Google leak

If you haven’t heard, a week or so ago one of Google’s internal engineering documents got leaked exposing how their algorithm works.

The leak has some juicy details that confirms many of the things we’ve been telling customers for years.

(If you want to dig into the technical specifics in more detail here’s the original post about the leak)

Here’s 3 key takeaways from the leak and some simple action steps you can take this week to improve your SEO:

Google uses clicks and click through rate (CTR) in its algorithm

Google has a system called NavBoost which tracks click data such as clicks from the search results.

For years in our SEO audits we’ve talked about CTR (click through rate) being a part of SEO algorithms and this confirms it

We talked about it a while back in a two part email series, Hidden SEO and Hidden SEO Part 2

Here’s a ~10 minute training video where we share our CTR optimisation tactics – https://www.wpspeedfix.com/wiki/how-to-write-a-meta-description/

Google uses Chrome user data in its algorithm

Google tracks Chrome visits across the web to determine user behaviour – we knew this already because Core Web Vitals Speed data is pulled directly from Chrome based browsers so it makes sense that other data like user engagement on a page would be pulled too.

In a previous email we talked about two techniques we teach customers, Inverted Pyramid Writing and Early Close which both improvement user engagement on a page and goal completion.

Domain name registration and renewal dates are tracked by Google

Google does look at domain registration, renewal and expiry dates. We talked about this in our last email titled “Simple, not obvious” that one recommendation we include in both our SEO Audits and Site Speed Consults is to renew your domain name for as long as your registrar allows (often 10 years)

Regardless of whether Google likes this or not, your entire SEO and online marketing strategy runs on top of your domain name and because domain renewals are so cheap there’s really not reason not to do this.

That’s it for this email, would love to hear what you think about these and if this style of content is useful to you – just hit reply.

If you’re looking for help with your site speed, core web vitals or SEO, click here to request a free site audit and we’ll review your site and tell you how we can help.