Timothy Carter

Chief Revenue Officer at SEO Company

Industry veteran Timothy Carter is SEO.co’s Chief Revenue Officer. Tim leads all revenue for the company and oversees all customer-facing teams for SEO (search engine optimization) – including sales, marketing & customer success.

He has spent more than 20 years in the world of SEO & Digital Marketing leading, building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams.

When he’s not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach…preferably in Hawaii.

Over the years he’s written for publications like ForbesEntrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.

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Why Isn’t My Law Firm Ranking on Google Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid
Timothy Carter

Why Isn’t My Law Firm Ranking on Google? Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid

If you launched your law firm website in hopes of generating new clients, but it’s not showing up in Google, you’re not alone. Search engine optimization (SEO) for law firms is brutally competitive, and it takes a lot of hard work to get seen. SEO is complex, and certain mistakes can keep your site from ranking. In a market where leads click the first results they see, SEO (search engine optimization) is life or death for your law firm’s business. Let’s break down the most common mistakes that can hold your law firm back, along with some solutions. You haven’t given your law firm’s website enough time If you law firm’s website is new, you’ll need to wait for results. Assuming you’ve been working on your SEO (search engine optimization), it could take six months to a year to see results. If you’re trying to do it all yourself, the time it takes to rank could be years or you may not see results at all if you aren’t using an effective strategy. In any case, if you aren’t sure where you stand, get a free SEO site audit or get a consultation from a professional SEO agency as soon as possible. You don’t have an SEO strategy Getting visibility in Google takes more than just publishing a few pages with relevant keywords, generated from an online tool. Effective SEO requires a strategic approach with attention to detail. A basic SEO strategy contains the following elements: Keyword research. You need to know what terms real people are searching for, and what LSI keywords to include in your content. On-page SEO. This includes optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, headers, URL structures, and other on-page elements. Additional aspects of on-page SEO include writing good content, using internal linking, and optimizing images. Technical SEO. You need a mobile-friendly, fast-loading site with no crawl errors, broken links, or indexing issues. XML sitemaps and schema markup are essential. Content strategy. The content you publish directly impacts your ranking. Local SEO. Having a Google Business profile, local citations, client reviews, and content optimized for your service areas are all essential components to optimizing for Google My Business (GMB) listings. Link building. You’ll need strong backlinks from authoritative sites to rank. This can be accomplished through guest posting, media mentions, and creating linkable assets that people want to share. Analytics and reporting. You can’t improve what you aren’t tracking. But SEO analytics can be complex if you aren’t familiar with everything. Ongoing optimization. SEO isn’t something you do once and walk away. You’ll need to constantly monitor and optimize your site to maintain and improve your rankings. While some people are able to successfully learn SEO on their own, taking a DIY SEO approach is risky. Unless you want to make SEO a part-time job, you’re better off hiring a law firm SEO pro. Your law firm site isn’t indexed It’s frustrating to see your site all the way back on page 20+, but if your site isn’t indexed, it won’t show up at all. Here’s how to know which issue you’re dealing with: Go to Google and do a site search by typing in: “site:yourwebsite.com” See if any of your web pages show up in the search engine results pages (SERPs). If none of your web pages show up, they aren’t in Google’s index. If pages show up, they’re indexed, but not ranking. To get your web pages indexed, submit a request for Google to recrawl your URLs through your Google Search Console. If your pages are indexed, but aren’t ranking, you’ll need to employ an aggressive SEO campaign to get seen. Google changed their algorithm (again) Since the beginning, Google has made hundreds of updates, major and minor, and each time, perfectly good websites take a hit. If your site used to show up in searches, but now it’s pushed far back, check to see if there was a recent algorithm change or core update. Sometimes sites recover naturally after a short period of time, but updates have been fierce in the last few years and you might need to call in an SEO pro. Your law firm’s website content is thin If all you have is a home page that lists your practice areas and phone number, you probably won’t rank well. The same is true if you publish a single 300-word blog post once a month. A good blog post should answer important questions in-depth and be at least 1,000 words long. It doesn’t help to publish blog posts on a regular schedule if the content isn’t good. You’re better off posting less frequently to ensure your content is high-quality. Law is a highly competitive market, and you have to do some work to get seen in Google. At minimum, you need a separate web page for each of your practice areas. For example, if you’re a personal injury attorney, you’ll want a separate page for the following: Slip and fall accidents Dog bites Motorcycle accidents Truck accidents Car accidents Bicycle accidents Wrongful death Premises liability Medical malpractice With a single page simply listing your personal injury lawyer practice areas, Google won’t see your site as helpful. Having a separate, well-written web page for each personal injury practice area gives you a better chance at ranking for related searches. Your web pages are overloaded with legal jargon Even though Google loves specificity, legal jargon will only confuse people who read your content. And if your leads aren’t searching for jargon, it’s not going to help you rank. Avoid complex sentences and excessive legal jargon. It’s okay to use technical words to describe your practice areas, explain how the law works, and describe the process people will go through when they file a lawsuit. For example, if you’re a car accident attorney, you’ll need to explain comparative negligence, no-fault insurance, and similar concepts. However, keep in mind that people who need a lawyer will search for “what to do after a car accident”

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SEO for Bing: A Search Engine Optimization Guide for Microsoft Bing
Timothy Carter

SEO for Bing: A Search Engine Optimization Guide for Microsoft Bing

Making Google happy is a big part of any professional SEO’s job. But it isn’t the only place that matters. Have you been presuming that Bing SEO is a waste of your time just because Google is king of the SEO hill? Although Bing is trailing Google by a ways, it still has a decent chunk of the market; plus, Bing powers Yahoo!’s search. According to an August 2020 report of search engine market share in the United States, Bing is up to 7.2 percent. That might not sound like a lot, but it represents millions of users. Who Uses Bing? Whether you’re asking inquisitively or sarcastically, the answer is the same: Quite a lot of people! Bing processes 13.7 billion monthly PC searches (or roughly 317k every minute). Bing services a surprising 60 million searchers who are not reached by Google. The typical Bing user in the United States is an educated individual between the ages of 35 to 54 with a household income above $75,000. The most popular industries include retail, finances, technology, travel, education, health, auto, and telecom. Bing on the Rise Some analysts believe it’s just a matter of time before Bing overtakes Google, as hard as that may be to conceive. The reasoning? A growing number of users now prefer Bing over Google for its intuitive features and great search options. Bing is getting smarter: It beat Google to a valuable feature called disavowing links by a few months. Bing traffic is actually considered by some to be more valuable than Google traffic. Bing users have a lower bounce rate, visit more pages per site, spend longer amounts of time on the site, and actually click more affiliate links. Bing is the default search engine for Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana. (And the number of voice searches continues to increase exponentially year over year.) We certainly wouldn’t try to predict what the future holds for the search marketing industry, but if there’s a chance Bing SEO could beat Google down the road, perhaps it’s time to optimize your site for Bing as fully as you can. Important Ways Google and Bing SEO Differ Until recently, though, there weren’t any concrete guidelines to follow. No one knew for sure what the secrets were to ranking high on Bing. Now we have a clearer idea of what the search engine’s algorithm looks for. Duane Forrester brought to the SEO world’s attention the newly released Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines /bing webmaster tools. If you browse through the document and are familiar with Google’s guidelines, then you’ll recognize that they’re actually pretty similar. They are, however, not the same. There are some distinct differences between Bing SEO strategy and Google, including: Core Ranking Signals: While both search engines prioritize high-quality content, Bing places a stronger emphasis on factors like exact match keywords, meta tags, and keyword-rich URLs. Bing tends to give more weight to traditional SEO elements than Google. Keywords. Google has gone to great lengths to move away from exact keyword matches and to instead rely on semantic search (or a system that interprets contextual cues and infers the searcher’s intent). Bing SEO, on the other hand, still prefers targeted keywords whenever possible. Exact matches, particularly in titles and tags, will help you rank. Meta keywords. Google killed meta keywords over a decade ago. Bing still loves them, though! So while they may be irrelevant for Google, they can actually give you a bit of a boost in the Bing rankings. Social signals. As you probably know, Google uses nofollow links on social media and denies that social signals play any role in page ranking. Bing SEO, on the other hand, treats social signals with a lot of trust and respect. If you have influence on social media, that will be reflected in your search rankings. Bing is more likely to factor in social signals (likes, shares, comments) from platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter when determining rankings. Google, on the other hand, doesn’t give these signals as much weight. Backlinks. Bing loves backlinks just as much as Google. However, they analyze them in a slightly different manner. Whereas Google uses PageRank to determine the authority of a backlink, Bing SEO emphasizes ranking factors like domain age and domain extensions. Link count is also an extremely important ranking factors (whereas Google likes quality over quantity). Multimedia content. Whereas Google is still highly reliant on text-based content, Bing has powerful technology that they say can accurately crawl and understand a variety of multimedia content (like videos and podcasts). This gives websites with lots of multimedia content a leg up. Best SEO Strategies for Optimizing Your Site for Bing Want to up your website’s rankings within the Bing search engine? Here are a few powerful strategies and tactics we recommend: Setting Up and Using Bing Webmaster Tools Bing Webmaster Tools is a powerful platform that can help you monitor and improve your site’s presence in Bing’s search results. Here’s how to make the most of it: Verify Your Website: Start by creating a Bing Webmaster Tools account and verifying your website. This allows Bing to crawl your site, and you’ll get access to valuable data about your site’s performance. Submit Your Sitemap: Submitting a sitemap to Bing makes it easier for the search engine to crawl your site and index its pages. This step ensures that all your content is included in Bing’s search results. Crawl Stats & Errors: Bing Webmaster Tools provides insights into crawl errors, such as broken links or unreachable pages. Monitoring this data helps you keep your site in top shape. SEO Reports & Keyword Research: Bing offers SEO reports that assess the health of your site, highlighting areas for improvement. You can also use the keyword research tool to find keywords that are likely to improve your rankings on Bing. Content Strategy for Bing Bing rewards high-quality, keyword-optimized content that is directly relevant to user intent. Here’s how to craft content that ranks on

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Pros & Cons of Using Indian Link Building Services
Timothy Carter

Pros & Cons of Using Indian Link Building Services

If you’re looking for a way to improve your website’s ranking in Google, then it might be worth considering an Indian link building service. For many small businesses and websites, the cost of hiring a U.S.-based SEO company is too expensive, so they often go with cheaper alternatives like these services. However, are there any risks associated with using Indian link building services? If so, how can you be sure you’ll hire the best link building company? All of these questions will be answered in this helpful Indian link building guide. What are Indian Link Building Services? When link-building services are outsourced to India and they’re usually composed of a team of web developers or programmers. They provide you with backlinks for your website so it’s ranked higher on Google search results pages. The importance of link-building is clear. Search engine algorithms rank websites higher on search results pages if they have a lot of backlinks. Indian link-building services are cheaper than hiring in-house SEO professionals, and you can hire them for as many hours or days that you need to get your website ranking high enough. It’s also something you don’t have to worry about maintaining, since these agencies keep coming up with new link building strategies all the time so your site is always getting fresh links from different sources. Link-building is a very difficult and time-consuming process that must be done manually. Contracting the services of Indian SEOs can help automate this challenging process to the benefit of your website and bottom line. What are the Benefits of Link Building Services? Link building services are an affordable and effective way to get a website ranked higher on Google. It’s also something you don’t have to worry about maintaining, since these agencies are always on top of conducting new link-building campaigns on your behalf. The benefits of using an Indian link-building service include: Affordable link building pricing Ability to scale up or down the amount of link building you need at any time, and on an as-needed basis Automated process that makes it easier for your website’s ranking in Google search results pages. As you can see, there are a lot of benefits associated with using Indian link-building services. However, to become an informed buyer, we’ve put together a full list of pros and cons of using this service. Pro: Indian Link Building Services are More Affordable Compared to hiring an in-house SEO specialist, Indian link building services are much cheaper. You can hire these agencies for as many hours or days that you need which is very economical and effective when it comes to your bottom line. This will allow you to scale your link-building services without breaking the bank, a benefit many companies would love to take advantage of. One caveat: the more quality the link building team you are able to hire out of India, the smaller the real gap is in pricing. Said differently, if you want quality backlink services out of India, the price differentiation may not be as wide as you had initially anticipated. Con: These Services May Not Be Too Reliable The reliability of Indian link-building services is a bit questionable. It’s difficult to know whether or not these agencies are actually conducting the type of link building you want for your website, or if they’re just trying to scam you and get paid without doing any work at all. It would be wise to conduct thorough research before hiring one of these companies so that you can ensure their service will be worth what you’re paying them. Here are some initial filtering questions to ask: Is the content you will be helping to produce quality? Does it avoid AI fluff that adds little value to the internet conversation? Do the publishers you are proposing to use have existing traffic? Are they relevant to my niche? Do they have high domain authority? Are you tracking changes in the ranking factors of the various search engines? What if we need to pivot a campaign? Are your link building strategies holistic? Do they encompass on-page SEO strategies? Do you have any link building case studies? If so, what were the key performance indicators (KPIs)? (demand ROI and revenue over fluff, non-converting organic traffic metrics) Con: There are Time-Zone & Communication Obstacles Time-zone and communication obstacles are an issue with Indian link building services. In order to make sure you’re getting the most out of these companies, it’s a good idea to communicate with them on a regular basis so that they know what type of campaigns need to be conducted for your website. But if there is any confusion in regard to this matter, then their work may not be as effective because they don’t have the correct information needed about your company or desired outcomes. Con: There is a Clear Language Barrier The language barrier is a disadvantage of using Indian link-building services. Many people who use this service speak English as their second language, so there are often times when they need to have someone else translate what’s being said for them. This can be an issue because some information may not get communicated in the way that it was meant to and could lead to confusion on both sides. Pro: Indians Can Be Very Effective at Conducting Link Building Campaigns Indian link building agencies can be very effective conducting campaigns since many companies outsource these types of work to them due to their expertise and experience in this niche field. These agencies know how best to approach your target audience without any disruption or delay which will result in your website ranking higher on Google. With a massive talent pool from which to choose, the opportunity to source quality link services out of India is certainly there. Not a day goes by where we do not receive at least a dozen (if not more) requests from Indian digital marketing agencies, offering their services to us “at a fraction of the

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Search Everywhere Optimization The New and Improved SEO
Timothy Carter

Search Everywhere Optimization: The New and Improved SEO

You already know the basics of traditional SEO. You optimize your website for keywords, fine-tune your meta descriptions, build backlinks, and cross your fingers that Google ranks your content somewhere near the top.  But guess what? The search landscape isn’t what it used to be. People aren’t just searching on Google anymore.  They’re using YouTube to find how-to videos.  They’re typing product names into Amazon.  They’re using TikTok to research restaurants and experiences.  And let’s not forget LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest, and even ChatGPT. If you’re still optimizing just for Google, you’re missing the bigger picture – and probably a big chunk of your potential audience. Welcome to the era of Search Everywhere Optimization. This isn’t just a clever rebrand of SEO. It’s a major shift in how you think about discoverability. And if you want to compete (and win) in today’s fragmented attention economy, you need to understand what it takes to be searchable everywhere your audience looks. What Is Search Everywhere Optimization? Search Everywhere Optimization (or SEO 2.0, as some are calling it) is a holistic, platform-agnostic strategy to make sure your brand shows up wherever people are searching. It’s about treating every platform (not just Google) as a search engine in its own right. Because they are. And the algorithms behind them are designed to serve up answers, recommendations, and results based on intent and relevance. Let’s say you sell skincare products. Five years ago, you might’ve focused all your energy on ranking blog posts on Google like “best retinol cream for sensitive skin.”  That still matters – but now, you also need to be showing up in: YouTube searches for skincare routines TikTok hashtags like #retinolresults Amazon queries for anti-aging products Pinterest boards about skincare hacks Reddit threads on skin concerns LinkedIn posts if you’re targeting professional buyers or industry peers Each platform has its own algorithm, culture, and content style. But the goal is the same: When someone is looking, you want to be there. If you want to stay relevant, you need to adapt to this new approach.  People no longer rely solely on Google. They go where they trust the community or format more. (Especially Gen Z, who are using TikTok like a visual search engine.) On top of this, we’re noticing that attention is fractured. In other words, you can’t assume your audience will make their way to your website. They’re on apps, marketplaces, and forums. You have to meet them there. Plus, we’re seeing that organic search is saturated in many industries. Expanding your presence gives you more opportunities to rank somewhere and be seen. That’s why a shift to the “new” SEO matters so much. And in the rest of this resource, we’re going to show you some of the tactical ways you can begin executing a search everywhere approach to SEO. How to Execute Search Everywhere Optimization So how do you actually start optimizing for everywhere?  It begins with a mindset shift – and then a very strategic rollout. Let’s break it down into a few key areas: Understand Intent Across Platforms If you’re trying to build visibility, you can’t treat every platform like it’s Google. People go to different platforms with different needs, expectations, and behaviors. That means your content and optimization strategies must match the intent behind each platform’s search experience. Some of the important platforms to account for include: Google. When someone types a search into Google, they’re often looking for a direct answer, detailed information, or a product or service to solve a problem. The intent here is clear: give me what I’m looking for now. This is where long-form blog posts, in-depth guides, product pages, and local SEO play a huge role. People might be in research mode, comparison mode, or ready-to-buy mode, but the common thread is intent-driven search. YouTube. YouTube is a visual search engine, and user intent here usually centers around learning, watching, or evaluating. People search for tutorials, product demos, reviews, “how-to” guides, or even lifestyle content that aligns with their interests. It’s not just about SEO – it’s about video engagement, watch time, visual storytelling, etc. Amazon. Amazon is all about buyer intent. If someone is typing your product’s name – or anything close – into Amazon’s search bar, they’re very close to making a purchase. That’s why your listing needs to do more than just describe your product – it needs to persuade. TikTok. On TikTok, users aren’t searching with clear product or service intent. In most situations, hey’re looking for authenticity, discovery, and visual inspiration. But TikTok has become a top search tool, especially among younger audiences. They’ll search for restaurant reviews, book recommendations, fashion ideas, or even how to fix a leaky faucet. Reddit. Reddit users come for honest, peer-driven advice. If they’re searching in a subreddit, they’re looking for real people’s experiences, opinions, and unfiltered feedback. They’re skeptical of brands, which means your tone and approach must be especially careful. Pinterest. Pinterest is a visual discovery engine focused on aspiration and planning. Users come here to gather ideas for events, outfits, recipes, renovations, and more. They’re not necessarily ready to buy, but they’re in research mode and building their ideal outcomes. LinkedIn. LinkedIn is built for professional intent. Searches here are about thought leadership, networking, career growth, and industry insights. If you sell B2B services or want to position yourself as an expert in your field, this is the platform where credibility matters most. Instagram. The Instagram search algorithm is driven by hashtags, keywords, and geotags, but it’s still heavily visual. Users are in scroll mode, but they’re also looking for inspiration, aesthetics, and lifestyle alignment. So, your content needs to do the talking through images, reels, and carousels. ChatGPT and AI Assistants. AI tools are now a go-to resource for quick answers and content exploration. When someone asks ChatGPT for the “best email marketing tips” or “what CRM to use,” the tool pulls from high-authority content, FAQs, and brand language it has been

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Best Link Building Strategies for SEO
Timothy Carter

Best Link Building Strategies for SEO in 2025

Search engine optimization (SEO) results are nearly impossible without at least some link building. The high-level view of link building strategies is simple enough; place or earn more links pointing back to your domain so your domain-level and page-level authority grow, at which point you’ll naturally rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). The truth is this exhaustive list of link building strategies should only be used to give your ideas. It can all be intimidating and difficult for a link building newcomer, and frustrating to a seasoned veteran who just can’t break past their most recent traffic plateau. These link building strategies include some of the best ways to get free backlinks. We’ll also answer the following questions: What tactics should I focus on for my niche? What tactics should I avoid, or which are too costly or time-consuming to be worth my time? SEO pricing can be expensive, but repairing poor SEO is worse. What are the easiest ways to acquire quality backlinks? How do you make your blog posts and other on-site content irresistibly link worthy? How do you avoid spammy link building strategies? What are the best link building strategies for new websites? How long does it take for even the best link building strategies to work? Once you get a good system in place for link building, how do you scale it up? How many of of my backlink strategies should involve guest blogging or guest post outreach? Should I manually acquire high quality links or rely on passive link acquisition strategies? How do I effectively outsource my link building? In this post, we delve into 77 link building strategies most likely to help you boost the visibility of your own site in the SERPs. In the rest of this article, we’ll be exploring link building strategies in different categories, from earning backlinks naturally with attractive content to best practices for managing publisher relationships. Curious about your site’s existing backlinks compared to your competitors? Use our backlink checker to view your profile and get information about how you can improve. These backlink strategies will help you ensure that the links you build are the highest possible quality: Backlink Quality > Backlink Quantity And quality is typically time-consuming and more expensive. This first strategy is more about what you shouldn’t do. Newcomers are often tempted to build as many links as possible, without putting much thought into which types of links they build or how they build them. Before you even start link building, make sure you have a clear vision. What are you trying to accomplish? Which links will help you the most? What links could hurt? Based on technical keyword research, what phrases do you want to rank for? Have you developed an anchor text strategy for your outreach? It’s much better to build a small number of extremely helpful links than a large number of links that might hurt you in the long run. Be VERY picky about the links you work to acquire manually: Work to be that guy or gal in your organization that won’t take or stand for acquiring garbage backlinks! Backlink Relevance > Referring Domain Authority Good links exist in context. A lengthy URL existing by itself in a forum comment isn’t going to get much positive attention; it isn’t helpful, valuable, or even natural. But a link embedded as a citation to a resource page, or a solidly written article is a different story. When building links, your first priority should be the content housing your link, and the context that justifies its existence. Focus on: Links from quality sites Links embedded in quality content Links using appropriate anchor text (depending on your existing profile) Links that point to a relevant page to the content topic AND the referring domain Without good content as a backbone, your link building strategy won’t get far. High DA > Low DA (duh) Google judges not just the number of linking domains to your site, but also the quality of those linking domains. Domain authority (DA) is a relative measure of the trustworthiness of a given site. Source: Moz The higher the DA of a domain is, the more authority its links will pass. Your rankings will increase with 1) enough high DA mixed with low DA sites and 2) enough time for those links to vest. Accordingly, getting a link on a high-DA site is better than a comparable link on a low-DA site. As an added bonus, high-DA sites tend to get more traffic on their own, which means they’ll have a higher likelihood of passing referral traffic your way. Favor new domains and IP addresses over already-linked domains Links pass authority from one site to another, but there are diminishing returns for links on the same domain. In other words, the first link you build on a 78 DA website will pass significant authority to your site, but the second link you build there will pass much, much less. As a general rule, getting a link on a new domain is a better use of your time, even if its DA is slightly lower. In this example, a link on a new 55 DA site will be superior to a second link on the 78 DA site. Of course, this isn’t written in stone; even if you aren’t getting as much authority, new links on already-link domains will still increase your brand visibility and may forward additional referral traffic your way. Add value to user experience, not just anchor text What function is your link serving? The best links exist to provide additional value to readers. There are many possible approaches here, but you’ll need a good one if you want your link to succeed. For example, your link can serve as additional reading material on a topic, or it could serve as a citation to back up the facts you report. It could also provide resources in line with what a reader is seeking, or even add a

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What Is Noreferrer in the Context of SEO copy
Timothy Carter

What Is Noreferrer in the Context of SEO?

The fundamentals of search engine optimization (SEO) are relatively easy to understand. Make good content, establish trust, have a stronger presence than your competitors, and you should rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). However, the technical aspects of SEO can sometimes be confusing – and challenging to act on. When you say something like rel=noreferrer as a non-technical expert, you may feel the tinge of a headache coming on. But the reality is, the noreferrer tag is a relatively simple concept that’s easy to understand and implement in your SEO strategy. What exactly is this tag and why is it relevant to your SEO strategy? What Is Noreferrer? The rel=noreferrer tag is an HTML attribute that deals with web privacy and security. It’s typically used with external links, providing instructions to a user’s browser to ignore the HTTP referrer header when moving from website A to website B; this also prevents external websites from tracking traffic sources. Essentially, using the noreferrer tag allows you to mask the referring source when a browser attempts to track it. It’s a way of disguising or anonymizing where a user is coming from. If you use this tag on your website, people who click the links on your website to travel to other pages will have their origin source hidden. Other websites won’t be able to tell, through their analytics, that they came from your website. This obviously works for other websites as well. If some other website is using the noreferrer tag on links pointed to your website, you won’t be able to tell where those visitors are coming from. Noreferrer vs. Nofollow If you have any link building or general SEO experience, you’re probably somewhat familiar with the “nofollow” tag. While similar in nature and function, these two tags are distinct in how they work and how they apply to your SEO strategy. A nofollow tag informs Google bots that a certain link should not be weighted as part of its search engine algorithm evaluations. In other words, the link is marked to be ignored in the context of PageRank. Links with the nofollow tag aren’t going to pass any link juice to your website. That doesn’t mean they’re useless, of course; they can still give you website visibility and referral traffic. However, nofollow tags are typically detrimental to a link building strategy. In contrast, the noreferrer tag doesn’t affect link juice or link evaluation at all. If a link is marked with the noreferrer tag, some visitor information will be obscured, but the link still counts in an SEO context. Why Use a Noreferrer Tag? Why should you consider using a noreferrer tag on your website?       Risk reduction. For some businesses, it’s all about reducing risk. Any amount of data exposure is a potential vulnerability, and reducing vulnerabilities reduces your exposure to risk. It’s a general strategy that doesn’t have much of A downside, but could protect you or your users if any of that information is threatened.       Page speed. You likely know that page speed is important for SEO (and for user experience beyond SEO). If you improve page loading speed, your users will be happier, Google will rate your website as more authoritative, and you’ll probably rise in the rankings for multiple reasons. While the effect is somewhat minor, using noreferrer tags can partially accelerate page speed.       User privacy protection. If your brand is committed to user privacy, noreferrer tags can help you adhere to that philosophy. These tags prevent other websites from knowing where your users came from, so you’re essentially functioning as a gigantic privacy shield for them. If you advertise this, your users may be grateful.       Maintaining distance from other sites. This strategy is also valuable if you want to maintain some distance from other websites. For example, if you’re linking to websites with controversial content or if you’re linking to sources that may engage in questionable practices in the future, a noreferrer tag can block some degree of affiliation.       Analytics shielding. For one reason or another, you may want to prevent your website or brand name from appearing in the analytics of other websites. Referral traffic is a big deal in the realm of digital marketing. Most website owners love digging into analytics to see how much referral traffic they’re getting and where that referral traffic is coming from. With a noreferrer tag, your name will be blocked, so you won’t show up in any analytics reports. Noreferrer Tags in an SEO Context Why is it so important to consider noreferrer tags in the context of SEO?       Indirect (and future) SEO benefits. We should start by saying that using these tags or having links pointed to your website with this tag applied has almost no direct impact on SEO whatsoever. It’s not a direct SEO benefit to implement the noreferrer tag, nor is it a benefit or detriment to have the noreferrer tag applied to your inbound links. That said, there are some possible indirect benefits of using the noreferrer tag whenever appropriate. For starters, this is a way of protecting user data and therefore user safety. Google always prioritizes websites with high levels of security, so this is a great way to strategically position yourself. Additionally, page speed acceleration can help you rank a bit higher as well. Keep in mind that Google may use the noreferrer tag as a ranking signal in the future, but we don’t know exactly how likely this is.       Visitor dwell time. Higher dwell time is also good for SEO. If your pages load quickly, if users know you’re protecting their privacy, and if you have good linking infrastructure in general, those users will be much more likely to stick around on your website. This, in turn, can support higher rankings.       Link juice preservation. Keep in mind that the noreferrer tag preserves

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