Welcome to Novembers edition of our SEO report that only reports on the important updates and things you need to be aware of to help your website perform better.
Algorithms
17th/18th November there looks to be a fairly large algorithm update from Google.
24th November there looks to be a small-ish Google algorithm update.
Still know Google Core Update, but, it’s coming! 🙂
Homepages
If you are new to SEO you may not realise that your homepage is the most powerful page of your website.
This month Google has said that it is their intention to make all the pages equal when it comes to SEO power. This, I suspect will take a while.
Page Experience
I have mentioned this several times now over the last few month’s (see previous SEO Reports), this could potentially be a big update from Google and is definitely something you should be working on now.
In May 2021 Google will start valuing websites on their user experience, things like page speed, to help them rank websites. I highly recommend you prepare your website in advance of this date – read our previous reports to find out what you need to do.
Historical Ranking
Google has said that you can still rank for keywords that are no longer on your website using historical data of your website they hold. I have seen this on many sites I have access too whereby the content is deleted and still rank well for the related keywords many months later.
Tip: Don’t forget to add a redirect on these pages ideally to similar products or pages.
Google, Don’t Be Evil!
This is the first of a new section in my SEO report highlighting areas of Google that are not really that fair. The criteria for this is that a new update/change from Google which actively negatively affects websites but positively helps Google.
If you would like to see more “Don’t be evil” entries we have a list on our Don’t Be Evil page.
Why now?
I read a lot about SEO and online marketing from many different sources and I am starting to see a change in how Google operates. I don’t know if it has anything to do with founders leaving the company or shareholders putting pressure on the business to perform – financially – better or not.
Just Google?
No, I will report on all search engines that act evil. It’s just Google manages 80% or so of search traffic so they are going to get more lines in the report.
I am hopeful that this section won’t be big and I only report on the odd thing, but, I have a feeling the online World is changing so this list might get large. 🙁
So, with that said, here is the first Evil from Google.
This month it has been reported – proof seen – that Google is taking content from websites and displaying them directly in their search results as Featured Snippets and adding additional links.
Let’s say you are ranking well for the Term SEO Reports and Google have selected a part of the page to display in their search results – this in itself I feel is semi-evil as it stops traffic going to your website, but, this is not new.
They then could add a link to your content to take searchers to your competitor’s website and not yours, therefore, benefiting from your content.
Not cool Google!
It wouldn’t surprise me in the future you will be able to pay to add a link to your website to be added to someone else’s content.
Have you heard of Google Web Stories?
This when Google takes part of your content to make their own using AI. They might combine with other websites content – like your competitors – to make a “better” version of the content.
This has been going on for a little while now so again not new.
Google has either been testing or adding to some Web Stories links in your content just like above.
Google has said that they are not indexing Web Stories for search, well, not yet anyway!!!