SEO and Google News Update - December 2020

The answer is, it depends of course. It depends on the specific algorithm, what scores the algorithm can generate at a granular level and what it has to assume or guess for the other pages it does not have enough data to generate at that granular level.

John said "It's-- like, when we try to understand the relevance of a website, on the one hand, we try to look at the bigger picture of the website." He added "But we do also look at smaller parts of a website. So it can certainly happen that some things go up, some things go down. And on average, across a domain, you will see some change, or maybe it'll even out even in kind of weird coincidental cases. So that's certainly possible, the way that you're seeing things there."

"And it's also that there are always a lot of different things that come out with regards to search, and some are a little bit more focused on the domain or on a bigger picture of the website. Some are focused more on smaller parts of a website," John explained.

Which is why he said "so even outside of a core update, you might see these shifts across some parts of your site, and other parts going up, some parts going down."

Glenn Gabe summed it up nicely also in these two tweets:

Here is the video embed to watch it yourself, it is not long, if you click play it will start at 37:02:

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Loading time, your web pages, your search engine rankings, and your bottom line

Google likes fast web pages. According to Google's John Mueller, web pages should load within three seconds or less. Page speed is a factor in Google's ranking algorithm.

Fast web pages are important

Google has a 'mobile first' strategy. Google wants to deliver web pages in the search results that are displayed quickly on mobile devices. Your pages should deliver the fastest user experience you can achieve.

In addition to the influence of fast pages on your Google rankings, fast pages are also important for the user experience:

Mobile Internet users will leave websites that are too slow, frozen, or not available.
Most consumers expect a web page to load in a few seconds.
Many consumers abandon websites that do not load within five seconds.
Each second that your web pages need longer to load can have a negative influence on the conversion rate of your website.

If your web pages do not load quickly enough, you will lose customers. In addition, Google won't rank your web pages as highly as they could be ranked.

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Optimize the pages of your website for your keywords and make sure that your web pages are error-free.

Google December 2020 core update is still rolling out

Google's December 2020 Core Update is still rolling out this week. If your website rankings on Google have changed, it's likely that the core update is the reason for the change.

What you should do now

Google's advice for core updates remains the same. Core updates do not penalize websites. For example, cleaning your links won’t help if your rankings drop after a core update. Instead, it’s likely that other websites do something better than your website.

If you want to get high rankings with Google's new ranking algorithm, just do the usual things that are needed to get high rankings:

1. Create web pages with good content

Your website should contain many pages that are related to the topic of your website. If the content of your website is unique, it will be much easier to get high rankings on Google (and other search engines).

2. Get good links from other websites

If your web pages have good links from related websites, they will rank higher than other pages that do not have these links. Analyze the links that point to your site and improve the links that point to your web pages.

If there are unnatural links to your web pages, you should remove these bad links.

3. Make sure that your website is mobile-ready

Most people visit websites on smartphones. For that reason, it is very important that your website works with mobile phones.

4. Use structured data markup code

Although structured data markup code is not necessary to get high rankings, rich results help to improve the look of your website on Google’s search results pages.

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You may want to watch the video by clicking here

Google: Avoid Blocking Pages That Are Important Enough To Have Links To Them

Google's John Mueller said he would advice that if "that's something where if you see that these pages are important enough that people are linking to them then I would try to avoid blocking them by robots txt."

In short, if you have important or popular pages with a lot of links to them, make sure Google can access the page.

If you robots.txt out that page, Google may drop the links and those links won't help Google understand the true importance of your web site. That means, your rankings can decline in Google Search.

Of course, it all depends on the specific situation of that piece of content. So this is not simple blanket advice across every situation.

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Google says page experience ranking algorithm coming May 2021

Google announced the page experience ranking algorithm that is coming in May 2021 some time ago. Last week, Google published a new FAQ page for the planned update.

What is the page experience update?

The page experience algorithm tries to understand how website visitors perceive a web page: how quickly it loads, how well the page is displayed on mobile phones, how ads are shown on the page, etc.

The new page experience algorithm uses existing Google ranking factors. For example, the page speed update, the mobile-friendly update, the interstitials update and the HTTPS update are part of the new algorithm. Google is going to refine the metrics that deal with usability and speed.

What is new in the FAQ?

The FAQ page shares details on how Google assesses user experience across mobile and desktop. Page experience signals for ranking will apply only to mobile search.

Google prioritizes the observed user experience. The technologies and architectures involved in delivering that experience do not matter.

According to Google, it's very likely that your web pages will meet Google's new criteria if you use AMP pages. It's also possible to meet or exceed the new thresholds without AMP.

Websites can be mobile-friendly while having a low Core Web Vitals score. Google's Page Experience signal measures aspects of how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page. Core Web Vitals is one aspect of this along with Mobile-friendliness. These are not meant to be overlapping but additive in order to provide a holistic picture of page experience.

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Google December 2020 core update is live

Google has announced that the December 2020 Core Update is now rolling out live. It will take 1-2 weeks to fully roll out.

The December 2020 Core Update is now rolling out live. As is typical with these updates, it will typically take about one to two weeks to fully roll out.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 3, 2020

Google confirms that the anchor text of a hyperlink is a ranking signal for Google

Google's John Mueller confirmed in a webmaster hangout on YouTube that the anchor texts of hyperlinks are a ranking signal for Google. Normal anchor texts help Google to rank a page for what the anchor text says about the page. Google is also able to ignore spam links that try to manipulate rankings:

Anchor links are an important ranking signal

John Mueller said that anchor texts are a ranking signal, and he said that Google can detect fake links:

"In general, when it comes to these kind of links, what we try to look at is the specific anchor text there.

So if it's something where, when we look at it, it looks like, oh, it's promoting this website in a way that it uses very keyword-rich anchor text, then that would be more problematic. If it's essentially just linking to the URL or if it's using the business name as something that is linking to the website name, then usually that's less of an issue. [...]

It's very possible that we already ignore these specific links, because these are the kind of links that are very easy for our systems to pick up and say, well, we can just ignore those."

You can view the full video here.

How to analyze the anchor texts of any website for free

Checking the links of competing websites can help you to improve the links of your own website. Unfortunately, Google Search Console shows the links that point to your own website but not the links of your competitors. Fortunately, there is a free tool that enables you to check the links of any website.

Google has confirmed that links from other websites are a strong ranking signal. There is a strong correlation between good links from other websites and high rankings on Google.

Find the websites and links that will give your own website a ranking boost by analyzing the links of your competitors. Analyze the links of your own website, remove bad links and improve the existing links that point to your site.

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