Lots to discuss this month so let’s get straight to it.
Algorithms
As per previous reports we report on the search engine algorithm updates that could affect your websites ranking positions. If your rankings have changed around these dates it could be due to these search engines updates:
1st August
30th August
Bookending the month! 🙂
LSI
Google this month have said that there is no such thing as LSI keywords. Hmm
LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. Essentially words that are connected to each other.
So, for example, if you were targeting the keyword “Cheltenham SEO” an LSI keyword could be “search engine” or “rankings”.
I say, don’t always believe what you have been told from Google.
Podcasts
If you create podcasts here is some interesting news. Google will index your podcasts for keywords that it finds within the content of your podcast.
Not only from the META data but from the words spoken.
That’s pretty cool!
Indexing
Google provided a little bit of information about when they index pages. They don’t split up a page and index different parts separately, say, for example, index the images and then index the words and then PDF’s.
But instead, they index the whole page as one with one URL. Afterwards, they might tag segments with they use in different parts of their systems like image search.
Words
It seems every month Google has to remind people of some old outdated thoughts on how SEO works.
This month it was the time for the number of words on a page. Google confirmed that the amount of words on a page is NOT a ranking factor.
Image Links
If you use images with Hyperlinks, ie: making an image clickable to take you to another page and wish to provide search engines with information on the linked page, then use the ALT tag.
This is quite basic and is something you should be doing anyway, whilst you are there I recommend using the Title tag for the image or link as well.
Mobile
65% or all searches on Google are from mobile devices, up from around 50% 3 or so years ago.
Instagram Images
If you embed Instagram images into your content, search engines will not use those images in their image search. Instagram has a clause in their embed code which stops this.
It is much better to upload the image directly to your site instead.
Medical
If you or your client is in the medical industry and you create content which gives advice about medical-related queries this one is for you.
It would help your site if you could show that your content was written by a Doctor or professional in their field. It adds strength to the reputation of the content and search engines will reward you for it.
The best way to do this, I think, it to link out to the Author/Doctors profile page on their own site, their page on their employee’s site or if not possible maybe their Twitter page.
This is even the case if the content was written by someone else but a Doctor reviewed it and agrees with what the content says.
Leasing Sub-Domains
You may remember last month me telling you about companies leasing sub-domains, here is a link to the SEO report for July for you to remind yourself.
Well, guess what?
Google is now starting to crack down on these domains and penalising websites for doing this.
I personally don’t think Google should do this as it is not part of their guidelines so no one is breaking any rules, but hay, Google can do what they like.
Manual Action Penalties
If you receive a penalty from Google and decide to not try and fix the bad links there is another option.
You could create a new website, move the content over and ask people who have linked to you to change their links.
Obviously, this is a bit of work and you would be in the hands of all the sites linking to you.
Something to think about is that the manual action penalty might also follow you to the new site.
Think long and hard before deciding to do this!
That’s it for this month, please share if you think someone else would benefit from the latest SEO news! Thanks!