Month: February 2019

SEO MARKET UPDATES: FEBRUARY 2019

Posted on by Zack Cornick

Join Fusion’s SEO team as they round up last month’s major industry updates.

GOOGLE FOCUSES ON UPDATING THE NEW SEARCH CONSOLE

As Google aims to keep closing features from the old search console by March 2019, new features continue to be implemented in the new interface in order to improve usability and move as many users over to the new Search Console as possible.

The first of the updates to the new Google Search Console seen this month was the addition of a security issues section.

https://twitter.com/googlewmc/status/1090704842870255616

The security issues section will warn users that Google has found issues on their site that impact site security, including the following:

The tool will help webmasters find and fix any of the above security issues affecting their site.

The second of the updates is the consolidation of canonical URLs.

Google has now implemented an update within the performance section of Google Search Console which consolidates website traffic on canonical URLs. This update will unify all search metrics for a single piece of content into the canonical URL. The benefits of this update include combining data from pages with separate mobile and AMP pages.

GOOGLE LOOK TO REMOVE PROPERTY SETS FROM SEARCH CONSOLE

Google announced, via email, that they will be removing property sets from Google Search Console at the end of March 2019.

These property sets were used to aggregate data from a business’ different sites, such as combining http and https, or www. and non-www. sites.

As a replacement to property sets, Google recently announced the full release of a domain properties feature. Having been in beta since November 2018, these properties group data in a similar way to property sets, including protocols (http/https) and subdomains (m, www and further subdomains). Domain properties will only be available for DNS verified accounts.

GOOGLE RELEASES REDESIGNED TEST MY SITE TOOL

Google released the redesigned version of its Test My Site tool on 25th February. Within the redesign, Google has implemented several new features in order to produce more competitive reports.

The following features have been added to Test My Site:

  • Speed estimates for both an entire site and individual pages
  • Details on whether the speed of a site or page is faster or slower compared to the previous month
  • Information on whether a site or page speed score is ranked as Fast, Average, or Slow
  • How the speed score for a site or page compares to others in the industry
  • The potential impact of site speed on revenue
  • A detailed list of recommended fixes to increase speed on up to 5 pages on a site
  • A complete shareable report containing a summary of the above

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE ADDS PRODUCTS REPORT

With Google utilising structured data and displaying products within rich snippets on SERPs, they have now also released new ways for merchants to provide information and improve results for the products they sell.

Within Google Search Console, users will now be able to display product issues in a report that uses schema.org to annotate product information. The report will mainly display any pending issues for markup on the user’s site, and can also be used to validate if the issues were resolved.

Google are also planning on rolling out new features in Google Merchant Centre in order to allow users to provide up-to-date, high-quality information on products, which can be used on a product’s knowledge panel.

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS EXPANDS RESOURCES FOR RESPONDING TO REVIEWS

Google announced, via a forum post, that users are now able to respond to reviews directly from Google Maps. Before this feature was released, replying to Google My Business reviews was only possible via the Google My Business mobile app. With this update, users will now have the option of using a desktop to reply to reviews.

Google’s tips for replying to reviews:

  • Be nice and don’t get personal. This isn’t just a guideline, it’s also a good idea as a business owner. It’s difficult to win an argument with a frustrated customer, and you want to avoid burning bridges. Keep your responses useful, readable and courteous. In addition, responses should comply with our local content policy.
  • Keep it short and sweet. Users are looking for useful and genuine responses, but they can easily be overwhelmed by a long response.
  • Thank your reviewers. Respond to happy reviewers when you have new or relevant information to share. You don’t need to thank every reviewer publicly since each response reaches lots of customers.
  • Be a friend, not a salesperson. Your reviewers are already customers, so there’s no need to offer incentives or advertisements. Tell reviewers something new about your business, or share something that they might not have learned from their first visit.

GOOGLE CREATE FEATURED SNIPPETS THAT COMBINE CONTENT FROM MULTIPLE CONTENT CREATORS

Google recently released a list style featured snippet,  combining content from multiple sites in order to display information on each of the items within the list.

Snippets like the above have come under scrutiny recently due to the fact that Google does not display the source URL of the information until an item in the list has been expanded. Google has since replied to inform that the snippet is similar to standard SERPs but displays information horizontally, rather than the traditional SERPs and that the snippet falls in line with Google’s focus on supporting the wider search ecosystem.

Social Media Roundup | January 2019

Posted on by Helen Hargreave

Welcome back to the Fusion blog for 2019!

If anyone thought this year would be any different in the world of social media, three words quickly teamed up to prove otherwise. We’ll give you a hint. The first is ‘vegan’. And the third is ‘rolls’.

Read on for baked goods and more in our brand new round-up of the most buzzworthy social activations of the last month.

Huddersfield Town announces surprising new manager

Back in December, Huddersfield Town football club parted ways with their manager, David Wagner.

The club had been linked heavily with German coach Jan Siewert, when a keenly-eyed Sky Sports news team thought they spotted him in the crowd when Huddersfield played Manchester City. Unfortunately for the reporter, he quickly discovered that it wasn’t Jan Siewert; it was City fan ‘Martin from Wakefield’ instead!

A lot was made of the encounter on social media, which cameras caught in full. And Huddersfield got in on the act when announcing Siewert’s appointment, involving Wakefield’s finest in the content creation and beginning their video with Martin sat at Siewert’s desk in the manager’s office.

The Huddersfield Town coat labelled ‘MFW’ – Martin from Wakefield – is a nice touch too!

https://twitter.com/htafcdotcom/status/1087379049230594049

Greggs cooks up a storm for #veganuary

Greggs’ reputation for social media antics doesn’t need much introduction.

They made headlines in 2017 with their controversial nativity scene, exchanging the baby Jesus for Gregg’s sausage roll. But that furore pales in comparison to their latest media frenzy – which, ironically, results from something far less controversial.

At first, all Greggs did was announce the launch of their very own vegan sausage roll, coinciding with the start of Veganuary.

https://twitter.com/GreggsOfficial/status/1080403000722710528

Like a finely-grilled panini, things really heated up once the Internet began engaging. And Greggs handled the naysayers masterfully, despatching a barrage of fiery tweets that caused a good chuckle from the social crowd:

The campaign marked a masterclass in social media marketing, from the standards of creative, to community management.

Netflix brings Bandersnatch to social

January was a superb month for streaming giants Netflix, with a range of titles receiving massive pop culture interest and acclaim, from Roma, to FYRE, to Sex Education.

Another title that captured the Internet’s imagination was Bandersnatch, the interactive choose-your-own-adventure style film from the creators of Black Mirror.

Not just content with enormous success on-screen, the Netflix digital team also brought the Bandersnatch concept to life on Twitter via Twitter Polls, giving their online audience the chance for an adventure of their own.

And it continues! Head to Twitter to see how the whole story unfolded. It’s a neat way of bringing your fans an engaging experience – and utilising Twitter’s functionality in an unconventional yet stimulating way.

And the winner of the Super Bowl is… MoonPie!

We’ve written before (and at length) about US confectionary brand MoonPie’s seemingly-subversive-but-actually-hyper-intelligent use of social media. And in recent weeks, they’ve served up fresh headlines in the ad industry following a series of activations on the night of this year’s Super Bowl (and we’re aware that it wasn’t technically in January, but we’re going to cash in on our artistic license and talk about it anyway).

Last year, MoonPie didn’t run any ads in the Super Bowl per se. Instead, they posted images on social media containing scripts that would have been in their ads. And these were all about as usual and conformist as you’d expect:

This year, MoonPie took their subversive Super Bowl ads approach a step further, by turning their scripts of the year before into full one-minute video ads. You can enjoy them below:

This received acclaim from leading industry press, including a spot in AdWeek, and enormous engagements from avid Twitter users from across the galaxy.

Come back next month for more social media stories and highlights!

 

SEO Market Updates: January 2019

Posted on by Zack Cornick

Join Fusion’s SEO team as they round up last month’s major industry updates.

GOOGLE SHOW RECENT SEARCHES IN SERPS

Google has announced that the release of new activity cards, which will appear in search results and display users’ recent activity.

 

The activity card will display sites users have previously visited for topics such as cooking, fashion, skincare and beauty, fitness, photography and more. However, cards will only be available if the user is logged into a Google account.

 

Just like bookmarks, users will be able to categorise and save recently visited pages. These saved pages can be accessed via menu at the top left of the search page (mobile only) and the Google app.

At present, the new feature is only available to logged-in U.S English users browsing via the Google app or mobile browsers, although it’s likely that an international roll-out will follow soon!

GOOGLE ANNOUNCES THE END OF OLD GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE FEATURES

On their Webmasters Blog, Google announced that they will be removing several features from the old Search Console, whilst also adding many features to the new Search Console.

Features Google will be removing from the old Search Console include:

  • HTML suggestions
  • Property Sets
  • Android Apps
  • Blocked resources

Many of the features being removed from the old Search Console have either been migrated to the new dashboard or to a more relevant Google tool, with the exception of HTML suggestions and property sets. Google now recommends using third-party tools for crawling page titles and descriptions as an alternative to HTML suggestions and currently have no plans to replace property sets.

Features Google will be adding to the new Search Console include:

  • Crawl errors in the new index coverage report
  • Sitemaps data in Index Coverage
  • New URL inspection tool
  • Structured data reports

Google plans to implement these new features towards the end of March 2019.

DUCKDUCKGO’S MAPS ARE NOW POWERED BY APPLE

As web users start to become more concerned about their online privacy, demand for services that help protect this, such as VPNs, continue to increase. This demand in privacy has caused DuckDuckGo’s recent rise in user base as the “search engine that doesn’t track you” recently reported to receiving 30 million private daily searches (still dwarfed by Google’s 3.5 billion daily searches) which was a 50% annual growth.

DuckDuckGo announced that map and address-related searches will now be powered by Apple via their MapKit JS. This will help power direct business searches, business type searches and nearby places searches.

DuckDuckGo’s local business is still powered by Yelp’s local business listings and a business will require a Yelp listing in order to display within map results.

GOOGLE DISPLAYS PDF DOCUMENTS IN FEATURED SNIPPETS

Recently spotted within Google’s search results, PDF documents are being displayed within featured snippets.

Although PDF documents are crawlable and indedxable, it’s unusual for Google to place PDF content within a featured snippet position.

Due to the limited functionality of PDF documents, most webmasters would generally recommend having an HTML equivalent to any information provided in PDF format.

GOOGLE UPDATE INSPECT URL TOOL IN SEARCH CONSOLE

Google has expanded the functionality of the URL inspection tool within Google Search Console.

Users will now be able see the HTTP response, page resources, JavaScript logs and a rendered screenshot of the page.

GOOGLE DATA STUDIO CAN NOW COMPARE CUSTOM DATE RANGES

Implemented on 24th January, charts and graphs can now display comparison figures for custom date ranges, with this feature previously being limited to comparing data to previous period or year.

Users will have the option to keep the custom comparison date fixed to the specific date range selected or on a rolling date window which will advance over time.