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Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that country code domain names perform better in search results because Google gives an edge to local sites
Google’s Gary Illyes answered a question about a ranking preference given to sites that use country level domain names and explained how that compares to non-country domain names. The question occurred in the SEO Office Hours podcast.
Domain names that are specific to countries are called ccTLDs (Country Code Top Level Domains). These are domain names that target specific countries. Examples of these ccTLDs are .de (Germany), .in (India) and .kr (Korea). These kinds of domain names don’t target specific languages, they only target Internet users in a specific country.
Some ccTLDs are treated by Google for ranking purposes as if they are regular Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), which are domains that are not specific to a country. A popular example is .io, which technically is a ccTLD (pertaining to the British Indian Ocean Territory) but because of how it’s used, Google treats it like a regular gTLD (generic top level domain).
The question that Gary Illyes answered was about the ranking boost given to ccTLDs.
This is the question:
“When a Korean person searches Google in Korean, does a com.kr domain or a .com domain do better?”
Gary Illyes answered:
“Good question. Generally speaking the local domain names, in your case .kr, tend to do better because Google Search promotes content local to the user.”
A lot of people want to rank better in a specific country and one of the best practices for doing that is to register a domain name that is specific to the country. Google will give it a ranking boost over other sites that are not explicitly targeting a specific country.
Gary continued his answer by explaining the ranking boost of a ccTLD over a generic top level domain (gTLD), like .com, .net and so on.
This is Gary’s explanation:
“That’s not to say that a .com domain can’t do well, it can, but generally .kr has a little more benefit, albeit not too much. “
Related:
Lastly, Gary mentioned that targeting a user’s language has more impact than the domain name.
He continued his answer:
“If the language of a site matches the user’s query language, that probably has more impact than the domain name itself.”
A benefit of targeting a language is that a site is able regardless of the country that a user is searching from whereas the country code top level domain name targets a country.
Something that Gary didn’t mention is that using a ccTLD can inspire user trust from searchers whose country matches the country that the domain name is targeting and because of that searchers on Google may be more inclined to click on a search result that uses the geotargeted ccTLD.
If a user is in Korea they may feel that a .kr domain is meant specifically for them. If a searcher is in Australia they may feel more inclined to click on a .au domain name.
Listen to the podcast answer from the 3:35 minute mark:
See also:
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Google Says How To Get More Product Rich Results – Search Engine Journal
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Google’s John Mueller discusses four essential things that are useful in getting more product rich results
In an SEO Office Hours podcast, Google’s John Mueller answered the question of how to get more product rich results to show in the search results. John listed four things that are important in order to get rich results for product listings.
Product search queries can trigger rich results that presents products in a visually rich manner that Google refers to as Search Experiences.
Google product search experiences can include:
The person asking the question wanted to know how to get more “product snippets in Search Console” which confused Mueller because product snippets are displayed in the search results, not search console. So Mueller answered the question in the context of search results.
This is the question:
“How to increase the number of product snippets in Search Console?”
John Mueller explained that there were four things to get right in order to qualify for product rich results.
Mueller answered:
“It’s not really clear to me what exactly you mean… If you’re asking about product rich results, these are tied to the pages that are indexed for your site. And that’s not something which you can change by force.
It requires that the page be indexed, that the page has valid structured data on it, and that our systems have determined that it’s worth showing this structured data.”
So, according to John Mueller, these are the four things to get right to qualify for product rich results:
Getting a page indexed (and ranked) can be difficult for some search queries. People who come to me with this kind of problem tend to have content quality issues that can be traced back to using outdated SEO strategies like copying what’s already ranking in the SERPs but making it “better” which often results in content that’s not meaningfully different than what Google is already ranking.
Content quality on the page level and on the site level are important. Focusing on content that has that little extra, like better images, helpful graphs, or content that’s more concise, all of that is so much better than focusing on keywords and entities.
This is another area that explains why some sites lose their rich results or fail to get them altogether. Google changes their structured data recommendations and usually the structured data plugins will update to conform to the new guidelines. But I’ve seen examples where that doesn’t happen. So when there’s a problem with rich results, go to Google’s Rich Results Test tool first.
It’s also important to be aware that getting the structured data correct is not a guarantee that Google will show rich results for that page, it’s just makes the page qualified to show in the rich results.
This is the part that Google doesn’t talk about. But if you’re read about reviews systems, quality guidelines, Google’s SEO starter guide and maybe even the Search Quality Raters Guidelines then that should be more than enough information to inform any question about content quality.
Google doesn’t say why they may decline to show an image thumbnail as a rich result or why they’ll not show a product in the rich results. My opinion is that debugging the issue is more productive if the problem is reconceptualized as a content quality issue. Images are content, if it’s on the page, even if it’s not text, it’s content. Evaluate all of the content in terms of how the images or products or whatever might look like in the search results. Does it look good as a thumbnail? Is the content distinctive or helpful or useful, etc.?
John Mueller lastly said that the merchant feed is another way to get products from a website to show as a rich result in Google.
Mueller answered:
“There’s also the possibility to submit a feed to your merchant center account, to show products there. This is somewhat separate, and has different requirements which I’ll link to. Often a CMS or platform will take care of these things for you, which makes it a bit easier.”
Mueller linked to this page:
Onboarding Guide – Create a feed
There’s also another page about Rich Snippets, which is more about text snippets:
Product snippet (Product, Review, Offer) structured data
While John Mueller listed four ways to get product rich results, Google Search Experiences, it’s not always as easy as 1, 2, 3, and 4. There are always nuances to be aware of.
Listen to the Google SEO Office Hours podcast at the 7:00 minute mark:
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Video: Google Monopoly Ruling, Ranking Volatility, Million Dollar Ad Bugs, Search Console Recommendations & More – Search Engine Roundtable
For the original iTunes version, click here.
This week, we covered the big ruling that Google is officially a monopoly, a federal judge ruled. Google search ranking volatility heated up the day after that ruling. Google served ads for products from other merchants, paid for by other advertisers, which is why they pulled down reporting. Google then issued million dollar LSA credits, by accident, it was a bug also – Google fixed it all. Google Search Console has a new recommendations feature that is rolling out slowly. Bing may have had a search algorithm update on May 29th but Microsoft denied it. There is this new SEO scam going around, beware. Google doesn’t avoid crawling more expensive to crawl page. Google Search snippets labels for “you may like.” Google local knowledge panels are interactive in some cases. Google Local Service Ads now tell us they may show your photos in the ads, and the photos can impact ad rank. Google Shopping product images may show user review images. Google Business Profiles added “see also” which is not fun for many small businesses. Google Ads will transition smart campaigns to performance max campaigns. Google Ads is testing call extensions with advertisers/business name. Google Ads is testing “featured options” ad formats. Google Ads released version 17.1 of the API. Google Trends has a new trending now page. Apple maintains a search index of billions of websites. YouTube shared some YouTube SEO advice and tips That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
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Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast player to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:
Search Topics of Discussion:
- 0:00 – Introduction
- 0:59 – Google Is A Monopoly, Federal Judge Rules (What’s Next)
- 2:27 – Google Search Ranking Volatility Heats Up After DOJ Monopoly Ruling
- 3:17 – Google Served Ads For Products From Other Merchants, Google Will Issue Credits
- 4:40 – Google Ads Million Dollar Credits Bug For Local Service Ads
- 5:27 – Google Search Console Recommendations (Experimental)
- 6:34 – Bing Search Ranking Algorithm Update Around May 29th? Microsoft Says No.
- 7:18 – SEO Scam Where You Pay Google To Fix Your Search Rankings
- 7:48 – Google: We Don’t Track How Expensive It Is To Crawl, Render, Index & Serve Pages
- 8:41 – Google Search Snippets You May Like Label
- 9:07 – Google Local Knowledge Panel Interactive Card Interface
- 9:29 – Google Local Service Ads To Show Photos & They Improve Ad Rank
- 10:04 – Google Shopping Product Images Showing User Review Images
- 10:25 – Google Business Profiles Listings See Also Carousel Leading To Competitors
- 10:52 – Google Ads To Transition Smart Campaigns To Performance Max
- 11:21 – Google Ads Test: Call Extensions With Advertiser Name
- 11:39 – Google Ads Featured Options Search Interface
- 11:52 – Google Ads API Version 17.1 Now Available
- 12:02 – Google Trends Rolls Out New Trending Now Design
- 12:17 – Document: Apple Maintains A Search Index Of Billions Of Websites
- 12:45 – Conclusion
Please do subscribe on YouTube or subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don’t forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!
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SEO Experts Gather for a Candid Chat About Search [Podcast] – Search Engine Journal
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Wix just celebrated their 100th podcast episode! Congrats, Wix. To quote Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Brand at Wix; “we talk a lot.”
You sure do! It’s a good thing you have a lot of interesting stuff to say.
The 100th episode of “SERPs Up” was full of awesome guests. Here’s a summary of the action.
Apart from the usual faces, Oberstein and Crystal Carter, Head Of SEO Communications, it was a powerhouse guestlist:
The first guest was Chima Mmeje from Moz. She dove into the frustrations that many SEOs have been feeling and spoke plainly about the flaws in Google’s updates.
Mordy Oberstein: “Is the SERP broken?”
Chima Mmeje: “The helpful content update, and I’m saying this here, live, is a farce. There was nothing helpful about that update. … Yes, the SERP is 1,000% broken. … How does anybody even use Google in the U.S.? … I don’t think they are going to release any update that will fix these issues.”
Mordy Oberstein: “There’s no update. … Plopping Reddit all over the SERP was because they saw the content trends … and they said ‘we don’t have any so we’re just going to throw Reddit there’.”
Chima Mmeje: “It was lazy to have Reddit there … Nobody uses their real names. Anybody can go on Reddit and answer questions and then you see these answers populating in People Also Ask, populating in featured snippets, populating all over the SERPs as correct information. It is dangerous, at worst.”
Crystal Carter: “Do you think that one of the reasons why we’ve seen so much upheaval and so much so volatility in the SERPs, which I certainly agree with in the last year … is lots and lots of variables, like lots of new features coming in, so the alignment with Reddit, the AI overviews, the SGE … Do you think it is just too many things being thrown in at the same time and it messing up lots of SERPs as a result? Or do you think it’s something else?”
Chima Mmeje: ” … releasing too many features that they did not test properly. Features that were rushed SGE [testing] did not even last a year and now they brought in Google AI Overviews. I still don’t understand why we have AI Overviews and featured snippets on the same SERP. I feel like it’s like pick one, make a choice.”
Mordy Oberstein’s next question was about what we can do. “As an SEO, how are you supposed to do this? I’ve heard things from people … Yeah, I don’t know what to do. I can’t produce the kind of results that I’ve always wanted to. Can you still be effective as an SEO in an environment like this?”
Chima Mmeje: “I’m going to be honest, we are suffering … It feels like we are trying our best with what we are seeing … because there is no clear guidance. And to be honest, a lot of us are playing a guessing game right now and that is the best that we can do. It’s all a guessing game based on what we’ve seen one or two variables work. And this is not a long-term strategy. If we’re going to be realistic, it’s not going to work in the long-term. I honestly, I don’t know what the answer is … you’re fighting against Reddit. How do you compete against Reddit? Nobody has figured that out yet.”
Crystal Carter: “Thanks for saying it out loud, Chima.” Crystal was reflecting the sentiment of the commenters, who appreciated her candor and willingness to say: we don’t know, but we’re trying our best.
Mordy Oberstein: “The most honest take I’ve heard on that in quite a long time.”
Mmeje also recounted examples of small website owners and small businesses that have had to shut down. She also talked about the pervasive feeling in the SEO community that there is no rhyme or reason to how the algorithms handle websites and content.
The next guests were Darren Shaw from Whitespark and Joy Hawkins, owner of Sterling Sky for a segment called “It’s New.” They talked about new developments in local SEO.
Hawkins talked about a new feature in Google Business Profile.
Joy Hawkins: “… There’s a little services section inside the Google business profile dashboard that’s easy to miss, but you can add anything you want in there. … We’ve done a lot of testing on it and they do impact ranking, but I should clarify, it’s like a small impact. So usually we see it for longer-tailed queries that maybe don’t match a category or things that are not super competitive. … So it is a small ranking factor, but still one that is worth filling out.”
Darren Shaw: “ .. this is the question that a lot of people ask. We know that if you go into the services section of your Google business profile, Google will suggest predefined services … And so Joy’s original research was focused on those predefined ones and it definitely identified that when you do put those on your profile, you now rank better for those terms depending on how competitive they’re, as Joy had mentioned. … There is a place where you can add your own custom services. Have you done any testing around that? Will you rank better with the custom services?”
Joy Hawkins: “Yes. They both work. In custom services … I’m trying to remember the keyword that Colin tested it on. It was something super niche like vampire facials. I was Googling, what the hell is that? … Really, really niche … But he just wanted to know if there was any impact whatsoever and there was. [Custom services fields are a] good way to go after longer tail keywords that don’t have crazy high search volume or aren’t super competitive.”
Darren Shaw: “You want to make sure that you’re telling Google what you do … that’s basically what the services section provides. And it’s not a huge ranking factor, but it’s just another step in the local optimization process. … a tip for custom services because custom services often get pulled into the local results as justifications. It’ll say this business provides vampire facials, right? Well, did you know there’s a vampire emoji? So if you put the vampire emoji in the title … Then in the local results you’ll see a whole panel of businesses that all provide that service, but yours has that little vampire emoji which will draw people in.”
There was tons more in this section, including questions from the audiences and some great jokes.
Eli Schwartz And Kevin indig were next up to talk about AI. Oberstein, professional rabble rouser, tried to get them to argue, but despite their very different posting habits, they found a lot to agree on about AI.
Mordy Oberstein: “It wouldn’t be an SEO podcast if we didn’t talk about AI. Where do we currently stand with AI? What can it do? What can’t it do?”
Kevin Indig: “… We’re at a stage where AI basically has the capability to create content, analyze some basic data. It still hallucinates here and there and it still makes mistakes. … If you compare that to when this AI hype started in November, 2022, so it’s almost two years now and we’ve come a really long way, these models are getting exponentially better. … It means different things based on whether you look at it as a tool for yourself to make your work more efficient. And of course, what does it mean from an SEO perspective? How does it change search, not just Google, but also how people search. And I think these are all different questions that are exciting to dive into. … So there is a lot of objective data that indicates efficiencies and benefits from AI. There’s also a lot of hype that promises a little too much about what AI can do. And so I’m generally AI bullish, but I’m not in the camp of AI is going to replace us all the next two years.”
Mordy Oberstein: “I’m setting the stage here a little bit because while your LinkedIn pros are generally like pro ai, a lot of Eli’s posts are a little more skeptical about AI. So Eli, what do you think about what Kevin just said? By the way, I’m like, for those who are listening or watching this, I’m pitting them against each other. They’re friends and they do a podcast together. So it’s cool.”
Eli Schwartz: I think AI is great. I think that there’s a lot of great things you can get out of AI. You can, again, like Kevin said, it can be your thought partner. … I’m anti AI in the way people are using it. And I don’t think people have necessarily changed their behaviors because before … they outsource [content] on Fiverr and Upwork and they bought very cheap content and now they’re getting very free content. So then that’s coming from AI. That behavior hasn’t really changed. The challenge is that now there are more people that think they can copy them.
So I talk to CMOs all the time who are like, well, I just go of my SEO team. A big company reached out to me recently. They wanted to gut check themselves after they already fired their SEO team. So I can’t really help there, but they’re like, AI can do everything. … Well, I’ll see them in a year from now when they have whatever sort of penalty. AI is a very powerful tool. Any tool we have a drill is a very powerful tool. But if you just hold it in the air and just let it go, it’s going to make holes. But if you use it appropriately, it does the thing it’s supposed to do. … We’re humans and we buy stuff and it has to come to a point where humans are talking to humans.
Crystal Carter: “… Most of the gains are coming from productivity. The stuff like Kevin was talking about with being able to write product descriptions more quickly, being able to write lots of posts more quickly and being able to finish your things more quickly, brainstorm, et cetera, in terms of the quality, the quality is still not there. It’s getting there rapidly, but it’s still not there.”
There was lots more AI talk, so you should listen to the whole episode if you want to hear the full range of opinions.
“The Snappy News” segment featured Barry Schwartz, Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land. It also featured the dreaded SEO phrase “it depends.”
Mordy Oberstein: So the article of the day is from Search Engine Land, basically written by Barry that the core update, the August 2024 core update is done. It is complete. … The issue with Google folks who are trying to figure out, will they see a reversal of their fortunes from the 2023 helpful content update, the September, 2023 helpful content update. It’s a mouthful, to be honest with you. And my question for you, since you’re here, did that happen? Was the August updated reversal?
Barry Schwartz: “It depends on the site. I think the number, I don’t have the exact data, obviously I don’t think anybody does, but I’ve seen examples of some very few sites see complete reversals. … There are a number of sites that saw maybe a 20% bump, a 30% bump, maybe a 5% bump. But very few sites saw a complete reversal, if you want to even call it that. … I’ve been through a lot of Google updates over the years, and it’s sometimes sad to see the stories, but at the same time, if you keep at it and you are true to the content, your audience, generally, you’ll do well in the long run. Not every site, there’s plenty of sites that have been hit, went out of business, and they couldn’t come back. That’s business in general. And things change, like seasonalities and times change. You’re writing about the railroad business a hundred years ago and you keep writing about it today. There’s not many people investing a lot of money in railroads these days. So I dunno, it’s, it’s hard to read those stories, but not everybody deserves to go back to where they were. And then at the same time, Google’s not perfect either, which is why they keep on releasing new updates.”
That’s a wrap!
If you haven’t experienced a SERPs Up episode before, you should absolutely take a listen to experience the full effect of Mordy and Crystal’s banter.
The SERP’s Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio.
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Google Says There’s No Limit on Title Tag Length – Search Engine Journal
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Google’s Gary Illyes says that industry standards on title tag lengths are externally created and not Google recommendations.
Gary Illyes shared if there are any hard limits to how long title tags can be during a Google Off the Record podcast. He then explained what the best title tag is.
Title tags are technically measured in pixels. It’s typically recommended that title tags be from fifty to about seventy characters long.
Those character limits are based on how the titles display on desktop and mobile devices.
Title tags that are longer than what Google displays in the search engine results pages (SERPs) will be shown cut off, which means that nobody will be able to read the full title tag in the SERPs if it’s longer than approximately 70 characters.
Many SEOs and SEO websites recommend a title tag length of approximately 50 to 70 characters because that’s what Google shows in the SERPs.
But that is not anything Google recommends to the SEO community. That 50 to 70 character length for a title is something the SEO community invented as a standard based on what Google is able to display.
But those display limits are based on what a mobile and desktop browsers are able to show.
Title Tag Length Recommendations Are Not for Ranking Purposes
Nobody at Google has ever said that the 40 to 70 character limits are what Google’s ranking algorithms are limited to indexing for ranking purposes.
So it does not make sense to accept the advise for limiting the title tag to 70 characters for ranking purposes when that recommendation is based on what is displayed.
You can search around and you will see that 70 characters is the recommended limit for title tags.
Related: Google Says Title Tags “Maybe” Impact Rankings
Moz’s title tag length recommendation is 50 – 60 characters and Moz correctly notes that there is no actual limit to how many characters can be used.
“Optimal title length
Google typically displays the first 50–60 characters of a title tag. If you keep your titles under 60 characters, our research suggests that you can expect about 90% of your titles to display properly.
There’s no exact character limit, because characters can vary in width and Google’s display titles max out (currently) at 600 pixels.”
Ahrefs recommends that title tags stay within the 50 to 60 characters, with no caveat about there being no actual character limits as Moz documented.
“Google starts cutting off title tags in the SERPs after around 50–60 characters. (Well, it’s actually based on pixels, but 50–60 characters is a good rule of thumb.)
So keep your title tags around this length.”
SEMRush goes one step further and recommends limiting the title tag length for “effectiveness.”
“Limit The Size Of Your Title Tag
The most effective title tags are around 10-70 characters long. These include spaces so keep this in mind when coming up with your Title Tags.
If it is too long, the title tag will be cut off from the display not revealing the full message.”
Google’s John Mueller asked Gary Illyes about title tag length.
John Mueller:
“I have a question that is, maybe, just a yes or no thing, Gary. “Is there a value in having <i>title</i> tags that are longer than the displayable space and the sections of it?”
Gary Illyes gives a direct answer without any hedging or ambiguity about if there’s any value in having a longer title tag.
Gary Illyes answered:
“Yes.”
After some lighthearted jocularity between Martin Splitt, Gary and Mueller the question was revisited.
Martin Splitt asked:
“Christina’s asking if we can get a reason for the <i>title</i> tag length answer, Gary.”
Gary expanded on his original answer by noting that the title tag length that is typically recommended is something that comes from outside of Google.
Gary Illyes:
“The <i>title</i> length, that’s an externally made-up metrics.”
After some attempts at humor and general merriment between Gary and Martin they soon returned to answering the question.
Related: Google Changes More Than 61 Percent Of Title Tags
In his answer Gary Illyes mentions “tokenizing” but without explaining what that means. Understanding tokenization will help understand his answer.
Tokenization is something that is done in natural language processing and information retrieval. It’s a way to edit a document into chunks that make it easier to understand what sentences and words mean. Some chunks are sentences and some chunks are single words.
Stanford University defines tokenization like this:
“Given a character sequence and a defined document unit, tokenization is the task of chopping it up into pieces, called tokens , perhaps at the same time throwing away certain characters, such as punctuation.
These tokens are often loosely referred to as terms or words, but it is sometimes important to make a type/token distinction.
A token is an instance of a sequence of characters in some particular document that are grouped together as a useful semantic unit for processing. A type is the class of all tokens containing the same character sequence.”
Now that we have a light understanding of tokenization we can make more sense of Gary’s answer.
One last thing though, Gary mentions a “manual action.” A manual action is a penalty given by Google that can stop a page from ranking.
Gary Illyes:
“The reason why I try to steer people away from thinking about concrete numbers is it’s not even about how we display titles, but rather, how we construct our serving index and how we tokenize the page itself.
Technically, there’s a limit, like how long can it be anything in the page, but it’s not a small number. It’s not 160 characters or whatever– 100, 200, 20, or whatever.”
Gary follows up with advice on title tags:
“Try to keep it precise to the page, but I would not think too much about how long it is and whether it’s long enough or way too long.
If it fills up your screen, then probably it’s too long, but if it just one sentence that fits on one line or two lines, you’re not going to get a manual action for it.”
Nowhere in Google’s webmaster and developer title tag support pages does Google recommend an optimal title tag size.
The recommendations to keep title tags under seventy characters long originated outside of Google, they are not Google’s recommendation.
The official statement from Google is that there is no limit (per Gary Illyes). The official Google recommendation is to be descriptive and concise. Concise means to say the most with the least amount of words, to be precise in the use of words, and avoiding being wordy.
According to Google’s official title tag developer support page:
“Titles are critical to giving users a quick insight into the content of a result and why it’s relevant to their query.
Page titles should be descriptive and concise. Avoid vague descriptors like “Home” for your home page, or “Profile” for a specific person’s profile.
Also avoid unnecessarily long or verbose titles, which are likely to get truncated when they show up in the search results.”
See also: Google: Should H1 & Title Tags Match?
Google only advises that title tags be concise and accurately describe what a page is about. SEO recommendations for title tag length should acknowledge that Google displays around 70 characters in the SERPs but that it’s okay to use more characters if necessary. This allows publishers to use as many words necessary in the title tag and not have to worry about the 70 character limitation if their website branding pushes the number of words beyond the 70 character limit.
Seventy characters should probably be considered as a soft limit that publishers can use to describe what a web page is about. Any leftover space can be used for the website branding.
According Google’s Gary Illyes and Google’s official documentation, it is recommended to use as many words as is necessary to communicate what a page is about. When writing the title tag it’s also important to be direct while also being mindful of how that title tag may look when displayed in the SERPs.
Taking everything together it’s probably safe to craft title tags in a concise and accurate manner and to be mindful of how it will appear in the SERPs and influence clicks, as Google’s developer support pages recommend.
However if your company name or branding at the end of the title tag pushes it over 70 characters then that’s not something to worry about in terms of that artificial 70 character title tag limit.
Regardless of how the title tag is displayed, Google will still take into account the entire title tag.
Transcript of Google Search Off the Record 15th Podcast Episode (PDF)
Listen to the 15th Episode of the Search Off the Record Podcast
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Podcast Transcription: Why & How to Transcribe Your Episodes – Castos
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If you’re spending the time and energy creating podcast episodes, it’s important to make your content as accessible and discoverable as possible. You can add a ton of value to each episode with a podcast transcription.
A podcast transcript is a word-for-word account of an episode’s podcast content. You or an automated software simply listen to your podcast audio file and write down every word spoken by you and/or your guests.
Some of the big podcast directories now automatically produce fairly accurate transcripts on their platforms. Apple Podcasts is one of the most recent platforms to produce transcripts for you, but it’s only available to users on that app.
You can also include your podcast transcript within your RSS feed. Some platforms will display this content on their platform for those listeners.
Finally, you can post your transcript on your own podcast website. It’s best to include a transcription for each episode on the same page as your audio player and show notes.
Why should you include a transcript alongside your audio files? Let’s look at the benefits of podcast transcriptions.
According to the World Health Organization, 5% of people struggle with some kind of disabling hearing impairment. Podcasting is an audio-first medium, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make your content available to people with hearing impairments.
An audio transcription gives people with hearing loss a way to enjoy your amazing content. They might use it to supplement the parts they can’t hear or they might read it through entirely.
Podcast episode transcriptions also make your show accessible to non-native speakers. You can help them out by putting that content in written form for them to look up.
Your show notes are valuable ways to help Google and other search engines understand what your episodes are about, but notes only create a few hundred words. That’s hardly the type of long form content Google likes to show at the top of its results.
A podcast transcript, however, can reach 6,000 words from a 30 minute episode. That’s a ton of content that creates a massive search engine optimization boost for your website, which ultimately makes it easier for new listeners to find your content via search engines
Most content creators avoid linking to podcast episodes without a podcast transcript because there’s nothing for their readers/followers to explore without listening to an entire episode.
However, content creators don’t mind linking to podcast episodes with podcast transcripts because their readers/followers have something to explore without committing to a full episode or following a lot of steps. So if you want more backlinks (great for SEO!), publish transcriptions.
A podcast transcript is a valuable bank of written copy you can use to create other forms of content. You might use it for email marketing campaigns, social media posts, or infographics. Many podcasters use their transcriptions as sources for blog articles.
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Transcribing a podcast can take anywhere from 4 to 10 times the length of the audio, depending on several factors:
Manual Transcription: For someone transcribing manually, it usually takes 4-6 hours to transcribe one hour of your audio track. This depends on the speaker’s clarity, background noise, and the complexity of the content. If the content is highly technical and the transcriber is unfamiliar with it, a human transcription could take even longer.
Automated Transcription Tools: AI-based transcription tools can produce accurate transcripts in a fraction of the time, but these tools often come with a cost.
The cost of podcast transcripts varies based on the method you choose. It also depends on the quality and speed you’re looking for.
Now that you understand the benefits of a podcast transcript, you’ll need to understand the transcription process.
Writing your own podcast transcription is pretty straightforward: Just listen to your audio recording and write what you and your guests say. Avoid transcribing the “ums,” “uhs,” “likes,” and other filler words. There’s no need for that in a transcript.
Transcription accuracy is high with this method, but it costs a lot of time. A 30-minute episode could take two to three hours to transcribe with pausing and rewinding. After transcribing a few episodes, most podcasters decide that their time is better spent producing content.
You can speed up the process of creating your own podcast transcript with a voice-to-text app that automatically types whatever you speak. Let it run while you record your episode and it will capture the audio and record it as text. You’ll still need to clean up the app’s output, however.
If you want your episodes transcribed by a human, but don’t want to do it yourself, your only option is to pay someone to do it. This is expensive. The cheapest services cost about $0.50/minute of audio. If you need a native speaker (and you do), that price can be higher.
The easiest way to add a transcription to each podcast is to let podcast transcription software do it automatically.
If you use Castos as your podcast host, our transcription service will automatically transcribe a full, word-for-word account of each episode with high transcription accuracy.
We’ve teamed up with the industry leading text-to-voice technology provider to offer an entirely seamless transcription experience that is available to all of our Castos hosting customers. If you’ve already published episodes with Castos, you can even go back and transcribe previous episodes.
If you don’t use Castos to host your podcast, you can use an automated transcription service like Rev or Descript.
Need inspiration? Here are some examples of shows who include podcast episode transcriptions in aesthetically pleasing and user friendly ways.
This American Life keeps their pages neat by adding a link to the transcript at the top of the page.
Clicking that link takes you to a new page with the full transcript.
This method doesn’t concentrate SEO value on one page, but it’s an easy experience for the user. There’s a link from the transcript back to the episode anyway, so if a Google search brings you to the transcript, there’s an easy path to listen.
Freakonomics takes a pretty standard approach. They publish their podcast episode transcriptions right beneath their introduction paragraph. They put the whole piece in quotes so you know you can identify the transcript at a glance.
Masters of Scale takes their podcast pages very seriously. Each page is well designed with lots of information, including custom photography from the interview. The last element on the page is this nicely formatted transcript.
This is another podcast with a button to read the transcript. It’s right under the title, so visitors can’t miss it.
However, unlike This American Life, StoryCorps keeps all the content on the same page in a popup overlay. This concentrates the SEO value while also keeping things organized.
You have a few options when it comes to making your podcast episode transcriptions available to your readers. Choose the option that’s right for your show and your listeners.
On each episode’s page. (Recommended method.) Post each transcription directly beneath your show notes and audio player on a blog page. This way everything relating to that episode is in one easy to find place and Google knows what the page is about.
Podcast transcript collection page. A transcript collection page is simply a page on your website that’s dedicated to podcast episode transcripts. If you don’t have many episodes, or if your episodes are short, you can post all of your transcripts on the same page. Otherwise, a collection page would contain a list of links to each transcript.
Downloadable transcripts. Another method is to make the transcript downloadable. Upload the document to your website and create a link to that file on the episode’s page. The downside, however, is that you lose all of the benefits we listed above. Downloadable documents aren’t accessible, don’t help SEO, and people don’t link to them.
Every episode you publish on the Castos platform can be automatically transcribed into a full, word-for-word account of your episode (with remarkably high transcription accuracy).
We’ve teamed up with the industry leading text-to-voice technology provider, Rev, to offer an entirely seamless transcription experience that is available to all of our Castos hosting customers.
All you need to do is head over to your Castos dashboard. Choose the podcast you’d like transcriptions for (if you have multiple podcasts). In the AI Assistant section, turn on to the automatic transcription feature. You’ll need to enable this feature for each podcast you host with Castos.
From that point forward, all of your podcast episodes will receive a searchable transcript within that episode details area. You can use this transcript editor to clean up the content or make any changes you see fit.
From there you can copy/paste the transcription into your website if you’d like, or export a PDF copy of the transcription to offer as a download for your listeners.
This method is far faster than human transcribers and just as reliable. And best yet, it’s useful for all podcasters, even if you have hours and hours of audio.
If you’ve already been publishing episodes with us at Castos for some time you can even go back and transcribe previous episodes.
Click into a podcast to find the list of episodes. Click on the episode that needs a transcript.
In the details editor, click the Generate Transcript button. This will create a transcript for this episode only. Do the same for every episode that needs a transcript.
Do you offer plans to transcribe per podcast as opposed to per minute?
Currently I pay $5 per podcast on Podcast Transcribe website. Do you guys have something like that?
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