Industry NewsOrganic Search (SEO) Content This month in SEO [May 2020] Jun 1st, 2020 As the lock down starts to ease it is important to evaluate the positives that have been seen online through SEO in order to learn from these moving forward and how the Google impact has been felt and what this means moving forward for businesses wanting to grow further online Elements of online trading have continued to thrive during this period and with such uncertainty around the easing of the lock down in relation to opening up of main high streets, shops and shopping outlets then an online presence is likely to become more critical for business than previously thought. As shops and outlets do start to open up, it will be interesting to evaluate the Google Analytics data so see the impact this may or may not have. Are Sites still performing? Yes. As during the entire lock down period there has still be a demand for products and services and with the continued message of ‘staying safe’ and ‘staying at home’ then online has really thrived. This has been the case for several of Clicks clients where in some cases record days and months of revenue has been taken through the organic channel. And more pleasingly is that revenue also grew. Of course the visibility grew inline These are just 4 separate examples of the performance and data Click are seeing for our clients. Click are still in close contact with our clients as to ensure supply chains are being maintained and are regularly reviewing the data and where appropriate making the needed strategic changes – have a fluid strategy during this time is key. The User Focused Content (UFC) element of a site is extremely important, especially with what Google is telling us about next years update, but during this time UFC has seen a greater increase than normal, more so in April than May but the data is showing us clients which have implemented UFC correctly (with appropriate internal linking) in line with search volume and trends have also seen an increase in performance. The figures and graphs are particularly encouraging considering that there was a roll out of a Google update during this time. Google Update – May The nice people at Google did decide to roll out a broad core update on the 4th May – now for the SEO community there is always an anxious wait to see what the update will bring and how it will affect the client performance. But the worry should never be the case, having the right strategy in line with what Google continues to inform SEOs on shouldn’t see any negative impact to the site’s and key word performance. That being said during this update period, which did feel longer than normal, Click did see fluctuations with specific keywords for a handful of clients, but whilst this was still being rolled out Click didn’t undertake any needless knee jerk reactions. The roll out was complete on the 18th 3-4 days later from this, the rankings which saw fluctuations did settle in their pre update positions. The key is always to let the roll out be completed, leave it a couple of days to settle and to then undertake analysis to see what has actually been impacted. Google have been busy in May Not only did they complete the update but they also rolled more updates Web Vitals “Web Vitals initiative provides unified guidance about quality signals that are essential for all sites to deliver a great user experience on the web. We’re happy to announce that all of Google’s popular tools for web developers now support measurement of Core Web Vitals, helping to easily diagnose and fix user experience issues.” – Taken from https://web.dev/vitals-tools/ This is now included in Google Search Console New Schema format being tested on desktop Google is likely testing this out in time where knowledge and User Focused queries are at their peak, and are likely to evaluate the data for future roll outs. Click’s SEO team will also be reviewing data in Google Analytics to see if this is having a knock on impact on the numbers of sessions which are actually coming through to the site. The future of Google search The biggest update they provided was their intention to roll out an update in 2021 which will have a focus on evaluating page experience, which is ultimately the user’s experience on site. The user, user journey and certainly user content has been key for many of Click’s strategies for over the past couple of years, so I would expect any impact on existing clients to be minimal but this means we are not taking our eye off the ball or the data. Click’s SEO team will be dissecting this update over the coming months and making the appropriate changes and updates to existing strategies should it be required. An important part of Page Experience update is to note that Google still seeks to rank pages with the best information overall, even if the page experience is subpar. Great page experience doesn’t override having great page content. Click have seen great performance for User Focused Content and this is something that will thrive even further during this update. Sites should be great anyway and the user journey when building a site or optimising a site should be at the key forefront of the businesses mind. Should you have any concerns or queries in relation to this then please get in touch. This being rolled out next year as Google didn’t want add to more woes some online sites are currently experiencing. But, Bing also did something “Bing can now return a “Yes” or “No” answer for certain queries, the company announced Tuesday. The new search feature includes the one-word answer as well as a carousel of related excerpts from various sources.” – Search Engine Land This is clearly in line with how Google have been amending their snippets but also again places an emphasis on how important user focused content is becoming. Remember that search engines are always looking at ways to increase their results so keeping on top of these updates as well as reviewing the data is key, especially if what has been seen over the past 9 weeks, outlines the blueprint of what to expect moving forward, in terms of new normality. Google is always moving and updating and it is therefore important to move with them, especially keeping on top of the data as to ensure performance is moving forward at any pace. Need to stay ahead of the curve? Contact us today!