Hi there! 👋

Today I'm sharing a note on Google's core update recovery times.

Now, for the last week's news, John Mueller shared some advice on Twitter on how to optimize your images with all the recent concerns over making pages faster for Core Web Vitals. 🏞

Many are changing their images from .png or .jpg formats to .svg for performance reasons. But if your site gets traffic from Google Image Search, that traffic can disappear with those changes.

So to properly optimize your images, start with image lazy loading, use the right size for images, and specify the image size. Most of this can be done with simple plugins also (if you're on WordPress).

Now, let's get to this week's SEO tip... 💥

Google released around seven confirmed Core Algorithm updates and hundreds of minor updates in 2020.

While all the algorithm updates are designed to make Google Search better, they also impose an algorithmic penalty on websites which can significantly hurt a websites' rankings.

The issue here is that when a site rankings drop, it leaves site owners confused as there's no clear indication as to why a site is penalized.

Now the frequently asked question is, how much time can it take to get back your rankings to the previous level?

According to Google's John Mueller, you do not have to wait for the next Google core update to see a full recovery.

Google's recommendation to site owners is to continue working to improve the site, which will lead to at least some incremental improvements over time.

While it's possible that the next core update can make a bigger change in your site’s performance, in general, sites don’t have to wait for the next bigger update in order to start seeing changes.

Finally, you can refer to the Search quality rater guidelines and the list of questions shared by Google for site owners to self-assess the site content in case there's traffic loss after any algorithm update.

• Bing announced the Content Submission API is in more of a public beta phase after being in private beta for over two years now.
• This helps expedite indexing and bypassing crawling, reducing server resources necessary for being indexed by Microsoft Bing.
• To set up, you will need to add & verify the site that you want to submit and request an API key within Bing Webmaster Tools.

• Let's say you have multiple international sites, ccTLDs, with your business registered with a .com for the US, .fr for France, .de for Germany, and so on.
• But you have not translated all of those sites into their local language, and some or many of those pages have the same English language you find on the .com version.
• So for that, Google says that is not considered as duplicate content, and there's no duplicate content penalty for something like that.

• This post by Dr. Pete Meyers covers Google’s advanced search operators that you can use to perform competitive content research.
• Some of the super useful search operators are site: (to find your best content), inurl: (to target a specific folder of a site), -site: (to find all competing pages), and site: OR site: (to target specific competitors).
• These operators can be used to create a list of relevant topics you might have missed, a list of your currently top-performing pages, a list of your relevant competitors, and a list of your competitors’ top-performing pages.

• Google is adding more and more SERP features of different shapes and sizes to provide the user with the required info as fast as possible and in the fewest number of clicks.
• In this post, all the SERP features are explained with the examples of keywords for which the feature is displayed and how you can optimize for the same.

• Mobile-first design involves looking at what your mobile user needs first and then designing from that standpoint.
• It is important because, in the last three quarters of 2020, over 60 percent of all organic searches made in the US were on mobile.
• So to make your site with a mobile-first design, start with creating a visual hierarchy, display the most critical elements prominently, avoid large graphics, use easily readable fonts, and place your most important CTA button above the fold.

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Until next week! :)

Saksham

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