Sam Astill

Digital Account Executive at US Digital with an avid interest in SEO and all things Digital Marketing. I’ll be updating you with any news on Google Algorithms and latest technology updates.

Google Algorithm Update January 2019

As we have covered in previous posts, Google loves a Google Algorithm update. It is estimated there are hundreds a year. Throughout the SEO world there has been positive talk of a potential Google Algorithm update around the start of January 2019. Evidence certainly seems to support this. Our trusty rankings tracker SEMrush sensor recorded a SERP volatility score of 7.4 for Monday 7th in the UK and this appears to be ongoing throughout the week. This may not seem particularly high but the general consensus seems to be noticeable shifts in rankings. We are seeing positive ranking shifts right across the board. It will be interesting to note the effects this will have upon traffic once the changes settle down.

Why Is Content Marketing Important?

In the digital world there is a wide range of possibilities when it comes to driving traffic to your site. Be it organic traffic, paid means or social media there is a variety of traffic sources available to use, each with differing levels of user quality and therefore success. One of the most, if not the most, successful drivers of high quality traffic is organic. Driving users to your site with a high user intent means said user is far more likely to convert. To be able to implement a successful organic traffic campaign requires a wide range of tactics to be implemented effectively, and the quality of your content plays a large role in this. Are you struggling with the idea of content marketing? If so then read on to find out more!

What Is Keyword Cannibalisation?

Websites revolve around keywords. They are how we determine a user’s search query and what to base our pages around. It would therefore make sense to have numerous pages based around a single strong keyword right? Wrong! When a site has more than one page focused on exactly the same keyword we refer to this as keyword cannibalisation.

What Is Negative SEO?

Negative SEO involves using black hat SEO techniques to negatively affect a site or page. The aim is to get the chosen domain penalised by Google. They can pose a major problem for webmasters. Not only can a lot of the techniques be outside of your site so out of your control but they are also often hard to spot. It is different to conventional hacking in that it will not affect the look and feel of your site, the intention is to harm rankings and traffic.

How To Write The Perfect Meta Description

When it comes to optimising a web page there are many different aspects that must be considered. Titles, H1 tags, H2 tags, keywords, images and Meta descriptions are just a few of these considerations. Meta descriptions can sometimes be under appreciated but they still have a large role to play in the SEO world. When you perform a search query on a search engine the short snippet of text beneath a website link is referred to as the Meta description. It effectively describes what will be included on that web page.

What you need to know about Google’s mobile-first indexing

Mobile-first indexing has been the talk of the SEO world throughout 2018. The historic change from Google moving to a mobile-first system is currently being rolled out. It is perhaps symbolic of today’s society in that we are moving towards a mobile world. Desktop of course still plays a massive role in many industries but Google’s choice to switch to mobile-first is indicative. This change could have a profound impact upon search results. But first we must understand what we mean when we refer to mobile indexing.

Google’s New Image Search Display

Google loves an update. Its recent algorithm updates (Sep 11^th) and (Sep 20^th) are relatively big updates and yet we still don’t hear about the vast majority of them. However, the next one promises to be a big one. At the anniversary event held for their 20^th birthday Google announced it would be updating its image search design for desktop computers. Of course back in March Google released an image display update for mobile devices and this latest updates intention is to bring desktop and mobile back in line. But what will Google’s new image search display update entail?

Google’s Latest Algorithm Update (Sep 20th 2018)

Google is at it again. There has been talk of a possible algorithm update throughout the SEO world and evidence certainly seems to support this. Our favourite rankings tracker SEMrush gave a SERP volatility score of 6.5 for Thursday 20^th. Whilst not as high as the previous noticeable update (9.2), this is still considered high by the tracker. So what could Google’s Latest Algorithm Update (Sep 20th 2018) mean for me?

Is SEO as important as it once was?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been around since the mid-90s and was often thought of as a bit of a dark art, crucial in website ranking but not universally known. However in recent times there has been the misconception that SEO should be common knowledge and something practiced by anybody loosely related to digital marketing. So we asked ourselves here at USdigital, is SEO as important as it once was?

Google AdWords: Google’s Keyword Search Terms Update

When the concept of keywords was first introduced, Google’s exact match for keyword targeting meant a user’s query had to exactly match that of the keyword. It is perhaps clear what problems this may have caused within the AdWords world. With these issues Google decided to introduce an update whereby allowing variations of the keyword to be considered. In 2014 Google introduced the concept of variations such as misspellings, plurals and abbreviations being considered. A later update was introduced in 2017 that would consider different word orders and word functions.