Google is finally taking action against those site owners that are abusing event markup in the search results. Those caught will have their markup removed from the search results and receive a manual action. Event spam started showing up a lot more frequently in the search results several months ago. Instead of using the markup […]
Archives for 2017
Google: Why Featured Snippets Rankings are Volatile
If you are an SEO, chances are pretty good you have managed to score a featured snippet in the Google search results. But, you probably noticed that the rankings are pretty volatile around featured snippets, and see two sites repeatedly flip-flop in and out of the featured snippet position, even if neither page has changed […]
Google Home Services Ads Now Local Services Ads; Expanded Categories
Google is changing the name of Google Home Services Ads to Google Home Local Services Ads. At Pubcon, Nathan Johns from Google talked a bit about Home Services Ads and revealed that they were changing their name. Google Home Services changing to Google Local Services, @NathanJohns #pubcon — Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) November 9, 2017 One […]
Google Adding More Structured Data Search Features to Search Results
At Pubcon yesterday, Gary Illyes confirmed that Google is planning to implement more search features to the search results that are pulled from structured data found on webpages. As part of a longer conversation about schema being used to help Google better understand and rank webpages, he said that Google will be focusing quite a […]
Adding Structured Data Helps Google Understand & Rank Webpages Better
At Pubcon yesterday, Gary Illyes from Google focused quite a bit of time on structured data, stressing the importance of its use by site owners. And while schema is popular for some types of websites, many sites are not implementing any kind of schema at all, or perhaps only default schema their CMS adds. Illyes […]
Google: How to Handle Expired Content on a Site
Sometimes there is content that expires… such as job postings or non-repeating events that doesn’t make sense to keep indexed, especially if it leads to a poor user experience to leave it up. But for best practices purposes, what is the best way to handle this content? The question came up in the last Google […]
Google: When to Remove & When to Improve Low Quality Content
When should you remove content versus improving it when it is low quality content on your site and you are concerned about the impact that spam or low quality content could have on your site overall? There are two approaches, either removing it or improving it. The question is about low quality content and the […]
Initial Google Rankings of Brand New Pages Will Adjust Over Time
We have often seen when adding a new page to Google’s index via Fetch and Submit that sometimes those pages rank very well initially, but then rankings drop and they never rank that well again. It came up in a recent Google Webmaster Office Hours because someone was seeing their pages initially rank well but […]
Google: Indirect Benefits of Improving Page Speed
Google talks a lot about page speed being a ranking factor, but you don’t hear them talking too much about the added benefits of page speed that aren’t ranking specific. When answering a question about page speed and load times, John Mueller from Google also talked about some of the things that can improve when […]
Google: Using Keywords for Internal Anchor Text in Content
While many SEOs have perfected strategies for internal linking structure for things like the navigation, when it comes to internal links within the actual content, this is an area where SEO best practices for links are often forgotten. But even these links are important when it comes to the use of anchor text. The question […]