A Look Back at 2018 SEO and a Look Ahead at 2019 SEO

Continuing SEO Education
A Look Back at 2018 and a Look Ahead to 2019

Rebecca GillVicePresidentof
DigitalMarketingServices
atemagine
__
Experience
ü 20 years in sales and marketing
ü 15 years in real-world SEO
ü 9 years running a digital agency
SEO educator to thousands of marketers,
webmasters, developers, agencies, and
independent consultants.
Copyright 2018 emagine, All Rights Reserved

2018
Thiswasaveryactive
yearfortheSEOindustry!

2018Overview
ClearThemesAppearedThroughout2018
__
qPositive User Experience
qTrust and Authority
qTopical Keyword Focus
qCustomer Journey Mapping
qUser Intent in Search
qSemantic Language Usage
qOngoing Technical SEO
qPerformance and Speed
qSecurity (SSL & HTTPS)
qAccessibility
qStructured Data and Schema
qVoice Search

2018Overview
ClearChallengesArrived
__
qThe Knowledge Graph truly changed everything and
anything about organic search.
qGoogle became smarter and this entirely changed SEO
strategy, planning, and execution.
qWhat worked before in SEO, may still work and you may
still rank in search, but actual website traffic and
conversions may have completely different results.

2018Overview
ClearChallengesArrived
__
qThe Knowledge Graph truly changed everything and
anything about organic search.
qGoogle became smarter and this entirely changed SEO
strategy, planning, and execution.
qWhat worked before in SEO, may still work and you may
still rank in search, but actual website traffic and
conversions may have completely different results.
THIS IS A GAME CHANGER!

GooglegaveandGoogletookaway.
Let’stakeastrollthroughtheyear
andreviewwhathappened.

January8,2018
NewGoogleSearchConsoleArrives
__
q This is now available to all users.
q The new GSC functionality included:
q Search performance
q Index coverage
q AMP status
q Job posting reports
q Data was extended to include 16 months of
information.
q Many core GSC featured were missing at
launch.

March15,2018
”ZeroSearchResults”AppearinSERPs
__
q Google launched a large-scale
experiment, removing organic
results from a small set of searches
with definitive answers and no
results.
q These “in SERP answers” were
being driven by Knowledge Cards.
q The SEO community revolted in blog
posts and on Twitter.
q Five days later Google halted the
testing and returned real listings
back to search engine result pages.

March15,2018
”ZeroSearchResults”…continued
__
q Sadly, this was a sign of what was to come in 2018.
q Google continued to grow answers within results
and showed fewer and fewer organic results and
links to websites.
q Moz did a study to see how bad the situation really
was for marketers:
Across the 10,000 SERPs in Moz’s data set, over
half (51%) had less than 10 traditional organic
results.
While very-low counts are rare, over one-fourth of
page-one SERPs fell into the range of 5–8 organic
results.
This is our new reality.
Source: https://moz.com/blog/zero-result-serps

March26,2018
Mobile-FirstIndexingRollsOut
__
q Mobile-first indexing means that Google is now using the
mobile version of a page for indexing and ranking in search.
q For well-coded, mobile responsive websites this change is
uneventful.
q It’s an entirely different story for websites that offer two
versions of their content or who have poor mobile
implementations.
q Site owners will see significantly increased crawl rate from
the Smartphone Googlebot.
q Google will show the mobile version of pages in Search
results and Google cached pages.
q With this change, speed and performance just became
mission critical to webmasters and marketers.

March31,2018
TheLong-tailGrowsandGrows
__
q SMX East talks reveal that 50% of search queries
are 4 words or longer.
q Voice search and tech savvy users are extending
their queries well beyond shorter and more broad
inquiries.
q Google has advanced it’s technology and it can
effortlessly provide quality answers to these
longer searches.
q Marketers need to adapt and think past traditional
phrases.
q Questions now dominate both search queries and
Google results.

May8,2018
NewImageGuidelines
__
q Create a great user experience
q Check page titles and descriptions
q Add structured data
q Optimize for speed
q Add good quality photos
q Include descriptive titles, captions, filenames, and text
for images
q Use descriptive alt text for Google and accessibility
q Use an image sitemap
q Optimize for SafeSearch
Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016?hl=en

May13,2018
MetaDescriptionDisplayChanges…Again
__
q Back in November 30, 2017, Google increased the
displayed text in SERP snippets to include more text.
q This change led marketers to adopt a new meta
description limit -- up to 300 characters from the
previous 155 characters.
q It was very short lived. In May, this was reversed and
Google rolled back most snippets to the former limit of
about 150-160 characters.
q Marketers and plugin developers scrambled…again.
q Later in the year, Google announced that marketers can
use any amount of character text desired and the search
engine will use what they want to display.
Source: https://moz.com/blog/how-to-write-meta-descriptions-in-a-changing-world

June25,2018
URLInspectionTool
__
q Google’s URL Inspection tool provides detailed crawl,
index, and serving information about specific website
URLs.
q A user can add URL into the tool to view the last crawl
date and status, any crawling or indexing errors, and the
canonical URL for that URL.
q If the page was successfully indexed, you can see
information and status about any enhancements we
found on the page, such as linked AMP version or rich
results like Recipes and Jobs.
q If a page isn't indexed, you can learn why, since the
report includes information about noindex robots meta
tags and Google's canonical URL for the page.

June27,2018
GoogleMarketingPlatformAnnounced
__
q This new platform is focused on both
small business and enterprise level
organizations.
q It includes tools we are already using
like Google Analytics, Google Tag
Manager, and Google Data Studio.
q Google Marketing Platform builds on
existing integrations between the
Google Analytics 360 Suite and
DoubleClick advertiser products.
q Google Marketing Platform also
supports 100+ integrations with
exchanges, measurement solutions,
and other technology providers.

July9,2018
Google’sSpedUpdateBeginsRollingOut
__
q The “Speed Update” only affects pages that deliver
the slowest experience to users and only affect a
small percentage of queries.
q Search intent is still a very strong signal, so a slow
page may still rank well if it has high quality content
that is deemed relevant to the query.
q Unfortunately, there is no tool that directly indicates
whether a URL is affected by this new ranking factor.
q Google does suggest resources for evaluating a
page’s overall performance:
q Lighthouse
q PageSpeed Insights
q Chrome User Experience Report

July20,2018
GoogleSearchQualityRater
GuidelinesisUpdated
__
q Quality raters do not directly impact search
ranking, but they do help us understand what’s
important to Google.
q This update focused on the quality of content
and the content’s author.
q E-A-T, an abbreviation for Expertise,
Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, became
an important consideration for website owners.
q At the time of release, marketers did not yet
comprehend the impact this update would have
on search and website ranking, but it becomes
very clear in the next few months.
Source: https://www.rebeccagill.com/GSQRG/

July24,2018
“NotSecure”WarningHitsChrome
__
q In 2014, Google announced HTTPS as a ranking
signal.
q In 2016, Google announced it would use Chrome
to eventually mark all sites that are not encrypted
with HTTPS as “not secure.”
q In July of 2018, Google rolled this change out to all
Chrome browser users.
q Google kept it’s word and we now see distinct
ranking differences between HTTP and HTTPS
websites.
q We are also seeing degrading ranking for websites
that have poorly integrated HTTPS. Mixed URLs,
links, and assets matter to Google and this means
they matter to marketers.

July24,2018
SpeakableStructuredDataArrives
__
q Google announces a new schema.org structured data
specification called speakable.
q This schema is for eligible publishers to mark up
sections of a news article that are most relevant to be
read aloud by the Google Assistant.
q This feature is currently available for English language
users in the United States.
q Content indicated by speakable structured data
should have concise headlines and/or summaries.
q Google recommends around 20-30 seconds of
content per section of speakable structured data, or
roughly two to three sentences.

July31,2018
FAQ,Q&AandHowToVerticalsArrive
__
q At Google Dance Singapore, Gary Illyes
from Google revealed a new feature that is
coming to the Google search results.
q The new feature would see specific content
from a webpage, including FAQ, Q&A and
how-to verticals being highlighted in the
search results for those pages.
q These rich results are expect to take up
nearly the entire screen on mobile.
q It is very likely that these results use the
relevant schema that would trigger this in
the search results.
Source: http://www.thesempost.com/google-adding-faq-qa-verticals-search-results/

August1,2018
”Medic”BeginsaWildRideofAlgorithmUpdates
__
q Google confirmed a "broad core algorithm update,"
with wide reports of massive impact.
q It rolled out over the period of about a week, but
peaked on August 1-2.
q This update seemed to disproportionately affect
sites in the health and wellness vertical, although
large-scale impact was seen across all verticals.
q YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) websites and
blogs were hit the hardest.
q It is believed the basis of the update stems from
the usage of E-A-T and the removal of unqualified
experts in high search results.
q Those websites with strong authority and a valid
industry level of expertise saw little impact.
Source:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-medic-update-26177.html

September4,2018
NewGoogleSearchConsoleLeavesBeta
__
q More features is added and now include:
q Index coverage
q Data for internal and external links
q URL Inspection
q Webmasters are receiving a large number of
automatic alerts with listings of pages affected
by crawling, indexing, AMP, mobile usability,
recipes, or job posting issues.
q Overall the new GSC is still missing many
features that are available in the old version, so
most users continue to use both versions.

September7,2018
VoiceSearchFiguresShowNon-StopGrowth
__
q WordStream released updated statistics on today’s usage
of voice search and the numbers are staggering.
q 2 in 5 adults use voice search once daily.
q One in five consumers (19%) have made a voice purchase
through digital home assistants and another third (33
percent) plan to do so in the next year.
q Growth expectations see 50% of all searches being done
via voice by 2020.
q 13% of all households in the United States owned a smart
speaker in 2017 and that number is predicted to rise to
55% by 2022.
Source: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/04/10/voice-search-statistics-2018

September20,2018
GoogleDataStudioComesOutofBeta
__
q This tool is now generally available and
officially out of beta.
q At the core, GDS takes Google Analytics
further and provides flexibility for reporting
options and views.
q GDS also allows you to easily access data
from a variety of core Google tools like
Google Analytics, Google Ads, Display &
Video 360, Search Ads 360, YouTube
Analytics, Google Sheets, and Google
BigQuery.
q There are 120 “connectors” and 500 more
data sources available for integration.
Without doubt, these numbers will grow.

September24,2018
GoogleReleasesSearchFactsandFigures
__
Facts and Figures
q Hundreds of billions of pages within the
index
q Search in 150 languages and 190 countries
q Billions of queries every day
q 15% of search queries are new each day
q 200,000 search experiments in 2017
q 2,400 changes to search in 2017 (6/day)
What Matters to Google
q The user and the user journey
q Relevant, high quality content
q Ongoing testing through rater guidelines
and tweaks
q A more visual search experience
q Information that is both accessible and
useful
Source: https://www.blog.google/products/search/improving-search-next-20-years/

October8,2018
Google+OfficiallyClosingtoIndividuals
__
q Google announces the closure of the Google+
platform after it discovered a data breech.
q In the announcement Google discloses the
consumer version of Google+ currently has low
usage and engagement.
q Reports show 90% of Google+ user sessions
are less than 5 seconds.
q At this moment, this closure is for individuals
only and does not apply to brand pages on
Google+.
q Marketers most likely won’t notice an impact,
because very traffic came from Google+.
q What once showed so much promise is now
dominates by automated spam driven by bots.

October30,2018
TheNewRealityofNoClickSearchResults
__
q The Knowledge Graph is eating up the search engine results pages and marketers are seeing
the true ramifications of the new technology.
q In the last two and a half years, desktop no-click searches have grown 9.5% and mobile “no-
click” searches have grown 11%.
q Google is also increasing ad space, which is also eating away at organic SEO traffic.
q For every 100 searches on Google mobile in September, 2018, there were:
q 38.5 clicks on an organic result
q 3.4 clicks on a paid result
q 61.5 no-click searches
q For every 100 searches on Google desktop in September, 2018, there were:
q 65.6 clicks on an organic result
q 3.7 clicks on a paid result
q 34.3 no-click searches
Source: https://sparktoro.com/blog/google-ctr-in-2018-paid-organic-no-click-searches/

March15,2018
”ZeroSearchResults”continued
__

October30,2018
NoClickSearchResults…continued
__
Source: https://sparktoro.com/blog/google-ctr-in-2018-paid-organic-no-click-searches/

October31,2018
GoogleAssistantOptioninGMB
__
q Google is letting customers use Google
Assistant's duplex technology to book
appointments or make reservations on their
behalf.
q A Search Engine Roundtable article shows
a new option in Google My Business that
allows companies to enable or disable the
ability for Google Assistant to call and
make these reservations.
q While we don’t know how many businesses
or consumers will use this feature, it will
help make 2019 a little more interesting.

2019
NextyearSEOchangeswill
mostlikelybejustasactive.

Marketersmustpreparefor
changeandconstantinnovationfromGoogle.
TosucceedinSEO,youhavetothink beyondold
schooltacticsofkeywordsandlinks.

HowtoCompetein2019
OwnYourE-A-T
__
q Help Google connect the dots of who,
what, and why of you and your website.
q Create expert profiles with easy to
locate website URLs for each
individual.
q Use author profile boxes for blog post
and educational resources.
q Build a expert profile offsite with social
media and industry directories.
q Leverage the audience of others.
q Use structured data to convey who you
are to Google using Google’s own
language.

HowtoCompetein2019
MapKeywordstotheCustomerJourney
__
Awareness
• Lump in breast
• Pain in breast
• Nipple discharge
• Breast rash
• Changes in breasts
• Breast cancer symptoms
• Early signs of breast cancer
• Breast cancer risk factors
• Breast cancer screening
• How is breast cancer
diagnosed?
• Breast exams
Consideration
• Abnormal mammogram
• Breast biopsy
• MRI on breast
• Ultrasound for breast cancer
• Breast cancer stages
• What does dense breasts
mean?
• Does a breast biopsy hurt?
• How much does a breast MRI
cost?
• Stage 1 breast cancer
Decision
• Breast cancer treatment
options
• Does insurance cover breast
cancer treatment?
• Clinical trials for breast cancer
• Breast cancer surgeon
• Mastectomy
• Breast reconstruction
• Breast cancer operation
• Breast cancer specialists
• Best breast cancer doctors
• Top breast cancer oncologists

HowtoCompetein2019
WatchSearchIntent
__
q Google plays close attention to the user’s intent
in search and you should too.
q You need to understand the difference between
navigational, informational, commercial,
transactional.
q Before planning your website’s site map, you
need to think through the users’ search intent
and consider how it relates to your planned
content.
q Don’t stretch for a keyword phrase that doesn’t match closely to your content and/or the nature
of your website.
q Use keywords that relate closely to who you are, what you do, and what you offer.
q If they fail to align, the keyword phrase will fail to deliver ranking, traffic, and conversions.

HowtoCompetein2019
RethinkOn-PageOptimizationEfforts
__
qKeyword Density - No longer something to focus on.
qSemantic Search – Important to understand, consider in keyword selection,
and optimize for within content.
qSemantic HTML5 Headers – Important to understand and put in place within
content. This helps Google better understand content and assist with
accessibility.
qFeatured Snippet Optimization – Learn what these are and how to write and
style content to capture this position in the SERPs.
qContent Length – While not a specific ranking factor, longer content dominates
page one of search. Review what ranks for a given phrase, so you better
understand what is required to rank well in search.

HowtoCompetein2019
Renew,Refresh,andRevisit
__
q Google’s Freshness update was a significant ranking algorithm change back in 2011.
q This Google algorithm change impacted about 35% of total searches with about 10% seeing
noticeable degree.
q The entire premise of this change was to provide the user with fresher and more recent search
results.
q This is still impacting search and many marketers have failed to address their outdated and stale
content.
q If your content is dated, consider the following as your priority in 2019:
q Remove old content that is no longer relevant and 301 redirect the URL
q Make slight updates to update old content that is still relevant
q Make major overhauls to outdated content that is still relevant
q If you make large changes to out content, update the publish date to show Google and human
visitors.

HowtoCompetein2019
ConsiderStructuredData
__
q Old school SEO needs to be set aside for
newer, more innovative approaches.
q This is the result of a simple search for
“pumpkin pie”.
q For certain types of searches, structured data
dominates the search engines results page.
q Marketers need to understand what schema
is and how it might apply to their website or
blog.
q Google has very little tolerance for incorrectly
implemented schema, so educate yourself or
select an SEO agency that understands the
importance of schema and the nuances of
usage.

HowtoCompetein2019
SchemaOptionsContinuetoGrow
__
q Did you know an entire set of schema exists
for healthcare and medical websites?
q In fact, it was created back in 2016. Yet very
few actually use this data.
q The health-lifesci schema.org extension is
available for other collaborative schema.org
extensions in topics centered on healthcare,
medicine and the life sciences.
q The “health-lifesci” schema extension
includes 100 types, 177 properties, and 147
enumeration values.
Source: https://health-lifesci.schema.org/
q Examples of usage include:
Medical Condition, Drug, Medical Guideline,
Medical Web Page, and Medical Scholarly
Article.
q The health and medical types model a core
set of medical entities, including:
Conditions, Signs and symptoms, Causes,
Risk factors, Therapies (including drugs and
procedures), Tests, Devices, Studies and
trials, Guidelines, Diets, Supplements,
Exercise plans, and Anatomy.

HowtoCompetein2019
MakeAccessibilityaFocus
__
qColor contrast
qImage alt text
qLink anchor text
qHTML5 header usage
qMovement of images and videos
qKeyboard navigation
qSkip links
qLogical tabbing order
qARIA roles (Accessible Rich
Internet Applications)

HowtoCompetein2019
PerformTechnicalSEOandOngoingAudits
__
q Technical SEO is a critical element of
today’s SEO.
q Every website and blog needs ongoing
crawls to identify issues.
q The website age and the number of
editors play a significant role in the health
of a website.
q If a website isn’t healthy, Google cannot
crawl it and render the content.
q If Google cannot render and digetst
content, it will not rank it in search.
q Obtain professional help from developers
and SEO experts. You need both to help
you identify and fix issues.

In2019rememberthis…
Thedayyoustoplearning
SEOisthedayyou
shouldstoppracticingSEO.

Rebecca GillVicePresidentof
DigitalMarketingServices
atemagine
__
Websites:
RebeccaGill.com
emagine.com
Social Media:
LinkedIn.com/in/rebeccagill/
Twitter.com/rebeccagill
YouTube.com/c/RebeccaGill
Facebook.com/groups/seolaunchpad/

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