Google Core Update 2020: The SEO Impact and Opportunity
From mid-January Google began rolling out its latest algorithm changes - Google Core Update 2020.
This particular algorithm change has impacted almost every industry/business category. It is a global rollout so this Google Core Update affects everything indexed irrespective of language or locale.
6 Confirmed Impacts from Google Core Update 2020
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There has already been a lot said about avoiding "thin content" and creating "E-A-T pages" for great SEO results.
The singling out of YMYL websites again with this rollout, demonstrates Google's determination to stamp out fake news and misinformation.
3 New SEO Opportunities from Google Core Update 2020
What is new are the last 3 items in the list. These are the ones that will have the biggest impact for you.
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Planning Your Featured Snippet SEO Strategy
In the past, having the Featured Snippet (the infamous Position Zero) was seen as a SEO win. Your brand got a huge piece of SERP real estate at the top of the page, plus you'd get an organic listing on Page 1 - giving you two opportunities for a click through.
A number of SEO experts predicted that over time, the CTR would become significantly lower on the Featured Snippet compared to a regular organic listing. Due mainly to your prized content being presented up front, so there is no need for the visitor to click through.
Now the organic listing is being removed,
there is uncertainty around the merits of having the Featured Snippet at all.
Most SEO experts are advocating a "wait and see" approach. Advising that you monitor closely and consider testing to see whether you would benefit from losing your Featured Snippet and reverting to an organic listing.
The approach the Conversion Leadership team is adopting is to work with clients to retain the Featured Snippet and create new content for Page 1 organic listings.
Our observations have been that (for right now) the Featured Snippet has a pretty good chance of being the result used for voice search (Google Assistant, Google Home Siri, etc). When it comes to Desktop and mobile search, we still want to have a healthy CTR. Creating great content that works for these devices that gets an organic listing means our clients are "meeting their audience" in the best way possible.
2.
Taking Advantage of the 2020 Google SERP Redesign
There are positives and negatives with the new layout for SERPs that make the paid ads look like organic listings.
THE BAD - is the potential for more "false clicks" - those unintentional clicks on your ads that cost you money and result in bounces.
THE GOOD - is that for advertisers, the "banner blindness" affect is being minimized. Giving you a greater opportunity for increased CTR.
Conversion Leadership is working with clients on CRO initiatives to minimize the downside of false clicks and take advantage of higher CTR opportunities while they last.
This blurring of the line between ads and organic may only last for a short time, as Google swiftly responds to harsh criticism of the SERP design change.
3.
Getting Onboard with SEO Structured Data
For some time now "Technical SEO" has been bubbling away in the background. Forums are filled with debate about whether or not there is any value in adding "structured data" for SEO purposes.
The announcement by Google of its intention to "sunset" Data-Vocabulary.org structured data in early April 2020 in favour of renewed focus on Schema.org, is seen as a signal… structured data, and in particular Schema markup, has SEO benefit for achieving Google rich results.
eCommerce solutions such as WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Volusion and others have already incorporated structured data to make their systems search engine friendly.
SEO tools such as Yoast plugin for WordPress, Metatag Module for Drupal, Mageplaza SEO Extensions for Magento, Google Structured Data Extension for Joomla and others have appeared to make it easier to add your schema markup to existing websites.
The greatest challenge with all of these SEO tools is that you need to manually enter the structured data information for every page yourself. A time consuming and thankless task for any Webmaster looking after a website of more than 20 pages.
Conversion Leadership has installed Snippetron (still in Alpha-phase) a WordPress plugin that uses AI to author and add Schema markup to the pages of your website.
Results Achieved with SEO Structured Data by Snippetron
The results achieved (with Snippetron) for a number of our smaller clients, particularly those in the YMYL space, over January 2020 have been reassuring.
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Case Study 1 - Health Category (YMYL)
While traffic volumes for a client in the Health category have eased (compared to the same period last year), there has been a steady increase in the number of organic keywords the website is indexed for. From 319 to 428 keywords.
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Case Study 2 - Logistics Category
Due to the cyclic nature of the Logistics category we'd usually expect to see a decline in traffic for our client in January. The lift in traffic plus an increase in the number of organic keywords from 197 to 246 is interesting.
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Case Study 3 - Side-by-Side Test/Comparison
For a point of reference, we selected two similar client websites, both niche Content Commerce websites. In January 2019, these websites had similar traffic volumes, sessions per user and session durations.
Without Snippetron
For the website without Snippetron installed, the traffic volumes are substantially down against last year. The number of organic keywords the website is indexed for is also in decline. From 438 to 350.
With Snippetron Installed
For the client's website with Snippetron installed, the traffic has increased and the number of organic keywords has risen from 488 to 600.
From these and many other websites we've tested and results analysed, we believe the addition of SEO structured data shows there is a significant and positive impact to be had.
As Search capabilities find their place within IoT, and new ways to engage with technology emerge, we firmly believe that SEO and optimization will evolve through necessity.
It is our responsibility as Growth Hackers, Digital Marketers and SEO specialists to help guide our clients smoothly through these abrupt and sometimes traumatic transitions.
The future direction of SEO has been sign-posted with the 2020 Google Core Update. Ignore the signs at your own peril.
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