Fibre Marketing

Category: Google

Google Rolls Out May 2020 Core Update

Posted on by Chloe

Google is constantly making updates – thousands a year – although more extensive core updates understandably play a greater role in how search results will be generated. On the 4 May, 2020, Google announced that they rolling out a core algorithm update, the second one of its kind for this year.

This is a broad update which will affect everyone regardless of location, industry or language – but what does it mean for your business? Part of our work at Fibre is to properly understand exactly how these updates affect our clients, and how they can position themselves to stay ahead. We’re here to answer a few questions about the upcoming changes.

What are core updates essentially for?

Though the hundreds of smaller updates throughout the year go by largely unnoticed, core updates cause changes that can be very noticeable, internationally, and are likely to have obvious effects on the way your business shows up in search results.

This may not be a bad thing however – at Fibre we’ve noticed that some sectors are more negatively impacted while others will actually see a gain in their search rankings. Updates generally aim to improve content relevancy for users, but this does mean that businesses need to routinely reappraise their SEO strategy and be aware of how any updates affect their visibility. 

How long does the update take to have effect?

Though the rollout is live currently, it’s likely still too early for businesses to notice any major effects. Typically, updates of this size take around a week or two to be established fully. Google’s first core update of this year was in January.

What kind of content will fare better after the update?

Google’s algorithms are designed to reward content that is more likely to satisfy users’ queries. If your content has dropped in relevancy since the last core update, its new search ranking will reflect this. On the other hand, some content will in fact perform better. There are no hard and fast rules – every business needs to do a careful assessment of pre-existing content to find out what’s working and what isn’t.

Wouldn’t the Coronavirus prevent Google’s updates?

The straightforward answer is no. Google have confirmed that scheduled updates will take place regardless. This could be worrisome, especially for those businesses who are already experiencing some volatility. Though some are choosing to essentially pause during lockdown and hold off on making strategic changes to their search marketing plan, it’s worth remembering that the new algorithms have not paused, and any losses experienced during this period may be difficult to recoup after lockdown lifts.

The unavoidable truth is that the Covid-19 pandemic has significantly altered not only consumer behavior but also online search behavior, with Google reporting, for example, that searches related to the virus have been the single most popular topic in the search engine’s history. Even casual users will have noticed the many changes Google has made to provide accurate information and data, as well as prioritise certain helpful content in the public interest.

Thus, Google’s update has rolled out as planned, but the criteria for “relevant” is greatly impacted by the needs of a world ravaged by the Coronavirus. The May core update may prove to be disruptive primarily because people’s searching behaviour is vastly different from what it was just six months ago. Some unexpected content topics are gaining in relevance while previously high performing ones will take a knock.

What you can do

In Google’s constant attempts to refine their search algorithms, businesses are forced to respond by increasing the quality of their sites. Though the changes can seem intimidating, many of the old rules still apply: businesses should always seek to be an authoritative and trustworthy source of truly valuable information, and reassess continually to make sure they’re hitting the mark.

A flexible SEO team can help you narrow down an intelligent strategy that exploits rising trends – such as increasing mobile use, the decline of text-rich content in favour of other formats, the rise of Google My Business and a growing focus on a more local perspective.

A Breakdown of Google’s Featured Snippet Deduplication

Posted on by Chloe

On the tail of their Core Update, the 22nd January 2020 saw Google make some rather large changes regarding featured snippet duplication, and, being rolled out without much warning, these updates have been met with some confusion, to say the least. Here we’re looking at what featured snippets are, what the new changes realistically mean for your SEO marketing strategies, and how best to respond.

What are featured snippets and how have they changed?

Simply, they’re the textboxes that show on Google search results above the result listings, answering users’ questions quickly; they’re now officially part of the main organic search results. Previously, if a site held a featured snippet, they would still be listed on the first page of search results as well. However, with the new change, sites can only gain either a featured snippet or a first page ranking, i.e. it’s been “deduplicated” so only one or the other appears. The regular listing will still appear along with a featured snippet, but it will now be on the second page, usually position 11.

What does this change mean for SEO?

Naturally, this has shaken a few things up, proving yet again that staying ahead amidst constantly evolving SEO trends is a skill that can no longer be underestimated. As more and more updates have followed, and Google’s Danny Sullivan answers concerned questions, people have begun to wonder which ultimately has more benefits for a webpage – a first page ranking or a featured snippet?

The answer is: it depends. If you’ve used snippets before, the change might mean a disadvantage since your URL will now only appear once instead of twice. If you haven’t used snippets, however, your competitors will essentially now have half the URL presence they had before.

Since the changes occurred, many studies have been published analysing the difference having a featured snippet can make, and if it’s worth it. Marie Haynes asked her non-SEO friends (who aren’t considered to be ‘tech savvy’) if they click on the featured snippet or if they scroll down – interestingly, many of the respondents stated that they avoided featured snippets as they thought it was an Ad.

Some more details


Google is overall attempting to declutter and streamline front page results, and the change makes sense for users, even if it has caused some upheaval for marketers. The updates now mean that snippets are counted as “position 1” in the ten positions on the SERP, and if a URL is in the featured snippets, Google actively prevents it from appearing elsewhere in the core search results. But it is possible to have a joint featured snippet and a front-page listing, so long as they both direct to different URLs.

Similarly, featured snippet images are not deduplicated, provided they have a URL different from the snippet text. Carousels, People Ask, Answers, top stories, local listings, Bubbles and other refined featured snippets are not deduplicated. Neither are vertical search integrations (these are not featured snippets), direct answers or knowledge panels. The updates will have no impact on your Search Console performance.

It gets a little tricky, however: right side featured snippets originally were deduplicated (reported as a bug) but as of this article they are not, and will eventually be positioned at the top left.

How to respond to the featured snippet deduplication

SEO marketers are no strangers to rapid changes like this one – after all, Google makes hundreds of updates a year. Skilfully keeping a close eye on traffic and performance will allow a swift response and the appropriate action, which will naturally need to be unique for every company. Featured snippets are a coveted “zero-click” spot and reach your audience even without them seeing your URL. However, there will be times when users actually prefer to click on a URL, and where a main listing would perform better than a featured snippet.

There’s no easy answer to predict which strategy will work best; as with any other SEO update, trial and error is inevitable, and experimentation will show your SEO team which position benefits you most. It’s not a given that a featured snippet will be valuable your site, and it’s not a foregone conclusion that Google’s new changes will damage your SEO marketing efforts. If you do decide to opt out of featured snippets, try to reduce the size of your snippet to prevent Google from displaying it. If you lose a featured snippet, you should be able to revert to a normal first page listing on the SERP.

Not including a few bugs and erroneous results as the updates were initially rolled out, the changes look set for now, with more likely to come regarding moving snippets from the right sidebar and into the main column. However, there’s no need for panic – SEO is all about creatively adapting to new challenges, and there are always intelligent ways to work around any limitation.

 

Your Next Biggest Competitor Is Google: What You Need to Know About Zero-Click Search

Posted on by Ella

The search engine results page (SERP) stands firmly at the centre of organic traffic generation. If you have a top-notch SEO team behind you and you’re lucky enough to land a placement on the first page of Google, you will likely be reaping the results. However, the SERP is changing, and it’s changing fast.

We had the arrival of black ‘Ad’ labels on mobile and the ‘How-to’ structured data markup in May 2019, not to mention the featured snippet deduplication change earlier this month, improved knowledge panels, and suggested content for long-tail search queries. Add to the mix video carousels and related product recommendations, and you’ve got yourself a very saturated SERP offering minimal visibility and poor click-through rates (CTR) for deserving websites.

As a result, for the first time, zero-click search (searches that end on the SERP because the user successfully found the answer to their query) has exceeded the number of searches resulting in organic clicks, at 50.33% to 45.25%. It’s not the best news we’ve heard, but not the worst either – it just means us SEO’s will have to work that little bit harder, and who’s not up for a challenge?

Crowded SERPs and zero complacency

SEO’s and digital marketers need to be one step ahead when it comes to SERP updates. If you think optimising your Google My Business profile once, or drafting your meta descriptions and incorporating a key term or two will earn you that top spot, you are mistaken. The Google SERP is a merciless territory, and you need to either adapt your strategy to suit users’ needs or face falling into the abyss on page 2…3…10…67!

Google is going to do what Google does, and that’s moulding the SERPs to maximise user convenience. If that means whipping a couple of websites off the first page and onto the second then that is what they will do. However it is important to stay resilient and have faith in the ability of your website. If it hosts the right content, is optimised correctly and technically sound, you might be ok.

There is also some comfort in knowing that this tech giant can only go so far. Back in June 2017, the European Union handed Google a €2.42bn fine for manipulating the SERP to favour its own comparison shopping service. Lyric website, Genius, also instigated a lawsuit for $50 million, claiming that Google had violated antitrust law by copying song lyrics from its website through a clever watermarking scheme.

Evidence that the SERP ship will keep on sailing

Amazon

Despite Google already dominating 90% of search engine market share, there has been increasing concern over the majority of product searches starting on Amazon, and unsurprisingly, Google is now working to follow suit. The search giant recently launched a new shopping platform that aims to be the go-to when finding items not available on Amazon. This comes after the revelation that only 22% of consumers are satisfied with their online shopping experience – a fact that Google has decided to improve in its own way.

Google lists similar products together with their prices encouraging the consumer to opt for the cheapest offer. When the user clicks on the product (through the shopping widget) they will be directed to the Google shopping platform. From here they can further click to view the product, see price comparisons and buy the product directly (all while being covered by a Google guarantee). There is no need to visit the retailer site at all.

Google’s BERT algorithm update

The long-term effects of the BERT update back in November are only just beginning to rear their heads. BERT was partly designed to target the results derived from long-tail searches and have since increased the number of featured snippets in 25 different languages. Featured snippets (FS) are special boxes where the format of a regular listing is reversed, showing descriptive content first. They usually hog the first part of the SERP and push organic results further down the page.

Furthermore, since Jan 2020, if you do succeed in obtaining a snippet, that URL will no longer be shown in the organic listings underneath. SEO’s have to choose between one or the other, depending on how much value each brings. This deduplication has resulted in severe drops in CTR for many sites across the board.

Growing Google SERP accessories

  • Ads – Up to four ads can be displayed at the top of the SERP and up to four at the bottom, leaving a lucky few organic results sandwiched between the two.
  • Rich Snippets – A rich snippet sits below the blue title on the SERP. It can include a picture, rating and extended description. They stand out from other results and usually generate a higher click through rate.
  • People also ask – This box is full of related queries to your original search and appears on the first page for pretty much all searches no matter the length of the query. When clicked it can answer your questions with no need to delve further to find the information’s original source. Written a short essay on how to boost your organic traffic? The likelihood is that the user will only read the most relevant paragraph regurgitated in the designated slot on Google and move on – that is, if your content is lucky enough to be featured in the first place.

The SERP epidemic is spreading to all corners of industry. Google job listings, flight price comparisons, hotel suggestions, Google thesaurus and dictionary not to mention the weather and Google reviews are all piled on the first page, distracting your target audience from executing your desired call to action.

What can you do to combat zero-click search?

Combating the zero-click epidemic is no easy feat. It takes a dedicated SEO team, a deep understanding of your niche, constant analysis of the changing SERP and the realisation that content must be produced for the user, not the search engine.

Get this right and you’re on the right track to effectively compete with Google and win back lost organic traffic. Contact us to talk about getting your metrics right first time around and help set your website on the right track for SEO success.

 

 

 

All You Need to Know About Google’s Jan 2020 Core Update

Posted on by Chloe

Google brings out around a thousand updates every year. Some of them, however, have more of an impact on the order of their search results than others.

Recently, a core algorithm updates, known as the January 2020 Core Update  was rolled out internationally and was ‘mostly done’ by the 16th. Known as a ‘broad update’, it’s an update that doesn’t apply specifically to any type of website, industry, region or language.

Reports have been coming in from many webmasters that saw a major impact on the rankings of their websites, and this is why here at Fibre we make it our business to fully understand Google updates and how they can affect our clients. Some of the industries which looked like they were seeing the biggest impact are arts & entertainment, finance, games and news & sports.

What Has Changed with the January 2020 Core Update?

Google’s main aim is to make it as easy as possible for its users to access the information that they are looking for and their updates to the search algorithms are mainly aligned to this. In the past few years, it has been mainly about content – following their E-A-T mantra: Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

The January 2020 update builds on their other updates to ensure that websites that offer relevant, insightful and expert information get rewarded with higher rankings. If your website has slipped down the rankings it doesn’t necessary mean that you have done something wrong – just that someone else might be doing it better than you.

What is interesting to note is that there were fewer changes than the previous core update, which rolled out in September 2019. These decreasing fluctuations indicate that Google is becoming confident in how they assess a site’s quality and therefore, will not deviate as much from previous updates – they’re just furthering the changes they’ve been making over the past few years.

YMYL

One of the most common speculations is that this update involved yet another reassessing of YMYL (Your Money Or Your Life) sites, as reports across Twitter suggest that websites belonging to this category were victimised, particularly if they had thin content. As mentioned earlier, sites operating within the finance industry were affected, along with those involved in the health sectors.

If Google was targeting sites with Trust issues, then it only makes sense for YMYL sites to be hit as hard as they were. There were mixed results across the board – some saw improvements while others did not. Either way, it’s highly likely that they’ll be impacted again by future updates that will undoubtedly occur sometime down the line.

What Can You Do to Improve your Google Ranking?

According to Google, “One way to think of how a core update operates is to imagine you made a list of the top 100 movies in 2015. A few years later in 2019, you refresh the list. It’s going to naturally change. Some new and wonderful movies that never existed before will now be candidates for inclusion. You might also reassess some films and realize they deserved a higher place on the list than they had before. The list will change, and films previously higher on the list that move down aren’t bad. There are simply more deserving films that are coming before them.”

This means that there isn’t much that you can do that is new to ensure that your website is ranked up there near to the top of Google’s all-important search ratings. However, the same principals apply as before and making sure that your website is optimised is vital. An SEO consultant can help you to make your website effective and easily found by your customers and potential customers.

Content

The main key to having a good google ranking in January 2020 is all about content. You need to make sure that your content is reliable, authoritative and that you know what you are talking about. To need to make sure that your content is accurate and information taken from expert sources.

You also need to make sure that your content is completely original and not a re-hash of other content that already exists. Try adding a new perspective, one which uses information taken from a range of reliable sources, with concise titles – and titles that are accurate in the description of the body of your content. It appears that those websites which have been the most affected by the algorithm changes are those with content that is lacking in quality.

Links

You should also consider links in your content. Try linking to your ‘About Us’ page – showing that you are an authority in your field – and make sure that you ‘About Us’ page clearly states how you have grown to be experts as well as any credentials that you have.

Furthermore, if you don’t have one already, it would be a good time to implement an external link building strategy.

Mobile

It is also important, of course, to ensure that your website is fully functional for those who are using mobile devices – both in its navigation and display of content.

Although these changes in algorithm might seem to be disruptive, they are just an extension of Google’s quest to give their customers the best experience that they can. With a good content strategy and attention placed on the quality of your website, you can make sure that you don’t suffer from these changes.

 

How to Effectively Track Your Organic Conversions

Posted on by Chloe

Any time a customer visits your site and carries out your desired call to action – make a purchase, sign up to a newsletter – it’s called a conversion. Organic conversions are those that come from traffic generated from search engines due to their relevance rather than paid advertising. Since this is the essence of your business, properly understanding your organic conversion rate is essential.

Google Analytics is one of the primary tools that SEO professionals use to track conversions. If you’ve previously found the idea intimidating, don’t worry, it’s not as complicated as it first seems, and gets much easier once you dive in and start experimenting. You can even play around with dummy data in a Demo Account so you don’t have to worry about making mistakes with real data.

The success of your campaign comes down to understanding the available data to track conversions, i.e. determine if your efforts are actually working. For example, if you’re experimenting with content marketing, you’ll need real insight into how often to publish new material, which articles are being read, by whom and at what time of day, and whether these readers ever progress to making a purchase or signup. Here’s how to get started using Analytics to get a handle on your conversions.

Google Analytics, step by step

Before you start, you’ll naturally need a Google account, and to sign up for Google Analytics (which is free and pretty easy to do). Once you know what your tracking ID is, the tracking code is embedded into the HTML of every page of your site so it can send information to Google.

You could essentially stop there and get a third-party tool to analyse your data for you. However, it’s worth taking the time to do what you can yourself, since every business is going to be unique, and a more tailored approach will yield a better result.

Create conversion goals

Before you can get started, you need to set up concise and realistic conversion goals. Think carefully about what you consider a conversion in the context of your site.

  1. Find the Admin tab and locate the “View” column, then click on “Goals.”
  2. Choose “New Goal.”
  3. Under “Goal Setup,” you’ll see plenty of options, but you want to scroll down and choose “Custom.”
  4. Next, you’ll be prompted to name and describe your goal – select “destination” as the type for now.

Add your tracking code to your web page headers

What you have to do next is link this to your “thank you” page – the page that appears to your customer after they’ve made a purchase, signed up or any other desirable call to action.

  1. After “Goal Setup” and “Description,” enter the URL of the page into “Goal Details.” You can optionally add how much each signup or purchase is worth to you (this requires a separate calculation using average customer lifetime value and customer acquisition rate).
  2. Remember that if you have multiple campaigns, you’ll need to set up separate goals for each of them, so take your time. Each should have its own thank you page (or equivalent) so you can separate them out when you analyse the data.
  3. Once you’re happy, turn the recording status to “on” and Google will start tracking!

View your data

  1. Select “Acquisition” > “Overview” > “Conversion,” and your new goal to take a look at the data – at first there won’t be anything. In time you’ll be able to see the channels that perform the best, and how many times someone has visited your site.
  2. Check the third column, “Conversion Rate,” to see which channels have the highest conversion rates – these are the channels you obviously want to focus on. The more data you collect over time and the more you fine-tune your methods, the more you’ll understand exactly how customers are behaving on your site and adjust accordingly.

Think in terms of customer journeys

Once you get a handle on your conversion data, you might start to become curious about more than just the very last click on your customer’s path to that final sale or signup. The Attribution tab on the left side will give you more insight into the different ways you can track and analyse the customer journey, so you can give credit for the conversion where it’s due. This allows you to focus your efforts where they really matter and optimise correctly.

If you’re new to using Google Analytics, the key is to start small and take your time. There’s plenty to wrap your head around, but thankfully you can get started right away with just a few principles in place. As most SEO experts will tell, the best way to learn how is to jump in and ‘trial-and-error’ it for yourself.

6 Misconceptions About SEO 2019

Posted on by Ella

Anyone who has a website or knows anything about marketing will probably have heard of SEO – or Search Engine Optimisation. In a world where we use the internet for everything from buying Christmas presents to booking holidays, it is essential that your website can be found amongst the great expanse of the internet. And that is what SEO is all about.

There are two important concepts behind SEO – being able to give searchers what they are looking for as efficiently as possible and understanding how search engines, like Google, produce their search engine rankings.

The world of SEO is ever-changing and full of misconceptions, and here are 6 of the most common ones…

1.   It’s a ‘trick’

Some people believe that SEO is all about trying to trick search engines into putting your website at the top of the rankings. Actually, it’s about trying to provide the best and most useful information to the public by ensuring that the right content is found easily.

An understanding of the technical side of SEO will help the right people find your website, making a search engine more effective and bringing you the quality traffic that you need.

2.   It’s all about the keywords

Back in the day, SEO was all about stuffing your content full of keywords. Today, however, things have changed. It is no longer about getting as many keywords into your content as possible, but about creating content that’s valuable to the user while strategically placing well-researched keywords in the text. This ensures your searchers will get straight to the information that they are looking for and not click away (increasing your bounce rate).

With recent algorithm updates being released, such as the BERT update, search engine optimisation focuses now on answering users’ queries in the best way they can, while being concise and visually-appealing. This balance can be tricky to uphold, but when mastered, it can make all the difference to the reader.

3.   SEO, tick!

Another common misconception of SEO is that it’s something that you do, then tick off the list. Just like any other sort of marketing, SEO is something that needs to be continually worked on and updated.

Not only will you find that search engines like Google, are regularly changing their algorithms which decide on website rankings, but your competitors are also likely working on improving their SEO too. And, frankly, if you don’t keep on top of it, you will find yourself being left behind.

An SEO consultant will be able to continuously look at your website to determine exactly what needs to be done to help you rank at the top of the search engine results.

4.   SEO isn’t very important

Of course, we’re going to say that SEO is important. But it really is.

75% of online marketers never scroll past the first page of search engines, and to get to that first page, you’re going to need SEO in order to compete with the hundreds of sites in your industry. Furthermore, showing up on the first page doesn’t just help you to get new customers; it also builds your brand, credibility and trust. When people read over your website and receive useful, accurate information from you, even if they’re not your customer now, they could turn into one in the future.

5.   Linking doesn’t help

You might think that linking both external and internal, is annoying and unnecessary, but hear us out. In fact, linking and link building are major players in the way that search engines like Google determine popularity and therefore where they are going to rank your website.

But it’s not that easy. There are many tricks to gaining links for your site and it is a multi-faceted task. Google is aware of black-hat link building strategies and understands that some links are included in content purely for SEO purposes, which goes against their user-orientated values. Not only that, bloggers, journalists and marketers are becoming more and more aware of this strategy which makes it harder to get that desired link. It’s an ongoing, ever-changing process that needs to be done in the right way – so take your time and get those links in ethically and organically.

6.   First Place or Nowhere

Although ranking first is certainly not something to turn your nose up at – and you will receive significantly more traffic just by appearing on the first page – Google has been making it harder to improve organic traffic for websites. One reason for this is because, over the years they have released SERP features that continue to take up space on the page, such as featured snippets. Simultaneously, ads continue to dominate the first part of the search results, with Google altering their appearance so that they blend in more with organic listings. Therefore, not only have you got to gain a first-page ranking, you also need to master the art of optimising for other SERP features. Statistics show that the first ranking is being increasingly pushed down the results page, reducing the number of search queries that result in organic clicks to just 40%. Read more on our blog about Google’s latest design of the results page and how this could impact you.

 

Why Low Speed Scores Could Be Killing Your Traffic

Posted on by Chloe

Earlier this month, Google rolled out its new speed reports on the Google Search Console to the general public. This aims to identify webpages that are slow to load and provide advice on how to improve the website’s performance.

Use this new feature and you could potentially boost your website rankings and improve user experience, allowing you to stand out from the competition and get the business results you need.

Keep reading to learn why your website speed matters, how the new Google speed reports can provide useful insight and learn more on how you can improve your website speed.

Why does site speed matter?

Site speed matters because it can potentially make or break user experience and influence your Google rankings.

Since the Google Speed update in 2018, speed has been one of the direct ranking factors used by the search algorithms to rank your pages and is used for both mobile and desktop sites. If your website is slow to load, the search engines could crawl fewer pages and your rankings are likely to suffer as a result.

Unsurprisingly, slow load speeds also affect the overall user experience. When a website visitor has to wait longer than they expect for a page to load, they’re more likely to click away from your page and choose your competition instead.

According to an article titled “Why Performance Matters” on the Google developer guide, “The BBC found they lost an additional 10% of users for every additional second their site took to load.” This can result in a higher bounce rate and a lower than average time spent on the page which damages the reputation of your brand and negatively impact your conversions.

Clearly, for both SEO and user experience, we need to keep website load speed in mind and troubleshoot any issues we come across. But how do you know how your website is performing?

Enter Google Search Console speed reports.

Using the Google Search Console speed report

Google Search Console speed reports were officially released this months after several months of testing.

Available in the Google Search Console interface under the ‘enhancements’ tab, users can quickly test the speed of the sections and URLs on their websites and identify any potential problems.

The results divided between ‘fast’, ‘moderate’ and ‘slow,’ for both mobile and desktop sites and colour-coded for ease of reference.

Google also provide useful tips on how you can overcome any problematic pages and increase your page load speed. Once you make these changes, you can continue to track your performance and make changes until your website performs as well as possible.

How to increase your website speed

If you identify a problem with one or several of your webpages, don’t panic.

There are many ways you can boost the speed of your website. Here are some tips:

Compress your images

By decreasing the file size of your images and choosing the right file format, you can speed up your website load time significantly.

While we do need crisp, compelling images to drive conversion, according to HTTP Archive, they can take up around 21% of the weight of the entire webpage. They also tend to be resource-heavy, impact user experience and slow down the page load speed considerably.

There are many tools, programmes plugins and scripts that can help you to achieve this relatively seamlessly.

The most popular of these is Affinity Photo as it is free and works in a similar way to Adobe Photoshop. Gimp is another programme which can help you achieve the same. You might prefer to use an online tool such as JPEG Mini or ImageResizer.com.

When you compress your images they will naturally lose quality so it’s important to find the balance between file size and quality. Experiment to find what works best for your website.

It’s also important to save images in the right format. Generally speaking, it’s better to choose JPEG for larger images as these have more flexibility with resizing and compression, WebP for smaller images and SVG for logos and icons as this format is vector-based.

Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML

Cleaning up your website code and removing any unnecessary characters, spaces, commas, comments, formatting and unused code, you can significantly boost your website speed and improve both UX and your search rankings.

Although these tiny pieces of unwanted code might not seem like much, they can slow down the time it takes to load your website and increase the crawl time needed by the Google bots to do their job.

Ask your web developer to do this of use one of the minifying resources recommended by Google such as HTML Minifier, CSSNana and UglifyJS.

Reduce redirects

Redirects are more than just annoying. They force your website visitor and Google to wait longer before they can access the information they are looking for.

Start fixing the problem by first identifying where you have redirects on your website. Tools such as Redirect Mapper can be excellent tools to help. Once you’ve found them, ask yourself why it exists and see how it affects the rest of your site. If it’s not essential, remove it where possible.

Use browser caching

When a user accesses information on a website, certain information such as images and stylesheets are stored on their browser. This allows them to be accessed quickly next time they visit.

You can leverage this process by telling browsers what they should do with the various information on your website.

There are several ways that this can be done by asking your developer to add code directly to your website or select a plugin that will handle the process for you. For WordPress, W3 Total Cache and WP Rocket are excellent choices.

Boost server response time

Provide faster results to your website visitors by improving your server response time.

Ensure that you’re using the best host and server that can meet the unique needs of your business. It should provide enough resources, provide excellent customisation option and give you fast results. Also, configure the settings to use HTTP2 and enable the cache so your website loads faster.

Use a content distribution network

Content distribution networks (CDNs) allow your website content to be accessed more quickly to users who are geographically closer to your servers. For example, if you’re a website visitor in Bristol, you’ll access the website on a London-based CDN much quicker than someone based in Sydney, Australia.

They can also provide a range of benefits including improving site accessibility, reducing website downtime, compressing images and delivering a more stable website to your visitors. Ask a professional if you’d like to do this for your business.

A slow website is more than just a minor annoyance. It directly affects SEO and user experience, increases bounce rate, reduces conversions and harms your brand image. Use the new Google Search Console speed reports and you can identify any issues, find a solution and boost your flow of website traffic again.

How To Future-Proof Your Website Against Black Friday Mayhem

Posted on by Ella

Black Friday has become increasingly popular in the UK over recent years and the number of consumers partaking in the furore of discounts and sales grows year on year. In fact, sales are expected to top £7 billion this year for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the UK alone. What’s more, e-commerce platforms generate 300% more sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday than on an average day in November. No business can afford to miss out on this incredible opportunity to boost sales and maximise profits ahead of the new year lull.

The Black Friday event provides every business with the chance to enhance profitability and revenue potential. However, high volumes of traffic can put significant amounts of pressure on websites, rendering them more susceptible to problems such as poor user load times, crashes, and so on. This can lead to a high bounce-back rate and lost sales, which will negatively impact your profits. Particularly considering the fact that purchases made during November and December account for around 20% of the retail industry’s average annual sales. For that reason, retailers must utilise SEO to leverage this traffic, avoid site issues from occurring, and capitalise on sales. Below, we have compiled the ultimate optimisation checklist to help your business get the most out this Black Friday.

1. Don’t disarm a ‘sold out’ product page

Disabling a product page once it has sold out can harm sales for several reasons. Firstly, you are less likely to be able to sell customers an alternative product once they land on a 404 page. Often, potential customers will just leave your site after seeing this. Secondly, disabling the product page without implementing a redirect for the user will impede the link equity of respective backlinks to your site. Backlinks that point to a 404 page ruin the user experience and will affect your SEO. Hence why you must have an SEO strategy in place to manage out of stock products efficiently.

2. Use the same URL every year for Black Friday

It may seem like a good idea to create a few new web pages in the lead up to Black Friday, however this can have a detrimental effect on your success during the event. In particular, newly built pages often take longer to rank than older, more established ones. This means newer pages are less likely to perform as well in the SERPs as a page that’s been attracting quality backlinks

and visitors for many years. Avoid this common mistake by using the same URL every year on Black Friday.

3. Optimise the page months before and months after

Research shows that consumers start looking for the best Black Friday deals as early as September. You should, therefore, optimise your website as early as possible. Get creative with your content and use marketing strategies like discounts and exclusive access to deals, to entice customers to make early purchases. You should also keep your Black Friday page running for a few months after the event. Remember that many consumers continue to look for deals after Black Friday, so don’t miss out on this opportunity to capitalise on sales.

4. Optimise your search for the term ‘Black Friday’

It is extremely important that you optimise your site’s search for the term ‘Black Friday.’ Make sure that you direct your visitors to the right places when they search for terms relating to Black Friday, instead of just showing a ‘no results found’ page. Otherwise, you risk customers abandoning your site as they can’t locate any information on Black Friday deals.

5. Optimise landing pages and structure them correctly

Remember that shoppers will enter your site from different pages. For that reason, you must optimise all of your Black Friday pages, not just the main landing page. This will help ensure that all visitors have the best experience possible. Furthermore, try to limit the number of clicks necessary for your user to get to their desired product page (AKA your link depth), to avoid shoppers becoming frustrated.

6. Have an omnichannel strategy and optimise for mobile

More and more consumers are using smart devices to browse the internet and make purchases online. In fact, nearly 40% of all Black Friday sales came from mobile devices in 2017. This statistic is a clear reminder of how essential it is for retailers to optimise their website to fit the smaller screens of mobile phones and other smart devices. This helps ensures that all customers have a positive experience while using your site.

7. Improve page load time

If your website has a low page load time, then shoppers are likely to become frustrated and abandon your site. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to improve your page load time by

optimising your code, file compression, reducing redirects, and upgrading to a faster server, for example.

8. Set tags for the pages

Setting tags is a great way to group related pages together and make it easier for shoppers to find the content they’re looking for. Tags will allow visitors to quickly narrow down your content and focus on just your Black Friday deals. Make sure that you install the right buttons to take shoppers to pages quicker.

Final thoughts

Black Friday can be a massive opportunity for your business to make the most of consumer spend. All retailers should take advantage of the fact that an increasing number of UK consumers are getting involved in the Black Friday event each year. However, you must be prepared to handle the Black Friday spike in sales. Use the above tips to optimise your website, maximise sales, meet customer expectations, and get the most out of this Black Friday!

All You Need To Know About BERT: Google’s Latest Update

Posted on by Chloe

Last Friday, Google announced a major algorithm update that is being referred to by SEO experts as one of the most important updates in the past five years. The BERT update is thought to impact around 1 in 10 search queries and has been rolled out in Google Search over the past week. Below, we are going to discuss everything you need to know about the BERT algorithm update and how it could impact your SEO strategies.

What is the Google BERT update?

Google state that BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) algorithm is a neural network-based technique for natural language processing.

Essentially, BERT helps Google recognise natural language and understand what words in a sentence mean to the user. This helps search engines better understand the intentions behind queries and provide users with more useful and relevant information.

Why was the update brought in?

According to Google, this update will aid complicated search queries that depend largely on context. Google said in their blog: “These improvements are oriented around improving language understanding, particularly for more natural language/conversational queries, as BERT is able to help search better understand the nuance and context of words in Searches and better match those queries with helpful results. You can search in a way that feels natural for you.” The BERT update means that Google Search has gotten better at understanding more prolonged and more conversational queries, thus improving the overall user experience.

Search Engine Journal provides a useful example of how the BERT update has improved search engine results. They state: “ In New England, the word “cow” in the context of fishing means a large striped bass.” They go on to describe how they typed the phrase, “how to catch a cow fishing” in Google and were provided with results related to livestock and cows, despite using the word “fishing” to provide context.

Now, following the BERT update, the same query brought up search results that are related to fishing and bass in particular. They conclude: “The BERT algorithm appeared to have understood the context of the word “fishing” as important and changed the search results to focus on fishing-related web pages.”

How does the update affect SEO?

Since last week, Google has been using the BERT algorithm to display search results. It has been confirmed that the new algorithm will impact around 10% of all search queries entered on Google Search.

This update will also affect Featured Snippets as Google will select different content from sites to display in their snippets, as previously, in many queries the snippets displayed were not that useful. Now, because of BERT, users will see featured snippets that will actually answer the posed question.

The BERT algorithm update has not been designed to punish sites, it simply aims to improve how Google understands search queries and user intent. Google has in fact already stated that there is no real way to optimise for the BERT update – Google’s Danny Sullivan tweeted: “There is nothing to optimise for with BERT, nor anything for anyone to be rethinking. The fundamentals of us seeking to reward great content remain unchanged.”

However, it’s clear that the new update will not favour sites with poorly written content. This means that all businesses can benefit from implementing strategies to improve the quality of their on-site content in order to get a boost in the rankings while avoiding being trampled by the new update. According to Google’s E-A-T guidelines, content creators should be writing for human enjoyment and real people, rather than focusing on writing for search engines.

How can I improve the quality of my content?

If you noticed a decline in your search engine rankings and organic traffic in the past week or so, then it’s likely that your site has been affected by the BERT update. As mentioned above, there isn’t really a simple answer for optimising in order to avoid a traffic decline. Primarily, there is nothing you can do.

But looking at your content may help. The update is more content-focused so technical improvements to your site are unlikely to improve your rankings. One of the main ways to boost your search engine rankings is by implementing strategies to improve the quality of your content in order to further meet Google’s guidelines.

With that in mind, here are some simple ways to enhance your on-site content and increase organic traffic to your site:

  • Update the content on your site regularly and ensure that it’s well-written, informative, and relevant. Remember to write for real people rather than machines.
  • Work with an SEO consultancy to create effective content strategies. SEO experts can work with you to build brand authority, improve search engine page rankings, and generate increased traffic flow and quality leads to your website.
  • Use a variety of different content on your site and experiment with various marketing techniques to engage as many users as possible.
  • Use natural internal linking within your content to help your website rank higher in search engine results.
  • While BERT is not directly linked to E-A-T, they do vaguely fit together as E-A-T guidelines strongly affect how Google reads your content – therefore, ensure that your site works with these factors.

Final thoughts

It is clear that the BERT algorithm update has had a significant impact on search queries – according to a press release by Google, BERT represents one of the biggest improvements in five years.

Overall, Google’s aim with updates is to enhance the user experience. BERT allows users to find relevant information quicker and use Google Search to find more satisfying results.

Remember, there is no real way for businesses to optimise their websites for the update – the best and most effective strategy you can implement is producing regular high-quality content that has been written to engage and inform your readership, thus improving your search engine rankings.

Do H1 Tags Impact Rankings?

Posted on by Ella

“H1 tags improve your SEO”.

True or false?

In this article we’ll be putting the H1 tag beneath the magnifying glass and assess its true ability to help bolster your website rankings. We’ll also explore what Google has to say and guide you step by step through how you can optimise the H1 tag for your website.

What is the H1 tag?

H1 tags are those snippets of HTML which help highlight the most important information on a webpage. They’re mainly used for page titles, blog post titles, or to name the page or topic and are written like this:

<h1 class=”entry-title” itemprop=”headline”> Do H1 Tags Impact Rankings? </h1>

They help explain the topic of a page to both readers and search engines alike, provide essential structure and generally help the text to stand out from the rest of the page.

They’re usually bigger, bolder and easier to read than the surrounding text and can vary in length from just a few words to an entire sentence.

Without them, the page would lack structure and it would be much harder to attract a reader and encourage them to fully engage with the content.

This is especially important as modern readers are more likely to skim read and have limited time to find the information they need, thus needing signposts like this.

It’s also worth mentioning that there are other tags which range in ‘importance’ from H1 (most ‘important’) down to H6 (least ‘important’). Like H1 tags, they help structure the webpage and provide a page hierarchy for Google to index. This can positively influence search results and simultaneously reduce bounce rates and improve user experience.

Why are H1 tags important to SEO?

Some debate in SEO circles suggests that H1 tags don’t matter, given that they no longer directly affect search engine rankings as they did in the early 2000s.

In the words of Google’s John Mueller, “Your site is going to rank perfectly fine with no H1 tags…”

However, others believe that these heading tags do improve the overall content quality, readability and user experience, despite speculation that they have been ‘crowded out’ by more advanced metrics.

Of course, Google won’t crawl your webpage, signpost your recent inclusion of H1 tags and instantly bump you up to 1st place on the SERP. But Google will notice the change in the behaviour of your readers. For example, whether they click away from your page quickly or engage with your content and keep reading. This could then influence your search rankings.

In the Search Engine Ranking Factors survey conducted by Moz in 2015, tags were indeed the third most influential ranking factor. Additionally, another similar study from 2018 showed that on-page ranking factors such as keywords in titles were the second most influential factor.

What does Google say about H1 tags and rankings?

Despite John Mueller’s statement claiming that your site would rank even if it doesn’t have any H1 tags, he also confirmed that H1 tags can help search understand the structure of prose;

“H1 elements are a great way to give more structure to a page so that users and search engines can understand which parts of a page are kind of under different headings.

So I would use them in the proper way on a page. And especially with HTML5 having multiple H1 elements on a page is completely normal and kind of expected.”

How should you implement the H1 tag effectively?

  • Have an H1 tag on every page: Avoid confusion, increase reader satisfaction and help to reduce bounce rates by making it clear to search engines and readers alike what your page is about. Make sure you include at least one H1 tag on each page.
  • Don’t use more than one: You wouldn’t see a newspaper that had twenty front page news headlines or find a book with several titles. It would be hard to make sense of, let alone easy to read. Keep it simple. Just use one.
  • Make them all unique: Duplicate content is a big no-no when it comes to SEO. Ensure that every H1 tag is unique and bespoke to the page content.
  • Aim for between 20 and 70 characters: Too short and you’re not giving yourself much chance to be descriptive. Too long and you could confuse your potential website visitor.
  • Include H2 tags too: Again, adding other tags helps to provide structure to the page rendering your webpage easier to index and easier for your reader to extract vital information. Aim to include relevant secondary keywords in these tags where appropriate.

Final thoughts

While those H1 tags won’t make or break your search engine rankings, they do help to improve overall user experience and help Google understand your site structure better. This means they’re certainly worth optimising for and getting right.