Just about to come to the end of January. Not a bad start to a new year (compared to last year). Welcome back to CBMarketing’s SEO News Bulletin! This marks the second SEO News Bulletin of the year with many more to come. Continue reading with us to find out all the latest news all about search engine optimisation and digital marketing. Keep up to date with our SEO news round ups!


 

SEO in 2021

I think an amazing way to start of this SEO news round up is to start off with a “definitive guide” on SEO in 2021. By courtesy of backlinko.com; this guide comes with an extensive guide consisting of 8 whole chapters as well as a bonus chapter. It does a brilliant job on what trends to look out for, as well as what strategies you can look to employ for SEO in 2021.

Just so you know what to expect from this definitive guide, here is a summary of the chapters:

  1. Core Web Vitals
  2. Google Passage Ranking
  3. Optimize for Featured Snippets
  4. The Rise of Visual Search
  5. Domain Authority 2.0
  6. Video Continues to Surge
  7. Master Search Intent
  8. Combat Decreasing CTRs
  9. Bonus: Quick SEO Tips for 2021

A fantastic guide by backlinko.com if I say so myself: https://backlinko.com/seo-this-year


 

Remember the Search Console Revamp? If not, you can give yourself a recap here, as we had last mentioned it in our SEO News Bulletin – 18th December 2020 article.

During the revamp, Google had introduce an Index Coverage Report. A report that shows the indexing state of just about every URL that Google has visited and/or has at least attempted to visit on a particular website. It’s a great report that helps you figure out and determine exactly which URLs have been crawled and indexed by Google, as well as the reasons why Google has decided to crawl that particular URL.

At first after the revamp, the report functionality wasn’t the greatest. However it has recently undergone recent changes (good changes). Get yourself familiar with those changes here.
But if you want the tldr version, here’s the recap:

  • Issues now report with specific issues and resolutions instead of vague error messages
  • Site/domain owners will be notified if a page indexed by Google is blocked by robots.txt.
  • Soft 404 reporting is a lot more accurate with the latest update.

 

Been shopping online lately and been trying to find products via Google? Well you may have noticed that Google has added a price drop appearance rich results to the search results!

googles new price drop appearance

Basically if you have searched for a product in the past and are trying to search for the same product again recently; Google will add a small snippet at the bottom of the meta description showcasing if the price has changed since you last viewed/bought that product. It’s pretty neat! To get more details, read more about it here.


 

error 404 message

Is it better to 404 or 410 blocked pages? Well; John Mueller from Google has a bit of advice for you. Getting back a hacked website can sometimes be difficult. And the recovery process afterwards can be even more painful and daunting. But John Mueller dishes out some recommendations and advice on how you can recover your hacked sites. More details can be found here.


 

Looking to enhance your organic CTR and rankings in SERPs? Searchenginewatch has just recently published a tips guide on how you can better achieve this goal. The summary is as follows:

  • Issues from trying increasing your site’s organic traffic may be linked to low organic CTRs.
  • Creative title tags is quite an important step for your site in order to create a positive first impression.
  • The best practice for meta descriptions is to limit the meta description text to under 160 characters to avoid truncation.
  • Goes without really saying but a  well-optimized, keyword-rich URL can help you to increase your organic CTRs by 45%.

But for those wanting to get a little more into the details, information and tips, the rest of the guide article can be found here at searchenginewatch.com