Ep. 156 - Oct. 28, 2020 - Light Version

Looking for the premium members version? Log in here

In this episode, we discuss the suspension of “request indexing”, Google Search Console emails, tips to improve your site’s performance, best practices for Black Friday, and more!

If you would like to subscribe, you can find the podcasts here:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Play | Soundcloud

Ask Marie an SEO Question

Have a question that you want to ask Marie? You can ask them on our Q&A with Marie Haynes Consulting page and Marie will answer some of the best questions each week in podcast!

It’s well worth the $18 per month.

The following topics are covered in the premium version of this episode:

• The suspension of “request indexing” in GSC is not connected to Google’s indexing bugs
• Chrome 86 to block abusive notification requests
• Tips for improving site performance
• Google Search Console Training: SEO for e-commerce
• Content marketing tips for e-commerce sites
• Tip for translated content on your site
• Takeaways from an interview with the Bing indexing team
• Google might be able to subscribe to push notifications
• One notable CEO discusses the pros and cons of working in-house vs. hiring agencies or consultants
• It’s Bing’s turn to have indexing issues
• How to win at local search with a Service Area Business (SAB)
• A series of free SEO tools
• My tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO and Local SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

Google Search Console has been sending notification emails promoting Discover and offering optimization tips

As Barry reports, a number of SEOs have spotted emails coming from Search Console regarding ways to optimize for Google Discover traffic. 

We saw some coming through for our clients:

Getting some emails from Google telling us that our clients could get more Discover engagement by including better and bigger images. pic.twitter.com/xsKj9ts7fS

— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) October 21, 2020

The specific recommendation is to utilize the max-image-preview robots meta tag. This gives Google a larger image so that it can be used for Discover thumbnails.

Best practices for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, from Google 

We’re a month away and Google recently released a blog post for helping you prep for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Here are some of the recommended practices:

• Create the page before the sale so Googlebot can discover and index it
• Follow SEO best practices
• Link to the landing page from your home page 
• Use a recurring URL, not a new one for each event — show that the event recurs yearly in the URL (ie. preference for /sale/black-friday over /sale/2020/black-friday)
• Include a relevant, high quality image
• Have your page recrawled to have the content updated quickly

If your site participates in the Black Friday events, we recommend reading the blog post in full and implementing some of these recommendations. 

There’s a special tag type in GTM that you can use when upgrading your property to GA4

A quick reminder for those updating Google Analytics to GA4:

When you're upgrading your existing @googleanalytics preperty to GA4, don't forget to add the tracking code to your website.

In GTM, there's a special tag type for that.

Note that you DON'T need to update the existing GA code, you need to ADD the new one and keep both for now. pic.twitter.com/Bkyez7Q4Qh

— Kristina Azarenko 🔥 (@azarchick) October 26, 2020

Tips for remote workers

Aleyda asked the community for some tips on working remotely. This is a massive thread, but we’ve picked out a few of the tips that we agree with. 

• Time management. Block out time for urgent tasks and less urgent ones. 
• Sleep! You can’t be productive if you aren’t sleeping properly. 
• Keep organized. Making task lists and checking them off once done. 
• Change of scenery. If you need to take a break, take it. If you need to go for a walk to clear your head, it can be very rewarding. 

What are your best tips/methods/tools to keep your productivity high while working remotely? We're preparing the next piece in @remotersnet and would love to quote what you find particularly useful! (will mention & link, of course) Thanks in advance 🙌😊

— Aleyda Solis (@aleyda) October 22, 2020

Nothing pertinent to report here from BrightLocal’s Local RankFlux tool. There was a small spike on Wednesday the 21st, but everything returned to normal and appears to be keeping steady.

Google’s issue with missing product descriptions (seen in GMB) appears to be resolved

There was another Google bug with how local panel products were being displayed. The information appeared to be missing from the product carousels. Some were seeing the image on the carousel but no copy. It was just a bug and appears to be resolved now. Let us know if you see anything different! 

Google's issue with descriptions missing on products in GMB is now fixed. https://t.co/R5BzzrRzxJ

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) October 27, 2020

Restaurant wait times seem to be fixed

Google My Business seems to have fixed the craziness with restaurant wait times.

I checked some egregious examples and they seem ok now.

Users are reporting fix in forum. What are you seeing?https://t.co/m7Imnt4fRm pic.twitter.com/d9n5lFyy0N

— Mike Blumenthal (@mblumenthal) October 24, 2020

In our local SEO section last week we mentioned that restaurant wait times displayed on GMB listings were incredibly inaccurate across the board. This week we are reporting that everything seems to be back on track according to this thread.

On a Scale of 1 to PBN, How Bad Could a Link Kill Your Brand? – Khris Marcial
https://launchpadpr.co/pbn-analysis/
August 10, 2020

Here at MHC we see a lot of links that come from PBNs. Most of them are low quality and are quite obviously unnatural. PBNs may give your site a short term boost but can seriously harm your site in the long run. 

PBN stands for Private Blog Network. It’s a network of blogs that sell links for the purpose of manipulating Google’s search algorithm. If you’d like to learn more about how PBNs can harm your site we recommend you read this article on LaunchpadPR! 

Recommended Reading (Local SEO)

The State of Local SEO: Experts Weigh in on Industry-Specific Tactics – Miriam Ellis
https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-expert-roundup
October 19, 2020

Follow a handful of local experts as they discuss the trends and tactics that webmasters should focus on ahead. This is a pretty in depth article and requires a full read, but the different niches, and the different perspectives of each contributor brings some compelling insight. 

4 Google My Business Fields That Impact Ranking (and 3 That Don’t) — Whiteboard Friday – Joy Hawkins
https://moz.com/blog/google-my-business-fields-that-impact-ranking
October 23, 2020

Joy and her team at Sterling Sky launched their own investigation into what GMB fields have an impact on ranking. Check out her article for more details and some information on what doesn’t rank.

What We Learned From A “Google Only” Marketing Approach – Mike Blumenthal
https://gatherup.com/blog/what-we-learned-from-a-google-only-marketing-approach/
October 21, 2020

Gather Up’s new case study takes a dive into how much the “Google only” approach can influence your business’ marketing for local SEO. For more information on this study, check the link above. 

Core Web Vitals: The Global Publications Set to Be Hit by Google’s Latest Update – James Watkins & Edd Wilson
https://www.impression.co.uk/blog/core-web-vitals-study-global-publications/
October 19, 2020

This is a good read from the team at Impression.co.uk overviewing the Web Core Vitals and how they could impact the media industry. It includes data on how some of the top media publications in the world are currently performing according to these metrics. It will be fascinating to see how much the WCV will impact the competitive landscape in such scenarios. 

Here we grow again! We're growing our content team! If you are looking or know someone looking for a sweet content gig, send them our way! https://t.co/eFzQkZyYp5

— Tess Voecks (@voeckseo) October 20, 2020

#SEOJobs – I have a few available. Looking US (LA) and Canada (French) to join the team. Anyone interested at all? email me! #SEO #jobs – Also looking for a MASTER export packaging export (design). Have 3-4 years/experience in SEO? Reach out, DM. Please #ReShare to help amplify!

— Rob May (@robinlmay) October 27, 2020

Premium members also get the following:

It’s well worth the $18 per month!

• The suspension of “request indexing” in GSC is not connected to Google’s indexing bugs
• Chrome 86 to block abusive notification requests
• Tips for improving site performance
• Google Search Console Training: SEO for e-commerce
• Content marketing tips for e-commerce sites
• Tip for translated content on your site
• Takeaways from an interview with the Bing indexing team
• Google might be able to subscribe to push notifications
• One notable CEO discusses the pros and cons of working in-house vs. hiring agencies or consultants
• It’s Bing’s turn to have indexing issues
• How to win at local search with a Service Area Business (SAB)
• A series of free SEO tools
• My tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO and Local SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

Note: If you are seeing the light version and you are a premium member, be sure to log in (in the sidebar on desktop or below the post on mobile) and read the full article here.

Part of the challenge of SEO is staying on top of industry news, trends, and techniques There is so much information out there that it is easy to get bogged down in information overload and trying to disseminate what’s truly important from all that noise can be really time-consuming and challenging.

Marie’s newsletter is a game changer because it manages to cut through the fluff and deliver high-quality information that is not only really important for those that do SEO, but it is presented in a format that is really easy to absorb.

If you are looking for a trusted information related to search that is highly actionable I would strongly recommend Marie’s newsletter.

– Paul Macnamara – Offers SEO Consulting at PaulMacnamara.com