Our weekly digest of what’s happening/trending in the digital world provided by Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and Search Engine Roundtable.

From Search Engine Land

How to Use Intelligent Site Search to Increase Conversions
Web visitors today don’t have time to browse all over your site. Read more

SEOs on Google e-commerce category recommendation: ‘I’ll stop doing it when it stops working.’
Though Google’s John Mueller suggests webmasters not put content in e-commerce category page footers, SEOs value performance more highly. Read more

Using JavaScript to publish content? Here are 6 ways to view rendered HTML via desktop and mobile
Always test your pages using Google’s own tools and third-party resources to view the rendered HTML to make sure all your content is showing up. Read more

Embracing automation and maximizing SEO performance
Intelligent automation allows SEOs to schedule tasks and immediately activate data to inform smarter optimizations. Read more

SEOs beware: Link builders are back with bogus Domain Authority pitches
Stop optimizing for Domain Authority; it has no impact on Google rankings. Read more

Google Ads API now out of beta, v0 will sunset April 30
Be prepared to start using the new Google Ads API by the end of April. Read more

Google Merchant Center to deliver real-time search results
The information in Shopping Ads is now available to all retailers (free of cost) and can be submitted directly to Google in real-time, not just by adding schema markup to your site. Read more

Google My Business boosts visibility of business offers in Google Posts
A new feature in Google Posts can display up to 10 offers from your business. Read more

Google My Business boosts visibility of business offers in Google Posts
A new feature in Google Posts can display up to 10 offers from your business. Read more

From Marketing Land

Expect more Instagram branded content ad opportunities in 2019
Instagram says it is encouraged by early testing and advertiser feedback. Read more

4 simple ways small businesses can use data to build better customer relationships
An effective CRM strategy needs to include a way to collect, organize and take action with your data. Read more

Google Ad Manager adopting first price auctions for programmatic display, video
The decision comes amid industry calls for greater transparency and simplicity in programmatic. Read more

From Search Engine Roundtable

March 1st Google Search Algorithm Ranking Update – Unconfirmed
On Friday afternoon, March 1st, maybe going through Saturday, March 2nd, there may have been yet another Google search ranking algorithm update. Read more

Google Ignores Keyword Spam In CSS
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that Google ignores keyword spam in CSS files. He said “we ignore that.” Read more

Google: Redirecting Spammy Links From Similar Domain Won’t Trick Us
Google’s John Mueller said you won’t trick Google’s spam algorithms by setting up a similar domain, building spammy links to that domain and then redirecting that domain to your main domain. Read more

Google Snippet With Popular Product Carousel
We covered this before but it probably should be pulled out as its own post here, the popular products carousel snippet for web sites that have products that they deem popular on their web sites. Read more

March 2019 Google Webmaster Report
We had a nice number of unconfirmed Google search ranking updates this past month including one on March 1st, February 27th, February 22nd, February 18th, February 13th and on February 7th Read more

Don’t Rank For Your Own Brand Name In Google?
Do you not rank for your own brand name in the Google search results? Read more

Google: Multilingual Sites Using Same Image URLs Should Localize Alt Attributes
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that it is fine for multilingual sites to use the same image and image source URLs for translated pages but the alt attributes for those images should be localized and translated into the local language. Read more

Google My Business Guidelines Prohibits Irrelevant Content In Business Description
Google has added a line to the business description guidelines within the Google My Business guidelines basically making it clear that they do not allow the description to contain irrelevant content. Read more

March 5th Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update?
I sound like a broken record but I am once again seeing chatter and signals of yet another Google search ranking algorithm update. Read more

Google: No SEO Benefit To Having Images On Your Own Domain Name
Google’s John Mueller said again that there is no specific SEO benefit for hosting your images on your own domain name. Read more

BingBot Both Crawls Your Site & Is Used For Webmaster Tools Verification
Did you know that Bing has tasked BingBot, their crawler, to not just crawl the web but also to be used to verify your web site in Bing Webmaster Tools? Read more

Google Shoppable Ads In Image Search
Google has launched a new ad format on image search named shoppable ads. Read more