Google Updates

After a silent June, Google announced 86 changes/updates to their search algorithm this past Friday.  As usual, we are going to highlight the changes that we are most interested in because they result directly to how we optimize and grow our clients’ web presence.   No matter the changes, we are keeping up with what effects your rankings.  There are several updates reinforcing that fresh, unique, and useful content is of the utmost importance to continuing to rank well.  These updates include:

• Bamse. [project codename “Page Quality”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• Bamse-17L. [project codename “Page Quality”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• GreenLandII. [project codename “Page Quality”] We’ve incorporated new data into the Panda algorithm to better detect high-quality sites and pages.
• #82353. [project codename “Page Quality”] This change refreshes data for the Panda high-quality sites algorithm.
• #82666. [project codename “Page Quality”] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• Hamel. [project codename “Page Quality”] This change updates a model we use to help you find high-quality pages with unique content.
• Lime. [project codename “Freshness”] This change improves the interaction between various search components to improve search results for searches looking for fresh content.

Google also announced a few changes to the way they are ordering search results with this update:

• ng2. [project codename “Other Ranking Components”] Better ordering of top results using a new and improved ranking function for combining several key ranking features.

There has not been a lot of information related to this change released yet, but we will be continuing to monitor how these changes will effect rankings in the coming months.

Press Releases and Penguin and Panda

Press releases are one of the strategies that we use at Globe Runner to build links to your website.  We try to write these press releases about current events in your industry and relevant to your business.  Our primary goal with these press releases is to gain high quality links.  In the aftermath of the Penguin and Panda algorithm updates, this is still a valid strategy, however, it is even more important now that press releases for SEO be written as normal, media focused press releases and not just stuffed with links or as promotional pieces.

Mobile Update

Mobile searches are increasingly popular and have extremely high conversion rates.  A study featuring 6000 mobile users stated that 85% of users who searched for a restaurant on their smartphone purchased within 24hrs of the search.  Results like these are why we at Globe Runner stress the importance of optimizing our client’s local pages like Google+Local, Yelp, Foursquare, Yahoo, and Bing local pages.

Social Media Update

Social Media is often confusing and many of our customers wonder about the effectiveness of their actions. The following graph, published by MarketingSherpa in their 2012 Social Media Benchmark Report, shows the effectiveness of each tactic to achieve objectives vs. the degree of difficulty to accomplish the task.  The size of the circles represents the percentage of companies taking these actions.

At Globe Runner SEO, we specialize in social media integration with search engine optimization.  Current with the industry trends our social media strategy focuses on first optimizing your business’ social sites managing your social campaigns, and encouraging blogger relationships.  These strategies ultimately build your brand credibility which builds authority which in turn boosts your rankings.

One final Social update, Google+ is finally rolling out vanity urls for their Google+ and Google+Local pages.  At last, Google+ pages will show the name of the place in the url.  For example, our vanity url will be google.com/+globerunnerseo.  Unfortunately, this is a slow rollout by Google and right now only the biggest players like Toyota, Delta, and Britney Spears have received their vanity urls.  Look for this optimization in the coming weeks or months.  We are monitoring this update to make sure our clients’ profiles receive their vanity urls as soon as they are available.

Just for fun

At Globe Runner we are tech junkies and love our smart phones and as you can tell, we are very much Google-groupies, following all of Google’s updates very closely.  One of the more fun recent updates we were excited about was the update that lets you handwrite your search queries on your smart phone or tablet.

During the Olympics the Google Doodles have been interactive games based on the Olympic sports and these games have been a fun source of office competition before our morning meetings.  However, our favorite Doodle was this one featuring our office’s favorite team building activity.

Resources
https://martech.org/study-50-percent-of-mobile-queries-in-travel-restaurants-autos-result-in-a-purchase/

June updates included two Panda updates, version 3.7 and 3.8, a first Penguin refresh, but there hasn’t been much chatter about those updates meaning they were probably pretty minor.  Google did confirm that links still carry more weight and are more important to your core rankings than social media.  Also, there are no “No Follow Penalties” from Google for including several no follow links on a site.

Other updates in the search engine blog-o-sphere included talk about how to manage multiple listings or locations on your website without having too much duplicate content.  For example, many of our clients own businesses with multiple locations throughout the Metroplex.   A question we are often asked is, “Can we use the same information on each of our unique location pages?”  Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer at Google, leading the webspam team, says that rather than repeat the whole history of the company or a long pitch, it is best to just list the address and contact information for the location and 2-3 sentences about what is unique to that location.  This will prevent Google from flagging your site for too much duplicate content.

Google Product Search has now become Google Shopping.  Google is for the first time discontinuing their free product shopping search in exchange for a “paid inclusion model.”  A paid inclusion model is “a model where companies pay to be listed, but payment does not guarantee that they rank well for any particular terms.”  Product listings will now need to be created through Google AdWords in campaigns for Google Shopping.  If you are already running Product Listing Ads, then you will be familiar with the process because Google Shopping campaigns will be very similar, so similar in fact, that once Google Shopping is fully released, Product Listing Ads will be phased out.  Google Shopping will offer benefits of allowing merchants to advertise their special deals and offers as well as present potential customers with better quality pricing information.

One change to the shopping experience you may notice right away is Google has shifted shopping results to the top right of the page as opposed to the top of the listings.  This will help keep organic results at the top of the page.  See the below for an example of a search I did for “laptop computers.”

PPC Update

Online Marketing continues to be a growing and evolving space. It’s been reported that in the 1st Quarter of 2012 online advertising spend increased 12%, a healthy growth rate. This should come as no surprise, if you’re reading this summary then you’ve already made online marketing a priority in your efforts and chances are your competition has as well.

Globe Runner Update

Monthly reports will now be sent out on the 15^th of the month rather than the beginning of each month.

Resources

Interview with Matt Cutts about what makes a quality site

Google Product Search to become Google Shopping

Search Engine Roundtable Search Buzz Video Recap

Online Ad Spend Up 12% Globally in Q1

All right. 2017 is just right around the corner, and it’s time to do some projections. What do we see is coming in 2017? There’s going to be a lot of surprises, but here’s a couple things that I can tell you with a pretty good certainty you’ll see in 2017.

The first one I did in a previous video, artificial intelligence. It’s here. It’s here to stay. It’s going to be a big part of what consumers experience, particularly on the customer service side, and it’s something that you need to be looking into for your own business.

The next one is schema. Schema is not new in and of itself, but an emphasis on schema and a wider schema vocabulary is going to be an emphasis in 2017.

Just to take a step back, schema is a microformat, where I can markup my page with additional data and allow Google to learn more about it. So, you’ll see it in rich snippet searches, like recipe searches for instance. You’ll see an image and a rating and some of the top ingredients. You’ll see that in more and more categories. We’re already seeing it in some e‑commerce categories, restaurants and physical location categories. More categories you’re going to have schemas. That will be a 2017 addition.

Another one that people are seeing, and there’s some controversy, is native Google content. This is Google actually pulling content off of your website and not sending the user to you but rather giving user the answer on Google. So it’s native Google content, basically answering the question. If it’s a clear question, Google feels like they should be able to just answer the question. Now, this is good and bad. If you can figure out a way to game the system ‑‑ which, by the way, we’ve figured out some ways to game that system ‑‑ and get content to rank as native, you still are the top spot and you’ll get a good click‑through rate. Even though it’s controversial, we see it as a big boon.

The last one that I’ll talk about is site speed, particularly mobile. Mobile speed is huge and Google rolled out AMP earlier this year. This is a very big deal which stands for “Accelerated Mobile Pages”. I’ve talked about it in another video. Very, very important to be taking advantage of technologies like that so you have a very, very fast experience on your website.

That’s just a few things that are going to be critical in 2017, that need to be part of your strategy. If your marketing team isn’t talking about it already, you’re behind the times. Get in touch with us if you need help staying up with the times. That’s what we do. We would be glad to help you. Go to GlobeRunner.com, and I look forward hearing from you.