SEO Small Business Update for March 2022
What Small Business Owners Need to Know about SEO this month
Here is a rundown of the major developments in SEO and digital marketing from March 2022 that small business owners can (and should) take action on.
1. Time to Install GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
In March, Google announced it is sunsetting Universal Analytics in July of 2023, which is when it will stop processing new data. After this date, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will be the new Google solution for monitoring and measuring website data.
Though this change is over a year away, and there’s a strong chance Google will delay the deadline, there’s no indication that it will be possible to pull historical data from Universal Analytics to GA4 so I recommend installing GA4 on your website as soon as possible. That way, you will have a year’s worth of historical data tracked in GA4 when the change occurs.
If you need help installing GA4 (and updating your Universal Analytics goals to be compatible with GA4), please contact us about our Google Analytics services.
2. The Rollout of the Page Experience update for desktop is complete
Google’s Page Experience update began rolling out in February 2022 and completed its rollout for desktop in March. This update measures the holistic page experience users have on a website and uses this information to determine organic ranking.
Page experience is impacted by the following:
- Core Web Vitals
- Mobile Usability
- HTTPS Usage
- Intrusive Interstitials
You can see how your site measures up by looking at data insights gathered in Google Search Console.
If you need help addressing your website’s page experience, please contact Digital Dynamo.
3. Yoast, RankMath, SEOPress and AllInOne SEO WordPress plugins have bugs that create duplicate sitemaps
In late March, it was confirmed that several WordPress plugins for SEO – Yoast, RankMath, SEOPress, AllInOne SEO – have a bug that produces duplicate sitemaps.
The duplicate sitemaps for Yoast look like this:
Original:
/page-sitemap.xml
Duplicates:
/page-sitemap0.xml
/page-sitemap1.xml
The issue manifests a bit differently for RankMath, SEOPress and AllinOneSEO users; you can see the details on each here.
It’s hard to say how big of an impact this will have for a site’s SEO, but as Search Engine Journal put it, “the best practice for SEO is to make things easy for search engines.” Duplicate sitemaps may create errors that confuse search engines, so there’s good reason for this plugin developers to get the bugs addressed.
It appears Yoast and RankMath have acknowledged the bug and are working on a fix. If you use Yoast, RankMath, SEOPress or AllInOne SEO plugins on your website, make sure to keep them updated because patches should be forthcoming soon.
If you are interested in help with your small business’s SEO, see our pages about website SEO for small business, SEO audits, and our keyword research services.
