Loganix’s Year in SEO: A (Quick) Recap of 2020

Jake Sheridan
Jan 27, 2021
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It’s almost the end of January 2021 which means one thing:

The obligatory look back at 2020 in blog post form!

To say a lot happened in 2020 would be an understatement.

2020 was a year of highs and lows, political movements, documentaries about Tiger Kings, lockdowns, memes, baby Yoda, and LOTS of home food deliveries.

But this roundup isn’t about any of them. It’s about what happened in SEO and what the fine folk at Loganix got up to.

Let’s go.

What Happened at Loganix 🔥

It is easy to write off the year 2020 as one of the worst years. While it was far from ideal, Loganix did get a lot done at least.

A new site redesign, loads of updates to existing products, brand new products built and launched, backlink inventory updates and more!

It’s amazing how much you can get done when your team is fully remote (and locked inside with high speed internet connections and a desire to do good SEO stuff).

Anyway, here’s a quick rundown of what happened at Loganix:

COVID

You can’t really talk about 2020 without mentioning COVID-19, everyone’s least favorite virus.

TLDR:

  • We saw businesses cancel or pause services
  • Lot of online businesses (ourselves included) took a wait-and-see approach
  • Internally we reviewed costs and operations
  • Doubled down on improving our own site and products (more on that later)

We wrote more about Covid19 impacts here if you want to know more about how it affected Loganix.

Enough doom and gloom. Let’s look at some of the better stuff to happen in 2020:

Redesign

We FINALLY updated our site and launched the redesigned version.

It’s looking pretty slick:

We are still working on the messaging, but I hope you’d agree that it’s looking loads better.

It’s our aim to make the whole process of browsing what we do a lot easier and more user friendly.

Speaking of which…

New SEO Products

We launched a bunch of new products to help SEOs get their jobs done faster and with more predictable results.

Here’s what we launched:

We are constantly updating and improving our processes to fulfill these new products (sorry team!). We want these to be the best SEO service packages out there.

Responses have been pretty positive so far…

“Loganix saves us 30 hours a month—and tens of thousands of dollars we’d need to pay to hire someone full-time. Plus, they really care about getting it right.”

Jerry Zheng, Senior SEO Specialist, OneLocal

“As a Digital Strategist on a lean in-house team, time and efficiency are always front of mind. Thanks to Loganix, we were able to outsource key aspects of our SEO efforts without having to worry about compromising quality. We found huge value in the competitive reports. They helped us identify opportunities that had the best chance of making an impact and played a significant role in our recent growth.”

Steven Orechow, Digital Strategist, stevenorechow.me

“Your keyword research forms a great base for me to finish up with a little fine-tuneing. Saves me hours of work. Useful information and it does not feel like a KW dump that anyone can do with Ahrefs.”

Robert Hising, Partner, Green Unicorn Farms

Link Building Inventory

We made some BIG changes to our inventory of backlinks.

We did the following:

  • Increased our link inventory. Actually we tripled, it is sitting at 2500+ sites now
  • Moved inventory into the dashboard to make it easier to browse our links (+ added Edits, CBD and Pool tabs/sites/products into the mix)
  • Added better sorting, filters and generally made it pretty to look at
  • For all you data nerds out there, we added the domain hosting location, primary language, referring domains, traffic geo breakdown, and more.
  • Added the blog partner system where you can make money by placing content (and links) on your website, by listing with us.
  • Built our credit reward system to be less reliant on coupons, and instead, we reward purchases with credit back at the end of the month for purchases.
  • Moved support/tickets into the client dashboard.
  • We’ve also created a nifty filter to help you choose which columns you want to see.
  • Oh and we created a bunch of resources to help with link building & SEO: link buying guide, backlink quality checklist, SEO competitor analysis sheet (more coming soon!).

Slack Community

We launched the Loganix Slack Community to discuss all things marketing, water cooler chit chat, and memes.

Join Loganix employees, customers, and a bunch of other brilliant marketing minds inside.

Everything Else

Looking back, A LOT of stuff was launched or re-launched in 2020.

Here’s a quick rundown of everything else:

  • Case Studies – We published our first fancy case study (featuring Rankings.io)
  • Guestposts – Opened our doors to get people to write for Loganix. So far we’ve had some awesome guestposts on the blog, (like this post on bootstrapping SEO and this on topical relevance).
  • Local SEO – Launched the Citation Audit Pro and rebuilt our citation indexing system.
  • Content – We rebuilt out content services and added in content-briefs-as-a-service.
  • Managed Services – We updated + enhanced our agency service to focus on being a full-service solution with account management + strategy.
  • PPC Services – Launched PPC services in our dashboard (including managed PPC, white label PPC and GA management)

Phew! That’s a lot of stuff.

Enough about us, let’s take a quick look back at what happened for SEOs in 2020…

The Year in SEO – 2020 🎉

With many businesses forced to pivot and increase their online presence in 2020, SEO has never been more important – or more in demand – than right now.

Let’s take a moment to look back on this crazy year and look forward to the innovations that are predicted for 2021 and beyond!

Microsoft 2020 Vision: Trends to define the next decade

Microsoft Advertising Brand Studio explores what trends will define the next 10 years of the century.

Focus on building trust, rely less on likes and click-throughs, new offerings create a whole new marketplace with their own demand and supply.

“In 2020 and beyond, the brand who delivers on the customer experience becomes the default brand, not because of an ad, but because of the experience it provides in response to the ad.”

Soft skills:

  1. Creativity
  2. Humility
  3. Empathy
  4. Adaptability
  5. Transparency

Hard Skills:

  1. SEO
  2. Data analysis
  3. Copywriting
  4. Behavioral analysis
  5. Automation

Read it here 👉  2020 Vision: Trends to define the next decade

Google Algorithm Update

The purpose of core updates is to reduce the gap between the expected ranking (based on the raters and other manual sources) and the actual results.

January 2020

Another core update penalizing thin content and emphasizing content that can have a direct impact on a reader’s health, finances, safety, and ultimately their happiness — Your Money or Your Life (YMYL).

May 2020

Appeared to be an E-A-T correction update — a large shakeup affecting niches more than usual core updates.

December 2020

According to Moz, this was the third largest named core update, very close in measured impact to the May 2020 Core Update and the August 2018 “Medic” Update.

Read it here 👉  2020 Google Core Updates

2020 Google Glitches

June 22, 2020

Heavy movement in rank-tracking tools showed heavy flux. A Google rep confirmed an indexing bug affecting Disqus comments that would be fixed during this time period.

August 10, 2020

Reports of massive ranking changes for a few hours, which then disappeared. Google later confirmed a glitch in their indexing systems.

September 29, 2020

Google confirmed an indexing and canonicalization bug starting in early September.

October 12, 2020

Google claimed that the bulk of the indexing and canonicalization bug(s) that started in September had been fixed by around October 14th.

Read it here 👉  2020 Google Glitches

Google’s Year in Search 2020

Explore the searches that shaped 2020 from Google Trends.

  1. Coronavirus
  2. Election results
  3. Kobe Bryant
  4. Zoom
  5. IPL
  6. India vs New Zealand
  7. Coronavirus update
  8. Coronavirus symptoms
  9. Joe Biden
  10. Google Classroom

Read it here 👉  Google’s Year in Search 2020

What’s Coming in 2021

Core Web Vitals

The page experience signals in ranking will roll out in May 2021, combining Core Web Vitals with existing search signals.

Read it here 👉  Core Web Vitals

Legal Pressure on Google’s Parent Company (Alphabet)

Texas and nine other states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google in December 2020. Alleging that Google unlawfully monopolizes the online-display advertising market and entered into an illegal agreement with Facebook, who is named as a co-conspirator, to manipulate advertising auctions and prices. The Texas-led lawsuit is the second major antitrust case brought against Google this year, following a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit in October.

Read it here 👉  Legal Pressure on Google’s Parent Company (Alphabet)

Summary

That’s it. It’s been a pretty busy year.

To sum up: 2020 was the year of change – 2021 will be the year of growth.

Thanks for growing with us!

 

Written by Jake Sheridan on January 27, 2021

Founder of Sheets for Marketers, I nerd out on automating parts of my work using Google Sheets. At Loganix I build products, and content marketing. There’s nothing like a well deserved drink after a busy day spreadsheeting.