May 10, 2020 : SEO and Google News Update - April 2020

📅 May 10, 2020 - 1. You don't need as many visitors as possible



This is a mistake that many beginners make. It's a good idea to to get many website visitors. However, you need the right visitors.

Doubling the number of visitors usually does not double your sales. You need visitors that are interested in your offers. If people come through traffic exchange programs to your website, they won't buy. If you optimize your website for generic keywords that have a very high search volume, people won't buy. Better optimize for targeted keywords with fewer competitors.
How to save time:

Focus on the quality of the visitors. Avoid traffic sources that deliver untargeted traffic. Optimize your web pages for keywords with a high conversion rate. Avoid vanity keywords that just look good. Getting 100 visitors through good keywords is much better than getting 1000 visitors through bad keywords.

2. You don't always need higher rankings than your competitors

For some keywords, it doesn't matter if your website is listed on position 2 or position 7. Searchers will check multiple results on the first results page before they make a decision. If your website is listed in the top 3 results, it is possible that the time and effort that is necessary to move your website to position 1 is better used to get high rankings for new keywords.

The number of targeted visitors that you get through the new keywords might be more than the additional visitors that you get by increasing the position for a single keyword.

How to save time:


It's sometimes better to optimize for new keywords than to optimize for keywords for which you already have good rankings.

3. You don't have to use the keywords with the highest search volume

Keywords with high search numbers aren't necessarily the best keywords for your website. High volume keywords are often generic and they do not convert well.

If a keyword is so competitive that your website won't get on the first result page then this keyword won't work for you. If you cannot make it on page one then it doesn't make sense to use that keyword.

A targeted keyword with a low search volume will deliver more sales to your website. If you want great results, don't waste your time on high volume keywords that will deliver worthless traffic to your site. Focus on long-tail keywords that are much more likely to convert.

How to save time:

Use the keyword tool to find targeted keywords. Use the search numbers as a bonus but do not choose your keywords based on the number of searches. If a keyword is related to your business, you should use it on one of your web pages.

A highly relevant keyword with few searches usually has a much higher conversion rate than a general keyword with many searches.

How COVID-19 may change the SERP forever
The new sticky side menu functionality at the left side of the page could solve some of the biggest problems Google faces going forward.

What started out as a simple alert panel has evolved into the most prolific set of direct information the Google SERP has ever seen. Google’s on-the-SERP coverage of COVID-19 isn’t only an easy-to-access beast of a data source, it’s also a peek at what could be coming to the SERP… permanently.
The uniqueness of the COVID-19 SERP

The SERP Google shows for many queries directly related to COVID-19 (i.e., anything from coronavirus to COVID-19 cure) is unique in two essential ways:

The amount of raw data being presented. There is just an absurd amount of data that Google presents on these SERPs. Google is showing you a breakdown of the COVID-19 cases in your location (as well as the world at large) as an accent to a global map of the pandemic’s spread. Of course, Google gives you the opportunity to click ahead in order to see a full breakdown of the COVID-19 data shown on the SERP. It’s a testimony to how hard Google can push direct content if it really wanted to. It’s both radically awesome and a bit frightening at the same time.
The left-hand menu functionality. While the right side of these ‘COVID-19’ SERP contains “knowledge” the left side contains specialty functionality. Here Google gives us a sticky menu (i.e., it follows you as you scroll down the SERP) that serves as a way to delve deeper into various aspects of the pandemic. Clicking on a given option brings up an entire SERP devoted to exploring that particular aspect of COVID-19.

While I could talk about the implications of Google going so deep into offering direct data on the SERP, it’s the functionality at the left side of the page that really caught my attention because I think it solves some of the biggest problems Google faces going forward.