Our latest monthly SEO report covering all the changes through-out December 2017. Understand what has changed and how you can help your website perform better. A 2 minutes read.
Stuart Cole
Welcome to the last Juicy SEO report of 2017! There have been lots of changes, good and bad, but we made it through them all.
As per normal here are all the important changes that the search engines have made through-out December 2017 all nicely contained in a 2 minute read.
Did you know I have now been writing this monthly SEO update report for 3 years on this site and longer elsewhere! WOW time fly’s.
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.
Snippets
You may have noticed whilst using Google that the description for the websites entry looks longer? The Search Results Snippets now display up to 320 characters increased from the old 155 characters. This is great news to help explain what your page is about and of course entice people to click to your website.
But before you go updating all your pages Meta descriptions Google have said there is no need as they will automatically add more content to the snippet from the content on the page. TIP: However, I recommend updating your most important pages and tailoring the descriptions to get the best click through rate.
Algorithms
Around the 13th December 2017 we saw a lot of movement in the search results, this was due to many Google Algorithm updates. Some of the sites we have read about that have been affected were low quality and high advert pages.
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.
Mobile First
If you have been reading our previous month’s reports you will know that Google will be launching their new Mobile First Index (see our other posts about this here). The problem is Google will not tell you when or if your website is now using their Mobile First Index.
However, there is a way to figure it out and it all lies with your websites log files. Typically you will see Google’s GoogleBot (80%) and GoogleMobileBot (20%) access your site. If you see it swap around and see the mobile bot increase then the chances are your site is included into the Mobile Index.
Rich Snippets
Are now called “Rich Results”. Well that’s nice.
Referral Traffic
For the first in, in, many many years Google refers more traffic to websites than Facebook. This could be to do with recent changes on how Facebook favour personal posts instead of company (pages) posts.
Quality Content
Google once again this month reminded webmasters that copying content or even rewriting the same content on your website is not adding value and therefore will not help your website rank better. TIP: Think of going a bit further and add more detail.
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.
Monthly SEO Report Covering October 2017
Monthly SEO Report Covering October 2017
Welcome to the latest monthly SEO report from Juicy SEO. As regular readers will know we condense a whole months worth of SEO news and important algorithm updates into a 2 minute read. We only report on the things that will make a difference to how your website performs in search engines.
If you have missed previous month’s reports you should have a read as because they are more than a month old it doesn’t mean they are out of date. A lot can be learned from them!
A little head of schedule (I think) Google is testing Mobile First out in the wild. Not everyone will see this but they are currently testing ahead of the full launch due early 2018.
If your site has been “chosen” to test mobile first and it falls short of certain areas Google will inform you via Search Console of the things you need to fix.
Spelling
If spelling isn’t your thing, when it comes to ranking in Google’s search results it will not make a difference. Google confirmed once again that spelling mistakes will NOT harm your search positions.
That said Bing have said that it does affect their ranking positions so worth getting sorted.
If you haven’t tried Grammarly – the free automatic online spell checker – I highly recommend it!
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.
Algorithms
It looks like Google released an algorithm update around the 8th October 2017. Pretty much all monitoring Apps have spotted the update. We are not at the moment (3rd Nov) what it affected.
Additionally, Google have also made a big update to their mobile results algorithm. There is a good chance it is connected to the Mobile First roll-out they are currently testing.
Google confirmed this month that their ranking algorithm is the same for position #1 as it is for position #100. There isn’t different algorithms for different ranking positions.
Around the 26th October we noticed a small algorithm update, we are not too sure what it has affected but as soon as we know we will let you know. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the news.
Sentiments
As far as I can remember Google have never confirmed the following, until now.
Google now uses sentiments from websites and social media as a ranking factor!
So basically if someone has written nice things about your website it will help it rank better. I think this is an area that Google will be using much more of in the future!
Social Media Management
Have you ever thought it’s a shame when you write a Tweet or Facebook post that your great content is wasted as it is never used again?
After all your followers would have to be online at the time to see the post anyway!
Then get more out from your social media posts without doing anymore work!
Ahh one of the old classic link building “techniques”. In case you are not sure what this is:
1 Find a site that has a broken link to another site.
2 Make sure this site is in the same industry as your site.
3 Write replacement content.
4 Inform the Webmaster that they have a broken link to a resource which is no longer there and ask them to link to your version instead.
It’s an old idea but it works. So much so Google have said this month that it is a good idea to get links to your site and for you to create good quality content.
So, off you go!
Comments V’s Social Media
Which is better?
Allow people to comment about your article on your website or comment about your content on social media?
Well, if you want the comments to help rank your Web page then having them on your site wins hands down!
Speed
We all know how important it is that a page loads as quick as possible. As a rule of thumb you should try and get your page Load under 3 seconds, faster if possible.
This month Google confirmed that they measure how long it takes for the server to respond. This news will put a little pressure on hosting companies to provide a fast server!
Welcome to the latest edition of our monthly roundup of all the most important changes by search engines like Google and Bing.
We only report on changes that will affect how your website will perform so make sure you read everything!
Although SEO is constantly changing previous monthly SEO reports will still be valuable, I highly recommend that you read those too. Here is a link to all our SEO monthly reports.
Links
As you may know creating links to your website from large international news websites can often push your websites rankings up considerably. In fact you may have received an email from someone selling links from the likes of Forbes, INC and Entrepreneur. We all know that you shouldn’t pay for links but I can understand why these emails are tempting.
News this month though is that all three of these websites will now make all the links from of their contributors articles “nofollow”. This means you will not get any SEO value from having links from these sites.
So, you can ignore those emails now!
Something that was interesting that Google said this month was that there are many websites that rank within the top 3 of their search results which do not have any links to it. I would think that this is low competitive long tail keywords but interesting to hear Google say this.
Algorithms
Around the 8th September there looks to have been a small algorithm update from Google. Most if not all of the monitoring tools have noticed this, we have yet to get confirmation from Google.
Additionally, we noticed another algorithm update around the 16th and 20th September as well as a larger update around the 26th. We know that Google are continuously making changes but I know that they like to make a big change at the end of the year so could this be some testing??
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.
Spammy Content
Google this month mentioned that just because your website is whiter than white (hat) compared to your black hat competitor it doesn’t mean your site should rank high than theirs. If their website provides a better result for the search term Google could still rank it higher.
So, our takeaway from this is to make sure your website provides better content than your competitors.
G+
“If your web page receives a lot of G+ (Google+) ‘likes’ will the website rank higher?”
That is a question that was asked of Google, they replied with a very simple, No.
Tip: That said we have found that if you do G+ a new published page Google will more than often index the page faster.
Publish Date
When you create a new piece of content a publish date is also created with it. In most CMS platforms you can change these dates. Some content writers believe that if you change the date it will look more recent therefore search engines like Google might value it more (We all know Google likes recent content).
Before you go and change the date on all your posts Google know about this little ‘Trick’, so the chances are you won’t get any benefit from changing the date.
However, that said why not try it for yourself?
Shopping Cart
Google have confirmed that shopping cart abandon rate is not a ranking factor. So don’t worry if people do not complete their order on your website as your ranking will not change but DO worry because they didn’t buy something!
Monthly SEO Report Covering August 2017
Monthly SEO Report Covering August 2017
Welcome to August’s SEO report update. Traditionally search engines like Google and Bing tend not to make too many updates over the summer holidays so this month’s report might be shorter than our normal 2 minute read time.
But it will still be packed with useful information on how to help your website perform better so enjoy!
Search Console
The new version of Googles Search Console is nearly here. Currently in private Beta it sounds like it will be a considerable improvement to the current version. Most notably there might have extra data in the history area of the tool. Currently Google Search Console only shows 90 days worth of historical data, there is a chance this might increase to 1 years worth.
Fingers crossed!
Crawling
Google this month shed a little light on how they crawl websites. It has been often thought that when Google crawls your Web page and find a link to another page, it would ‘click’ that link to crawl that page also. This is not the case though.
When Google finds a link on a page it adds that URL to a list which they will crawl at a later date.
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.
Internal Searches
Google once again this month reminded the Webmaster community to use ‘noindex’ internal search results within your website.
These often use the URL www.domain.com/?s=searchWord
The main reason for this is that Google doesn’t want to list internal search results as Google search results as they often don’t provide any quality content.
Links
Google in a roundabout way confirmed something that most SEO’s already think when comparing the link juice value between internal and external links. Basically they said that Google does treat these two types of links differently.
We would assume Google values links from external websites that you don’t control to be more valuable than internal links that you do control.
Not Secure
Back in April of this year Google informed us that a new version of Chrome will be released in October 2017 which could affect a lot of websites.
This month Google sent out emails to webmasters that currently have forms which request security questions – like a password – and don’t have a SSL certificate. When the new version of Chrome is live it will label these pages as NOT SECURE.
This could drastically affect the amount of people using your form therefore we suggest making your website HTTPS instead of HTTP.
Last Mod Date
Google confirmed this month that they do look at the last modified date and the URL of a page but not within the sitemap.
(I’m not so sure myself that they don’t look at the modified date in the sitemap).
Either way it does confirm again that it is beneficial to update older content to help it rank better.
Tip: We like to add ‘Updated September’ in the page title also to highlight that it is up to date in search results.
Algorithm
At the tail-end of August there looks to have been an algorithm update which, as per normal hasn’t been confirmed by Google. At the time of writing we have not learned what has been affected. Once we know we will let you know either on Twitter, Facebook and of course in next months SEO report.
Private Images
If you prefer to block Google from using your images using the HTML tag “noindex” it will not negatively affect how your website performs in the main search results. This is good news if your create images yourself and prefer to keep complete control of them.
Monthly SEO Report Covering July 2017
Monthly SEO Report Covering July 2017
Welcome to July’s 2017 edition of our monthly SEO update report.
Each month we inform you of the latest and most important updates from search engines like Google and Bing that could affect your websites ranking positions.
Before we get going if you have missed previous update reports we recommend quickly having a look at those too as they will still be relevant. Here is a link to all our SEO update reports.
In a rush? No problem our SEO update report is designed to be read in 2 minutes, so you get the important information you need without taking up much of your time.
So, let’s get going…
Indexing
Google confirmed this month that if you have a lot of pages that need to published and therefore indexed within Google’s search results, you should not artificially slowly publish them but publish them all at once.
They mentioned even if you have 100,000’s of pages it won’t matter. One word of warning is to make sure your server can handle the crawl from Google.
Videos
Adding a video to your page does not provide you with any advantage in Google’s search results or make it a quality piece of content.
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 have said, again, that Domains that exactly match keywords do not get an advantage in their search results.
Geo-targeting
If you are targeting a certain country Google have said it will not make a difference if your website is using a server which is not located in that country. Instead you should either have a domain with the correct TLD (see Glossary for explanation) or use Google Search Console to inform Google.
Search Console
In July Google made a change to how they calculate the average ranking positions within their Search Console software. Many people have seen a large drop in rankings and are quite worried. Google have said not to worry as nothing has changed only the way they report on the average positions.
Seals
No not the type that swim but Trust Seals. Someone asked Google this month if by having a seal from an trusted organisation on your website, does it help the page to rank better. In a word, No.
It is however good to show that you are affiliated to the company behind the seal but not for SEO.
Tip: a link from a trusted organisation to your website will however help your website SEO wise.
Meta Keyword
I’m including this into our report this month purely for readers who are new to SEO. Each Web page can use the META tag ‘Keyword’. A long long long time ago this was used to help search engines learn more about the page. However, this hasn’t been used by search engines for a very long time.
You will not get penalized for using it but if you do you are only telling your competitors which keywords you are targeting, you don’t want to do that now do you?
Google Instant
Have you noticed recently that when you start typing into Google’s search bar the suggested end of your search query is now not there?
Google have decided to remove Google Instant as it doesn’t fit within the way mobile devices use their search engine interface.
This, for me is a shame for two reasons, one personal and one professional.
1: Professional: Google Instant used to be a good way to find new keywords that were being used.
2: Personal: It used to be a fun way to waste some time seeing what silly things people have entered into Google.
Sticky Footers
These are footers that stay on the page at the bottom of your window whilst you scroll up or down the page. These are completely OK to use and are within Google’s guidelines, they are particularly useful on mobile devices to quickly find important content.
Monthly SEO Report Covering May 2017
Monthly SEO Report Covering May 2017
Welcome to this month’s edition of Juicy SEO’s month SEO report. We condense all the important updates made by search engines like Google and Bing into a short easy to read blog post. We try and keep it under a 2 minute read so you can be informed and continue on your day.
If you missed last month’s SEO report covering April 2017 even though it is now a month old almost all the information is still relevant, so, head over and have a read as there would have been something there you would have missed in the news and will benefit your website in performing better in search engines.
Owl
Fake news is, well, all the news lately and search engines and social media platforms are under a lot of pressure to remove, or at least not promote fake news. Google last month released a new algorithm called Owl (What a Google algorithm which doesn’t start with a ‘P’!). Owl is designed to target fake news in their search results and remove them. We touched on this in last month’s report.
Featured Snippets
If you have managed to get your website to the top, or very near the top of the first page of Google search results then your websites data might have been included in their featured snippet section. What we have learnt this month is that Google can sometimes display the content ‘snippet’ from one website, but also display the image next to the text from a completely different website. Google News have been doing this for a long time but now we are seeing it in the main search results.
Our monthly SEO report isn’t interested in search engines testing colours or shapes of buttons, we only report on changes that will affect your website to perform well in search engines!
Affiliate Source
A technique that is getting quite popular to help with generating new and useful content is to combine two or more pieces of content from other sources and present them all together in one single page. Some could see this as creating useful information in one place.
Google, however, does not see this content as adding value as you are not actually providing any newdata. If this is something you like doing or works well for your industry we recommend adding extra content in the form of text, images, infographics, videos and even animation to make the page unique.
Google doesn’t forget!
Google this month answered a question on their forum on if the search engine ever forgets URL’s, namely pages that have been in their index for a long long time. Google simply said, “No, we have a lot of storage”.
We believe them.
Algorithm’s
It looks like there was a Google algorithm update around 17th May (US), 18th May (UK), however, as I write this we are unsure what was updated by Google.
All the monitoring Apps lit up like a Christmas tree where they have seen many ranking changes over many websites. We have seen a lot of ranking movements over a considerable amount of domains ourselves, we look forward to finding out what has changed. We will let you know as soon as we know. Follow us on Facebookif you can’t wait until next month’s SEO report.
Widgets
Google are considering ignoring links that originate from website widgets. Back in the day, I’m starting to sound old here, when SEO was just starting out, a technique used to create links was to simply add links to sidebar widgets. They would normally be site-wide and give loads of link juice. Those days are well and truly gone and Google are now considering ignoring those links because they are not providing any SEO benefits.
Adwords
This month Google have updated their Ad Rank figure within Google Adwords. If you are currently running an advert using Adwords we recommend having a look at your CPC figures.
Links
Over the last 12 month’s or so there has been an increase in spam emails being sent out selling space on high domain authority websites (DA) with a link to your own website. It maybe because of this increase in these emails that Google this month have commented that these types of links are against Googles guidelines and are currently looking into it.
We are not sure at the moment if Google will penalise any sites which have used these sites for links or not, but something you should think about before hitting that ‘Buy’ button.
Over Optimisation
Google confirmed that you can over optimise your website to a point where it starts hurting your website ranking potential. We think, hmm!
Finally, if you know of someone who you think would benefit from being informed of the latest updates from search engines share this page with them, they will thank you forever!
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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.
Monthly SEO Report Covering April 2017
Monthly SEO Report Covering April 2017
Welcome to this month’s edition of our monthly SEO report updating you with the most important changes in SEO and online marketing. As per normal we will try and keep under a 2 minute read.
If you missed last month’s report it is well worth a read as there are loads of great insights for you to learn, SEO report covering March 2017.
Mobile
If you are a regular reader of our monthly update report you will know that Google are working on a new Mobile First index, it looks like it will take them a little longer than they first thought as they have now delayed the launch until 2018. If you were not sure what the mobile first index is we recommend quickly reading the last few reports for a catch up.
Algorithm’s
At the start of March Google updated their algorithm that scores the quality of the content on pages, it was named Fred. Google have confirmed that at the same time Fred went live other algorithms were also updated therefore your website might have been affected by them and not Fred if you saw a drop in rankings.
Advanced SEO Audits
Understand why your website is not performing well with our advanced SEO audit, your website will not thank you enough!
If you are new to SEO you may not know about Disavow files, this is a file that you can add websites that link to yours which you would like the search engines to ignore. A reason you would do this is if you have spammy links to your site and it is harming your site in the search results.
If you add some links to this file and then see your website drop in the search engine rankings we recommend that you remove some of those links in case they are actually helping your website perform better. It is a little trial and error with this.
Domain Age
Just a quick reminder that the age of a website or the length a domain has been registered does not affect how your website performs in search ranking results.
CAPS PAGE TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS
GOOGLE HAVE CONFIRMED THAT THERE ISN’T A PENALTY IF YOU USE UPPERCASE CAPS IN YOUR TITLE AND DESCRIPTION META TAGS. WE DON’T USE THEM OURSELVES BUT IT MIGHT GET A FEW MORE EYES LOOKING AT YOUR LISTING IF YOU DO.
Updates
Like previous years this time of year sees a lot of big algorithm updates, we saw “Fred” in March and there was an another update around 18th April as well. At this time we are unsure exactly what that update was targeting. We will update you once we know.
Owl – Hoot hoot!
An Owl has flown into our lives this month targeting “fake news”. Google’s latest algorithm called Owl rewards authoritative content and penalises fake or bad quality content. It is targeting offensive and misleading pages.
Links
Google have confirmed this month that links from higher ranking websites do not provide any more link juice than links from lower ranking websites. So, if you were ranked number 5 and you got a link from the website at position 1, it will not provide any more “power” than if you got a link from the website ranking at number 10.
Don’t get this confused with links from higher Pagerank websites as this is certainly still the case.
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.
Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering March 2017
Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering March 2017
First off before we start if you missed last month’s treat then you really should have a read there are some relevant news tips in there! SEO Report Covering February 2017.
Fred Algorithm Update
The big news this month was the ‘Fred’ algorithm update which occurred around the 8th March. The name of the update was called Fred because the person at Google who helps SEOs understand what is going on couldn’t think of a name, so, he called it Fred.
This affected many many websites and as yet we are unsure what the algorithm was targeting. Many SEO’s thought it was targeting websites with lots of adverts however our tests showed it was targeting low quality content. If your websites rankings dropped around that time have a re-look at your content and try and make it better.
UPDATE: Google this week confirmed the above that it was a quality update.
Adverts
Google this month also re-affirmed that you should not have too many adverts above the page, if you really need to have an advert there make it your most important one.
Links
Google also mentioned that it is possible to create a new website without any links to it and rank well for medium competitive keywords, we performed several experiments on this over the years and every time we have seen good results, so, yes it is possible. That said, it is good to hear it from Google.
Site:
Google have said that the site: command is not going away, many of the engineers at Google use this command and would fight it if Google wanted to remove.
This is a handy command that lists all the pages of your website that have been indexed. The figure isn’t 100% correct but we think it is close.
To use enter the following into Google: site:www.youdomain.com
Googles Adwords
Googles Adwords users are now allowed to bid on registered trade marks, however, you are still not allowed to use them in your advert, but this is an important change for PPC users.
Adwords also now allows price extensions for your adverts, a nice addition!
Voice
Followers of the latest tech gadgets would already know about home devices like Alexa and Echo whereby you can talk to the gadget to get search results of questions (amoung other things), a prime example would be to ask:
What is the weather going to be like today?
This month we have seen the first glimpse of how manufactures will make money from these gadgets in the future. Described by Google as a mistake before the customers home gadget replied, it told the owner that a new film is being premiered in cinemas this weekend. Beleive me this is not a mistake but a little look into the future.
Believe me this is not a mistake but a little look into the future!
Crawl Budget
Search engines are very busy things, one thing they do it spider websites to find content for their index database. To use their time and resources effectively they create a crawl budget for each website, basically the larger the budget the more time they are looking at your website.
By reducing the amount of time it takes to download a web page will use up less of the budget. Therefore, if you have faster web pages the likely hood is more of your content will appear in the search engines index.
We have tested this many times and it has been the case for all our tests, so speed up those pages!
DMOZ
DMOZ is one of the largest and oldest directories and has been around for 18 years. Many ‘iffy’ SEOs out there still use DMOZ to get links to their website, tut tut!
Well, they will not be able to do this for much longer, as of 14th March it will be closed down forever.
Mobile
Over the last few months we have been updating you with the latest news on Google’s “Mobile First Index”, this is a completely new index separated from the normal desktop version you see which will serve up the best results for mobile devices.
At the moment if you search Google on a mobile device it will use the desktop index.
The latest on this is that they will only make it live once they know the quality of the results are as good as the current desktop version.
Facebook
And finally…
It was confirmed that Google does NOT use Facebook “Likes” as a ranking signal. Shock! 🙂
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.
Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering February 2017
Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering February 2017
Welcome to the new look Juicy SEO monthly report, this time we list all the important updates and changes that happened in February 2017.
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.
Algorithm’s
At the start of February we heard a lot of reports in the SEO world discussing a possible Google algorithm update. After a bit of research it looks like Google had performed an update which affected certain types of links, these were mainly blog networking links. This occurred around 2nd February so if your rankings were affected around that day this could be why.
Additionally, it looked like on the 7th February Google performed a much bigger update which targeted quality content (Phantom update), or should I say bad quality content. Google have yet to confirm what it updated and as it has been about 3 weeks they are probably not going to now.
If your rankings for some of your pages have dropped around this date we recommend revisiting the content and try and make it a little better. We have a tip below on doing this.
AMP
Google informed us that around 70% of Google News results are now using AMP versions of their websites.
Tip
Do you know how to find out which one of your website pages ranks for a keyword? For free?
Enter the following command into Google and it should list the most likely page for the keyword first. If it is the wrong one then work on the content signals on the page you wish to rank for the keyword.
Site:www.domain.com keyword
Quality Content
Google have said to help your website pages perform better make sure the content actually makes sense. We recommend reading it out aloud, if it doesn’t make sense when you do this then there are things you can change.
Remember: Google’s algorithm is that clever it knows good content when it reads it.
Fast Track Indexing
Google have a ‘fast track’ index system which can be used from their mobile testing pages (link HERE). However, this tool might index the page quickly but it will not stay indexed for long.
This is a handy thing to remember, if you need a page indexed quickly, say for an urgent message or short time product sale. Then use the Fast Track Index.
If you want your page to be indexed for a longer time or even forever then it is recommended to be indexed the normal way, ie via your sitemap.
Contest Links
Google reminded everyone that using a contest which you have to create a link to the contest owners website to enter is the same as paid links and it is not advised.
IE: Win a car, just add a link to our website and we will pick a winner
Google: Hiring an SEO
Google have created a great video to help small businesses hire an SEO or SEO company. It explains what to ask an SEO when hiring and what to expect in an answer. This will help understand who to trust and who actually knows what they are talking about!
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.
Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering January 2017
This report will cover all the important updates and changes from the search engines and social media platforms for January 2017.
Site and Link bye!
Algorithms
It looks like a small algorithm update went live on Google on January 16th, however, Google have jet to confirm this and it didn’t look to be too big.
Mobile
The mobile index algorithm looks to be still rolling out. More on mobile Tips in our SEO report covering December 2016. As far as we can tell not many sites have been hit by this update, however, the sites that have been, have been hit hard.
The Mobile first index not live yet, due out later this year, which could mean a month from now or in December 2017. No date from Google so we will have to wait.
The link: operator
This no longer works. 🙁
By entering: link:www.juicyseo.co.uk it used to list a good slice of the links to your website. This hasn’t really worked for quite a while, but only now Google have confirmed it doesn’t work. You will need to use another way to find your links to your site.
The site: operator
Another popular command you can use in Google search box is: site:
This command lists all your pages indexed in the search engine. This month Google confirmed that there isn’t any order of the pages that are displayed in the results. Some people thought that it was in pagerank order, it’s not.
Bad Links
If you happen to create a link to an external site which the site is ‘bad’, Google recommends that you use the rel=’nofollow’ command. An example of why you would link to a bad site is if you want to show an example of a bad site (we can’t think of any other reason why you would do this). All other links shouldn’t really use this command.
Search Console
There is a setting in search console that you can set the country you wish your website to target. Google this month confirmed that even if you set your site to target UK (for example) traffic it will not harm your ranking in other countries. This just doesn’t sound right to us but Google have said this is so, so we will have to believe them.
AMP
The new’ish format of mobile websites, AMP, is not a ranking signal by Google, however, they will display your AMP version ahead of other versions if you have one.
Penguin
That’s it! There will not be any more versions of the Penguin algorithm which are numbered (last one being Penguin 4.0), instead updates will continuously roll out unnumbered.
That’s it for this month, don’t forget to check out our SEO report covering December 2016 which includes our predictions for 2017 in the world of SEO.
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.
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!
SEO abbreviation fail
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.
Example of Google Promotional Pins
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, Facebookand our RSSfeed.
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…
The SEO road is rarely straight forward
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.
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.
