Google’s Mobile First Index Will Show In Your Log Files

Google Mobile First Index From Log Files

At last!

Google has almost answered how we will know when our sites are being served from the looming Mobile First Index.

The answer, as always, will be in your log files.

Those unassuming heroes of the internet which hold so many secrets, yet lie unloved in the corners of your web servers.

Read about how to do it in this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 15th December 2017.

#SEO #SEONews #MobileFirst #LogFiles #Googlebot
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Google Backtracks: Time to Update Your Meta Descriptions

Google Backtracks - Update Your Meta Descriptions

Whaaaaaat? You mean I have to update 50 squillion meta descriptions?

Yup, indirectly Google is saying with their spangly new 300 character snippets in search, you maybe, probably, could think about updating your meta descriptions to match.

That’s this Christmas sorted then. And the New Year. And quite a bit of Feb.

Read all about it in this extract from the marvellous TWIS SEO News & Updates 15th December 2017 – a bit of essential reading, if you ask me.

#SEO #SEONews #MetaTags #SERP
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SEO Bits & Pieces 8th December 2017

SEO Bits & Pieces 8th December 2017

Hooray! Hooray and thrice Hooray!

It’s the SEO Bits & Pieces for 8th December 2017.

More juicy tidbits and snackettes from the world of search, Google and digital marketing.

Read more now in this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 8th December 2017.

It’ll make you wiser and more glamorous. 

#SEO #SEONews #Facebook #SERP
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Google Testing Mobile SERPs With Almost No Organic Results 

Mobile SERPS No Organic Results

The next evolution of SERPs is being tested, and I don’t think it will go down well with webmasters.

How about SERPs with only 2-5 organic listings on mobile?

That would make the competition for first pages listings (and traffic) really quite intense.

And don’t forget this is part of Google’s shift towards delivering the answer in SERP.

Read more in this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 8th December 2017.

#SEO #SEONews #Google #MobileFirst #SERP
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Google Dumping AJAX Crawling Scheme

Google Dumps AJAX Crawling Scheme

Hooray! At long last Google is dumping escaped fragment URLs.

JavaScript developers the world over can breathe a sigh of relief.

Unless they ignored Google’s warning two years ago that they were going to End of Life it.

And didn’t do anything about it.

In which case they’ll be shocked.

Devs would never do that, would they?

This is an extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 8th December 2017.

#SEO #SEONews #JavaScript #Googlebot #AJAX… Read More

Journalists Accept Bribes To Mention Companies – Google Not Happy

Journalists Accept Bribes For Mentions

I was unsurprised by these revelations that numerous dross-content-churn “publications” had writers who took money to mention companies.

These are one step back from Paid Links and Google is not happy about it.

Expect some penalties being applied in the near future.

Read more and stay tuned to find out in this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 8th December 2017.

#SEO #SEONews #LinkSpam #PaidLinks #LinkingStrategy #ContentStrategy
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Knowledge Panels Gain Where Featured Snippets Lost

Knowledge Panels Gain From Featured Snippets

Oh noes! Poor Featured Snippets have been giving way really bland Knowledge Panels.

Re-arranging the deck chairs on a well-know boat springs to mind.

If you rely on crowd-sourced content, you are always going to find a fair degree of rubbish in it.

Putting it in a Knowledge Panel is like putting lipstick on a pig.

Read this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 1st December 2017.

#SEO #SEONews #FeaturedSnippets #KnowledgePanels #SERP
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Google Increases SERP Snippets

Google SERP Snippets Lengthening

I don’t know many people who are pleased about Google lengthening snippets in SERPs.

Essentially, this is a drive to lessen traffic to a destination website by providing an immediate answer in search.

If websites are slow, have hordes of non-Google ads, and are not mobile-first, who would want to send traffic there anyway.

Anyway, back to rewriting meta descriptions then…

Read about it in this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 1st December 2017.

#SEO #SEONews #SERP #MetaTags
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New Direct Link for Local Business Reviews

Direct Link for Local Business Reviews

I absolutely love this little hack for generating a direct link for customers to review your business on Google.

This is useful for businesses large and small – you should use it now.

Without stepping into the mire of review solicitation, you can encourage customers to click the link and go straight to giving a review. How fantastic is that?

Read more in this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 1st Dec 2017.

#SEO #SEONews #LocalSEO #GoogleMyBusiness #Reviews
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A Simple Python 404 Checker

Python Simple 404 Checker

I hate wasting time doing the same thing over and over and over again*.

So I wrote this little python tool to check for a 404 Header Response for a made-up URL on a domain to save me from the drudgery of doing it by hand, to give me absolute consistency of checking, and to give me an audit trail of URLs checked and responses.

*unless it’s perfectly acceptable time-wasting like watching cat videos, obviously.

#SEO #SEOTools #Python #WebDev #TechnicalSEO
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Google’s Event Structured Data Penalty

Google Events Structured Data Penalty

Google is flexing its muscles with regard to structured data spam.

If you are caught abusing the events markup, you may receive a manual action, blocking all rich snippet results from your domain appearing in SERPs.

If you have been relying on rich snippets to drive traffic this could have a severe impact on your business.

Read more in this superb extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 1st December 2017.

#SEO #SEONews #StructuredData #RichSnippets #Webspam #GooglePenalties
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