Welcome to the final digital marketing round up of 2020. We’ve made it! The toughest of tough years is now over, and we can now look to 2021 for a more positive outlook. While you’re putting the Christmas tree back in the attic, there’s still time to look back at the latest developments in SEO, PPC and Social Media during December. Sit back and grab a cuppa to find out what happened in digital marketing in December 2020.
1. Google Releases December 2020 Algorithm Update
We’d got through the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping period with no huge updates from Google. However, when December came around, the month started with a massive Core Algorithm Update. This upset many marketers because Google usually avoids releasing vast changes during big holiday periods.
Once the dust had settled, we explored the impact that Google’s December Core Algorithm Update had on search with huge volatility found with websites in the music, lyrics, financial, legal and shopping sites seeing huge wins and losses.
2. Google Reveals What We Searched For In 2020
At the end of every year, many of us look back on what happened . While 2020 was not a year to remember for most of us, we’re still intrigued by what defined the year. Google knows this as they released the Year in Search 2020. This is a report Google releases every year on Google Trends, giving us a list of the most popular searches from around the world.
You won’t be surprised to learn that Coronavirus was the most searched for topic around the world. Other common search topics included US Election, Zoom, Tiger King and Among Us. The report can also be segmented to reveal top searches in individual countries. In the UK, some of the most popular searches were about notable figures such as Caroline Flack, Philip Schofield and Joe Wicks. While Afternoon Tea Delivery and Wine Delivery were hugely popular searches as many wanted to bring going out experiences into their own home.
You can explore all UK searches here.
3. We Shared The Complete Guide to Core Web Vitals
2021 sees the biggest change to Google’s Algorithm since the introduction of Mobile First Indexing. Core Web Vitals will be a ranking factor from May 2021, which will measure how user friendly a website is. If you don’t meet the standards set by the Core Web Vitals, your website will lose some rankings. To ensure you’re ready for the changes we created the Complete Guide to Core Web Vitals, giving you everything you need to know in one place.
4. Request Indexing is Back!
SEOs and digital marketers can rejoice as everyone’s favourite Search Console feature returned during December: Request Indexing! While Google is always crawling websites and indexing pages, you could boost a page you’ve added or updated up the queue to get it into SERPs faster. The feature was disabled back in October as Google wanted to make infrastructure changes behind the scenes which have now been completed.
Google has reminded site owners that if you have a lot of new pages, they should be added to the sitemap and that using the feature doesn’t guarantee that your new pages will be indexed. However, those looking for quick wins to existing pages will be glad to see the feature has returned, as quick wins can have a big impact on results.
5. Google Ads Includes Enhancements to Lead Form Extensions
Google took the time during December to add some improvements to Lead Form Extensions on its Ads platform. The new updates aim to streamline and add better controls for advertisers while creating a lot more efficiency for creation and management leads.
Lead Form Extensions are designed to help leads become customers much faster. Now Ads users can share lead form extensions across every campaign at the touch of a button. There are now more question options for advertisers to use, making it easier to direct users to the right sales rep or email campaign. The update has also added lead gathering automation capabilities to allow businesses to interact with their leads much faster.
6. You Can Now Share Tweets On Snapchat
Do you manage social media profiles for your company? Does your target audience use Snapchat? Do you have really engaging Twitter posts that would be of interest to your Snapchat audience? Now, you can share your Tweets directly on Snapchat. Twitter has never made it easy for you to share your tweets on other platforms, with many users resorting to screenshotting tweets to share.
Now if you have iOS, Twitter allows you to share your tweets directly in a Snapchat story. Snapchat users can then tap on the tweet which will take them through to Twitter where they can view more content by the author.
Twitter is hoping this is the first of many integrations they can make available for its users.
7. Bing Webmaster Tools Adds Features From Clarity
Following on from the successful launch of Microsoft Clarity at the end of 2020, Microsoft are bringing tools from it for use in Bing Webmaster Tools. Clarity gives website owners an overview of how visitors interact with their site without infringing on privacy. You can view clicks, scroll heatmaps and even playback people’s entire sessions. This is great news as it means webmaster tools can be used for SEO & SEM purposes alongside optimising website usability and debugging.
8. We Virtually Attended The BrightonSEO SERP Analysis Summit
2020 has seen a big hit to all the SEO and digital marketing events that we usually attend. However, most of them have moved online, allowing marketers to gain valuable insights from their sofa. BrightonSEO hosted another of their online events in December: the SERP Analysis Summit. Our newest team members were excited to get the latest marketing tips and insights which they shared with you over on the blog.
For more insights and key takeaways on everything to do with SEO, make sure you keep up to date with the Ricemedia blog!
