February & March’20 Digital Marketing News & Updates
Welcome to the third episode of digital marketing news that Converged SEO Consultant Cemre Yildiz summarized. It’s for you to read the February and March ’20 updates that are mostly about SEO in a bundle.
We cover the most striking digital marketing news and updates of the month. Due to COVID-19, we share two months altogether this time. Stay safe.
Hope you’ll enjoy it in a blink.
February ‘20
Warner Bros. renamed the Harley Quinn movie for better SEO
This is very exciting news for every SEO on the planet. Because it points out how strong SEO can get: renaming a movie. Warner Bros. renamed the film Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) to simply Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey. The reason? To make it easier for moviegoers to find tickets online.
Check out Search Engine Land for George Nguyen’s article
There’s an emoji sticker for multiple feelings
Emojis are not new. But people really like to use them all the time. If you’re an Android smartphone user, then you probably already noticed you can select different emojis by combining 2 or more emoji into a single one.
SEO and Intent 2020: New Study Reveals True State of Search
Ignite Visibility analyzed 500+ searchers to find out how they search and what impacts their decision to click.
- 59% of respondent searchers think the search results have improved over the past year.
- 68% responded that Google adding more ads to the search results would make them move away from the search engine overall.
- 85% preferred to click on an organic result rather than an ad.
Check out Ignite Visibility Blog
Position Zero Is Dead
Dr. Peter J. Meyers has shared an article that covers basically everything on featured snippets, position zero particularly. He takes you from 2014 to this day and what you should do according to the SERP you get for your website, niche or business. We loved how he explains SERP rankings as if it’s for dummies. Anyone can consume this article with no questions marks at all.
How Important is URL Structure?
On 7th of February, John Mueller from Google had a Google Webmaster Hangout session where he pointed out that once Google processes the content on a page URLs become less significant. Thus, we can accept that URL has not a fixed value for all times, it can change over other parameters.
86 Blog Post Ideas With Successful Examples
Si Quan Ong gathered 86 great blog post ideas for anyone suffering from writer’s block.
I’m sure you’ll find at least one of them is practical for your website.
Check out Ahrefs Blog for the article
The Nasty Side-Effects of Google Search Traffic
Kevin takes us through the journey of how Google started to provide answers to an engine that helps users get things done which is something completely different. This article needs 16 minutes of your precious time and is definitely worth your time. He also shares great tips on how to track your personal activities on Google by checking “My Google Activity” as well.
Check out Kevin Indig’s Website
Git Explorer
This is a Swiss Army knife for every developer or devs to be. This is a great tool that help you find the right commands you need without digging through the web.
Build SEO seasonality projections with Google Trends in Python
Python is still a hype topic within the SEO community. Even though we are living uncertain times now during COVID-19, we’ll head back to the usual sooner or later. So why not we don’t invest some time for SEO seasonality projections via Python? Tyler Reardon shares how we can get SEO seasonality projections solely with Python and Google Search Console.
Check out Search Engine Land for the article
JavaScript Loading Priorities in Chrome
Knowing how browsers interpret script loading can be helpful, for sure. Kouhei Ueno shares an up to date summary of script scheduling in Chrome. If you’re a web developer wondering where you can see the “Loading Priority“, Chrome DevTools has an optional “Priority” column available in the Network panel.
Check out addyosmani website for the article
February’20 was a long month with a bunch of new updates, so let me drop a few additional links without a wrap up for you to discover in your free time:
- More & better data export in Search Console
- Screaming Frog Guide to Do Almost Anything
- Scaling Google indexation checks with Node.js
- An SEO Experiment: Are H1 Tags Necessary for Ranking?
- How to Write an Incredible Title Tag
- The Death of the Third-Party Cookie: What Marketers Need to Know
March ‘20
Why Google Now Allows Third Party JavaScript in AMP
Eric Enge had a beautiful Q&A session with Ben Morss who is a Developer Advocate in the AMP and PWA at Google. We are now past those cold and sad days when it was impossible to use JavaScript on an AMP page. But how? And why?
Check out Perficient Blog for the Q&A Session
What is Cached Data? What does Clear Cache Mean and What Does it Do?
Jeff Lowery explains what cache data is. You can think of cache data as a storage depot. A cache’s primary purpose is to speed up retrieval of web page resources, decreasing page load times.
Check out Freecodecamp for Jeff’s article
How people search for the Corona Virus
As much as we tried to exclude the topic of Corona Virus since it’s literally everywhere and nearly every brand or company reached out to people via social media and emailing. However there’s one thing crystal clear: COVID-19 changed how and what people search on Google. That makes it a must to include in Converged newsletters.
Here’s Kevin Indig’s article on how people search for COVID-19.
Check out Path Interactive Blog for Ian Pfister’s article
Google people also ask boxes not showing as often now?
RankRanger says the people also ask (PAA) shows for 40% of queries, it used to show up for 52% of queries. 12% is a significant amount of reduction. Mozcast also shows a 6-point drop from 93% to 87% of all queries.
Check out on Search Engine Land
Why Negative SEO Matters, Even if Rankings Are Unaffected
Negative SEO can hurt your website and your work in search, even when your rankings are unaffected by it. Luckily, Russ Jones takes us through the underground world of negative SEO.
How do you fight back against negative SEO?
- Canonical burn pages
- Embedded styled attribution
- Link Lists
Announcing mobile first indexing for the whole web
Google, finally announced mobile first indexing will be applicable for the whole web, starting September 2020. Speaking of mobile first indexing, Google recommends making sure that the content shown is the same (including text, images, videos, links) on desktop and mobile.
Check out Google Blog for the announcement
Yelp published this report and frequently updates it. Please keep in mind the data served in this report includes solely the U.S. local economy. Yet again it gives a rough idea on how different businesses manage to gain interest during COVID-19 times.
Check out Yelp Coronavirus Economic Impact Report
What we learned from analyzing 1,926 Salesforce Commerce Cloud websites
Dan Taylor shares a report where they analyzed hundreds of websites.
- 73% of sites don’t return a 404 response code (when they should).
- 63% have hreflang errors.
- 64% have Lighthouse performance scores less than 33/100.
- 51% actively utilize meta keywords.
Check out Salt Agency Blog for details
GMB Features Suspended Due to Covid-19: What’s Changed and How It Affects You
In a post published on Friday March 20, Google announced that it was temporarily disabling and limiting a number of features in Google My Business, saying:
“During the unprecedented COVID-19 situation, we are taking steps to protect the health of our team members and reduce the need for people to come into our offices. As a result, there may be some temporary limitations and delays in support as we prioritize critical services.”
Some features are removed and some of them are limited now.
Businesses that aren’t considered health-related can also expect delays to the listing edits, including:
- Open and closed states
- Business descriptions
- Business attributes
- Temporary closures
Why All Those ‘Working From Home’ Tips Are Not Working
We have seen a bunch of “working from home” tips and tricks all over the internet right now. This one is the best, in my humble opinion. Because it’s real. We should adopt a “work first” mindset instead of having a separate home office.
Check out dariusforoux website
March’20 was a long month as well.So let me drop a few additional links without a wrap up for you to discover in your free time:
