Monthly SEO Report Covering June 2017
Welcome to June’s SEO update report, if you are a regular reader you will already know that each month we create a rundown of all the important changes within the search engine industry and squeeze it all into a 2 minute read.
We only report on changes that could affect your website in search engine results and provide tips on how to help your website to perform better.
If you have missed any previous month’s reports don’t forget to read the last few as they will still be of use. Here is a link to ALL the latest SEO Updates for 2017.
Algorithms
As we all know Google and in fact, all search engines are continuously updating their algorithms, we know that there are many updates every day. However, these are mostly small tweaks and do not affect too many websites. When Google updates an algorithm in a big way which affects a large percentage of websites in the past they haven’t always confirmed that they have actually done anything. This makes SEO’s and webmasters see the rankings change for their sites without knowing why.
Google this month have said that they will communicate large algorithm updates in the future (only large ones mind!), so we might know a little bit more on why our websites move on certain dates.
Make sure you are following Juicy SEO on either our Newsletter, RSS feed or Facebook and we will keep you informed.
There looks to have been a Google algorithm update on the 25th/26th June 2017, we are unsure at the moment what has been updated by Google but it looks like it has affected a lot of websites. As soon as we know more we will let you know.
Fred
At the start of March 2017 (7th or 8th) Google released the algorithm Fred into the World. Fred scores the quality of the content on your pages. As you would expect the quality score affects your ranking positions. If you think you have been affected by Fred we recommend you heading over to Google’s Fred Guidelines to find out what you need to do to help your website.
Glossary
If you are new to search engine optimisation or just need a little refresh on the phrases used in our report head over to our SEO Glossary page, everything you need to know in one place.
Voice Search
A new aspect of SEO is to now think about voice search. Over the last 12 months, users using their voice to make search commands (mainly on phones) on Google has increased drastically Therefore, it makes sense to optimise your website to cater for these types of searches. Think about how you speak and the type of questions you might ask about your industry.
That said, Google will be helping us all out soon with voice search by adding voice analytics to their tools like Search Console and Google Analytics. We don’t know when yet, but it’s coming.
Mobile First Index
A few months ago Google confirmed that they are working on a search index purely for mobile devices. Initially, they thought this new index would be launched in 2017 however it now looks like it will be 2018. We will keep you posted.
If you are currently running a mobile version of your website like: http://m.mydomain.com and you are thinking of changing the site so it uses the standard URL like: http://mydomain.com for mobile devices too, then it is advised to make this change before the new Mobile First Index is rolled out. We recommend making sure it is all done and re-indexed before the end of 2017.
Whilst we are on the mobile index subject it is advised that you should make sure the content on your mobile version of your website is equivalent to the content on your main desktop version. It doesn’t provide a good experience if the mobile version only shows a small percent of the content of the main desktop version.
Google Test My Site
Google launched their “Test My Site” tool around 18 months ago, it’s a tool that analyses your website to check that it is mobile friendly and offers advice on how to improve it. This month Google has made an update to this tool which now offers more information. If you haven’t tried it you should give it ago, here is a link to the page.
Competitors Spammy Links
We have all been there, when analysing why your competitors are performing better than you for certain keywords you look at their link profile. Low and behold you find a tonne of spammy links to their website.
Is it helping them?
Should I also create links from those spammy sites?
Well, the answer is no. Google is a very clever bit of kit, it knows which sites have spammy links and will simply ignore them. In fact, they often penalise sites for having spammy links. That said, you should certainly try and get links from the sites which are not spammy! 🙂