Fibre Marketing

Tag: Google

Recent Events That Have Impacted SEO

Posted on by Chloe

The world of SEO is always changing. It’s developing and adapting to make sure that it keeps up-to-date with what’s going on in the world – ensuring that the public can get all the information they need as quickly and efficiently as possible. That is the point of search engines, after all!

It is important to know how the on and offline world interact with each other, and how this will affect your website’s traffic and conversions.

When events impact search engines, you must be prepared. Some of these changes can happen organically, over a long time, and some are reactions to more specific events. To be able to market your business properly, having a good understanding of SEO is vital, knowing how people search at different times and how it can help you attract customers.

Here are some examples of recent events that have impacted SEO and the way that the internet is – and will be – used.

Google SOS Alerts

One of Google’s features is known as an SOS Alert. When something happens in the world where information needs to be given out, Google creates special search results which help spread this information. Recent situations that have warranted Google SOS Alerts include the tornados in Tennessee and Coronavirus.

A typical SOS Alert features a red box at the top of the screen, followed by ‘top stories,’ then a series of useful links followed by either  local Twitter updates or the usual search results (pictured below), with authoritative sources taking the top rankings. They can also display information about how to donate to help to support relief efforts. All of this information is made clear, so that it’s easy to see and share with those also searching for the particular ‘SOS event.’

Coronavirus

Coronavirus is having a much more significant impact on the virtual world of SEO than you might have thought. This is due to how it’s affects on the outside world.

Some of the effects of Coronavirus on search and SEO include:

  • More people searching and buying online as people self-isolate, spending less time outside
  • Changes in what people are buying – face masks and hand sanitiser sales, for example, are going through the roof
  • More people looking into how to stream events and communicate with colleagues online, from home
  • An increase in people working from home
  • Predictions of a slump in the travel industry, with fewer people searching for travel information and people looking into travel insurance
  • The impact of a slower economy

All of this means that the trends of the search terms are different than usual, and you should try to take this into account when you are considering your content marketing strategy.

Elections and Political Advertising

In a world of fake news, micro-targeting and social media, political advertising can have a massive impact on society – especially in the outcome of elections and referendums. With the targeting of certain demographics of people, we have seen some political parties or viewpoints having a massive impact and the internet is really only just beginning to get to grips with this.

Media in its many forms has always played a big part in affecting how people see the world and ensuring that the media that we consume online is fair and true is vital.

In November 2019, for example, we saw Google announce that they were to ban political advertisers from targeting British voters except on characteristics of gender, age, and a rough geographical location in an attempt to create a balanced perspective for people.

Another way that elections have affected search trends is the nation’s quest for information. During the last election, for example, Google saw massive rises in searches for information about Jeremy Corbyn, party manifestos and what certain political parties stand for. It also saw surges in searches regarding how to leave the country after the election…

Changes in Copyright Law

The online use of content is an issue which the internet has never really got its head around. Whether it is a blatant forgery, the use of art and music without paying for it, or illegally downloading films, there is nowhere else in society where this is happening to such a level.

The EU has laid out a set of rules which are designed to help to prevent these – what many people consider to be – unethical practices, through their copyright reforms. The laws involve those who display snippets of material having to pay licensing fees, as well as forcing companies to police the content that they publish. It is important if you are carrying out any sort of content marketing, that you are fully up-to-date with these new laws.

Google had tested new SERPs to ‘try to understand what the impact of the proposed EU Copyright Directive would be to our users and publishing partners.’ The results looked sparse, like they hadn’t finished loading.

It’s predicted that the new laws will full roll out in 2021, meaning that next year will certainly be a memorable one for the internet.

As the world moves forward, we will always be coming up against new challenges. Whether it is a long or short term issue, it is important that for your business to succeed online, you keep updated on how these issues are impacting SEO.

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.

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.

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.

Google SERPs Potential New Layout?

Posted on by Chloe

Google makes regular core updates multiple times throughout every month, seemingly increasing each year. In 2018, Google stated that they had made over 3,000 improvements to search, compared to 2009, where there were only 350-400 changes reported. Some of these are hardly noticeable, while others have a significant impact on search engine results and SEO rankings, which is why it is vital that any algorithm update Google releases are closely monitored.

Here at Fibre Marketing, we track these search changes and help our clients beat the updates to improve their rankings.

Recently (Sept 28th 2019), it has become apparent that Google was testing a new search results page design for desktop – something that caught our attention.

With this particular test, Google has added several additional options to the area at the right and left of the search results that was previously a blank white space. The left side now offers more search filters, while the right side has related search options that allow users to expand their search and look at related search result pages.

(click on images to expand)

Types of searches this will apply to

It appears that the new search results design update will only be available on certain types of searches. This may include searches for:

  • Songs
  • Games
  • News
  • Video

So far, it seems that the new design cannot be replicated and may not apply to searches for movies, books, artists, or bands, according to Barry Shwartz and Adarsh Verma, who reported the test. Although this could of course change at any time in the near future.

Impact on search results

As with all Google updates, this has left people questioning what effect the changes will have on search results.

Decrease In Click-Through-Rate?

Firstly, it has the potential for less click-through rates as users have more options when searching for answers and information online. This also includes YouTube searches, as the videos from the video platform are integrated in the results page here, although it is currently unclear whether or not the video will play in the SERPs, or if it’ll open in a new tab on YouTube itself.

On the other hand, music-sharing platforms such as Spotify will clearly benefit from this change, as they are linked directly underneath the video, above fold.

Of course, all of the above features will likely see search results themselves pushed further down the SERPs than they already are. Google tailors the design of their results pages to the user in order to optimise their search experience. This means presenting the answers within the SERPs themselves, as shown by this potential design, which will likely result in an increase in zero-click searches.

In June 2019, 49% of all Google searches ended with zero-clicks. Google has now become a competitor within a variety of sectors, including hotels, flights, song lyrics, etc., which has landed many website owners in a panic as they watch their organic traffic decrease. This potential search design will not likely help this situation.

A UX-Based Design

The changes could likely result in quicker searches as users will be able to locate the information they are looking for more efficiently using keywords. Google is constantly looking for ways to improve the user experience, and these changes to the results design page could help search results become more UX based as it offers more shortcuts to what they need, if they are wanting a media search itself.

A Tough Challenge For Organic Search Results

However, this new SERP design will push the organic results further down page, a continuing trend with any new search update. Over the years, Google has added a staggering amount of features onto their results pages over the years – 39 overall, according to Paige Hobart’s talk at BrightonSEO – from featured snippets, map packs and knowledge cards. And then, there’s the Ads.

If your site is currently ranking as the top position, this does not necessarily mean that your listing will be above fold. Therefore, site owners have adapted their strategy over the years to create more user-friendly content which will appear in featured snippets, as well as implementing schema to take up more space in the results. It is not clear from this recent test how featured snippets will show up – beneath the media results, or above.

Regardless of this, if Google does go ahead with the proposed search design, site owners will continue to watch this drop.

Final Insights

So far, the only real information we have is that Google has made changes to its search results page design. The full effect of these changes on search results is still unclear, but it is likely to create a more UX-based experience that could decrease organic traffic to your website – although it is too early to say for sure. Currently, it appears that these changes only apply to a limited number of search types including songs and games, and it is unknown whether the changes will apply to other search types at a later date.

All You Need To Know About The Google Update To Reviews Rich Results

Posted on by Chloe

Making your business stand out online can be tough what with all the competition out there – it’s therefore vital that your search listings stand out in search results. Rich results, created by schema markup has always been one of the best and most popular ways to do this as it allows for prices, dates, star ratings and more to show underneath your meta title. These features can work wonders for your organic performance, as over 80% of local business consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

However, on Sept 16th 2019, Google implemented changes to their reviews rich results policies and procedures, affecting how it shows review rich results and rating stars. The overall aim of this change is to improve the rich results for search users as well as addressing abusive implementation (e.g. ‘self-serving’ reviews) that have occurred over the years.

All website developers should strive to understand these new changes to ensure that their knowledge is up to date and relevant.

What Are Reviews Rich Results?

Reviews rich results are those results which show at the top of the Google Search Results. They are based on the reviews and ratings of a product, service, or production that have been produced by

Rich Results

a well reputed and established website. There are many different types of products and services for which a review can be left, including books, events, guides, local businesses and establishments, software and applications, recipes, and other similar features.

Reviews rich results tend to look similar to the image shown on the right.

The Google Update

The changes that Google have released, at their very simplest, are designed to limit the number of reviews rich search results that can be made; notably, self-serving reviews are no longer allowed.

The schema that are now allowed are:

  • Book
  • Course
  • Creative work session
  • Creative work series
  • Episode
  • Event
  • Game
  • How to
  • Local business
  • Media object
  • Movie
  • Music playlist
  • Music recording
  • Organization
  • Product
  • Recipe
  • Software application

Clarification

Google’s primary goal with the new regulations were based on preventing businesses from self-promoting their own material, content, services, and the like – hence, creating ‘self-serving’ reviews. For example, reviews about business A that have also been posted on business A’s website will no longer feature as a reviews rich result; only reviews which have been made by unbiased third party individuals will be considered.

A more detailed case could be a search result featuring the review markup showing something like 5000+ reviews, when realistically they actually have 100. These extra reviews have been generated by the business themselves, and therefore do not count.

This update therefore is to protect the integrity of the content and ensure that the results are of the most relevance and use to the searcher as possible; biased self-reviews, unsurprisingly, do not meet this requirement.

This algorithmic update was met with confusion amongst the SEO community, and so the team at Google Webmasters updated their blog to clarify the regulations more clearly. They stated that, essentially, you can’t review your own local business and then host it on your own website. See the Twitter discussion here.

But Why Do We Care?

You might be wondering why you might need to be worried about these new changes. While they don’t necessarily need to be all that consequential, it should be considered as they could impact a page’s ability to show its own star rating. This means that everyone should always work to ensure that they have reviewed and analysed the new changes to ensure that their markup meets the regulations in order to avoid their rich results being dropped.

In addition, for people who make use of these reviews rich results when making a search, the new changes could also be beneficial. The changes are heavily based on the idea of making it easier for people to use the system without having to worry about reviews from biased sources. This means that search users can feel confident in the quality of the reviews that they are finding for the products or services that they are searching for, thus receiving a better user experience from Google.

How should you respond to rich results review display limitations

Even though this update is only a small change, it may have an indirect impact on a site’s ranking as these reviews can affect organic performance. Therefore, if your website uses review rich results, you should strive to understand the new changes.

Elimination of self-serving reviews

The changes to self-serving reviews are now in place for entities that are a local business, organization, or anything in between. The same will be the case for third party reviews—such as a TripAdvisor review—that are embedded into a business’ website. Already, there have been a large number of cases of sites losing their review rich results, as reported by numerous tools including Mozcast (35.8% rich results, down from 39.2%) and SemRush (47.6%, down from 52%) – statistics dated two days after Google’s announcement.

It should be noted that there will not be any penalties for businesses who still display these self-serving reviews; rather, the case will simply be that the snippet won’t appear in the Google Search results.

Mandatory “name” property in featured snippets

In addition to this, Google have also announced changes that have been made to the ways in which you name your reviews. In order for a review to be eligible for showing  as a reviews rich result, they will now need to feature the name of the product or service in their markup—and failing to do so will mean that the review won’t be possible for being a reviews rich result.

Final Thoughts

If you’re deeply involved with SEO, you’ll know that review rich results are not a ranking factor, so it won’t your site’s position. But, adding this markup took websites a long way as it can affect the number of sales and users, information that search engines use when selecting the best results for the search user. So this small change will likely have a significant impact amongst the SEO community and search results, as we’re already started to see. It is therefore vital that you get to grips with the latest regulations to ensure that your organic performance isn’t affected a great deal.