"hreflang Analysis", a disruptive new tool
Custom Filters even more powerful
Keeping up-to-date with the SEO world
Conclusions, and what’s next
"hreflang Analysis" a disruptive new tool
There was a huge gap in the SEO tools market. Not any more.
Visual SEO Studio 1.5 - code-named "Mezzofanti" - fills the gap providing a thorough check-up for all possible hreflang implementation issues over the whole site pages.
hreflang analysis in Visual SEO Studio
Remember manually checking the presence of all return tags? Now you are covered.
Remember manually checking those language/country codes were correct, like the – wrong – "en-UK" instead of "en-GB"? Now you are covered.
And those missing generic language tags? Those made-up country codes? Those URLs pointing to 404/noindex/blocked pages?
... Covered. Covered. Covered! Now it's all automated!
We do a lot of International SEO consulting and regularly come into incorrect implementations of alternate/hreflang tagging. Since we developed the new feature and adopted it internally for the testing period, we ourselves were surprise to the amount of potential issues it regularly catches.
International SEO professionals can finally cheer and toast to the new tool.
The new test suite sports twenty reports testing for all major potential mistakes. It has a brand new "hreflang Viewer" to detail each alternate/hreflang tag and how it stands against the major tests.
While likely the most complete hreflang test suite on the market, there still is space for improvements: support for hreflang in HTTP header directive, in sitemap files, in external sites... we also have lots of ideas to make great even better. Stay tuned for even more power in the next releases to come!
To learn more, check the page hreflang Analysis.
Note: "hreflang Analysis" is available only in the Professional Edition. You can evaluate it for free for 30 days by registering the Trial version.
Custom Filters even more powerful
Our users love Custom Filters powerful SEO-oriented query engine, love the insight they could get with Performance Suggestions, and asked for more.
Now you can filter in Custom Filters all pages also adding in boolean logic any measure treated by Performance Suggestions: number of images, number of scripts, of DOM elements... some already were there, now you have them all!
New performance-related properties in Custom Filters
Keeping up-to-date with the SEO world
Search Engine Optimization is a fast evolving world. We keep a keen eye on all important news and release updates often, so that you can always have a product ready to follow the latest evolutions.
XML Sitemaps validation, complying with the new specifications
On November 30, 2016 Bing and Google announced they agreed a new limit for sitemap size elevating it in the specifications from 10 MB to 50 MB (Google already tolerated 50 MB, but now the change is in the specs and Bing complies to it too); accordingly we modified our validation rule changing the limit, the message, and reporting as an error instead of a warning.
XML Sitemap size updated validation rule
Previously the validation rule was checking against the previous limit and only reporting a warning with the message "Sitemap size exceed the 10 MB limit imposed by the protocol (but Google tolerates up to 50MB)"
The site sitemaps.org is sponsored by Google, Yahoo and Bing; Yandex is officially adhering to the specifications, but apparently still sticks to the old limit. We inquired Yandex whether they intend to support the new limit, so far we didn't get a reply. The new limit was elevated mostly to fit all hreflang extensions, not supported by Yandex in XML Sitemaps, so it's likely they will not support it in the short run. If we'll get not a response in due time, with one of the next releases we'll add back a validation rule (a warning) for Yandex only with the old 10 MB limit.
Complying with the newly updated Google user-agent list
Google on November 30, 2016 announced retiring feature-phone user-agents (do WAP/WML terms ring any bell on the oldest of you?), so we dropped them too from the list of available user-agents (Crawl options, advanced options available for administered sites only).
Conclusions, and What's next
There several other changes and improvements in "Mezzofanti", for a complete list please consult the Release Notes.
We believe with this release we delivered a major aid for your International SEO work. Our hreflang analyzer was a long time planned feature, we used internally and honed it for some time, and our beta testers helped us improving it. We will soon extend it even further to make it shine.
We are also working with a fast pace on other new features. There's a lot of magic boiling in the cauldron for the next months!
Now, 'Mezzofanti' is waiting for you to take action:
Update Visual SEO Studio to the latest release and get all that hreflang stuff fixed!
Comments are open on linked Facebook page.