Google Offers Reasons for Significant SERP Changes via @martinibuster

On a Google Webmaster Hangout, Google’s John Mueller answered the question of how to get a site that lost rankings back on track. Mueller responded that it’s not possible to give specific advice without reviewing the actual site.

But he did offer some general tips for explaining what could be going on.

Question About Significant Changes

The person asking the question said there had been changes in the search results (SERPs) and wanted to know how to get the site ranking again.

“There seems to be a very significant change that took place on January 14th. My traffic and revenue have been negatively affected despite no penalty or notification of any problems.

While I’m used to ebb and flow of traffic and revenue… are you able to give any advice on specific things to focus on to get back on track?”

January 14, 2020 Update?

John Mueller denied that any special update occurred on January 14th and offered a caveat.

“So first of all I’m not aware of anything specific that happened on January the 14th. So I don’t really know exactly what you’re pointing at there.

I also don’t know your site so it’s really hard to say what might be involved there.”

Mueller Comments on Significant SERP Changes

Mueller now states that there are multiple reasons why search traffic may undergo significant changes, not all of them related to an update. So, he’s trying to get the publisher to step back and widen his perspective on the multiple reasons that can explain why search traffic patterns can vary significantly.

It’s Not Your Site, It’s the Searchers

This is Mueller’s response:

“In general I think there are a few things to keep in mind. On the one hand there are lots of sites in the search results so it’s never the case that everyone is demoted and like no longer visible in search because there are always sites that come up as well. It’s not that we don’t show anything in search.

So these kinds of changes are generally pretty normal and they can come and go and that can be due to changes in our algorithms, they can be due to changes in the way that people search.

So if a topic suddenly is no longer as interesting then maybe you’ll start to have less traffic for those kinds of queries just because it’s something that people don’t search for anymore.”

It is Your Site

Next Mueller suggested that the reason a site can lose traffic could be from a change in site quality (something the publisher changed on their website) or a change on Google’s side where they changed how they identify quality.

This is Mueller’s response:

“It can also be due to changes in quality on the website or the perceived quality of a website based on our algorithms.

But all of these things are really kind of hard to guess at without knowing your website.”

Takeaways

SERPs Change

The search results (SERPs) are in a state of change. Sometimes this could be because a competitor is becoming more active online. Sometimes it’s because there are new competitors.

Don’t expect the search results to stay the same.

Searchers Change

If search habits change, then search traffic will change.

In the offline world, for whatever reason, many supermarkets aren’t carrying soy milk but are stocked with multiple brands of oat milk. It’s possible that “traffic” to the supermarket for “soy milk” has declined. So they stopped carrying it.

Here is a 12 month Google Trends graph showing the relative popularity of soy milk versus oat milk. As you can see, there has been an explosion of search activity for oat milk, double the the search trends for soy milk.

The supermarket responded to consumer demand by providing more oat milk.

Similarly, you should always try to keep an eye on consumer use of keywords. It could be that consumer popularity has changed. If tastes change then it may be time to update to what users are interested in. This can most definitely cause a negative change in search traffic.

Site Changes

Sometimes a change on your site can cause Google to understand it less. As a hypothetical example, if a business card site begins publishing marketing related content, it’s possible that Google might begin to see the site as being less authoritative about business cards.

Google Changes

Sometimes Google changes how it interprets search queries and web content. This is something that has constantly been changing for the past couple years (Rank Brain, BERT, etc.).

Always check the search results to try to understand why the winners are winning and you are not. And don’t seize on the most obvious reasons as those could be red herrings.

 

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/google-offers-reasons-for-significant-serp-changes-via-martinibuster/

Notable Changes In The SEO World In 2018

2018 SEO UPDATES AND CHANGES YOU SHOULD MAKE IN 2019

We have witnessed some big changes in the SEO world in 2018. From big algorithm updates to mobile first indexing and changes in Google search console, there is a lot to catch up on.

Search ranking and algorithm updates

Speed update. Google pre-announced that they will be launching the Speed update anytime soon in January but launched it five months later in June. At first, many website owners and SEO professionals were flipping out, thinking that it will adversely affect their site ranking, but Google confirmed that this update will only affect the slowest sites. Google said it “only affect a small percentage of queries.”

Medic update. Clearly the biggest search ranking algorithm update in 2018. Google launched the Medic update around August 1 and confirmed it after the SEO community took notice and approached them to get more information.  At first Google shrug it off saying that it just another “broad core algorithm update” that they do multiple times a year, but this update was different as it specifically impacted health and YMYL categories (YMYL stands for “Your Money or Your Life” pages and are comprised of pages that are important enough that, were they low-quality, they could have a potential negative impact on a person’s life, income, or happiness. As a general rule, the pages that Google requires to be written by experts are known as YMYL pages).

Other algorithm updates. Along with the Medic update, Google also launched March core Update and April core update.

Mobile-first indexing

Google started hinting that they will be going mobile first very soon….in 2016. Yeah, they were planning to go mobile first since 2016 and fully shifted to mobile first indexing in 2018.

For those who are unaware of it, Google finally decided to index the internet from the view of a smartphone instead of desktop. They started sending notifications via Google Search Console to inform the site owners about this shift. Today, Google claims that almost 75% of the websites have been shifted to mobile first indexing.

Here’s a Google guide on how you can prepare for mobile first indexing.

SEO changes

Structured data. Google is putting a lot of emphasis on structured data and schema.  From speakable markup for voice search related queries, a brand new indexing API for job posting schema to image search changes, various updates to recipe markup, new job posting guidelines, Q&A schema, live stream support, datasets schema, how to, QA, FAQs schema and so much more.

Other changes. Google not only introduced new schemas and APIs but also dropped support for the old ones like news meta tag, the standout tag and editors pick in Google news. This move was seen as an attempt to appear unbiased because all of the internet giants are facing allegation of partial treatment from a lot of publishers & users.

Google’s effort around the dynamic rendering and lazy loading content and photos is an effort you’ve seen a lot around with JavaScript SEO in 2018 and will continue through 2019.

Personalization. The two internet giants Facebook and Google were accused of misusing personal data in 2018. However, Google said that they do not use personalization that much and it is limited to showing relevant local results. “BUT” the duck duck go founder says otherwise. He explained in a long Quora post that how Google misuses your personal data and how privacy becomes a myth when you use any of the Google products or services.

Google Search Console and other tools

Google launched a brand new search console in 2018. Just like most of their updates, they first launched the beta version of it and then removed the beta tag and fully launched it for everyone. They also provided a way to import your old search console reports and data to the new one.

Google also started showing Search Console snapshots directly in the search results for site owners. They also changed the limits and quotas on crawling and indexing within search console, removed the ability to use the public URL submission tool & provided convenience to the site owners by automatically verifying them with their Google Analytics account.

Google also tested new form of domain properties for cross site reporting, added a number of reports for event listing, AMP, links, mobile usability and more. They also launched several tools in 2018, and one of the best from the lot was URL inspection tool.

This wonderful tool gives a snap shot of how Google sees your page. Pretty awesome, isn’t it?

They also heard the demand of the SEO community and finally allowed us to view 16 months of historical data. Not only that but they also expanded the API to provide us with 25,000 rows of data.

Google local

Google Posts. Google spent a lot of time polishing Google Posts. They tested many UI around Google Posts on both desktop and mobile searches and also updated the My Business Console to enable Google Posts on the web or through the mobile app.

However, all these efforts from Google didn’t yield the type of results they were expecting since many local SEO experts said that the Google posts traffic and engagement level is on the decline.

Google My Business. Google not only updated the GMB API several times in the past year but also updated the GMB mobile app to allow business owners to manage their listing on the go. They added more insights data, analytics, branded searches, more query data and also launched an agency dashboard as well.

Mobile search and voice assistants

The increasing popularity of voice assistants has made many SEOs take keen interest in voice SEO. Although Google Home is considered the smartest one out there, but the competition is neck and neck since all the tech giants like Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have their own home assistants. But we can give credit to Google home for being the first home assistant that comes equipped with a display.

From an SEO perspective, we couldn’t care less about which one is the best, but rather we are very much interested in how we can beat the competition and  secure the number one spot in voice search results for our clients. We know that the featured snippets play a big role in it, and as the usage will grow so will the SEO tactics to outrank each other.

Google UI changes

Google rolled out a new design for desktop searches, discover feed and more results button for mobile and did many changes to UI.

They also increased and then decreased their snippet length, expanded the autocomplete predictions and started showing cameos of famous people in search results.

AMP. Coming to AMP, Google released a developer preview of showing the publisher URLs in search and not the Google AMP cache URL. They also launched AMP stories in search & a bunch of other AMP features.

Other big Google news

In other news, Google is finally closing down Google Plus after 7 years due to many security incidents.

Continuing from the last several years, there hasn’t been ANY negative impact on our client’s rankings after the rollouts of these algorithm updates and continue to rise as we shift to 2019.  In fact, our clients benefited greatly because of the negative impact on many of their competitors.

2018 SEO SURVEY & CHANGES YOU SHOULD MAKE IN 2019

Moz has released the 2018 local search ranking factors last month & it reveals a lot about the upcoming big changes in the SEO world. If you are looking for accurate predictions, or just want to stay updated about the current trends, we recommend reading the full report.

2018 was a good year for Local SEO since we witnessed a major boost in the rankings of the local players instead of the corporates. This just solidifies the facts that no matter your size, if your site has what it takes, then there’s no denying that you can even beat the mega corporations.

Keep in mind that this survey was conducted among the SEO professionals. They were asked to rank the main ranking factors. Here are some of the key findings.

Local SEO has changed drastically over the past 3 years and if you are sticking to old SEO practices, it will do more harm than good. Also, if you want your site to rank high, you will have to prefer quality-over-quantity. Be it content, backlinks, reviews or citations.

It has been observed by many SEO professionals that you can manipulate the content on the knowledge graph. It mostly works for hijacking brand queries or getting clicks that you will not get normally.

Also if your site is not receiving the kind of traffic that you were expecting that maybe you have to send signals to Google. What it means is that if Google gets the “hey this business is alive signal”, it might boost your rank a little. You can then use this to show a detailed report of your SEO efforts. But you will have to figure out which thing to prioritize. Because there’s a lot of things going on and there’s a good chance that your client will not understand the technical things.  So you may have to break it down in simpler terms.

Factors to pay attention to in 2019

An easy way to check for what Google thinks is important with internal links is to do a site search on Google, type in one of your keywords & see what comes up first. This will help you determine what Google thinks is most relevant for your keyword.  And if the result is not what you expected, fix it and do a search with the same keyword again.

If your business is new, you have to ensure that you have covered all these basics.

1. Order Citations
2. Website is up and running.
3. Page loads quickly.
4. High quality and relevant content
5. Add schema to the site
6. You are using Google My Business posts
7. You are responding to Questions asked via knowledge graph listing

If your business is around for a while, it is going to take a lot more efforts. You can start by checking the source of the traffic, if you are paying for it, then is it converting? Are your blogs up to date. Are you regularly uploading high quality content?  These are only a few of the questions that you should ask yourself about your website.

Be informed that GMB categories are a major ranking factor. Therefore it is often manipulated BUT GMB related spam can be reported on Google Maps or escalated to Google via their various support channels. So if you see anyone misusing it, you should report it.

The conclusion of the survey is hard to sum up but if you will pay attention to the details, you will be able to crack the secret ingredient to a successful local SEO strategy. Although, you will have to do a lot of research to revise your current plans without hurting the existing campaigns.

If you have any questions about this post, please contact me.  If you would like to dominate your local market, definitely call me for a free consultation.

Edward Lott, Ph.D., M.B.A.
President and Managing Partner
BusinessCreator, Inc.

Ed can be reached at

edl@businesscreatorplus.com
855-943-8736
610-437-8822
www.BusinessCreatorPlus.com

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/notable-changes-in-the-seo-world-in-2018/