Catch up on the latest SEO news, interesting content and actionable tips you shouldn't miss with this October roundup.
October 2022 spam update
On 19th October, Google rolled out a new global update affecting all languages to improve the quality of search results. If you notice large changes in ranking or organic traffic, take a look at Google’s spam policies to understand why you rank lower or not appearing in search results at all.
MM TIP: Did you know that we automatically add notes on days with major Google updates that could have affected your rankings? You can use the new notes in Rank Tracking to cross-reference any changes in your organic search traffic.
Goodbye Google’s Webmaster Guidelines!
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines has been the go-to source for SEO best practices for 20 years now. However, they now decided to rebrand it to Google Search Essentials. The updated guidelines split into technical requirements, spam policies, and key best practices. They are simplified to provide clear guidance on how to build helpful websites. The new Technical requirements section helps users understand how to publish content that Google Search can access and index.
We also recommend learning Google’s core practices that you should consider to improve your search visibility.
- Create helpful and people-first content.
- Add keywords to the title, main heading and other descriptive locations, such as alt text and anchor text.
- Make your links crawlable.
- Follow the best practices for image and video content too.
- Tell people about your site
- Enable structured data and other search appearance features that make sense for your site.
- Control what information Google sees on your site and what is shown in search results.
New site names and updated favicon logos in search results
We can now see new site names in the mobile search results to easily identify websites in the search results. They more prominently show the name of the website at the top of the snippet. There are different sources that Google uses to identify the site name for a search results. But you can use structured data on your homepage to indicate your preferred site name. Google also recommends revisiting your favicons and providing an icon that’s at least 48px.
Check the Site names documentation for more information about how to update your details.
Data Studio is now Looker Studio
The tech giant has brought Data Studio into Looker, and it is now named Looker Studio. Looker Studio currently supports over 800 data sources and it also brings more features and analytics tools.
Does Google ignore hashtags in a URL?
Have you wondered if Google ignores what's behind the hashtag or number symbol when crawling your web? In the latest #AskGooglebot episode, John Mueller explains that the part behind the hashtag is often ignored by search engines. They view them as a reference to the specific location on the web page. So when it comes to crawling and indexing, all hashtags refer to the same page and only the beginning of the URL is used. And yes, you're guessing right. Pages with JavaScript are handled differently. Learn more:
Our Top 5 SEO reads
Highlights from BrightonSEO October 2022
We joined the second round of this year’s BrightonSEO conference and collated some of our favourite talks for you to read. So if you didn’t get around to all talks or want to learn something new, you can catch our key takeaways here.
Interview with Kristina Azarenko: Technical SEO
Technical SEO is one of the most crucial aspects of ranking your website properly. And it’s super important to get it right. Check out this interview with Kristina Azarenko to learn about her journey in technical SEO, common technical SEO and website migrations challenges, and hear some actionable tips.
5 New Rich Snippets for E-commerce Websites
Working in eCommerce marketing? Rich snippet results are more eye-catching and can lead to a higher organic CTR. Brodie Clark shared additional five rich snippet types for eCommerce page that many SEO professionals are unaware of.
Zero-Clicks Study
Semrush has conducted a search behavior analysis to explore the rise of zero clicks a bit closer. The study revealed that 25.6% of desktop searches and 17.3% of mobile searches are zero-click searches.
TikTok SEO: Understanding the TikTok Algorithm
Lidia Infante summarized her investigation into the principles behind the TikTok algorithm and covered the main TikTok ranking factors such as video engagement, content, locality, device suitability, and others. A great read for all marketers who want to get more users looking at their brand’s content.
Marketing Miner Insights
New Projects Update
We have added some great improvements to the Projects section You can now:
- see Google’s algorithm updates on the graphs
- create custom notes
- assign notes to specific keywords/tags/all keywords
- new estimated traffic metric
- use multiselect functionality
Take a look at our video to see how they work:
Data Extractors Update
Did you know that you can export your Google Analytics and Google Search Console data with no limits in Marketing Miner? We now also support the Universal Analytics properties. Simply connect your account, select a specific date range and apply your data filter. It’s super quick and easy.
You can download your Google Analytics and Google Search Console data without limits here.
