Archive for the SEO News & Tips Category

On or around November 7, 2019, Google rolled out a change to it’s core algorithm. The algorithm update impacted medical sites as well as news, tech and finance sites and sites in other niches as well. What we know about the November 7, 2019 Algorithm Update: This

On October 23, 2019, a Google algorithm change rolled out. There’s a lot I do not know and will not know about this algorithm, but, I’m going to share what I do know. First, let’s start with a screenshot from RankRanger: Sometimes the best change after a

On October 25, 2019, Google announced the BERT update which impacts search results. In a nutshell, this is a great update which helps Google produce more relevant search results for longer / natural language / conversational search queries. A BERT example: Instead of a keyword, such as

October 2019 – When a law firm wants their Google ad to come up on the top of the search results, they can bid on their competitors name in Google Ads (formerly AdWords). If their bid is successful, then when a potential customer the searches that brand

Any website with a significant amount of traffic gets blasted with a variety of “junk” links. Generally speaking, junk links are not going to harm the visibility or ranking of your website in Google’s search engine. Junk links are very common and all modern search engines are

Google has been spotted testing what I have nicknamed “Breadcrumb-First” search results. I got my first look at the SERP test on October 7, 2019. This is what the search results looked like: Will this be a permanent change? I suspect that the test could become a

Google is no longer displaying review stars in search results for local businesses. Most websites lost their review stars in Google’s search results in September 2019. Google is calling this the September 2019 Review Rich Results Update. The problem: Misleading Review Stars. I don’t often pat myself

On September 20, 2019, Google began sending out messages via Google Search Console titled “Fix Breadcrumbs markup for https://www.website.com/”. Here’s what the message looks like: It reads: Google systems show that your site is affected by one Breadcrumbs markup issue. This means that your Breadcrumbs pages might

On September 5, 2019, Google released the latest Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG). The last update to this document was May 16, 2019. You can download the most recent edition here, or visit our mirror for the 9/5/2019 edition. What are the Quality Rater Guidelines? Google hires “quality

On September 5, 2019, a significant change to Google’s algorithm took place. SERP trackers, such as RankRanger’s, showed this as seen in the screenshot below: The September 5, 2019 Update Timeline of Events This timeline of events will be updated as the algorithm rolls out along with

August 28, 2019, a Google algorithm update began rolling out. This came shortly after Google began demoting websites which participate in “subdomain leasing” around August 23. Google engineers also made slightly noticeable changes to the algorithm on August 1 and August 20. Some people feel the August

This is such a broad, huge topic, it really merits its own book. But, I will condense this as much as I can. What is a backlink? Of course, if you’re reading this, you understand that websites need backlinks to rank well in Google search. But you

And it’s here. A major change to Google’s algorithm rolled out, as can be seen here thanks to RankRanger’s monitoring tool: July 2019 Google Algorithm Update – Live Timeline Here’s how the July algorithm rolled out: July 13, 2019 – On July 13, 2019, there were several

On June 8, 2019, an article hit InfoWars.com titled “Google De-Lists Alex Jones From Web Search“. The article explains that if you use Google to search for the phrase (name) Alex Jones, InfoWars.com is no longer a result near the top of page 1 of Google’s search

Google has been testing out a new feature on desktop search results which I have been calling “More Results”. After performing a search and scrolling to the bottom of page 1, instead of seeing the classic list of additional Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), users are presented

The June 2019 Google Broad Core Algorithm Update impacted the rankings of websites in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages. Several aspects of the algorithm were changed which caused some sites to gain visibility and others to lose visibility. Generally speaking, sites negatively impacted will see a drop

On May 16, 2019, Google released the latest Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG), more recently called the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. You can download the latest QRG here, or via our mirror here. Update: Get the September 2019 version here. What are the Quality Rater Guidelines? Google hires

Today I made my annual trip to Yahoo.com to see if it was shut down yet. The site is still up, it is just plastered with ads. The home page is plastered with ads which literally take you to fake news sites and sites which attempt to

On March 12, 13, and 14, 2019, many webmasters began noticing a change to their rankings and traffic. That’s because Google rolled out an update to their algorithm. Google frequently rolls out updates, but this one was a significant “Broad Core algorithm update”. The update began rolling

In December 2018, YouTube deleted subscribers from many channels on their platform. With all of the massive problems YouTube faces lately, apparently they thought this was a priority. 😛 Users can still fake review counts. One company I briefly tracked adds a lame video, then inflate the