Google Freshness Update – What Should SEOs Be Paying Attention To?
Google’s freshness algorithm update was announced at the beginning of the month. The update rewards fresh content by prioritizing more recent results in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), particularly in areas covering:
- Hot news topics (EG: the debt crisis, political movements, celebrity gossip etc.)
- Recurring events (EG: sporting events, conferences, holidays etc.)
- Frequent updates (EG: product updates, pricing updates, reviews etc.)
According to Google:
“Different searches have different freshness needs. This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers”.
So with “freshness” continuing to be the name of the game for Google, what should SEOs be paying particular attention to?
1. Content Marketing
It’s not enough just to have great content anymore. You need to have great up-to-date content, and a steady flow of it, all the time.
This calls for a solid content strategy, which should include figuring out those important content topics, how you will support these topics over time, and in which channels — be it through blog posts, white papers, videos, press releases… or a combination of all.
2. Press Releases
For certain searches, news results now appear at the very top of the SERP. Make sure you work closely with your PR manager to ensure that press releases are keyword optimized prior to being wired out — particularly for searches that are being impacted by the news results.
Don’t just focus on news relating to product releases and updates, but also look for other opportunities to tie your company and/or products to newsworthy events, as well as regular shows/exhibitions/conferences that you have a presence at.
3. Ratings and Reviews
Ratings and reviews play an important role in helping to capture those long-tail searches and it also helps to keep your page content fresh through new product review information. This plays perfectly into the freshness update, providing even more reason to have ratings and reviews on your site, if you don’t already.
4. Blogs
Blog posts on your website are a great way to share content on a regular and ongoing basis, and can compliment news-related topics well by showing a particular point of view.
It may be helpful to build out a schedule of topics (and writers) to help with a steady stream of content, since anyone can suffer from blogger’s block from time to time! Just like your press releases, make sure your blog posts are optimized for important keywords and encourage readers to comment.
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