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 did the 2018 SERP changes impact organic search?
21/01/2019
SEW reviews how the SERP has changed in 2018 and what its impact on organic search has been; this includes switching to HTTPS, mobile first, featured snippet/knowledge panels, related products, video optimisation, image search and the extended length of titles and descriptions.
Data: Local search trends from 2017-2018
18/01/2019
Yext recently released some findings on local search trends based on more than 300,000 customer business locations active between 2017-2018. They found that new business reviews are up 87% YoY, there were more interactions with AI-enabled services than their own websites, more consumers took action in the search results and local pages saw increased consumer actions.
Accelerated mobile pages: Are they worth it?
22/01/2019
SEL reviews where the AMP project stands today and whether or not it’s worth adopting, concluding that it largely depends on your site; content publishers benefit from the greater speeds, however due to the loss of loss of UX elements other webpage types should likely stick to dynamic pages with a responsive design.
How reputation became a major ranking factor in SEO
22/01/2019
SEL discusses how reputation is potentially factored into the Google algorithm, recommending close attention is paid to aspects beyond technical SEO; ensuring good usability, good customer service and great content as well as responding to negative reviews and eliciting positive ones.
Ways to succeed in Google News
17/01/2019
Google released a Webmaster Central post on how to improve performance in Google News. This includes recommendations related to the headline and dates, duplicate content and transparency.
How to make your content more accessible to the visually impaired
18/01/2019
SEL runs through tips on improving content for the visually impaired, which includes using strong alt text descriptions creating friendly URL, image titles and file names, using schema and applying accessibility principles to videos, PPT and PDF.
Links as a Ranking Factor – Still Going Strong
17/01/2019
Stone Temple conducted it’s annual study on the impact of links on search rank and found it still correlates strongly.
Uncovering SEO Opportunities via Log Files
23/01/2019
Moz released a how-to guide for using log files to discover SEO opportunities, this includes understanding what they are, useful tools to help the analysis, what to look out for in the files and how they can be actioned.
