Fibre Marketing

Tag: SEO

Fibre Predicts The SEO Landscape for 2020

Posted on by Ella

In 2018 alone, Google made over 3,200 changes to search, and while this figure is yet to be determined for 2019, it does show how much can change in the space of a year. And with another busy year nearing ever closer, the team at Fibre can only guess what might be in store for the SEO landscape.

So without further ado our Director, Adam Adlkish, kickstarts our SEO predictions for 2020.

Adam Adlkish – Company Director

Prediction: ‘It’s all about brand. I believe brand strength is key to success with organic traffic, especially for online and e-commerce enterprises. There will be less focus on anchor texts orientating around brand offerings, which has been an SEO strategy since 2003.’

Tell us more: More recently, organic listings have been pushed further down the results page with featured snippets, map packs and Ads dominating the top positions on the SERP. After this, usually the first few organic results are well-known, high authority brands, leaving little wiggle room for a smaller company to make their mark and persuade users that they too can be trusted.

This is where branding strategies are key. Building brand awareness and credibility can be done through undertaking numerous tasks such as, comment and review maintenance on GMBs, achieving quality, authoritative links for the client that are relevant to the user, and displaying signs of E-A-T across as many aspects of a site as possible.

Edward Ziubrzynski – Search Performance Manager

Prediction: ‘For E-commerce category pages, I predict that content heavy SEO strategies will slowly become less important. Instead, Google will better rank pages that immediately satisfy the intent of the searcher,  favouring pages that offer immediate access to products and/or services as opposed to typical keyword optimised content that will interfere with the user experience of the page.’

Tell us more: While Ed’s prediction goes against the content-first rule of thumb for SEO strategies in the mainstream, we are currently seeing some success with one of our clients who have strayed from the norm. Originally, heavy blocks of content were placed at the top of the page and while this did give the client a small boost in rankings, it certainly wasn’t enough. We then decided to cut down the text so that the user could find the product listings quicker, and we’ve been seeing steady improvements in rankings ever since.

Google likes to see fresh content that marries providing value with a great user experience. If users struggle to find your products, it’s compromising on their shopping and that’s not going to help bolster brand visibility.

Ella Morley – Search Engine Marketing Executive

 Prediction: ‘The gap between average desktop (46.52%) and mobile (45.98%) market share in the UK is rapidly closing. While website rankings are still primarily orientated around the desktop version of a site, we’ve seen some significant hints from Google in the past couple of years or so pointing towards the need for a more mobile-friendly SEO approach.

 It’s been a slow slog towards Google ranking mobile content alongside desktop, but I think that 2020 will be the year we see more progress. With Google defaulting mobile-first indexing for new sites this July and other tools jumping on the hype, SEO’s will start to direct more attention to their mobile SEO strategy and harness that 51.51% of web traffic.’

Tell us more: As an SEO agency, we cannot stress enough the importance of mobile SEO. If your website is not optimised for mobile you’re missing out on roughly half of your traffic potential. Slow user load times, difficulty navigating the site on the go and poor adaptation to a smaller screen size, are big red warning signs indicating that your user experience is not up to scratch.

Chloe Price – Content Marketing Specialist

Prediction: ‘Content creators are increasingly desperate for links and seeing as interest in SEO continues to grow rapidly, more journalists and bloggers have become aware of the true aim of guest posting. Publishers will be putting up as many barriers as they can, including increasing guest posting prices, paywalls or demanding more link-for-link exchanges. However, as this goes against Google’s guidelines, sites that ‘sell’ links will see decreased traffic and SEO performance sooner rather than later.

 Link relevance will also be the top priority now that branding is becoming more of a focus. In order to encourage brand awareness, the links need to place clients as authoritative sites in their industry so that consumers make a connection with the company and will want to return. If a link does not encourage engagement, then it will be rendered useless.’

Tell us more: As we mentioned earlier, there were many updates this year based on link trust, and affiliate sites were knocked down the rankings and disavows grew in significance. These updates certainly tell us that link quality is far more important than quantity, and so a few links on incredibly good sites will be worth more than hundreds of sites with hardly any authority.

Before, links were inserted into articles just for ‘link juice’ purposes, but when users followed them through there wouldn’t really be much interaction on-site following that. Now that brands are needing a push, any links built must provide value, even if that makes finding accurate sites more of a challenge.

Jamie Smith – Search Marketing Specialist

Prediction: ‘In regards to local search, I believe we’ll see even more of a push towards Google My Business (GMB) pages.

 With the SERPs continuing to evolve to show more local results, we are seeing local map packs reign as the top dogs. Ensuring that businesses have this profile updated and continuously interacted with will be a stand out factor in comparison to those who don’t. 

 I can also see the GMBs becoming more of a one-stop-shop. As with the current hotel format (showing increased filters, resources, and an additional fourth map pack addition), Google allows you to book without even visiting the website. It won’t be long before we see other businesses actioned in the same way.’

Tell us more: Google My Business is certainly becoming more and more of a competitor for businesses, as features are constantly being added that have the potential to steal organic traffic, which has been kickstarting a lot of controversy in the industry. This illuminates the fact that in order to give your business a boost, you need to optimise your GMB listings to the best possible state.

Local packs are taking up more room on SERPs, and if you’re not included, you’re going to see the effects with your traffic, and looking at the way Google’s search features are going, businesses will need to work harder if they’re involved in the travel or hospitality industries. Booking flights, rooms and orders are being integrated into search. Jessica Bowman from Search Engine Land has previously commented that Google is becoming more of a portal and less of a search engine – and it’s certainly plain to see across many searches.

Emma Howell – Content Marketing Specialist

Prediction: ‘I think that building a brand up through a natural network of links will become more of a priority. Furthermore, relevance of the anchor and context concerning the link will be very important.’

Tell us more:  Emma’s prediction aligns with the theories of the general SEO community: that branding is one of the strongest aspects to be considered in any search strategy. As mentioned earlier, this suggests that link builders will play a role in gaining placements on sites that will drive traffic and conversions, as opposed to creating links that simply sit on the page for SEO purposes.

The anchor of a text is certainly an interesting one. Ever since the Penguin Algorithm Update, Google has been paying close attention to anchor text and the keywords used, which is why nowadays most SEO’s play it safe and work to build a more natural linking profile.

Eryk Kilianek – Junior Search Specialist

Prediction: ‘Small high street businesses will struggle to attract new customers without appropriately optimising their Google My Business listing. Google has made it relatively straightforward to achieve some local visibility and build trust with your target market using their free tools such as GMB and website builder. In my opinion, 2020 is the best time for local businesses to build up their listings and trust with local customers before the competition.’

Tell us more:  We all know what a difference having a Google My Business profile can make – after all, 86% of people look up the locations of businesses on Google Maps, and it’s your GMB listing that helps you sit on top of that map pack. It has also been estimated that a whopping $10.3 billion worth of sales are lost every year due to false or missing local listing information.

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.

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.

Why Your ‘About Us’ Page Is Replacing Your Business Card

Posted on by Chloe

Before the digital world took over, business cards were one of the best ways to promote your brand and foster new business. However, with a plethora of online alternatives providing instant information for consumers at the touch of an enter key, the humble business card is slowly vanishing from the enterprise space.

According to data from Internet live stats, the number of daily searches on Google is rising exponentially – currently standing at 3.5. billion – and when consumers arrive at your website ‘About’ page, you need to be confident that you have followed SEO best practice to ensure maximum conversions.

Designing your website doesn’t have to be a complicated feat, so long as each component is carefully considered, planned and executed within Google’s guidelines. 81% of shoppers will conduct online research before making a purchasing decision, so it’s important that your website represents your business accurately and assures users that your company is the stand out competitor.

When users arrive organically at the website of a business they’ve never heard of before, they will likely conduct a quick online investigation. According to a study lead by KoMarketing, 52% of visitors will be looking for an ‘About’ page. Without one, businesses risk being hidden from potential customers.

An ‘About’ page:

  1. Allows customers to get to know you, the basis of a relationship between them and your brand. The better the relationship, the more successful your business will be.
  2. Present your achievements, experience and credentials, improving your site’s E-A-T (Enterprise, Authority and Trust) and thus helping your rankings.

The problem is, many businesses fail to create ‘About’ pages that effectively convey their message and brand mission to consumers. It is also all too common for companies to overlook the weight of this page entirely, despite evidence from Google Analytics that suggests ‘About’ pages are one of the most frequented webpages.

With this in mind, let’s look at the key features of an ‘About’ page, and what is needed to assure users that your company is one that they can trust.

Tell Us Your Story

When creating content of any form, it is vital that you keep your audience engaged. They need to be interested enough to carry on reading.

This page does not need to be an essay, but it does need to explain where you came from, what your goals are and how you or your business got started. Focus on key elements that have influenced you in some way and how they’ve impacted your company. Your readers don’t need to know how many suppliers you’ve been with or a year-by-year growth timeline – just the parts that emphasise your relevance to your target audience. It is generally advised to cut out any jargon – you’re better off using a simple tone of voice that suits your company ethos and writing in a way that users will actually understand.

Make Your Mission, Values and Visions Clear

This is probably one of the most important features to consider when creating your ‘About’ page. Your mission, values and visions provides an insight into what your business entails – they reflect pretty much every facet that makes up your company.

Is your company environmentally conscious? What do you believe in? These are your values, and they say a lot about your company culture.

Note, your values are not the same as your mission statement. Your mission is why your company exists and what it wants to achieve in the short term. This matters to users as it’s more action orientated and thus suggests what your team are doing to put their values into practice.

Now on to your vision statement. Your vision statement should explain what your business is aiming to achieve in the long run. The simplest way to differentiate this from your mission statement is to think about what goal your mission serves. How will your company change its sector? Where does your company want to sit within your industry or even general society?

E-A-T Factors

If you know anything about SEO, you’ll know that E-A-T is a major ranking factor (if you weren’t aware of this, click here).

There are many reasons why an ‘About’ page can work wonders for E-A-T. You can include your credentials, testimonials and experience within your content to show that you are a reliable business to go to within your field. When talking about experience, don’t forget to mention how long your company has been operating – this will fit in nicely with your story.

To demonstrate your enterprise, you’ll also need to include information on any qualifications and awards that you’ve obtained. Have you been mentioned by relevant experts from your industry? Integrate this into your page (and link to the source to make it easier for Google to associate you with them).

By following the factors above, Google is more likely to recognise your business’ website as credible and will favour you when ranking sites. Just remember that the aim of your content is to clearly demonstrate you or your business’ purpose, and how you intend to meet it. This information should always be easily accessible.

Include A Variety Of Features

User experience (UX) is an indirect ranking factor when it comes to websites. Google’s aim is to improve UX as much as possible by presenting high-quality sites to its users.

Visuals are a good way to achieve this, as they break up your text and make the page look less intimidating. They can add value to your content and, if they’re personal, they can add an element of company culture which users often find appealing. They don’t necessarily need to be headshots of your team members – there is a large variety of media you can go for instead, such as images, videos, infographics, and timelines. Don’t forget to optimise images for SEO.

A Quick Recap

There are many key elements that make up a quality ‘About’ page. We’ve explored the most essential features above, but here is a quick check list for you to take note:

  • The story of your business
  • Your values, mission and vision statements
  • E-A-T factors such as credentials and experience
  • Different forms of media

By including these different elements, your ‘About’ page will speak volumes and assure users that you and your team are capable of meeting their requirements. This will contribute to your overall visibility and keep customers coming back to you, boosting your rankings and future conversion rates.

Why Reducing Your Link Depth Is Critical To Your Blogs’ SEO Success

Posted on by Ella

A new study has found that the structure of many blogs could be having a detrimental effect on their search engine rankings. The main issue is due to link depth, which is the average number of clicks from the homepage of the blog to the relevant content. The study by Perficient Digital found that two thirds of websites have a link depth higher than five. This is likely to have a negative effect on the PageRank and ability of search engine bots to crawl the content. Shockingly, the study found that – ‘31.5% of the posts were 21 clicks or more from their respective home pages,’ ‘9.5% of the posts were 50 or more clicks away’ and some posts even exceeded 1,000 clicks away.

The problem with high link depth

The main problem with having a high link depth is that your content will essentially be buried below multiple other links. This in turn, sends a strong message to the search engines that your content may not be relevant to the users query and as a result, reduces the websites search spider crawl budget. What’s more, if one page in the chain of links has an error, then the crawler will be unable to access any of the pages further down the link chain. Therefore your content may not be effectively crawled for long periods of time. Keep in mind that your link depth should ideally be between 3 and 5, depending on your website’s size and structure. You can easily check your average link depth with the help of online SEO analytics tools.

How to identify your link depth culprits

A number of factors may be affecting your link depth. Here are four of the most common culprits to be aware of:

1. Pagination

While pagination may be an essential tool for improving user experience and reducing server load time, content on your website that includes lengthy paginated lists can actually cause significant problems for SEO. For example, if there are 40 pages in the list but the highest page you can click to go to automatically is page 6, then you would then have to make many clicks to reach higher pages. Pagination can also be a catalyst for duplicate content issues, seeing search engine crawlers waste precious resources on indexing poor quality content.

2. Faceted Navigation

Filters implemented on large sites can help users narrow down their search results to find a desired product or content. However often construed as a SEO nightmare, a navigation strategy with poor filter combinations can create new pages at volume. This can quickly increase link depth, swallow up crawl budget and dilute link equity. It is advised that website developers should avoid using multiple filters simultaneously (two at most) to maximise traffic potential and to limit the URL being changed. Be aware that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ strategy and you may have to manually create indexable landing pages for some of these key filter combinations.

3. Tracking parameters in URLs

Tracking parameters are used to deliver useful information about the source of a click through the site’s respective URL. Parameters can be derived from a huge range of combinations and can quickly generate URL variations en masse. Many low value URLs that display similar if not the same content, can lead to keyword canibalisation and impact site quality. Parameters are also a detriment to page performance as they often look less clickable and trustworthy in form.

4. Broken URLs

Broken links on a website can appear on an internal and external basis. Internal links on-page often return a 404 response as the page the link is leading to may no longer exist. Broken external links take users from your own website to a non existent page. Both types of malformations will impact user experience and likely diminish your click through rates. If these issues are not resolved quickly, Google will identify the deterioration of the website and reflect this in your search rankings.

Ways to amend your blog content structure

Fortunately, there are some simple ways to amend your blog content structure and reduce your link depth. Here are some key actions to consider:

Add internal links to valuable content

Determine what content on your site is most valuable to you and most importantly to your audience. Adding plenty of internal links – such as navigational links and contextual links – will help demonstrate to search engines that this content has value and should be seen by users. As a general rule of thumb, the optimal internal linking structure follows a pyramid hierarchy. See here for a trusted guide to internal linking.

Systemise your site structure

Ease of user experience and display of original, relevant content should be at the core of your website’s ambitions. Cleaning up your blogs’ structure doesn’t have to be an overly technical process and can be achieved through numerous strategies. Succinct site menus, functional categories, tags and keeping content updated and in line with Google algorithm updates are a couple of examples that come to mind.

Rethink your content strategy

If you are new to the SEO scene, prioritise quality content over quantity. Make sure you check your old content and either revive it or remove anything that is outdated, low quality, or no longer relevant. However, before deleting any content, be sure to perform rigorous audits so as not to upset your rankings in the SERP. Auditing your content will help you evaluate what adds value to your site and what is harming it. When refining your website, consider whether it meets Google’s E-A-T requirements and aligns with new algorithm updates before making any changes.

Final thought

Businesses should be aware that their blog structure can have a significant impact on their link depth and overall SEO ranking. It is important that all businesses take action to effectively improve their websites in order to ensure that their web pages are effectively crawled by search engine bots and are accessible to users. Use the tips above to help identify and improve any issues with your link depth or alternatively speak to us for specialist advice.

Leveraging Schema To Increase Organic Performance

Posted on by Chloe

Update:

From 16th September 2019, Google made changes regarding the regulations of Reviews Rich Snippets. Please see here before implementing this schema markup. 

If you’re somewhat involved in SEO, you will have likely heard of phrases such as schema and structured data. You also may have heard that by leveraging your schema or other forms of structured data, you can help improve your site’s rankings and visibility through featured snippets, knowledge graphs and other search features.

But what exactly is schema? Is it an essential for your website? And how does it help increase your organic performance?

In 2018, John Mueller stated that while structured data will not give you a ranking boost, Google understands that schema is important for a website as it can help them understand your content more, potentially leading to higher rankings.

Therefore, schema implantation is recommended for any website, especially now content is one of the most significant factors of SEO. If you’ve created quality content that complies with the Quality Guidelines, it may not rank if Google does not understand what exactly is on the webpage.

To understand what schema and structured data can do for your business, follow our guide below.

Schema and Structured Data – what’s the difference?

Schema

Schema, also known as schema.org, is a project formed in 2011 across multiple search engines. It consists of different mark-ups made up of tags that you can add to your site’s HTML to help search engines understand your webpage and the way that page is displayed, thus resulting in better representation in the SERPs.

Essentially, it is these tags that tell search engines whether your information is about a specific place, person, movie, book, etc. These tags are classed as structured data.

Structured Data

When it comes to structured data, it is essentially a way of adding a standard set of values to the text on your webpage that will help search engines understand your content. It’s a bit like talking them through your website section by section so they can make sense of every part of it.

These set values are part of a hierarchy:

  • Itemscope – this simply paves the way for a new item on the webpage.
  • Itemtype – there are many different itemtypes, not just movies, people and places as we mentioned earlier. The broadest type is ‘Thing’, which has four different properties: name, description, URL, image. There are then more specific properties within these broader types, known as Itemprops, the final instalment in the hierarchy.

Here’s an example from the Schema.org webpage to break this down a little more.

So you have a webpage about the movie Avatar which includes details about a ‘Person’, which is a specific ‘Thing’. Say that person is James Cameron (director of Avatar), so that’s a specific type of ‘Person’. You can even broaden this even more, by saying that the film he directed is Sci-Fi, a specific type of ‘Movie’.

So, by adding these into your schema markup with the correct tags,  the search engine is now aware that this page features a link to the Avatar trailer, a Sci-Fi film directed by James Cameron. See here for how this would look in HTML code, or for a quick reference, here’s their image of this code:

Schema

And the difference?

To summarise, structured data puts names with values within your HTML code to help ensure that search engines thoroughly understand your content and index the webpage correctly. Schema on the other hand is the overall project that provides the set of standard values and definitions for the tags.

To check that your structured data is validated, you can test using Google’s Structured Data Testing tool.

How do you leverage schema to improve organic search performance?

There are a variety of ways to use schema that can help boost your visibility and presentation in the SERPs. This can be done by adding different features that can help promote your site and company as a whole.

The way that these results are presented were previously labelled as ‘rich snippets,’ but now they are ‘rich results’, and can take many different forms such as carousels, additional data, star ratings under the meta title, etc.

Here are a few examples of different types of schema that can help boost your visibility.

Location Schema

Schema can work wonders for local SEO, as it allows search engines to understand location-related information for your business, such as addresses, phone numbers, HQ location, events and more.

The problem with location schema is that not many people realise that it can work for local SEO as they have verified GMB listings and therefore believe that they do not need to do anything more. But the reality is that using schema can help provide essential information into your business’ knowledge panel.

Here are some ways you can do this:

  • You can apply Postal Address schema, which adds your local address for your business. Click here to see how.
  • There is also the Local Business schema mark-up which is ideal for brick and mortar businesses. This schema allows you to add opening hours and types of payments that your company offers.
  • The Organization mark-up allows you to specify your logo, social links and contact information.

As an example, the screenshot below shows The Lab Spa using schema markup for their business.

Reviews and Ratings

By using Ratings schema mark-up, star ratings and reviews that your business has received on its website will show in the SERPs. This can be added to certain content types, including:

  • Local businesses
  • Movies
  • Music
  • Recipes
  • Products
  • Books

This schema can be particularly useful for restaurants hotels and bars, as shown here:

Events:

This is incredibly beneficial for spreading the word about an event that you have organised. When your events show in the search results, you’re able to direct users to the listing most relevant to them while also taking up more space in the SERPs – streamlining traffic to your site.  As you can see below, the dates and locations of your event (so in this case, performances of Les Miserables) will be listed underneath the meta description and will take you straight to the landing page when clicked.

Event Schema

You can find the vocabulary for this schema mark-up here.

Product Information:

The Product schema mark-up allows businesses to show more information about the products they offer directly in the SERPs. So, underneath the meta title and the green URL in search results, users can see the product’s price, ratings and if it’s in stock, as seen below.

Product Schema

This particular schema can be beneficial for small businesses who are competing against well-known brands and organisations, such as eBay, Ikea, Amazon, or other large companies that operate within your industry. If your offerings are more price competitive, the searcher will likely come to you.

Breadcrumb:

This mark-up allows users to understand a website’s hierarchy by implementing a series of links in the SERP. It’s a useful schema to apply when the ranking page doesn’t appeal to the user as you can present a few other pages that you have on offer. To expand on the image below, the blue links under the meta description are known as ‘child pages’ or ‘breadcrumbs’. These results clearly emphasise the ‘Enhance Your Site’s Attributes’ page, but in case that doesn’t interest you, two more pages, (such as the, ‘Establish Your Business’ page), display below as an alternative option for the user. In doing this, you will increase your chances of users arriving at your website from an array of different search queries.

Breadcrumb Schema
The schema mark-ups listed above are just a small selection of possible options available to you and your website. While schema and structured data are not quick fixes for the architecture of a site, it can certainly enhance your chances of gaining featured snippets while improving your organic listings. This way, your website is more likely to be noticed over your competitors, improving your click-through-rate and organic traffic. With so many different Schema and structured data mark-ups available, they can truly be a benefit to any business looking to improve their organic search visibility.