Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering December 2016

Welcome to the final 2 minute read monthly online marketing report from Juicy SEO covering 2016, and what a year it was!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

No doubt like most people you will be making a new years resolution for 2017, if you haven’t thought of one yet can we recommend optimising your website?

If increasing traffic to your website is something you are interested in then make sure you keep coming back to our monthly round-up of all the important changes that will affect your website perform better each month.

So, lets get on with this…

Search Console

Google have removed the content keyword report in Search Console, this is due to it sending the wrong message to the webmasters and Google wanted to make their communication to webmaster easier to follow.

Moving websites

If you are thinking of moving your website from one server to another, Google recommend that for small and medium sized websites to move the whole site in one lump. If however, you have a large website it is ok to break it up into sections.

Sitemaps

Both Bing and Google have increased the maximum size for sitemaps that can be submitted, now 50MB instead of 10MB. However, there is still a limit of 50,000 url’s, so basically the extra space is for longer urls.

Index

Google have added a “SUBMIT TO GOOGLE” button directly in their mobile friendly test. By clicking this button it will add the URL to the Google index queue.

Submit to Google button in mobile friendly test

Speed

Google have advised to keep the homepage load speed less then 2-3secs. It is very rare that Google provide a figure like that, so worth paying attention too!
Google have also mentioned that if the page is slow to load, they might mark it as not mobile friendly even though it passes the mobile friendly test.

See our 2017 prediction below for more on this

Paid links

We know paid links are a NO NO, but did you know giving to charity for a link is also?! Well it is.

HTTPS

Google have recommended that if you are changing from HTTP to HTTPS that you keep the rest of the url the same whilst changing over. They don’t recommend changing the url structure at the same time. You might think of doing this to add some keywords into the url for example. It is better to perform two separate tasks after the new HTTPS versions have been indexed.

There is an important change coming at the start of Jan 2017 for websites that either a password or credit card details need to be entered in. If your website has this and you haven’t a SSL certificate (HTTPS) Google (Chrome) and Firefox will mark the page as NON SECURE.

Not two words you want connected to your online shop!

The fix is to make the whole site HTTPS or at least the page with the password/credit card form on it.

SEO Tip

Abbreviation are not good for SEO, especially if you are abbreviating your keywords! So, make sure you write out your keywords and linked keywords in full!

AdWords

Google AdWords Editor version 3.7 has been released with many new features, if you are an advertiser with Google and you use Google Adwords Editor you should update your version and have a look at these in case you are missing out.

Algorithms

Mid December there looks to have been a search algorithm update. We have not seen any confirmation from Google about this but our stats saw a lot of movement around the 15th/16th December and the SEO industry have also reported this.

Google Maps Adverts

In case this has passed you by, you can advertise your business on Google Maps. So when someone searches for “Anniversary cards because I have forgotten” your card shop can be displayed on Google Maps so the customer can easily find your shop. Obviously this is really targeting local businesses.

Anyway, I digress, this month Google have added a nice little update to this which allows you to add your company logo as the advert pin on the map.

2017

So it’s a new year and its traditional to post what you think the coming year will bring, well Juicy SEO does this too but much much shorter!. For our predictions we, in true spirit of our 2 minute read SEO update, are going to keep it short and sweet. Are you ready?

Mobile!

SHOCK!

We know you have heard this before from us, but for 2017 you must think mobile BEFORE desktop. This is not just creating a website but also when SEO’ing websites. Optimising a desktop website could be different to optimising your mobile version.

This includes not only that the website is mobile friendly but consider site speed (biggy!), load order and AMP.

At the moment Google do NOT use site speed when deciding mobile ranking, but as sure is eggs are eggs we think they will in 2017!

But don’t worry, as normal we are here to hold your hand and to offer any advice and tips, so follow us on Twitter, Facebook and our RSS feed.

Glossary

Panda: The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page content, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in Google’s search results.

Penguin: Google has an algorithm called Penguin which analyses links to web pages and identifies which ones are valuable or spam links. An example of a spam link would be a paid link to your site. Since 23rd Sept 2016 this has joined the core search updates and is now real time.

Pigeon: Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.

Phantom (Quality Update): This algorithm rewards website pages for good content.

TDL: A TLD means Top Level Domain like .com or .net or .co.uk.

AMP: Accelerated Mobile Pages. A way to increase the speed your mobile version of your website loads.

EMD: Exact Match Domains. Matching the domain name exactly with the search term used.

Juicy SEO – Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering October 2016

Welcome to another edition of Juicy SEO‘s monthly online marketing report this time covering all the important updates and changes for October 2016 by the search engines.

Let’s get right to it…

Penguin

At the start of the month we saw the continuation of the roll-out off the new ‘real time’ Penguin update. It took a week or so to fully complete due to the update gradually spreading around the Worlds servers.

Now Penguin is real time several dodgy SEO’s out there are already thinking how they can manipulate this, the obvious one is to increase your link building and if you get a penalty simply remove the links and start again. Google have said that they are “ready for you!” if you are thinking about doing this and could remove the link value of all the links to your site. So, think carefully if you thinking about doing this!

Redirects

This one if really for the webmaster who is moving their site or changing their CMS. It is not good practice to 301 redirect your old pages from your previous version of your website to the homepage of your new website. Google will mark these down as soft 404 pages and which will not pass any link juice (SEO benefit). As much as a pain as it is you should create separate 301’s from your old URLs to the new replacement pages.

Mobile

On the 10th January 2017 Google will be releasing their “Intrusive Interstitial Mobile Penalty“. A what I hear you say?!

From this date if Google finds a pop-up that covers most or all of the mobile screen it will penalise the mobile version of the site. These “pop-ups” are used all over the web and include a lot of social ‘Share’ buttons and adverts. However, Google are only looking at page load and not, say, 5mins after you have been on the site or when leaving the site. Most of the good social share widgets out there will have config options that will fix this. A tool to test this is due out too soon from Google.

Mobile

In the next few months Google will start using a separate index just for mobile devices. At the moment Google uses the main desktop index for both desktop and mobile searches. By using a separate index for mobile devices they can use mobile specific ranking signals like page load speed to help them decide ranking positions.

Content

In some of our previous reports we have mentioned that it is possible to be out-ranked by another website which has a copy of your own content. This is often the case if the other site has a better domain authority than your own. That said, Google this month confirmed that it is also due to other websites taking your content and adding extra value to it, therefore, making the content even better.
This has been a very successful way of ranking Juicy SEO’s clients websites in the past, so if you are looking for some content ideas, research other content out there and make your version better!

HTTP2

As reported previously by Juicy SEO, Google this month also mentioned that they do not pass any search engine ranking ‘help’ if your website is using HTTP2.

AdWords

Google have officially rolled out ‘Click-to-Message‘ sitelinks for adverts which allow people to…. well… click and send a message. I guess the name of it explains the idea well enough.

Domain Authority

Although lots of SEO tools out there have their own “Score” of websites Google have confirmed that they do not have an overall score for a domain (I know I used domain authority above, it was purely to help explain).

Ranking

Finally, Juicy SEO have reported for several years now that it is often the case that Google search engine ranking updates occur at the end of the quarter. A member of Google’s team has also mentioned this month that this is the case. So, keep an eye on the date! 🙂

Glossary

Panda: The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page content, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in Google’s search results.

Pigeon: Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.

Phantom (Quality Update): This algorithm rewards website pages for good content.

TDL: A TLD means Top Level Domain like .com or .net or .co.uk.

AMP: Accelerated Mobile Pages. A way to increase the speed your mobile version of your website loads.

Juicy SEO – Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering September 2016

Welcome to this month’s edition of the Juicy SEO online marketing report where we condense all the changes and important news into a 2 minute read, as per normal we have a Glossary at the bottom to remind you which algorithm does what.

This month our report is mainly to do with a major update that has recently happened, Penguin 4.0 is now live and in the wild!

So, lets get to it…

Penguin

As this algorithm update is major news we will focus a little more than normal on this subject and explain what has changed and how it will affect you.

Real Time

This is the 4th version (4.0) of this algorithm and it will also be the last, this is because they moved the ‘code’ of Penguin into their main core ranking engine which ‘scores’ website pages continuously. Therefore, Penguin will be real time and any penalties given due to bad links will happen instantly. The good news though is that once you clean up your bad links your site should recover instantly too.

New Links

As Google will be checking your links all the time this also includes new links to your site, it means keeping a close eye on your links in case they affect your ranking positions.

Per-Page Not Per-Site

The new version of the Penguin algorithm does not assess links to your website but more to your web pages. Therefore, if Google penalises your site for a bad link it should just affect the page it is linked to and not the whole site. This is great news as you should be able to manage your link building strategy and see if certain links penalise your website.

Recovery

Once you have cleaned up your bad links you might expect to bounce back up to where your website once ranked, sadly that is unlikely. Google will instead of penalising your site and devalue the links they will simply just ignore them.

Therefore, if you once ranked no:1 for ‘Keyword Research’ and got hit with a Penguin penalty, the recovery will just ignore the link juice of those bad links so you won’t get any help at all from them. Your site should still move up the rankings as you are no longer penalised, just not as high as you once were.

One final thing about Penguin, well for this month anyway. Google have said that the roll out of Penguin 4.0 was their best roll out to date. Which isn’t surprising really is it as it took them 2 years to do it!

Local SEO

This month Google’s local algorithm received an update too, this time, the update was to target spam results.

API’s

If you provide an API for developers to access data from your site then this might be of interest. Google have said if your API requires a DOfollow link to access the API it is the same as a paid link and therefore against Google’s guidelines.

Widgets

If you are a provider of Widgets for webmasters to add to their site, Google this month have stressed that all the links back to you must be NOfollow, not a surprise here but good to be reminded of.

Links

Google this month said an interesting thing about links, “To get more traffic to your site you don’t necessarily need more links”. Is this a smoke screen to try and stop people link building or are they devaluing links?

AdWords

If you are a user of Google Adwords (PPC) you would have most likely been informed that the length the text can be for the adverts is to increase therefore allowing more “Words for your Buck”. We believe it is going live early 2017.

AMP

AMP sites have been seeing a considerable amount of traffic increase over the last couple of weeks, AMP is not for everyone but it is worth looking at to see if it will help your business.

Mobile SEO

Over the last couple of months in our SEO reports we have mentioned Google might penalise mobile websites that have pop-ups which fully cover or cover a large percentage of the screen when the page loads. This month they have added more information on this, sites can also be penalised if the pop-up appears after scrolling half way down the page. This is interesting as there are many social media sharing widgets that work like this.

Algorithms

Google this month highlighted that now Penguin 4.0 (oops sorry I mentioned it again) is live you should expect to see more algorithm updates coming in the near future and that this will never stop. Great! 🙁

Rankings

We are expecting to see a lot of fluctuations in ranking figures over the next week or so as Penguin calms down, so don’t panic if your rankings are not looking too good. If you need some help just drop us a line.

Glossary

Panda: The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page content, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in Google’s search results.

Pigeon: Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.

Phantom (Quality Update): This algorithm rewards website pages for good content.

TDL: A TLD means Top Level Domain like .com or .net or .co.uk.

AMP: Accelerated Mobile Pages. A way to increase the speed your mobile version of your website loads.