FAQ

(UPDATE SEP 2016) We released the SERP Checker plugin, which will help you see the GOOGLE RANK for all the keywords you used on your website.   Read more

(UPDATES May 2016): The last update from google will make the check even harder. You need to have cURL activated in PHP in order to work. How to activate Curl

People ask me why they get the error “Could not receive data from google (Err: blocked IP)” on Squirrly > Performance Analytics page.

This error means that Google is blocking the calls from your IP over the next hour, because there are too many rank checks. (coming from your server’s IP).

Ideas on Why This Happens:

Your IP (the IP address of your WordPress host) makes too many calls to Google. This does NOT happen due to Squirrly. As you can see in the interface, you can set the interval for how to ask google about the Google Rank (the SERP).

Now: maybe you have a shared IP and multiple websites or web apps are hosted on the same server (this is something that happens quite often. You should ask your hosting provider).

If this is the case, then maybe those sites ask Google for information as well. Google has kept limiting the number of requests it wants to receive from people. Even if you’d search manually on Google, it would start blocking you at one point.

What does it mean: IP Blocked? Does it Affect me?

No, it does not. It has 0 (zero) impact on search rankings and whatnot. It simply means that Google refuses for a while to “chat” with the IP address from which you send the requests.

How Do I Fix This? What are the Solutions?

1) get a dedicated hosting, where you have your own IP. This will completely fix the problem for you. Of course, this may not come in handy for some of you. That’s why we’ve built an option. Read number (2)

2) SERP Checker Plugin by Squirrly. Read how this helps.

How Squirrly SEO checks the google rank

As the On-page SEO from Squirrly, the See Google Rank feature is also FREE and uses Google search results to get the position for each article.

While using Google search option, you are limited (By Google, not by us) as to how many articles you can check every hour. For this, we added an option in Squirrly 5.0 or higher to set the number of article you want checked each hour.

We recommend to set it to 5 articles per hour to prevent Google from blocking your IP for the next hour.

If you have your site hosted with shared hosting, the server IP is used by many other users. In this case, even if you have 0 calls for Ranking in Squirrly > Settings > Rank Option, the IP can be blocked and we encourage you to buy a private IP .

Download the new Squirrly SERP Checker:

http://www.squirrly.co/serp-checker

We get this question a lot and it’s a good thing we do.

Same as you, we care about Google’s SEO requirements and we’re committed to offering you an SEO tool which will help you optimize your WordPress website properly.

Long story short, yes, Squirrly SEO complies with Google’s requirements when it comes to SEO.

In this article, we’ll tell you how we do it.

1. On-Page SEO with the Squirrly SEO Features

The live assistant is the feature which helps you optimize your posts for both humans and search engines.

It’s called the live assistant because it tells you as you type your article whether you’re doing a good job or if there’s something you need to fix.

One of Google’s most crucial guidelines is making your pages primarily for users and then, for search engines. The live assistant helps you take care of this in the easiest manner possible.

Here are the most important aspects it takes into consideration:

• The presence of your main keyword in the title tag;
• If you used the keyword in the URL;
• Gives you the ability to create SEO-friendly URLs. Google loves a simple URL structure;
• Checks if you used the keyword in a subheading (H2 tag);
• Checks to see if you used the keyword in the Alt text of the images;
• Warns you if you have over-optimized your post. Keyword stuffing is a practice which can get your site banned by Google;
• Tells you to use the keyword in the introduction of your post.

2. XML Sitemap

The sitemap is a file which includes a list of the pages on your site and how they are organized. This is an essential general guideline from Google which states you need to provide a page where you list all the important links in your site.

Bots read this file, so they can crawl your site better. Also, the sitemap contains valuable metadata about a page, such as:

• When it was last updated;
• How often it’s changed;
• Its importance relative to other pages on the site.

One of the Squirrly SEO features is the XML Sitemap, which allows you to select which post types you want to include in the sitemap and also if you want to include images or videos.

That way, you will help Google learn about the structure of your site and the content you publish.

3. Keyword Research

What’s also important when it comes to SEO and Google is to use the best keyword for your site, which will be easy to rank for.

If you choose an extremely competitive keyword, then your post won’t rank high in search engine results, people won’t find your content and so it won’t have any impact.

Google suggests thinking about the words your audience would use when searching for the type of content you want to create.

If you don’t know where you can find these, then you can use the keyword research feature, which will give you plenty of keyword suggestions you can use in your article.

With Squirrly’s Keyword Research, you can find keywords your site will actually rank for, without needing to spend months on doing backlink work.

Measure Your Site’s Success with the Squirrly SEO Features

We check on a regular basis if Google has come up with new requirements or updated the ones it already had.

Whenever something changes, Calin, our CTO, will start working on making the necessary changes, so that the plugin is compliant with Google’s guidelines.  All the updates are documented on the WordPress directory.

Besides making sure Squirrly meets Google’s SEO requirements, you can also measure your content’s success within the plugin.

The Google Rankings section and the site Audit will become your best friends and you will rely on them to see how your site is doing.

You can find more details about the 650+ features that Squirrly provides for SEO here >> 

The answer is yes, Squirrly works okay with both WordPress SEO by Yoast and All in one.

[Update Squirrly SEO 2022] You can Use Squirrly SEO In Compatibility Mode

Learn more about how to use Squirrly SEO in compatibility mode with other SEO plugins here >> 

[Related] Migrating Data: How to Switch from Yoast SEO to Squirrly SEO

[Update Squirrly SEO 2020] New Update: Use Squirrly SEO in Power-Up Mode !!!

Are you stuck with Yoast (or any of the other plugins)? – no problem!

You can make any other SEO plugin about 10 times more powerful by adding the Power of Squirrly SEO to your WordPress site and combining it with the basic SEO plugins you have.

Here’s how you can use them together:

[Update Squirrly SEO 2019]

However, even though it works, make sure you read the following.

Squirrly SEO 2019 (Squirrly SEO plugins starting version 9.1.00) is a complete redesign of all that we had before. Once you install the 2019 version, you have 100% everything you need for amazing WordPress SEO.

Squirrly has a feature called “Duplicate Removal” https://plugin.squirrly.co/duplicate-removal-tool/ 

if all the settings of Squirrly SEO are activated it will remove all counterparts going from Yoast into the source code of your page.

Therefore, to Google it will look like you’re using only one plugin.

Because of the Duplicate Removal we expect no conflicts. Yoast loads pretty slow, so that is the only thing where it could affect the performance of your pages.

Squirrly plugin loads super fast.

The only thing that sometimes seems like it’s loading slow in Squirrly is stuff coming over from the API, but Google doesn’t pick up on that and it is beyond their scope of interest. They just see that the site loads fast and that’s good enough for their algorithm.

Therefore, if you only use Squirrly SEO as a SEO plugin, Google will see that your WP site loads really fast. (compared to the same loading time, when you’d be using other SEO plugins)

We use Quick Redirect plugin on WordPress for re-directs. We’ve been using for years and does the job. Creates no problems in search console. Better UX with import / export features than what yoast plugin offers.

However, it is not mandatory to delete the yoast plugin.

[the old version of the article follows below. We still leave this in the Help Center for those with older versions of the plugin]

If you have Yoast or All in one SEO installed already, switch the Title and Description from Squirrly off.

If you decide to use the Search Engine Optimization from Squirrly then you have to deactivate the other plugins to prevent META duplicates.

You can always check for issues using the “Check for SEO issues in your site” button and Squirrly will guide you to fix the Meta duplicates.

Squirrly brings you all the updated WordPress SEO requirements and its main feature is to find you the best keywords and to help you optimize your articles for both humans and search engines.

Recommended reading:

🚨 This article share details about an older version of the SEO Live Assistant. For information regarding the most recent version of the SEO Live Assistant, please check out this resource.

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The New SEO Live Assistant embodies what we kept saying over the last 3 months: you need to get search engine bots to like you enough to display you in SERPs, but ultimately the Human Readers are the ones you want to entice with your writing.

Finally, you have a Live Assistant that does just that: It helps you optimize your Content for both Search Engines and Human Readers.

Too many tools are focused only on the Search Engine Bots! This needs to change

You can get some amazing new traffic by optimizing your content for search engines, and you may have seen some great results since starting to use our wordpress seo plugin. Which is great.

But getting more traffic from search engines is just the first part of the whole bargain.

The people you attract need to like the page (or the article) that they land on.

This is where the New SEO Live Assistant Comes In

What we’ve done is make sure that you now have a clever assistant inside your WordPress dashboard that helps you in real-time, as you’re typing your article, to make the written text more enjoyable for your Human readers.

This is made by following some of the basic rules of writing and some basic rules of journalism.

I’ll detail even better in a few moments all the new things, but until then, I want to say:

Bye bye stuffed articles.

The new SEO Live Assistant will do an amazing job in helping you avoid keyword stuffing.

You’ll be able to write articles that will not be banned by Google. The Human love you’ll get (social media shares, links from other blogs, etc.) will be most welcome.

Out with the Old, in with the New

We loved this interface for the Live Assistant.

Neil Patel, the Co-Founder of KissMetrics and Crazy Egg, made an awesome videoexplaining how to use it. (Neil really knows his SEO so it was an honor to have him use the Live Assistant).

All-in-all the old version was great.

It’s just that we think you’ll love the new one even better

Here’s how you activate the new one:

– Go to your WordPress -> Plugins. Search that list for Squirrly SEO and you’ll see the update button. The new version is: 2.2.0

– Now, go to WordPress -> Squirrly -> Settings and scroll down a bit. You’ll get to:

The last switch that you see on that list sais: “Use V2 of the SEO Live Assistant”. Make sure that it’s activated.

– Awesome. Now you can start using the New version.

Note: some of your articles that have been 100% optimized, might now become optimized less than 100%, due to the new calculations.

We made sure you can still use the Old Live Assistant if you want.

Improvements and the New Benefits:

1) Headline Suggestions.

Once you type your keyword in the “Optimize for keyword” box, you can click the place where you’d normally type your title for the article.

You’ll notice a section that appears and it displays to you the Headlines used by other people related to the topic you plan to write about. This will easily help you get inspired concerning your brand new title.

Remember: it’s not about copying those exact headlines, but it’s a good way to see what other people wrote and find your own killer headline.

2) Human Friendly.

I personally think this is the highlight of the new version. It helps you write articles that are journalistically appropriate.

It makes sure that:

– your article is long enough, so that your readers will not just close the tab and bounce off

– your article is long enough to make it to the Google News

– you have a great introduction and conclusion for your article, in which you specify the topic you’re writing about and state ideas.

– you avoid repetitions. Check out this thread on Quora.

– you avoid keyword stuffing, regardless of “keyword density”. Just 100% good writing. Trust me, your readers will feel something is wrong if the keyword is mentioned way too much in just a few sentences.

Also, for the times in which you trully can’t avoid repetitions, the SEO Live Assistant will give you synonim suggestions and highlight where you should place the synonims in order to have a Human-friendly article.

3) Google Friendly. More important than the old Keyword Density

What?

Yes.. It’s true. You’ve heard Matt Cutts (head of Anti-Spam at Google) say it. You heard Rand of Moz say it.. and others. Keywords density is no longer a real thing.

However, you should understand what this means:

Google doesn’t care if you have 3% density, or 3.4% density, or 4% density.

It cares if you over-optimize your article for your main keyword!! So if your density is too high, there’s a problem (a big one!) and Squirrly will tell you all about it.

Also, you do need to have your keyword specified in the body of your article. It’s important for both Google and your Readers. Why?

If you mention your keyword (start thinking of it more like a topic, than anything else) only once and you write a 500 word article, you will not make a real point with your article, so this task will help you mention the keyword just the right number of times to craft a clear message for both search engines and Humans, while also helping them better understand what you’re actually writing about.

Think of this: scrolling all the way through this here article: if you would see the SEO Live Assistant specified only once you’d be like “so what am I reading about in this text? Did they launch a new Squirrly? Did they launch a new SEO Audit? What?”

4) Over Optimization

It’s very easy to hit traps when you optimize your articles for Long Tail Keywords. Here’s an example:

Let’s say I optimize my article for “Content Marketing Strategy for 2014″.

All the tasks from the Live Assistant would normally tell me that everything is Green and perfect. But is it?

Oops, it seems like I’ve used “content marketing” way too much in my text and Google would normally penalize me for this, because it would seem to their engine like I was trying to stuff in this keyword and build up web spam.

The Over Optimization task will be a great companion that helps you avoid any problems with the big ‘ol G.

Thanks for reading this And a big thank you for supporting us all the way.

Your Content will get a great lift from search engine bots and Human readers will love what you write. This Excellent ballance is now made possible through the new SEO Live Assistant from Squirrly.