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In this episode, we discuss the December Core Algorithm update and our thoughts on it thus far, creating sustainable monetized websites, FAQs on Google’s Core Web Vitals, and more!

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

• What you need to know (so far) about the December core update
• New from Google: Creating Sustainable Monetized Websites (with our observations from the QRG)
• Suggested advice for handling your sitemap when you do a site migration
• A thread on things you might not know about bounce rate
• Is there some kind of “quality reduction” to having a bunch of 4xx pages?
• Google explains crawl priority
• How important is positioning of URLs in a sitemap?
• Google has updated their guide on managing crawl budget for larger sites
• Tip for minimizing layout shifts
• How to improve your internal linking
• How to generate more reviews online
• Everything you need to know about Google Posts
• Are Local Services Ads stealing your GMB clicks?
• Using Ahrefs Site Explorer 2.0 reports to compare changes in pages and keywords between two dates (useful for algo updates!)
• Analyzing a Google update via Search Console data and Google Data Studio
• Compare field data for a series of websites using the Chrome UX Report
• My tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO and Local SEO articles

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The December Core Update is live!

We did not think that Google would push out a core update in the final days of 2020. We were quite surprised to see this announcement on December 3:

The December 2020 Core Update is now rolling out live. As is typical with these updates, it will typically take about one to two weeks to fully roll out.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 3, 2020

At 1:16 pm EST on December 3, Google SearchLiaison confirmed that the update had started to roll out. 

At MHC we have been working hard every day since then to analyze this update. We have had daily team meetings where we spend several hours looking at sites that won or lost, and using our knowledge of the Quality Raters’ Guidelines and Google’s algorithms to try and understand why these changes happened. It is still very early to draw conclusions but we were excited to see gains for some of our clients. It should be noted that not all of our clients saw improvements. 

In the next section, our premium readers can read the following:

• A thorough list of everything we know so far on this update
• Which types of sites were affected
• Analytics for sites that improved along with some thoughts as to why
• Our early thoughts on whether links were a component of this update
• Specific advice from Google on recovery

We’re hiring! 

The MHC team is growing again! We’re currently taking applications for digital marketing trainees to join our team in 2021! If you love digital marketing and want to expand into an SEO auditing role, this is the job for you! 

Please be sure to read through the whole application to get a sense of what the job is and what working at MHC is all about. We can’t wait to hear from you! 

It's that time again…. we're hiring!

Want to join an awesome growing team where you can learn from one of the best in the biz?

We're looking for digital marketing trainees! If you'd like to apply, please fill out the application before January 8th! https://t.co/6ZN2upoCra pic.twitter.com/aMSXXYmB6e

— Marie Haynes Consulting (@mhc_inc) December 9, 2020

Use Ahrefs to improve content quality and relevance (Sponsored, but good for everyone!)

We loved this tweet by Ahrefs this week and thought we’d give the content gap tool a go.

Plug the URLs of the two or three top-ranking pages for your primary target keyword in Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool. Then plug your page’s URL at the bottom.

Hit “Show keywords” and you’ll see the keywords that one or more of the top-ranking pages rank for, but you don’t. pic.twitter.com/Bmy6NgOTNK

— Ahrefs (@ahrefs) December 7, 2020

We looked to see who was ranking in the top 10 for searches for Google’s May Core Update. We then used Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool to determine which keywords these posts were ranking for:

The results showed us that Moz’s post on the May core update ranks for a bunch of terms containing the words, “Google algorithm update”.

If we were working on optimizing this post, we would do the following to improve our chances for ranking for more terms:

• Include the words “Google algorithm update” on the page a few times. We likely would add a paragraph that uses, “Google algorithm update” in the h tag.
• Add the word “algorithm” to the title tag
• Link internally to our page several times using the anchor “Google algorithm update”. (See what we did there?)

We would also look at the post from the eyes of someone who is skimming for information on recent Google updates. If a searcher typed in “Google algorithm update” there is good information in our post, but it’s hard to skim and find it. Some tweaks to content really should change this!

We expect we will be using Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool even more as we work with clients to improve their content quality and relevance after the December core update.

Google appears to be testing the Page Experience indicator in the SERPs

As we covered in previous episodes, Google is going to start showing a Page Experience indicator besides the search results. Well, it looks like it is starting to show for some pages! Brodie has spotted it beside a URL. Don’t forget, this could impact your clickthrough rate if you have a low experience score. We recommend working on some optimization before this rolls out in full. 

Whoa, the new Page Experience indicator is now showing for some pages!

Looks very similar to the AMP icon in the current form. Likely to evolve over time.

-> Google Page Experience & Core Web Vitals Icon In Search Results by @rustybrick h/t @peyman_met https://t.co/JxLhVKSLVb pic.twitter.com/GJh7xDFFSQ

— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) December 4, 2020

FAQs related to Core Web Vitals are available

We just published a FAQ on Core Web Vitals in the help forum — check it out at https://t.co/G6QRY7XIRW

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) December 2, 2020

If you are still a little in the dark on the Core Web Vitals — and their arrival as ranking factors in May 2021 —this is a great place to catch up, as Google’s Cheney Tsai has compiled and answered a thorough list of the most frequently asked questions.

Google Search Console for nonprofits

On the most recent “Google Search Console Training” video, Daniel Waisberg talks about what are some of the key data you should pay attention to when reviewing your GSC report. 

🌍 Search Console for Nonprofits

Better understand how you're performing in Google Search with these tips from @danielwaisberg

1⃣ Make sure Google can find your pages
2⃣ Monitor site performance
3⃣ Optimize site for search

Learn more → https://t.co/utnYxtt17O pic.twitter.com/89LFvGS4ha

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) December 2, 2020

Tips on image optimization for Wix

Any Wix users out there? Mordy has provided some great tips to help you optimize your images! Wix has some neat features that will help you improve your photos, so we recommend checking out this thread.

A few folks have asked me about @Wix image optimization (Thanks @BubblesUp for bringing this up!)

So, I figured I'd dive into it in this. And away we go:

1) Wix automatically resizes your images for you
2) We also 'clean' the image up without messing w. image quality #WixSEO pic.twitter.com/zvk05NNKlD

— Mordy Oberstein (@MordyOberstein) December 2, 2020

We expected to see some fluctuations this week on BrightLocal’s flux tool as the organic SERPS saw massive shakeups with the December Core update. Often the local rankings follow suit. In this case, we saw some slight turbulence on December 4, the day following the core update, but things have been relatively quiet on the local scene since then.

Some changes made to the suggest edit feature in Google Maps

There appear to be more explanatory options when you suggest an edit now. It’s a great way to help Google understand why a business may need changing. However, it will be more important to keep your listings up to date, as it will now be easier for users to suggest changes to your business.

Google suggest an edit changes in the local search results, much more detailed now https://t.co/2pvekPBXtx pic.twitter.com/l3T3SA7iCe

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) December 4, 2020

We Analyzed 306M Keywords. Here’s What We Learned About Google Searches – Brian Dean
https://backlinko.com/google-keyword-study
December 1, 2020

If you are currently in the process of optimizing your content to have a better chance of ranking for your main keywords, this article by Backlinko can give you some insights on some of the things you should be focusing on. Definitely a read worth looking into!

A Practical Introduction to Structured Data for SEO – Geoff Jennedy
https://sitebulb.com/resources/guides/practical-introduction-to-structured-data-for-seo/
December 2, 2020

For a hands-on introduction to structured data, this resource from Sitebulb has you covered. If you’re eager to earn rich results, assess what kind of pages could qualify for a schema type, which pages you should consider prioritizing, understanding the different implementation and validation options, this is an excellent overview for anyone new or potentially inexperienced with the subject matter.

📢📢📢📢📢 Senior SEO content manager @TransferWise

We’re looking for a B2B Content Strategist to join our growing SEO team in London. We’d love to hear from you if you have managed a content team already or you’ve managed SEO for a large content site.https://t.co/H04uq1H2GP pic.twitter.com/R6Ba02PgCQ

— Fabrizio Ballarini (@Pechnet) December 2, 2020

I'm looking for a Senior #SEO Executive to join my rapidly growing team at BBI

This is the perfect opportunity for an individual with a solid base of SEO knowledge, looking to grow at a forward-thinking, award-winning agencyhttps://t.co/HzzuBe1V4f pic.twitter.com/SY6kvRvyWX

— 📈🍺 Charlie Whitworth 💾👩🏻‍🦰 (@WhitworthSEO) December 2, 2020

Great Tech SEO job in the (South) Bay Area (posting for a friend, the boss there is an old colleague and a great person to work with!) https://t.co/FdTXLmmht1

— 🌴 Martin MacDonald 🌴 (@searchmartin) December 2, 2020

If you have multi-channel marketing experience (particularly paid & email), and especially if you SaaS experience, then Moz's marketing team would love to talk to you!

You can read more here, and apply on the same page!https://t.co/Q0dgqpWWHt

— Rob Ousbey (@RobOusbey) December 1, 2020

PPC Job Opportunity https://t.co/NGd8KVrK7k

— Colan Nielsen (@ColanNielsen) December 3, 2020

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:

• What you need to know (so far) about the December core update
• New from Google: Creating Sustainable Monetized Websites (with our observations from the QRG)
• Suggested advice for handling your sitemap when you do a site migration
• A thread on things you might not know about bounce rate
• Is there some kind of “quality reduction” to having a bunch of 4xx pages?
• Google explains crawl priority
• How important is positioning of URLs in a sitemap?
• Google has updated their guide on managing crawl budget for larger sites
• Tip for minimizing layout shifts
• How to improve your internal linking
• How to generate more reviews online
• Everything you need to know about Google Posts
• Are Local Services Ads stealing your GMB clicks?
• Using Ahrefs Site Explorer 2.0 reports to compare changes in pages and keywords between two dates (useful for algo updates!)
• Analyzing a Google update via Search Console data and Google Data Studio
• Compare field data for a series of websites using the Chrome UX Report
• My tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO and Local SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

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