Pigeon Update Taking Effect In The US
The biggest update is the news in July of the Pigeon update which has been rolled out in the US which should give the UK some ideas on how to prepare their websites in time for when it flies into the UK.
SEO
Pigeon update starts to take effect in the US
The Pigeon update looks to be boosting local US directories such as Yelp, other local directories are also benefitting from this when users looking up city queries. Before the update a search query for a restaurant in New York would show get you the restaurants website first, followed by all Yelp listings? Now, the restaurant’s website comes after Yelp listings.
How your website can benefit from the Pigeon update?
The Pigeon update was brought out to provide better search results for people searching using the Google Maps or Google Places platform.
Local businesses should benefit from this because Google has given local directory sites more authority and better search visibility.
With the update, Google has improved its ability to see past spelling errors in searches. So a company’s search results will not face any problems in SERPs by spelling mistakes. Also the ability to recognize synonyms has improved.
Social media
Tweet analytics
Twitter have launched organic tweet analytics which is good news for paid social as we can use the data to see which tweets are performing well and compare impressions.
PPC
Dynamic sitelinks
Google have introduced dynamic sitelinks which automatically sit below your ad text and look like this:
When people are planning a trip or a holiday they will search for several sites and based on this activity Adwords will decide which web pages are relevant to your search and annotate ads with a link to those pages.
Dynamic sitelinks are good for your PPC campaigns because:
- They match website content with what people are looking for
This provides a link directly to popular sections of your website based on your search activity on Google.
- Automatically increase your sitelinks coverage
Complement your ads with an additional, automatically generated sitelink. There’s no need to create a new text ad or set up a new sitelink. The benefit of including sitelinks is an increase in ad rank and quality score which will help to improve your CTR and ad rank.
Link building
Press release requests can help to build links
Building genuinely powerful and authoritative links isn’t easy says Matthew Barnaby in his recent interview with Searchengineland. As Google updates are being rolled out, more sites such as PRWeb with good page ranking are being hit with penalties. There are lots of interesting ways to build links but not many of these techniques actually enable you to gain real editorial mentions from top tier websites.
