Impression - What's new in SEO

What’s new in SEO?
February 2018
Edd Wilson
SEO Strategist
I M P R E S S I O N
hello@impression.co.uk

I’m Edd
- Search marketing since 2010
- Joined Impression in 2014
- Agency and in-house
- Speaker at STAT city crawl &
Ecommercial Conference

Today
➔ Official Updates from Google
➔ Industry Focus & Ranking Factors
➔ 2018 from Impression

Official Updates from Google

Mobile First Indexing - Q4 2017
What Google Say
Google begins mobile first indexing, using mobile content for all search rankings. While called an 'experiment,' it’s actually the
first move in Google's planned shift to looking primarily at mobile content, rather than desktop, when deciding how to rank
results.
What you can do
Audit your website from a mobile perspective - Pete from Impression

Rendering Ajax Pages - Q4 2017
What Google Say
Starting in Q2 2018, Google’s search engine crawlers will begin to render JavaScript-based web pages without the assistance
of the AJAX crawling scheme. For site owners, that means it will no longer be necessary to provide rendered versions of these
pages to Googlebot.
What you can do
● Although Google claims it can render javascript web based web pages, we would still prioritising important content to
the eyes of Google and the user.
● Use javascript switcher

SEO Starter Guide - Q4 2017
What Google Say
You should optimize your site to serve your users' needs. One of those users is a search engine, which helps other users
discover your content. Search Engine Optimization is about helping search engines understand and present content. Your site
may be smaller or larger than our example site and offer vastly different content, but the optimization topics we discuss below
should apply to sites of all sizes and types. We hope our guide gives you some fresh ideas on how to improve your website.
Link: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en
What you can do
● Learn the basics of SEO and website structure
● Take insight from what Google are looking for

Page Speed Update - January 17th 2018
What Google Say
The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect
a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page.
The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.
What you can do
● Review your websites page speed - Google Pagespeed Insights & Pingdom
● Understand what you can implement on your website - Image compression & Caching

New Search Console - February 6th 2018
What Google Say
The new Search Console was rebuilt from the ground up by surfacing the most actionable insights and creating an interaction
model which guides you through the process of fixing any pending issues. We’ve also added ability to share reports within
your own organization in order to simplify internal collaboration.
What you can do
● Search Performance: 16 months of data
● Index Coverage: a comprehensive view on Google's indexing
● Search Enhancements: improve your AMP and Job Postings pages

HTTPS - February 8th 2018
What Google Say
From July 2018 on Chrome will mark HTTP sites as “non secure”.
For the past several years, we’ve moved toward a more secure web by
strongly advocating that sites adopt HTTPS encryption. And within the
last year, we’ve also helped users understand that HTTP sites are not
secure by gradually marking a larger subset of HTTP pages as “not
secure”. Beginning in July 2018 with the release of Chrome 68, Chrome
will mark all HTTP sites as “not secure”.

Confirmed Updates
Penguin & Panda ongoing updates - November 2017
Eric Kuan from Google on stage with Gary Illyes and Nathan Johns from Google at PubCon said that Google is still making
changes to both the Panda and Penguin algorithms. Just a month ago we reported that Google occasionally tweaks the
Penguin algorithm but for the most part it is on autopilot.
Google Maccabees Update - December 2017
The biggest bulk of sites that I saw got hit all had tons and tons of landing pages target massive arrays of keyword
permutations. So for example, if they are a travel site, they would target all the destinations they service and also add landing
pages for [destination sub name] + [activity name] and sometimes even go beyond that. If they were a service business, they
would target [city name] + [service A] and then [city name] + [service B] and so on.

Industry Focus & Ranking
Factors

Length of Snippets
“We recently made a change to provide more descriptive
and useful snippets, to help people better understand
how pages are relevant to their searches. This resulted in
snippets becoming slightly longer, on average.”

Featured Snippets & Voice Search

Usability & Dwell time

Links, Links, Links

Our 2018 Focus

“Providing top quality informational content looks like it's going to become even more
important.”
“We've experimented with adding tags to informational content and it looks like
schema markup will continue to be important for the answer style features.”
“While top-quality writing and information is essential, it also needs good markup to
enable Google to find, understand and display it as easily as possible.”
Ben Garry

“Longer form on-page content is definitely one of my focuses in 2018”
“We are moving so much more towards featured snippets, PAA boxes and structured
data creating guides, how to's, informative tables and presenting data on your site
seems to be one of the best ways to get in the SERPs and drive traffic to your site”
“I'll also be focusing a lot more on creating content but stepping away from the brand
by using data and creating pieces around news and popular topics as a primary link
building strategy”
Chloe Fair

In 2018, something we aim to do is continue to integrate SEO practises into our PR strategies.
We don’t want our PR offering to just be link building that sits alongside SEO, we push for
campaigns that have a real integrated marketing depth. This includes building creative content
that can both be outreached as well as sit on-site whilst ranking for organic keywords.
Something that has increasing focus within our team for this year is relevancy of industry
publications. Other than the obvious referral traffic benefit, we’ve found exceptional SEO value
in placements that sit at the heart of our client’s industries beyond the simple link benefit.
We’re constantly trying out new strategies to increase brand awareness, link benefit and
coverage. As innovators in our sector, we’re constantly debating and evaluating these kinds of
ideas, and keeping up with the changes in Google’s algorithms to make sure we’re ahead of
the game.
Jess Hawkes

“Keeping a strong focus on site structure, more and more sites that come through to us
at Impression have poor URL structures which make crawling the site much more
difficult and give very little hierarchy”
“Creating valuable resources backed by strong keyword research and continuously
improving these through small adjustments”
“With mobile first being rolled out making sure that all websites load fast and efficiently
will be critical, especially for ecommerce businesses”

Hummingbird Algorithm
What we focus on:
● Understanding user intent
● Audience analysis
● Consumer search journey
● No SERP is the same

Crawl Optimisation
What we focus on:
● Organising the URL Structure
● Cleaning up a website using robots.txt
● Implementing an internal linking structure
● Analysing server logs
● Understanding content correlation
● SEO Silos

Conclusions

Learn From Google
SEO Starter Guide & Featured Snippet Guide

Usability
Pagespeed, HTTPS and Dwell time

Content
Panda & Hummingbird

Links
Penguin & Ranking factors

Technical SEO
Ajax Rendering & Crawl Optimisation

Thank you

Impression - What's new in SEO

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