Another year has flown by and Google had all of us SEO’s on our toes with all the updates they announced over the course of the year. Below is a list of just some of the major updates they released.
If you have a M.Website.com domain, it’s time to update to a responsive design ASAP!
Google will be penalizing those sites if they are not already.
Do not use the keyword you’re trying to rank for multiple times in the URL.
Example- www.keyword.com/key-word-materials/key-word-reviews
Deleting Pages can reduce rankings. Instead set them to no index or optimize them
Number of domain pages is a ranking factor
When researching keywords to focus on, find keywords your competition isn’t ranking well for
instead of trying to compete for keywords they already do well in
Google knows when content is rewritten or spun.
Not recommended. Certain exclusions do apply for ecommerce sites with many products. It’s best to write unique content over time starting with most popular products and working down from there.
If your site only reaches a certain language, add Hreflang to tell Google your preferred language
May see a rank boost.
Never change your URLs.
It could take months for Google to recover your site Quality Score. Instead use 301 redirects.
Google will start penalizing interstitials and pop-ups on mobile devices.
Most of these changes revolve around user experience. As always, Google announces these updates after collecting data of user behavior in an effort to continually optimize for a better experience for them.