March 2022 – SEO and Marketing News

0
Mar 25, 2022 / by
March 2022 – SEO and Marketing News

The times we are currently living through have rarely seemed darker. There’s no way of sugar-coating the atrocities being committed in the name of conquest by Putin’s regime in eastern Europe. 

As a result, we’ll be splitting this month’s news roundup into two halves – one half dealing with how the SEO and marketing sector is coping with the effects of the invasion and one half dealing with more benevolent news. Stay safe everyone!

Help for Ukraine SEO & PPC specialists seeking work

We’ve all been watching the horrific events unfolding over the last few weeks. One thing that you can count on in our industry, however, is how we come together in times of trouble to help one another. That’s exactly what SEO entrepreneur Olesia Korobka is doing. She has created two Google Sheets, which have been shared widely in our community via social media in the last day:

Looking for a job or gig from Ukraine. More than 90 search marketers have added info about their specialisations and skills.

Digital vacancies for Ukrainians. More than 20 companies have added information about roles they are looking to fill, details about their company, and contact information.

Google and Bing halt all ad sales in Russia

Google and Bing have expanded ad sales suspensions imposed on Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine. Google has temporarily halted ads from serving to Russia-based users, the company announced Thursday. Similarly, Microsoft announced that it will suspend all new sales of its products and services in Russia. These ad suspensions serve to protest Russia’s actions in Ukraine, but they also help search engines avoid brand safety debacles like misinformation campaigns making it through their automated systems and showing to users.

Member of the SEO community and her two children killed in Ukraine

Tatiana Perebeinis was the chief accountant for SE Ranking, an SEO platform. Tatiana, 43, her two children (Alise, 9, and Nikita, 18) and another man were trying to evacuate from Irpin, Ukraine, when Russian forces fired on them, according to reports. To go into greater detail would be to do Tatiana a disservice but know that the entire community mourns her sacrifice.

Google doubles down on short-form video

In the wake of TikTok’s success, everyone is jumping on the short-form video bandwagon these days, Google included. It was announced this month that Google is working on ways to show more short-form video in search results, saying it’s a clear and concise format for satisfying certain queries. This was stated in the latest “Search Off The Record” podcast episode by Google Product Manager Danielle Marshak, who oversees videos in search results.

Yoast confirm bug

Yoast has confirmed a bug that causes WordPress to generate duplicate sitemaps and is said to be working on a fix. A sharp-eyed search marketer noticed that Yoast was generating duplicate sitemaps. It’s not known how long this has been happening, but the head of SEO at Yoast acknowledged the bug and noted that Yoast is aware of the problem and says it is working on a fix. Once this duplicate sitemap bug was discovered, however, checking on other SEO plugins revealed that a similar issue was happening to other plugins as well, but that it wasn’t endemic to all SEO plugins.

Google scrap universal analytics 

Google is getting ready to sunset Universal Analytics, which was the standard version of Google Analytics before GA4, in mid-2023. July 1, 2023, is the date Universal Analytics will stop processing new data. Universal Analytics 360 properties will have an extra three months of data processing, ending on October 1, 2023. After those dates, Google Analytics 4 will be the new go-to solution for monitoring website activity.

New LinkedIn tool finds top skills required for any job

A new tool from LinkedIn allows you to find the top skills employers want candidates to have for almost any job position. In addition, if there’s a skill you need and don’t have, the tool will direct you to resources available for building up the skill. The “Future of Skills” data tool from LinkedIn will show you how requirements for jobs have changed from 2015 to 2021. According to a recent LinkedIn analysis, top skills for a given role have changed by roughly 25% from 2015 to today and may increase to a change of 40% by 2025.

Google introduces new vehicle ads format

Google is giving advertisers in the automotive industry a new tool to fuel their marketing efforts in the form of an ad unit customised for vehicle sales. When people search for cars for sale, this new ad format shows vehicles to purchase nearby.