Want to know all about the latest SEO news in April 2022? Our latest roundup covers everything you need to know about Google’s updates and interesting articles we found on the web.
Google Updates
Google introduced Multisearch
Thanks to the recent Google update, searching on images just got even easier! Users can now search by image and text at the same time. What does this mean for you?
Make sure your images are indexed so Google can show them to users when they’re using Google Lens. If your content is findable in search and your images are relevant, then you are doing everything right to appear for relevant queries.
Don’t forget to follow image SEO best practices to make your content even more accessible:
- Make the image title simple and descriptive. Ensure images are placed near relevant text and on pages that are relevant to them.
- Add good quality photos. Post original images, not just stock photos!
- Use descriptive and relevant alt text.
- Compress images to optimize for speed.
- Use responsive images.
- Follow the general structured data guidelines.
- Use an image sitemap.
- Create good URL structure for your images.
Listen to John Mueller in the video below to know how to use alt text within the context of SEO:
Automatically generated content update
Google now added a new line about automatically generated content to its webmaster guidelines document. They say that automatically generated content is against the guidelines only when it is "intended to manipulate search rankings." Does it mean that we might be seeing more automatically machine-generated content from Google in search now?
A new solution for eCommerce sites
“94% of US consumers abandoned a shopping session because they received irrelevant search results.” Google Cloud has announced the release of Retail Search, a new tool designed for eCommerce stores to help shoppers find more relevant products.
Retail Search changes the shopping experience and makes it easier for shoppers to find relevant products by understanding user intent and context.
Google launched an Ecommerce Essentials video guide
Google announced a new series dedicated to finding solutions to common problems for all eCommerce websites. You can watch it here:
YouTube rolls out Search Insights to all users
When creating content for your website, there are many sources (for example, Marketing Miner ☺) you can use to come up with the right keyword strategy. Now, you can also do the same thing for your video content thanks to the new search insights tool in YouTube Studio. With this new feature, you can now discover content gaps and create new videos that people are interested in. At the moment, you can filter your data by content gaps, geography, and language to get specific data. Data is available for the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, and India. However, YouTube is slowly rolling out this feature to more languages.
New performance metrics in Google Business Profile
Google has added a new Products section to the Google Business Profile performance metrics. Thanks to this new analytics feature, you can now discover how many people viewed your products and how well your products are performing in Google Maps and local search.
TIP: Always make sure you are adding UTM tags to track all organic traffic coming from Google Business Profile. If you’re not sure what URL parameters to use, we recommend downloading this awesome spreadsheet for UTM tagging by Claire Carlile.
Google and Privacy
Google changed the way they handle cookies and rolled out a new “reject all” button in Europe after big fines. The new pop-up menu option will appear on Google Search and YouTube if users are not signed in to their accounts. Last month, Google also updated its policies to help users take more control of their online presence in search. Users can now find new options for removing personally identifiable information from search.
The Digital Services Act
Google and other tech giants will now have to explain their algorithms under new EU legislation. The Digital Services Act will also ensure that researchers have access to key data from the largest search engines to inform their understanding of how online risks evolve. Learn more here.
SEO Spotlight Articles
Key takeaways from BrightonSEO 2022
We put together key takeaways and tips from April’s BrightonSEO conference. We covered everything important from SEO reporting, entity search, the future of search to improving Core Web Vitals, and more!
Take a look at our top takeaways from this year’s Brighton SEO to find out more.
Internal Linking: The SEO Superpower
Want to know why internal linking is the SEO superpower and how publishers are maximizing their organic traffic with this tactic? Barry Adams wrote an interesting article to show how news publishers leverage the value of internal links and how it helps diving more traffic to their news stories.
Marketing Miner news
Major Reports Update
We’ve just updated the entire Reports section to improve the user’s interface. We put a lot of effort to make this section easily accessible and save even more time when working on your SEO reports! Here’s how the new Reports section works: https://www.marketingminer.com/en/blog/major-reports-section-update.html
