SEO News February 2018
A lot happens in the world of SEO. Our new blog series – monthly SEO news will bring you the highlights of the month and keep you up to date on what is happening in SEO.
Mobile First Index to start Expanding
Gary Illyes from Google announced at PubCon that Google will be moving more sites to the mobile first index over the next few weeks. The initial move last October was a very limited number of websites.
Google has said that the next lot of websites to be moved will be sites that are already mobile ready. If your site is not mobile ready yet it won’t be moved yet BUT it will get moved eventually whether it is ready not.
To see if your site has moved to the mobile first index check your log files and keep an eye out for the Google mobile crawler.
Possible Google algorithm update around February 20th
There was a bit of talk on WebmasterWorld about a potential algorithm update on or around the 20th of February 2018. There was some talk of more traffic to some websites but conversions stayed stable so there may also have been some bot issues.
SEMRush and Mozcast both showed jumps in the terms that they track around the same date. Keep in mind that they each track their own separate terms.
We didn’t notice any major changes on any of the sites we look after.
Chrome browser to show ‘Not Secure’ on HTTP pages
Google have been telling us for a while that they were going to do it and now they have finally set a date.
From July 2018 Google’s Chrome browser (which will be version 68), will show ‘Not Secure’ on all websites that are still serving pages over http. Chrome is currently the most popular internet browser with nearly 58% of online users using the browser.
RankRanger have reported that 70% of all page 1 results are now https and MozCast are reporting 78%. They track different search terms, but you can see where the trend is heading.
Google will clarify how to make lazy loading SEO friendly
John Mueller has said on twitter that Google are looking at providing more clear recommendations on how to implement lazy loading on websites.
In the past Google has admitted that they can’t see lazy loaded images on mobiles. Lazy loading on websites is very important as it helps with your load speeds.
Hopefully the recommendations give some clear advice on the best way to implement lazy loading on your website.
There are various ways to lazy-load images, it's certainly worth thinking about how the markup could work for image search indexing (some work fine, others don't). We're looking into making some clearer recommendations too.
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) February 28, 2018
Rand Fishkin has left Moz
SEO guru Rand Fishkin has left Moz the company he started with his mum back in 2001. It was not an SEO company when they started.
He has moved on to a new company that he has started called SparkToro. His first blog on the new company website provides more details about him leaving Moz.
SparkToro is a software and data service that helps marketers and public relations professionals to understand the audience that they are targeting.
I have watched many of Rand’s videos and will miss the white board Fridays when they come to an end.
Written by Dave Stansfield - 14 March 2018