SNYCU Ep. 152 - Sept. 30, 2020 - Light Version

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In this episode we discuss possible significant algorithm updates this month, major indexing issues, internal linking tips, a recap of the last SEO Mythbusting episode and more!

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In this episode:

Paid members also get the following:

  • Google's mishandling of canonicals are causing serious indexing issues
  • Internal linking tips
  • How to setup scroll depth tracking with Google Tag Manager
  • In GSC, which property settings take priority?
  • Bing is improving its deep learning, here’s how…
  • New information on Google’s featured snippet algorithm
  • Guide: FAQs and tips for GMB suspensions and reinstatements
  • Great tip for earning reviews and producing better results
  • My tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO and Local SEO articles

Algorithm Updates

September 21-24 was possibly an unannounced significant Google update

While Google has not confirmed this as an update, something significant happened with Google’s algorithms last week. This may be connected to the issue causing Google to wrongly canonicalize pages. But, we have several clients that are seeing nice gains (and a few seeing losses) that we really can’t connect to canonicalization issues. 

It is possible that Google made changes to their algo that determines which sites get sitelinks or featured snippet rankings. Our premium readers can read more in the next section which includes some information about one of our clients and the changes they are seeing to sitelinks.

MHC Announcements

Have you submitted a question for our link webinar?

Last week we shared that we are hosting an upcoming webinar on links with Marie. This will discuss major themes such as disavowing, guest posting, unnatural links and more! 

We opened it up for question submission and if you haven’t yet, please submit a question here. We look forward to reading them all! 

Google Announcements

Google experienced a brief hiccup with Google News indexing

At the beginning of the week, Google announced that they’ve been experiencing issues with indexing new News content. It appears to have been short-lived though, as Google announced it was resolved a couple hours after the initial announcement. If you’re a news publisher and were experiencing issues around this time, this may be why! 

There has been some speculation that this Google News indexing issue is connected to the issue we described above whereby Google is wrongly canonicalizing pages, causing some to drop out of the index. However, we have not been able to draw an obvious connection yet between these two problems.

SEO Tips

SEO Mythbusting -- the final episode

On the last and final episode of SEO Mythbusting, host Martin Splitt and guest Barry Schwartz discuss Google and its relationship with the SEO community.

The episode is less than 20 minutes long and worth the watch. Barry raises some interesting questions on transparency-related SEO topics we’ve all been wondering about.

Other Interesting News

Google is prompting searchers to answer about their ad experience

Glenn has spotted a new feedback survey in the SERPs after experiencing poor ad experience. Coincidence? We think not. It is likely another way of Google confirming with users what poor ads are. 

We’ve always advised our clients to be careful with their ads as per the QRG, but this is more than an ATF ad as Glenn points out. We’re interested to see if anyone else spots more of these feedback surveys in the SERPs. 

Local SEO

Looking at the last week, there was a slight jump in the local flux Thursday to Saturday, but nothing major. We didn’t hear any rumblings of significant changes in the local sphere, but will keep you posted if we do.

local flux sept 22

Local SEO - Google Announcements

Additional info from Google surrounding SABs and Virtual office guidelines

Google has made changes to the requirements for SABs and virtual office spaces. As Joy points out, they’ve added back in the requirement of staff having to be at the separate location. However, you are able to have more than one profile if this is the case. See the full list of changes here.

Recommended Reading

The Theory Behind Ranking Factors — Whiteboard Friday – Russ Jones
https://moz.com/blog/ranking-factors-theory
September 18, 2020

Russ Jones dissects the different ‘classes’ of ranking factors which he’s grouped into five categories. Overall we like how Russ speaks about the different ends of the ranking spectrum, what kind of items have the ability to move the needle, and also the takeaway that before we assume someone is talking about a direct ranking factor, we should take the time to understand what kind of ranking factor they’re speaking about.   

 

How to Detect and Improve Underperforming Content: A Guide to Optimization – Samuel Mangialavori
https://moz.com/blog/improve-underperforming-content
September 28, 2020

Courtesy of Samuel Mangialavori of Distilled comes this comprehensive approach to finding improvement opportunities with under-performing content. All of these steps are a lot easier said than done, but this is a bookmark-worthy read from Sam that provides a really good roadmap.

 

3 Types of Blog Posts That Earn the Most Backlinks, According to HubSpot's Link-Building Expert – Pamela Bump
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blog-posts-that-earn-the-most-backlinks
September 23, 2020

HubSpot says that their highest backlink earning blog posts come in the form of 1) posts backed by original data (bonus if it can speak to a wide audience), 2) thought leadership or expert interview posts (people crave expert level insight!), and 3) posts that serve as foundational ‘Ultimate Guides’. They provide examples for each of the above blog posts types and also do a good job of covering tips and alternatives for when data collection may not be overly straightforward. Finally, they discuss a few tips for creating ‘highly linkable content’. 

 

3 best practices of competitor SEO you should know – Kevin Indig
https://www.kevin-indig.com/3-best-practices-of-competitor-seo-you-should-know/
September 10, 2020

A look at competitor SEO which includes examples of excellent real-life strategies, plus a step by step of how to do this yourself. Read the article to learn how to do it! 

 

What is First Input Delay (FID)? – Ziemek Bućko
https://www.onely.com/blog/what-is-first-input-delay
September 22, 2020

There has been a lot of new information coming out about Google's Core Web Vitals which will be getting added to the algorithm as part of the page experience signals sometime next year. You can read MHC’s guide to understanding these new metrics here.

Ziemeks article covers a lot of ground regarding the deeper details of this metric. 

Recommended Reading (Local SEO)

We Asked the Experts: How Do You Make a Google My Business Listing More ‘Clickable’? – Stephanie Newton
https://www.brightlocal.com/blog/make-a-google-my-business-listing-more-clickable/
September 2, 2020

This is an excellent piece by BrightLocal on how to make your GMB listing more clickable. Read the article to see what experts recommend. 

 

Local Search Ranking Factors 2020: What Affects Local Rankings? – Rosie Murphy
https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/key-ranking-factors-for-local-seo/
September 22, 2020

BrightLocal recently reviewed what 50 local SEO experts from Whitespark’s Local Search Summit believe to be the most important rankings factors in 2020. Of course these survey results are just people's opinions, but it is interesting to see how things have changed over the years.

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Paid members also get the following:

  • Google's mishandling of canonicals are causing serious indexing issues
  • Internal linking tips
  • How to setup scroll depth tracking with Google Tag Manager
  • In GSC, which property settings take priority?
  • Bing is improving its deep learning, here’s how…
  • New information on Google’s featured snippet algorithm
  • Guide: FAQs and tips for GMB suspensions and reinstatements
  • Great tip for earning reviews and producing better results
  • My tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO and Local SEO articles

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That's it for this episode! Stay tuned for our Youtube video (my channel is here). If you want to follow me on Facebook, here is my page.

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