March 2020 – SEO and Marketing News

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Mar 27, 2020 / by
March 2020 – SEO and Marketing News

With a potential major outbreak on the horizon, mainstream news outlets are heavily focused on the pandemic. So, allow us to offer an island of calm away from the pandemic paranoia and delve into the latest goings-on in the world of SEO and marketing.

That being said, the virus named after a weak Mexican beer is still having an impact on the wider world of online marketing, so let’s get it out of the way.

Google tightens FAQ markup guidelines

Google has updated its content guidelines for the FAQ schema that says you can no longer markup the same question and answer with FAQ schema if that question and answer is in multiple pages on your site.

The updated guidelines added this line: “If you have FAQ content that is repetitive on your site (meaning, the same question and answer appear on multiple pages on your site), mark up only one instance of that FAQ for your entire site.”

Most local SEOs making at least $60,000!

The majority of local SEO professionals appear to be happy in their jobs, according to BrightLocal’s 2020 Local Search Industry Survey. That’s the clear implication of a finding that 78% intend to remain in their current positions. The survey featured responses from 475 “local marketers,” including agencies, in-house marketers, freelancers, and local businesses.

Half of those responding to the survey said they have been working in the industry for more than a decade and 11% have been working in local SEO for 20 years or more.

The survey also found that 65% of local SEOs earned more than $60,000 and 29% were making more than $100,000. Only 4% were looking to move out of local, while others were interested in changing jobs within the industry or staying put in their current jobs.

While it’s not clear whether the survey is representative of the industry as a whole, it does offer some decent benchmarks for local SEO professionals and reveals that the industry is still in fine fettle.

Google officially announces mobile-first indexing 

It’s been a few years now since Google first started working on mobile-first indexing – Google’s crawling of the web using a smartphone Googlebot.

However, this month the tech giant found that most sites shown in search results are good to go for mobile-first indexing, and 70% of those shown in search results have already shifted over. Notably, they will be switching to mobile-first indexing for all websites starting from September 2020. About time too!

Community rebukes Google for advising free site audits

Google recently published a video on how to hire a search marketing consultant. They made two reasonable recommendations. But the third one caused the search community to rebuke Google for its advice. The first two recommendations were to interview the consultant and to check their references. The third, however, was to request a technical and search audit before the business hired the SEO.

To say this was questionable advice would be something of an understatement because a free site audit is little a lead generation trick employed by disreputable email spammers.

One can only speculate that the authors of Google’s video have received spam emails offering a free technical and search audit and they presumed this was a common way of doing business.

The advice in the video demonstrates that lived first-hand experience is superior to second-hand knowledge.