However, Google comes up with plenty of updates throughout the year – including updates to some of the major core algorithms – to improve quality and search experience.

It is essential to pay attention to all these search engine algorithm updates that may affect your website’s ranking and visibility, such as Google Core updates, page speed updates, Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird.

Google Core Update for June 2019

Google doesn’t always give a heads up when it’s time to roll out a new core update, but this time they did. To determine whether your site was affected by the algorithm updates that impact how search results are ranked and listed, take a look at your web analytics and search console performance reports. If you’ve noticed a change in your site’s online rank or performance, Google suggests improving your site with better content, which could cause your rankings to rise in time.

Google Diversity Update

Different from the core update, the diversity “update” is actually a change—not an algorithm—that will reduce multiple site listings in search results to no more than two pages from the same site. Called the Site Diversity Change, it won’t affect all search results—at least not those Google considers to be relevant. In that case, some search results may show more than one result the web page is deemed important to the user entering the search phrase: the user intent when searching.

Mobile-First Indexing Update

The July 1, 2019, update will use “mobile-first” indexing as the default for all new websites. What this means is that if your site is not mobile-compatible, you may not rank as well as other responsive mobile-friendly websites. Also, it will affect your overall website ranking performance because of your perceived poorer user experience. If your site is older and hasn’t yet moved to a mobile format, you will still use desktop-first indexing until your site has been upgraded to include a mobile format. Google will still monitor and evaluate your web pages until they’re ready for the new indexing, and they will notify you via Search Console of their readiness. Although the new indexing doesn’t affect ranking per se, being mobile-friendly does affect ranking.

New Mobile SERP

When you do a search on a mobile device, you’ll notice a large video box at the top of the search results with two thumbnail videos below. The desktop version shows three videos in a row, all of comparable size. The difference is that the mobile SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) makes one video more prominent than the others.

Countless Updates to Improve Quality and Search Experience

Last year alone, Google made 3,200 changes to its search systems. It’s unknown how many of the approximately nine changes per day concerned core ranking versus changing the search box’s pixel location or font size, but they did involve search. Each one resulted in some type of improvement based on identified issues.

What You Should Do Following a Google Update

If you have good searchable content and follow the guidelines that apply—and are relevant—to your target audience, you’re off to a good start. You can also use this time to boost web traffic—especially if the updates have caused a drop in online visibility. If you’re not already using video to optimize your online presence, consider it a viable link-building strategy. Your website is 50 times more likely to get a first-page ranking if you include online video. It can improve your rank by:

• Increasing click-through rates because video is more likely to attract attention than text
• Lowering bounce rates because people spend 88 percent more time on your site if it includes video
• Generating 1,200 percent more shares than text and images combined

Why You Should Track the Google Updates

Not every update is significant to every company, and some go unnoticed altogether. However, many have dramatically impacted SEO and, ultimately, the ROI (return on investment) on a company’s website. Since your SEO strategy is your plan to drive traffic to your website, the context of the updates could positively or negatively impact your:

• Online visibility and ranking
• Organic traffic search
• Conversions
• ROI
• Company revenue

Depending on how your company is affected by Google’s thousands of annual changes to its algorithm, you might think your site is being punished—or, hopefully, rewarded for excellent content and a positive user experience. To know for sure whether you’ve been negatively impacted with a drop in traffic flow:

• Follow the proper sources, such as Google’s Official Webmaster Central Blog
• Audit your website
• Contact an expert if you’ve been penalized, but do it only after you’ve excluded other reasons for the penalty
• Create a strategy for recovery and follow it exactly
• Continue to create good SEO content

Contact Norton Norris, Inc. in Chicago for the marketing and training solutions your organization needs to succeed.

The post What Google Updates Mean to Your Organization and SEO Strategy appeared first on Norton Norris.

We live in an impatient world. That’s not much of a surprise to anyone. As technology and new possibilities for data mining continue to advance at a dizzying pace, so too do our expectations in terms of achieving results from those advances.

Such is the case with search engine optimization (SEO).

The ability to improve your website’s position in organic web search rankings by effectively aligning page content with well-planned metadata is obviously very appealing to schools of all types and sizes. Ultimately, this is what SEO is all about—increasing traffic to your website.

Unfortunately for many schools, they don’t put the necessary resources into SEO. Whether they simply lack the resources, think they lack the resources and allocate funds to other areas, or don’t believe in the power of SEO, these schools are missing out on a huge opportunity to impact their enrollment and bottom line.

To an extent, it’s understandable that some may not trust SEO to the point where they throw money into it. It can be a very confusing world, and its emergence over the past decade hasn’t come without having to battle misperceptions that it’s more snake oil potion than effective strategic tool. Thankfully, that misperception has for the most part gone away.

But for our purposes here and now, the focus will be on those schools that do invest in SEO.

As mentioned earlier, we don’t have a lot of patience these days. We expect results instantly, whether it’s a web page loading, an app installing, a video playing, or pretty much anything else related to technology.

It’s no different with SEO. And this can be a bad thing. Because one of the most important things to understand when it comes to SEO and the results it can deliver is this—it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Expecting instant results immediately after optimizing your website’s pages is a waste of energy and just not very realistic. When you go into your SEO initiative with the perspective that results are best measured month-over-month and year-over-year, your expectations will be in the right place.

Case in point—the SEO results from one of our clients between the years 2017 and 2018.

The analytics from this client’s SEO performance offer a powerful glimpse into what’s possible when you take a strategic approach and understand that there needs to be a premium on patience. Consider these results comparing the website’s performance in October 2018 with the performance in October 2017.

• Organic traffic increased 12 percent
• Organic three-month total increased 15 percent
• Organic leads increased 25 percent
• Dollar value of organic traffic increased 10 percent
• Total keywords in top 50 places rose by 414

Additionally, the average session duration on the website increased by more than 30 seconds; and the site’s bounce rate, which measures the number of visitors who leave the website quickly rather than viewing multiple pages, decreased more than 20 percent.

And if you look at how the website performed in October 2018 compared to the campaign’s start in June 2017, the results are even more impressive.

• Organic traffic increased 55 percent
• Organic three-month total increased 60 percent
• Organic leads increased 72 percent
• Dollar value of organic traffic increased 51 percent
• Total keywords in top 50 places rose by 723

Just as interesting is the fact that the website’s well-executed SEO campaign outperformed Google AdWords when it came to lead generation.

In August 2018, SEO generated 351 leads to AdWords’ 274, in September SEO generated 407 compared to AdWords’ 250, and in October SEO generated 374 to AdWords’ 370.

Clearly, there’s a lot to be gleaned from these results. First and foremost, year-over-year it shows that the website’s SEO campaign performed very well. Organic traffic on the website rose substantially, and organic leads improved year-over-year and month-over-month. Exhibiting this kind of growth is critical, because converting traffic into leads is a tough thing to do.

The three-month organic totals demonstrate strong growth every month, a clear indication that the SEO initiative was headed in the right direction. The decreased bounce rate shows that the organic traffic being generated is much more interested and engaged, spending more time on the site navigating through multiple pages. This also is indicated by the solid increases in both the average session duration, as well as the average pages visited per session.

Further, the increased number of keywords shows that the website is getting improved position in SERP for a broader range of keywords, making the site more competitive with the websites of other schools.

So, what’s it all mean?

Consider what may have happened if this client expected these kind of results from its SEO campaign in just the first few months. They may have erroneously deemed the effort a failure, abandoned any future commitment to SEO for their website, and walked away from long-term results that have been highly impressive.

Fortunately, they didn’t. They chose to be the turtle instead of the hare, and understood the importance of treating the campaign as a marathon, not a sprint.

That’s a valuable lesson. And it’s one we impress on schools across the country every day. We have more than 20 years of experience leading the way in providing admissions and marketing solutions to colleges and universities that deliver results.

If you’re ready to learn more about how SEO can take your website to new levels and provide a considerable boost to your school’s bottom line, contact one of our seasoned experts today.

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