While the SEO industry is consistently improving and changing the search landscape, there is still a long way to go. There are always things that could use an update or a change, so if we were going to write a Christmas wish list to Google and to the social networks, there are several SEO considerations that would make it to the top. To gear up for the holiday this week, below are a few quick items we hope to see more of in 2016:
Give us data for longer than 90 days.
When looking at data, Google only gives us data from the last 90 days. This means that if you weren’t forward-thinking enough to create a spreadsheet with your data, you’re unable to see numbers that appeared in your insights longer than 90 days ago. Being able to have this data at your fingertips is crucial because you don’t always know when you’re going to need it. Something that happened last year may be suddenly important to you again, but you won’t have your results available.
More Matt Cutts style videos.
Head of Google Webspam Matt Cutts put out over 500 videos on SEO topics over the last 5 years, but since his leave from Google this past year the videos have halted. Google has still created videos, but they no longer have a spokesperson like Cutts to answer questions and be a point of contact for those looking to learn more and keep up with Google news. The Google blog is great, and while they may not want a single person to be the voice of Google anymore, having similar style videos that we can count on would be helpful. They’re quick, easy to understand, and easy to follow. So far we haven’t really seen anything similar from the search engine.
More emphasis on implied “links.”
Implied “links” refers to mentioning your brand but not actually back-linking to your website, yet still getting some sort of SEO link juice for that mention. This would cut down on the number of links drastically while still allowing smaller blogs and businesses to get involved with bigger and more authoritative publications. Implied “links” don’t necessarily have to be as influential in regards to SEO as actual links, but some sort of recognition and announcement from Google would help spearhead this movement and help bring today’s SEO to the next level.
New data in place of (not provided).
The (not provided) data was taken away from us in 2013, and while there are still other solutions that you can learn about here, it would be nice to have it back in at least some capacity. It doesn’t appear that the change made too big of a difference other than making things more difficult for marketers, so any small help from Google would be appreciated. This is probably the longest shot we’ve taken on this wish list, but hey, Google is full of surprises!
Bring back Google authorship.
Again this does not have to be brought back in the exact same way or to the exact same degree, but the idea of authorship would be great to have back. In other words, some way to really track writers and give writers credit for their work could do wonders for SEO. This would help websites find new information and perspectives easier from specific authors, which can help create more of a community for bloggers and publishers. This was also a great motivator for writers and helped keep quality content on the web and a way to drive more clicks and engagement on the SERPs because of the authorship snippets, so bringing this back seems like a no-brainer to us.
Bring Google+ back.
Google+ is still alive and well to be clear, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. A social network from Google that works with their search engine could offer huge potential for businesses and consumers, but the current model isn’t working. This is one wish that actually may come true because Google+ is consistently changing and seems to be somewhat of a priority for the search engine, so here’s to hoping they figure it out in 2016 and finally giving us something new to work with. If there is anything you would add to the list, let us know in the comment section below. And Happy Holidays from the entire SEO Agency team!