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Weekly Wrap
This week, we’ve gone technical. We live and breathe SEO, it’s at the core of what we do and we know how important it is to adhere to the rules Google sets out (even if they do insist on switching up their algorithms all the time). We’ve gathered all of our favourite SEO news, tips and tricks from the week gone by. Get ready to be immersed in 3 whole minutes (approximately) of SEO goodness, because, everyday is a school day.
Plan ahead, because there’s currently severe delays on the Google line.
This week, Google is suffering from just a small whoopsie. On the 14th September, SEO experts across the globe were going about their day at work, analysing data on Google Search Console, only to discover something fishy was going down. Is it my wifi? My laptop? For once it actually wasn’t their wifi, it was Google’s fault. Google released a statement saying that Google Search Console reporting was suffering severe delays. Apparently it’s suffering from an issue that’s causing delays in updating the Index Coverage report. Thankfully nothing else has been affected, but it would be handy if everything worked as expected. Oh, and it’s been 4 days and it still isn’t fixed. Come on Google, don’t leave us hanging.
Watch out, Google may pop up when you least expect it. They’re always lurking…
Even the big boys need to go through trial and error to get the best outcome. That’s just what happened this week as Google appeared to be testing a new location for their knowledge panel. Placed in the middle, it was the first time we have seen the knowledge panel placed there before. When you click on “More about…” it will then take you to a new SERP where that snippet or knowledge panel is then placed above the organic results. Twitter was alight with SEO and Google lovers contemplating what was going on. Turns out you never know what’s really going on down at GooglePlex HQ…
Remember, bigger isn’t always better.
Worrying that your content isn’t long enough? Fret no more, apparently shorter content is much better for SEO. It makes sense as the attention span of the average mobile user is minimal. The key point here is that shorter content earns the most backlinks, and the optimum length to secure those high quality backlinks is between 650-700 words. Within the same study they also analysed the linkability and shareability of content. Again, content with less than 1000 words was more shareable, with ‘How-to’ articles also performing well. So, if you want your next content piece to be a success and are stuck on what to write, you can’t go wrong with a how-to blog of around 650 words.
Think you know how to rank well? Think again.
We probably already knew this in the back of our minds but stuffing Keywords in generic top-level domains won’t help you rank better. On an episode of AskGoogleWebMasters this week, one of the experts mentioned that ‘Just because a website has a keyword in its domain name, doesn’t mean that it’s more relevant than others for that keyword’. Basically, it’s all the same to Google whether your domain is .com, .org or .jobs. There are exceptions to the rule however, mostly when it comes to country specific domains, Google will geographically target in this instance. So, if you have a country specific domain, and try to add keywords to attract users from other areas of the world, Google will basically say no, and aim to retarget people in your country. It can be difficult to keep up when algorithms are often changed (Google what do you want from us). Where should I place my keywords? How many keywords? Will Google penalise me for too many keywords? SEO is a hard game to play.
Who runs the SEO world? Girls.
If you work in marketing, you will probably find it isn’t too difficult to find awesomely talented women in this sector. So why do they only account for 30% of SEOs globally? Top SEO females got together this week with Search Engine Land to discuss everything SEO and we are loving it. Panelists included female agency founders, lead strategists and international SEO consultants. Female SEOs are still, on average paid less than their male colleagues (not cool). So with that in mind, there was a lot of ammo for this discussion. From compensation gaps, pay gaps, to SEO tips and advice on being SEOs best friends this episode was a banger. You can head over and watch the video here.
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