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.
How to use Schema to create a Google Action
26/11/2019
Google recently announced publishers can now create Google Actions via schema markup. Actions are applications that are designed for Google Assistant, and include the Domino’s delivery action; they are initiated when a user prompts Assistant using the phrase “OK, Google…”. The actions schema is available across a wide variety of content types including news, recipes and podcasts and can enable increased brand awareness if used appropriately.
A new study reveals how consumers choose local businesses in 2020
25/11/2019
A new study by Ignite Visibility has found that 59% of users prefer to search for local information on a desktop, with 70% relying on Google more than any other search engine for local business lookups, whilst reviews are very influential in purchase decision making; even one negative review was enough for some users to stop them interacting with a business.
Complex search-results pages change search behaviour: The pinball pattern
20/11/2019
A new study by Nielsen Norman Group has found that Google users aren’t following the traditional top-down view of the SERPs, instead, users are ping-ponging in a non-linear pattern, causing clicks to be spread across the results (in 2019 the first result gained 28% of clicks whilst in 2006 this was 51%). Another striking finding was that only 2% of users move past the first page of results.
Google’s ‘Duplex on the web’ enables the Assistant to buy movie tickets for you
21/11/2019
Google is enabling Assistant to be able to purchase cinema tickets via Duplex. If this proves popular it will pave the way for further integration of services within the Google, with brands missing out if they fail to partner.
App Store SEO: How to diagnose drop-in traffic & win it back
25/11/2019
Moz released a guide to understanding a drop in-app store traffic and how to recover; this includes steps to investigating why traffic declined and identifying issues, then understanding how recovery can take place by monitoring competitors and through optimisation and localisation.
Better content through NLP (Natural Language Processing) – Whiteboard Friday
22/11/2019
Moz’s latest Whiteboard Friday looks at creating content by using NLP for both users and robots. This looks at relationships between entities, words and how users search, understanding salience, NLP APIs, tips for writing human and machine readability and using tools to review content.
PayPal research finds businesses turning to social media to sell
20/11/2019
Paypal’s Commerce Index has revealed that the number of UK business selling on social is predicted to double in the next six months, this will increase by 600,000 UK retailers – the UK lags behind other countries when it comes to social commerce with only 24% of UK business selling via social with the global average at 35%.
Empowering the customer with choice and control
22/11/2019
A white paper by UPS has found that across 18,000 online shoppers worldwide, 94% would be prepared to use a slower and cheaper delivery option if it were offered. This can help increase conversion rates if delivery is a pinch point for users.
Google Search recipe bug continues into Thanksgiving cooking season
26/11/2019
Google is yet to fix a bug within its recipe rich results causing the images to disappear. This can be rectified by getting Google to recrawl the URL via the URL Inspection Tool, though this can only be done one URL at a time.
