Murali SEO Expert - SEO and Digital Marketing Trends

Business owners will likely soon have the option to write and edit descriptions that show up in Google's local knowledge panel. Google looks to be adding a feature in Google My Business that allows business owners to add descriptions that appear in the local panel in search results. Both @deegs20 and @maulikpanchal posted screen shots of this in action. Google removed this feature back in 2016 when they dropped the Google+ support, but it seems to be added back via the Google My Business console. Users of Google My Business can go into their accounts and click on the “info” section, where they may see this business description section that can be edited. Here is a screen shot from Dave DiGregorio: It then can show up in your local panel, toward the bottom: This information was also recently added to the official Google help documents, which now say: Enter a brief description of your business — what you offer, what sets you apart, your history, or anything

Core search algorithm update Johns noted the core search algorithm update started to roll out on March 7. Most SEOs believed it started to roll out either on March 8 or 9. He reiterated that this core search algorithm update is designed to “reward under-rewarded sites,” and if your site saw a drop, just keep working on making your site better, it does not indicate a penalty. The mobile-first index and speed update With the mobile-first index, there is nothing new to add; it is still “chugging along,” Johns said, and overall, this is a big effort and a big change, so Google is taking its time with it. The speed update is coming in July, and thus, speed and mobile-friendliness are most important. Everyone should be working on that for their websites if they have not done so already. Voice search There were a number of presentations during SMX West addressing voice search and how site owners can prepare their content for surfacing in voice. Johns did not have specific infor

Fake reviews are a growing problem for those of us that own small businesses. In the online world, it's extremely easy to create a new account and leave either a positive or negative review for any business — regardless of whether you’ve ever tried to hire them. Google has tons of policies for users that leave reviews. But in my experience they're terrible at automatically catching violations of these policies. At my agency, my team spends time each month carefully monitoring reviews for our clients and their competitors. The good news is that if you’re diligent at tracking them and can make a good enough case for why the reviews are against the guidelines, you can get them removed by contacting Google on Twitter, Facebook, or reporting via the forum. The challenge with negative reviews on Google The challenge is that Google doesn’t know who your customers are, and they won’t accept “this wasn't a customer” as an acceptable reason to remove a review, s

Should you AMP-lify your site in 2018? This is a question on the mind of many publishers. To help answer it, this post is going to dive into case studies and examples showing results different companies had with AMP. If you’re not familiar with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), it’s an open-source project aimed at allowing mobile website content to render nearly instantly. This initiative that has Google as a sponsor, but it is not a program owned by Google, and it’s also supported by Bing, Baidu, Twitter, Pinterest, and many other parties. Some initial background Since its inception in 2015, AMP has come a long way. When it first hit the scene, AMP was laser-focused on media sites. The reason those types of publishers wanted to participate in AMP was clear: It would make their mobile sites much faster, AND Google was offering a great deal of incremental exposure in Google Search through the “Top Stories news carousel.” Basically, you can only get in the Top Stories carous

If you want Google to send you more visitors, a great keyword research tool is a must. How many times in the past week have you gotten onto Google to look something up? Since Google processes an average of 40,000 searches every single second, the answer to that question for most people will be “a lot.” Here’s another question: how many times in the past month can you remember searching for something on Google and actually continued on to the second page of search results? How many times did you look past the first four? This number is probably significantly smaller, if it even exists at all. That’s why keyword research is so important, and using the right keyword research tool can make the difference for your business. Copywriters almost always do keyword research before they even get started working. It can help you determine which keywords you should be optimizing for, and which will help your content be seen. If you’re unsure where to start, that’s where keyword rese