Hello folks, welcome to a new post of our Weekly SEO News Update!

As you can probably tell, we made some big changes to how the update would be presented moving forward.

It’s got its own dedicated SEO News tab (amazing I know!), and instead of weekly updates on the monthly SEO Update post,  we will be keeping things short and sweet instead, by publishing a new post every week.

Have a good weekend folks, and we’ll keep you updated next week.

Is COVID-19 shaking up the SEO industry? Probably, likely, yes.

An insightful post by Italian SEO Gianluca Fiorelli on how the Coronavirus that’s been shaking up countries over the globe has been affecting SEO as well. Gianluca offered some sage advice for those in the travel industry in this period of turmoil, so check it out!

RSS Feed + XML sitemap

John Mueller chimed in this Twitter post of @MissSennSEO confirming that as according to the GoogleWebmaster’s blog post that yes, it is recommended to provide RSS feed along side your XML sitemap to keep Google updated on any changes, especially if you run a large website.

Read the full exchange below.

Yes, that's still recommended, if you have a really large & regularly changing site. RSS feeds are like small sitemap files (like news sitemaps too), if you can list your changes in one place, then that makes it easier for us to check that place for updates.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) March 10, 2020
  

Chrome provides more options on vision deficiencies simulations

An update from the Chrome team, providing more options on vision deficiencies simulations to help build better and more accessible websites.

New accessibility feature in @ChromeDevTools: simulate vision deficiencies, including blurred vision & various types of color blindness. 🔥

Find out how people with vision deficiencies experience your web app, and resolve contrast issues you didn’t even know you had! pic.twitter.com/QKLQmEhhMM

— Mathias Bynens (@mathias) March 10, 2020

Key Moments for video results

@brodieseo on Twitter shared a few screenshots of Key Moments (a timeline highlighting key moments in videos ranked in the result page) running wild.

Is this feature now available on all mobile video results? Let’s wait to find out.

Wowsers, Key Moments (AKA “in this video”) on steroids in this test.

Previously, this feature would only show in position #1 in a video carousel on mobile.

Now being triggered in all sorts of areas, but now with the ability to hide/expand results.

cc YT SEO guru @aleyda pic.twitter.com/LVOsAEafSW

— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) March 10, 2020

Help Google to understand pagination through links

Since Google stops supporting rel prev and next, there has been much debate on what steps can be taken to replace it. Though Google seems confident in recognizing pagination correctly even without it.

In the recent Google hangout, John Mueller says that having headers and page titles and page numbers helps, a little bit. But the most important part is linking the pages correctly.

Here’s more information on the subject by Barry Schwartz.

Updated: 24 April 2024

About Lo Jia Thong

A polyglot plummeted into the deep blue world of SEO and inbound marketing armed with a burning passion on letters and a fascination on how thing rolls in the world wide web.

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