What is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO is the process of optimizing web content to rank in search engines. The on-page SEO process encompasses keyword research, SEO copywriting, meta tag optimization, page experience, and more.

Site owners who implement on-page SEO across their web pages will likely see more keyword rankings and higher ranking positions for valuable keywords in their industry.

What’s Different about On-Page SEO in 2022 compared to 2021?

Although the best practices of on-page SEO for the most part remain the same, search engine technology grows more advanced every year, changing the way we execute optimization across our web pages.

For 2022, there are some key updates that site owners should be aware of so they can leverage them to achieve higher rankings and organic traffic.

Here are some of the top SEO trends for 2022:

• People also ask: A recent study showed that Google’s “People also ask,” feature now shows up for approximately 48.6% of all searches, and often above position 1.
• Core Web Vitals: Since the Page Experience update, Core Web Vitals are officially a Google ranking factor. Fast-loading, responsive web pages now perform better in the SERPs
• AI Copy Generation: More SEO software engineers are incorporating GPT-3 into their tools and applications to help content marketers create SEO content more quickly and at scale.
• Keyword Clusters: It’s estimated that Google processes over 63,000 keyword searches a second. There are hundreds to thousands of ways that users are searching, and keyword clustering is a more effective strategy for getting a web page to rank for all of those variations.

The Best On-Page SEO Tips for 2022

For 2022, on-page SEO is all about combining SEO best practices with newer strategies that help your web pages meet the quality signals Google crawlers are looking for.

1. Make Core Web Vitals Top Priority

Last summer, Google rolled out one of the largest algorithm updates in years — the Page Experience Update. In addition to security, mobile-usability, and page speed, Google considers a web page’s Core Web Vitals when ranking content.

Although load times and speed have not traditionally been viewed as “on-page seo” priorities, the reality is, a web page with high-quality content doesn’t mean much if it takes too long to load or items shift while the user scrolls or clicks.

Optimizing Core Web Vitals should now be a part of your fundamental SEO practice. To get a better understanding of where your web pages stand, use the Site Auditor tool in GSC Insights, or run your pages through Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool

2. Answer Common Questions

A recent study of 2.5 million search queries showed that Google’s “People also ask” feature now shows up for about 48.6% of searches. 

With its prominent placement at the top of the SERP results (and often above position 1), getting your content ranking in this coveted feature is the next great way to improve site visibility and generate organic clicks.

To get there, your writing team needs to provide answers to common questions in your content. Utilize questions in your h2s-h6s, and make sure your answers are detailed and comprehensive.

By providing answers to those questions on the page, your content can show up at the top of page one, even if your traditional SERP result appears lower on the page (or even sometimes on page 2)! 

Watch this tutorial on how to optimize for People also ask using the SEO Content Assistant.

3. Use Content Optimization Software

With more advanced natural language processing technology, Google is not just looking for your target keywords on the page anymore.

Crawlers are looking for related terms, subtopics, synonyms, and other semantic SEO signals. Original insight an analysis, topical-depth, and expert authorship are also quality signals that can help improve the ranking potential of content.

To better meet all these signals, a content optimizer tool like the SEO Content Assistant can give you the “cheat codes,” to better ranking content. The tool recommends Focus Terms, outbound links, word count, and can even generate content using GPT-3 technology.

4. Leverage AI-Powered Content Generation

With GPT-3 now widely available, more software engineers are incorporating this powerful NLP model into their applications. That means you are not only competing with the content writers of your competitors, but the robots they may be utilizing to help generate more content, more quickly, than you.

AI copywriting tools still have some way to go before replacing our writers entirely. Also, some tools are far better than others. Still, content marketing teams are already using these tools to speed up ideation, outlining, drafting, and on-page SEO optimization so they can scale up their content development.

Those brands that leverage these technologies, but still keep the human touch, are likely to scale up their SEO content strategy quickly this year.

5. Write Longer Content

Although not officially a Google ranking factor, there is a strong relationship between longer content and higher ranking positions. By improving the topical depth and length of your content, you can signal Google higher quality and more comprehensive exploration of the content.

How long should your content be? There is no magic number, but tools like the SEO Content Assistant will suggest a target word count based on the top ranking content for your target keywords.

6. Review your Content on Mobile

More searches are completed from mobile devices than desktop. That’s why search engines are now prioritizing content by what best suits their predominantly mobile user-base.

To rank better in today’s mobile-first world, you need to be focusing on how your content serves mobile users (even if your current site traffic is predominantly desktop users).

The first place to check for mobile usability issues is within your own Google Search Console. These are issues that Google has already flagged for your site, which means Google is already factoring “mobile usability issues” into your search rankings.

Here are things to look for:

• Are images and assets fitting on the screen?
• Are images and assets resizing appropriately for the screen size?
• Can users easily access all of the page content?
  • Is the page short enough to scroll through easily?
  • Are large/unnecessary page elements taking up all the space?
  • Does the user have to scroll and scroll and scroll to get through the page?
• Are any page elements overlapping in a way that hinders the user viewing content?
• Do you have huge blocks of unbroken text?
• Does the design still look clean?

What you can do:

• Get the user to relevant content faster
  • Hide unnecessary images on mobile
  • Reduce the font size of headers on mobile
  • Move important content to the top of the page
  • Add jump links for longer content
• Make content easier to view/read on a smaller device
  • Make sure images and graphics are resizing responsively
  • Adjust your navigation so mobile users can see all options
  • Break up text into 2-3 sentence blocks
  • Use more whitespace!
• Increase tap areas so it’s easier to scroll to relevant content
• Use a sticky nav so users can always find a “next step” if they get stuck

For more information on mobile SEO check out our Comprehensive Guide to Mobile SEO.

7. Use More Rich Media

Mobile users spend heavy portions of their time on social media feeds, YouTube, and Apps. There are all beautifully designed platforms heavy on visuals and multimedia content.

Multi-media keeps people scrolling, conveys concepts at-a-glance, and helps users interact more fully with content. Multi-media makes blog and page content more engaging.

With images and video pulling in at the top of SERPs now, that content is yet another way to get onto the first page.

8. Meet the User’s Search Intent

BERT helped Google better understand the intent behind search queries and launched at the end of October 2019. BERT-related refreshes and advancements still matter in 2022.

As Google continually refines its understanding of the intent behind search queries it will be serving better results, especially for long-tail queries and never-before-seen queries. This means that you should be hyper-focused on creating content that helps a user find the product, service, information, or entertainment that they’re looking for with a search.

To learn more about recognizing search intent, and indicators for informational vs. commercial oriented keywords, take a look at our What are Keywords in SEO Guide.

9. Write for Humans and Robots

Readability is understood differently by SEO professionals. In general, though, simpler sentences are easier to read and less prone to grammatical errors. In voice search specifically, Google avoids overly-complex language.

It is much easier to understand a badly formulated written answer than an ungrammatical spoken answer, so more care has to be placed in ensuring grammatical correctness.

Keeping your sentences simple can also make your content more accessible to a wider range of users. Although SaaS, software, or technologies companies may have more technical content by nature of their products of service offerings, it’s still important to write in a way that is not too academic or jargon-ridden.

A survey of 15,000 searches across 3 device types found the average reading level for voice responses was 8th grade. For reference, Harry Potter is about the same reading level.

10. Link Strategically

Google pays attention to what resources you share with your users. As Google puts it, outbound links matter because they:

• Show that you’ve done your research and have expertise in the subject manner

• Make visitors want to come back for more analysis on future topics

• Build relationships with other domain experts. For example, sending visitors can get you on the radar of other successful bloggers and begin a business relationship.

“Link Neighborhood” is a term coined by the SEO community. It refers to the type of sites that you link out to, and the type of sites that link back to you, and how they link to each other.

For example, if you were to look at the “link neighborhood” for a celebrity site, you’d probably see a lot of streets to gossip magazines, social media groups, fan sites, and concert venues. If you were to look at the “link neighborhood” for an MIT lab, you might see a lot of streets going to scientific publications, tech news, grant organizations, etc.

Internal links also matter because they keep users navigating across your site. Also, they help crawlers understand your site hierarchy, and spread PageRank across your web pages.

Link neighborhoods help give context for the topical focus of a site, and the relative authority of a site; is harvard.edu linking to the site, or is bestcrystalsforhealing.com linking to the site?

Your link neighborhood is a combination of your outbound links and inbound links coming back to your site and web pages.

Recap: Tips for On Page SEO in 2022

• Make Core Web Vitals Top Priority
• Answer Common Questions
• Use Content Optimization Software
• Leverage AI-Generated Content
• Write Longer Content
• Review your Content on Mobile
• Use More Rich Media
• Meet the User’s Search Intent
• Write for Humans and Robots
• Link Strategically

The post 10 Tips for On Page SEO in 2022 appeared first on LinkGraph.

Over the past year, Google has pushed out an astounding number of updates. From the Link Spam Update to the Page Experience Update, Google’s on a mission to weed out black hat SEO tactics and improve the SERPs by emphasizing quality content, optimal page speeds, and mobile SEO. What does this mean in terms of your SEO strategy in 2023? Stick to best practices and ensure your SEO foundation remains strong.

If you’re planning to prioritize increasing your site’s search visibility, we’ve put together a plan that will get you through 2023 and have your site sailing through the SERPs for time to come:

2023: Quarter 1

Begin the year with a focus on gaining a clear understanding of where your metrics are at now and where you want to go.

1. Know Your Numbers & Set Goals

When it comes to planning out your SEO strategy for the year, spending time with your metrics is vital. What metrics should you be mindful of going into 2023? 

A great place to start studying your SEO metrics is with your

• Overall organic traffic: the number of people that land on your website via a search engine
• Organic click-through-rate (CTR): the number of times searchers click on links to your page in the SERPs divided by your impressions.
• Keyword rankings: Where your pages appear in the SERPs for keywords you rank for 

Once you feel comfortable with where these numbers are, you will want to examine your domain rating (DR) and page speed analytics.

What SEO Goals Should You Set for 2023?

Not all websites have the same SEO needs. We recommend you aim for a robust and well-rounded balance between all pillars of good SEO for the best results. 

However, if you’re looking for specific numbers to achieve in 2023, consider:

• Increasing your organic traffic by a set percentage: examine last year’s MoM growth and increase the percentage by 5%-10% MoM this year.
• Setting a goal for your Total Keywords or Keyword Positions.
• Increasing your DR and earning high marks in PageSpeed Insights. This is always a great way to boost your rankings, too.

2. Keep Your Competitors’ Metrics in Mind

Ultimately, you want to have a higher DR than your competitors. But knowing where to aim is part of the battle. Use the Bulk DA Checker to compare your domain authority or DR to your competitors’. 

While you’re looking into your competitors’ sites, take note of what keywords they rank for and if they have any keyword gaps.

3. Create a SERP-Winning Blog Content Calendar

Google continues to strive to uphold its core values in order to provide the best results for its users. In regards to your content, this means providing thorough, long-form blogs that demonstrate quality information and increase your site’s topical breadth and relevance.

To establish your content calendar for 2023:

1. Set up pillar topics that relate to your site.
2. Then use the Keyword Researcher to find long-tail keywords that you can potentially rank for. Keep in mind that quality matters when deciding how many blogs to produce each month. Don’t bite off more than you handle.
3. Use the SEO Content Assistant tool to ensure you maximize your blog’s ranking potential with the right keywords, length, and other quality indicators.

4. Audit Your Site Speed

As we saw in 2022, Google will continue to reward sites with fast loading times, stable pages, and responsive design. We anticipate these signals will continue to play a major role in how Google ranks its results. However, it’s important to keep in mind that these also benefit your users, reduce your bounce rate, and can increase your conversion rates.

So, perform a site speed audit and use that information to make a plan to tackle any issues that arise. First, identify your slowest pages. Then focus your efforts on optimizing images and elements above the fold. Finally, work your way through any other content shift issues and loading delays.

2023: Quarter 2

Build on your SEO fundamentals and diversify your approach as the year progresses.

5. Stay Active on Social Media

Voice Search continues to trend upward. What does that have to do with your social media profiles? While Google has never formally released how heavily social media weighs into their PageRank (if at all), Bing factors social signals into their rankings. And the majority of voice searches are performed on Alexa smart speakers… And Alexa uses Bing’s search results. This means that optimizing slightly more for Bing can give your site a bump in traffic.

6. Update or Create a Google Business Profile

Mobile searches continue to outnumber desktop searches, averaging 60% of all searches throughout 2022. And when it comes to finding local businesses, mobile search far surpasses desktop.

If you haven’t created your Google Business Profile, now is the time. Without a business profile, you’re missing out on local search traffic and the opportunity for better reputation management.

For those that already have a Google Business Profile, check your photos, reviews, and questions. Take the time to answer questions potential customers may ask, reply to positive and negative reviews, and update photos of your business.

7. Spring Clean Your Links

Broken internal and external links can disrupt a Google crawl resulting in a negative effect on your SEO.

Perform a Site Audit using the Page Explorer tool. 

1. Using the Inaccessible and Orphaned report to identify broken links and pages that are not loading. 
2. Fix the pages with the highest Search Impressions and Organic Traffic first. 
3. Replace or redirect internal links and replace outbound links with relevant newer links.

8. Increase Backlink Outreach

Backlinks have a direct effect on your site’s domain rating. Poor quality inbound links can have a negative impact on your DR while high-quality links can strengthen your DR. Gaining backlinks can be a time-consuming process, but it pays off.

Begin a link outreach program or use a service to streamline the link building process, targeting websites with high DR scores. Offering quality guest posts can increase the quality of your backlink profile.

2023: Quarter 3

Don’t lose your momentum and keep your eye on the prize of increasing organic traffic.

9. Revise Tired Content

Once your content strategy is running smoothly, you can begin to update your existing content. This signals to Google that your content is still relevant and gives you the opportunity to add depth to your blogs. Use the Top Pages tool in GSC Insights to identify pages that aren’t reaching their SEO Potential.

As you update blogs and landing pages, remember to update meta tags, especially for pages with high impressions and low CTRs.

Adding rich media is another great way to liven up your pages. And don’t forget to make your pages accessible.

10. Check Your SEO Progress

Throughout your SEO journey, it’s important to reflect on what’s working and where you should pivot. The SearchAtlas’s GSC Insights tool makes it easy to compare the most telling metrics like Keyword Rankings. Use these analytics to begin forming an ongoing plan for 2023.

Don’t forget to celebrate your successes.

11. Respond to Google Algorithm Updates

There is no doubt that Google will release several updates in 2023. By focusing on best practices, you’re in a great place to respond to any new updates Google rolls out. However, you will want to tailor your approach to the specifics of the changes. 

If you’re a SearchAtlas user, you will stay in the know throughout the year with our “What’s New in Search” emails. Additionally, our suite of SEO software reflects the latest changes to Google’s PageRank.

2023: Quarter 4

Finish off the year strong. Cut ties from toxic backlinks and prune any pages that don’t reflect the strength of your new content.

12. Remove Toxic Backlinks

Toxic backlinks can wreak havoc on how Google views your site. Eliminating low-quality backlinks is like cutting an anchor when your pages are sinking the SERPs. Gather your backlink information with the Backlink Analyzer. Then, submit disavow files using Google’s disavow tool.

13. Prune Under-Performing Pages

In the spirit of preparing for the new year, prune your pages that don’t perform to your standards or pages that present keyword cannibalization issues. The SearchAtlas Page Pruning tool allows you to easily identify low-performing pages that can bog down the quality of your content and overall site.

14. Set SEO Goals for 2024

As 2023 comes to an end, begin projecting new goals into the upcoming year. Stay current with changes to algorithms and audit how your target audience’s search and what your site’s strengths are.

And enter the new year with confidence by building on your successes in 2024.

Innovative SEO Software, Unbeatable SEO Experts

Planning for record-beating organic traffic in 2023? With SearchAtlas and the LinkGraph team, you can ring in the new year with SEO insight that will make this year the best yet when it comes to your site’s performance. Contact us today to learn more about our SEO services or SEO software.

The post Celebrate the New Year with a New SEO Strategy for 2023 appeared first on LinkGraph.

The Google algorithm is constantly changing. In 2018 alone, Google ran 15,096 Live traffic experiments, and launched 3,234 updates to its search algorithm.

Not all updates have significant impact on the search results. This page covers the top 150 updates to how search results function from 2000-2019. Updates are a blend of changes to:

• Algorithms
• Indexation
• Data (aka Data Refreshes)
• Google Search UIs
• Webmaster Tools
• Changes to ranking factors and signals

Before we get into the timeline of individual google updates, it’s going to be helpful to define a handful of things upfront for any SEO newbies out there:

Google’s Core Algorithm

SEO experts, writers, and audiences will often refer to “Google’s Core Algorithm” as though it is a single item. In reality, Google’s Core Algorithm is made up of millions of smaller algorithms that all work together to surface the best possible search results to users. What we mean when we say “Google’s Core Algorithm” is the set of algorithms that are applied to every single search, which are no longer considered experimental, and which are stable enough to run consistently without requiring significant changes.

Google Panda (2011-2016)

The Panda algorithm focused on removing low quality content from search by reviewing on-page content itself. This algorithm focused on thin content, content dominated by ads, poor quality content (spelling/grammar mistakes), and rewarded unique content. Google Panda was updated 29 times before finally being incorporated into the core algorithm in January of 2016.

Google Penguin (2012-2016)

The Penguin algorithm focused on removing sites engaging in spammy tactics from the search results. Penguin primarily filtered sites engaging in keyword stuffing and link schemes out of the search results. Google Penguin was updated 10 times before being integrated into Google’s core algorithm in September of 2016.

RankBrain (2015-Present)

This machine-learning based AI helps Google process and understand the meaning behind new search queries. RankBrain works by being able to infer the meaning of new words or terms based on context and related terms. RankBrain began rolling out across all of Google search in early 2015 and was fully live and global by mid-2016. Within three months of full deployment RankBrain was already the 3rd most important signal contributing to the results selected for a search query.

Matt Cutts

One of the first 100 employees at Google, Matt Cutts was the head of Google’s Web Spam team for many many years, and interacted heavily with the webmaster community. He spent a lot of time answering questions about algorithm changes and providing webmasters high-level advice and direction.

Danny Sullivan

Originally a Founding Editor, Advisor, and Writer for Search Engine Land (among others), Danny Sullivan now communicates with the SEO community as Google’s Public Search Liaison. Mr. Sullivan frequently finds himself reminding the community that the best way to rank is to create quality content that provides value to users.

Gary Illyes

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst who often responds to the SEO community when they have questions about Google algorithm updates and changes. Gary is known for his candid (and entertaining) responses, which usually have a heavy element of sarcasm.

Webmaster World:

Frequently referenced whenever people speak about Google algorithm updates, webmasterworld.com is one of the most popular forums for webmasters to discuss changes to Google’s search results. A popular community since the early 2000’s webmasters still flock to the space whenever major fluctuations are noticed to discuss theories.

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2021 Google Search Updates

2021 December – Local Search Update

From November 30th – December 8th, Google runs a local search ranking update. This update rebalances the various factors used to generate local results. Primary ranking factors for local search remain the same: Relevance, Distance, and Prominence. 

Additional Reading:

• Google Also Had a Local Search Update from November 30 Through Decemeber 8

2021 November – Core Quality Update

From November 17th – November 30th, Google rolls out another core update. As with all core updates, this one is focused on improving the quality and relevance of search results. 

Additional Reading:

• Google November Core Update is Over — What Happened?

2021 August – Title Tag Update

Starting August 16th, Google starts rewriting page titles in the SERPs. After many SEOs saw negative results from the update, Google rolls back some of the changes in September. Google emphasizes that it still uses content with the <title> tag over 80% of the time. 

Additional Reading:

• Google’s Title Tag Update and the Future of Meta Tags in SEO

2021 July – Link Spam Update

Google updates link spam fighting algorithm to improve effectiveness of identifying and nullifying link spam. The update is particularly focused on affiliate sites and those websites who monetize through links.

Additional Reading:

• A Reminder on Qualifying Links and Our Link Spam Update
• How Affiliates Can Work With Google to Reduce Link Spam

2021 June – Page Experience Update

Google announced in late 2020 that its upcoming 2021 Page Experience update would introduce core web vitals as new Google ranking factors. Core web vitals are a set of user experience criteria that include page load times, mobile responsiveness, visual responsiveness, and more. Google evaluates these metrics through the following criteria:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – The time it takes a web page to load the largest piece of content on the page
2. First Input Delay (FID) – A measurement of the users first interaction with the page from interactivity and responsiveness.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – Measures visual stability and how stable the website is when loading and scrolling

This update makes it so Google will evaluate page experiences signals like mobile friendliness, safe browsing, HTTPS security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines when ranking web pages.

Additional Reading:

• The Page Experience Update: New SEO Ranking Factors for 2021
• Evaluating Page Experience for a Better Web

2021 February – Passage Ranking

Google introduces Passage Ranking and starts indexing passages of web content. Google now hones in on a specific passages of long-form content and ranks those passage in the SERPs. Google highlights the relevant passage and takes the users directly to the relevant passage after clicking on the blue link result. 

Additional Reading:

• The 2021 Guide to Google Passage Ranking

2020 Google Search Updates

2020 October – Indexing Bugs

From early September to the beginning of October, Google experienced multiple bugs with mobile indexing, canonicalization, news-indexing, top stories carousel, and sports scores breaking. The bugs impacted about .02% of searches. Google fully resolved all impacted urls by October 9th.

Additional Reading:

• Is it Google Search Ranking Updates or Instability Over Bugs?

2020 August 11 – Google Glitch

On Tuesday, August 11th, Google experienced a massive, worldwide indexing glitch that impacted search results. Search results were very low-quality or irrelevant to search queries, and ecommerce sites in particular reported significant impacts on rankings. Google resolved the glitch within a few days.

Additional Reading:

• Google Suffers Massive Indexing Glitch

2020 June – Google Bug Fix

A Google representative confirmed an indexing bug temporarily impacted rankings. Google was struggling to surface fresh content.

Additional Reading:

• Google: The Search Indexing Issues are Now Resolved

2020 May – Core Quality Update

This May 2020 core update was one of the more significant broad core updates with the introduction of core web vitals and increased emphasis on E.A.T. This update was a continuation of an effort to improve the quality of SERP results with COVID related searches. The update most significantly impacted those sites with low-quality or unnatural links. However some sites with lower-domain authority did appear to see positive ranking improvements for pages with high-quality, relevant content. 

Later today, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the May 2020 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this blog post for more about that:https://t.co/e5ZQUAlt0G

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) May 4, 2020

Many SEOs reacted negatively, particularly because of the timing of the update, which occurred at the height of economic shutdowns to slow the spread of coronavirus. Some concerns about the May 2020 core quality update ranged from social media SERP domination and better SERP results for larger, more dominant brands like Amazon and Etsy. Some analysis noted these changes may have been reflecting user intent from quarantine, particularly because the update focused on providing better results for queries with multiple search intents. Google’s responded to the complaints by reinforcing existing content-quality signals. 

Additional Reading:

• An Intensive Analysis of the May 2020 Google Update by MHC
• Google May 2020 Algorithm Update: 4 Key Changes and how to Adjust

2020 March – COVID-19 Pandemic

Although not an official update, the coronavirus outbreak led to an unprecedented level of search queries that temporarily changed the landscape of search results. Google made several changes to adjust to the trending searches such as:

• Increased user personalization to combat misinformation
• Removed COVID-19 misinformation across YouTube and other platforms
• Added “Sticky Menu” for COVID related searches
• Added temporary business closures to the Map Pack
• Temporarily banned ads for respirators and medical masks
• Created COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports
• Temporary limited certain Google My Business listings features

Additional Reading:

• Google My Business Changes Due to COVID-19
• Remarkable Impacts of COVID-19 on Google SERPs

2020 February 7 – Unannounced Update

In February of 2020, many SEOs reported seeing significant changes to rankings, although Google had not announced and denied any broad core update. Various analysis of the update showed no clear pattern between websites that were impacted. 

Additional Reading:

• Google Update February 2020: Background and Analysis
• Google responds to February 2020 update saying: “We do Updates all the Time”

2020 January 22 – Featured Snippet De-duplication

Prior to this January 2020 update, those sites that earned the featured snippet, or “position zero,” also appeared as the subsequent organic search result. This update de-duplicated search results to eliminate this double exposure. This impacted 100% of searches worldwide and had significant impacts on rank tracking and organic CTR.

Additional Reading:

• January 2020 Featured Snippet Google Update
• Google Featured Snippets: A 2020 SEO Guide

2020 January – Broad Core Update

On January 13th, 2020, Google started rolling out another broad core update. Google did not provide details about the update, but did emphasize existing webmaster guidelines about content quality.

Additional Reading:

• Google January 2020 core update is rolling out
• Google January 2020 core update almost done rolling out

2019 Google Search Updates

2019 November Local Search Update

In November of 2019 Google rolled out an update to how local search results are formulated (ex: map pack results). This update improved Google’s understanding of the context of a search, by improving its understanding of synonyms. In essence, local businesses may find they are showing up in more searches.

In early November, we began making use of neural matching as part of the process of generating local search results. Neural matching allows us to better understand how words are related to concepts, as explained more here: https://t.co/ShQm7g9CvN

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 2, 2019

 

2019 October 26 BERT

In October Google introduced BERT a deep-learning algorithm focused on helping Google understand the intent behind search queries. BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) gives context to each word within a search query. The “bidirectional” in BERT refers to how the algorithm looks at the words that come before and after each term before assessing the meaning of the term itself.

Here’s an example of bi-directional context from Google’s Blog:

In the sentence “I accessed the bank account,” a unidirectional contextual model would represent “bank” based on “I accessed the” but not “account.” However, BERT represents “bank” using both its previous and next context — “I accessed the… account” — starting from the very bottom of a deep neural network, making it deeply bidirectional.

The introduction of BERT marked the most significant change to Google search in half a decade, impacting 1 in 10 searches — 10% of all search queries.

Additional Reading:

• BERT: Google’s Largest Update in Years
• Google BERT Update – What It Means SEJ

2019 September – Entity Ratings & Rich Results

If you place reviews on your own site (even through a third party widget), and use schema markup on those reviews – the review stars will no longer show up in the Google results. Google applied this change to entities considered to be Local Businesses or Organizations.

The reasoning? Google considers these types of reviews to be self-serving. The logic is that if a site is placing a third party review widget on their own domain, they probably have some control over the reviews or review process.

Our recommendation? If you’re a local business or organization, claim your Google My Business listing and focus on encouraging users to leave reviews with Google directly.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog: Making Review Rich Results More Helpful
• Google Help Center: How to Get Reviews on Google

2019 September – Broad Core Update

This update included two components:First, it hit sites exploiting a 301 redirect trick from expired sites. In this trick users would buy either expired sites with good SEO metrics and redirect the entire domain to their site, or users would pay a 3rd party to redirect a portion of pages from an expired site to their domain.Note: Sites with relevant 301 redirects from expired sites were still fine.

Second, video content appears to have gotten a boost from this update. June’s update brought an increase in video carousels in the SERPs. Now in September, we’re seeing video content bumping down organic pages that previously ranked above them.

 

We can see this at an even greater scale looking at two purely text and purely video sites – YouTube and Wikipedia. We can see that for the first time, YouTube has eclipsed Wikipedia in the Google search results.

 

Additional Reading:

• Search Metrics Google’s September 2019 Update

2019 June – Broad Core Update

This is the first time that Google has pre-announced an update. Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, stated that they chose to pre-announce the changes so webmasters would not be left “scratching their heads” about what was happening this time.

What happened?

• We saw an increase in video carousels in the SERPs
• Low quality news sites saw losses

What can sites do to respond to this broad core update? It looks like Google is leaning into video content, at least in the short-term. Consider including video as one of the types of content your team creates.

Additional Reading:

• Search Engine Land – Google Pre-Announces June 2019 Core Search Algorithm Update

2019 May 22-26 – Indexing Bugs

On Wednesday May 22nd Google tweeted that there were indexation bugs causing stale results to be served for certain queries, this bug was resolved early on Thursday May 23rd.

By the evening of Thursday May 23rd Google was back to tweeting – stating that they were working on a new indexing bug that was preventing capture of new pages. On May 26th Google followed up that this indexation bug had also been fixed.

Additional Reading:

• The Webmaster May Indexing Bugs
• SEJ – New Google Indexing Issues

2019 April 4-11 De-Indexing Bugs

In April of 2019 an indexing bug caused about 4% of stable URLs to fall off of the first page. What happened? A technical error caused a bug to de-index a massive set of webpages.

Additional Reading:

• Google April Deindexation Tweets
• The Webmaster April De-Indexation Summary

2019 March 12 – Broad Core Update

Google was specifically vague about this update, and just kept redirecting people and questions to the Google quality guidelines. However, the webmaster community noticed that the update seemed to have a heavier impact on YMYL (your money or your life) pages.

YMYL sites with low quality content took a nose-dive, and sites with heavy trust signals (well known brands, known authorities on multiple topics, etc) climbed the rankings.

Let’s take two examples:

First, Everdayhealth.com lost 50% of their SEO visibility from this update. Sample headline:Can Himalayan Salt Lamps Really Help People with Asthma?

Next, Medicinenet.com saw a 12% increase in their SEO visibility from this update. Sample headline: 4 Deaths, 141 Legionnaires’ Infections Linked to Hot Tubs.

This update also seemed to factor in user behavior more strongly. Domains where users spent longer on the site, had more pages per visit, and had lower bounce rates saw an uptick in their rankings.

Additional Reading:

• Search Metrics – Winners and Losers of the March 2019 Core Algorithm Update

2019 March 1 – Extended Results Page

For one day, on March 1st, Google displayed 19 results on the first page of SERPs for all queries, 20 if you count the featured snippet. Many hypothesize it was a glitch related to in-depth articles, a results type from 2013 that has long since been integrated into regular organic search results.

Additional Reading:

• Moz – The Mysterious Case of the 19-Result SERPS

2018 Google Algorithm Updates

2018 August – Broad Core Update (Medic)

This broad core update, known by its nickname “Medic” impacted YMYL (your money or your life) sites across the web.

SEOs had many theories about what to do to improve rankings after this update, but both Google and the larger SEO community ended up at the same messaging: make content user’s are looking for, and make it helpful.

This update sparked a lot of discussion around E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) for page quality, and the importance of clear authorship and bylines on content.

Additional Reading:

• SEO Roundtable – Nice Breakdown of 300 Impacted Sites
• SEMrush – EAT and YMYL

2018 July – Chrome Security Warning

Google begins marking all http sites as “not secure” and displaying warnings to users.

 

Google views security as one of their core principles, so this change makes sense as the next step to build on their October 2017 update that began warning users about unsecured forms.

 

Looking forward, Google is planning on blocking mixed content from https sites.

What can you do? Purchase an SSL certificate and make the move from http to https as soon as possible. Double check that all of your subdomains, images, PDFs and other assets associated with your site are also being served securely.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Marking HTTP Not Secure
  
• Google Blog – No More Mixed Messages about HTTPS

2018 July – Mobile Speed Update

Google rolled out the mobile page speed update, making page speed a ranking factor for mobile results.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Using Page Speed In Mobile Search

2018 June – Video Carousels

Google introduces a dedicated video carousel on the first page of results for some queries, and moves videos out of regular results. This change also led to a significant increase in the number of search results displaying videos (+60%).

Additional Reading:

• GSQI – Trapped in Google Video Carousels

2018 April – Broad Core Update

The official line from Google about this broad core update, is that it rewards quality content that was previously under-rewarded. Sites that had content that was clearly better than the content of it’s organic competitors saw a boost, sites with thin or duplicative content fell.

2018 March – Broad Core Update

March’s update focused on content relevance (how well does content match the intent of the searcher) rather than content quality.

What can you do? Take a look at the pages google is listing in the top 10-20 spots for your target search term and see if you can spot any similarities that hint at how Google views the intent of the search.

Additional Reading:

• Danny Sullivan’s Broad Core Update Announcement

2018 March – Mobile-First Index Starts to Roll Out

After months of testing Google begins rolling out mobile-first indexing. Under this approach, Google crawls and indexes the mobile version of website pages when adding them to their index. If content is missing from mobile versions of your webpages, that content may not be indexed by Google.

To quote Google themselves,

“Mobile-first indexing means that we’ll use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they’re looking for.”

Essentially the entire index is going mobile-first. This process of migrating over to indexing the mobile version of websites is still underway. Website’s are being notified in Search Console when they’ve been migrated under Google’s mobile-first index.

 

Additional Reading:

 

• Google Blog – Rolling Out Mobile-First Indexing
  Mobile SEO – The Complete Guide (2019-2020)

2017 Google Search Updates

2017 December – Maccabees

Google states that a series of minor improvements are rolled out across December. Webmasters and SEO professionals see large fluctuations in the SERPs.

 

Barry Schwartz gave this set of updates the Maccabees nickname as he noted the most fluctuation around December 12 (occurring during Hanukkah). However, updates occurred from the very beginning until the very end of December.

 

What were the Maccabees changes?

Webmasters noted that doorway pages took a hit. Doorway pages act as landing pages for users, but don’t contain the real content – users have to get past these initial landing pages to access content of any value. Google considers these pages barriers to a user.

A writer at Moz dissected a slew of site data from mid-december noted one key observation. When two pages ranked for the same term, the one with better user engagement saw it’s rankings improve after this update. The other page saw its rankings drop. In many instances what happened for sites that began to lose traffic, is that blog pages were being shown/ranked where product or service pages should have been displayed.

A number of official celebrity sites fall in the rankings including (notably) Channing Tatum, Charlie Sheen, Kristen Stewart, Tom Cruise, and even Barack Obama. This speaks to how Google might have rebalanced factors around authoritativeness vs. content quality. One SEO expert noted that thin celebrity sites fell while more robust celebrity sites (like Katy Perry’s) maintained their #1 position.

Multiple webmasters reporting a slew of manual actions on December 25th and 26th, and some webmasters also reported seeing jumps on the 26th for pages that had been working on site quality.

Additional Reading:

• SER – Google Defines Doorway Pages: Pages for Ranking for Keyword Permutations
• Moz – An Investigation into Google’s Maccabees Update

2017 November – Snippet Length Increased

Google increases the character length of meta descriptions to 300 characters. This update was not long-lived as Google rolled back to the original 150-160 character meta descriptions on May 13, 2018.

2017 May – Quality Update

Webmasters noted that this update targeted sites and pages with:

• Deceptive advertising
• UX challenges
• Thin or low quality content

Additional Reading:

• SEJ – May Algorithm Update

2017 March – Fred

In early March webmasters and SEOs began to notice significant fluctuations in the SERPs, and Barry Schwartz from SEJ began tweeting Google to confirm algorithm changes.

The changes seemed to target content sites engaging in aggressive monetization at the expense of users. Basically sites filling the internet up with low-value content, meant to benefit everyone except the user. This included PBN sites, and sites created with the sole intent of generating AdSense income.

Fred got its name from Gary Illyes who suggested to an SEO expert asking if he wanted to name the update, that we should start calling all updates without names “Fred.”

Fred it is https://t.co/aEE7sfm7X5 @i_praveensharma @JohnMu

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) March 9, 2017

 

The joke, for anyone who knows the webmaster trends analyst, is that he calls everything unnamed fred (fish, people, EVERYTHING).

What those who aren’t friends with @methode don’t realize is that he calls EVERYTHING un-named, fred. Fish, people, whatever.

— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones) March 9, 2017

 

The SEO community took this as a confirmation of recent algorithm changes (note: literally every day has algorithm updates). Validating them digging into the SERP Changes.

Additional Reading:

• SER – Google Fred Update Targets Ad Heavy, Low Value Content Sites

2017 January 10 – Pop Up Penalty

Google announces that intrusive pop ups and interstitials are going to be factored into their search algorithm moving forward.

“To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.”

This change caused rankings to drop for sites that forced users to get past an ad or pop up to access relevant content. Not all pop ups or interstitials were penalized, for instance the following pop ups were still okay:

• Pop ups that helped sites stay legally compliant (ex: accepting cookies, or verifying a user’s age).
• Pop ups that did not block content on load.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Helping users easily access content on mobile

2016 Google Search Updates

2016 September – Penguin 4.0

The Google announcement of Penguin 4.0 had two major components:

• Penguin had been merged into the core algorithm, and would now have real-time updates.
• Penguin would be more page-specific moving forward rather than impacting entire domains.

SEOs also noted one additional change. Penguin 4.0 seemed to just remove the impact of spam links on SERPs, rather than penalizing sites with spammy links. This appeared to be an attempt for Google to mitigate the impact of negative SEO attacks on sites.

That being said, today in 2019 we still see a positive impact from running disavows for clients who have seen spammy links creep into their backlink profiles.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Penguin is Now Part of Our Core Algorithm
• Moz – White Board Image Penguin 1.0-3.0 vs Penguin 4.0

2016 September – Possum Update

This update targeted duplicate and spammy results in local search (Local Pack and Google Maps). The goal being to provide more diverse results when they’re searching for a local business, product, or service.

Prior to the Possum update Google was filtering out duplicates in local results by looking for listings with matching domains or matching phone numbers. After the Possum update Google began filtering out duplicates based on their physical address.

Businesses who saw some of their listings removed from the local pack may have initially thought their sites were dead (killed by this update), but they weren’t – they were just being filtered (playing possum). The term was coined by Phil Rozek

SEOs also noted that businesses right outside of city limits also saw a major uptick in local rankings, as they got included in local searches for those cities.

Additional Reading:

• Rank Ranger – Google’s New Local Search Algorithm Update
  
• SEL – Everything You Need to Know About Possum

2016 May – Mobile Friendly Boost

Google boosts the effect of the mobile-friendly ranking signal in search.
Google took time to stress that sites which are not mobile friendly but which still provide high quality content will still rank.

Additional Reading:

• Marketing Land – Google to Boost the Mobile-Friendly Ranking Factor in May 2016
• Google Blog – Continuing to make the web more mobile friendly

2016 February 19 – Adwords Change

Google Removes sidebar ads and ads a fourth ad to the top block above the organic search results.
This move reflects the search engine giant continuing to prioritize mobile-first experiences, where side-bar ads are cumbersome compared to results in the main content block.

2016 January – Broad Core Update + Panda Is Now Core

Google Confirms core algorithm update in January, right after confirming that Panda is now part of Google’s core algorithm.

Not a lot of conclusions were able to be drawn about the update, but SEOs noticed significant fluctuations with news sites/news publishers. Longform content with multi-media got a boost, and older articles took a bit of a dive for branded terms. This shift could reflect Google tweaking current-event related results to show more recent content, but the data was not definitive.

Additional Reading:

• SER – Panda Now Part of Google’s Core Algo Update

2015 Google Search Updates

2015 December – SSL/HTTPS by Default

Google starts indexing the https version of pages by default.

Pages using SSL are also seeing a slight boost. Google holds security as a core component of surfacing search results to users, and this shift becomes one of many security-related search algo changes. In fact, by the end of 2017 over 75% of the page one organic search results were https.

2015 October 26 – RankBrain

in testing since April 2015, Google officially introduced RankBrain on this date. RankBrain is a machine learning algorithm that filters search results to help give users a best answer to their query. Initially, RankBrain was used for about 15 percent of queries (mainly new queries Google had never seen before), but now it is involved in almost every query entered into Google. RankBrain has been called the third most important ranking signal.

Additional Reading:

• SEJ – Google Algorithm History – RankBrain

2015 October 5 – Hacked Sites Algorithm

Google introduces an algorithm specifically targeting spammy in the search results that were gaining search equity from hacked sites.

This change was significant, it impacted 5% of search queries. This algorithm hides sites benefiting from hacked sites in the search results.

 

Interactions with Gary Illyes at #pubcon and on twitter suggest that this algo only applies to search queries traditionally known to be spammy.

 

@rustybrick yesr. That’s what we’re aiming for.

— Gary “鯨理” Illyes (@methode) October 9, 2015

 

The update came right after a September message from Google about cracking down on repeat spam offenders. Google’s blog post notified SEOs that sites which repeatedly received manual actions would find it harder and harder to have those manual actions reconsidered.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – An Update on How We Tackle Hacked Spam
• Google Blog – Repeated Violations of Webmaster Guidelines

2015 August 6 – Google Snack Pack

Google switches from displaying seven results for local search in the map pack to only three.

Why the change? Google is switching over (step-by-step) to mobile-first search results, aka prioritizing mobile users over desktop users.

On mobile, only three local results fit onto the screen before a users needs to scroll. Google seems to want users to scroll to then access organic results.

Other noticeable changes from this update:

• Google only displays the street (not the complete address) unless you click into a result.
• Users can now filter snack pack results by rating using a dropdown.

Additional Reading:

• SEL – Google Switched to Local 3-Packs: Is There Cause for Alarm?

2015 July 18- Panda 4.2 (Update 29)

Roll out of Panda 4.2 began on the weekend of July 18th and affected 2-3% of search queries. This was a refresh, and the first one for Panda in about 9 months.

Why does that matter? The Panda algorithm acts like a filter on search results to sort out low quality content. Panda basically gets applied to a set of data – and decides what to filter out (or down). Until the data for a site is refreshed, Panda’s ruling is static. So when a data refresh is completed, sites that have made improvements essentially get a revised ruling on how they’re filtered.

Nine months is a long time to wait for a revised ruling!

2015 May – Quality Update / Phantom II

This change is an update to the quality filters integrated into Google’s core algorithm, and alters how the algorithm processes signals for content quality. This algorithm is real-time, meaning that webmasters will not need to wait for data refreshes to see positive impact from making content improvements.

What kind of pages did we see drop in the rankings?

• Clickbait content
• Pages with disruptive ads
• Pages where videos auto-played
• How-to sites with thin or duplicative content (this ended up impacting a lot of how-to sites)
• Pages that were hard to navigate/had UI barriers

In hindsight, this update feels like a precursor to Google’s 2017 updates for content spam and intrusive pop ups.

Additional Reading:

• NBC News – Google’s Phantom Algorithm Update

2015 April 21 – Mobilegeddon

Google boosts mobile-friendly pages in mobile search results.

This update was termed Mobilegeddon as SEOs expected it to impact a huge number of search queries, maybe more than any other update ever had. Why? Google was already seeing more searches on mobile than on desktop in the U.S. in May 2015.

In 2018 Google takes this a step further and starts mobile-first indexing.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Rolling Out the Mobile-Friendly Update
• Mobile SEO – The Complete Guide (2019-2020)

2014 Google Algorithm Updates

2014 December – Pigeon Goes International

Google’s local algorithm, known as Pigeon, expands to international English speaking countries (UK, Canada, Australia) on December 22, 2014.

In December Google also releases updated guidelines for local businesses representing themselves on Google.

Additional Reading:

• Google Guidelines – Representing Your Business On Google

2014 October – Pirate II

Google releases an “improved DMCA demotion signal in Search,” specifically designed to target and downrank some of the sites most notorious for piracy.

In October Google also released an updated report on how they fight piracy, which includes changes they made to how results for media searches were displayed in search. Most of these user interface changes were geared towards helping user find legal (trusted) ways to consume the media content they were seeking.

 

—————————–Additional Reading:

 

• Google Blog – Continued Progress on Fighting Piracy
• Google Report – How Google Fights Piracy
• SEL – After More Than Two Years, Google Finally Releasing New “Pirate Update” To Fight Piracy

2014 October 17 – Penguin 3.0

This update impacted 1% of English search queries, and was the first update to Penguin’s algorithm in over a year. This update was both a refresh and a major algorithm update.

2014 September – Panda 4.1 (Update 28)

Panda 4.1 is the 28th update for the algorithm that targets poor quality content. This update impacted 3-5% of search queries.

To quote Google:

“Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signal to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.”

Major losers were sites with deceptive ads, affiliate sites (thin on content, meant to pass traffic to other monetizing affiliates), and sites with security issues.

2014 September – Known PBNs De-Indexed

This change impacted search, but was not an algorithm change, data refresh, or UI update.

Starting mid-to-late September, 2014 Google de-indexed a massive amount of sites being used to boost other sites and game Google’s search rankings.

Google then followed-up on the de-indexing with manual actions for sites benefiting from the PBN. These manual actions went out on September 18, 2014.

Additional Reading:

• SEL – Google Targets Sites Using Private Blog Networks With Manual Action Ranking Penalties

2014 August – Authorship Removed from Search Results

Authors are no longer displayed (name or photo) in the search results along with the pieces that they’ve written.

Almost a year later Gary Illyes suggested that sites with authorship markup should leave the markup in place because it might be used again in the future. However, at a later date it was suggested that Google is perfectly capable of recognizing authorship from bylines.

Additional Reading:

• SER – Google Authorship Take Back
• Google Support – Authorship Markup No Longer Supported

2014 August – SSL becomes a ranking factor

Sites using SSL began to see a slight boost in rankings.

Google would later go on to increase this boost, and eventually provide warning to users when they were trying to access unsecure pages.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – HTTPS as a Ranking Signal

2014 July 24 – Google Local Update (Pigeon)

Google’s local search algorithm is updated to include more signals from traditional search (knowledge graph, spelling correction, synonyms, etc).

Additional Reading

• SEL – Google “Pigeon” Updates Local Search Algorithm With Stronger Ties To Web Search Signal

2014 June – Authorship Photos Removed

Photos of Authors are gone from SERPs.

This was the first step towards Google decommissioning Authorship markup.

2014 June – Payday Loan Update 3.0

Where Payday Loans 2.0 targeted spammy sites, Payday Loans 3.0 targeted spammy queries, or more specifically the types of illegal link schemes scene disproportionately within high-spam industries (payday loans, porn, gambling, etc).

What do you mean illegal? We mean link schemes that function off of hacking other websites or infecting them with malware.

This update also included better protection against negative SEO attacks,

Additional Reading:

• Google Payday Loan Algorithm: Google Search Algorithm Update To Target Spammy Queries

2014 May 17-18 – Payday Loan Update 2.0

Payday Loan Update 2.0 was a comprehensive update to the algorithm (not just da data refresh). This update focused on devaluation of domains using spamy on-site tactics such as cloaking.

Cloaking is when the content/page that google can see for a page is different than the content/page that a human user sees when they click on that page from the SERPs.

2014 May – Panda 4.0 (Update 27)

Google had stopped announcing changes to Panda for a while, so when they announced Panda 4.0 we know it was going to be a larger change to the overall algorithm.

Panda 4.0 impacted 7.5% of English queries, and led to a drastic nose dive for a slew of prominent sites like eBay, Ask.com, and Biography.com.

 

Sites that curated information from other sources without posting info or analysis of their own (aka coupon sites, celebrity gossip sites) seemed to take a big hit from this update.

 

@mattcutts I hope it is not too painful pic.twitter.com/VUmBJ59IEG

— Steven Broschart (@optimizingexp) May 21, 2014

 

2014 February 6 – Page Layout 3.0 (Top Heavy 3.0)

This is a refresh of Google’s algorithm that devalues pages with too many above-the-fold ads, per Google’s blog:

We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away.

So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience.

The Page Layout algorithm was originally launched on January 19, 2012, and has only had one other update in October of the same year (2012).

 

2013 Google Algorithm Updates

2013 December – Authorship Devalued

Authorship gets less of a boost in the search results. This is the first step Google took in beginning to phase out authorship markup.

2013 October – Penguin 2.1

Technically the 5th update to Google’s link-spam fighting algorithm, this minor update affects about 1% of search queries.

Penguin 2.1 launching today. Affects ~1% of searches to a noticeable degree. More info on Penguin: https://t.co/4YSh4sfZQj

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 4, 2013

 

2013 August – Hummingbird

Hummingbird was a full replacement of the core search algorithm, and Google’s largest update since Caffeine (Panda and Penguin had only been changes to portions of the old algorithm).

Humminbird helped most with conversational search for results outside of the knowledge graph — where conversational search was already running. Hummingbird was a significant improvement to how google interpreted the way text and queries are typed into search.

This algorithm was named Hummingbird by Google because it’s “precise and fast.”

 

Additional Reading:

 

• Google Blog – Hummingbird Announcement

2013 July – Expansion of Knowledge Graph

Knowledge Graph Expands to nearly 25% of all searches, displaying information-rich cards right above or next to the organic search results.

 

 

Additional Reading:

• Moz – The Day the Knowledge Graph Exploded

2013 July – Panda Dance (Update 26)

Panda begins going through monthly refreshes, also known as the “Panda Dance,” which caused monthly shifts in search rankings.

The next time Google would acknowledge a formal Panda update outside of these refreshes would be almost a year later in May of 2014.

2013 June – Roll Out Anti-Spam Algorithm Changes

Google rolled out an anti-link-spam algorithm in June of 2013 targeting sites grossly violating webmaster guidelines with egregious unnatural link building.

Matt Cutts even acknowledged one target – ‘Citadel Insurance’ which built 28,000 links from 1,000 low ranking domains within a single day, June 14th, and managed to reach position #2 for car insurance with the tactic.

By the end of June sites were finding it much harder to exploit the system with similar tactics.

@screamingfrog very natural…. @mattcutts

— Jamie Knop (@JamieKnop) June 21, 2013

 

@JamieKnop @screamingfrog yup, we saw that. Multi-week rollout going on now, from next week all all the way to the week after July 4th.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 22, 2013

 

2013 June 11 – Payday Loans

This update impacted 0.3% of queries in the U.S., and as much as 4% of queries in Turkey.

This algorithm targets queries that have abnormally high incidents of SEO spam (payday loans, adult searches, drugs, pharmaceuticals) and applies an extra filters to these types of queries specifically.

We just started a new ranking update today for some spammy queries. See 2:30-3:10 of this video: https://t.co/KOMozoc3lo #smx

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) June 11, 2013

 

2013 May 22 – Penguin 2.0

Penguin 2.0 was an update to the Penguin algorithm (as opposed to just a data refresh), it impacted 2.3% of english queries.

What changed?

• Advertorials will no longer flow pagerank
• Niches that are traditionally spammy will see more impact
• Improvements to how hacked sites are detected
• Link spammers will see links from their domains transfer less value.

One of the biggest shifts with Penguin 2.0 is it also analyzed linkspam for internal site pages, whereas Penguin 1.0 had looked at spammy links specifically pointing to domain home pages.

This marked the first time in 6 months that the Penguin algorithm had been updated, and the 4th update to Penguin that we’ve seen:

• April 24, 2012 – Penguin 1.0 Launched
• May 25, 2012 – Penguin 1.1 Data Refresh
• October 5, 2012 – Another Penguin Data Refresh

 

Additional Reading:

 

• Matt Cutts Blog – Penguin 2.0 Rolled Out Today

2013 May – Domain Diversity

This update reduced the amount of times a user saw the same domain in the search results. According to Matt Cutts, once you’ve seen a cluster of +/- 4 results from the same domain, the subsequent search pages are going to be significantly less likely to show you results from that domain.

 

Additional Reading:

 

• SEL – Domain Clustering Change

2013 May 8th – Phantom I

On May 8th, 2013 SEOs over at Webmaster World noticed intense fluctuation in the SERPs.

Lots of people dove into the data – some commenting that sites who had taken a dive were previously hit by Panda, but there were no conclusive takeaways. With no confirmation of major changes from Google, and nothing conclusive in the data – this anomaly came to be known as the “Phantom” update.

2013 March 14-15 – Panda Update 25

This is the 25th update for Panda, the algorithm that devalues low quality content in the SERPs. Matt Cutts confirmed that moving forward the Panda algorithm was going to be part of a regular algorithm updates, meaning it will be a rolling update instead of a pushed update process.

2013 January 22 – Panda Update 24

The 24th Panda update was announced on January 22, 2013 and impacted 1.2% of English search queries.

New Panda data refresh rolling out today: 1.2% of English queries affected. Background: https://t.co/EMBEJqGZ

— Google (@Google) January 22, 2013

 

2012 Google Algorithm Updates

2012 December 21 – Panda Update 23

The 23rd Panda update hit on December 21, 2012 and impacted 1.3% of English search queries.

2012 December 4 – Knowledge Graph Expansion

On December 4, 2012 Google announced a foriegn language expansion of the Knowledge Graph, their project to “map out real-world things as diverse as movies, bridgets and planets.”

 

2012 November – Panda Updates 21 & 22

In November 2012 Panda had two updates in the same month – one on November 5, 2012 (1.1% of English queries impacted in the US) and one on November 22, 2012 (0.8% of Enlish queries impacted in the US).

2012 October 9 – Page Layout Update

On October 9, 2012 Google rolled up an update to their Page Layout filter (also known as “Top Heavy”) impacting 0.7% of English-language search queries. This update rolled the Page Layout algorithm out globally.

Sites that made fixes after Google’s initial Page Layout Filter hit back in January of 2012 saw their rankings recover in the SERPs.

2012 October – Penguin Update 1.2

This was just a data refresh affecting 0.3% of English queries in the US.

Weather report: Penguin data refresh coming today. 0.3% of English queries noticeably affected. Details: https://t.co/Esbi2ilX

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 5, 2012

 

2012 September – Panda Updates 19 & 20

Panda update 19 hit on September 18, 2012 affecting 0.7% of English search queries, followed just over a week later by Panda update 20 which hit on September 27, 2012 affecting 2.4% of English search queries.

Panda update 20 was an actual algorithm refresh, accounting for the higher percentage of affected queries.

2012 September – Exact Match Domains

At the end of September Matt Cutts announced an upcoming change: low quality exact match domains were going to be taking a hit in the search results.

Up until this point, exact match domains had been weighted heavily enough in the algorithms to counterbalance low quality site content.

Additional Reading:

• Moz – Google’s EMD Algo Update

2012 August 19 – Panda Update 18

Panda version 3.9.1 rolled out on Monday, August 19th, 2012, affecting less than 1% of English search queries in the US.

This update was a data refresh.

Panda data refresh this past Monday. ~1% of queries noticeably affected. More context: https://t.co/nSjVRWGb

— Google (@Google) August 22, 2012

 

2012 August – Fewer Results on Page 1

In August Google began displaying 7 results for about 18% of the queries, rather than the standard 10.

Upon further inspection it appeared that google had reduced the number of organic results so they’d have more space to test a suite of potential top-of search features including: expanded site links, images, and local results.

This change, in conjunction with the knowledge graph, paved the way for the top-of-search rich snippet results we see in search today.

Additional Reading:

• SEL – Google Showing Fewer Results
• Moz – Secrets of the 7-Result SERP

2012 August 10 – Pirate/DMCA Penalty

Google announces they’ll be devaluing sites that repeatedly get accused of copyright infringement in the SERPs. As of this date the number of valid copyright removal notices is a ranking signal in Google’s search algorithm.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog: An Update to Our Search Algorithms

2012 July 24 – Panda Update 17

On July 24, 2012 Google Announces Panda 3.9.0 – a refresh for the algorithm affecting less than 1% search

2012 July 27 – Webmaster Tool Link Warnings

Not technically an algorithm update, but it definitely affected the SEO landscape.

On July 27, 2012 Google posted an update clarifying topics surrounding a slew of unnatural link warnings that had recently been sent out to webmasters:

• Unnatural link warnings and drops in rankings are directly connected
• Google doesn’t penalize sites as much when they’re the victims of 3rd party bad actors

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – New Notifications About Inbound Links

2012 June – Panda Updates 15 & 16

In June Google made two updates to its Panda algorithm fighting low quality content in the SERPs:

• Panda 3.7 rolled out on June 8, 2012 affecting less than 1% of English search queries in the U.S.
• Panda 3.8 rolled out on June 25, 2012 affecting less than 1% of queries worldwide.

Both updates were data refreshes.

2012 June – 39 Google Updates

On June 7, 2012 Google posted an update providing insight into search changes made over the course of May. Highlights included:

• Link Spam Improvements:
  • Better hacked sites detection
  • Better detection of inorganic backlink signals
  • Adjustments to Penguin
• Adjustments to how Google handles page titles
• Improvements to autocomplete for searches
• Improvements to the freshness algorithm
• Improvements to rankings for news and recognition of major news events.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Search Quality Highlights 39 Changes for May

2012 May 25 – Penguin 1.1

A data refresh for the Penguin algorithm was released on May 25, 2012 affecting less than 0.1% of search queries.

Additional Reading:

• SEW – Google Penguin 1.1 Pushed Out As Some Sites Report Recovery

2012 My 16 – Knowledge Graph

On May 16, 2012 Google introduced the knowledge graph, a huge step forward in helping users complete their goals faster.

First, the knowledge graph improved Google’s understanding of entities in Search (what words represented — people, places, or things).

Second, it surfaced relevant information about these entities directly on the search results page as summaries and answers. This meant that users in many instances, no longer needed to click into a search result to find the information they were seeking.

Additional Resources:

• Watch – Introducing Knowledge Graph
• Read – Google Blog – Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings

2012 May 4 – 52 April Updates

On May 4, 2012 Google posted an update providing insight into search changes made over the course of April. Highlights included:

• 15% increase in the base index
• Removed the freshness boost for low quality content
• Increased domain diversity in the search results.
• Changes to Sitelinks
  • Sub sitelinks
  • Better ranking of expanded sitelinks
  • Sitelinks data refresh
• Adjustment to surface more authoritative results.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Search quality highlights: 52 changes for April

2012 April – Panda Updates 13 & 14

In April Google made two updates to its Panda algorithm fighting low quality content in the SERPs:

• Panda 3.5 rolled out on April 19, 2012
• Panda 3.6 rolled out on April 27, 2012 affecting 1% of queries.

Panda 3.5 seemed to target press portals and aggregators, as well as heavily-templated websites. This makes sense as these types of sites are likely to have a high number of pages with thin or duplicative content.

Additional Reading:

• Winners and Losers from Google Webspam Update

2012 April 24 – Penguin

The Penguin Algorithm was announced on April 24, 2012 and focused specifically on devaluing sites that engage in spammy SEO practices.

The two primary targets of Penguin 1.0? Keyword stuffing and link schemes.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Another Step to Reward High Quality Sites
• Search Console Help – Webmaster Answers: Link Schemes

2012 April 24 – Penguin

The Penguin Algorithm was announced on April 24, 2012 and focused specifically on devaluing sites that engage in spammy SEO practices.

The two primary targets of Penguin 1.0? Keyword stuffing and link schemes.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Another Step to Reward High Quality Sites
• Search Console Help – Webmaster Answers: Link Schemes

2012 April – Parked Domain Bug

After a number of webmasters reported ranking shuffles, Google confirmed that a data error had caused some domains to be mistakenly treated as parked domains (and thereby devalued). This was not an intentional algorithm change.

Additional Reading:

• SEL – Google Parked Domain Classifier Error Blamed for Lost Search Rankings

2012 April 3 – 50 Updates

On April 3, 2012 Google posted an update providing insight into search changes made over the course of March. Highlights included:

• Sitelinks Data Refresh
• Better handling of queries with navigational and local intent
• Improvements to detecting site quality
• Improvements to how anchor text contributes to relevancy for sites and search queries
• Improvements to how search handles synonyms

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Search Quality Highlights: 50 Changes for March

2012 March – Panda Update 12

On March 23, 2012 we saw the Penguin 3.4 update, a data refresh affecting 1.6% of queries.

Panda refresh rolling out now. Only ~1.6% of queries noticeably affected. Background on Panda: https://t.co/Z7dDS6qc

— Google (@Google) March 23, 2012

 

2012 February 27 – Panda Update 11

Panda Update 3.3 was a data refresh that was announced on February 27, 2012.

2012 February 27 – Series of Updates

On February 27, 2012 Google posted an update providing insight into search changes made over the course of February. Highlights included:

• Travel related search improvements
• international launch of shopping rich snippets
• improved health searches
• Google changed how it was evaluating links, dropping a method of link analysis that had been used for the past several years.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – 40 Changes for February

2012 February – Venice

The Venice update changed the face of local search forever, as local sites now up even without a geo modifier being used in the keyword itself.

Additional Reading:

• SEJ – Venice Algorithm Update

2012 January – Page Layout Update

This update devalued pages in search that had too many ads “above-the-fold.” Google said that ads that prevented users from accessing content quickly provided a poor user experience.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Page Layout Algorithm Improvement

2012 January 10 – Personalized Search

On January 10, 2012 Google announced Search, plus Your World. Google had already expanded search to include content personally relevant to individuals with Social Search, Your World was the next step.

This update pulled in information from Google+ such as photos, profiles, and more.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Search, plus Your World

2012 January 5 – 30 Google Updates

On January 5, 2012 Google posted an update providing insight into search changes made over the course of December of 2011. Highlights included:

• Landing page quality became a signal for image search, beyond the image itself
• Soft 404 detection (when a page returns a different status code, but the content still wont be accessible to a user).
• More rich snippets
• Better infrastructure for autocomplete (ex: spelling corrections)
• More accurate byline dates
• Related queries improvements
• Upcoming events at venues
• Faster mobile browsing – skipped the redirect phase of sending users to a mobile site m.domain.com

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – 30 Search Quality Highlights

2011 Google Algorithm Updates

2011 December 1 – 10 Google Updates

On December 1, 2011 Google posted an update providing insight into search changes made the two weeks prior. Highlights included:

• Refinements to the inclusion of related queries so they’d be more relevant
• Expansion of indexing to include more long tail keywords
• New parked domain classifier (placeholder sites hosting ads)
• More complete (fresher) blog results
• Improvements for recognizing and rewarding whichever sites originally posted content
• Top result selection code rewrite to avoid “host crowding” (too many results from a single domain in the search results).
• New verbatim tool
• New google bar

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – New Monthly Search Updates</a
  
• Google Blog – New Verbatim Tool
• Google Blog – Google Bar Update

2011 November 18 – Panda Update 10

The Panda 3.1 update rolled out on November 18th, 2011 and affected less than 1% of searches.

 

2011 November – Panda 3.1 (Update 9)

On November 18th, 2011 Panda Update 3.1 goes live, impacting <1% of searches.

 

2011 November – Automatic Translation & More

On November 14, 2011 Google posted an update providing insight into search changes made over the couple preceding weeks. Highlights included:

• Cross language results + automatic translation
• Better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors (referring to google-generated page titles, when they ignore html title tags because they can provide a better one)
• Extending application rich snippets
• Refining official page detection, adjusted how they determine which pages are official
• Improvements to date-restricted queries

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Ten Recent Algorithm Changes

2011 November 3 – Fresher Results

Google puts an emphasis on more recent results, especially on time-sensitive queries.

• Ex: Recent events / hot topics
• Ex: regularly occurring/recurring events
• Frequently updated/outdated types of info (ex: best SLR camera)

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Giving You Fresher More Recent Search Results

2011 October – Query Encryption

On October 18, 2011 Google announced that they were going to be encrypting search data for users who are signed in.

The result? Webmasters could tell that users were coming from google search, but could no longer see the queries being used. Instead, webmasters began to see “(not provided)” showing up in their search results.

This change followed a January roll out of SSL encryption protocol to gmail users.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Making Search More Secure
• Moz – Google Hides Search Referral Data with New SSL Implementation

2011 October 19 – Panda Update 8 (“Flux”)

In October Matt Cutts announced there would be upcoming flux from the Panda 3.0 update affecting about 2% of search queries. Flux occurred throughout October as new signals were incorporated into the Panda algorithms and data is refreshed.

Additional Reading:

• SEL – Panda Update 3.0 & Flux

2011 September 28 – Panda Update 7

On September 20, 2011 Google released their 7th update to the Panda algorithm – Panda 2.5.

2011 September – Pagination Elements

Google added pagination elements – link attributes to help with pagination crawl/indexing issues.

• Rel=”Next”
• Rel=”prev”

Note: this is no longer an indexing signal anymore

2011 August 16 – Expanded Site Links

On August 16, 2011 Google announced expanded display of sitelinks from a max of 8 links to a max of 12 links.

 

Additional Reading:

 

• Google Blog – Evolution of Sitelinks Expanded and Improved

2011 August 12 – Panda Update 6

Google rolled out Panda 2.4 expanding Panda to more languages August 12, 2011, impacting 6-9% of queries worldwide.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – High Quality Sites Algorithm

2011 July 23 – Panda Update 5

Google rolled out Panda 2.3 in July of 2011, adding new signals to help differentiate between higher and lower quality sites.

2011 June 28 – Google+

On June 28, 2011 Google launched their own social network, Google+. The network was sort of a middle ground between Linkedin and Facebook.

Over time, Google + shares and +1s (likes) will eventually become a temporary personalized search ranking factor.

Ultimately though, Google+ ended up being decommissioned in 2019

Additional Reading:

• Wikipedia – Google+

2011 June 16 – Panda Update 4

According to Matt Cutts Panda 2.2 improved scraper-site detection.

What’s a scraper? In this context, a scraper is software used to copy content from a website, often to be posted to another website for ranking purposes. This is considered a type of webspam (not to mention plagiarism).

This update rolled out around June 16, 2011.

2011 June 2 – Schema.org

On June 2, 2011 Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft announced a collaboration to create “a common vocabulary for structured data,” known as Schema.org.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Introducing Schema.org

2011 May 9 – Panda Update 3

Panda 2.1 rolled out in early May, and was relatively minor compared to previous Panda updates.

2011 April 11 – Panda Update 2

On April 11, 2011 Panda 2.0 rolled out globally to English users, impacting about 2% of search queries.

What was different in Panda 2.0?

• Better assessment of site quality for long-tailed keywords
• This update also begins to incorporate data around sites that user’s manually block

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – High-quality sites algorithm goes global, incorporates user feedback

2011 March 28 – Google +1 Button

Google introduces the +1 Button, similar to facebook “like” button or the reddit upvote. The goal? Bring trusted content to the top of the search results.

Later in June Google posted a brief update that they made the button faster, and in August of 2011 it also became a share icon.

 

Additional Reading:

 

• Google Blog – Introducing the +1 Button

2011 February – Panda Update (AKA Farmer)

Panda was released to fight thin content and low-quality content in the SERPs. Panda was also designed to reward unique content that provides value to users.

 

Panda impacted a whopping 12% of search results, and virtually wiped out content farms, sites with low quality content, thin affiliate sites, sites with large ad-to-content ratios and over optimization.

 

As a result sites with less intrusive ads started to do better in the search results, sites with”thin” user-generated content went down, as did harder to read pages.

Per Google:

As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.”

Additional Reading

• Moz – Farmer Update Analysis of Winners vs Losers

2011 January – Attribution Update

This update focused on stopping scraper sites from receiving benefit from stolen content. The algorithm worked to establish which site initially created and posted content, and boost that site in the SERPs over other sites which had stolen the content.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Google Search and Search Engine Spam

2011 January – Overstock.com & JCPenney Penalty

Overstock and J.C. Penney receive manual actions due to deceptive link building practices.

Overstock offered a 10% discount to universities, students, and parents — as long as they posted anchor-text rich content to their university website. A competitor noticed the trend and reported them to Google.

JC Penney had thousands of backlinks built to its site targeting exact match anchor text. After receiving a manual action they disavowed the spammy links and largely recovered.

Additional Reading:

• SEW – Overstock Lands In Google’s Penalty Box
• NYT – J.C. Penney the Underbelly of SEO

2010 Google Algorithm Updates

2010 December – Social Signals Incorporated

Google confirms that they use social signals including accounting for shares when looking at news stories, and author quality.

<h3style=”font-size: 18pt;”>2010 December – Negative ReviewsIn late November a story broke about how businesses were soaring in the search results, and seeing their businesses grow exponentially – by being as terrible to customers as possible.

Enraged customers were leaving negative reviews on every major site they could linking back to these bad-actor businesses, trying to warn others. But what was happening in search, is all those backlinks were giving the bad actors more and more search equity — enabling them to show up as the first result for a wider and wider range of searches.

Google responded to the issue within weeks, making changes to ensure businesses could not abuse their users in that manner moving forward.

Per Google:

“Being bad is […] bad for business in Google’s search results.”

Additional Reading:
NYT – Bullies Rewarded in Search

2010 November – Instant Visual Previews

This temporary feature allowed users to see a visual preview of a website in the search results. It was quickly rolled back.

 

Additional Resources:
Google Blog – Beyond Instant Results, Instant Previews

 

2010 September – Google Instant

Google suggest starts displaying results before a user actually completes their query.

This feature lived for a long time (in tech-years anyways) but was sunset in 2017 as mobile search became dominant, and Google realized it might not be the optimal experience for on-the-go mobile users.

2010 August – Brand Update

Google made a change to allow some brands/domains to appear multiple times on page one depending on the search

This feature ends up undergoing a number of updates over time as Google works to get the right balance of site diversity when encountering host-clusters (multiple results from the same domain in search).

2010 June – Caffeine Roll Out

On June 10, 2010 Google announced Caffeine.

Caffeine was an entirely new indexing system with a new search index. Where before there had been multiple indexes, each being updated and refreshed at their own rates, caffeine enabled continuous updating of small portions of the search index. Under caffeine, newly indexed content was available within seconds of being crawled

Per Google:

“Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.”

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Our New Search Index Caffeine

2010 May 3 – MayDay

The May Day update occurred between April 28th and May 3rd 2010. This update was a precursor to Panda and took a shot at combating content farms.

Google’s comment on the update? “If you’re impacted, assess your site for quality.”

Additional Resources:

• Watch – Matt Cutts and Recovering Rankings

2010 April – Google Places

In April of 2010 Local Business Center became Google Places. Along with this change came the introduction of service areas (as opposed to just a single address as a location).

Other highlights:

• Simpler method for advertising
• Google offered free professional photo shoots for businesses
• Google announced another batch of favorite places

By April of 2010, 20% of searches were already location-based.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Introducing Google Places

2009 Google Algorithm Updates

2009 December – Real Time Search

Google announces search features related to newly indexed content: Twitter Feeds, News Results, etc. This real time feed was nested under a “latest results” section of the first page of search results.

 

Additional Reading:

 

• SEL – Google Launches Real Time Search

2009 August 10 – Caffeine Preview

On August 10 Google begins to preview Caffeine, requesting feedback from users.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Help Test Some Next Generation Infrastructure

2009 February – Vince

Essentially the Vince update boosted brands.

Vince focused on trust, authority and reputation as signals to provide higher quality results which could push big brands further to the top of the SERPs.

Additional Resources:
Watch – Is Google putting more weight on brands in rankings?
Read – SEO Book – Google Branding

2008 Google Search Updates

2008 August – Google Suggest

Google introduces “suggest” which displays suggested search terms as the user is typing their query.

Additional Reading:

• SEL – Google Finally Gets Google Suggest Feature

2008 April – Dewey

The Dewey update rolled out in late March/early April. The update was called Dewey because Matt Cutts chose the (slightly unique) term as one that would allow comparison between results from different data centers.

2007 Google Algorithm Updates

2007 June – Buffy

The Buffy update caused fluctuations for single-word search results.

Why Buffy?Google Webmaster Central product manager and long-time head of operations, Vanessa Fox, notoriously an avid Buffy fan, announced she was leaving Google.

Vanessa garnered an intense respect from webmasters over her tenure both for her product leadership and for her responsiveness to the community – the people using google’s products daily. The webmaster community named this update after her interest as a sign of respect.

Additional Reading:

• SER – Buffy Update
• SEL – Vanessa Fox Leaves Google

2007 May – Universal Search

Old school organic search results are integrated with video, local, image, news, blog, and book searches.

Additional Reading:

• SEL – Google Universal Search

2006 Google Search Updates

2006 November – Supplemental Update

An update to how the filtering of pages stored in the supplemental index is handled. Google went on to scrap the supplemental index label in July 2007.

Additional Reading:

• Nobs – Supplemental Update
  

2005 Google Search Updates

2005 November – Big Daddy

This was an update to the Google search infrastructure and took 3 months to roll out: January, February, and March. This update also changed how google handled canonicalization and redirects.

Additional Reading:

• Matt Cutts – Indexing Timeline
• Matt Cutts on Webmaster Radio

2005 October 16 – Jagger Rollout Begins

The Jagger Update rolled out as a series of October updates.

The update targeted low quality links, reciprocal links, paid links, and link farms. The update helped prepare the way for the Big Daddy infrastructure update in November.

Additional Reading:

• SER – Jagger Update

2005 October – Google Local / Maps

In October of 2015, Google merged Local Business Center data merges with Maps data.

2005 September – Gilligan / False Alarm

A number of SEOs noted fluctuations in September which they originally named “Gilligan.” It turns out there were no algorithm updates, just a data refresh (index update).

Given the news, many SEOs renamed their posts “False Alarm.” However, moving forward many data refreshes are considered updates by the community. So we’ll let the “Gilligan” update stand.

Additional Reading:

• Matt Cutts – What’s an Update

2005 June – Personalized Search

Google relaunches personal search. This time it helps shape future results based on your past selections.

Additional Reading:

• Google My Activity
• SEW – Google Relaunches Personal Search

2005 June – XML sitemaps

Google launches the ability to submit XML sitemaps via Google Webmaster tools. This update bypassed old HTML sitemaps. It gave Webmasters some influence over indexation and crawling, allowing them to feed pages to the index with this feature.

Additional Reading:

• SEW – New Google Sitemaps Web Page Feed Program

2005 May – Bourbon

The May 2005 update, nicknamed Bourbon seemed to devalue sites/pages with duplicate content, and affected 3.5% of search queries.

2005 February – Allegra

The Allegra update rolled out between February 2, 2005 and February 8, 2005. It caused major fluctuations in the SERPs. While nothing has ever been confirmed, these are the most popular theories amongst SEOs for what changed:

• LSI being used as a ranking signal
• Duplicate content is devalued
• Suspicious links are somehow accounted for

Additional Reading:

• Ryte Wiki – Allegra Update

2005 January – NoFollow

In early January, 2005 Google introduced the “Nofollow” link attribute to combat spam, and control the outbound link quality. This change helped clean up spammy blog comments: comments mass posted to blogs across the internet with links meant to boost the rankings of the target site.
Future Changes:

• On June 15, 2009 Google changed the way it views NoFollow links in response to webmasters manipulating pages with “page rank sculpting”.
• Google suggests webmasters use “nofollow” attributes for ads and paid links.
• On September 10, 2019 Google Announced two additional link attributes “sponsored” and “ugc.”
  • Sponsored is for links that are paid or advertorial.
  • UGC is for links which come from user generated content.

Additional Reading:

• Wikipedia – NoFollow

2004 Google Algorithm Updates

2004 February – Brandy

The Brandy update rolled out the first half of February and included five significant changes to Google’s algorithmic formulas (confirmed by Sergey Brin).

Over this same time period Google’s index was significantly expanded, by over 20%, and dynamic web pages were included in the index.

What else changed?

• Google began shifting importance away from Page Rank to link quality, link anchors, and link context.
• Attention is being given to link neighborhoods – how well your site connected to others in your sector or space. This meant that outbound links became more important to a site’s overall SEO.
• Latent Semantic Indexing increases in importance. Tags (titles, metas, H1/H2) took a back seat to LSI.
• Keyword analysis gets a lot better. Google gets better at recognizing synonyms using LSI.

2004 January – Austin

Austin followed up on Florida continuing to clean up spammy SEO practices, and push unworthy sites out of the first pages of search results.
What changed?

• Invisible text took another hit
• Meta-tag stuffing was a target
• FFA (Free for all) link farms no longer provided benefit

Many SEOs also speculated that this had been a change to Hilltop, a page rank algorithm that had been around since 1998.

Additional Reading:

• SEJ – The Latest Update On Austin

2003 Google Algorithm Updates

2003 November 16 – Florida

Google’s Florida update rolled out on November 16, 2003 and targeted spammy seo practices such as keyword stuffing. Many sites that were trying to game the search engine algorithms instead of serve users also fell in the rankings.

 

Additional Reading:

 

• SEW – What Happened to My Site on Google?

2003 September – Supplemental Index

Google split their index into main and supplemental. The goal was to increase the number of pages/content that Google could crawl and index. The supplemental index had less restrictions on indexing pages. Pages from the supplemental index would only be shown if there were very few good results from the main index to display for a search.

When the supplemental index was introduced some people viewed being relegated to the supplemental index as a penalty or search results “purgatory”.

Google retired the supplemental index tag in 2007, but has never said that they retired the supplemental index itself. That being said it’s open knowledge that Google maintains multiple indices, so it is within the realm of reason that the supplemental index may still be one of them. While the label dissapeared, many wonder if the supplemental index has continued to exist and morphed into what we see today as “omitted results”Sites found they were able to move from the supplemental index to the main index by acquiring more backlinks.

Additional Reading:

• Cognitive SEO – Omitted Results

2003 July – Fritz (Everflux)

In July, 2003 Google moved away from monthly index updates (often referred to as the google dance) to daily updates in which a portion of the index was updated daily. These regular updates came to be referred to as “everflux.”

2003 June – Esmerelda

Esmerelda was the last giant monthly index update before Google switched over to daily index updates.

2003 May – Dominic

Google’s Dominic update focused on battling spammy link practices.

2003 April – Cassandra

Google’s Cassandra update launched in April of 2003 and targeted spammy SEO practices including hidden text, heavily co-linked domains, and other low-link-quality practices.

Google began allowing banned sites to submit a reconsideration request after manual penalties in April of 2003.

Additional Reading:

• Google Blog – Hidden Text and Links

2003 February – Boston

Google’s first named update was Boston which rolled out in February of 2003. The Google Boston Update improved algorithms related to analyzing a site’s backlink data.

2002 Google Algorithm Updates

2002 September – 1st Documented Update

Google’s first documented search algorithm update happened on September 1, 2002. It was also the kickoff of “Google Dance” – large-scale monthly refreshes of Google’s search index.

SEOs were shocked by the update claiming “PageRank [is] DEAD”, this update was a little imperfect and included issues such as 404 pages showing up on the first page of search.

Additional Reading:

• Search Engine Showdown – Google Dance Begins

2000 Google Search Updates

2000 December – Google Toolbar

Google launches their search toolbar for browsers. The toolbar highlights search terms within webpage copy, and allowed users to search within websites that didn’t have their own site search.

Additional Reading:

• Google Toolbar

 

The post Google Algorithm Update History appeared first on LinkGraph.

External linking can also be helpful to your SEO and ranking. However, many companies, agencies, and small businesses are still hesitant about linking to outside sources from their own pages for fear of losing users, or losing search equity.

Outbound Linking Barrier #1

The fear of losing search equity demonstrates a slight misunderstanding of how links work in terms of SEO.

The Hose Myth

Many people think of links like hoses that search equity flows through. In this mental model, search equity originates from users, they bestow it on a site by visiting/engaging, and that search equity flows to other pages/sites via links. The problem with this idea of links is that you view search equity as a very finite commodity—and believe that you “lose” search equity every time you link to another site (this is false).

A Better Mental Model

Think of a link like a recommendation. One site is recommending another site to their users by linking to that site.

Let’s take that metaphor a little further with a scenario: Let’s assume your friend asks you for recommendations on someone to hire. Consider the following two outcomes:

• You give them recommendations for two really good candidates.
• You give them recommendations for the full 523 people you had in your phone contacts.

In the first outcome your friend probably found you very helpful, and would come to you for help again. In the second outcome, your friend probably didn’t find that useful at all, and they are unlikely to return to you for help.

To summarize, here are three key reasons why outbound links work for companies of any size.

• Search engines judge you by the company you keep (especially Google). Your reputation can benefit from being associated with other sites that are well known for being reputable on related topics.
• Users prefer information to be curated for them rather than having to find it themselves. Whenever you have the opportunity to do so, link to the most relevant resources in your field. This will encourage a user to bookmark your page or share your content.
• Linking shows that you know which resources are most relevant. This enables you to highlight to Google that you know authoritative content when you see it.

Outbound Linking Barrier #2

The next major barrier most business face to outbound linking is the concern that they’ll lose converting users to other sites.

The Lost Traffic Concern

As pointed out by Moz, it’s true that by linking to another website, you’re directing some traffic away from your own page.

Benefits Outweigh the Cost

Most sites will set external links to open in a new tab for users, reducing the chance of the user being truly pulled away from the site. Additionally, users who are still in the research phase are less likely to have converted during their session anyways.

In your site’s overall SEO strategy, each page is an opportunity to showcase your expertise and depth of knowledge about the topic, space, or industry through your content. When you reference other authoritative sources via outbound links it builds trust for your own website with users, and sends content quality signals to search engines. In this way, outbound linking helps improve the SEO health of your website and reduces behaviors that negatively impact SEO, like u-turns and bounces.

Furthermore, posting an outbound link to a site you find valuable is also a way of extending your hand for potential partnership. This can be a solid way to start building relationships with bloggers, writers, and businesses in the same niche, location, or complementary industry. If you’re a local business, suggesting or recommending other local businesses can even help search engines recognize your page better for local search. In a way, you’re asking Google and other search engines to associate your page with that of other related sites and their SEO efforts/attributes (like location or authority).

How to Select Sites for Outbound Linking

First, only ever select resources that will provide value to your user (informational value, entertainment value, etc).

The easiest place to figure out how to rank in Google? Google itself. Complete a preliminary search of your top keywords and see what Google currently thinks is worth promoting.

Tools for Checking Site Authority

If there are sites that you already know about, and want to check on their authority, you can use a Domain Authority (DA) checker. DA is a metric created by Moz that scores websites based on a scale that goes up to 100. The higher the score, the more domain authority that website holds, making it a strong candidate for an outbound link.

Another great place to start is Ahrefs, using their site explorer you can check the backlink profile for any site already ranking well for your target keyword(s) or sites already linking to a source that you know is authoritative. Look for sites with a high Domain Rating (DR), as a starting point.

Bonus:   Screaming Frog, a free tool, can analyze your competitor’s site and provide you a list of their outbound links.

Considerations for Site Selection

Here are a few questions to keep in mind when choosing backlinks:

• What one-to-three pages help to support my claims or share related content?
• Which other pages cover the topic well?
• Do these pages also have good domain authority/domain rating?
• Do these pages operate by bloggers or domain owners in related or similar niches?
• Are these pages ones that get regular traffic and social shares from others in my niche?
• Do I find these sites to be valuable sources of information I trust?

Going through these questions can help you pinpoint whether or not another site is a good choice for a link.

The most valuable sites to link to are those with strong domain authority. Google prioritizes high authority and high organic traffic (OT) metrics. For example, if you were writing a page for your chiropractic business about post-car-accident back injuries, linking to research from the Mayo Clinic could be valuable because you’re backing up the statements you shared on your page with a trusted source of medical information. With Bing, the kings of content are sites that end in .gov and .edu. This is because they’re often associated with government agencies, research, and universities.

If a certain topic is trending in the news, linking to a site that has less domain authority but is the primary source of coverage for this topic can help you jump on the trend while the topic is still fresh in your readers’ minds.

Linking to Your Own Earned Media

A wonderful chance to link to outbound content while also building on your own traction is to link to other websites that have mentioned or profiled your company or your own site. Any form of earned media, such as a mention in a reported piece, a guest blog, or an interview on someone else’s podcast allows you to benefit from the other person’s link to your website and for you to write up a recap for your own site to link to theirs.

Over time, a strategy like this signals to the search engines that you’ve “shown up” as a trusted link by many others in your niche. This is also a much more organic way of building traffic and SEO traction than outdated spammy methods like link farms or linking parties.

You’ll sometimes see sites create an entire section for news or press to highlight earned media.

Outbound Linking Helps Secure Inbound Links

When you create quality content on your own site, you’re also likely to become a hub for outbound links from other people, too! Establishing your site as a worthwhile resource and home for quality content means that over time, you’ll continue to post outbound links to other valuable websites.Your own site might also pick up some backlinks of its own as other people connect to your content. At that stage, link-building becomes a cycle and it’s much easier to build on your own results.

One method we discussed earlier in this article is content curation. Or creating a page that links to all the best resources on a topic, and helps users quickly navigate those resources by providing either brief color-commentary or high-level organization. An example of this would be an article like “The 10 Best Places to Visit When Travelling to Arlington, VA” or “The 20 Best Resources for Getting Started with Inbound Marketing.”

The Outbound Link “Strategy” to Avoid

Avoid two-way backlinking schemes run by private blog networks. These are sometimes referred to as “linking parties.” In Google’s recent updates, they have been penalizing efforts to game the system with links shared between blogs. (They’re calling these discrepancies “link schemes.”)

Worried about your site? If you haven’t participated in any of the following acts, you should be fine:

• Excessive link exchanges:  This is what we were talking about in the paragraph above. Google will come after you for participating in “link to me and I’ll link to you” schemes. You also should avoid partnering with a page, influencer, blogger, etc. that doesn’t make sense for your company. Google is watching for relevance. So if you get your link on a site that just doesn’t make sense, Google will ping you for it. For example, a link to an automotive shop shouldn’t show up within the blog pages of a bakery.
• Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns:  Sometimes, businesses think they’re sneaky and can use one singular article several times in hopes of getting a few links out of it. Reworking a few words here and there isn’t going to fool Google.
• Exchanging goods or services for links:  Google will know if you sent someone a “free” product in exchange for a link. If you do this, make sure it fits your brand and looks natural.

The best way to get on Google’s good side it to create unique, relevant content that your audience will genuinely love. We don’t care what you’ve heard, creating good content pays off. Remember, you’re in this for the long-game.

As pointed out in a July 2019 edition of #AskGoogleWebmasters, outbound linking should always be done without getting involved in any schemes, adding outbound links in user-generated content, and links in ads.

Final Thoughts

The best way to become a trusted source in your niche is to publish regular high-quality content of your own. Forming relationships with other writers and bloggers in your niche by following their content and commenting can also open the doors for future link-building opportunities.

Remember, Google is evolving all of the time. The company isn’t doing this to punish you or take away your hard-earned followers. The algorithm changes to filter out spammers. Rule of thumb? Do your research. Take the tips we’ve laid out in this article to heart. Google doesn’t play and it will penalize your site for a variety of reasons, including joining the wrong link directory, article marketing (which is spinning the exact same article multiple times in hopes of ranking), keyword stuffing, and unnatural anchor text. (You wouldn’t want unnatural text repping your brand anyway, right?

Your SEO efforts are best spent on pages that are not yet ranking on Page 1 for target search terms. Once you’ve seen what is working on your page, flex your new SEO muscles by selecting an under-performing page and test out how you can make improvements to that page. You can then track whether you’re able to boost your rankings for that page. We have a great article with advice on creating great on-page content.

The post How Outbound Links Improve Your Site Authority and SEO appeared first on LinkGraph.

If your business goal this year is to increase your website’s traffic, your best bet is to start with search engine optimization (SEO). However, the broad and complex field of SEO can feel overwhelming, especially if you try to implement everything you can all at once. To make the process easier, we’ve created this 2022 SEO checklist. 

As you go through the SEO process this year, use this checklist as a resource to help you multi-task the differing aspects of SEO, schedule items in a logical order, and prioritize more impactful actions. We hope you will also take advantage of the downloadable SEO Checklist, Downloadable SEO Checklist for Presentations or Google Doc SEO Checklist to track your SEO progress as you work. 

Are you ready to check off some tasks and watch your organic traffic climb? Let’s get started.

How to Use this SEO Checklist

There’s no denying that SEO is a dynamic art and science. This means that you will need to revisit some tasks over time while others are one-and-done. In the printable or editable version of this checklist, you will find that the * indicates a task that is best revisited quarterly.

Additionally, to prevent you from getting overwhelmed, we’ve listed each task in order of importance.

Begin with the Basics: SEO Foundational Setup

While you can dive right into adding schema markup to every page on your site, you may want to hold off on a task like that. Beginning with SEO best practices and being able to start tracking your site’s organic traffic metrics is a bit more important. 

So, if you’re starting from scratch, start here:

1. Become Familiar with SEO Terminology

Plunging into the world of search engine optimization requires learning a lot of new terms. Arming yourself with an SEO glossary can help you build your confidence and propel you beyond the learning curve.

Suggested resource to learn more: LinkGraph’s Complete SEO Glossary

2. Create Your Google Search Console Account

Google Search Console is like an EKG for your website’s SEO health. This free SEO tool provides you with a great depth of insight into how Google views your websites, how you’re performing on their search engine results pages (SERPs), and your site’s Core Web Vitals.

While Google Search Console can be confusing at first, we recommend you spend some time over the next month becoming familiar with the reports this tool provides.

With GSC, you can:

• Learn which keywords your site ranks for
• See which of your URLs performance the best in search results
• Submit your sitemap to Google
• Find crawler errors

Suggested resource to learn more: How to Use Google Search Console for SEO

3. Set Up an Account with Bing Webmaster Tools

While Google receives about 92% of the global search share, Bing does receive almost 3% of searches–many of which are via Amazon’s Alexa. This means if you’re a locally-based business, you want to make optimizing for voice search a priority. Furthermore, Bing’s Webmaster Tools are easy to use.

Suggested resource to learn more: Voice Search Optimization: An Updated & Comprehensive Guide

4. Begin Using Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the perfect complement to Google Search Console. While GSC provides you with a wealth of data regarding your site’s organic traffic and search engine crawlability, GA gives you data about all site visitors.

Setting up your Google Analytics account is similar to setting up Search Console. In fact, you can even link the two, so you can find all of your site visitor metrics in one place.

Suggested resource to learn more: Get Started with Analytics

5. Sign Up for SearchAtlas

SEO is a multi-faceted discipline. Using SEO software that helps to make tracking your SEO campaigns and create the best content can give you a headstart in improving your site’s SERP rankings. 

SearchAtlas is a full suite of SEO tools to tackle every aspect of SEO, including:

• Metrics tracking and deep data analysis
• Content creation
• Keyword research
• Competitor research
• Backlink strategy data
• SEO site audit reports

Suggested resource to learn more: Learn more about SearchAtlas

SEO Content Creation Checklist

When it comes to rankability–your site needs quality content that follows keyword best practices. Building a library of SEO-optimized content takes time and skill, but is well worth the investment.

1. Find Your Best Keywords

Your keywords are key to getting Google’s attention–this is why choosing the best keywords for your site is a vital step in becoming discoverable on Google and other search engines.

However, knowing where to begin can be a monumental task. We recommend beginning with Google Suggest. Then use the Keyword Researcher and competitor research to learn more about the keywords you want to target and have a higher probability of ranking for.

Keep in mind that you will want to target long-tail keywords during the keyword research process. 15% of all Google searches have never been searched before–This leaves plenty of opportunities to capture searchers.

Suggested resource to learn more: Unlock the SEO Potential of Low Competition and Long-Tail Keywords

2. Plan Your Content Calendar

Once you’ve strategically targeted the keywords your site has the potential to rank for, you will want to establish a content plan. This should include primary keywords along with a cluster of related keywords that are relevant to the content topic.

Most sites schedule their content on a quarterly basis, prioritizing keywords that have the most potential SEO value. 

Content creation is a time-consuming process. If you’re pressed for time–or you don’t have a knack for writing–hiring an SEO agency can be a wise choice. The Content Planner lets you create a keyword plan then you can export the brief using the SEO Content Assistant.

Suggested resource to learn more: Content Development: Improve Your Content Strategy for SEO

3. Create Fully-Optimized Content

As you work through your content strategy, live by the mantra: every piece matters. If you approach every blog post, landing page, and product page with an eye for quality and SEO, you will save yourself time, money, and SEO grief.

Using a content optimizer makes creating SEO-friendly content easier. Using a tool like the SEO Content Assistant allows you to produce rankable content without needing to understand every intricacy of the process. 

Suggested resource to learn more: The Beginner’s Guide to Writing Web Content for SEO

4. Promote Your Content

To maximize the power of your new, fresh content, you will want to promote it on social media and in emails. This will increase referral traffic to your website. It will also increase brand visibility and support your brand’s reputation within your industry. This can result in organic backlinks–which can boost your domain authority and domain rating.

Suggested resource to learn more: 7 Contextual Link-Building Tips & Techniques

On-Page SEO Checklist

Every page on your site is one more opportunity to rank. This section is designed to be an on-page SEO checklist to ensure each of your URLs reaches its SEO potential. Most on-page SEO tasks should be enacted on an ongoing basis.

1. Optimize Your URLs

Google has an eye for detail. This detail comes down to a granular look at each of your website’s URLs as Google indexes your site. Optimizing your slugs can be one of the many details that promote your site in Google SERPs.

To optimize your URLs:

1. Include your target keyword in your slug
2. Separate words with hyphens
3. Use evergreen methods–omitting dates
4. Avoid redirect chains

Suggested resource to learn more: Campaign URL Builder

2. Optimize Your Title Tags

In addition to optimizing your slugs, you also want to ensure your title tags are also Google-worthy. This means that they include your target keyword in a natural way (at the beginning of the title if possible).

Your title tags can be the same as your page title, but they should also be:

• Between 40 and 60 characters
• Omit parentheses and brackets
• Interesting–click-worthy
• Straightforward

Suggested resource to learn more: A Guide to SEO HTML Tags

3. Create Meta Tags with SEO Best Practices

Whether your site has an existing blog or a long list of product pages, you want to be sure all of your meta tags reflect your keyword targets. So, in addition to your title tag, be sure your meta descriptions, headings (AKA H1 tags, etc.), and alt text follow meta tag best practices.

You will also want to be sure your site uses canonical tags (if you use WordPress or Shopify, these platforms automate this for you).

Robots tags are also important if your site has gated content, a chat forum, or user comments.

Suggested resource to learn more: What Are Canonical Tags and When to Use Them

4. Link to External Resources

Throughout your content, you will want to link to external sources using outbound links. This practice tells Google’s webcrawlers what your content is about in relation to other pages. Providing Google with these signals can increase your chances of appearing in the right Google searches and on other search engines.

To choose authority sites to link to, select sites that:

• Are not your direct competitors
• Not spammy
• Are respected in your industry
• Ideally are high DA sites with original research)

Suggested resource to learn more: Why Are Links Important for SEO?

5. Use Internal Links

Just as external links tell Google what your content is about through the indexing page process, internal links help Google’s crawlers find pages to crawl on your site and understand them better.

The more a page within your site is linked to, the more important Google sees it in the context of your site–and the more often Googlebots will crawl it. 

Through the use of anchor text, annotation text, and strategic internal linking, you can improve your site’s search engine crawlability.

Suggested resource to learn more: Internal Links as a Ranking Factor

6. Use Schema Markup

Schema markup allows you to signal to search engines that a page contains specific information. Search engines then use this information to better place your content in search results. 

Additionally, Schema Markup allows searchers to preview your content in the search results to ensure it fits their query intent. The result: a high click-through rate, a lower bounce rate, and happy searchers.

You can use the Yoast Plug-in on WordPress or Shopify to create and implement schema markup, or you can use Google’s free tool.

Suggested resource to learn more: Complete Guide to Schema Markup

Technical SEO Checklist

When it comes to implementing SEO best practices, Technical SEO can be the most intimidating. However, if you can use WordPress, SearchAtlas can simplify the technical SEO process.

1. Find and Fix Crawler Errors

As a site owner, your goal should always be to do it right the first time. However, this isn’t always possible–especially if you created your site before you learned about SEO. Luckily, a crawl audit can help you identify problems that can occur from page edits, site architecture problems, and more.

If Google cannot crawl your site, your pages will not appear in their search results. Finding and repairing these issues can improve the chances of your web pages being discovered by search engines and appearing in the SERPs.

As a webcrawler works its way through your website, it will travel from one link to another. If it hits a dead end or waits too long for a page retrieval, it can negatively affect your SEO. Fixing these issues is a must for indexing purposes and your visitors’ user experience.

What errors should you look for?

• Chain redirects (multiple 301s in a row)
• Broken links (4XX errors)
• Slow server speeds
• Duplicate content

Note: Some aspects of this task overlap with other tasks–so, don’t stress if it seems like a monumental hurdle. The most important part of this task is to see how Google views your site and what pages their crawlers cannot access.

Suggested resource to learn more: What Is Crawl Budget & How to Optimize for It

2. Learn How Google Indexes Your Pages

Having a preliminary understanding of how search engine crawlers work can work to your advantage as you continue to build out your content library and product or services pages. 

So, how goes Google index your pages?

(As you read through this explanation, keep in mind that it’s an abbreviated version of the process). A Googlebot will first look at your sitemap and robots.txt. Then move onto your homepage, from there, it will begin traveling and collecting information from pages linked to in your navigation menu or internal links. 

Googlebots can index more than one page at once, but they limit the amount of data pulled in order to not ‘clog’ your server and slow down speeds for your site visitors.

As the Googlebot arrives on a page, it will pull information from your page’s:

• Page load speed
• URL text
• Headers
• Alt text & image file names (for content comprehension and Google image searches)
• Links (both internal and external)
• Images & videos (using Google MUM)
• Schema markup
• Overall text
• Text structure

Suggested resource to learn more: How Google Search Algorithm Works

3. Fix Broken Links

One of the easiest tasks that can improve your technical SEO is fixing broken links. These can include internal and outbound links.

So, after you’ve identified the URLs that have broken links, you will want to identify why the link is broken. 

If the link is an internal page, determine if the linked URL has been 

• Redirected and the redirect isn’t working
• Needs a redirect set up
• Deleted and no longer exists

If the redirect isn’t working or needs to be set up, submit a ticket to your web developer to assess the issue or create the redirect.

For pages that no longer exist, remove the link or link to a new page on a similar topic.

For broken external links, you will want to remove the links and add another external link elsewhere within the content or replace the broken link with a fresh link to another page.

Suggested resource to learn more: 10 Bad Links That Can Get You Penalized by Google

4. Ensure Optimal Mobile Accessibility

Google uses a Mobile-First approach to indexing. This means that their crawlers will first revert to viewing the mobile version of a page. This means your site needs to be able to load quickly and correctly for mobile users and Google.

A simple site audit with SearchAtlas will provide you with your mobile page speed load time data. You can also access this info via PageSpeed Insights or your Google Search Console Account.

If your site’s mobile speed loading isn’t up to Core Web Vitals standards, you will want to work with your web developer to improve the issues. Using dynamic page layout and design can do wonders for your mobile loading times.

Suggested resource to learn more: Mobile SEO – The Complete Guide

5. Switch from HTTP to HTTPS

Google continues to emphasize the importance of safety and security for web users, and we anticipate that this trend will continue for years to come. As of now, Google promotes websites that take security precautions higher in the Google SERPs. So, how can your site become one that reflects Google’s security standards?

One of the easiest ways to keep your site visitors protected is to use the more secure HTTP–HTTPS. HTTPS encodes user data so it is less vulnerable to theft. To make the switch, you will need to obtain an SSL certificate or a TLS certificate.

Suggested resource to learn more: HTTPS vs HTTP Protocols and More

6. Check Your Site’s Speed Performance

In an effort to improve the overall search experience, Google uses page load speeds and time-to-interactivity as ranking factors. While the Core Web Vitals are relatively new, page load speed has always affected a site’s ranking. How? Google tracks individual pages’ bounce rate–which is a metric that reflects the number of searchers that ‘bounce back’ to the search engine’s results page. The longer a searcher has to wait for a page to load, the more likely they are to become impatient and abandon waiting.

The first step to this task is understanding your site’s speed metrics. You can find this data in Search Console, SearchAtlas, or by using PageSpeedInsights. 

The next step is to work with your web developer to improve your site’s performance.

Suggested resource to learn more: 30 Ways to Improve SEO Performance 

Backlink Building Checklist

One of the most important aspects of the success of a site’s SEO is its backlink profile. When a website has more backlinks, Google is better able to understand the site’s content, plus backlinks establish a site’s credibility and authority. To begin building your site’s backlink profile, you will need to begin checking items off this list.

1. Reach Out to Industry Peers

Backlink building takes time and effort. One of the most effective ways to begin the link-building process is to plan and implement an industry-rich link-building campaign.

To begin this process, you will need to identify potential sites to reach out to. You can do this with the Suggested Outreach report in SearchAtlas.

Once you have a list of sites, you will need to begin reaching out to their sites’ owners. As you do, be cordial and simply ask if they would be interested in a guest blog post, guest infographic, or original data. You can even include the great content you’re offering in your initial email, so site owners are able to assess the quality and fit for their website.

If a site agrees to publish guest content on their website, be sure to confirm that they’re also willing to include a link to your website either as credit or a contextual backlink.

Suggested resource to learn more: Link Exchanges: Do They Work & Are They Safe?

2. Target Your Competitors’ Backlinks

One way to build your site’s Domain Authority and Domain Rating is to acquire backlinks on sites that link to your competitors. By identifying which sites link to your competition, you gain access to a list of pre-qualified sites that will likely be happy to partner with you for guest posts. 

With SearchAtlas’s Free Backlink Analyzer report, you can easily identify which sites have the best backlink potential for your site. Screaming Frog also has a competitor backlink analysis tool that can be quite handy in obtaining a full list of your competitors’ backlinks.

Suggested resource to learn more: White Hat Link Building Methods

3. Attend Conferences & Become Active in Industry Conversations

One way to win organic backlinks is to become a recognized expert and leader in your field. You can achieve this by participating in shaping the future of your niche through forum discussions, conference presentations, and networking.

As you build your reputation and organization reputation, more sites will naturally want to link to yours.

Suggested resource to learn more: How to Find a Conference or Meeting

4. Speak Up: Get Invited to a Podcast

Podcasts are labor-intensive media assets. They’re also highly consumed by internet audiences and a great way to gain highly valuable backlinks. By connecting with podcast creators, you offer them a low-effort option for an episode that will result in high-quality content. In return, you can increase your brand awareness and site authority.

Suggested resource to learn more: Connecting podcasters with great guests

Local SEO Checklist

Whether you provide local services, local eats, or physical goods from a brick-and-mortar shop, local SEO is one of the most important SEO efforts you can implement in your SEO strategy.

1. Set up Your Google Business Profile Listing​

Google Business Profile (or Google My Business) is one of the most powerful tools for local SEO. This is one of the few ways to begin appearing on Google Maps and in local searches. Therefore, if your business (even e-commerce businesses) does not have a Google Business Profile, it is time to set it up.

As you begin the setup process, have images of your business and products available. Be prepared to write a thorough description of your business. And try to be as thorough as possible. The more work you put into your Google Business Profile, the more power it has to attract potential customers to your establishment.

Suggested resource to learn more: How To Set Up Your Google Business Profile Listing

2. Implement Local Business Schema Markup

Schema markup allows you to communicate to search engines information about your web pages and business. When you provide this information, search engines have a clearer idea of what searches your web pages should appear in and help you reach your target audience. Furthermore, schema data markup can help search engines highlight your business and business offerings in the SERPs.

This low-effort task can have a profound impact on your business’s search traffic and revenue. With schema, you will draw in more searches from mobile devices and more traffic to your landing pages.

Suggested resource to learn more: Local Busines by Google Search Central

3. Connect with Local Media Outlets 

Becoming a recognized organization in your community can increase your search visibility and sales. If your business participates in charitable activities and donations, you can highlight your efforts by providing local news outlets with pre-written press releases they can ‘plug and play.’

The result of this is backlinks from a local site to further verify your locale and brand exposure to a greater audience.

Suggested resource to learn more: How to Get a Story on the Local News

4. Respond to Reviews and Questions on GBP Weekly

Your Google Business Profile is a conduit of communication between the public and your business. Like other aspects of your brand reputation, you will want to devote time weekly to acknowledging, responding, and tending to users’ reviews and questions about your business.

Suggested resource to learn more: Tips to Elevate Your Online Reputation

Long-Term SEO Checklist

Search engine optimization is an ongoing process. The search landscape changes based on updates to search engine algorithms. Additionally, your search engine rankings can shift due to your competition’s SEO efforts. Furthermore, 15% of all search queries are 100% unique. To keep your site fully optimized, you and your team will want to plan for ongoing, proactive SEO maintenance.

1. Always Stay Current on Your Organic Traffic Metrics

This is likely the most important task you can do in this complete SEO checklist. By tracking your metrics, you can better understand how your SEO efforts are paying off. Knowing your numbers can also help you respond to an algorithm update that had a negative impact on your organic traffic.

SearchAtlas provide the most in-depth reports and insightful analyses of your Search Console data. 

Suggested resource to learn more: Metrics to Elevate & Measure SEO Success

2. Add Server Space to Maintain Speeds and Reduce Outages

As your site grows in size and traffic, you may find that your users’ site speeds slow. This can lead to a drop in your site’s SERP performance due to page speed loading delays. One way to remedy traffic-related speed issues is to invest in a server that is strictly devoted to your site. This will reduce outages while improving the user experience for your site visitors.

Increasing page load speeds can also improve your site’s crawlability. Run a site index coverage report to understand how Google is crawling your site.

Suggested resource to learn more: How Much Web Hosting Storage Do You Need for Your Site?

3. Reoptimize Meta-Descriptions for higher CTRs

As you track your URLs’ performances in Google rankings, you may find some of your pages garner high impressions and low click-throughs. This can indicate that your meta tags (your meta title and meta description) are not encouraging searchers to visit your pages. To improve your pages’ performance, you can re-optimize these meta tags.

Suggested resource to learn more: A Guide to SEO HTML Tags

4. Perform a Content Audit & Prune Under-Performing Content

One practice that can boost your site’s visibility in Google results is to perform a content audit. A content audit leads to the content pruning process. This task involves finding and fixing duplicate content issues by using canonical tags or removing unnecessary duplicates.

Through the content audit process, you also want to identify and eliminate under-performing blogs and landing pages. Additionally, you want to find outdated product pages or news pages.

After identifying these pages, you will want to create a list of backlinks and internal links to these pages. If the URL has backlinks or internal links, you will want to update the content or redirect the URL to similar content. Pages without any backlinks or internal links can be deleted.

Suggested resource to learn more: Why & How Content Pruning Helps Your SEO

5. Revise Outdated Content

For pages that have SEO potential, the revision process can inject new life into already existing pieces of content. This offers a time-saving strategy to pair with your new content creation process.

Updating content can also attract new attention to the content from search engines. To revise blogs and landing pages, use your target keyword and its search intent to guide your decisions. 

You also want to consider adding depth to your site web pages. This can be easily accomplished with Frequently Asked Questions sections.

Suggested resource to learn more: Content Development: Improve Your Content Strategy for SEO

6. Diversify Your Website’s Content

At some point, you will check all your target keywords off your content calendar. Once this happens, it’s time to revamp your content strategy to include more images, videos, and other media. By appearing in Google searches for images and videos, your site can gain a competitive edge in the SERPs. 

Furthermore, mixed content makes your web pages more engaging to contemporary audiences–keeping visitors on your page for longer periods of time and increasing your site’s time-on-page metrics.

Suggested resource to learn more: Tips for On-Page SEO

Begin Marking Off Tasks On Your SEO Checklist

You don’t have to be an SEO professional in order to begin optimize your page. As you work your way through this checklist, check your SEO metrics to measure your site’s SERP success. Over the next few months, your web pages should climb in rank, and your site’s overall search visibility will increase along with your organic traffic.

If you need assistance on your SEO journey, LinkGraph is happy to help. We offer SEO services for businesses of all sizes.

The post SEO Checklist for Growing Your Site’s Search Rankings appeared first on LinkGraph.