Lately, there have been several updates to SEO and I want to make sure you stay in the know so today we are going to be looking at several of those updates including the new Google analytics 4 and even a new google home movie first up.

Google Search Console Request Indexing Feature!

Google has temporarily suspended the request indexing feature now if you are not familiar with this. This is a free tool inside your Google Search Console account, it is under the URL inspector tool and what this allows you to do is.

If you have a new page or you have content that you have updated and you want Google to index those changes quickly. You're able to go into your google search console accounts and request indexing of those pages to get indexed even faster.

Now Google has temporarily suspended this for what they are calling infrastructure changes but they do hope to release this in the coming weeks. If you are not using google search console you are really missing out this is free information directly from Google, about what they like and don't like, about your website as well as insights that are going to help you figure out where to start and getting more traffic and higher rankings quickly earlier.

This week I released an in-depth tutorial on the google search console here so make sure to check that out.

Google Analytics 4!

Now Google has also released google analytics for which is the latest and greatest version of their analytics tool now essentially.

What this is? This is really the next step in helping you track the full customer journey across multiple platforms so right now you're able to track what is happening with a visitor on their website but now you're gonna be able to start tracking it across multiple platforms including SAS products, apps, email, social, paid channels, organic and more.

So, this is really something that is going to be very very valuable to businesses and is something that you're going to want to start transitioning to now. You don't need to start doing this absolutely immediately. It is not absolutely urgent but it is something that you do want to start planning on transitioning your business or even clients businesses to just make sure you look into this.

You have a plan in order to do this because you do need a new tracking setup in order to do this. So when you go into your google analytics account under admin, in the properties section where you're going to be able to click the link at the top to upgrade to Google Analytics 4.

How To Create SEO Friendly Offer URL?

Now as we are nearing Black Friday and Cyber Monday many businesses are gearing up for those sales. So Google has highly recommended that you use permanent or recurring URLs for these Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.

This means every year do not create a new URL so don't use a URL on Black Friday - 2020 and Black Friday - 2021 simply use Black Friday Offer and use that year. After a year this is going to help you build up link equity and help rank that page highly over time.

Now when you update those changes you are normally able to go into the request indexing feature and let google know that there has been new content added to that particular page but for now, just make sure that you do have that page added to your sitemap and you have added that sitemap into your google search console account.

Microsoft Analytics Clarity!

Now Microsoft has also released their own new free version of website analytics and it is called clarity. This is very much focused on behavior analytics and some of the main features with clarity are session playbacks heat maps and an insights dashboard.

So, this is really amazing and I am sure in an upcoming article I'll be sharing more about clarity and really looking at the differences between Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity.

Google Home Movie!

Google has also released what they are calling a home movie typically we don't get to see behind the scenes what is happening with google and in this new home movie, they are sharing really more of behind a scenes look at google search engineers.

Actually looking and approving different updates and changes so this gives us an opportunity to see what is going on now.

Last but definitely not any less important google has given us some very interesting stats one of those being that year after year the search term for curbside pickup has increased 3000 percent every single year. So this means if you are a local business or you're working with local businesses that if you are not offering curbside pickup that you are missing out on customers and sales.

So this is absolutely something that you want to consider due to the growth now another interesting step that they have shared is that in this year alone there has been a 20000%. No, I did not mistake that 20 000 percent increase in the searches to support local businesses.

So this is a really amazing opportunity to be able to rank for terms related to that as local customers are looking for local businesses that they can support and keep more of their dollars there locally to help keep those businesses open so as you can see there has been a lot going on in SEO and definitely some things for you to know about.

So that you can improve your SEO and your rankings but I will keep an eye out on what else is coming up in the upcoming weeks and I'll be sure to share that here with you.