Google Updates You Might Have Missed

Predictions, inspiration and trends take up the majority of my feeds at the moment. There’s so many it can get quite confusing, so here’s 3 things you can focus on today.

Google updates for 2018 include: a potential search ranking algorithm update, mobile-first indexing pages and longer meta descriptions. Here at Flourish, we understand that it can be difficult to stay up-to-date, especially following the Christmas break, so we we’ve pulled together this quick guide, so you can digest and implement:

Potential Search Ranking Algorithm Update

December is normally a quiet time for Google algorithm updates, however, Webmasters reported a potential update impacting sites with no schema data. Google only tend to confirm the larger updates so we can’t be sure, however, it’s a timely reminder to make sure we are utilising schema mark-up where we can. There’s a good Beginners Guide to Schema from Search Engine Journal.

If you’ve seen a decline in your organic traffic over the past year, it’s worth a closer look at analytics to figure out why. If you need a hand we’d be happy to help.

Mobile-First Indexing Pages

For the past year, Google has been experimenting with mobile-first indexing i.e. ranking based on how your site displays on mobile and not desktop. There isn’t an official release date for this change, however, Google has created a handy guide to get you started so take a look and make sure you are ready.

Longer Meta Descriptions

As discussed in our previous blog, Google has increased meta descriptions characters from 160 to 230* characters. Ultimately, this will both improve the flow of traffic through Google and the users’ experience of using the search engine. The big question is whether to in fact increase them or simply improve your site content as they generally appear this way in the SERP. It’s early days, but our advice at the moment is to check your existing web content and make sure that it is both relevant, clear and concise! If later down the line you’re not happy with the results, then take action and increase the length of your meta descriptions. Easy!

If you would like find out more how about these update could impact you, or how you could use them to improve performance, then please get in touch with Ian Reeves our General Manager.