Find and Fix Mix Content Issues with This Free Tool

Among newer SEO issues that have become a widespread problem is so-called “Mixed Content” issue.

Let’s find out:

• What mixed content is
• How to spot and fix the mixed content issue

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What Is Mixed Content?

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Mixed Content issue occurs when a secure page serves non-secure content (images, videos, but also scripts, styles, etc.)

Mixed content occurs when initial HTML is loaded over a secure HTTPS connection, but other resources (such as images, videos, stylesheets, scripts) are loaded over an insecure HTTP connection. This is called mixed content because both HTTP and HTTPS content are being loaded to display the same page, and the initial request was secure over HTTPS.

Source: Jo-el van Bergen (Google)

There are two types of mixed content:

• Passive mixed content: insecure videos, images,and audio files, and other resources that cannot interact with the rest of the page.

• Active mixed content: non-secure iframes, scripts, stylesheets, flash resources, and other code that a browser can download and execute.

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The issue has become a widespread problem after lots of sites switched to HTTPS protocols, following Google’s persistent recommendation (when it was confirmed as a ranking factor).

Mixed content hurts the website’s security and speed, but most important, it causes Google Chrome (and probably other browsers) to block your non-secure content.

Put simply, previously Google Chrome would show an error when a secure page loads non-secure content, but now the browser would quietly refuse to load it

While this may be better for the user (they will not rush to leave your site when being alerted of some weird security errors), this also makes identifying mixed content harder for the website owners.

Does Mixed Content Impact Your SEO?

Google doesn’t say that there’s any direct impact on organic rankings for pages that serve non-secure content. We do know that Google is over-protective of security and usability of pages that show up in Google’s SERPs.

Since Google defines mixed content as

degrading the security and user experience of your HTTPS site.

Source: Google

On top of that, as mentioned above, HTTPS encryption is an official Google’s ranking factor, so a partial absence of it must one too.

So it is safe to assume that Google may be flagging mixed content as something they may not want to on the very top of Google

How to Spot and Fix the Mixed Content Issue

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Now that identifying mixed content by using a browser has become harder, how to go about finding and consequently fixing it?

Secure Checker is the free SEO tool that will alert you of any mixed content issues.

The free Secure Checker uses a headless Chrome browser to load each URL which is entered.

What this means is that the mixed content errors displayed by the tool are directly pulled from the browser console, hence these are the same errors that a live Google Chrome browser would identify:

This is exactly the content that will be blocked by Google Chrome.

Conclusion

Mixed content should be part of any SEO audit or usability audit from now, so this free tool will hopefully turn helpful. Please do let us know if you have any feedback or feature requests in the comments below!

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Free Mobile/Desktop Code Comparison Tool: Is Your Site Mobile-First-Index Friendly?

On March 5 Google announced what we all knew had been coming: The Mobile-First index is now the default for the whole web.

Previously, you had to wait for a notification in your Search Console to be sure Google is using your site’s mobile version to index your pages. Now it is the default for everyone.

And while this has been coming for ages, the SEO community is still struggling to grasp the consequences.

What does this really mean and why should we care?

What is Mobile-First Index?

Google keeps a record of all URLs it is aware of to promptly match any to any search query. This record is called “index.” Mobile-First index means Google is keeping a record of whatever your page looks like on a mobile device.

Why does this matter?

For years, both Google and usability experts have been telling website owners to adapt their sites for mobile browsing. We’ve been encouraged to build clear and clutter-free experiences for mobile users to be able to navigate our pages on smaller screens.

This advice is perfectly legit as mobile browsing is different from desktop browsing, so we need to build somewhat different user experiences for both.

But this also means that the majority of websites out there now serve “stripped” (for lack of a better word) versions to mobile users now. In many cases, there are fewer links and images on mobile sites allowing people to easier navigate through sites.

This also means that Google doesn’t “see” those missing links or images, or even text any more.

In other words, if you have had a smart interlinking strategy sending search crawlers to other sections of your site, or if you had well-optimized text to help search engines understand what your page is all about, chances are Google chooses to no longer access any of those important SEO elements.

Why would this happen?

There is a multitude of plugins and themes that help create cleaner mobile experiences by re-arranging and removing excessive HTML elements. Most website owners I’ve seen are not even aware of those mechanisms working behind the scenes and optimizing their pages for mobile browsers.

And Google is very vocal (for once) about making sure the mobile version of your site is as full as possible, or else Google might not be seeing everything you want it to see:

In particular, we recommend making sure that the content shown is the same (including text, images, videos, links), and that meta data (titles and descriptions, robots meta tags) and all structured data is the same.

John Mueller

So are you following this recommendation? Is there a quick way to check?

Yes:

Here comes the free SEO tool

Because so many people are struggling with making sure their sites are Mobile-First-Index-friendly, we have come up with a free and easy tool to use:

Mobile/Desktop Code Differences Analysis Tool

I recommend running your most important pages through that tool now: The tool gives you the most important information on top so you don’t have to look any further.

Unless you see any difference in the number of links and words right away, there is no need to look any further. Unfortunately, this is not the case in this particular case:

This may mean that your page is missing 19 unique links on your mobile page, and 117-word-worth of potentially important anchor text.

Once you see there are obvious differences, you can scroll the page to see differences and links and in code to identify what is different and how to fix it.

On a side note, if you have a link on any page and desperately trying to decide if Google can see it, you can run the tool to make sure the link exists on a mobile version of a page.

All in all, the tool is quick and easy, and requires no registration, so you can run it any time when diagnosing a page or a drop in rankings.

If you have an idea for an improvement, feature requests or bug reports, please comment!

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The SEO Plugin You Have Been Waiting For

Google search results are getting richer and harder to deal with. You cannot copy URLs of search results until you click them. It is impossible to copy the list of URLs ranking on page 1. You cannot do much when trying to analyze search result pages.

To make SERP analysis doable, we have come with a new Greasemonkey plugin helping you make sense of Google search engine result pages and easily copy anything you need: Get URLs from Search Results Plugin

To Install the SEO Plugin:

• Install Greasemonkey plugin here:
  • Firefox
  • Google Chrome
• Install our plugin here

Keep these options unchecked for the best results:

Keep these options unchecked

The SEO Plugin for Google SERPs

As soon as you install the plugin, make sure Greasemonkey is active in your browser and head to Google’s search. There you will immediately notice several improvements:

Numbered Search Results

The SEO plugin will display all organic search results at the bottom, numbered and easy to copy-paste anywhere you need:

The plugin makes it easy to figure out the actual organic position of any page ranking for your target search query. You can also easily obtain the full list of your organic competitors

There will be as many links as you have your search results to show within one page. If you have 50 (like me), the plugin will list all 50, conveniently numbered.

All links in the list are direct, so you can copy any without having to open the link.

People Also Ask Results

If you have this plugin running you’ll be able to easily copy-paste “People Also Ask” results that appear for your target query, as well as see the featured URL:

An easy way to copy questions from Google’s “People Also Ask” search element

Related Searches and Brands

Google shows a lot of types of search suggestions these days prompting its users to dig deeper into the topic. These educational search elements driving users deeper into all kinds of search results include:

• Searches Related To
• Related topics
• Related entities (similar brands or places), etc.

This SEO plugin will give you a good overview of all of those:

These are great for content development and SEO research purposes: Find which entities, categories and keywords Google deems your target query relates to

Video Carousel Results

You can also access links to top video results which made to Google’s carousels:

Direct links to video results from inside the Google’s video carousel

Knowledge Graph Links

The plugin will also extract links from Google’s Knowledge Graph and list them below the search results. For example, for a navigational queries, it will look something like this:

Google’s Knowledge Graph links for the search query [amazon]

And for an informational queries, it will display all data sources Google is using to create an info box:

Google’s Knowledge Graph data sources for the search query [pizza]

Finally, while you can easily copy-paste any block, there’s also an Excel expert for you to play with.

The implications of this plugin are truly limitless as it makes any SEO task much easier and faster. Use it for competitive research, reputation management, SERP analysis and more.

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How to Adapt Your SEO Strategy to Survive the Crisis

In these uncertain and unprecedented times, when every business is facing some sort of a struggle (whether it is a lack of demand or the shortage of supply or something else), all of us are trying to figure out how to keep our businesses afloat.

Can SEO be part of the solution here?

In most cases it can!

1. Re-focus your store to what can be in demand and/or available

This is probably an obvious step but too many businesses are missing it: If your product and offer is not in high demand at this time, highlight products that are.

On the other hand, if your primary products are sold out or need time to re-stock, shorten your product line to focus on what you can deliver fast.

In most cases, re-focusing your product and content marketing strategies in the following direction is likely to improve both organic visibility and engagement:

• Family life and kids: Gear content topics towards kids, parents, families, teachers, etc… even if you’re a B2B business. Re-focus your key landing pages to family-centric product. Redesign your home page to highlight those products that may help families staying home with kids
• Health and wellness: It may be no-brainer in this situation but don’t be afraid of getting creative. For example, you may not be able to sell a hand sanitizer but you can create DIY kits using your products and feature them on the home page. Bundling products around currently hot needs will help you rank for queries where you don’t necessarily have a product to offer.

But more importantly, don’t stress over traffic fluctuations. Searching and buying behaviors are changing, there’s no denying that. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, these changes are going to be temporal: Your site will get back to normal as panic buying settles down.

It is a good idea to adjust your business model a bit to cater to the new buying patterns but overall keeping your sanity is the most important step here: This all shall pass.

2. Inform your customers of your current situation and possible workarounds

Put a quick disclaimer on your home page informing your customers what your shipping situation is and what you can still do to help them.

If you are selling essential products and find yourself unable to restock fast, go an extra mile and provide some clues as to how your customers may get along until you get the products back in stock.

If there’s a DIY option, find a good instruction and list the steps on your home page. Being genuinely helpful goes a long way: It builds brand loyalty and can even bring in links.

On your home page create a COVID-19 notice which would include:

• What you are doing to help ensure safely of your employees and customers
• If there any changes in delivery times
• How you are helping your community and/or struggling nonprofits to survive the pandemic

This is also a good time to offer customers an incentive to invest with you now. For example, you can offer bundle discounts, extended returns/warranties, etc.

3. Create Linkable Assets to Build/Attract Links

It may sound somewhat too pragmatic, but crises like this one offers some of the best opportunities to build your highest quality links.

Now that journalists and educators are in search for the new ways to turn this situation around and offers their readers and students some ideas on what to do over the quarantine, help them!

Is there any way your business can help people these days? Do you provide opportunities for free education? Can your products or digital assets can cover some immediate needs? Don’t hesitate and build an outreach campaign around that.

Ninjas can help out! We have years of experience in high-quality asset creation and outreach campaigns, so we can definitely help create an effective link building strategy for your site.

Some example of linkable assets you can create:

• Survey-based data on how COVID-19 has impacted your industry so far
• A DYI guide on creating alternatives to essential products
• An original idea on how people can make the most of their quarantine time (new hobby idea)
• Free downloads for homeschooling parents, etc.

Yes, you need to make it really helpful and useful. And yes, you need a personalized outreach campaign to bring it forward in front of teachers and journalists who can link. But if you do both of these right, you’ll see a flood of links you never dared to hope for!

4. Work on Your EAT (Expertise Authoritativeness Trustworthiness)

Now that there too many scams and fake news floating the Internet, Google is likely to pay even more attention to trust signals of each particular page.

It is a good time to emphasize why your business is worth the trust of both Google and its users:

• Refresh on-site reviews and testimonials
• Add links to external entities that have featured you (past conferences, awards, etc.)
• Highlight Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives on the site
• Re-write your About page to showcase the expertise behind the site (and connect authorship across the site)
• Highlight educational content you’ve been building, etc.

Conclusion

We live in the challenging times. But you know what: Each and every business is facing challenges these days. It is not like you desperately watch your competitors climbing up while your ship is tanking.

We are all going through the same storm which means one important thing: Where there is a challenge, there is an opportunity for flexible and creative businesses that are ready to innovate and work with reliable partners.

Speaking of partners: Get yourself a good one here.

We are into this together.

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