Google Adds Increased Visual Options for Shoppers and Brands
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-adds-increased-visual-options-for-shoppers-and-brands/374960/

NEWS FILTER ADDED TO GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE PERFORMANCE REPORT

Google has updated the performance report within Google Search Console to let you filter by “News” traffic in the search type filter. Google said on Twitter Tuesday, “Now you can analyze traffic coming from the News tab on Google Search.”

What it looks like. Below is a screenshot of the filter option under the “search type” filter box. You can now filter by News, in addition to Web, Image and Video.

You can also click the “compare” option to see how your news traffic compares to web or image or video traffic.

Search type filter options. Here is a list of the current filter options:

•Web: Results that appear in the All tab. Image and video results shown in the All tab in search results are also counted for type Web.

•Image: Results that appear in the Image search results tab.

•Video: Results that appear in the Videos search results tab.

•News: Results that show in the News search results tab.

Data starts June 30, 2020. The data for the News filter here begins on June 30, 2020. So starting on June 30th, going forward, you will be able to see how your News traffic is in Google Search.

Why we should pay attention? Giving SEOs, webmasters, developers and site owners more ways to slice and dice their Google search exposure and traffic is useful. This is one of the many ways you can look at your data in Google Search Console.

@bloggingdirections

Google Search Site: Command is Broken [Update: Fixed]
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-site-command-is-broken/375149/

GOOGLE DELAYS MOBILE-FIRST INDEXING DEADLINE TO MARCH 2021

Google announced Wednesday that it has decided to give webmasters, SEOs, developers and developers more time to prepare for the mobile-first indexing switchover. The deadline has been moved from September 2020 to March 2021.

Previously: Google in early March, before all the lock-downs began across most of the world, announced the deadline for all sites to switch over to mobile-first indexing would be September 2020. At that time, Google said, “To simplify, we’ll be switching to mobile-first indexing for all websites starting September 2020.”

Now: Now that we are still knee-deep in this pandemic, Google said, “We realize that in these uncertain times, it’s not always easy to focus on work as otherwise, so we’ve decided to extend the timeframe to the end of March 2021.” This does not come as a surprise. Google has been dropping hints that it may push off the mobile-first deadline for months now.

Google started the mobile-first indexing process in 2016. Google has been working up to this point for almost four-years now. We have had plenty of time to get ready for this and it should come as no surprise to anyone here. Google said mobile-first indexing “has been an ongoing effort of Google for several years.”

Prepare. If you have sites that you manage that are still not migrated over, Google documented some of the issues you should look into to that may be holding the site up from being automatically migrated to mobile-first indexing. Here is a summary listing of what Google wrote but check out Google’s post for more details:

•Robots meta tags on mobile version

•Lazy-loading on mobile version

•Be aware of what you block

•Make sure primary content is the same on desktop and mobile

•Check your images and videos including

•Image quality

•Alt attributes for images

•Different image URLs between desktop and mobile version

•Video markup

•Video and image placement

@bloggingdirections

Google Search Console Coverage Report - Experiencing Indexing Issues Notice
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-coverage-report-experiencing-indexing-issues-29822.html

Google’s John Mueller Discusses Recent Changes to Search
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-john-mueller-discusses-changes-to-search/375552/

Now there's a new player in the market and this will give a tough competition to Canva! Freepik has recently released its new feature– Freepik Editor. Some of the key features of Freepik Editor include:

• You can edit and customize freepik's vector collection.

• You can create your own designs, with full control.

• A great font family collection to cover all tastes and a great variety of shapes and iimages to boost your creativity!

• You can upload your own images too!

THE BEST PART IS YOU CAN DO ALL THESE IN REAL TIME, ONLINE, FOR FREE! ( editor.freepik.com )

Google Updates Search Console With More Structured Data Support
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-updates-search-console-with-more-structured-data-support/376139/

BEST PRACTICES TO OPTIMIZE YOUR ANCHOR TEXT

Anchor text is the actual text you click on for a link, whether it is click here, check this out, or a keyword that indicates that you’re navigating to a list of the best code editors available. Best practices regarding anchor text have changed over time, and the search engines of 2020 are much different than they were even a few years ago. We want to give you some ideas of how to optimize your links for today and prevent any penalties from search engines.

Defining and Setting Anchor Text
As we said above, anchor text is the actual hyperlink that you click on a website. It’s really very easy. The HTML code looks like this:

<a href="https://bloggingdirections.com/">This is the anchor text.</a>

Anything that you put between those brackets becomes a label for Google and other search engines to know how to index the content on the other side. You can even insert HTML for an image in there, but you definitely need a defined title and alt text if you do that. For the WordPress editor, you just have to highlight the text you want to be the anchor, and then press CTRL – V, and you get an instant hyperlink.

But just because it is easy doesn’t mean it’s simple. So here are a few things we want to make sure you consider regarding your website’s anchor text and link-building strategy.

1. Do Not Keyword Stuff
Back in the ’00s, search engines were not nearly as sophisticated as they are now. The algorithms hadn’t been polished and refined to read like a human reads. That’s why websites were able to “keyword stuff” their text and anchor links.

Basically, you would go to a website, and every single time the major topic of that page was mentioned, it was hyperlinked to a resource. If it were about swimming pools, every instance of that phrase on the page would be anchor text. And honestly, that’s not very useful. But it would tell search engines that you are providing a lot of resources for your readers.

Unfortunately, that sort of anchor text is overwhelming, and it’s not even really contextual. Readers have no idea where they’re clicking, what the target link provides, or anything other than it relates in some general way to swimming pools. And if readers don’t know what’s on the other end, there’s a very good chance that search engine bots won’t, either.

Regardless, using the same anchor text for any number of links is frowned upon. So make sure to vary it, even if you’re writing on a single topic.

2. Use the Right Kind of Anchor Text
Not all anchor text is created equal. Depending on what you want to do with it and how you want Google (and your readers) to interpret the link, there area few ways to write it out.

First, you might be showing a link to a particular post. Such as Five Cool Things You Can Do in Divi with Anchor Links. That tells your reader and search engines exactly where it’s going. You might also just end up linking to the overall brand or product, like if you’re linking to Divi so your readers can find out about your favorite WP theme, rather than an article about what you can do with it.

As we mentioned above, there are the keyword anchor texts, like swimming pools. Then, for technical sites, you may need to refer to the actual domain with anchor text, like https://bloggingdirections.com or the probably-more-useful BloggingDirections.com

However, you can also keep your anchor text related to your keywords, but not direct repeats. You can link to Divi with anchor text like the world’s best WordPress theme, and your readers and search engines can interpret where it goes based on the context of the article.

Don’t Use the Wrong Kinds of Anchor Text
With all that in mind, each of those kinds of anchors have their uses. But there are also some that we wholly recommend avoiding like wildfire: the omnipresent click here links. Don’t use them whenever it’s possible. Sometimes, it’s just the best way to structure a sentence, and you’re using them as a call to action. Okay. But make that the far exception, rather than the rule.

You see, neither Google nor your readers has any idea where that link goes. It could be to a form, to a file, to an internal page, or to an external app. There’s no way to know contextually. So the go to this page to find out kind of anchor text is one to avoid whenever possible.

Additionally, don’t try to fool Google or your readers. They’re both smarter than you may give them credit for. Under no circumstances should you ever link to something that is entirely unrelated to the current article with misleading anchor text. If you are writing about swimming pools again, but you use the anchor text hot and fun in the sun to link to a site about the top computer games of the year, you’re not helping anyone. And your readers will bail and search engines will actually penalize you for it.

3. Internal Linking Anchor Text
Internal links have kind of their own style for anchor text creation. It’s interesting because while the practice is absolutely imperative for search rankings, overdoing it can result in penalties because it appears as though you’re keyword stuffing — to your own content, using keywords you’re already trying to rank for separately.

Making sure that you link to your own articles while respecting both the target and current SEO can be difficult. But once you’ve done it a few times, you will get the hang of making your anchor text for internal links sing.