

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Don't forget add Alt Tags (AKA Alt Text) to your images to help visitors utilizing screen readers (and Google) understand your images. Don't passively rely on your #CMS to auto-generate alt tags. Double check to ensure they are both accurate and helpful! https://lnkd.in/gh2HwDfP

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Oooh, it must be Fall (hard to tell when you live in Florida)...the 2025 trends lists are coming out already! SEO Top Trends for 2025 1) Search alternatives and Google’s antitrust trial. 2) AI as a powerful (or terrible) assistant. 3) E-E-A-T and the push for originality. 4) The user versus the keywords. 5) Technical SEO will matter more than ever. #seostrategist #contentstrategist #SEOcontentwriter #SEOtrends #copywriter

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For all the SEO writers out there 🤣 Use strong verbs. Question every appearance of the verbs “to be,” “to do,” or “to have.” “Very” weakens what it modifies. Delete it. A semi-colon links two complete sentences; it reinforces and seems to prove their connection. If it sounds literary, it isn’t. Remove the boring stuff. Nothing is ineffable. Make the effort: Write the stuff that’s hard to articulate. “Said” is always enough. “Chuckled,” “smiled,” “ranted,” “explained” … all of them are too much. Don’t find synonyms, and drop explanatory adverbs from attributions. This list of writing rules is lifted shamelessly from Neal Allen https://lnkd.in/eASAYT5q

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Writing copy? 👉 you have to know your icp Prioritizing roadmap? 👉 you have to know your icp Planning events? 👉 you have to know your icp Thinking about content partnerships or influencers? 👉 you have to know your icp Considering investing $$$$ in analyst relations? 👉 you have to know your icp Setting up a competitive program? 👉 you have to know your icp If you don't? You'll still get a lot done. It just won't have a ton of impact. Marketers, if you're only doing one more thing this year, let it be this. You'll set yourself up for a good 2025. Episode 3 of Competitive Intelligence Alliance CI Confidential is out now 👀

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SEO updates you ✨NEED ✨ to know [15 Apr]: 📰Google has begun blocking links to California news outlets​ from search results in a protest to a proposed law that would require large online platforms to pay a ‘journalism usage fee’. 📊A 1,000 keyword analysis​ of health symptom searches in Google, many covering serious concerns, has shown Quora is the second most prominent site, where it's easy to find spammed, copied or AI-generated medical advice. ☠️Potentially harmful results have been flagged​ in Google's results since the March update, specifically with Google recommending a "for kids" filter on the search for "best cbd gummies". ​Google has responded to examples​. 💈Google appears to be showing brand names​ in title tags again, reversing a previous decision that saw Google truncate titles, usually by removing the company/brand name. Could be worth monitoring for CTR changes. 😭Particularly egregious examples of pure spam​ in both the SGE/featured snippets have been highlighted by Lily Ray, despite Google having recently completed their March Spam Update. 👋Bing is testing removing the estimated number of search results​ count in the Bing Search results interface. This comes after Bing began testing removing the cache link from the search result snippets. 🕒We are now 41 days into the March Core Update rollout​ and it's still going! We had a lot of volatility over the weekend and so far there have been no reports of recoveries from sites impacted by the HCU. ♊Gemini 1.5 Pro is now available in 180+ countries​, with native audio (speech) understanding capability and a new File API to make it easy to handle files as well as system instructions and JSON mode to give more output control. 📝In a completely unsurprising announcement​ that was predicted by absolutely everybody, Google is killing off their "Search Notes" feature, which allowed users to vandalise, er, make notes on search results. ✉️ If you like these updates, I send them out weekly, via email, along with some SEO tips, all for free, to my newsletter at CoreUpdates[dot]com Links to everything in my first comment! ⬇️⬇️

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Google was caught, again, lying to everyone about SEO signals. I'm sure you saw the headline by now. However experienced SEOs weren't tricked. Our tests have always been the truth tellers. Hopefully your SEOs weren't surprised either. If they were, you may need an upgrade. This stuff is very hard. I preach about entities, CRO, usability, all this stuff for a reason. I preach about building SEO campaigns around all this. If you hire amateurs, who are not truly up to speed, you pay more in the long run. I've been watching the market slip into cheaper and cheaper economy SEO services. This is a key reason why that should have never happened. If you think these thoughts have value for others, please repost. Maybe we can turn this industry around and save businesses a ton of future heartache.

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Helpful Content Analysis Summary 1. Helpful content was not always a "site wide" devaluation or suppression of content - this was more notable on domains that had different content topics in different sub folders - HCU would often hit specific content types and not everything 2. Sites that were "single topic" often saw the greatest hits because of how HCU worked - it would look at overall engagement & performance factors post brand assessment before supressing content 3. It APPEARS as if a threshold would be met if a larger portion of content didn't yield expected behaviour - if the probability of a "poor session" went up too high than the overall impact would be almost DOMAIN wide 4. In-page ads and UX appeared to play a part in helpful content evaluation - I noticed trends in auditing where shorter engagement page profiles (because of UX and ad stuffing) lead to shorter and lesser engagement - often these sites had ads nearly SITEWIDE which would drag down GLOBAL metrics - rendering MORE of the domain less helpful & more likely to suffer wider suppression 5. Interaction to content availability LOOKED to be a factor - this is my own speculation. But if pages had thousands of words of content that never saw interaction - it would be an indicator that: > the content may not have been helping users to achieve what they set out to do > The content may have been written for SEO > Poor / disorganised or cluttered content layouts would put users off from engaging or scrolling For example - I noted a huge amount of casino affiliate sites that jammed far too much content into comparison pages saw significant decline because no one would consume a full article and less than 10% of users even got half way through scrolling 6. HCU could be SKIPPED if other thesholds were met - if a page/overarching brand was strong enough, Google could use other factors outside of HCU for evaluation - thus some sites would just sail through HCU as if nothing happened 7. UGC likely won not just because of REDDIT + GOOGLE in bed, but because UGC tends to have a negative more real world bias which subsequently tends to draw more engagement than content that has a bias behind it (to get you to buy a product i.e. affiliate) Other things to note: 1. Once HCU suppression was in place - little could be done to have any effect - I don't say this lightly, suppressions are WORSE than penalties/manual actions which can be recovered from more quickly (generally) 2. HCU suppression IS transferable - however there appears to be SIGNAL TRANSFER lag - which may explain why some site owners who changed the domain saw a burst of traffic before seeing everything bottom out again 3. HCU escape MAY be possible with a change of domain and migration of content without using Google search console COA - but how sustainable this is - I don't know - Google has a hard time attributing content to original sources #seo #seotips

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Don't go chasing Domain Rating goes the famous TLC song. For those of you who aren't SEO nerds, Domain Rating shows the strength of a website's backlink profile compared to the others in the Ahrefs (an SEO software) database on a 100-point scale. Lately, I've gotten several requests from prospects whose primary ask is to "raise my Domain Rating by 15-20 points in one year." Not only is this an unstructured approach, but it is also chasing a vanity metric (a waterfall) that doesn't always have something to do with actual business value. For example, I showed a prospect a website that built (or earned) over 300 links in one year. Their Domain Rating actually went down from 53 to 52. An uninitiated SEO agency might sell this prospect on 300 links in one year (this is hella expensive) and get the same results. It's just a bad KPI. For me, I need to look holistically at things like : - current on-page SEO - current content - # of competitors referring domains to page - internal links ...before I start arbitrarily building links. So if your primary concern is to increase Domain Rating, you should first understand that there are 4-5 fundamental things you must understand and successfully implement before investing in link building. For me, the question shouldn't be "How can I increase my Domain Rating?" It's "What SEO strategies do I need to implement to generate more sales?" See you in the water.

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Bonus SEO Tips: When Land Clearing in Texas Meets SEO 😂🌳 Some SEO nerd humor. I got a chuckle of this when I came across this page: https://lnkd.in/eexmcQVV In case you haven't noticed: check the "Bonus SEO Tips:" at the end? #SEOHumor #SEO

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