SEO News: Google Reveals SEO Best Practices for Deal pages

SEO specialist Joe Wheeler takes us through this weekly round-up of SEO news, including best practices for deal pages and definitive answers surrounding redirect lengths. Find out more.

SEO News: Google Reveals SEO Best Practices For Deal Pages

This week's SEO round up covers all things Google, with new features, advice and more. We look at best practices for deal pages, a new update that lets users know why they're seeing search results, and how long Google recommend a redirect is left in place for.

The SEO Best Practices for Deal Pages

With an increase in search demand during sale seasons such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Google are making more use of carousels to be able to direct searchers to the best deals. Recently, Google released a set of SEO best practices if you'd like your deal page to feature in one of these carousels.

Following on from best practices released during Black Friday last year, the advice given by Alan Kent from Google is:

• Create a dedicated page for each promotional event
• Use the same URL each year
• Create your pages early so that Google can index them
• Follow standard SEO practices
• Link to the sale page from your homepage
• Include the even description in the page title
• Include an image relevant to the sale
• Put text describing the event in the page contents
• If you reveal sales details on the day of the event, include general information about the event in advance

This can be used for all kinds of sale events, not just Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so it's definitely worth keeping in mind for other times of the year too.

Unfortunately, this feature is currently only available in the US and operational for limited sales event according to Google, however, that's not to say that it won't get rolled out more widely in the future.

Google Introduces New Ranking Information in 'About This Result'

Another feature that Google are rolling out in the US that is likely to be rolled out further in the future is the expanded features they're adding to the 'About This Result' menu on organic search listings.

Next to most listings on Google, you will see three dots. Going forward, searchers in the US will be able to click these dots to get a better understanding of why Google is showing them this particular result. The information will provide context for users and includes things like: which terms you searched for that appear in the result, which terms related to your search appear in the result, the language of the result, and the relevance of the result to your region.

This will be helpful for searchers as it will help them to understand whether a particular result is what they're looking for. And, while this isn't something that Google mention, it's possible it may provide some valuable insight from an SEO perspective in understanding what Google is looking for when ranking pages for a particular term.

Google Provides Definitive Answer On How Long A Redirect Should Be Kept in Place

Gary Illyes from Google has recently confirmed in a tweet that redirects should be kept in place for a minimum of one year.

The reason for this is because by the one year mark, Google will continue to forward ranking signals to the destination page, even if the redirect has been removed. 

With that said, if the page that's being redirected is still receiving traffic, you should keep the redirect in place indefinitely to ensure that users are being directed to the correct page. 

And that brings us to the end of our SEO news round-up! If you'd like to discuss any of the news covered - please do not hesitate to get in touch.