Below is the official transcript and audio recording of The SEO Drewsletter, an Amazon Alexa Skill for the latest digital marketing trends and SEO news. To listen to The SEO Drewsletter on your Alexa device, simply enable The SEO Drewsletter, and ask Alexa: “What’s my flash briefing?”
Introduction
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of The SEO Drewsletter. I’m your host Drew Marlier (Senior SEO Specialist at L2TMedia), and this week’s SEO Drewsletter features the latest in mobile-first indexing, a change in the way Google is indexing content, and big updates for agencies that use Google My Business.
A lot to cover this week, so let’s dive in and get you caught up with the latest SEO trends and digital marketing news.
From Search Engine Roundtable:
Google Now Sending Mobile-First Indexing Enabled Notifications
Google is now starting to send out notifications about sites switching to the mobile-first indexing process. So make sure you check your inboxes to see if your site has officially moved to mobile-first indexing.
From Search Engine Roundtable:
Second Batch Of Google Mobile-First Indexing Began
Search Engine Roundtable received confirmation that the second wave of sites transferring to mobile-first indexing has begun—this was announced a day after the first wave of mobile-first emails were sent to Webmasters.
From The SEM Post:
Criteria for Google Mobile First Indexing is Matching Content Not Mobile Friendliness
With all the mobile first indexing news out there this week, The SEM Post wanted to offer some clarification of mobile friendliness being a criteria or not for sites changing over.
Some people had speculated that a way to prevent mobile first indexing was to have a site that is not mobile friendly, but that is clearly not the case, according to The SEM Post. The criteria seems to be matching content between the desktop version and the mobile version of the site alone, regardless of whether or not the site is mobile friendly.
I also want to point out that John Mueller of Google “liked” this story on Twitter, which shows that this is very important and useful information for mobile-first indexing.
From Search Engine Journal:
Google Wants to Make Audio Content Searchable
Google wants to change how people discover audio content in search results, which means huge news for those podcasters out there.
In a recent interview, Zach Reneau-Wedeen of Google’s podcast team details the company’s plans to prioritize audio in the same way it does text, images, and video.
The biggest implication here is that there may be a new form of SEO on the horizons: audio SEO. This is something to definitely keep tabs on, especially if you’re already creating audio content.
From Google & Information from Blumenthal:
Making Google My Business work for agency and platform partners
Big update for agencies that manage Google My Business listings.
For the first time, Google announced that agencies will be able to sign up and register for a Google My Business account. Key benefits include:
- Updated API
- Messaging API
- Improved Search APIs across locations
- Department hierarchies
- New Agency Dashboard
- Single organization account for all locations
- Users groups for teams
- Invitation Management
- New Partner Program
- Agencies advanced access to new features
- Dedicated forum and tailored support
- Partner directory
Conclusion
That’s The SEO Drewsletter for the week. If you’ve enjoyed the Drewsletter or found it useful, please feel free leave a review. Thanks for listening, and we’ll Drew it again next week!