Bing
We don’t hear too much from Bing that often however, this month we have, and it’s weird!
They have increased the number of URL’s that you can manually submit to them to 10,000 per day, which, sounds good huh?
They also mentioned that they intend on moving away from crawling websites to find new content, WHAT!!
Brave thing to do. So, make sure you are submitting your new content to Bing manually through their webmaster tools.
Bad Links
Google said this month that if YOU think a link to your website is bad and have not received a manual action penalty you should include into the disavow file.
I say don’t. If you get a penalty then obviously you do but what if the link is actually ok?
Algorithms
This month we noticed algorithm updates affecting Google’s ranking results on:
8th Feb
13th Feb
18th Feb
Internal Links
Google have confirmed that there isn’t a penalty to over optimising internal links on your website, so, get linking! 🙂
Sectors/Industries
Google mentioned this month that they don’t look at verticals or industries when they adjust their algorithm but more on the queries used.
Click Through Rate: CTR
Oh boy this subject got a lot of attention this month. Basically Google have been saying “forever” that they do not use the click through rate as part of their core ranking result. Time and time again they have said this. Many SEO’s out their disagreed, me included.
A document from Google was discovered this month saying they have used CTR as part of their algorithms!
This is a biggy!
Have Google got an incorrect document or have they been telling lies for years?
I’m sure we have not heard the end of this one.
UTM: Internal Links
Google have advised not to used UTM URL’s for internal links.
Webmasters have been using UTM’s to track buttons clicked and visitor routes within websites. If you are using them I have a better way to do it, shout if you need it.
Website UX
A websites user experience does not affect how the website performs in search results. They do help visitors find what they are looking for and stop bouncing off the site again though.