Weekly SEO news: 14 January 2020
Welcome to the latest issue of our newsletter!

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,
Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO

1. How to identify thin content on your website

Web pages with thin content do not rank well on Google's search result pages. How do you identify thin content pages on your website, and what should you do with that content?

how to identify thin content

What is thin content?

Thin content pages are pages with less than 400-500 words that do not have a clear focus. Some people also consider unoptimized pages, duplicate pages and outdated pages thin content.

How to identify thin content on your web pages

The website audit tool in SEOprofiler helps you to find thin content pages on your website. Just run a website audit and then open the page 'Content topics' in the audit report:

how to identify thin content

The audit report shows thin content pages on your website, and it also shows the top keywords that are used on your web pages.

What you should do with your thin content pages

There are four strategies for dealing with thin content pages: do nothing, update the pages, redirect the pages, or removing the pages.

1. Do nothing

You don't have to do anything if the page gets many website visitors and/or if the page is ranked well on Google and other search engines. Of course, the content of the page should be up-to-date.

2. Update the page

If the content of the page is relevant but not up to date, update the page to make sure that it is relevant to your current offerings.

If the content is relevant but not detailed enough, add more information about the topic on the page. Make sure that the web page plays a relevant role in converting visitors on your website.

Updating content is less work than creating new content. In additions, the old pages usually contain some backlinks. When updating a page, you can also add videos, infographics and other content that makes the page more linkworthy.

3. Redirect the page

If you have another page on your website that contains a better version of the same content, just redirect the thin content page to the rich-content page.

4. Remove the page

If the content of a page is outdated, or if it does not comply with current regulations, it might be a good idea to remove the page from your website.

This should only be done if it is not possible to redirect the old page to another page of your website that is up-to-date.

Other errors on your web pages

Your website can contain many more errors that have a negative impact on your search engine rankings. The website audit tool in SEOprofiler finds them:

Website errors and how to fix them

Check your web pages regularly (with an automated tool)

Updating or replacing content that doesn't provide value for your customers is always a good idea. You should also check the redirects on your website. One bad redirect can lead to massive problems.

The website audit tool in SEOprofiler automatically checks your web pages every week (and on-demand if you need it) and it informs you about all issues that can have a negative impact on your rankings:

Check your website now!

2. Internet marketing news of the week

John MuellerGoogle: there's no need to change evergreen content
 
Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that you don't have to update the creation date of web pages that contain evergreen content: "If it's evergreen, then by definition you don't need to change it. No need to do anything special. Keep your dates, make it great."


Google's John Mueller: we do not index everything on the web

"We just don't index everything on the web, that can be completely normal. Making sure that a site is of high quality, unique & compelling can help our systems to focus more on it, for example."

John MuellerGoogle: it doesn't matter how you set up separate mobile URLs (but you should avoid them)

"Some days ago, Google’s John Mueller said that you should migrate from m-dot domains to responsive design. He added that it doesn’t matter if you separate mobile URLs with m.example.com subdomains, with other subdomains, or with separate directories."


PPC trends to look out for in 2020

"The unwelcome PPC trend for 2020 will be rising CPCs and this will be most evident on Google Search. With the SERPs becoming increasingly competitive and organic results falling further down the page, brands with big budgets will simply increase ad spend and this drives up the cost for everyone."


+++ SEARCH +++ ENGINE +++ NEWS +++ TICKER +++

  • John Mueller: Why would an article be disadvantaged by a date?
  • Google is adding a "summarized from table:" feature on desktop PAA's.
  • Google: large scale crawling is complicated.
  • Introducing quieter permission UI for notifications in Chrome.
  • Microsoft now allows anyone to create a brand page on Bing.
  • How the remnants of About.com are stealthily taking over the internet.
  • Bing loses out to DuckDuckGo in Google’s new Android search engine ballot.
  • Google handles reconsideration requests in batches.
  • Some Google Ads URL show emojis although Google does not allow them.
  • DuckDuckGo still critical of Google’s EU Android choice screen auction, after wining a universal slot.

3. Previous articles