SEO News You Can Use: Google Protects Us From Coronavirus and Tackles Amazon for eCommerce Territory

In 2017, Google launched its SOS Alerts feature that’s activated when a crisis occurs that endangers the public. On Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak a global public health emergency. And so, the Google SOS Alert for coronavirus switch was flipped.

Google’s No Doctor But is Trying to Save Lives

While this may seem like a small effort against a potential massive outbreak, we’ve all used Google as a replacement medical professional before. Recent reports confirm a dramatic global increase in Google searches for “corona beer virus,” “beer coronavirus” and “beer virus.” It’s clear many users are in dire need of the correct information. So the search engine giant is doing us a favor by ensuring a search for the coronavirus churns out curated, accurate information. The Google SOS Alert for the coronavirus guarantees that when you run a search you will be shown results that include up-to-the-minute news, suggested safety tips from medical experts and links to information from the most authoritative sources.

Google works with global teams who are actively sourcing content from trusted media outlets, government agencies, NGOs and the like. The teams also look to Google News, Maps and Waze for any additional information they’ve missed. The coronavirus outbreak alert is currently a global alert, but it can become localized when the outbreak is eventually (hopefully) contained.

WHO Released Recommendations for How the Public Should Mitigate the Risk of Exposure

Here’s what they’ve listed on their website:

• Frequently clean hands by using alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water
• When coughing and sneezing, cover mouth and nose with flexed elbow or tissue – throw tissue away immediately and wash hands
• Avoid close contact with anyone who has fever and cough
• If you have fever, cough and difficulty breathing, seek medical care early and share previous travel history with your healthcare provider
• When visiting live markets in areas currently experiencing cases of novel coronavirus, avoid direct, unprotected contact with live animals and surfaces in contact with animals
• The consumption of raw or under-cooked animal products should be avoided

Google seems to have a keen sense of responsibility to its global community of users and steps up to assist when the world at large is under threat. It deserves all the kudos. However, this is also a great example of how comprehensive SEO strategies can get the right information out to the right people when they need it the most. Speaking of … Google has made some waves in the SEO community. Check out the latest SEO news below:

More SEO News You Can Use

It Seems Google is on a Mission to Obtain Prized eCommerce Space: This was a strategic move already noted in 2019, but January has seen Google encroaching on eCommerce territory pretty quickly. Amazon is the fiercest competitor that Google has to cut off at the knees to really triumph in this already overcrowded online space. Listen to this episode of the Voices of Search podcast to hear Collin Colburn from Forrester hash out how he thinks Google plans to attack and what the response might be from the likes of Amazon.

If Video is the Future of Content Marketing You Better Get Your YouTube Videos Ranking: Video SEO means the video content you create is optimized to drive organic traffic to your website. Your goal with your video content is to find out how to get more views from Google and have your YouTube videos ranking higher. You can find guidance on video SEO, YouTube SEO and how to read the data thereof in this piece from Ahrefs’ Joshua Hardwick.

Have Your 2020 SEO Strategy in Place For Your New Financial Year: Jenn Mathews of Search Engine Journal understands how important it is to have an SEO strategy outline in place before you begin the new fiscal year. For many enterprise-level company executives, the time for planning is over and the strategy must be presented. Have a read through her enterprise SEO strategy outline that is comprehensive and helps you differentiate from your competitors.

You’d Be Forgiven For Not Knowing What LSI Keywords Are: Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords used in your content helps you to rank higher as it is a technology used by Google. The technology was created to include keywords that have the same meaning but are different from the keywords used for indexing. Sounds simple? Maybe, but Google’s John Mueller posted this tweet in July 2019: ‘There’s no such thing as LSI keywords — anyone who’s telling you otherwise is mistaken, sorry.’ Ahrefs did some investigating and here’s what it found.

In a World Where Privacy is Paramount, Jumpshot Suffers a Big Fail: Analytics firm Jumpshot is no longer. The company has been shutdown by its parent company, Avast, amidst claims of unethical data-collection practices. Articles doing the rounds are accusing Jumpshot of reselling the data collected from its users’ browsing behavior. Privacy and consent issues around data collection are hot topics since the implementation of regulatory policies such as GDPR and the CCPA. Do you know if the data and analytics tools you’re using are legally and ethically above board?

Editor’s Note: “SEO News You Can Use” is a weekly blog post posted every Monday morning only on SEOblog.com, rounding up all the top SEO news from around the world. Our goal is to make SEOblog.com a one-stop-shop for everyone looking for SEO news, education and for hiring an SEO expert with our comprehensive SEO agency directory.