Summary: Yes, it’s happening again. There was a significant Google algorithm update on 11/30/16, following an update on 11/10/16 that was partially reversed on 11/18/16. And the 11/30 update is showing a connection to previous quality updates (AKA Phantom). Let’s explore what’s going on in Google Land. When writing about the November 10, 2016 Google … Read more
{Update: Saturday, November 19, 2016 – I saw reversals starting yesterday, November 18 (both recoveries and drops), which supports my theory that this was the mobile-first index being tested. I have provided more information below at the end of this post about what I’m seeing — including screenshots.} The fall of 2016 has been one of the … Read more
Understanding if people engage with your content is important on several levels (including SEO-wise). For example, if someone searches Google, visits your page, spends 2 seconds on the page, and then returns to the search results, that can send horrible signals to Google. That’s called low dwell time and I’ve mentioned that many times before … Read more
Website redesigns and CMS migrations can be challenging from an SEO standpoint. And that’s especially the case on large and complex websites, where there are a lot of moving parts. In those cases, business owners and webmasters need to be methodical and meticulous to avoid negative impact. I’ve written a number of posts about migrations … Read more
I’ve written in the past about how a robots.txt file could look fine, but actually not be fine. For example, maybe you add your directives, a sitemap file or sitemap index file, and then upload it to your site. You think all is good, but you find that directives are not being adhered to, maybe … Read more
It’s no secret that changing urls can be dangerous SEO-wise. In the past, I’ve written heavily about the dangers of website redesigns, migrating to a new CMS, and changing domain names. Basically, whenever you mass change urls on your site, you can run into serious SEO problems. And that includes migrating to https (which many … Read more
On Tuesday, Google announced a demo of accelerated mobile pages (AMP) in the standard search results. That was huge news and should have every website that’s publishing content take notice. Until the demo was announced, amplified pages would only show in very specific areas of the mobile search results, like the “Top stories” section (via a … Read more
Over the past few years, Google’s John Mueller has been asked many questions about where to best redirect pages during a redesign or website migration. It’s a hot topic, but that makes sense. When you are changing urls, it’s extremely important to redirect older pages to the newer urls using a one to one mapping, … Read more
{Updated on 7/4/16 with additional information and screenshots based on the impact from the June algorithm update.} {Updated on 7/6/16 with information about the gain or loss of rich snippets based on the June update.} {Updated on 7/11/16 with information about Penguin 4.0 from Google’s John Mueller.} Summer is here, and it could be a … Read more
For years I’ve been using a short branded domain name combined with bitly to shorten links I share across social media. For example, I registered glennga.be as the short domain name, and whenever I share a link on Twitter, that’s the domain name in the urls for all shares. Here’s a quick example that leads … Read more
Update: March 2019: Google has released a new type of property in Google Search Console called a domain property. A domain property will include all variations for the domain, including by protocol and subdomain. It’s a great move forward by Google and I highly recommend you set them up as soon as possible. In order … Read more
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