SEO for voice, ‘Corona’ evolution and AMP traffic drop : What we read this week (3/27)

27. March 2020

By William Flannigan service@newsdashboard.com

Well, the News Dashboard team has survived another week in quarantine. We’ve laughed, cried, shared videos of our cats and grumbled about how difficult it’s been buying eggs at the supermarket. Fortunately, we’re still sane (mostly) and on the lookout for SEO tips, tricks and news that newsrooms should see.

Below are five tidbits we read this week, and we think you should, too.

Google’s “Corona” Page Went from Basic to Bespoke

The Corona beer folks are probably fondly remember a time when they didn’t have to compete with a pandemic for SEO traffic. George Nguyen over at Search Engine Land has watched the corona SERP evolve over the past month. What he saw was a fairly standard SERP page transform into one that offers up need-to-know info including symptoms, an outbreak map and info from the CDC.

https://searchengineland.com/corona-to-covid-how-googles-corona-results-page-has-evolved-331245

Time to SEO for Voice

Over the past couple of years many newsrooms have experimented with, or made a habit of, writing conversational news briefs for smart speakers. And with at least 21 percent of Americans owning a smart speaker, according to Edison Research, the strategy seems sound. But now newsrooms may want to do something similar, but this time for search. In 2018, Nieman Lab reported Google was working on a voice-driven version of Google News. Now that program is in beta. Search Engine Watch has the details on the schema your newsroom will need to take full advantage of it.

https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/03/25/speakable-schema-markup-and-its-impact-on-seo/

Say “Goodbye” to the Right Rail Tidbit Column

Goodnight, sweet prince. Have no fear, the info is still on SERPs, it’s simply moved from the right rail to the main results column. For news publishers, this could mean content appears once on the SERP (organic/news results and the right rail) instead of twice for some keywords. Will it greatly affect traffic for your site? Probably not, but every bit counts.

https://searchengineland.com/googles-right-sidebar-featured-snippets-are-no-more-331133

Things Changed in September 2019 For Some Publishers

Did your newsroom notice a drop in AMP and Google Discover traffic last year? In this podcast, Vahe Arabian of State of Digital Publishing explains why, especially if it happened after September 2019 (core algorithm update). The explanation and tips are delivered especially for news publishers.

https://www.stateofdigitalpublishing.com/podcasts/google-discover-and-amp-traffic/

One-pager: Google Search Developer Documentation by Lizzi Harvey

If you’re serious about news SEO, at least half the battle is on the technical side. This one-pager will help you review Google search developer documentation and see where you might need a refresher or to dive deeper.