Rank Ranger Blog

After months of speculation and anxious anticipation, the latest incarnation of the Google's spammy website killing algorithm is upon us. But what does it all mean for you and your site? What makes Penguin 4.0 different than Penguin 3.0? What can you expect and how should you act now that Penguin has been updated and modernized.

Between September 13th and September 14th the SERP feature saw a more than 50% drop off in its Page One appearances. Such an unusual drop off left us wondering, where have all the images gone? Did they just fall off the face of the Earth? Did they get pushed down? Were they replaced with another feature? Were all Image Boxes affected or simply those that related to certain topics or categories?

The Rank Ranger team has discovered that Google's keyword research tool, Keyword Planner, is now altering search queries, presenting results that don't exactly match the initial search phrase. As a result, at times it shows results that not only don't match the query exactly, but may seriously deviate from the original intent behind it.

August was a month with SERP news aplenty. In fact, last month had everything you could possibly want, hot summer days, the coming of the school year (a parent's best friend), and a multitude of SERP features coming and going. In any event, all of the news and happenings on the SERP last month made for quite a rich SERP experience, so without further adieu may I present to you the very much altered August 2016 SERP.

If Google is good at one thing (other than search of course) it's marketing strategy. Though you'll never see an ad for the king of the search engines, this query behemoth employs some of the most subtle, yet fantastically impressive marketing strategies out there. Strategies that you should definitely take a look at and work in your own marketing tactics. There's no need to reinvent the wheel when you can learn from the Grandmaster of subtle marketing.

Keyword research is a uniquely dynamic way to perform brand analysis and in the first installment of this blog series, you saw exactly how brands and content creators can take advantage of this far-reaching method. In this second part in the keyword research for brand analysis saga, we'll get into the heart of the matter by seeing how employing keyword research in this manner can change how advertisers approach their trade.

The SEO community has been abuzz with discussion about Keyword Planner's recent data restrictions that have deep implications for SEOs and digital marketers. Due to the significance of the data limitations Google has rolled out I thought it pertinent to update you as to the exact issue you may be facing and how to most effectively deal with it.

I love the Olympics and I'm the first to admit that I have Olympic fever. There's something about the Games that excites just about everyone even those who aren't regular sports fans. There's also something interesting happening on the Google SERP with the introduction of a "deep" knowledge panel about the Rio Olympics.

Considering the broad economic value that brands can carry, performing thorough brand analysis is an essential and common business practice. As odd as it sounds, keyword research is a viable and potent way to perform brand analysis. For those of you who may be skeptical of the ability of keyword research to serve as a valuable tool to analyze brand power, allow me to demonstrate!

Just in time for a SERP fluctuation frenzy, the newly released Mobile SERP Feature Tracker saw a seesawing series of SERP features over the course of July. Join me as I investigate what went up, what went down, and which SERP feature data trends on mobile corresponded to desktop.