Are you curious what had been shared during the first Google Dance in Singapore? Well, Google Dance is a gathering of website owners, SEO enthusiasts, webmasters and web developers, hosted by the Google Search team. In 2018, Google is ditching the tradition of arranging Google Dance at the GooglePlex California this year. Instead of that, they have scheduled it to be organised in Osaka (Japan) and Singapore (Google Asia Pacific).
Attendees can expect to interact with other influential regional online practitioners across Southeast Asia, hear the latest updates on Google Search, and participate in discussions on website optimization best practices with the panelists from the Google Search team.
Guest Speakers from Google Search Team
- Juan Felipe Rincon – Head, Global Search Outreach
- Gary Illyes – Webmaster Trend Analyst
- Stacie Chan – Strategic Partner Development Manager
- Yinnon Haviv – Software Engineer, Search Console
Agenda
13.00: Registration
13.45: Welcome
14.00: What’s Cooking in 2018 – by Juan Felipe Rincon & Gary Illyes
15.00: Tea Break
15.30: Partnership & Third Party Features – by Stacie Chan
16.00: The New Search Console – by Yinnon Haviv
17.00: Panel Discussion
17.50: Closing + Group Photo
18.00: Dinner + Office Tour
Location:
Google Asia Pacific, 70 Pasir Panjang Road, #03-71, Singapore, 117371.
Point #1: The core of what Google is about is bringing information to people – Sundar Pichai, Google CEO.
Juan Felipe kick-started this event by emphasizing the core of Google before going in-depth.
Point #2: The growth potential for internet usage in Southeast Asia is exciting.
The graph indicated the Total Population versus Internet Users (in Millions) in 6 Southeast Asia countries (Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore) and comparison to western countries including Brazil, Germany and France. Indonesia has the highest potential growth as the population is very high while internet usage is relatively low.
Point #3: Google’s Mission.
Juan Felipe also reminded us of the Google’s mission: To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Point #4: Google: We Are Committed to Support Local Language Content Creation and Discovery.
Google encourages all of us not only to produce content in English, but also to create native languages for the local people. Googler Juan Felipe mentioned that as not everyone searching for info in English, hence, it’s very crucial for your website to have local language version content that serves for the local market well. Tips: create the static local language content, avoid using the automated translation plugin.
Point #5: Whatâs Cooking in 2018
Point #6: Five Important Points in this year – Good URLs Are Critical.
1. No # in URLs. (Avoid using Dynamic URL, the apprearance of # might be caused by infinite scroll)
2. Canonicalize & HTTPS.
3. Sitemaps. You can generate sitemap with this free sitemap generator.
4. Use âaâ with âhrefâ.
5. Internal linking
Point #7: Google Re-emphasizes the Metadata Still Very Important
1. Page Titles (Make sure you optimize the title well for every page)
2. Meta Description. Google: No limit, you can write a very long description like a Wikipedia content. Google will still crawl your website content to detect the most relevant description to serve the usersâ queries.
Point #8: Google: Winning with images.
1. Use alt-text, use it wisely.
2. Add captions.
3. Lazyload with noscript.
Google Machine Learning is able to recognize general objects such as apple, building, table. But not to specific context, such as Mr Suzuki sitting on the chair with his Chromebook. Thatâs why Google encourages us to use Alt Text and add captions.
Point #9: Google: Winning with Content
1. Write clearly! Write as if for your friend. Not writing content for bot. Write useful info.
2. Use ads reasonably! Website with heavy ads will not rank high on Google.
3. Do you really need that interstitial? Avoid full screen pop up.
Point #10: Google: Play need for speed!
1. Find a testing tool you like. Ie Lighthouse tool, Google page speed test etc.
2. Donât look for a single metric. Ie. javascript, image etc.
3. Look at how users react to your optimisations. Load each page within 2 â 3 seconds.
Point #11: Google: Structure the data!
1. Check for new types. Ie. Voice Search Structure Markup.
2. Use structured data reasonably. Ie. Recipe, event date.
3. Check structured data validity.
Point #12: Google: Structure the data! Example
Example structured data for a recipe site.
Point #13: Google: Structure the data! Structured data helps increase more traffic and longer session duration.
Point #14: How Search Works
Point #15: How Search Works
1. Crawling â Google render your site. Use Fetch as Google in Search Console to test crawl.
2. Indexing â Google index info in their database.
3. Ranking & Serving â Google finds the most relevant info to answer the queries.
Point #16: Googleâs Rendering
Gary explained how the âFetch and Renderâ in GSC works based on the following criteria:
1. Chrome 41, no ES6.
2. No storage APIs.
3. Fast pages render better. Google prefers static pages.
Point #17: Deferred Rendering.
*Gary messed up this chart.
Should be: crawl -> render -> index
Point #18: Test Rendering.
1. Use Fetch & Render as Google in GSC.
2. Do mobile-friendly test.
3. Rich Result Test. Test your rich snippet markup here.
Point #19: What is Mobile First Indexing (MFI) Ready?
1. Mobile and desktop versions have the same Content, video, Images, URL.
2. Mobile and desktop versions have the same Metadata, structured data, URL.
3. Build internal links.
4. Crawl capacity. Â If Google crawls all the pages of your site and finds that the greater majority of them are duplicate, blank or loading so slowly they cause timeout errors your budget may as well as be zilch. To make the most out of your crawl budget, you need to: remove duplicated pages, resolve broken links, donât write thin pages, remove 301 redirect chain.
Point #20: What is Mobile First Indexing (MFI) Ready?
Mobile First Indexing (MFI) Q&A:
1. Responsive: awesome! Google prefers responsive website than m dot site.
2. Doesnât use desktop site for Mobile First Indexing.
3. Hamburger-menu: fine!
4. Fold-out content: Fine!
Point #21: Google Early Adopter Program (EAP) â AMP.
Google partnership program with other brands to roll out many features on SERP such as Top Stories Carousel, Twitter Carousel, CNN News AMP Carousel. Aka Position #0, optimized with structured data.
Point #22: How can I partner with Google?
1. Have high-quality, relevant content. Avoid thin, useless content.
2. Awareness of what products are launched, so you understand the scope. Ie. Google new products on Google My Business Page, New Structured Data for Voice Search etc.
3. And⊠(see next slide)
Point #23: New! FAQ, Q&A, and How-To Verticals on Google Search
Produce content in the form of:
1. Q n A
2. FAQ
3. How-to
Answering a question (FAQs)
Describe a product (use bullet point)
Provide how-to instruction (provide map/video is a plus)
Point #24: Example of FAQ
Return Policy related questions and anwers.
Point #25: Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) + Progressive Web App (PWA)
1. AMP meant for fast loading speed. We should start adopting AMP in the website.
2. PWA still new. Its look like app in a website form. Can install in homes screen, fast loading.
Point #26: Developers.google.com
1. Developers.google.com = best friend.
2. Follow Googleâs latest events & products.
Point #27: The New Search Console
Google Software Engineering â Search Console, Yinnon Haviv proudly shared the new Search Console features.
Point #28: The New Search Console | Performance â Our Most Popular Report.
1. Focus on effort. See next slides.
2. Insightful data.
3. Accessible on mobile.
4. 16 months historic data Full API with convenient quotas.
Point #29: The New Search Console | New GSC Task-based issue reporting (Focus on efforts)
1. Measurable impact. More useful data.
2. Actionable insights. Group the identified issues by what Google suspect is the common âroot-causeâ to help you find where you should fix your code.
Point #30: The New Search Console | Owning the flow.
1. Share with developers.
2. Detailed information.
3. Fast feedback loop.
Point #31: The New Search Console | Keeping Track on Progress.
You can validate if the errors have been fixed.
Point #32: The New Search Console | More Transparency
1. Zoom into a Sitemap.
2. See all URLs.
Point #33: The New Search Console | Inspect ANY URL
Point #34: Actionable insights â Grouping issues is hard.
Tech giant Google is also having difficulties & challenges in developing more intelligent Google Search Console as well.
1. Undergrouping (split into many tasks) means redundant AIs
2. Overgrouping means progress tracking is harder
3. Holy grail – Group by root cause – might be hard even for human (might require looking into code)
Point #35: Prioritizing Ais is hard.
GSC AI challenges faced by Google.
1. Prioritization by volume (#pages / #impressions)
– susceptible to issues.
2. Prioritization by issue by recency / page age?
– Legacy systems are harder to change
– Different sites have different content turnover
3. Business requirements might be impossible for us to predict
– Eg. launching a new section, focusing on a locale / department
4. Understanding webmaster’s intent is key
– Submitted URLs (via Sitemap) are a good signal.
– Critical errors sometimes hide the intent (eg. missing AMP link)
5. Beginner’s nose might be gold for Savvy users.
Point #34: The New Search Console | To Recap
1. Useful Dashboard
2. Mobile Friendly Performance Report + Full API + 16 months history
3. Tasks based issue handling + end to end flow
4. Transparency – pivoting on a sitemap or one URL
5. Grouping and Prioritizing issues is hard
Point #37: Panel Discussion
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