SEO foundations and technical hygiene

Google have launched Google Preferred Sources, which is a brand new feature that allows your customers and your readers to choose you as a preferred source of information. Now when this is done correctly, it does a few things.

No. 1, it increases your chances on coming up on Google AI Overviews, coming up in Google AI mode, and also it's going to increase your chances of being the top source on Google News.

Not only that, Google have said to us that it's gonna be part of the algorithm that more people that have selected you as a preferred source is gonna increase your chances of actually ranking on Google as well. So there's a few ways to set it up and get your customers and your readers to choose you as a preferred source.

The first thing that you can do is go on to Google News. You gonna see top stories over there.

You click on that icon, and then it's gonna take you to a section where people can put in your URL and add you as a source. The second way that you can do it is go to this URL: google.com/preferences/source...

this on your social, and basically what you have to start doing is get your customers and your readers to start selecting you as a preferred source. If you look on a lot of news publishing websites, a lot of companies have started doing this straight away.

You can see that they've actually started putting these buttons on their websites, on all their articles, and also specifically some people have dedicated pages on their website inviting people and show them how to make them a preferred source. If you are a publisher and you want your news to come up more on Google, I suggest that you start doing this straight away.

You can see what a difference it makes. Google actually show you this little button on the side saying that you are a preferred source, and it really does make a big difference.

Go try out Preferred Sources now, specifically if you're a publisher and you want more traffic to your articles and your website.

I do SEO audits and Google Ads audits for clients across South Africa and across the world on a daily basis. I want to share an experience and a story that happened with one of my SEO audits last week and what I've taken from it.

A guy that I know was head hunted and bought into a big company he said to me, can I just do a quick SEO order that he'd like to show the guys at what is going on. So I did this SEO audit for them.

It was quite in detail but it didn't take me that long only about 20 minutes although it was very in depth. I pointed out a lot of the weaknesses that this company had on SEO and the opportunities that they're missing out on and obviously the mistakes that this current agency is doing for them.

So the video was shown to the directors of the company as well as the marketing executives. From what I understand they got a quite a big shock because they didn't realise how bad their SEO currently was.

They then sent this video to the agency that was meant to be doing the SEO for them...

n so much from him. So just by the way, I hopefully will get this business at a later stage, but it's a little bit complicated.

Apparently this agency has got a contract and there's a whole lot of company politics that I don't really know. So it's not so straightforward.

So this is what I've learnt from the story. No.1, I'm glad people are learning so much from my videos.

No. 2, unfortunately, I'm a little bit sad that agencies have to watch my videos and learn what to do.

And at the same time, they're selling these services to their clients. I said it many times, unfortunately, a lot of agencies are selling things that they aren't really doing and this is a pity.

Thirdly, and this is important, I realise that my audits are really good. I do spend a lot of time with it and thank god I'm putting all The skills that I've learnt from all my time doing SEO into them, they're really golden.

So what I've decided to do is, yes, I'm still doing the audits for people, but I have to start charging for it. I don't think I have to give away all this gold for nothing...

If you want to understand and do well at Google Ads and SEO, I want you to think of The Karate Kid. Now why I'm saying Karate Kid is there's that famous scene about wash on and wash off where Mister Miyagi teaches Daniel that the basics of karate come down to a few simple things.

Just watch this quick scene. Show me wax on, wax off, wax, wax, wax, wax.

Show me paint, defense, paint, paint. Now this is probably the most pivotal scene in the movie as we know.

What happens is that Daniel wants to learn karate, that he can defend himself against the bullies. Mister Miyagi teaches him don't worry too much about the fighting, worry more about the basics.

Now when it comes down to Google Ads and SEO, so many times I've seen it over the years in training my own staff and dealing with other companies that people focus on too many different things and they don't want to worry about the basics. Now when it comes down to the basics, one has to find a mentally understand what Google search is about...

This way you can check an s E. O.

Website Authority score on any website out there. This is including your website and your competitors.

This tool is totally free to use. All you have to do is go to Google and type in Website Authority Checker by ahrefs and click on that first result, put in any domain that you want, press enter and you're gonna see that website authority score.

Now as we've mentioned before, I want you to think of your website authority score almost as your popularity score. The higher that score, the more popular you are.

In order to build on your popularity, you need other popular people or popular websites saying that you are good. By building up your Website Authority score, this means that your results on Google should go higher.

If you have any questions about this or anything relating to s C. O.

Or Google Ads, drop in the comments below and I'll get back to you.