February Roundup: SEO Topics You Don’t Want to Miss

Facebook Makes Its Ad Metrics Easier to Understand

Many businesses that use Facebook Ad Manager have voiced their opinion about its obscure measurement tools and metrics. In response, Facebook is introducing “estimated” and/or “in-development” labels to give users more insight into how the metrics are calculated. In addition to the site’s makeover, the company will be removing some other “redundant” metrics and launching an education program giving insight on measurement.

Google to Move Many More Sites to Mobile-First Index Very Soon

In regard to mobile-first indexing, Google had planned to have all sites migrated to the mobile-first index by early 2018. Although it seems like this goal will not be met, Google’s Gary Illyes announced more information about the topic during his keynote presentation at Pubcon. He has confirmed that a significant number of sites will be migrated to the mobile-first index in the next month. Want to know if your site has been added to the mobile-first index? Check the server logs to see if Googlebot Mobile is crawling the site more often. If so, then it is very likely that your site is on the mobile-site index.

Google AMP Team Launches ‘Render on Idle’ to Load Ads Faster When Browsers Sit Idle

A new feature called Render on Idle has been launched by Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages team. This will work to increase impressions per page by speeding up ad load when a user isn’t taking any action in a browser. Publishers that have tested the feature have seen a 13 percent increase in impressions per page and just a .5 percent increase in clicks and viewable queries by being able to render ads when a user’s browser is idle with Render on Idle.

Google Drops Support for Meta News Keywords Tag

For years, Google has told publishers to utilize the news meta keyword tag. But now, they have switched gears and have dropped its support for this feature. A news meta keyword tag was made specifically for news publishers so that Google could understand the content being posted to these sites. Simply put, if you are a news publisher you can stop using the news meta keyword tag without any repercussions.

Stay on Top of 2018 with Help from Market MindShift

Each month brings a wave of new changes to the digital marketing industry. It is important for any business to stay on top of these changes throughout the year. On your own, this may seem like a daunting task, but the Market MindShift team is here to help you. For more information about what we can do for you, contact us today.