Each week the Croud SEO team collate the latest news from relevant sources around the web so you don’t have to. Read through the top SEO news stories for this week below and follow us on Twitter or sign up to our newsletter.
You can’t opt-in or out of mobile-first indexing
21/08/2019
Google’s John Mueller has reminded us that one day there will only be mobile-first indexing and that webmasters cannot opt-out (or into) the index. Ensuring sites are built for mobile users first and foremost, is key to any successful future search strategy; particularly as global web usage on mobile exceeds that of desktop usage now.
Google is helping publishers to get more out of visual searches on Google Images with AMP
25/08/2019
Google has announced that traffic from Image’s new Swipe to Visit feature will now appear in Search Console. The data is available under ‘AMP on Image Results’ search appearance – this will help publishers understand how much impact images will have on the overall search strategy.
Google may be having indexing issues again
20/08/2019
Google has confirmed it may be having a fresh set of indexing issues, again relating to not showing new content within Google Search and Google News. If site content is not showing up in Google, be aware that this may be an issue and Google is investigating.
FTC smacks down anti-review ‘non-disparagement clauses’ in form contracts
19/08/2019
The US FTC is clamping down on sites that include a ‘non-disparagement clause’ within their form contracts in order to prevent negative reviews, often with financial penalties or the right to sue for their violation. These are illegal however under the Consumer Review Fairness Act (2016) and will also negatively affect consumer trust in the brand in the long term; negative reviews can give more credibility to a brand if responded to. If these clauses are in place, they should be removed.
Quick wins for Magento SEO
16/08/2019
SEW runs through best practice SEO quick wins for the Magento platform. This includes detailing setting configurations, site speed improvements and layered navigation, in addition to a discussion on content for the platform.
Google: says dates on articles makes it easier to recognise high-quality evergreen content
20/08/2019
Google’s John Mueller has stated that putting dates on articles and content helps the algorithm recognise quality, evergreen content.
Google search ranking & algorithm update over the weekend?
19/08/2019
There was chatter about the potential of an algorithm update between 16th and 17th August, with the various monitoring tools noticing fluctuations in the SERPs. It’s worth bearing in mind if traffic saw any peaks or troughs over this period.
Google may be testing paginated mobile search results without more results buttons
19/08/2019
Google may be testing mobile search results without the ‘More Results’ buttons – switching back to the paginated version instead.
Google Discover is driving traffic to e-commerce product pages
16/08/2019
Google Discover can show product pages that may be of interest to the user (not just news/articles), and these will show up in Search Console performance reports for the Discover feed. This data can be used to identify top performing pages that are being recommended by Google in Discover and help improve the visibility of other pages.
