| Weekly SEO news: 10 December 2019 |
Here are the latest website promotion and Internet marketing tips for you.
We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please forward this newsletter to your friends.
Best regards,
Google has confirmed the November 2019 local search update on Twitter. What has changed, and what do you have to do to keep your local rankings?
What exactly has changed?
Google now uses neural matching to go beyond the exact words in business name or description. This helps Google to understand conceptually how these might be related to the words searchers use and their intents.
In early November, we began making use of neural matching as part of the process of generating local search results. Neural matching allows us to better understand how words are related to concepts, as explained more here: https://t.co/ShQm7g9CvN
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 2, 2019
In other words, your business listing might be shown for search terms that do not appear in your business name or description.
The update has fully rolled out, rankings can change
Google confirmed that this was a global launch covering countries and languages worldwide. The update has fully rolled out:
Neural matching in local search -- which we call the Nov. 2019 Local Search Update -- has now fully rolled out. However, as with web search, results can change as there are smaller updates that happen all the time, as well as content itself that constantly changes.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 2, 2019
Just like regular search results, the new local search results can change over time.
What do you have to do now?
Google says that you don't have to change anything:
The use of neural matching in local search doesn’t require any changes on behalf of businesses. Those looking to succeed should continue to follow the fundamental advice we offer here: https://t.co/tPkyuyMjsP
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 2, 2019
There are some things that you can do. For example, you should have a complete Google My Business profile, you should upload photos and videos, you should verify your locations, keep your hours accurate, and you should respond to reviews.
How does Google rank local results?
Google ranks local results based on relevance, distance, and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for a search.
For example, Google algorithms might decide that a business that's farther away from your location is more likely to have what you're looking for than a business that's closer, and therefore rank it higher in local results.
Is your website listed in Google's local search results?
Use the local SEO tools in SEOprofiler to ensure that your web pages can be found in the right locations. For example, you get ranking checks on city-level, and you can track the positions of businesses that do not have a website:
Open sourcing 2017 local SEO ranking factors data
Google search quality guidelines update emphasizes users of diverse backgrounds
Google: not having a manual action does not mean that your website is good
Results of removing my Google My Business listings
+++
SEARCH +++ ENGINE +++ NEWS +++
TICKER +++
- Google: you can use the same image on multiple web pages.
- Google: being the same as others won’t help you to get high rankings.
- Google: Bert does not affect indexing.
- Google: Legal interstitials are fine as long as we can index the content without having to do anything special.
- When is a star not always a star? When it’s an online review.
- Local rankings: Changed to SAB (Service Area Business) and traffic dropped big time.
- Google image search drops custom date range filter.
- Google: get your own domain name for a long-term web presence.
- Genius sues Google over allegedly stolen song lyrics.
- Google tests package tracking in search results.
- Click-depth as a ranking factor (and how to find the click depth of all pages on your website)
- New in SEOprofiler: more locations for local SEO and rank tracking
- Google Chrome: your website usually loads slow (and how to fix it)
- Bing announces penalty for inorganic site structures
- Better keywords lead to more revenue
- Google: link velocity is not important, it's the quality of the links that matters
- SEO done right: how to get high rankings in 2019
- H1 headings are important - or are they?
- Google releases September 2019 broad core algorithm update
- Reminder: it’s not enough to remove technical errors to rank well (but it’s important)
- View all past issues...
Do you need better rankings for your website?
SEOprofiler is a web-based search marketing tool that helps you to get better Google rankings. You can create a free SEOprofiler account here. The step-by-step manual will help you to get started as quickly as possible.