Google has updated its official SEO Starter Guide for the first time in seven years. The release of the new web-based SEO Starter Guide replaces the previous PDF version as well as incorporates their old Webmaster Academy, which was a separate resource which had the information and tools to teach webmasters how to create a site […]
Google to publishers: Accepting ‘bribes’ for links could lead to penalties
Google has reminded publishers that the practice of accepting ‘bribes’ in return for links is against their guidelines and can lead to ranking penalties. The reminder comes in response to a widely-shared article published by The Outline, which claims that many major online publications such as TechCrunch, Huffington Post and the New York Times accept […]
Google has increased the length of snippets in search results – should you rewrite your meta descriptions?
The 160 – 180 character limit for meta descriptions has been standard practice for years, but now Google has decided to increase the snippets to provide more information in search results. After many in the SEO industry noticed longer meta description snippets in Google’s search results recently, the search engine giant officially confirmed that they […]
Google adds more real-time data and filtering options to Google Trends
Google has updated its Google Trends tool with even more real-time data, allowing users to filter popular keywords in News, Shopping, Images and YouTube verticals. Google Trends has always been a great tool to research the popularity of certain organic keywords, and to measure them against others. Now Google has added even more real-time data […]
Google issues warning to webmasters about ‘misuse’ of Event markup
Google has announced that it will take measures to penalise websites that use Event markup in a ‘misleading’ way. Google has today issued a warning to webmasters not to use Event structured data markup in a misleading way, as it could now lead to penalisation. Specifically, Google singled out voucher and coupon websites who markup […]
Avada theme review – is this the best WordPress theme?
With well over 350,000 (and counting) purchases from theme directory ThemeForest.net, Avada bills itself as the number one best-selling WordPress theme of all time. Here we take a close look at what Avada offers, and whether being the best-selling theme also makes it the best WordPress theme full stop. Since it was released in August […]
Google to begin penalising “teaser” AMP pages from February 1, 2018
Although AMP is not a ranking factor, non-compliant page will no longer appear in Top Stories and other AMP-related search features. Google has announced that as of the start of February 2018, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and canonical pages must match or at least have very “close parity”. AMP pages that fail to comply “will […]
New study by SEMRush identifies top 17 organic search ranking factors
SEMRush have updated their Ranking Factors study and identified the top 17 organic search ranking factors. Search marketing software company SEMRush have released a new study detailing the top organic ranking factors, following on from the initial study they carried out in June 2017. The study is based on their own analysis of search results […]
Local SEO ranking factors 2017 – it’s all about reviews
New research into local SEO ranking factors finds customer reviews as the most prominent, helping local businesses rank in the Local Pack results in Google even with low quality link profiles. The research, carried out by localseoguide.com looked at more than 200 ranking factors across 100,000 local businesses to identify the patterns in what helps […]
Google reveals new knowledge panel for news publishers
Google has unveiled a new publisher Knowledge Panel in a bid to combat the spread of fake news and provide searchers with more information about news sources. Search giant Google has announced a new addition to the knowledge graph, which will offer more details about a specific news publisher directly in the search results. Google […]