Algorithm
This month we have seen large Google algorithm updates – mainly not confirmed by Google – which may have affect your search rankings:
- 10th March
- 17th March
- 24th March
Bing have also confirmed that there has been a lot of algorithm updates through-out March, much more than normal. Recommend checking your Bing search results too!
Mobile First Indexing
Google have re-confirmed that ALL websites will be using Mobile First Indexing as of September 2020. Recommend checking why your site hasn’t moved over already and fix any issues before this date as your mobile traffic could be affected.
Nofollow
In last months SEO report (and previous reports for that matter) I mentioned that Google could start using nofollow links as signals for their search results algorithm.
Google have confirmed this is now possible – 1st March 2020 was the date – but as yet they haven’t made any changes, YET!
Bing
This month Bing had a bug in their indexing which stopped whole sites from being indexed. This was only found out by someone looking at their Bing Webmaster Analytics. From their they requested Bing to look into it.
It pays to check Bing’s Webmaster Tools as well as Googles. I recommend checking all your sites are ok as Bing are NOT contacting website owners if this problem is affecting them.
Shopify & WordPress get Google advantage
Many people including some SEO’s think Shopify and WordPress websites get a boost in search engine rankings.
Google have confirmed that this NOT the case.
As if it would be that easy. 🙂
Google My Business
Car dealerships can now have multiple entries for each dealership, each car manufacturer and also each department within each.
So, lots of areas there to exploit if you are in this business.
Pagination
Google have once again recommend using headers (H tags) for paginated pages, also include title tags on NEXT/PREV buttons, you can make them quite specific to explain the next page.
Website Search Results
If your website has internal search results – often CRM’s like WordPress offer this – and you allow Google to index those search pages it will water down the other pages in search engines for your website.
This is to control the crawl budget and will affect larger sites more.
I bet you never thought that?
Don’t forget to test if you are going to do this, identify direct traffic going to your search page and make sure there are replacement pages to serve them.
Featured Snippets
A subject i have written a lot about over the last few months is that Google are removing the right hand side featured snippets, often – if not all – not moving to the main search results.
This month I think the update is complete, I have not seen a featured snippet on the right now for a while.
AMP
Google have come out and said they do not prioritise AMP pages.
Hmm 😉