SEO Update Report Covering December 2018

Algorithms

Our regular entry in our monthly SEO report starts us off, Google algorithm updates. Although not confirmed by Google we think there where updates on:
30th November
10th December
16th December

Structured Data

Google have released a new set of structured data settings for question and answer pages. This will help Google display your answer for these questions in the search results.
If you have a question and answer page I recommend adding these meta tags as not many sites have them yet and you could get the jump on your competitors.
If you don’t have a Q&A pages, create one! 🙂

Image Search

Google have said if you would like all your pages to be included in their image search results they recommend have unquie images on each page. Also to note that both the image and the page(s) the image is located need to be crawlable, ie: not noindex.

Bad and Spammy Links

Google have informed us that we as webmasters and SEO’s should not worry about bad or spammy links to your website. If they find any they will simply ignore them.
That said if you have received a manual action penalty within your Google Search Console I recommend adding those links to a disavow file to ask Google to ignore to help you fix that penalty.

Scrapers

Search engines like Google as well as other services on the Web use scrapers to understand the content on your website. Sometimes they will use the content elsewhere, sometimes not.
Google have said that if your website gets scraped a lot it is not a signal or affects your ranking positions.

Mobile First Index

Google announced this month that over 50% of the websites shown in their search result on a mobile device now use Mobile First Index.

Negative SEO

Sadly the world isn’t filled with nice people like you and me, there are some people out there trying to “steal” other peoples money.
In the SEO world one way these nasty people are doing this is by bribing website owners by threatening them of negative SEO tactics.
If someone gets in contact with you and makes this threat simply ignore it or tell them to “push off big bullies we don’t like you!“.
Google have said they will know if someone is conducting negative SEO and will ignore their efforts.

Mentions

An oldy has raised its head again this month, “do mentions of your website on other websites without a link help your website perform better in search results?”
In otherwords are mentions part of the page rank algorithm?
Google have always said no they are not however this month they said they can find mentions and recognise they are talking about your website in their content. But, they did not say they don’t use them in their algorithm.
So, has something changed?
We just don’t know, I think we will be talking about this again in the near future, hint hint. 😉

Crawling

Google said this month that they will always use the most restrictive version of the index tags. For example if your robots.txt file says index everything but some JavaScript you may have on the page says noindex, then they will not index the page. Obvious but nice to remind ourselves.

SEO Update Report Covering November 2018

Low Quality Content

If there is one thing that 2018 and in fact also 2017 have thought us is that the quality of your websites content is very important.

Google this month talked about thin low quality content and what you should do with it. If possible you should increase the quality wherever possible. If however, it is not possible – for example too many pages to change – then it might be better to remove them from your website.

Lazy Loading

Lazy loading images is a way of decreasing the page load speed, I’m sure you have seen it when as you scroll down the page more content appears.

This is a very good way to help your page speed, however, Google this month have said it is NOT a good idea to use lazy loading as it makes it harder for Google to crawl all the content on the page.

Interesting, Google want us to produce fast pages but not like this.

Anyway, Google have created some documentation to help Webmasters manage lazy loading and created a tool to test your page out. But, it’s still better not to use.

I am currently doing an experiment on speeding up websites, if interested get in touch in the comments below.

Description Tags

In the past Google have said that they will most likely ignore what you write in your meta description tag and create something themselves.

However, this month Google have said that you should fill out this tag as “you know what the content is about more than Google”. Go figure!

Algorithms

The World saw a fairly large algorithm update on the 1st November and again on the 7th. Google have not said what type of websites it affected.

Another one raised its head on the 16th too.

Google answered the question of why they only sometimes confirm or even comment on algorithm updates. Essentially they only comment if they feel the SEO community is confused about the update and they need to help explain.

Search Console and Google Analytics

Google have confirmed that there are no ranking benefits to having Google’s Search Console and Google Analytics not connected.

ALT Tags

When adding an image to your web page you should always fill in the ALT – alternative – tag. Its job is to explain what the image is about and used if the image can not be loaded or not needed.

Google have been saying for a while now – and I have too – that this tag is used in Google’s image search.

I have – if you have been reading my previous SEO reports – also said that I think it is also another signal to search engines which you can use to help your web page rank better.

This month Google have agreed with me.

Smug mode! 🙂

Until next month, stay safe! 🙂

Written by Stuart Cole
Stuart Cole has been running Internet businesses since 1996 and has been concentrating on SEO and online marketing since 2007. Stuart is a regular SEO author specialising in recent changes that can affect how websites perform in search engines.

SEO Update Report Covering October 2018

SEO position rankings go up and down

SEO Update Report Covering October 2018

Welcome to our SEO report covering all the changes in October 2018. We thought this month might be a quiet one, oh, we were wrong! This month we have seen loads a loads of Algorithm updates from Google. Some have been confirmed like the ones at the start of the month around 5th Oct and […]

Stuart Cole

Welcome to our SEO report covering all the changes in October 2018. We thought this month might be a quiet one, oh, we were wrong!

This month we have seen loads a loads of Algorithm updates from Google. Some have been confirmed like the ones at the start of the month around 5th Oct and just before on the 27th September.

Most are small updates – however we all know that all updates effect all websites – which are probably tweaking last months big update.

That said we still think we got all the info you need in a 2 minute read, so enjoy!

If you have missed any of the other reports, which will still be relevant, then we definitely recommend you catch up, here is a link to the SEO Report Updates.

If you are using full page Adverts (popups) for desktop or mobile devices these could stop Google crawling your website as Google doesn’t wait for them to disapear – not all popup adverts are the same so some will be ok.

Popups that appear after a time or when someone if just about to leave the site are safer.

Links

Google have said that link building is making false links, which is against their guidelines.

So stop it!

Oh and keep creating links as we all know they are important. 🙂

Glossary

If you are new to search engine optimisation or just need a little refresh on the phrases used in our report head over to our SEO Glossary page, everything you need to know in one place.

Google+

Closed. Do you remember Google+?

Real visits

Google have said that they do not include real visits to businesses as part of their search results algorithm. So if you buy a burger from Burger King it will not rank Burger King any higher.

That said, never say never it might happen in the future!

Quote and Captions

Google have said that they treat content in quotes or captions the same as normal content on the page.

TIP: To help images rank better in Google’s image search try to include keywords in the image captions as well as the ALT tags.

Bing URL tool

For some reason Bing are not listening to their own tool in Bing Webmasters Tool. This is where you can add a new url to inform Bing that it’s there.

Instead you will have to make sure it is in your sitemap.

*** update ***

Bing have fixed this, it was a bug which Bing have squashed.

Hashtag

Google have said this month that their algorithm can not handle hashtags in url’s. So, if you use hashtags to direct the user to parts of a page then Google will ignore it. They will still crawl the page just ignore the hashtag.

Here is an example:

www.juicyseo.co.uk#section2

If a user enters that in and the page is setup correctly – which ours isn’t – it would take you to section2 of the page.

Local

Google informed us that 40% of searches are local intent. A large figure indeed.

TIP: Try and rank for local versions of your keywords, ie: “plumbers in Cheltenham”.

Speed

Our monthly regular is here, yep once again we are talking about how fast your website is.

This month Google have been sending out messages to webmasters who have slow websites and for them to speed them up if they want to rank better.

If there is one thing you do today it should be looking at how fast your website is and make it faster.

If you are having trouble doing this drop us a line I will help out.

Rich Snippets and Penalties

If your website displays there rich snippets in Google’s search results it will be taken away if you receive a penalty from Google.

Internal links

Google have said that it is safer to use absolute url’s rather than relative url’s in internal links and canonicals. Example here:

Absolute: https://www.juicyseo.co.uk/jg/contact/

Relative: /contact/

IP addresses

It doesn’t matter if a lot of your links come from the same IP address, as long as you are not spamming of course. Not my words, words from Google.

Written by Stuart Cole

Stuart Cole has been running Internet businesses since 1996 and has been concentrating on SEO and online marketing since 2007. Stuart is a regular SEO author specialising in recent changes that can affect how websites perform in search engines.

SEO Update Report Covering September 2018

SEO position rankings go up and down

SEO Update Report Covering September 2018

Welcome to the latest SEO update report covering all the important changes that happened in September 2018. First off I’m sorry this is a little late, we have been very busy rolling out new SEO audits for our clients. Algorithm’s Oh boy what a month for algorithm updates! Lots of chatter around the 8th as […]

Stuart Cole

Welcome to the latest SEO update report covering all the important changes that happened in September 2018.

First off I’m sorry this is a little late, we have been very busy rolling out new SEO audits for our clients.

Algorithm’s

Oh boy what a month for algorithm updates!

Lots of chatter around the 8th as well as at the end of the month around the 27th September.

Google have confirmed these updates occurred.

Basically the updates were to re-evaluate the quality of the content on the sites and update their ranking positions. They have said if your website has dropped it isn’t because it has been penalised, just it is not as good as other websites out there to answer the query.

TIP: If you have lost some positions look at the sites beating you and update your page to be even better!

GDPR

You may have noticed this yourself since the due date of GDPR. Some websites outside of Europe are not displaying their content to visitors from Europe because of GDPR. Instead they display a message explaining this. Essentially they don’t want to be GDPR compliant so stopping all European visitors.

First off, what silly silly people they are!

Google knows this is happening and that the traffic from Google.com to these websites is not providing the experience Google wants.

They are looking into this, it wouldn’t surprise me if their websites disapear from European searches.

For European websites this is really good news, less competition from some big US websites!

If your rankings go up soon it could be related to this, keep an eye on your rankings!

I will report as soon as I hear anything.

Glossary

If you are new to search engine optimisation or just need a little refresh on the phrases used in our report head over to our SEO Glossary page, everything you need to know in one place.

Content Date

Google have said that they will keep displaying the original created date of the page or post even if updated.

However, if a large amount of content has changed they will display the modified date in their search results instead.

They are doing this because we know that Google lke recent content and people think changing the date their post was published will make it look more recent, it doesn’t.

Speed

My favourite SEO subject was mentioned this month by Google. They have said that you should try and get your page speed to less than 100ms.

WHAT!!

That is quite hard to do. The sites I design and create are normally around the half a second to load, and that’s not that easy.

Good luck everyone!

Sitemap

Google have said that sitemap files need to be located in the parent folder of the files it contains.

So, if the file lists all the URL’s in the /TEST/ folder you could put the sitemap in that folder or the ROOT.

Most people will just keep their sitemaps in the ROOT folder or use a dynamic sitemap, but interesting to know.

Image Search

Google have released a new algorithm for image searches that now looks more at the website as well as the image.

It now checks the authority of the website, this will benefit those high authoritive websites.
Also where the image is being displayed on the page – higher the better – so make sure your most important images are high up the page and using all the Tags!
And of course how recent the image/post is.

Google rarely makes changes to their Search algorithm, I think this is quite a big one and brings it inline – partially – with the main search index.

Title Tags

There have been some talk that Google have increased the length of the search results title field – Tag – from 55 chars to 67 chars.

I’ve not seen any examples of this but interesting news!

I will report back if/when this happens as it will provide more real estate for the most important of META tags.

That’s it for this month, don’t forget to come back next month. You can get a reminder if you sign up to our newsletter or just follow us on social media.

If you know of someone who would benefit from this information, please share. Thanks! 🙂

Written by Stuart Cole

SEO Update Report Covering August 2018

SEO position rankings go up and down

SEO Update Report Covering August 2018

Welcome to the August 2018 edition of our 2 minute SEO update report. Get up to speed with all the important changes within online marketing and search in 2 minutes. Algorithm At the start of August – 1st/2nd – we saw lots of ranking movements which Google confirmed was due to a “Broad core algorithm […]

Stuart Cole

Welcome to the August 2018 edition of our 2 minute SEO update report. Get up to speed with all the important changes within online marketing and search in 2 minutes.

Algorithm

At the start of August – 1st/2nd – we saw lots of ranking movements which Google confirmed was due to a “Broad core algorithm update”.

Google performs these updates a few times a year to re-adjust their search results and re-value websites. The update takes all their signals into account therefore it isn’t just a linking update or on page content.

This update affected the medical industry considerably, but not just those sites which has been often reported by other SEO’s.

If your rankings have dropped it isn’t because your website isn’t as valuable as it once was, but instead other websites are now deemed more relevant to the search query.

The fix: make your page/site content better than your competitors.

Google Mobile First Index

Just a quick note about Google’s Mobile First Index rollout. The chances are by the time you receive the email from Google your website was probably using the Mobile First Index several weeks beforehand. Google have said that there is a delay when they send out those emails.

Glossary

If you are new to search engine optimisation or just need a little refresh on the phrases used in our report head over to our SEO Glossary page, everything you need to know in one place.

Search Console Messages

Every so often I like to remind our readers to use and monitor messages in Google’s Search Console.

NEW MESSAGE: If you have recently migrated from HTTP to HTTPS Google now informs you if any pages are not being indexed after the migration.

On a side note when performing this type of migration you should use 301 redirects and not 302’s etc.

Search Console Link Report

Google have rolled out a new version of their link report in Search Console. You should check it out as there is a lot more detail provided.

PDF’s

To help Google read PDF files and other similar types of documents they convert them into HTML first. Interesting!

Publish Dates

We all know to have up to date content on our sites, however, when updating your content do not update the publish date. This has been heavily recommended by Google. What you can do is write a little note at the start of the content informing that the content has been updated.

TIP: I like to Include this info in the META tags too to help the CTR.

Written by Stuart Cole

SEO Update Report Covering July 2018

SEO position rankings go up and down

SEO Update Report Covering July 2018

Welcome to another monthly SEO report this time covering all the important updates in July 2018. Traditionally July and August tend to be quiet in the SEO world and this year is no exception.Still, I have managed to gather some very good tips and SEO news stories for you to read. Enjoy! Once again […]

Stuart Cole

Welcome to another monthly SEO report this time covering all the important updates in July 2018.

Traditionally July and August tend to be quiet in the SEO world and this year is no exception.Still, I have managed to gather some very good tips and SEO news stories for you to read.

Enjoy!

Once again we have added a Tip to help with your own SEO work. If you have missed any of the other reports, which will still be relevant, then we definitely recommend you catch up, here is a link to the SEO Report Updates.

Speed

Google’s speed update has now gone live, you may have already received an email from Google already about this. This update only affects the very slowest mobile version of your websites so it won’t affect a large amount of readers.

Surely none of you will be affected as I have been talking about this for months now! 🙂

500 errors

If Google receives HTML 500 errors when crawling your pages due to slow response there is a very good chance that Google will not crawl your website as often. Use Search Console to monitor these errors and fix as soon as you can.

Glossary

If you are new to search engine optimisation or just need a little refresh on the phrases used in our report head over to our SEO Glossary page, everything you need to know in one place.

People Also Searched

Back in February this year Google added a new section to search results called “People also search for”. Basically how it works is once you click on a link and then return back to Google a box is displayed with other search suggestions.

This is really handy if you are doing keyword research.

Well, this month Google added this box to adverts in their search results too. Another handy tool if you are using Adwords (which has just been renamed to Ads incidently).

Algorithm

The start of a large algorithm update occurred at the end of July affecting medical websites. This has affected a lot of websites ranking positions.

Not Secure

This month Google updated Chrome that now shows websites that don’t use SSL (HTTPS) and NOT SECURE.

They have given us plenty of warning this was going to happen and I have reported on it several times too.

Written by Stuart Cole

Monthly SEO Report Covering June 2018

SEO position rankings go up and down

Monthly SEO Report Covering June 2018

Hi! Welcome to this month’s SEO update report where we remove all the waffle about SEO and condense all the changes that have happened in the last month into a 2 minute read. First off if you haven’t read last months report I highly recommend as previous reports can give you a history for […]

Stuart Cole

Hi!

Welcome to this month’s SEO update report where we remove all the waffle about SEO and condense all the changes that have happened in the last month into a 2 minute read.

First off if you haven’t read last months report I highly recommend as previous reports can give you a history for this month’s updates.

Crawl Budget

If you are not aware of search engines crawl budget I explain what it is in our SEO report for March.

This month Google have said that unless you have a really huge site you shouldn’t worry about your budget. I would still keep an eye on it in Search Console though.

Speed Update

If you read my SEO report each month you will know that I have mentioned that in July Google will be launching their Speed Update.

This will affect the ranking positions for websites that are REALLY slow. We are talking many seconds. If your site loads more than 5 seconds I would start looking at reducing.

Google reminded us that it isn’t just their GoogleBot that checks for the site speed, they use several means. Therefore, if you are thinking of stopping loading of heavy scripts when a robot visits as they take a long time to load, don’t bother. Google we use other means to check the speed.

Anyway, you should reduce the speed of your page to help the visitor not to have better rankings, quicker site = happier visitor = more products sold.

Glossary

If you are new to search engine optimisation or just need a little refresh on the phrases used in our report head over to our SEO Glossary page, everything you need to know in one place.

Title Tags

Google have said this month that the order of the words in your Title tag should not make a difference to your page rankings.

Hmm!

Algorithm’s

There looks to have been another algorithm update rolled out around the 8th/9th June. No word from Google about this.

To be honest there seems to be chatter about an algorithm update every week for the last month or so.

Web Light

In case you have not heard of Google’s Web Light it is basically a system that reduces heavy web pages for slow network coverage like in places in Africa, for example.

From what I understand it isn’t serving your site to them but a “more wordy, less image” version of your page instead.

Google have now added to Search Console an option to show you how many people see the Web Light version. Quite interesting and worth a look.

Incidentally Google Web Light does not affect your websites rankings.

Sitemap

The order of your URL’s in your sitemap doesn’t matter and will not make a difference to your websites ranking positions.

Stars

The rating stars that you can add to your rich snippet and get displayed in Google’s search results are not a ranking factor for organic search results.

If I remember correctly I think they are for Google My Business.

Press Releases

Google have said that they do not count links to your website from Press Releases. They also will not penalise you for having press releases link to you.

The reason this has come up is because some people create press releases for “spammy” link building. Shame on you!

Written by Stuart Cole

Monthly SEO Report Covering May 2018

SEO position rankings go up and down

Monthly SEO Report Covering May 2018

Welcome to this month’s SEO update report. covering May 2018. If you have missed any of the other reports, which will still be relevant, then we definitely recommend you catch up, here is a link to the SEO Report Updates. rel=Canonical I have mentioned a few times in the past the importance of making sure […]

Stuart Cole

Welcome to this month’s SEO update report. covering May 2018.

If you have missed any of the other reports, which will still be relevant, then we definitely recommend you catch up, here is a link to the SEO Report Updates.

rel=Canonical

I have mentioned a few times in the past the importance of making sure your webpage is as optimised as much as possible before making it live. In my experiments and experiences pages perform better this way rather than allowing Google to index the page first and then optimising it later.

The reason I bring this up is that Google have this month informed us that to make sure your rel=canonical tag is correct at time of publishing/indexing as they might not look at it again in future crawls.

m.mydomain.com

Just a little reminder that you should NOT have a version of your website using the m. prefix (m. = mobile) if your standard version is a responsive website.

m. sub-domains are purely to serve a copy of your desktop website created for mobile devices.

By having both it could (and probably will) confuse Google and might be seen as duplicate content which in turn gets you a black mark from the big G.

Glossary

If you are new to search engine optimisation or just need a little refresh on the phrases used in our report head over to our SEO Glossary page, everything you need to know in one place.

Adwords Bye Bye!

Google have confirmed again that Adwords accounts that have not spent any money will be closed down after 16 months or so. If you want to keep your account, even if only to use their tools to help identify keywords then I suggest spending a couple of penny’s advertising something.

Like this blog post for example. 🙂

Algorithm Update

A Google algorithm updates looks to have occurred around the 15th of May and the 25th May. As normal no word from Google. If you have seen a big ranking changes around those times it could be because of this.

Personal Search Results

It has been widely thought in the SEO community that Google could/will if possible serve up a different set of results per person – providing they are signed into a Google account – as a personalised search results. I have seen examples of this happening so it does exist.

That said Google have said that the amount of users who see personalised search results are very small and most people who are using the same language and location will see the same results.

Location and language is much more influential.

Speed

It wouldn’t be one of my monthly SEO reports if I didn’t mention that the speed of your website is soooo important. Google this month mentioned that the faster your website loads, the more of the website it will crawl.

This is interesting as it sounds as if they allot a certain amount of time per site/page. This goes against what they have said in the past.

Either way having a fast site just helps all the time!

Written by Stuart Cole

Monthly SEO Report Covering April 2018

SEO position rankings go up and down

Monthly SEO Report Covering April 2018

Welcome to this months SEO report covering all the important changes in the world of SEO. When I started writing this report I thought it was quite a quiet month, but, really it wasn’t as you will see below. Hope you enjoy and get something from this report. Please share and help others keep on […]

Stuart Cole

Welcome to this months SEO report covering all the important changes in the world of SEO. When I started writing this report I thought it was quite a quiet month, but, really it wasn’t as you will see below.

Hope you enjoy and get something from this report. Please share and help others keep on top of SEO.

If you have missed any of the other reports, which will still be relevant, then we definitely recommend you catch up, here is a link to the SEO Report Updates.

Structured Data

No matter how small the clue from Google about what decides or what doesn’t decides how websites are ranked we report them to you here every month.

Google have confirmed that Structured Data does NOT give you a ranking boost. It does however help them understand what your page is about which in turn will help them add your content to their Search engine.

So, not directly helping your website rank but does in a longer winded way.

Mobile First Index

As we all know (if you didn’t know, see last months SEO report) Google’s Mobile First Index roll-out has started. I haven’t personally see any sites that have been moved over yet, but, apparently some have.

Google have assured us the “Public” not to worry about moving over to mobile first index , they will be adding them site by site and checking the internal links on your site match, so comparing the desktop and mobile versions internal link structure. This will ensure all pages that have links to them will get indexed and hopefully you will not see any ranking drops.

Glossary

If you are new to search engine optimisation or just need a little refresh on the phrases used in our report head over to our SEO Glossary page, everything you need to know in one place.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds do not help your website rank better. Simple as that.

GDPR

Oh no not GDPR here too!

Sorry about that I am sure you have read enough about GDPR already, just a quick note though that Google are sending out emails informing Webmaster owners that it is up to them to change how long Google should hold your data.

To do this you need to use Google’s Search Console – following their email directions – and make the change for each site.

Basically, they are passing the “responsibility” buck to us. Thanks Google!

Algorithm Update

Around 17/18th April there was an algorithm update by Google and looks to have taken a good week to roll out.

Google confirmed that this update was a broad core update – which we reported on our Twitter at the time – which re-values each web page and gives a ranking boast for better content.

It’s always good to keep en eye on your ranking positions. If your rankings have dropped the only real thing you can do, is make your content better (for this update anyway).

Job Postings

Did you know that there is a Rich Snippet designed to help highlight any job openings you have in your business? If not you should start using it as it is used by Google.

However, Google have warned that if your job position is now filled (congrats!) you should update your web page’s rich snippet to show this. Otherwise a big black mark could be heading your way in a form of a Manual Action Penalty and you don’t want one of those!!

Written by Stuart Cole

Monthly SEO Report Covering March 2018

SEO position rankings go up and down

Monthly SEO Report Covering March 2018

Welcome to the March SEO report covering all the latest news which has happened over the last month. If you have missed any of the other reports, which will still be relevant, then we definitely recommend you catch up, here is a link to the SEO Report Updates. CSS Google confirmed that Googlebot is based […]

Stuart Cole

Welcome to the March SEO report covering all the latest news which has happened over the last month.

If you have missed any of the other reports, which will still be relevant, then we definitely recommend you catch up, here is a link to the SEO Report Updates.

CSS

Google confirmed that Googlebot is based off Chrome 41 and therefore does not support CSS custom properties.

Google also confirmed that they should be able to read and understand content of a website that is using CSS grid format.

Schema

If you are using Schema and in particular the new Product Schema, Google now supports this for image search. Just to remind you that Image Search is a very good way to rank for a tough keyword so this should help with that.

Glossary

If you are new to search engine optimisation or just need a little refresh on the phrases used in our report head over to our SEO Glossary page, everything you need to know in one place.

Content

Google confirmed that by having more content on your site doesn’t help your website rank any better, additionally, if you post more frequent will also not help your site rank better.

That said, having more content on your site allows you to target more keywords and therefore your website will rank for more keywords.

Location

Google does not use the location of your server that hosts your website to understand where in the World your site is located. They have many signals they use instead so don’t worry if you move your website from a UK server to a US server.

Algorithm

Google have confirmed that there was a LARGE google algorithm update on 8th March 2018. In fact it was a “Core Search Update” and affected a LOT of websites. These kind of updates do not happen that often, around 2 or 3 times a year, compared to other algorithm updates which can most days.

TIP: If your website has dropped in ranking positions around this date and hasn’t recover then we recommend working on updating the content to answer the query better.

There might have also been an algorithm update on 23rd March and again on the 28th. No news from Google as of yet but there is a lot of discussions in the SEO world.

ZERO!

Google have been testing ZERO search results in their search results.

Yep you read that correctly. For some search terms they were not showing any search results but answering the query themselves. This is mainly for calculations – or similar – so asking what 2+2 is Google will just show the answer (it’s 4 by the way) with a button for you to press if you want to see the search results.

The future??

Google – as does all website owners – what you to stay on their site for as long as possible so why wouldn’t they not show links to other sites.

By the end of March this test had been removed, it doesn’t mean it will not be back though!

Mobile First

If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that Google are rolling out a Mobile First Index (see previous posts here). This month Google confirmed that via their Search Console they will let you know when your site is now using Mobile first.

Broken Links (404)

It is completely natural for a website to have broken links – or 404 errors as they are known. Google have confirmed – once again – that broken links will not harm your website. If your SEO company is “selling” their services by fixing broken links to help your site rank better, it won’t. And shame on them!! tut tut!

That said it is always good to fix broken links to help the visitor find what they are looking for and to add trust to your site.

Written by Stuart Cole

Monthly SEO Report Covering February 2018

SEO position rankings go up and down

Monthly SEO Report Covering February 2018

Welcome to this month’s SEO report, lots of varied news to tell you about, hope you enjoy! If you think someone you know would be interested in being kept up to date with SEO news and very useful TIPS then send them our way! Thanks! If you have missed any of the other reports, […]

Stuart Cole

Welcome to this month’s SEO report, lots of varied news to tell you about, hope you enjoy!

If you think someone you know would be interested in being kept up to date with SEO news and very useful TIPS then send them our way! Thanks!

If you have missed any of the other reports, which will still be relevant, then we definitely recommend you catch up, here is a link to the SEO Report Updates.

Canonical

The HTML canonical tag lets search engines know which version of the content should be used in their index (among other jobs). So, if you create a canonical tag for pageB from pageA then Google will not take notice of the content on pageA.

Make sure you set these up correctly!

Sitemaps

This month a webmaster asked a question “Is it ok to have dynamic sitemap filenames?”. So, basically something like: sitemap-02-03-18.xml

I have no idea why they would do this, he said that he has a large site which new content is added very regularly so he date stamps the sitemap file. Why doesn’t he just update the sitemap.xml file?

Anyway, Google confirmed that this was not a good idea (shock!) but to use the same sitemap filename.

Glossary

If you are new to search engine optimisation or just need a little refresh on the phrases used in our report head over to our SEO Glossary page, everything you need to know in one place.

Tip

Instead of writing content to target one of a few keywords, write what the reader wants to read. Kind of makes sense I know but too many people write content to target their keywords. Google is very clever and will pick up on supporting words to your keywords, so unless you write about the subject and how the reader expects to read about it you won’t include those supporting words.

Hard to explain but try and think about the reader and what they want.

Security

We have touched on this before in previous SEO reports that in July Google will be releasing a new version of Chrome which will mark ALL HTTP websites as NOT-SECURE. If you didn’t know, now you do! 😃

My advise, buy a SSL certificate before this date as NOT-SECURE will not fill your readers/customers with confidence.

More: This update will not affect your search results ranking positions.

Also Search For…

Google have made an update to the featured snippet area in their search results that when you click on a link and then bounce back to Google from that website it will show a new section called: “People also search for”.

It will, as you would expect, show other search terms people used to get what they are looking for.

TIP: This is a good little signal for your keyword research, Google will basically tell you other keywords people are typing in to get to a product like yours!

You are welcome! 😃

New Websites

When creating a brand new website launch with HTTPS and not HTTP, it will save you a headache later on!

Google News META Keyword tag

I never thought I would be writing something about the keyword tag again, didn’t think anyone stilled used it. Anyway, I have been corrected as plenty of people do it seems. Google this month informed the SEO community that they are not supporting this tag for Google News.

TIP: Don’t ever use the META keyword tag, it doesn’t help your website rank better and only tells your competitors which keywords you are targeting.

Location

If you are new to SEO you may not be aware that where your content is located on your page makes a difference and can in fact affect how your page ranks. With the up and coming Mobile First Index being launched it might affect how your web page performs in the mobile search results.

TIP: Once you know your website is now part of Mobile First Index (keep an eye out on your log files) then monitor your mobile rankings and make changes if needed.

Written by Stuart Cole

Monthly SEO Report Covering January 2018

SEO position rankings go up and down

Monthly SEO Report Covering January 2018

Our latest monthly SEO report covering all the changes through-out January 2018. Understand what has changed and how you can help your website perform better. A 2 minutes read.

Stuart Cole

Welcome to the first monthly SEO report of 2018, as per normal the idea is to compress all the changes made by the search engines and report on the most important changes that will affect how your website performs.

Our aim is to get it under a 2 minute read so you get the info without taking up too much of your time.

Algorithm’s

It looks like Google performed a few small algorithm updates in the first and third weeks of January 2018. Google have not confirmed this and we (and SEO community) are still not sure what had changed but we saw a lot of movements in the ranking results.

Google Speed Update

This should be under the heading of Algorithm’s but Google have actually named it so it gets its own heading.

This algorithm will be launched in July 2018 (nice to have some warning) and is targeting really really slow mobile websites. This update will most likely not affect many sites. If it does affect your site then shame on you for having a website that slow!!

Glossary

If you are new to search engine optimisation or just need a little refresh on the phrases used in our report head over to our SEO Glossary page, everything you need to know in one place.

Search Console

Google provide a free tool called Search Console which gives webmasters feedback about their website and help on how to improve. Prior to this month the most amount of data Search Console held about your website was 90 days worth.

Well, that has changed with the release of their latest (beta) version which now holds 16 months worth, which is great news.

If you haven’t used Search Console you really should give it ago!

SEO Tips

Every so often Google give out some SEO tips, some are obvious, some are really useful.

This month Google offered these tips:

Google have said that they never index all a sites URLs.

Google will discount hidden text (will not help the page rank any better). We have reported this several times in our monthly SEO reports most recently about text hidden behind tabs or similar. Although Google discounts the content they will use it if people are searching for keywords which are in the hidden content. TIP: Never hide the important content!!

Google Image Index

Now listen up people, using Google’s image search to rank your website when you are having trouble in the main index is a very good tactic (hint hint!).

Something to keep in mind though is to reference your image using HTML SRC commands and not using CSS background image as Google’s image search doesn’t look at CSS.

Sub Domain or Sub Folder

An age old question: should you use sub-domains or sub-folders to separate your website?

This month Google decided to join the debate – well actually re-ignite it – and say that Google will index either options.

That said, for ages most SEO’s would recommend using Sub-Folders as they generally perform better. However, that said if your site suits sub-domains then go for it!