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In this episode, we discuss Google’s conversational updates to search, why Google may be taking longer to index new content, information regarding Google crawling, and the latest SEO tips and news!

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

• Marie’s algorithm analysis
• Say goodbye to Google’s AI created AMP Stories
• Theorizing why Google might be taking longer to index new content
• Should you be disavowing low quality, highly targeted blogspot links if they’re in the hundreds or thousands?
• Comparing Google Search Console’s crawl stats to log files
• John Mueller clarifies how to interpret the indexing crawler information within Google Search Console
• Does the image crawler work separately from smartphone and/or desktop crawler?
• Google comments on anchor text
• Google comments on the indexing process, but not everyone feels the same way
• New tool that leverages the Wayback Machine for bulk retrieval
• My tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO and Local SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

A tip for using Ahrefs’ Referring Domains tool to improve E-A-T (Sponsored, but still good for everyone!)

We know that Google is greatly preferring to rank sites with good E-A-T, but how do they determine that? If you’re new to the topic, we have written a very thorough article on everything you need to know about Google’s use of E-A-T. Google has told us that authority is closely tied to PageRank. They’ve also said throughout the Quality Raters’ Guidelines that recommendations from authorities contribute to E-A-T.

With this in mind, we set out to determine what type of content on MarieHaynes.com gets links from authoritative websites. 

After seeing this tweet, we played around with the search function in the Referring Domains section:

#quickSEOtip (using @ahrefs)

If you need to know if a certain website has linked to you (or to your competitor)…

There's a handy SEARCH BAR in "Referring domains" report in Ahrefs.

…which I just realised I'm using quite often, so thought I'd share it with you 🙃 pic.twitter.com/M0JXVtsllD

— Tim Soulo (@timsoulo) December 1, 2020

We put the domain name of several authoritative SEO websites into this tool and analyzed what types of links we were earning from them.

Our goal was to determine which type of content can gain links from authoritative places without us doing link outreach. While it’s not wrong to ask for a link, we thoroughly believe that the types of links that Google values are those that truly are recommendations from experts and are not just there because of SEO efforts. Links that use your content to support or reference a point are likely very good ones!

It didn’t take us long to see that there were certain types of content on our site that gained more true natural links than others:

• Case studies that gave practical advice
• Quotes from Googlers in our conference write-ups such as this Q&A with Gary Illyes
• Thorough guides such as our guide to Google’s Core Web Vitals
• Anything we write on disavowing links

Knowing this can help keep us on track so that we are writing on topics in a way that experts in SEO like to quote. 

This exercise would be extremely helpful for large websites that cover many different topics. Rather than looking at which posts get the most links, it can be helpful to see which types of content get the most links from the authoritative sites in your subject matter. 

If you are not an Ahrefs subscriber, you can still do this by looking at your links manually, as downloaded in GSC. You can filter your spreadsheet to only include links from certain domains that you recognize as authorities. However, it’s a lot faster to simply pop those names into Ahrefs’ referring domains tool!

Learn about Google’s latest conversational updates to Search

Google has recently made improvements to search, the first being understanding the context from one query to the next. They are using context from your recent activity to provide a more specific and relevant search. The example Google provided was if you were searching for Thanksgiving recipes, and then searched for “carving”, it would relate that to turkey carving, based on your first search. Another new feature is that Google will actually provide you with additional suggestions, ie. movie suggestions based on the genre you were searching for.  Additionally, relevant follow-up questions will also surface to help you go even further with your search. 

This all aligns with our theories that Google is understanding relevancy more to provide a better search experience. This likely will make keyword research much more challenging. Understanding user intent is going to be very important.

Google Search can now help you get the information you want faster. 🙏 Learn more about the latest conversational updates to Search → https://t.co/Bsyhui4t9o pic.twitter.com/JmG0xw2YK1

— Google (@Google) November 23, 2020

Why does Google surface old text for a page in Search?

If Google knows that text used to be on a page, it might still show in the SERPs for people searching for it — even if that text has been removed (there is a benefit to it, even if it doesn’t always seem so).

Not really. If we know a text used to be on a page, we might continue to show the page even if the text has been removed. For example, if a company changes its name, you'd still want to find the website if you searched for the old name.

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) November 26, 2020

This reminds us of some of the interesting discussions we have had in the past on “ghosted links”. Many SEOs believe that good links are still rewarded by Google for quite some time, even after they have been removed.

Does Google “normalize”/translate content to one language in order to index it?

More from John: But Google did run some experiments for languages where it didn't have a lot of content. In that test, G translated the query into a different language & then brought results from that other language (& Google would show the translated version of those pages). https://t.co/0xWfZcUe4M

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 30, 2020

The word from Google is that they don’t translate content to English in order to index it, they will typically index the content in the original language. For languages that don’t have a lot of content, it is translated to another language to display relevant search results.

Google is taking your questions related to Web Stories

Google Web Creators is creating another AMA episode to discuss Web Stories! This is a great opportunity to ask Paul Bakaus, web creator relations lead at Google, some questions about Web Stories. There are already some great ones in the thread, so this will likely be an awesome AMA. 

We want to hear from you!

We’re putting together another AMA episode of Storytime with @pbakaus so if you have any burning questions about #WebStories, now’s the time to ask.

Tweet us your questions today for a chance to be featured!

👇👇👇

— Google Web Creators (@WebCreators) November 30, 2020

This week’s local flux from BrightLocal, shows a peak that corresponds to American Thanksgiving as well as Black Friday. We anticipate that these changes are mainly seasonal and nothing to worry about.

How to create kick-ass local content

This is another episode of BrightLocal’s local marketing podcast featuring local expert Carrie Hill! In this episode Carrie discusses common questions about how often local businesses should be blogging, the type of content that converts, and how to remedy great content that isn’t ranking. 

Episode 6 of Adventures in Local Marketing is out now! This time @CarrieHill reveals her secrets on:

🔬 Performing effective content research
💰 How to make content that ranks and converts
🚫 What to avoid when creating content

Happy listening! https://t.co/0RLvxNfRYd

— BrightLocal (@brightlocal) November 25, 2020

7 site structure & internal linking principles – Sam Underwood
https://www.samunderwood.co.uk/blog/site-structure-and-internal-linking/
November 25, 2019

We’re going back to 2019 for this article because it’s that good! Sam Underwood brilliantly discusses the importance of site structure, touches on the concept of PageRank, and most importantly, gives a series of useful principles for improved site structure and internal linking.

I Blogged Every Night for a Week. It Went Terribly. – Rand Fishkin
https://sparktoro.com/blog/i-blogged-every-night-for-a-week-it-went-terribly/
November 23, 2020 

Rand Fishkin wrote more blog content in a week’s window back in November than he ever had in over 2.5 years of blogging. The content he published surrounded the topic of marketing takeaways from the 2020 election and he soon after found that these blog posts actually underperformed pretty badly. He experienced a slight traffic drop during this timeframe so he dug into it a little bit more.

Premium members also get the following:

It’s well worth the $18 per month!

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

• Marie’s algorithm analysis
• Say goodbye to Google’s AI created AMP Stories
• Theorizing why Google might be taking longer to index new content
• Should you be disavowing low quality, highly targeted blogspot links if they’re in the hundreds or thousands?
• Comparing Google Search Console’s crawl stats to log files
• John Mueller clarifies how to interpret the indexing crawler information within Google Search Console
• Does the image crawler work separately from smartphone and/or desktop crawler?
• Google comments on anchor text
• Google comments on the indexing process, but not everyone feels the same way
• New tool that leverages the Wayback Machine for bulk retrieval
• My tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO and Local SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

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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