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.
Google RankBrain: Clearing up the myths and misconceptions
05/03/2019
Search Engine Watch released an article detailing the myths and misconceptions of Google’s RankBrain, this includes looking at what exactly RankBrain does, how it works, what it may be doing, does it use user experience signals, whether or not it can be optimised for and if it influences rankings.
Why mobile first design is the only 2019 strategy that will work
05/03/2019
SEW a post arguing that mobile first is not the only strategy that will work in 2019 – the argument is made to stop using responsive mobile design and outlines seven strategies to creating a mobile-first website alongside improving the all important page speed.
Eight shortcuts to find long tail keywords (and how to use them)
04/03/2019
SEW outlines eight shortcuts to finding long tails keywords, this includes detailing a number of different tools available to marketers.
SEOs on Google e-commerce category recommendation: ‘I’ll stop doing it when it stops working.’
05/03/2019
Google’s John Mueller has suggested that webmasters should stop putting content in the footer on category pages and instead if the content is useful put it in a more prominent position.
Mobile Voice Usage Trends 2019
05/03/2019
A study by Stone Temple has revealed that voice search is continuing to grow amongst mobile searchers, with users also becoming more confident in using voice search in public (though a home alone remains the most popular environment to use the feature). Most people cited speed as the reason for use.
AMP user experience updates include video, lists, more
01/03/2019
Google released an overview of all the updates it has made for AMP in January. This includes improvements to video which allow video to be minimized and include ads, UI improvements that allow the resizing of lists, infinite scroll, input masking in forms and better transition in lightbox mode. They also added better integration for Consent Management Platforms, a feature to allow publishers to display localised dates and AMP Stories now allow publishers to enhance a Google ad request with additional targeting information.
March 1st Google Update: The Mysterious Case of the 19-Result SERPs
04/03/2019
Moz released an analysis of the SERP fluctuations that were reported from the Feb 28 to Mar 1, which appeared to be Google testing a new SERP that includes a position 0 and then 19 results. This has since returned to normal, but may indicative of things to come.
Google: Multilingual Sites Using Same Image URLs Should Localize Alt Attributes
05/03/2019
Google’s John Mueller has stated that it is fine to use the same images across multilingual sites, however the alt-attribute should be changed to the localised language.
