The search engine giant Google made many changes in the SEO space in 2021. Google has been implementing such changes to improve the user experience on the search engines. Their activities range from removing link spam to rewarding detailed reviews.
Core web vitals was an initiative to improve the user experience further. Mobile-friendliness became the center after the launch of this update. But with so much information, there are some misconceptions that people have about these aspects.
You can audit your website crawlers or keyword research using the best SEO audit tools available. It will help you understand the effectiveness of activity implementation to improve the quality and quantity of traffic. This article helps you compile a checklist of things you should not miss out on.
Core Web Vitals vs Content Quality
Optimizing core web vitals is essential for your website in 2022. The core web vitals are a link between website development and SEO. They help measure websites’ first input display, contentful paint, and cumulative layout shift.
These are the essential parts that load first and allow the users to interact with your site in a few milliseconds. The higher your website’s load time, the worse the user experience.
It is not new information, and we all know how important it is for core web vitals to perform on mobiles. Around 60% of the searches come from this source. The importance given to core web vitals is clear from the fact that a CWV report is available in the Google search console.
However, it should not be on the top of your SEO checklist, as there is nothing more useful than publishing killer on-page content. Content is the king in SEO. Answering user questions and being useful are the most crucial ranking factors. So, you can not be under the misconception that Google will not rank you unless you have strong core web vitals in place.
In 2022, strong core web vitals can help you perform better in organic search, but content marketing should still be your first priority.
Status of Affiliate Product-Review Sites
Another misconception related to product reviews on affiliate sites came into the limelight after a new product review update by Google. The update by Google prioritized useful and in-depth product reviews over those light on details and the spammy ones. Higher quality content will always rank better, similar to organic search.
Google started killing the low-quality and shady product reviews on affiliate sites after their April 2021 update. If anyone ever made money featuring nonsense product reviews and spamming thousands of people, then chances are these will get removed.
Detailed and long-form reviews that help generate trust from users get prioritized by the search engine. Such reviews stand a chance to benefit from Google’s update, and the sites with spammy reviews will vanish from top results. Therefore, as long as there is relevant and legitimate content for the user, this update will not impact your ranking.
Google Rewriting All Titles
There is a prevailing misconception after the tag rewriting initiative of Google that you do not need to put effort into title tags. In August 2021, Google started rewriting some page titles, which they believed were below user expectations. Google believes these were keyword-stuffed, overtly long, or missed the context.
At times, Google uses semantics to rewrite a title, either to be better or more descriptive. In other cases, the new titles came from body text, H1 text, or backlink anchor text. Google believes these will help improve a user’s experience during the search.
Google rewrites the titles to improve:
- Outdated titles
- Too short titles
- Inaccurate titles
- Boilerplate titles
Google has no intention to rewrite your titles once you write high-quality ones. Such titles should be useful, truthful, and descriptive. If you can give what users need, Google will leave the titles without any change. Title tags matter a big-time in SEO, so do not believe that your efforts are futile due to such a change.
The Way Forward
Therefore, as you can see, these misconceptions can become dangerous in 2022 for your SEO efforts. Are quality affiliate links, core web vitals, and title tags crucial for Google? Yes, they are, but your SEO efforts have to be smart to tackle these. Everything that Google does has the user intent at the center.
So you can optimize your core web vitals but prioritize quality content. Have affiliate sites with reviews, but ensure they are useful. Lastly, put amazing SEO title tags so that Google does not rewrite them.