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#might have a bit to do with us turning off google search indexing due to [gestures at system] maybe?
betweenlands · 4 years
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also i have no idea if we got shadowbanned somehow or if tumblr is just doing its usual thing where it refuses to show our posts in tags, ever
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theasstour · 5 years
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0108. Le cygne.
Friday, 12 February 2015
FIC PAGE | CHAPTER SYMPHONY | WORD COUNT: 5.7k
NB: explicit language, alcohol, harry being a dream and a half
“Blimey,” Teresa mumbled before biting into her green apple. “I do want to kill Thursdays sometimes.”
They were on their 15-minute break in their three-hour Composing I seminar, neither of them feeling like talking. Once the break started, they could almost sense when the other one did not want to interact or talk, so if that was the case then the girls would keep quiet. Today had kind of been like that, Y/N sitting on her phone while Teresa jut ate her apple and stared off into nothing. When her friend spoke, Y/N almost jumped a little, yawning as she tore her eyes away from her phone to look over at Teresa.
“And why’s that?”
“Because they’re so bloody boring. Could keep myself entertained by sorting my entire life out instead of attending this seminar.”
Y/N scoffed and Teresa raised her eyebrows.
“What? You think I’m joking?”
“No, just think you have one hell of a task ahead of you.”
Teresa laughed, opening her laptop on her desk again and looking up something on Google. Y/N turned back to her phone and stopped immediately. A new mail. Response to her application to a job. With her heart beating wildly in her chest, Y/N opened the mail, sure Teresa could tell the difference in her body language. Shoulders high with tension, breathing heavier, and eyes wide open; it was hard not to notice something was up. But if Teresa noticed a change in Y/N, she didn’t say anything. However, Y/N herself was way too busy opening her mail to notice anything but the lit up phone screen in front of her.
Dear Miss Picot,
We are sorry to inform you…
Y/N didn’t read the rest. It was enough to read the three first words to know what the rest of the mail involved. She excited the mail app and closed her phone, putting it down on the desk and staring at it for a little while. This was one of the countless times she had been declined even a job interview, and she didn’t even want to think about the number if you added the failed job interviews on top of that. She felt like she would never get one, no matter how hard she tried. Every time she got declined it was like yet another blow to the stomach. It never failed to ruin her day. Though she was fully aware that she would probably get a job one day, she needed one now. She needed money because she couldn’t keep asking her parents for it and her loan would never be big enough to cover all her living expenses. So, Y/N resulted to staring at her phone and thinking about how much her life truly sucked. Yet again she had hit the lowest of low. Fantastic. How was she ever supposed to stop doubting herself when something as minor as this made her question her whole existence? How was she supposed to live a normal life when her anxiety treated her like this? Y/N ran two frustrated hands through her hair, sighing lowly to herself.
“What’s up?” Teresa asked, catching onto Y/N’s foul mood.
“Just…” She sighed. “Didn’t get a job interview.”
“It’s just one job interview, there will be plenty more in the future.” Teresa reassured Y/N, biting into her apple.
“I know,” Y/N said. “But I… I have applied to so many and some don’t get back to me, some do but don’t offer me a job interview, some do give me an interview, but never a proper chance.” Y/N groaned, getting her laptop out of her rucksack so she could entertain herself with something online for the remainder of the seminar. “I’m so sick and tired of never being good enough.”
“Okay, shut up.” Teresa frowned, throwing her apple into the bin not too far away from their two desks. “Because you are good enough.”
“But-“
“-It takes time getting a job. In all my life I’ve lived in London, and I’ve only had one job because it’s bloody impossible to get one, Y/N.” Teresa explained. “Everything will come in due time, even though it might not seem that way now.”
“It certainly does not.”
Teresa smiled, shaking her head a little. “Ever thought about performing?”
Y/N looked over at her friend, furrowing her brows a little. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the uni helps music students find places to perform so they can get their music out there.” Teresa explained. “You haven’t heard of this?”
Y/N shook her head.
“Basically, go talk to one of the student representatives for Music, and they’ll tell you everything.”
“Have you talked to them about this?” Y/N asked.
“No, but I paid attention during our first week here.” Teresa explained, shrugging her shoulders. “Unlike someone else.”
Y/N giggled. “What do you know about this performing thing?”
“There are tons of bars and pubs in London, yea? They help talk to some so you can perform and if their customers like you, they’ll end up paying you to come in. So, you need to impress on the first try and all that. Which I think is very hard since you’re in London and there are loads of other performers out there.” Teresa said, twirling a curl around her index finger. “Thought about asking them or help myself, to be honest, I just don’t even know what songs I would choose or how I would perform.”
Y/N nodded, logging onto Canvas. She looked around the website for a bit before she noticed the silence stretching out between them. Looking over at Teresa, she noticed her friend sitting there with wide eyes and an expression on her face that told Y/N she had an idea. Teresa blinked a few times as she came back down to earth, but slowly a smile crept up on her lips.
“Y/N.”
“Resa.”
“We should perform together.”
Y/N stopped for a little bit to let the idea sink in. Teresa’s voice when she sang reminded Y/N of silk; it was soft and elegant and one wouldn’t mind wearing it all day long. So for someone so talented to even be suggesting that the two of them join up and perform around London together was such an honour that Y/N felt a little taken aback. Teresa looked hopeful, eyes wide as she watched Y/N think about the idea she’d just had. Y/N only stared at her friend, so Teresa opened her mouth.
“You play the violin, I sing. We make a duo.”
Y/N turned toward Teresa.
“We could play whatever we wanted to, and wherever we’d go in London we’d be us two.” Teresa smiled. “We’ll have so much fun, Y/N.”
Y/N smiled a little back. “How often would we perform?”
“As often as we got offers and opportunities, I suppose.” Teresa said. “As often as we have time and feel like it. It will be hard, but I have no doubt we’re going to make it work somehow. We just need to push through the hard time of getting semi recognised and places to work regularly.”
Y/N, for some odd reason, had never thought about this. The thought of performing at all had never entered her mind, performing with Teresa – someone she knew had an amazing voice and a passion for music to match her own – had never been up for debate because she didn’t know if she would ever be worthy. As the two friends looked at each other, thinking about what had just been suggested and all the different ways it could all work out, it dawned on them just how good of an idea this was. Teresa’s voice fit all kinds of music, but she was extraordinary when singing country or indie songs, which would most likely be the genre they’d play in. And Y/N could play just about anything on her violin if she just got some time to practice it beforehand. All of this went through both of their heads as they thought about all of this, and Teresa suddenly reached over and took Y/N’s hand, smiling widely.
“Y/N,” she said, voice soft. “This could be so good, don’t you reckon?”
“Yes.”
The reply left her lips before she even registered them, but it was true. It would be good. This was the best idea they had ever had. And it would be good. So good. Y/N turned her hand and entwined her fingers with Teresa’s, squeezing her friend’s hand as she returned a smile.
“Yes. It really could.”
Teresa smiled so big crinkles formed by the sides of her eyes. “Oh, my God.”
“I know.” Y/N tried not to clap her hands together and scream with joy at what they had just agreed on doing. “I know!”
Teresa squealed, making sure that the professor didn’t see her having a freak out at the back of the seminar room. Quickly, Teresa threw both her arms around Y/N, and the two friends hugged each other so tight it was like they melted into one. Y/N had never seen someone be this excited about something as she was before, the only exception being when Annie agreed to move in with her and Tiana, but this was something completely different. This was something Y/N had been struggling with for months now. They pulled apart and Teresa turned to her laptop and started typing away at a Word document.
“I’ll make a list of some pop, country and indie songs that could work with violin.”
And the rest of the seminar went to just that. Teresa would poke Y/N every now and then to ask her opinion on a song or to show her one, and Teresa added them all to the list as Y/N was too afraid to hurt Teresa’s feelings by saying she didn’t like a particular one. They walked out at the end of the seminar together, agreeing on a time to meet up and start planning and searching. They needed a meeting with the head of the Arts department at Battersea so they could ask all the questions they had and to make sure they were doing everything right. Y/N was listening to something Teresa was saying, completely emerging herself in the conversation, when she heard her name being uttered. She stopped, looking over her shoulder exactly as she had done some weeks prior, and found Harry standing by the wall. Arm crossed and his glasses on, he looked absolutely amazing. Y/N refrained from taking his outfit and body in, because every time she did she ended up staring and licking away drool at the edge of her mouth.
“Y/N.” He repeated, walking over to her.
“I’ll see you around, Y/N.” Teresa said, giving Y/N a wink before she turned around and walked off.
Y/N bit her lip, seeing Harry make his way over to her made her heart leap out of her chest and every cell in her body dance with anticipation. It was so exciting being close to him, she never knew what to expect or how to react and act around him. She felt comfortable in his presence, but at the same time, every single time they had been together, he had pushed her out of her comfort zone in some way. She never knew what to expect from him.
“Harry.” She said, as if feeling him in the air around her made her body say his name and not her mouth.
“Haven’t seen you in five days.” He frowned a little, arms at his sides and a frown etched into his forehead. “You avoiding me?”
Now it was Y/N’s turn to frown, as if she didn’t know exactly what he was talking about. There had been a slight tinge of embarrassment in her after the incident in the bathroom stall at The Grand, and she hated that she felt that way. She hated that she had wanted to when the Y/N she knew would never have done anything of the sort. It was as if someone else had taken control of her body in those few minutes it was all going on. Not that she regretted it, because she did not, but she was still well embarrassed. What of Harry had thought it hilarious? What if he gone and told it to his mates right away after? The last thing she wanted was to push Harry away, but she also knew that he could, after all of that and everything before, stomp all over her heart and break it into a million tiny little pieces if he wanted to. Avoiding him hadn’t been because of anyone but herself… Also because she got very paranoid and she didn’t want to ruin anything by being very awkward afterward.
“No.” Y/N replied, running a hand through her hair.
Harry raised his eyebrows. Y/N raised hers back.
“Well, if you are then I want you to know what happened last Friday was not a mistake.” Harry said, cutting straight to the point as he usually did when Y/N wouldn’t. “And you don’t have to tread lightly around me because that’s the last thing I want you to do.”
Y/N drew in a breath. Harry’s stare was intense, not the extreme kind that made her wish to disappear into thin air, but the kind that made her understand he was paying attention to her. With every slight movement, every breath, every blink and utterance, he was giving her all his attention. The glance told her that he truly cared, he truly wanted to know what was bothering her so much that she had gone out of her way to not see him this last week. Even though the paranoid side of her told her there was more to him acting this way, Y/N knew Harry. A decent human being who wouldn’t talk shit about her to his mates.
“I-I just thought…” Y/N trailed off, swallowing a lump in her throat she didn’t know how had appeared there. “Since we didn’t talk since… that you might… might-“
“-Regret it?”
Y/N looked up at him, biting her lower lip before nodding twice.
“Darling,” he smiled a little. “Only thing I’d regret if we had come to that, you getting off on my thigh, and someone walked in looking for you, would be if I didn’t help you finish.”
It was suddenly very hard to breathe, and Y/N hated how her eyes fell to his lips for a split second before they met Harry’s again. Whenever he was close to her, all she wanted to do was take him in; all angles, features, and spoken words. Looking at him both calmed her down and sent her heart racing. He noticed Y/N staring at his lips for a few, giving her a little smile as he did the same. But the smile quickly vanished, and he suddenly grew very serious.
“You left.” He suddenly said. Y/N’s stomach dropped. “You promised not to avoid me once we came down from the loos, and you… just left.”
She nodded, fully aware of what she had done and the fact that Harry most likely didn’t appreciate it.
“Why-Why did you leave? Looked around the whole club for you.”
“Tiana was ready to.” Y/N explained. “I’m sorry. I know I should’ve told you, it was wrong of me to bolt.”
Harry sighed, looking at the ground between them. “No, it wasn’t. Don’t have to tell me nothing if you don’t want to, we’re not-“ Harry stopped himself, looking into her eyes again. It seemed like he was struggling to find the right word, as if none of the ones he had thought about when he started that sentence fit. Studying her eyes, he lost himself in the memories yet to be created and those that already had been. It was easy to get lost in something you found great interest in. So, when Harry finally found his ability to talk again, he opened his mouth. “Something. I don’t have the right to know everything you’re doing.”
Y/N frowned a little. “I promised not to avoid you and I did. You’re not mad?”
Harry smiled a little. “I’d never be mad. Just sad I didn’t get to spend time with you.” He said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Figured you didn’t leave without an actual reason. That isn’t like you.”
Y/N bit her lip, trying not to giggle.
“Sad, though,” Harry nodded. “That I am.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Harry said. “You’re not avoiding me now, are you?”
Y/N smiled a little. “Still. I’m sorry. I just get awkward, and it’s nothing to do with you and all to do with me.”
Harry grew serious again, taking another step closer to her so that she could smell his cologne now. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable around me, Y/N.”
She only looked at him, a little at loss for words.
“Ever.”
Y/N nodded.
“You always do that.”
“What?”
“Nod.” He smiled. “It’s cute. Your hair always moves with it and I like your hair.”
Her cheeks flared and Y/N felt the need to turn her back to Harry so he wouldn’t see just how flustered he got her. By this point it was impossible for him not to know the exact effect he had on her. It was so pathetic, Y/N thought, how little he had to do or say for her to melt into him. There wasn’t a chance in hell of him not knowing the exact way she felt about him. The way she looked at him and acted around him must be enough of an indicator in itself.
“Have to leave.” Harry said suddenly. “Heading to Euston.”
Y/N frowned again as she watched Harry button up his coat, wondering what he was going to be doing at London Euston.
“Going home for a few days.”
Y/N blinked. “To Manchester?”
“Yea.” Harry wrapped a blue scarf around his neck, tucking it into his coat. “Dad needs me.”
Y/N bit her lips together, not wanting to pry.
“But worry not,” he grinned now, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “I’ll be back for you, darling. See you in a week.”
And just like that, Harry walked off, leaving Y/N to look at his back as he disappeared from view. It was then that Y/N realised she knew next to nothing about Harry’s family. The only thing he had told her one time was that he was from Manchester, that he had lived in the city all his life and barely left it because of his father’s business and his mother’s job. But Manchester was a 3-hour and £80 train ride from London Euston, which only made Y/N wonder why Harry had decided to go to a uni so far from home. There could well be absolutely no other reason behind it other than the fact that he simply wanted to move out of Manchester for four years, but she couldn’t help herself from asking that question over and over in her head. Why did he want to go to a uni so far from Manchester and his home? Everyone else Y/N knew at Battersea were from the South, Harry was the only one from the North.
It didn’t take long for Y/N to get back to Westbridge Halls. With the hood of her raincoat over her head and earbuds playing soft Brahms, Y/N felt content on her way home. She changed into dry loungewear and felt herself relax into the safeness of flat 34. Getting her tea mug from her desk, she walked out of her room and to the kitchen to make herself a cuppa and some food. Today had been a roller coaster and she was starving. As she entered the kitchen, Y/N saw Annie standing by the fridge, looking into it. Giving her a smile, Y/N quickly stopped on her way over to the kettle when she saw Annie’s red eyes. Tears stained her cheeks and her chest moved with sobs wanting to escape.
Their eyes met and Annie froze, so did Y/N. Both girls were so shocked to see the other that the whole situation made both stop functioning for a little while. Thought Y/N rarely spoke unless spoken to, she knew not speaking now would be the worst possible option.
“Annie-“
“-I’m fine.” Annie interrupted, giving Y/N an unconvincing smile. “I’m fine, Y/N.”
Then she hurried off, out of the kitchen and up the stairs to her room. Once again Y/N was left staring after someone, wondering what was going on. She held on tightly to her mug, fearing it might break, because seeing Annie that upset without knowing what was plaguing her did not sit right with Y/N. But never would she force anything out of Annie either. As she made her cuppa and dinner, Y/N stood thinking about Annie and how she, as her friend, didn’t know how to help properly.
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Friday, 20 February 2015
Hating every single academic piece you wrote when at uni was a disease most students suffered from. Typing one word into your document every five minutes and then giving up once a full sentence was finally formed was the way most essays were born and formed. Y/N sat in her room doing exactly that one late February Friday, looking at her laptop screen and praying to God this essay would somehow end up writing itself. It was raining outside, soft pattering sounded against Y/N’s window and quiet music from her speaker. She was trying to calm herself down enough so once she got going on her essay, it would flow easily. But it didn’t seem to be working. All she could think about was how little she wanted to be writing her essay, and how much more she’d like to sit in the kitchen with the others.
As of on que, the doorbell rang and Y/N heard Finn run to let someone in. Flat 8 of Cotton Row walked in and Finn was singing along to the song playing from inside the kitchen, clapping his hands and hyping everyone up. Y/N couldn’t hear anyone talking except for those that already were in the kitchen. She wouldn’t even try to hide the fact that she was listening out for Harry’s voice amongst the chaos of the pre-drinks. The door into the kitchen closed and Y/N looked back at her Word document, groaning to herself.
The two flats were going to a house party in Balham, and Becky thought it would be a brilliant idea to have pres together then. Finn obviously loved this idea and texted the groupchat he had with Wade, Harry and Sai right away. Sai had undoubtably arrived with flat 8, and everyone were now hanging out in the kitchen getting drunk together. Though Y/N knew she probably would have stayed in instead of going to the house party anyway, it would have been nice to have the option. Now, with her 2000-word essay, she had to stay back. Before going to university, she had made a promise with herself to prioritise uni over everything, and she had therefore informed her flat she wouldn’t be coming along. They had understood, and Spencer promised he’d try and make everyone keep the volume down for her.
Y/N sat upright in her chair, sighing heavily and running both hands through her hair before putting it in a loose bun at the top of her head. Rolling her shoulders, she reached her hands out toward the laptop and started typing. Once she saw herself done with a paragraph, she sat back and read through it, feeling proud for finally having been able to write something. That feeling of euphoria soon vanished when she read through what she had written and felt everything inside her turn when she cringed. Groaning once again, Y/N deleted the whole paragraph and started over again.
She didn’t know how long she sat there for, writing and deleting and moaning and revaluating every life decision that had led to this moment. Rubbing her hands over her face, running both her hands over her eyelids to wake herself up, Y/N tried to concentrate once again. Her fingers pressed letters into words and words into sentences. Though she was unsure if it made any sense at all, she didn’t much care by this point. To put her mind someplace else, Y/N stopped the music coming from her speaker and got her violin out. Closing her eyes, she played a piece she knew by heart.
Le Cygne, or The Swan, by Camille Saint-Saëns was one of Y/N’s favourite solos to play. Originally a cello solo, Y/N had admired it so much when she had first heard it around the time started playing the violin, so she had figured out a way to play it herself. Ever since then, she had been able to play it without a sheet, and whenever she needed to think about something else for a little while, Y/N would find her violin and play Le Cygne. For three minutes, she lost herself in between musical notes, four strings, and the way the violin felt resting against her skin. Soft music emerged from the connection between her bow and strings, and as Y/N felt her shoulders relax and the tension in her entire body evaporate, the corners of her mouth tipped up.
But a knock at her door made her stop, whipping her head towards it. She hadn’t heard anyone open the kitchen door or the music from the communal area drift into the hallway to indicate anyone walking about. Carefully, Y/N put her violin in its case and walked over to the door. She took a small step back when she opened the door and saw Harry standing there. With drunk and glassy eyes, he looked at her with a look of amusement, like he had just seen something he found highly interesting. Clearing her throat, Y/N gripped the handle tighter and shifted the weight of her feet from one to the other.
“Hi.” She said, voice low.
“Can’t you come out?”
Y/N’s heart stopped. Eyes grew wide. Did he know? “W-What?”
Harry laughed. “Your face,” he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall opposite Y/N’s room. “Jesus, Y/N, I’m only asking you to come into the kitchen.” He cocked his head to the side. “Need you in there.”
She looked over her shoulder and then at Harry. “Need me in there?”
Harry took a step forward. “Uh-huh.”
“Sorry, Harry, I’m doing my essay. Didn’t they tell you?”
He ran a hand through his hair, nodding his head. “They did, but I’m drunk and…” He smiled, blinking slowly as he stared at Y/N. “And you weren’t in the kitchen.”
Y/N didn’t know how it was possible for her to feel all the butterflies in the world all at once at the mere sound of someone’s voice, but Harry somehow managed to make them all appear. Swallowing, Y/N was about to suggest Harry go back to the others when he started talking again.
“Remember in November when I asked if I’d ever hear you play the violin?” Harry asked. “And you said ‘In your dreams’?”
Y/N smiled a little. He remembered that?
“Couldn’t help but to listen to you play while I was having a wee.” Harry pointed towards the loo, grinning. “And you’re bloody brilliant.”
Y/N looked at the floor. “Thank you.”
“Mind playing that piece for me again?”
She looked up at him then, seeing the honesty and need in his eyes when they met. Stepping aside, Y/N let Harry into her room for the second time, watching as he walked over to her bed. He looked around, smiling to himself as he took in the pictures on the board and the fairylights hanging about. Y/N got her throw out and spread it out over her bed so Harry could sit down.
“What piece were you just playing?”
“Le Cygne.”
“Right.”
Y/N looked over at Harry as he sat nodding in her bed. She smiled. “It’s one of my favourite solos. Know it by heart.”
Harry smiled a little at that, watching her take the violin out of its case. “Played it long?”
“Ever since I knew how to play.”
“Can’t wait then.” He placed his hands in his chest and looked up at her eagerly.
Placing the violin to her chin and shoulder, Y/N suddenly felt a little nervous. Harry had never seen her escape into the music. And when it was just the two of them in a room like this, playing him Le Cygne was suddenly very intimate. But she closed her eyes, knowing that if she started overthinking she’d be able to screw up a song she hadn’t done wrong in years. The bow danced over the strings as Y/N started playing. It was easy to forget someone else was in the room with her when she played, but somehow Harry took up more space than she thought he did. Maybe not physically, but she felt the pressure of his presence on her heart, and as she played, it was as if both that pressure and the feeling of floating with the music intensified. She was very aware of Harry as she forgot about the world, because somehow he managed to forget with her.
Y/N felt as if they were both in a boat in the lake by the Picot Farm, that same boat she used to lay in each summer and just read or relax. Harry sat with her in that boat, smiling at her, and the sky behind him and overhead painted a magnificent and radiant colour of pink and orange. The trees were a dark green as they always were, and the world around them quiet, except for Le Cygne playing softly from Y/N’s violin. Harry was glowing slightly, lighting up in the dark afternoon that would soon turn night; like her very own lantern to illuminate against the blackness of the world. Her heart was beating faster now as the solo was coming to an end, and as she lowered her violin from her chin, looking over at Harry on her bed, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he had truly travelled with her through music and space.
He was gaping at her, a softness in his green eyes that it was impossible to conjure up unless it was of the most genuine kind. He just looked at her, unable to properly form words or tell her how he felt. It had been so beautiful, and Y/N had played it flawlessly, and they both knew after this, there was no way they would ever be able to forget about the other ever. Neither knew where they were going, but the whole experience had done something to both of them. Had changed the rhythm of their hearts and coloured their world a little more detailed.
“You…” Harry started, feeling himself incapable to say anything coherent. He swallowed. “You’re so fucking… so…”
Y/N put her violin back in its case, looking over at Harry when he said the next word, “Everything. You’re everything.”
Y/N didn’t know what that meant. She didn’t know if it was meant in a positive way or if she ever would know what he had thought about before uttering it. But Harry’s drunk self had a reason for it, she guessed. She watched him get up from her bed, swallowing as he came to stand right before her. His fingers traced up her bare arm, sending shocks of something resembling electricity throughout her entire body. Squeezing her shoulder, Y/N’s breath hitched, and when Harry’s hand made contact with her neck, she had no idea how much longer she would be able to stand for. Breaths mingling into one and their eyes frantically looking from one to the other to their lips. They hated space, hated the concept of being far apart from one another. That was when Harry’s palm came to rest at Y/N’s cheek, she suddenly felt like fitting the last piece to a puzzle. The whole picture was complete. She saw it clearly now.
She looked down at his forearm at his tattoo, chest swelling with some sort of pride. The bloke she had ended up falling for was a good person. A very good person, and he treated her and everyone with nothing but respect. It was as if she felt like she had done something right for once. She had chosen the right person and felt at peace at the thought of maybe one day loving him, if he let her. Their eyes met again, and Y/N could feel one of Harry’s curls against her forehead.
“Harry!”
Harry closed his eyes, swearing under his breath.
“Mate, are you taking a huge fucking shite?!”
Harry opened his eyes, mouth closed in frustration.
“You better go.” Y/N said, giving him a little smile.
“Harry!” Finn pounded on the bathroom door, opening it to finding no one there. “What the…”
“Wish me luck.” Harry mumbled, clearly annoyed with once again being interrupted. “Feel like I can never get you for myself.” Harry said, nose rubbing against Y/N’s forehead before he sighed into her hair. “Fucking hate it.”
“Boys,” Finn shouted into the kitchen. “Harry’s vanished into thin air!”
“Jesus Christ, what an absolute nutter.” Harry groaned, stepping away from Y/N and over to her door. He laid his hand on the doorknob, looking over his shoulder at her before turning it. “Good luck with your essay, Y/N.”
She smiled at him.
“Best fucking violinist I’ve ever known.”
Once again, Harry left Y/N to herself. She heard him shouting at Finn to stop being an idiot, and Finn shouting back that he thought he had lost his best mate. Y/N locked her door and giggled, leaning against it once the corridor outside was quiet. She bit her lip as the images of what had just happened flashed through her brain. Her life was finally falling into place.
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You possibly can boost web sites search engine optimization by enabling you to keep current with the way in which search engines index websites. Search engines like google usually are refining the algorithms and procedures they use to guage web sites and remove the spam. Obtaining developments in this area of applied research you'll be able to make sure you will invariably be doing all you can to improve the web site's place on serp's pages.
Claim your replacement for maximize seo! That's for websites that are created to protocol locations for enterprise with a neighborhood presence. Search engines watch you to make sure up sites native to any person's IP address acquiring trying to find a physical business. By claiming your internet-site upon the pages you'll be able to control doing this and try to make customers very likely to visit you.
Use essentially the most searched key phrases inside of the HTML title tag. Search engines like google and yahoo weigh the position of keywords and probably the most weight is linked to those in the title. Placing an important phrases correct in your title is going to make you tends of a search question and drive customers to these site.
Embrace various photos on your site or blog so to procur visible searches on the massive search engines. Typically, it is way better to show, promote or market your product with an image, rather than explaining what it will establish text description. This may achieve great results in enhancing your visibility as a company.
Find some SEO forums that take site overview requests. Participate in the forums then ask fellow members to move understand website. When someone you do not know well visits your business site they'll analyze it critically and unemotional, then spotlight errors and suggest ways so that you can enhance web site's google search optimization.
Live by the rule that no web page on your site must be more than two clicks abstain from your private home page. Search engines like google hate deep hyperlinks and often times ignore them. Along with you, by sticking to this rule, you assist confirm your entire pages get eat some residual place value from your home page.
Present high quality photographs of products, not to mention an simple to operate magnification system so customers you can receive a good idea of the details. Be sure that colors are correct and of course when no elements are obscured by reflections. Strive photographing terminology from several angles and both decide upon most engaging end result or enable buyers view every model in turn.
When submitting your web site to one web, it s never good that you block your area ownership information. Serps recognize sites that carry out this observe as spamming web sites, and will choose not to include you of their listings due to this. Be open your info to become a member of faster.
Spelling and grammar really do depend, as soon as your product is information. Have someone proof-read an entire website to get around embarrassing errors. Not limit do mistakes help make your work look much less professional, however they may end up in unintended meanings and confusion over what kind of you're promoting as well as which the vocabulary and guarantees are.
Typically don't your websites URLs look like we are: http://exampledomain.com/?session_id=37. These URLs take off session ID or dynamic addressing. While such techniques that will aid you manage complex web sites, recognise that the URLs they generate do not say anything concerning the pages they reference. Permanent, descriptive URLs are one other place you vary from key phrases for serps to pick up when they index your site.
When trying to fully optimize your msn search placement, it's a wise thought by no means in order to publish the same article or blog post below a little bit of different URLs in your site. Search engines like google and yahoo look specifically associated with strategy and penalize heavily for that, so do more beneficial and go out all URLs, totally original.
Key phrases are necessary to seo, but be careful how many you put. If you put an insane large number of key phrases on your web page, it will notice labeled as spam. Search spiders are programmed to ignore websites which can be vulnerable to placing their key phrases too incessantly onto their site. Use good judgement in the whole keyword use.
When researching keywords, had a 2 to 3 word keyword phrase that you simply have to say is essentially the most important. For sure, embrace this phrase into one's space, file names, title, description, and web page content. Don't overdo letting it to ridiculousness, but do use it as often as possible, especially in backlink anchor textual content!
There's a lot encompassed inside the notion of web site optimization. There is a national kind steps you might take attain increased page ranks. Try making use of these ideas to begin correctly in search optimization--More on make money online.
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caesarsme · 3 years
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Designer Handbags Which Are Definitely Value The Investment
Founded in 1856, Burberry is world renowned for craftsmanship, design, and innovation. With the invention of gabardine by Thomas Burberry in the 1800s, the progressive weatherproof cotton fabric, outwear turned the center of the corporate's business and stays so at present as evidenced by the long-lasting Burberry trench coat. Mytheresa's compilation of Burberry handbags is certainly one that you'll cherish. The assortment comprises catwalk must-haves and timeless classics that look simply as phenomenal at night time as they do in the day. Select a Baby Bridle crossbody bag and dress with an iconic trench, for exemplary British magnificence. Whether you bought the brand’s iconic “end systemic racism” tote last summer time or want to shop for the first time, this versatile Saks-exclusive trunk bag is certain to become a staple accent. 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So, it was offered by a nefarious individual, not a good person. Replica Burberry Handbags Shop If you’re nonetheless in two minds about faux designer handbags and are serious about selecting an identical product, AliExpress is a good place to match prices and sellers. We’ll allow you to to work out whether or not it’s price paying further for a high-end version or whether or not you’re getting simply pretty much as good a deal by getting the cheaper merchandise. Styled by her mommy in head-to-toe Chanel, Kulture Kiari Cephus was all smiles as she showed off her designer blue sweater, plaid skirt, purple Chanel bag, and black lace-up shoes. The Wd2011 is a prime vendor and has been round since 2011. They have ninety seven.4% constructive rating and have greater than 10,000+ happy prospects. They have a great assortment of baggage that includes luggage, wallets, backpacks and more. One of their greatest selling products is the transparent mesh with chain sling bag. Then the color of this Replica Burberry Handbag is tremendous and very nice! I selected this shade as a end result of I didn’t have a really mild bag and this cherry blossom powder was full of ladies. This basic sling bag is lined in brown canvas with a zipper high closure. Goldtoned hardware adds a classy finish to this designer bag. wikipedia Burberry introduces a new form to their bag assortment this season in “The Sling”, a small basic bow-shape simply sufficiently big for all those requirements you simply can't go away the house without. You’ll spot a wide selection of materials together with an updated Burberry check, cable knotted python, and alligator and feather leather-based. The Sling bag is out there in many pastel and fundamental earth shades, making it simple to pair with just about something. Basically, we offer free delivery irrespective of where you buy, and you might also ask us about our guarantee for top value items. 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epackingvietnam · 3 years
Text
The Best-Laid Plans: Can We Predict Anything About 2021?
Posted by Dr-Pete
I've deleted this introduction twice. To say that no one could've predicted how 2020 unfolded seems trite since we're not even a month into 2021, and this new year has already unraveled. Our challenges in the past year, across the globe, have gone far beyond marketing, and I doubt any of us ended the year the way we expected. This graph from Google Trends tells the story better than I can:
The pandemic fundamentally rewrote the global economy in a way none of us has ever experienced, and yet we have to find a path forward. How do we even begin to chart a course in 2021?
What do we know?
Let's start small. Within our search marketing realm, is there anything we can predict with relative certainty in 2021? Below are some of the major announcements Google has made and trends that are likely to continue. While the timelines on some of these are unclear (and all are subject to change), these shifts in our small world are very likely.
Mobile-only indexing (March)
Mobile-first indexing has been in progress for a while, and most sites rolled over in 2020 or earlier. Google had originally announced that the index would fully default to mobile-first by September 2020, but pushed that timeline back in July (ostensibly due to the pandemic) to March 2021.
If you haven't made the switch to a mobile-friendly site at this point, there's not much time left to waste. Keep in mind that "mobile-first" isn't just about speed and user experience, but making sure that your mobile site is as crawlable as your desktop. If Google can't reach critical pages via your mobile design and internal links, then those pages are likely to drop out of the index. A page that isn't indexed is a page that doesn't rank.
Core Web Vitals (May)
While this date may change, Google has announced that Core Web Vitals will become a ranking factor in 2021. Here's a bit more detail from the official announcement ...
Page experience signals in ranking will roll out in May 2021. The new page experience signals combine Core Web Vitals with our existing search signals including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
Many of these page experience signals already impact ranking to some degree, according to Google, so the important part really boils down to Core Web Vitals. You can get more of the details in this Whiteboard Friday from Cyrus, but the short version is that this is currently a set of three metrics (with unfortunately techie names): (1) Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) LCP measures how quickly the largest, visible block of your page loads. It is one view into perceived load-time and tries to filter out background libraries and other off-page objects.
(2) First Input Delay (FID) FID measures how much time it takes before a user can interact with your page. "Interact" here means the most fundamental aspects of interaction, like clicking an on-page link.
(3) Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) CLS measures changes to your page layout, such as ads that appear or move after the initial page-load. I suspect the update will apply mostly to abusive or disruptive layout shifts. While these metrics are a narrow slice of the user experience, the good news is that Google has defined all of them in a fair amount of detail and allows you to track this data with tools like Google Lighthouse. So, we're in a unique position of being be able to prepare for the May algorithm update.
That said, I think you should improve site speed and user experience because it's a net-positive overall, not because of a pending 2021 update. If past history — including the HTTPS update and mobile-friendly update — is any indicator, Google's hope is to use the pre-announcement to push people to make changes now. I strongly suspect that Core Web Vitals will be a very minor ranking factor in the initial update, ramping up over a period of many months.
Passage indexing/ranking (TBD)
In October 2020, Google announced that they were "... now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the pages." They later clarified that this wasn't so much passage indexing as passage ranking, and the timeline wasn't initially clear. Danny Sullivan later clarified that this change did not roll out in 2020, but Google's language suggests that passage ranking is likely to roll out as soon as it's tested and ready.
While there's nothing specific you can do to harness passage ranking, according to Google, I think this change is not only an indicator of ML/AI progress but a recognition that you can have valuable, long-form content that addresses multiple topics. The rise of answers in SERPs (especially Featured Snippets and People Also Ask boxes) had a side-effect of causing people to think in terms of more focused, question-and-answer style content. While that's not entirely bad, I suspect it's generally driven people away from broader content to shorter, narrower content.
Even in 2020, there are many examples of rich, long-form content that ranks for multiple Featured/Snippets, but I expect passage ranking will re-balance this equation even more and give us increased freedom to create content in the best format for the topic at hand, without worrying too much about being laser-targeted on a single topic.
Core algorithm updates (TBD)
It's safe to say we can expect more core algorithm updates in 2021. There were three named "Core" updates in 2020 (January, May, and December), but the frequency and timing has been inconsistent. While there are patterns across the updates, thematically, each update seems to contain both new elements and some adjustments to old elements, and my own analysis suggests that the patterns (the same sites winning and losing, for example) aren't as prominent as we imagine. We can assume that Google's Core Updates will reflect the philosophy of their quality guidelines over time, but I don't think we can predict the timing or substance of any particular core update.
Googlebot crawling HTTP/2 (2022+)
Last fall, Google revealed that Googlebot would begin crawling HTTP/2 sites in November of 2020. It's not clear how much HTTP/2 crawling is currently happening, and Google said they would not penalize sites that don't support HTTP/2 and would even allow opt-out (for now). Unlike making a site secure (HTTPS) or mobile-friendly, HTTP/2 is not widely available to everyone and may depend on your infrastructure or hosting provider.
While I think we should pay attention to this development, don't make the switch to HTTP/2 in 2021 just for Google's sake. If it makes sense for the speed and performance of your site, great, but I suspect Google will be testing HTTP/2 and turning up the volume on it's impact slowly over the next few months. At some point, we might see a HTTPS-style announcement of a coming ranking impact, but if that happens, I wouldn't expect it until 2022 or later.
When will this end?
While COVID-19 may not seem like a marketing topic, the global economic impact is painfully clear at this point Any plans we make for 2021 have to consider the COVID-19 timeline, or they're a fantasy. When can we expect the pandemic to end and businesses to reopen on a national and global scale? Let me start by saying that I'm not a medical doctor — I'm a research psychologist by training. I don't have a crystal ball, but I know how to read primary sources and piece them together. What follows is my best read of the current facts and the 2021 timeline. I will try to avoid my own personal biases, but note that my read on the situation is heavily US-biased. I will generally avoid worst-case scenarios, like a major mutation of the virus, and stick to a median scenario.
Where are we at right now?
As I'm writing this sentence, over 4,000 people died just yesterday of COVID-19 in the US and over 14,000 globally. As a data scientist, I can tell you that every data point requires context, but when we cherry-pick the context, we deceive ourselves. What data science doesn't tell us is that everyone one of these data points is a human life, and that matters.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of viable vaccines, including (here in the US and in the UK) the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. These vaccines have been approved in some countries, have demonstrated promising results, and are in production. Here in the US, we're currently behind the timeline on distribution, with the CDC reporting about 10 million people vaccinated as of mid-January (initial goal was 20 million vaccinated by the end of 2020). In terms of the timeline, it's important to note that, for maximum effectiveness, the major vaccines require two doses, separated by about 3-4 weeks (this may vary with the vaccine and change as research continues).
Is it getting better or worse?
I don't want to get mired in the data, but the winter holidays and travel are already showing a negative impact here in the US, and New Year's Eve may complicate problems. While overall death rates have improved due to better treatment options and knowledge of the disease, many states and countries are at or near peak case rates and peak daily deaths. This situation is very likely to get worse before it gets better.
When might we reopen?
I'm assuming, for better or worse, that reopening does not imply full "herd immunity" or a zero case-rate. We're talking about a critical mass of vaccinations and a significant flattening of the curve. It's hard to find a source outside of political debates here in the US, but a recent symposium sponsored by Harvard and the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that — if we can adequately ramp up vaccine distribution in the second quarter of 2021 — we could see measurable positive impact by the end of our summer (or early-to-mid third quarter) here in the US.
Any prediction right now requires a lot of assumptions and there may be massive regional differences in this timeline, but the key point is that the availability of the vaccine, while certainly cause for optimism, is not a magic wand. Manufacturing, distribution, and the need for a second dose all mean that we're realistically still looking at a few months for medical advances to have widespread impact.
What can we do now?
First, let me say that there is absolutely no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Many local businesses were decimated, while e-commerce grew 32% year-over-year in 2020. If you're a local restaurant that managed to stay afloat, you may see a rapid return of customers in the summer or fall. If you're a major online retailer, you could actually see a reduction in sales as brick-and-mortar stores become viable again (although probably not to 2019 levels).
If your e-commerce business was lucky enough to see gains in 2020, Miracle Inameti-Archibong has some great advice for you. To inadequately summarize — don't take any of this for granted. This is a time to learn from your new customers, re-invest in your marketing, and show goodwill toward the people who are shopping online more because of the difficulties they're facing.
If you're stuck waiting to reopen, consider the lead time SEO campaigns require to have an impact. In a recent Whiteboard Friday, I made the case that SEO isn't an on/off switch. Consider the oversimplified diagram below. Paid search is a bit like the dotted gray line — you flip the switch on, and the leads starting flowing. The trade-off is that when you flip the switch off, the leads dry up almost immediately.
Organic SEO has a ramp-up. It's more like the blue curve above. The benefit of organic is that the leads keep coming when you stop investing, but it also means that the leads will take time to rebuild when you start to reinvest. This timeline depends on a lot of variables, but an organic campaign can often take 2-3 months or more to get off the ground. If you want to hit the ground running as reopening kicks in, you're going to need to start re-investing ahead of that timeline. I acknowledge that that might not be easy, and it doesn't have to be all or none.
In a recent interview, Mary Ellen Coe (head of Google Marketing Solutions) cited a 20,000% increase during the pandemic in searches from consumers looking to support local businesses. There's a tremendous appetite for reopening and a surge of goodwill for local businesses. If you're a local business, even if you're temporarily closed, it's important to let people know that you're still around and to keep them up-to-date on your reopening plans as they evolve.
I don't expect that the new normal will look much like the old normal, and I'm mindful that many businesses didn't survive to see 2021. We can't predict the future, but we can't afford to wait for months and do nothing, either, so I hope this at least gives you some idea of what to expect in the coming year and how we might prepare for it.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
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0 notes
bfxenon · 3 years
Text
The Best-Laid Plans: Can We Predict Anything About 2021?
Posted by Dr-Pete
I've deleted this introduction twice. To say that no one could've predicted how 2020 unfolded seems trite since we're not even a month into 2021, and this new year has already unraveled. Our challenges in the past year, across the globe, have gone far beyond marketing, and I doubt any of us ended the year the way we expected. This graph from Google Trends tells the story better than I can:
The pandemic fundamentally rewrote the global economy in a way none of us has ever experienced, and yet we have to find a path forward. How do we even begin to chart a course in 2021?
What do we know?
Let's start small. Within our search marketing realm, is there anything we can predict with relative certainty in 2021? Below are some of the major announcements Google has made and trends that are likely to continue. While the timelines on some of these are unclear (and all are subject to change), these shifts in our small world are very likely.
Mobile-only indexing (March)
Mobile-first indexing has been in progress for a while, and most sites rolled over in 2020 or earlier. Google had originally announced that the index would fully default to mobile-first by September 2020, but pushed that timeline back in July (ostensibly due to the pandemic) to March 2021.
If you haven't made the switch to a mobile-friendly site at this point, there's not much time left to waste. Keep in mind that "mobile-first" isn't just about speed and user experience, but making sure that your mobile site is as crawlable as your desktop. If Google can't reach critical pages via your mobile design and internal links, then those pages are likely to drop out of the index. A page that isn't indexed is a page that doesn't rank.
Core Web Vitals (May)
While this date may change, Google has announced that Core Web Vitals will become a ranking factor in 2021. Here's a bit more detail from the official announcement ...
Page experience signals in ranking will roll out in May 2021. The new page experience signals combine Core Web Vitals with our existing search signals including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
Many of these page experience signals already impact ranking to some degree, according to Google, so the important part really boils down to Core Web Vitals. You can get more of the details in this Whiteboard Friday from Cyrus, but the short version is that this is currently a set of three metrics (with unfortunately techie names): (1) Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) LCP measures how quickly the largest, visible block of your page loads. It is one view into perceived load-time and tries to filter out background libraries and other off-page objects.
(2) First Input Delay (FID) FID measures how much time it takes before a user can interact with your page. "Interact" here means the most fundamental aspects of interaction, like clicking an on-page link.
(3) Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) CLS measures changes to your page layout, such as ads that appear or move after the initial page-load. I suspect the update will apply mostly to abusive or disruptive layout shifts. While these metrics are a narrow slice of the user experience, the good news is that Google has defined all of them in a fair amount of detail and allows you to track this data with tools like Google Lighthouse. So, we're in a unique position of being be able to prepare for the May algorithm update.
That said, I think you should improve site speed and user experience because it's a net-positive overall, not because of a pending 2021 update. If past history — including the HTTPS update and mobile-friendly update — is any indicator, Google's hope is to use the pre-announcement to push people to make changes now. I strongly suspect that Core Web Vitals will be a very minor ranking factor in the initial update, ramping up over a period of many months.
Passage indexing/ranking (TBD)
In October 2020, Google announced that they were "... now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the pages." They later clarified that this wasn't so much passage indexing as passage ranking, and the timeline wasn't initially clear. Danny Sullivan later clarified that this change did not roll out in 2020, but Google's language suggests that passage ranking is likely to roll out as soon as it's tested and ready.
While there's nothing specific you can do to harness passage ranking, according to Google, I think this change is not only an indicator of ML/AI progress but a recognition that you can have valuable, long-form content that addresses multiple topics. The rise of answers in SERPs (especially Featured Snippets and People Also Ask boxes) had a side-effect of causing people to think in terms of more focused, question-and-answer style content. While that's not entirely bad, I suspect it's generally driven people away from broader content to shorter, narrower content.
Even in 2020, there are many examples of rich, long-form content that ranks for multiple Featured/Snippets, but I expect passage ranking will re-balance this equation even more and give us increased freedom to create content in the best format for the topic at hand, without worrying too much about being laser-targeted on a single topic.
Core algorithm updates (TBD)
It's safe to say we can expect more core algorithm updates in 2021. There were three named "Core" updates in 2020 (January, May, and December), but the frequency and timing has been inconsistent. While there are patterns across the updates, thematically, each update seems to contain both new elements and some adjustments to old elements, and my own analysis suggests that the patterns (the same sites winning and losing, for example) aren't as prominent as we imagine. We can assume that Google's Core Updates will reflect the philosophy of their quality guidelines over time, but I don't think we can predict the timing or substance of any particular core update.
Googlebot crawling HTTP/2 (2022+)
Last fall, Google revealed that Googlebot would begin crawling HTTP/2 sites in November of 2020. It's not clear how much HTTP/2 crawling is currently happening, and Google said they would not penalize sites that don't support HTTP/2 and would even allow opt-out (for now). Unlike making a site secure (HTTPS) or mobile-friendly, HTTP/2 is not widely available to everyone and may depend on your infrastructure or hosting provider.
While I think we should pay attention to this development, don't make the switch to HTTP/2 in 2021 just for Google's sake. If it makes sense for the speed and performance of your site, great, but I suspect Google will be testing HTTP/2 and turning up the volume on it's impact slowly over the next few months. At some point, we might see a HTTPS-style announcement of a coming ranking impact, but if that happens, I wouldn't expect it until 2022 or later.
When will this end?
While COVID-19 may not seem like a marketing topic, the global economic impact is painfully clear at this point Any plans we make for 2021 have to consider the COVID-19 timeline, or they're a fantasy. When can we expect the pandemic to end and businesses to reopen on a national and global scale? Let me start by saying that I'm not a medical doctor — I'm a research psychologist by training. I don't have a crystal ball, but I know how to read primary sources and piece them together. What follows is my best read of the current facts and the 2021 timeline. I will try to avoid my own personal biases, but note that my read on the situation is heavily US-biased. I will generally avoid worst-case scenarios, like a major mutation of the virus, and stick to a median scenario.
Where are we at right now?
As I'm writing this sentence, over 4,000 people died just yesterday of COVID-19 in the US and over 14,000 globally. As a data scientist, I can tell you that every data point requires context, but when we cherry-pick the context, we deceive ourselves. What data science doesn't tell us is that everyone one of these data points is a human life, and that matters.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of viable vaccines, including (here in the US and in the UK) the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. These vaccines have been approved in some countries, have demonstrated promising results, and are in production. Here in the US, we're currently behind the timeline on distribution, with the CDC reporting about 10 million people vaccinated as of mid-January (initial goal was 20 million vaccinated by the end of 2020). In terms of the timeline, it's important to note that, for maximum effectiveness, the major vaccines require two doses, separated by about 3-4 weeks (this may vary with the vaccine and change as research continues).
Is it getting better or worse?
I don't want to get mired in the data, but the winter holidays and travel are already showing a negative impact here in the US, and New Year's Eve may complicate problems. While overall death rates have improved due to better treatment options and knowledge of the disease, many states and countries are at or near peak case rates and peak daily deaths. This situation is very likely to get worse before it gets better.
When might we reopen?
I'm assuming, for better or worse, that reopening does not imply full "herd immunity" or a zero case-rate. We're talking about a critical mass of vaccinations and a significant flattening of the curve. It's hard to find a source outside of political debates here in the US, but a recent symposium sponsored by Harvard and the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that — if we can adequately ramp up vaccine distribution in the second quarter of 2021 — we could see measurable positive impact by the end of our summer (or early-to-mid third quarter) here in the US.
Any prediction right now requires a lot of assumptions and there may be massive regional differences in this timeline, but the key point is that the availability of the vaccine, while certainly cause for optimism, is not a magic wand. Manufacturing, distribution, and the need for a second dose all mean that we're realistically still looking at a few months for medical advances to have widespread impact.
What can we do now?
First, let me say that there is absolutely no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Many local businesses were decimated, while e-commerce grew 32% year-over-year in 2020. If you're a local restaurant that managed to stay afloat, you may see a rapid return of customers in the summer or fall. If you're a major online retailer, you could actually see a reduction in sales as brick-and-mortar stores become viable again (although probably not to 2019 levels).
If your e-commerce business was lucky enough to see gains in 2020, Miracle Inameti-Archibong has some great advice for you. To inadequately summarize — don't take any of this for granted. This is a time to learn from your new customers, re-invest in your marketing, and show goodwill toward the people who are shopping online more because of the difficulties they're facing.
If you're stuck waiting to reopen, consider the lead time SEO campaigns require to have an impact. In a recent Whiteboard Friday, I made the case that SEO isn't an on/off switch. Consider the oversimplified diagram below. Paid search is a bit like the dotted gray line — you flip the switch on, and the leads starting flowing. The trade-off is that when you flip the switch off, the leads dry up almost immediately.
Organic SEO has a ramp-up. It's more like the blue curve above. The benefit of organic is that the leads keep coming when you stop investing, but it also means that the leads will take time to rebuild when you start to reinvest. This timeline depends on a lot of variables, but an organic campaign can often take 2-3 months or more to get off the ground. If you want to hit the ground running as reopening kicks in, you're going to need to start re-investing ahead of that timeline. I acknowledge that that might not be easy, and it doesn't have to be all or none.
In a recent interview, Mary Ellen Coe (head of Google Marketing Solutions) cited a 20,000% increase during the pandemic in searches from consumers looking to support local businesses. There's a tremendous appetite for reopening and a surge of goodwill for local businesses. If you're a local business, even if you're temporarily closed, it's important to let people know that you're still around and to keep them up-to-date on your reopening plans as they evolve.
I don't expect that the new normal will look much like the old normal, and I'm mindful that many businesses didn't survive to see 2021. We can't predict the future, but we can't afford to wait for months and do nothing, either, so I hope this at least gives you some idea of what to expect in the coming year and how we might prepare for it.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
nutrifami · 3 years
Text
The Best-Laid Plans: Can We Predict Anything About 2021?
Posted by Dr-Pete
I've deleted this introduction twice. To say that no one could've predicted how 2020 unfolded seems trite since we're not even a month into 2021, and this new year has already unraveled. Our challenges in the past year, across the globe, have gone far beyond marketing, and I doubt any of us ended the year the way we expected. This graph from Google Trends tells the story better than I can:
The pandemic fundamentally rewrote the global economy in a way none of us has ever experienced, and yet we have to find a path forward. How do we even begin to chart a course in 2021?
What do we know?
Let's start small. Within our search marketing realm, is there anything we can predict with relative certainty in 2021? Below are some of the major announcements Google has made and trends that are likely to continue. While the timelines on some of these are unclear (and all are subject to change), these shifts in our small world are very likely.
Mobile-only indexing (March)
Mobile-first indexing has been in progress for a while, and most sites rolled over in 2020 or earlier. Google had originally announced that the index would fully default to mobile-first by September 2020, but pushed that timeline back in July (ostensibly due to the pandemic) to March 2021.
If you haven't made the switch to a mobile-friendly site at this point, there's not much time left to waste. Keep in mind that "mobile-first" isn't just about speed and user experience, but making sure that your mobile site is as crawlable as your desktop. If Google can't reach critical pages via your mobile design and internal links, then those pages are likely to drop out of the index. A page that isn't indexed is a page that doesn't rank.
Core Web Vitals (May)
While this date may change, Google has announced that Core Web Vitals will become a ranking factor in 2021. Here's a bit more detail from the official announcement ...
Page experience signals in ranking will roll out in May 2021. The new page experience signals combine Core Web Vitals with our existing search signals including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
Many of these page experience signals already impact ranking to some degree, according to Google, so the important part really boils down to Core Web Vitals. You can get more of the details in this Whiteboard Friday from Cyrus, but the short version is that this is currently a set of three metrics (with unfortunately techie names): (1) Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) LCP measures how quickly the largest, visible block of your page loads. It is one view into perceived load-time and tries to filter out background libraries and other off-page objects.
(2) First Input Delay (FID) FID measures how much time it takes before a user can interact with your page. "Interact" here means the most fundamental aspects of interaction, like clicking an on-page link.
(3) Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) CLS measures changes to your page layout, such as ads that appear or move after the initial page-load. I suspect the update will apply mostly to abusive or disruptive layout shifts. While these metrics are a narrow slice of the user experience, the good news is that Google has defined all of them in a fair amount of detail and allows you to track this data with tools like Google Lighthouse. So, we're in a unique position of being be able to prepare for the May algorithm update.
That said, I think you should improve site speed and user experience because it's a net-positive overall, not because of a pending 2021 update. If past history — including the HTTPS update and mobile-friendly update — is any indicator, Google's hope is to use the pre-announcement to push people to make changes now. I strongly suspect that Core Web Vitals will be a very minor ranking factor in the initial update, ramping up over a period of many months.
Passage indexing/ranking (TBD)
In October 2020, Google announced that they were "... now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the pages." They later clarified that this wasn't so much passage indexing as passage ranking, and the timeline wasn't initially clear. Danny Sullivan later clarified that this change did not roll out in 2020, but Google's language suggests that passage ranking is likely to roll out as soon as it's tested and ready.
While there's nothing specific you can do to harness passage ranking, according to Google, I think this change is not only an indicator of ML/AI progress but a recognition that you can have valuable, long-form content that addresses multiple topics. The rise of answers in SERPs (especially Featured Snippets and People Also Ask boxes) had a side-effect of causing people to think in terms of more focused, question-and-answer style content. While that's not entirely bad, I suspect it's generally driven people away from broader content to shorter, narrower content.
Even in 2020, there are many examples of rich, long-form content that ranks for multiple Featured/Snippets, but I expect passage ranking will re-balance this equation even more and give us increased freedom to create content in the best format for the topic at hand, without worrying too much about being laser-targeted on a single topic.
Core algorithm updates (TBD)
It's safe to say we can expect more core algorithm updates in 2021. There were three named "Core" updates in 2020 (January, May, and December), but the frequency and timing has been inconsistent. While there are patterns across the updates, thematically, each update seems to contain both new elements and some adjustments to old elements, and my own analysis suggests that the patterns (the same sites winning and losing, for example) aren't as prominent as we imagine. We can assume that Google's Core Updates will reflect the philosophy of their quality guidelines over time, but I don't think we can predict the timing or substance of any particular core update.
Googlebot crawling HTTP/2 (2022+)
Last fall, Google revealed that Googlebot would begin crawling HTTP/2 sites in November of 2020. It's not clear how much HTTP/2 crawling is currently happening, and Google said they would not penalize sites that don't support HTTP/2 and would even allow opt-out (for now). Unlike making a site secure (HTTPS) or mobile-friendly, HTTP/2 is not widely available to everyone and may depend on your infrastructure or hosting provider.
While I think we should pay attention to this development, don't make the switch to HTTP/2 in 2021 just for Google's sake. If it makes sense for the speed and performance of your site, great, but I suspect Google will be testing HTTP/2 and turning up the volume on it's impact slowly over the next few months. At some point, we might see a HTTPS-style announcement of a coming ranking impact, but if that happens, I wouldn't expect it until 2022 or later.
When will this end?
While COVID-19 may not seem like a marketing topic, the global economic impact is painfully clear at this point Any plans we make for 2021 have to consider the COVID-19 timeline, or they're a fantasy. When can we expect the pandemic to end and businesses to reopen on a national and global scale? Let me start by saying that I'm not a medical doctor — I'm a research psychologist by training. I don't have a crystal ball, but I know how to read primary sources and piece them together. What follows is my best read of the current facts and the 2021 timeline. I will try to avoid my own personal biases, but note that my read on the situation is heavily US-biased. I will generally avoid worst-case scenarios, like a major mutation of the virus, and stick to a median scenario.
Where are we at right now?
As I'm writing this sentence, over 4,000 people died just yesterday of COVID-19 in the US and over 14,000 globally. As a data scientist, I can tell you that every data point requires context, but when we cherry-pick the context, we deceive ourselves. What data science doesn't tell us is that everyone one of these data points is a human life, and that matters.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of viable vaccines, including (here in the US and in the UK) the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. These vaccines have been approved in some countries, have demonstrated promising results, and are in production. Here in the US, we're currently behind the timeline on distribution, with the CDC reporting about 10 million people vaccinated as of mid-January (initial goal was 20 million vaccinated by the end of 2020). In terms of the timeline, it's important to note that, for maximum effectiveness, the major vaccines require two doses, separated by about 3-4 weeks (this may vary with the vaccine and change as research continues).
Is it getting better or worse?
I don't want to get mired in the data, but the winter holidays and travel are already showing a negative impact here in the US, and New Year's Eve may complicate problems. While overall death rates have improved due to better treatment options and knowledge of the disease, many states and countries are at or near peak case rates and peak daily deaths. This situation is very likely to get worse before it gets better.
When might we reopen?
I'm assuming, for better or worse, that reopening does not imply full "herd immunity" or a zero case-rate. We're talking about a critical mass of vaccinations and a significant flattening of the curve. It's hard to find a source outside of political debates here in the US, but a recent symposium sponsored by Harvard and the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that — if we can adequately ramp up vaccine distribution in the second quarter of 2021 — we could see measurable positive impact by the end of our summer (or early-to-mid third quarter) here in the US.
Any prediction right now requires a lot of assumptions and there may be massive regional differences in this timeline, but the key point is that the availability of the vaccine, while certainly cause for optimism, is not a magic wand. Manufacturing, distribution, and the need for a second dose all mean that we're realistically still looking at a few months for medical advances to have widespread impact.
What can we do now?
First, let me say that there is absolutely no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Many local businesses were decimated, while e-commerce grew 32% year-over-year in 2020. If you're a local restaurant that managed to stay afloat, you may see a rapid return of customers in the summer or fall. If you're a major online retailer, you could actually see a reduction in sales as brick-and-mortar stores become viable again (although probably not to 2019 levels).
If your e-commerce business was lucky enough to see gains in 2020, Miracle Inameti-Archibong has some great advice for you. To inadequately summarize — don't take any of this for granted. This is a time to learn from your new customers, re-invest in your marketing, and show goodwill toward the people who are shopping online more because of the difficulties they're facing.
If you're stuck waiting to reopen, consider the lead time SEO campaigns require to have an impact. In a recent Whiteboard Friday, I made the case that SEO isn't an on/off switch. Consider the oversimplified diagram below. Paid search is a bit like the dotted gray line — you flip the switch on, and the leads starting flowing. The trade-off is that when you flip the switch off, the leads dry up almost immediately.
Organic SEO has a ramp-up. It's more like the blue curve above. The benefit of organic is that the leads keep coming when you stop investing, but it also means that the leads will take time to rebuild when you start to reinvest. This timeline depends on a lot of variables, but an organic campaign can often take 2-3 months or more to get off the ground. If you want to hit the ground running as reopening kicks in, you're going to need to start re-investing ahead of that timeline. I acknowledge that that might not be easy, and it doesn't have to be all or none.
In a recent interview, Mary Ellen Coe (head of Google Marketing Solutions) cited a 20,000% increase during the pandemic in searches from consumers looking to support local businesses. There's a tremendous appetite for reopening and a surge of goodwill for local businesses. If you're a local business, even if you're temporarily closed, it's important to let people know that you're still around and to keep them up-to-date on your reopening plans as they evolve.
I don't expect that the new normal will look much like the old normal, and I'm mindful that many businesses didn't survive to see 2021. We can't predict the future, but we can't afford to wait for months and do nothing, either, so I hope this at least gives you some idea of what to expect in the coming year and how we might prepare for it.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
xaydungtruonggia · 3 years
Text
The Best-Laid Plans: Can We Predict Anything About 2021?
Posted by Dr-Pete
I've deleted this introduction twice. To say that no one could've predicted how 2020 unfolded seems trite since we're not even a month into 2021, and this new year has already unraveled. Our challenges in the past year, across the globe, have gone far beyond marketing, and I doubt any of us ended the year the way we expected. This graph from Google Trends tells the story better than I can:
The pandemic fundamentally rewrote the global economy in a way none of us has ever experienced, and yet we have to find a path forward. How do we even begin to chart a course in 2021?
What do we know?
Let's start small. Within our search marketing realm, is there anything we can predict with relative certainty in 2021? Below are some of the major announcements Google has made and trends that are likely to continue. While the timelines on some of these are unclear (and all are subject to change), these shifts in our small world are very likely.
Mobile-only indexing (March)
Mobile-first indexing has been in progress for a while, and most sites rolled over in 2020 or earlier. Google had originally announced that the index would fully default to mobile-first by September 2020, but pushed that timeline back in July (ostensibly due to the pandemic) to March 2021.
If you haven't made the switch to a mobile-friendly site at this point, there's not much time left to waste. Keep in mind that "mobile-first" isn't just about speed and user experience, but making sure that your mobile site is as crawlable as your desktop. If Google can't reach critical pages via your mobile design and internal links, then those pages are likely to drop out of the index. A page that isn't indexed is a page that doesn't rank.
Core Web Vitals (May)
While this date may change, Google has announced that Core Web Vitals will become a ranking factor in 2021. Here's a bit more detail from the official announcement ...
Page experience signals in ranking will roll out in May 2021. The new page experience signals combine Core Web Vitals with our existing search signals including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
Many of these page experience signals already impact ranking to some degree, according to Google, so the important part really boils down to Core Web Vitals. You can get more of the details in this Whiteboard Friday from Cyrus, but the short version is that this is currently a set of three metrics (with unfortunately techie names): (1) Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) LCP measures how quickly the largest, visible block of your page loads. It is one view into perceived load-time and tries to filter out background libraries and other off-page objects.
(2) First Input Delay (FID) FID measures how much time it takes before a user can interact with your page. "Interact" here means the most fundamental aspects of interaction, like clicking an on-page link.
(3) Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) CLS measures changes to your page layout, such as ads that appear or move after the initial page-load. I suspect the update will apply mostly to abusive or disruptive layout shifts. While these metrics are a narrow slice of the user experience, the good news is that Google has defined all of them in a fair amount of detail and allows you to track this data with tools like Google Lighthouse. So, we're in a unique position of being be able to prepare for the May algorithm update.
That said, I think you should improve site speed and user experience because it's a net-positive overall, not because of a pending 2021 update. If past history — including the HTTPS update and mobile-friendly update — is any indicator, Google's hope is to use the pre-announcement to push people to make changes now. I strongly suspect that Core Web Vitals will be a very minor ranking factor in the initial update, ramping up over a period of many months.
Passage indexing/ranking (TBD)
In October 2020, Google announced that they were "... now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the pages." They later clarified that this wasn't so much passage indexing as passage ranking, and the timeline wasn't initially clear. Danny Sullivan later clarified that this change did not roll out in 2020, but Google's language suggests that passage ranking is likely to roll out as soon as it's tested and ready.
While there's nothing specific you can do to harness passage ranking, according to Google, I think this change is not only an indicator of ML/AI progress but a recognition that you can have valuable, long-form content that addresses multiple topics. The rise of answers in SERPs (especially Featured Snippets and People Also Ask boxes) had a side-effect of causing people to think in terms of more focused, question-and-answer style content. While that's not entirely bad, I suspect it's generally driven people away from broader content to shorter, narrower content.
Even in 2020, there are many examples of rich, long-form content that ranks for multiple Featured/Snippets, but I expect passage ranking will re-balance this equation even more and give us increased freedom to create content in the best format for the topic at hand, without worrying too much about being laser-targeted on a single topic.
Core algorithm updates (TBD)
It's safe to say we can expect more core algorithm updates in 2021. There were three named "Core" updates in 2020 (January, May, and December), but the frequency and timing has been inconsistent. While there are patterns across the updates, thematically, each update seems to contain both new elements and some adjustments to old elements, and my own analysis suggests that the patterns (the same sites winning and losing, for example) aren't as prominent as we imagine. We can assume that Google's Core Updates will reflect the philosophy of their quality guidelines over time, but I don't think we can predict the timing or substance of any particular core update.
Googlebot crawling HTTP/2 (2022+)
Last fall, Google revealed that Googlebot would begin crawling HTTP/2 sites in November of 2020. It's not clear how much HTTP/2 crawling is currently happening, and Google said they would not penalize sites that don't support HTTP/2 and would even allow opt-out (for now). Unlike making a site secure (HTTPS) or mobile-friendly, HTTP/2 is not widely available to everyone and may depend on your infrastructure or hosting provider.
While I think we should pay attention to this development, don't make the switch to HTTP/2 in 2021 just for Google's sake. If it makes sense for the speed and performance of your site, great, but I suspect Google will be testing HTTP/2 and turning up the volume on it's impact slowly over the next few months. At some point, we might see a HTTPS-style announcement of a coming ranking impact, but if that happens, I wouldn't expect it until 2022 or later.
When will this end?
While COVID-19 may not seem like a marketing topic, the global economic impact is painfully clear at this point Any plans we make for 2021 have to consider the COVID-19 timeline, or they're a fantasy. When can we expect the pandemic to end and businesses to reopen on a national and global scale? Let me start by saying that I'm not a medical doctor — I'm a research psychologist by training. I don't have a crystal ball, but I know how to read primary sources and piece them together. What follows is my best read of the current facts and the 2021 timeline. I will try to avoid my own personal biases, but note that my read on the situation is heavily US-biased. I will generally avoid worst-case scenarios, like a major mutation of the virus, and stick to a median scenario.
Where are we at right now?
As I'm writing this sentence, over 4,000 people died just yesterday of COVID-19 in the US and over 14,000 globally. As a data scientist, I can tell you that every data point requires context, but when we cherry-pick the context, we deceive ourselves. What data science doesn't tell us is that everyone one of these data points is a human life, and that matters.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of viable vaccines, including (here in the US and in the UK) the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. These vaccines have been approved in some countries, have demonstrated promising results, and are in production. Here in the US, we're currently behind the timeline on distribution, with the CDC reporting about 10 million people vaccinated as of mid-January (initial goal was 20 million vaccinated by the end of 2020). In terms of the timeline, it's important to note that, for maximum effectiveness, the major vaccines require two doses, separated by about 3-4 weeks (this may vary with the vaccine and change as research continues).
Is it getting better or worse?
I don't want to get mired in the data, but the winter holidays and travel are already showing a negative impact here in the US, and New Year's Eve may complicate problems. While overall death rates have improved due to better treatment options and knowledge of the disease, many states and countries are at or near peak case rates and peak daily deaths. This situation is very likely to get worse before it gets better.
When might we reopen?
I'm assuming, for better or worse, that reopening does not imply full "herd immunity" or a zero case-rate. We're talking about a critical mass of vaccinations and a significant flattening of the curve. It's hard to find a source outside of political debates here in the US, but a recent symposium sponsored by Harvard and the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that — if we can adequately ramp up vaccine distribution in the second quarter of 2021 — we could see measurable positive impact by the end of our summer (or early-to-mid third quarter) here in the US.
Any prediction right now requires a lot of assumptions and there may be massive regional differences in this timeline, but the key point is that the availability of the vaccine, while certainly cause for optimism, is not a magic wand. Manufacturing, distribution, and the need for a second dose all mean that we're realistically still looking at a few months for medical advances to have widespread impact.
What can we do now?
First, let me say that there is absolutely no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Many local businesses were decimated, while e-commerce grew 32% year-over-year in 2020. If you're a local restaurant that managed to stay afloat, you may see a rapid return of customers in the summer or fall. If you're a major online retailer, you could actually see a reduction in sales as brick-and-mortar stores become viable again (although probably not to 2019 levels).
If your e-commerce business was lucky enough to see gains in 2020, Miracle Inameti-Archibong has some great advice for you. To inadequately summarize — don't take any of this for granted. This is a time to learn from your new customers, re-invest in your marketing, and show goodwill toward the people who are shopping online more because of the difficulties they're facing.
If you're stuck waiting to reopen, consider the lead time SEO campaigns require to have an impact. In a recent Whiteboard Friday, I made the case that SEO isn't an on/off switch. Consider the oversimplified diagram below. Paid search is a bit like the dotted gray line — you flip the switch on, and the leads starting flowing. The trade-off is that when you flip the switch off, the leads dry up almost immediately.
Organic SEO has a ramp-up. It's more like the blue curve above. The benefit of organic is that the leads keep coming when you stop investing, but it also means that the leads will take time to rebuild when you start to reinvest. This timeline depends on a lot of variables, but an organic campaign can often take 2-3 months or more to get off the ground. If you want to hit the ground running as reopening kicks in, you're going to need to start re-investing ahead of that timeline. I acknowledge that that might not be easy, and it doesn't have to be all or none.
In a recent interview, Mary Ellen Coe (head of Google Marketing Solutions) cited a 20,000% increase during the pandemic in searches from consumers looking to support local businesses. There's a tremendous appetite for reopening and a surge of goodwill for local businesses. If you're a local business, even if you're temporarily closed, it's important to let people know that you're still around and to keep them up-to-date on your reopening plans as they evolve.
I don't expect that the new normal will look much like the old normal, and I'm mindful that many businesses didn't survive to see 2021. We can't predict the future, but we can't afford to wait for months and do nothing, either, so I hope this at least gives you some idea of what to expect in the coming year and how we might prepare for it.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
ductrungnguyen87 · 3 years
Text
The Best-Laid Plans: Can We Predict Anything About 2021?
Posted by Dr-Pete
I've deleted this introduction twice. To say that no one could've predicted how 2020 unfolded seems trite since we're not even a month into 2021, and this new year has already unraveled. Our challenges in the past year, across the globe, have gone far beyond marketing, and I doubt any of us ended the year the way we expected. This graph from Google Trends tells the story better than I can:
The pandemic fundamentally rewrote the global economy in a way none of us has ever experienced, and yet we have to find a path forward. How do we even begin to chart a course in 2021?
What do we know?
Let's start small. Within our search marketing realm, is there anything we can predict with relative certainty in 2021? Below are some of the major announcements Google has made and trends that are likely to continue. While the timelines on some of these are unclear (and all are subject to change), these shifts in our small world are very likely.
Mobile-only indexing (March)
Mobile-first indexing has been in progress for a while, and most sites rolled over in 2020 or earlier. Google had originally announced that the index would fully default to mobile-first by September 2020, but pushed that timeline back in July (ostensibly due to the pandemic) to March 2021.
If you haven't made the switch to a mobile-friendly site at this point, there's not much time left to waste. Keep in mind that "mobile-first" isn't just about speed and user experience, but making sure that your mobile site is as crawlable as your desktop. If Google can't reach critical pages via your mobile design and internal links, then those pages are likely to drop out of the index. A page that isn't indexed is a page that doesn't rank.
Core Web Vitals (May)
While this date may change, Google has announced that Core Web Vitals will become a ranking factor in 2021. Here's a bit more detail from the official announcement ...
Page experience signals in ranking will roll out in May 2021. The new page experience signals combine Core Web Vitals with our existing search signals including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
Many of these page experience signals already impact ranking to some degree, according to Google, so the important part really boils down to Core Web Vitals. You can get more of the details in this Whiteboard Friday from Cyrus, but the short version is that this is currently a set of three metrics (with unfortunately techie names): (1) Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) LCP measures how quickly the largest, visible block of your page loads. It is one view into perceived load-time and tries to filter out background libraries and other off-page objects.
(2) First Input Delay (FID) FID measures how much time it takes before a user can interact with your page. "Interact" here means the most fundamental aspects of interaction, like clicking an on-page link.
(3) Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) CLS measures changes to your page layout, such as ads that appear or move after the initial page-load. I suspect the update will apply mostly to abusive or disruptive layout shifts. While these metrics are a narrow slice of the user experience, the good news is that Google has defined all of them in a fair amount of detail and allows you to track this data with tools like Google Lighthouse. So, we're in a unique position of being be able to prepare for the May algorithm update.
That said, I think you should improve site speed and user experience because it's a net-positive overall, not because of a pending 2021 update. If past history — including the HTTPS update and mobile-friendly update — is any indicator, Google's hope is to use the pre-announcement to push people to make changes now. I strongly suspect that Core Web Vitals will be a very minor ranking factor in the initial update, ramping up over a period of many months.
Passage indexing/ranking (TBD)
In October 2020, Google announced that they were "... now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the pages." They later clarified that this wasn't so much passage indexing as passage ranking, and the timeline wasn't initially clear. Danny Sullivan later clarified that this change did not roll out in 2020, but Google's language suggests that passage ranking is likely to roll out as soon as it's tested and ready.
While there's nothing specific you can do to harness passage ranking, according to Google, I think this change is not only an indicator of ML/AI progress but a recognition that you can have valuable, long-form content that addresses multiple topics. The rise of answers in SERPs (especially Featured Snippets and People Also Ask boxes) had a side-effect of causing people to think in terms of more focused, question-and-answer style content. While that's not entirely bad, I suspect it's generally driven people away from broader content to shorter, narrower content.
Even in 2020, there are many examples of rich, long-form content that ranks for multiple Featured/Snippets, but I expect passage ranking will re-balance this equation even more and give us increased freedom to create content in the best format for the topic at hand, without worrying too much about being laser-targeted on a single topic.
Core algorithm updates (TBD)
It's safe to say we can expect more core algorithm updates in 2021. There were three named "Core" updates in 2020 (January, May, and December), but the frequency and timing has been inconsistent. While there are patterns across the updates, thematically, each update seems to contain both new elements and some adjustments to old elements, and my own analysis suggests that the patterns (the same sites winning and losing, for example) aren't as prominent as we imagine. We can assume that Google's Core Updates will reflect the philosophy of their quality guidelines over time, but I don't think we can predict the timing or substance of any particular core update.
Googlebot crawling HTTP/2 (2022+)
Last fall, Google revealed that Googlebot would begin crawling HTTP/2 sites in November of 2020. It's not clear how much HTTP/2 crawling is currently happening, and Google said they would not penalize sites that don't support HTTP/2 and would even allow opt-out (for now). Unlike making a site secure (HTTPS) or mobile-friendly, HTTP/2 is not widely available to everyone and may depend on your infrastructure or hosting provider.
While I think we should pay attention to this development, don't make the switch to HTTP/2 in 2021 just for Google's sake. If it makes sense for the speed and performance of your site, great, but I suspect Google will be testing HTTP/2 and turning up the volume on it's impact slowly over the next few months. At some point, we might see a HTTPS-style announcement of a coming ranking impact, but if that happens, I wouldn't expect it until 2022 or later.
When will this end?
While COVID-19 may not seem like a marketing topic, the global economic impact is painfully clear at this point Any plans we make for 2021 have to consider the COVID-19 timeline, or they're a fantasy. When can we expect the pandemic to end and businesses to reopen on a national and global scale? Let me start by saying that I'm not a medical doctor — I'm a research psychologist by training. I don't have a crystal ball, but I know how to read primary sources and piece them together. What follows is my best read of the current facts and the 2021 timeline. I will try to avoid my own personal biases, but note that my read on the situation is heavily US-biased. I will generally avoid worst-case scenarios, like a major mutation of the virus, and stick to a median scenario.
Where are we at right now?
As I'm writing this sentence, over 4,000 people died just yesterday of COVID-19 in the US and over 14,000 globally. As a data scientist, I can tell you that every data point requires context, but when we cherry-pick the context, we deceive ourselves. What data science doesn't tell us is that everyone one of these data points is a human life, and that matters.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of viable vaccines, including (here in the US and in the UK) the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. These vaccines have been approved in some countries, have demonstrated promising results, and are in production. Here in the US, we're currently behind the timeline on distribution, with the CDC reporting about 10 million people vaccinated as of mid-January (initial goal was 20 million vaccinated by the end of 2020). In terms of the timeline, it's important to note that, for maximum effectiveness, the major vaccines require two doses, separated by about 3-4 weeks (this may vary with the vaccine and change as research continues).
Is it getting better or worse?
I don't want to get mired in the data, but the winter holidays and travel are already showing a negative impact here in the US, and New Year's Eve may complicate problems. While overall death rates have improved due to better treatment options and knowledge of the disease, many states and countries are at or near peak case rates and peak daily deaths. This situation is very likely to get worse before it gets better.
When might we reopen?
I'm assuming, for better or worse, that reopening does not imply full "herd immunity" or a zero case-rate. We're talking about a critical mass of vaccinations and a significant flattening of the curve. It's hard to find a source outside of political debates here in the US, but a recent symposium sponsored by Harvard and the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that — if we can adequately ramp up vaccine distribution in the second quarter of 2021 — we could see measurable positive impact by the end of our summer (or early-to-mid third quarter) here in the US.
Any prediction right now requires a lot of assumptions and there may be massive regional differences in this timeline, but the key point is that the availability of the vaccine, while certainly cause for optimism, is not a magic wand. Manufacturing, distribution, and the need for a second dose all mean that we're realistically still looking at a few months for medical advances to have widespread impact.
What can we do now?
First, let me say that there is absolutely no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Many local businesses were decimated, while e-commerce grew 32% year-over-year in 2020. If you're a local restaurant that managed to stay afloat, you may see a rapid return of customers in the summer or fall. If you're a major online retailer, you could actually see a reduction in sales as brick-and-mortar stores become viable again (although probably not to 2019 levels).
If your e-commerce business was lucky enough to see gains in 2020, Miracle Inameti-Archibong has some great advice for you. To inadequately summarize — don't take any of this for granted. This is a time to learn from your new customers, re-invest in your marketing, and show goodwill toward the people who are shopping online more because of the difficulties they're facing.
If you're stuck waiting to reopen, consider the lead time SEO campaigns require to have an impact. In a recent Whiteboard Friday, I made the case that SEO isn't an on/off switch. Consider the oversimplified diagram below. Paid search is a bit like the dotted gray line — you flip the switch on, and the leads starting flowing. The trade-off is that when you flip the switch off, the leads dry up almost immediately.
Organic SEO has a ramp-up. It's more like the blue curve above. The benefit of organic is that the leads keep coming when you stop investing, but it also means that the leads will take time to rebuild when you start to reinvest. This timeline depends on a lot of variables, but an organic campaign can often take 2-3 months or more to get off the ground. If you want to hit the ground running as reopening kicks in, you're going to need to start re-investing ahead of that timeline. I acknowledge that that might not be easy, and it doesn't have to be all or none.
In a recent interview, Mary Ellen Coe (head of Google Marketing Solutions) cited a 20,000% increase during the pandemic in searches from consumers looking to support local businesses. There's a tremendous appetite for reopening and a surge of goodwill for local businesses. If you're a local business, even if you're temporarily closed, it's important to let people know that you're still around and to keep them up-to-date on your reopening plans as they evolve.
I don't expect that the new normal will look much like the old normal, and I'm mindful that many businesses didn't survive to see 2021. We can't predict the future, but we can't afford to wait for months and do nothing, either, so I hope this at least gives you some idea of what to expect in the coming year and how we might prepare for it.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
camerasieunhovn · 3 years
Text
The Best-Laid Plans: Can We Predict Anything About 2021?
Posted by Dr-Pete
I've deleted this introduction twice. To say that no one could've predicted how 2020 unfolded seems trite since we're not even a month into 2021, and this new year has already unraveled. Our challenges in the past year, across the globe, have gone far beyond marketing, and I doubt any of us ended the year the way we expected. This graph from Google Trends tells the story better than I can:
The pandemic fundamentally rewrote the global economy in a way none of us has ever experienced, and yet we have to find a path forward. How do we even begin to chart a course in 2021?
What do we know?
Let's start small. Within our search marketing realm, is there anything we can predict with relative certainty in 2021? Below are some of the major announcements Google has made and trends that are likely to continue. While the timelines on some of these are unclear (and all are subject to change), these shifts in our small world are very likely.
Mobile-only indexing (March)
Mobile-first indexing has been in progress for a while, and most sites rolled over in 2020 or earlier. Google had originally announced that the index would fully default to mobile-first by September 2020, but pushed that timeline back in July (ostensibly due to the pandemic) to March 2021.
If you haven't made the switch to a mobile-friendly site at this point, there's not much time left to waste. Keep in mind that "mobile-first" isn't just about speed and user experience, but making sure that your mobile site is as crawlable as your desktop. If Google can't reach critical pages via your mobile design and internal links, then those pages are likely to drop out of the index. A page that isn't indexed is a page that doesn't rank.
Core Web Vitals (May)
While this date may change, Google has announced that Core Web Vitals will become a ranking factor in 2021. Here's a bit more detail from the official announcement ...
Page experience signals in ranking will roll out in May 2021. The new page experience signals combine Core Web Vitals with our existing search signals including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
Many of these page experience signals already impact ranking to some degree, according to Google, so the important part really boils down to Core Web Vitals. You can get more of the details in this Whiteboard Friday from Cyrus, but the short version is that this is currently a set of three metrics (with unfortunately techie names): (1) Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) LCP measures how quickly the largest, visible block of your page loads. It is one view into perceived load-time and tries to filter out background libraries and other off-page objects.
(2) First Input Delay (FID) FID measures how much time it takes before a user can interact with your page. "Interact" here means the most fundamental aspects of interaction, like clicking an on-page link.
(3) Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) CLS measures changes to your page layout, such as ads that appear or move after the initial page-load. I suspect the update will apply mostly to abusive or disruptive layout shifts. While these metrics are a narrow slice of the user experience, the good news is that Google has defined all of them in a fair amount of detail and allows you to track this data with tools like Google Lighthouse. So, we're in a unique position of being be able to prepare for the May algorithm update.
That said, I think you should improve site speed and user experience because it's a net-positive overall, not because of a pending 2021 update. If past history — including the HTTPS update and mobile-friendly update — is any indicator, Google's hope is to use the pre-announcement to push people to make changes now. I strongly suspect that Core Web Vitals will be a very minor ranking factor in the initial update, ramping up over a period of many months.
Passage indexing/ranking (TBD)
In October 2020, Google announced that they were "... now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the pages." They later clarified that this wasn't so much passage indexing as passage ranking, and the timeline wasn't initially clear. Danny Sullivan later clarified that this change did not roll out in 2020, but Google's language suggests that passage ranking is likely to roll out as soon as it's tested and ready.
While there's nothing specific you can do to harness passage ranking, according to Google, I think this change is not only an indicator of ML/AI progress but a recognition that you can have valuable, long-form content that addresses multiple topics. The rise of answers in SERPs (especially Featured Snippets and People Also Ask boxes) had a side-effect of causing people to think in terms of more focused, question-and-answer style content. While that's not entirely bad, I suspect it's generally driven people away from broader content to shorter, narrower content.
Even in 2020, there are many examples of rich, long-form content that ranks for multiple Featured/Snippets, but I expect passage ranking will re-balance this equation even more and give us increased freedom to create content in the best format for the topic at hand, without worrying too much about being laser-targeted on a single topic.
Core algorithm updates (TBD)
It's safe to say we can expect more core algorithm updates in 2021. There were three named "Core" updates in 2020 (January, May, and December), but the frequency and timing has been inconsistent. While there are patterns across the updates, thematically, each update seems to contain both new elements and some adjustments to old elements, and my own analysis suggests that the patterns (the same sites winning and losing, for example) aren't as prominent as we imagine. We can assume that Google's Core Updates will reflect the philosophy of their quality guidelines over time, but I don't think we can predict the timing or substance of any particular core update.
Googlebot crawling HTTP/2 (2022+)
Last fall, Google revealed that Googlebot would begin crawling HTTP/2 sites in November of 2020. It's not clear how much HTTP/2 crawling is currently happening, and Google said they would not penalize sites that don't support HTTP/2 and would even allow opt-out (for now). Unlike making a site secure (HTTPS) or mobile-friendly, HTTP/2 is not widely available to everyone and may depend on your infrastructure or hosting provider.
While I think we should pay attention to this development, don't make the switch to HTTP/2 in 2021 just for Google's sake. If it makes sense for the speed and performance of your site, great, but I suspect Google will be testing HTTP/2 and turning up the volume on it's impact slowly over the next few months. At some point, we might see a HTTPS-style announcement of a coming ranking impact, but if that happens, I wouldn't expect it until 2022 or later.
When will this end?
While COVID-19 may not seem like a marketing topic, the global economic impact is painfully clear at this point Any plans we make for 2021 have to consider the COVID-19 timeline, or they're a fantasy. When can we expect the pandemic to end and businesses to reopen on a national and global scale? Let me start by saying that I'm not a medical doctor — I'm a research psychologist by training. I don't have a crystal ball, but I know how to read primary sources and piece them together. What follows is my best read of the current facts and the 2021 timeline. I will try to avoid my own personal biases, but note that my read on the situation is heavily US-biased. I will generally avoid worst-case scenarios, like a major mutation of the virus, and stick to a median scenario.
Where are we at right now?
As I'm writing this sentence, over 4,000 people died just yesterday of COVID-19 in the US and over 14,000 globally. As a data scientist, I can tell you that every data point requires context, but when we cherry-pick the context, we deceive ourselves. What data science doesn't tell us is that everyone one of these data points is a human life, and that matters.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of viable vaccines, including (here in the US and in the UK) the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. These vaccines have been approved in some countries, have demonstrated promising results, and are in production. Here in the US, we're currently behind the timeline on distribution, with the CDC reporting about 10 million people vaccinated as of mid-January (initial goal was 20 million vaccinated by the end of 2020). In terms of the timeline, it's important to note that, for maximum effectiveness, the major vaccines require two doses, separated by about 3-4 weeks (this may vary with the vaccine and change as research continues).
Is it getting better or worse?
I don't want to get mired in the data, but the winter holidays and travel are already showing a negative impact here in the US, and New Year's Eve may complicate problems. While overall death rates have improved due to better treatment options and knowledge of the disease, many states and countries are at or near peak case rates and peak daily deaths. This situation is very likely to get worse before it gets better.
When might we reopen?
I'm assuming, for better or worse, that reopening does not imply full "herd immunity" or a zero case-rate. We're talking about a critical mass of vaccinations and a significant flattening of the curve. It's hard to find a source outside of political debates here in the US, but a recent symposium sponsored by Harvard and the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that — if we can adequately ramp up vaccine distribution in the second quarter of 2021 — we could see measurable positive impact by the end of our summer (or early-to-mid third quarter) here in the US.
Any prediction right now requires a lot of assumptions and there may be massive regional differences in this timeline, but the key point is that the availability of the vaccine, while certainly cause for optimism, is not a magic wand. Manufacturing, distribution, and the need for a second dose all mean that we're realistically still looking at a few months for medical advances to have widespread impact.
What can we do now?
First, let me say that there is absolutely no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Many local businesses were decimated, while e-commerce grew 32% year-over-year in 2020. If you're a local restaurant that managed to stay afloat, you may see a rapid return of customers in the summer or fall. If you're a major online retailer, you could actually see a reduction in sales as brick-and-mortar stores become viable again (although probably not to 2019 levels).
If your e-commerce business was lucky enough to see gains in 2020, Miracle Inameti-Archibong has some great advice for you. To inadequately summarize — don't take any of this for granted. This is a time to learn from your new customers, re-invest in your marketing, and show goodwill toward the people who are shopping online more because of the difficulties they're facing.
If you're stuck waiting to reopen, consider the lead time SEO campaigns require to have an impact. In a recent Whiteboard Friday, I made the case that SEO isn't an on/off switch. Consider the oversimplified diagram below. Paid search is a bit like the dotted gray line — you flip the switch on, and the leads starting flowing. The trade-off is that when you flip the switch off, the leads dry up almost immediately.
Organic SEO has a ramp-up. It's more like the blue curve above. The benefit of organic is that the leads keep coming when you stop investing, but it also means that the leads will take time to rebuild when you start to reinvest. This timeline depends on a lot of variables, but an organic campaign can often take 2-3 months or more to get off the ground. If you want to hit the ground running as reopening kicks in, you're going to need to start re-investing ahead of that timeline. I acknowledge that that might not be easy, and it doesn't have to be all or none.
In a recent interview, Mary Ellen Coe (head of Google Marketing Solutions) cited a 20,000% increase during the pandemic in searches from consumers looking to support local businesses. There's a tremendous appetite for reopening and a surge of goodwill for local businesses. If you're a local business, even if you're temporarily closed, it's important to let people know that you're still around and to keep them up-to-date on your reopening plans as they evolve.
I don't expect that the new normal will look much like the old normal, and I'm mindful that many businesses didn't survive to see 2021. We can't predict the future, but we can't afford to wait for months and do nothing, either, so I hope this at least gives you some idea of what to expect in the coming year and how we might prepare for it.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
gamebazu · 3 years
Text
The Best-Laid Plans: Can We Predict Anything About 2021?
Posted by Dr-Pete
I've deleted this introduction twice. To say that no one could've predicted how 2020 unfolded seems trite since we're not even a month into 2021, and this new year has already unraveled. Our challenges in the past year, across the globe, have gone far beyond marketing, and I doubt any of us ended the year the way we expected. This graph from Google Trends tells the story better than I can:
The pandemic fundamentally rewrote the global economy in a way none of us has ever experienced, and yet we have to find a path forward. How do we even begin to chart a course in 2021?
What do we know?
Let's start small. Within our search marketing realm, is there anything we can predict with relative certainty in 2021? Below are some of the major announcements Google has made and trends that are likely to continue. While the timelines on some of these are unclear (and all are subject to change), these shifts in our small world are very likely.
Mobile-only indexing (March)
Mobile-first indexing has been in progress for a while, and most sites rolled over in 2020 or earlier. Google had originally announced that the index would fully default to mobile-first by September 2020, but pushed that timeline back in July (ostensibly due to the pandemic) to March 2021.
If you haven't made the switch to a mobile-friendly site at this point, there's not much time left to waste. Keep in mind that "mobile-first" isn't just about speed and user experience, but making sure that your mobile site is as crawlable as your desktop. If Google can't reach critical pages via your mobile design and internal links, then those pages are likely to drop out of the index. A page that isn't indexed is a page that doesn't rank.
Core Web Vitals (May)
While this date may change, Google has announced that Core Web Vitals will become a ranking factor in 2021. Here's a bit more detail from the official announcement ...
Page experience signals in ranking will roll out in May 2021. The new page experience signals combine Core Web Vitals with our existing search signals including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
Many of these page experience signals already impact ranking to some degree, according to Google, so the important part really boils down to Core Web Vitals. You can get more of the details in this Whiteboard Friday from Cyrus, but the short version is that this is currently a set of three metrics (with unfortunately techie names): (1) Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) LCP measures how quickly the largest, visible block of your page loads. It is one view into perceived load-time and tries to filter out background libraries and other off-page objects.
(2) First Input Delay (FID) FID measures how much time it takes before a user can interact with your page. "Interact" here means the most fundamental aspects of interaction, like clicking an on-page link.
(3) Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) CLS measures changes to your page layout, such as ads that appear or move after the initial page-load. I suspect the update will apply mostly to abusive or disruptive layout shifts. While these metrics are a narrow slice of the user experience, the good news is that Google has defined all of them in a fair amount of detail and allows you to track this data with tools like Google Lighthouse. So, we're in a unique position of being be able to prepare for the May algorithm update.
That said, I think you should improve site speed and user experience because it's a net-positive overall, not because of a pending 2021 update. If past history — including the HTTPS update and mobile-friendly update — is any indicator, Google's hope is to use the pre-announcement to push people to make changes now. I strongly suspect that Core Web Vitals will be a very minor ranking factor in the initial update, ramping up over a period of many months.
Passage indexing/ranking (TBD)
In October 2020, Google announced that they were "... now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the pages." They later clarified that this wasn't so much passage indexing as passage ranking, and the timeline wasn't initially clear. Danny Sullivan later clarified that this change did not roll out in 2020, but Google's language suggests that passage ranking is likely to roll out as soon as it's tested and ready.
While there's nothing specific you can do to harness passage ranking, according to Google, I think this change is not only an indicator of ML/AI progress but a recognition that you can have valuable, long-form content that addresses multiple topics. The rise of answers in SERPs (especially Featured Snippets and People Also Ask boxes) had a side-effect of causing people to think in terms of more focused, question-and-answer style content. While that's not entirely bad, I suspect it's generally driven people away from broader content to shorter, narrower content.
Even in 2020, there are many examples of rich, long-form content that ranks for multiple Featured/Snippets, but I expect passage ranking will re-balance this equation even more and give us increased freedom to create content in the best format for the topic at hand, without worrying too much about being laser-targeted on a single topic.
Core algorithm updates (TBD)
It's safe to say we can expect more core algorithm updates in 2021. There were three named "Core" updates in 2020 (January, May, and December), but the frequency and timing has been inconsistent. While there are patterns across the updates, thematically, each update seems to contain both new elements and some adjustments to old elements, and my own analysis suggests that the patterns (the same sites winning and losing, for example) aren't as prominent as we imagine. We can assume that Google's Core Updates will reflect the philosophy of their quality guidelines over time, but I don't think we can predict the timing or substance of any particular core update.
Googlebot crawling HTTP/2 (2022+)
Last fall, Google revealed that Googlebot would begin crawling HTTP/2 sites in November of 2020. It's not clear how much HTTP/2 crawling is currently happening, and Google said they would not penalize sites that don't support HTTP/2 and would even allow opt-out (for now). Unlike making a site secure (HTTPS) or mobile-friendly, HTTP/2 is not widely available to everyone and may depend on your infrastructure or hosting provider.
While I think we should pay attention to this development, don't make the switch to HTTP/2 in 2021 just for Google's sake. If it makes sense for the speed and performance of your site, great, but I suspect Google will be testing HTTP/2 and turning up the volume on it's impact slowly over the next few months. At some point, we might see a HTTPS-style announcement of a coming ranking impact, but if that happens, I wouldn't expect it until 2022 or later.
When will this end?
While COVID-19 may not seem like a marketing topic, the global economic impact is painfully clear at this point Any plans we make for 2021 have to consider the COVID-19 timeline, or they're a fantasy. When can we expect the pandemic to end and businesses to reopen on a national and global scale? Let me start by saying that I'm not a medical doctor — I'm a research psychologist by training. I don't have a crystal ball, but I know how to read primary sources and piece them together. What follows is my best read of the current facts and the 2021 timeline. I will try to avoid my own personal biases, but note that my read on the situation is heavily US-biased. I will generally avoid worst-case scenarios, like a major mutation of the virus, and stick to a median scenario.
Where are we at right now?
As I'm writing this sentence, over 4,000 people died just yesterday of COVID-19 in the US and over 14,000 globally. As a data scientist, I can tell you that every data point requires context, but when we cherry-pick the context, we deceive ourselves. What data science doesn't tell us is that everyone one of these data points is a human life, and that matters.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of viable vaccines, including (here in the US and in the UK) the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. These vaccines have been approved in some countries, have demonstrated promising results, and are in production. Here in the US, we're currently behind the timeline on distribution, with the CDC reporting about 10 million people vaccinated as of mid-January (initial goal was 20 million vaccinated by the end of 2020). In terms of the timeline, it's important to note that, for maximum effectiveness, the major vaccines require two doses, separated by about 3-4 weeks (this may vary with the vaccine and change as research continues).
Is it getting better or worse?
I don't want to get mired in the data, but the winter holidays and travel are already showing a negative impact here in the US, and New Year's Eve may complicate problems. While overall death rates have improved due to better treatment options and knowledge of the disease, many states and countries are at or near peak case rates and peak daily deaths. This situation is very likely to get worse before it gets better.
When might we reopen?
I'm assuming, for better or worse, that reopening does not imply full "herd immunity" or a zero case-rate. We're talking about a critical mass of vaccinations and a significant flattening of the curve. It's hard to find a source outside of political debates here in the US, but a recent symposium sponsored by Harvard and the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that — if we can adequately ramp up vaccine distribution in the second quarter of 2021 — we could see measurable positive impact by the end of our summer (or early-to-mid third quarter) here in the US.
Any prediction right now requires a lot of assumptions and there may be massive regional differences in this timeline, but the key point is that the availability of the vaccine, while certainly cause for optimism, is not a magic wand. Manufacturing, distribution, and the need for a second dose all mean that we're realistically still looking at a few months for medical advances to have widespread impact.
What can we do now?
First, let me say that there is absolutely no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Many local businesses were decimated, while e-commerce grew 32% year-over-year in 2020. If you're a local restaurant that managed to stay afloat, you may see a rapid return of customers in the summer or fall. If you're a major online retailer, you could actually see a reduction in sales as brick-and-mortar stores become viable again (although probably not to 2019 levels).
If your e-commerce business was lucky enough to see gains in 2020, Miracle Inameti-Archibong has some great advice for you. To inadequately summarize — don't take any of this for granted. This is a time to learn from your new customers, re-invest in your marketing, and show goodwill toward the people who are shopping online more because of the difficulties they're facing.
If you're stuck waiting to reopen, consider the lead time SEO campaigns require to have an impact. In a recent Whiteboard Friday, I made the case that SEO isn't an on/off switch. Consider the oversimplified diagram below. Paid search is a bit like the dotted gray line — you flip the switch on, and the leads starting flowing. The trade-off is that when you flip the switch off, the leads dry up almost immediately.
Organic SEO has a ramp-up. It's more like the blue curve above. The benefit of organic is that the leads keep coming when you stop investing, but it also means that the leads will take time to rebuild when you start to reinvest. This timeline depends on a lot of variables, but an organic campaign can often take 2-3 months or more to get off the ground. If you want to hit the ground running as reopening kicks in, you're going to need to start re-investing ahead of that timeline. I acknowledge that that might not be easy, and it doesn't have to be all or none.
In a recent interview, Mary Ellen Coe (head of Google Marketing Solutions) cited a 20,000% increase during the pandemic in searches from consumers looking to support local businesses. There's a tremendous appetite for reopening and a surge of goodwill for local businesses. If you're a local business, even if you're temporarily closed, it's important to let people know that you're still around and to keep them up-to-date on your reopening plans as they evolve.
I don't expect that the new normal will look much like the old normal, and I'm mindful that many businesses didn't survive to see 2021. We can't predict the future, but we can't afford to wait for months and do nothing, either, so I hope this at least gives you some idea of what to expect in the coming year and how we might prepare for it.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
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kjt-lawyers · 3 years
Text
The Best-Laid Plans: Can We Predict Anything About 2021?
Posted by Dr-Pete
I've deleted this introduction twice. To say that no one could've predicted how 2020 unfolded seems trite since we're not even a month into 2021, and this new year has already unraveled. Our challenges in the past year, across the globe, have gone far beyond marketing, and I doubt any of us ended the year the way we expected. This graph from Google Trends tells the story better than I can:
The pandemic fundamentally rewrote the global economy in a way none of us has ever experienced, and yet we have to find a path forward. How do we even begin to chart a course in 2021?
What do we know?
Let's start small. Within our search marketing realm, is there anything we can predict with relative certainty in 2021? Below are some of the major announcements Google has made and trends that are likely to continue. While the timelines on some of these are unclear (and all are subject to change), these shifts in our small world are very likely.
Mobile-only indexing (March)
Mobile-first indexing has been in progress for a while, and most sites rolled over in 2020 or earlier. Google had originally announced that the index would fully default to mobile-first by September 2020, but pushed that timeline back in July (ostensibly due to the pandemic) to March 2021.
If you haven't made the switch to a mobile-friendly site at this point, there's not much time left to waste. Keep in mind that "mobile-first" isn't just about speed and user experience, but making sure that your mobile site is as crawlable as your desktop. If Google can't reach critical pages via your mobile design and internal links, then those pages are likely to drop out of the index. A page that isn't indexed is a page that doesn't rank.
Core Web Vitals (May)
While this date may change, Google has announced that Core Web Vitals will become a ranking factor in 2021. Here's a bit more detail from the official announcement ...
Page experience signals in ranking will roll out in May 2021. The new page experience signals combine Core Web Vitals with our existing search signals including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
Many of these page experience signals already impact ranking to some degree, according to Google, so the important part really boils down to Core Web Vitals. You can get more of the details in this Whiteboard Friday from Cyrus, but the short version is that this is currently a set of three metrics (with unfortunately techie names): (1) Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) LCP measures how quickly the largest, visible block of your page loads. It is one view into perceived load-time and tries to filter out background libraries and other off-page objects.
(2) First Input Delay (FID) FID measures how much time it takes before a user can interact with your page. "Interact" here means the most fundamental aspects of interaction, like clicking an on-page link.
(3) Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) CLS measures changes to your page layout, such as ads that appear or move after the initial page-load. I suspect the update will apply mostly to abusive or disruptive layout shifts. While these metrics are a narrow slice of the user experience, the good news is that Google has defined all of them in a fair amount of detail and allows you to track this data with tools like Google Lighthouse. So, we're in a unique position of being be able to prepare for the May algorithm update.
That said, I think you should improve site speed and user experience because it's a net-positive overall, not because of a pending 2021 update. If past history — including the HTTPS update and mobile-friendly update — is any indicator, Google's hope is to use the pre-announcement to push people to make changes now. I strongly suspect that Core Web Vitals will be a very minor ranking factor in the initial update, ramping up over a period of many months.
Passage indexing/ranking (TBD)
In October 2020, Google announced that they were "... now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the pages." They later clarified that this wasn't so much passage indexing as passage ranking, and the timeline wasn't initially clear. Danny Sullivan later clarified that this change did not roll out in 2020, but Google's language suggests that passage ranking is likely to roll out as soon as it's tested and ready.
While there's nothing specific you can do to harness passage ranking, according to Google, I think this change is not only an indicator of ML/AI progress but a recognition that you can have valuable, long-form content that addresses multiple topics. The rise of answers in SERPs (especially Featured Snippets and People Also Ask boxes) had a side-effect of causing people to think in terms of more focused, question-and-answer style content. While that's not entirely bad, I suspect it's generally driven people away from broader content to shorter, narrower content.
Even in 2020, there are many examples of rich, long-form content that ranks for multiple Featured/Snippets, but I expect passage ranking will re-balance this equation even more and give us increased freedom to create content in the best format for the topic at hand, without worrying too much about being laser-targeted on a single topic.
Core algorithm updates (TBD)
It's safe to say we can expect more core algorithm updates in 2021. There were three named "Core" updates in 2020 (January, May, and December), but the frequency and timing has been inconsistent. While there are patterns across the updates, thematically, each update seems to contain both new elements and some adjustments to old elements, and my own analysis suggests that the patterns (the same sites winning and losing, for example) aren't as prominent as we imagine. We can assume that Google's Core Updates will reflect the philosophy of their quality guidelines over time, but I don't think we can predict the timing or substance of any particular core update.
Googlebot crawling HTTP/2 (2022+)
Last fall, Google revealed that Googlebot would begin crawling HTTP/2 sites in November of 2020. It's not clear how much HTTP/2 crawling is currently happening, and Google said they would not penalize sites that don't support HTTP/2 and would even allow opt-out (for now). Unlike making a site secure (HTTPS) or mobile-friendly, HTTP/2 is not widely available to everyone and may depend on your infrastructure or hosting provider.
While I think we should pay attention to this development, don't make the switch to HTTP/2 in 2021 just for Google's sake. If it makes sense for the speed and performance of your site, great, but I suspect Google will be testing HTTP/2 and turning up the volume on it's impact slowly over the next few months. At some point, we might see a HTTPS-style announcement of a coming ranking impact, but if that happens, I wouldn't expect it until 2022 or later.
When will this end?
While COVID-19 may not seem like a marketing topic, the global economic impact is painfully clear at this point Any plans we make for 2021 have to consider the COVID-19 timeline, or they're a fantasy. When can we expect the pandemic to end and businesses to reopen on a national and global scale? Let me start by saying that I'm not a medical doctor — I'm a research psychologist by training. I don't have a crystal ball, but I know how to read primary sources and piece them together. What follows is my best read of the current facts and the 2021 timeline. I will try to avoid my own personal biases, but note that my read on the situation is heavily US-biased. I will generally avoid worst-case scenarios, like a major mutation of the virus, and stick to a median scenario.
Where are we at right now?
As I'm writing this sentence, over 4,000 people died just yesterday of COVID-19 in the US and over 14,000 globally. As a data scientist, I can tell you that every data point requires context, but when we cherry-pick the context, we deceive ourselves. What data science doesn't tell us is that everyone one of these data points is a human life, and that matters.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of viable vaccines, including (here in the US and in the UK) the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. These vaccines have been approved in some countries, have demonstrated promising results, and are in production. Here in the US, we're currently behind the timeline on distribution, with the CDC reporting about 10 million people vaccinated as of mid-January (initial goal was 20 million vaccinated by the end of 2020). In terms of the timeline, it's important to note that, for maximum effectiveness, the major vaccines require two doses, separated by about 3-4 weeks (this may vary with the vaccine and change as research continues).
Is it getting better or worse?
I don't want to get mired in the data, but the winter holidays and travel are already showing a negative impact here in the US, and New Year's Eve may complicate problems. While overall death rates have improved due to better treatment options and knowledge of the disease, many states and countries are at or near peak case rates and peak daily deaths. This situation is very likely to get worse before it gets better.
When might we reopen?
I'm assuming, for better or worse, that reopening does not imply full "herd immunity" or a zero case-rate. We're talking about a critical mass of vaccinations and a significant flattening of the curve. It's hard to find a source outside of political debates here in the US, but a recent symposium sponsored by Harvard and the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that — if we can adequately ramp up vaccine distribution in the second quarter of 2021 — we could see measurable positive impact by the end of our summer (or early-to-mid third quarter) here in the US.
Any prediction right now requires a lot of assumptions and there may be massive regional differences in this timeline, but the key point is that the availability of the vaccine, while certainly cause for optimism, is not a magic wand. Manufacturing, distribution, and the need for a second dose all mean that we're realistically still looking at a few months for medical advances to have widespread impact.
What can we do now?
First, let me say that there is absolutely no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Many local businesses were decimated, while e-commerce grew 32% year-over-year in 2020. If you're a local restaurant that managed to stay afloat, you may see a rapid return of customers in the summer or fall. If you're a major online retailer, you could actually see a reduction in sales as brick-and-mortar stores become viable again (although probably not to 2019 levels).
If your e-commerce business was lucky enough to see gains in 2020, Miracle Inameti-Archibong has some great advice for you. To inadequately summarize — don't take any of this for granted. This is a time to learn from your new customers, re-invest in your marketing, and show goodwill toward the people who are shopping online more because of the difficulties they're facing.
If you're stuck waiting to reopen, consider the lead time SEO campaigns require to have an impact. In a recent Whiteboard Friday, I made the case that SEO isn't an on/off switch. Consider the oversimplified diagram below. Paid search is a bit like the dotted gray line — you flip the switch on, and the leads starting flowing. The trade-off is that when you flip the switch off, the leads dry up almost immediately.
Organic SEO has a ramp-up. It's more like the blue curve above. The benefit of organic is that the leads keep coming when you stop investing, but it also means that the leads will take time to rebuild when you start to reinvest. This timeline depends on a lot of variables, but an organic campaign can often take 2-3 months or more to get off the ground. If you want to hit the ground running as reopening kicks in, you're going to need to start re-investing ahead of that timeline. I acknowledge that that might not be easy, and it doesn't have to be all or none.
In a recent interview, Mary Ellen Coe (head of Google Marketing Solutions) cited a 20,000% increase during the pandemic in searches from consumers looking to support local businesses. There's a tremendous appetite for reopening and a surge of goodwill for local businesses. If you're a local business, even if you're temporarily closed, it's important to let people know that you're still around and to keep them up-to-date on your reopening plans as they evolve.
I don't expect that the new normal will look much like the old normal, and I'm mindful that many businesses didn't survive to see 2021. We can't predict the future, but we can't afford to wait for months and do nothing, either, so I hope this at least gives you some idea of what to expect in the coming year and how we might prepare for it.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
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