Google Updates You Should Be Aware Of in 2021
Google’s at it again unrolling even more updates for 2021 and, once again, businesses are finding themselves re-learning just what they need to do to keep up with the changes so that their business can transform into something even bigger and better than last year or the year before that.
Curious as to what the latest updates are? They are massive in number, some more significant than others, but, as always, they are all based around ways to improve usability and user experience. So far this year these include the suspension of e-commerce sites with less-than-transparent pricing, improvements to Google ad wording and search result possibilities, (potential) algorithm updates that can effect SEO and SERP rankings, and updating Google My Business to better meet the demand for local business searches.
E-Commerce Sites Face Suspension
If your website is an e-commerce site, take extra care when it comes to your pricing, specifically when organising prices listed on landing pages versus those in your Merchant Center and those at checkout. Beginning April 6, 2021, if there are any discrepancies between any three of them as found by Google’s bots, you will given 28 days to resolve the issue before Google potentially suspends your account.
Improving Google Ads Search Word Matching
This update, rolling out this month, is good news for businesses that use paid Google ads as it allows you to better match your ad phrasing to a more specific customer base. It does however, give Google significantly more control over your marketing campaigns, so understanding how this update will affect your digital marketing plan is critical to success.
Unconfirmed Algorithm updates
Google has not (yet) confirmed anything, but it’s of note that there have been enough changes to business’ Google rankings and/or website traffic to warrant the idea that, over the course of January, there have been some small updates taking place in Google’s algorithms. Specifics are not yet known but are being researched and we expect to hear of some new requirements your digital marketing strategy will need to adopt to stay ahead of the curve. Stay tuned!
Confirmed SEO Updates
A number of changes are happening on the SEO-front, including removing teaser stories, enhancing price drop calculations for e-commerce sites, improving multi-lingual indexing capabilities (although no specific information on how this will be accomplished has yet been offered). Our digital marketing team at Mint on the Rock is keeping a particularly close eye on these linguistic updates so we can always offer our local businesses a marketing strategy that is top-knotch with best practice strategies for Gibraltar, Spain, and beyond.
Google My Business Taking On a Bigger Role
Google has taken note of the importance of local businesses in today’s world and is updating, improving, and enhancing Google My Business to better serve the needs of local consumers as well as local businesses. Some of the most significant changes that have already happened this year include new performance metrics and insights so you can better understand your customers (great news when it comes to developing a successful digital marketing campaign!), offering black-owned businesses the opportunity to label themselves as such, and improving review flow to make those all-important business reviews even more targeted and helpful to your potential customers.
Google is constantly updating its algorithms, rules, and structures to better meet the needs of today’s online consumers. That’s not something that business owners are particularly fond of -we know your time is better well spent elsewhere, but here at Mint on the Rock, it’s something we’re well used to and can even find -yes, you are reading this right, exciting. So go ahead and let us put in all the hard work from the marketing research side so you can reap the benefits while focus your energies somewhere else. Give our digital marketing team a call to discuss your goals and what we can do together to get you there.
