3 Critical Things You Need To Know About The Google Update
The massive Google update we saw last week is still evolving but here’s what you need to know so far. We don’t even have a name for this update yet so I can’t try to rank for it 🙁 About a month ago I said Penguin 2.0 was coming it feels different to Penguin though.
1. Broad category searches are location dependent
Google Places results still seem to be jumping all over the place and of course vary from city to city as they always have. Now we are seeing that with organic results as well. Last week it was possible for you to rank nationally for a broad category even if you only had an address in one city. This no longer seems to be the case. If you want to rank in a city for a broad category you’d better have an address in that city. Also make sure your address page is using structured data.
2. Ecommerce SEO Is Unaffected If Structured Properly
If you have your ecommerce product data structured properly you should be able to rank in any city in a country for a given product. See the structured data link above. Product related SERPs do not change much from city to city. However all the ecommerce sites we have looked at so far that rank for individual products have good structured data. The same would apply to event related sites. We are now checking all our ecommerce clients SEO and tweaking where necessary. Of course make sure your ecommerce site is not making these seo mistakes.
3. Focus on the longtail for searches outside your city
If you are an ecommerce site you should be focussing more on the longtail and not on the broad search phrases for users outside of your city.
What is your experience with this change? What are you seeing that I have missed? Love to hear your experience.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
