15 tips to boost your website’s SEO
- Optimize your images
- Add alt text
- Use titles and descriptions
- Write some copy on your homepage
- Focus on your About page
- Fix broken links
- Add an SSL certificate
- Connect to a CDN
- Launch a blog
- Do keyword research
- Add testimonials and reviews
- Backlinks
- Create a sitemap
- Put your 404 page to work
- Connect to Google Analytics
Unconfirmed Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update February 8th
There are some early signs from both the SEO community and the tracker tools that there is a big Google search ranking algorithm update going on. This has not been confirmed by Google, but that is not uncommon. There is some early chatter from within the community and some, not all, of the tracking tools are showing big changes.
Google Ignores Low Quality Blog Pingback Links
In regards to low quality blog pingbacks, Gary Illyes of Google said on Reddit “very very likely those pingbacks are marked worthless (meaning they’re ignored) on Google’s end.” Google has said many many times that it is good at ignoring links that it does not trust or finds spammy.
Google: Removing Blog Comments May Impact Search Rankings
Google’s John Mueller advised site owners that removing all comments from a website may adversely impact search rankings. Google factors comments into the ranking of web pages. It’s unlikely comments can be removed from a site without impacting its rankings.
Site owners should be aware that Google sees comments as part of the content. If a comment contains information a searcher is looking for then it can help a page get surfaced in search results. But Google is able to distinguish the comment section from the main content, so comments up being treated differently.
Mueller said that Google does not ignore comments. If you choose to delete comments, it’s reasonable to expect at least some changes with regards to search rankings.
Google Search Prefers To Neutralize The Effect Of Spam
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that “if we can neutralize the effect of bad links, that’s enough; there’s no need to remove the site completely from search then.” He said “most of the time, the algorithms take care of neutralizing the issue on their own.” It seems Google prefers to just ignore, or neutralize the impact, of search spam versus penalize it.
Bing Search Recommends Queries & Sites Based On Activity & What’s Popular
Bing is now recommending additional search queries to try out and websites to check out based on your activity and what’s popular.
Google Search Console Page Experience Appearance Filter In Performance Report
Google is preparing to upgrade the performance report within Google Search Console to show a page experience update appearance filter. This is all part of Google’s efforts to get people to get core web vitals into place.
Microsoft Bing: 15% Of Searches Are Misspelled So Speller100 To The Rescue
Microsoft posted on its research blog that it has launched Speller100, spelling correction models, to help Microsoft Bing Search do better at spelling corrections. Microsoft said “about 15% of queries submitted by customers have misspellings” so this is needed. Microsoft said it has “recently launched our large-scale multilingual spelling correction models worldwide with high precision and high recall in 100-plus languages.
Core Web Vitals Might Include Noindexed Pages
Core Web Vitals metrics include:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – How fast a web page is perceived to load
- First Input Delay (FID) – How soon a visitor can interact with a web page
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – How stable web page elements (like buttons, text and images) are while the page is downloading, without shifting about.
Mueller says that the core web vitals score may not always be calculated on a page by page basis.
While Mueller said that he wasn’t 100% certain if Google used noindexed pages, he did affirm that the Chrome User Experience Report included all kinds of pages (which in this context presumably includes noindexed pages).
Google officially displays years in business in local pack
Google announced that the “years in business” label is now live for businesses that want to display how many years they are in business within the Google Search local pack. If your business has been around for some time, adding the open date can help encourage a searcher to click on your listing and potentially call or visit your location, hopefully ultimately leading to a sale. Google wrote you can “add an opening date to your Business Profile to tell customers when your business first opened, or will open, at its address.”
A small business’ step-by-step guide to dominating local search in 2021
– Claim and optimize your Google My Business listing
– Become a pro at keyword research
– Use actionable on-page SEO techniques (Title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, etc.)
– Leverage internal and external links
– Optimization isn’t enough, create high-quality local content
– Request and respond to reviews to climb SERPs