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In this episode, we discuss Rand Fishkin on our podcast, insight on how people link to your competitors, gaining trust with your audience, mobile popups and mobile-first indexing, and a ton of great SEO insight!

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

• Full algorithm news insight
• Google admits they’ve had a GSC bug related to messages sent to site owners
• How to request content removals
• New structured data feature to report
• A technical SEO guide to Lighthouse Performance Metrics
• Useful tip for auditing layout shifts
• New Web Vitals lane in the Performance panel recordings
• What kind of negative effects come with a mobile popup?
• Possible reasons why your site has not yet moved to mobile-first indexing
• Possible Google Search Console reporting issues
• Updated options for flagging GMB reviews
• Google Posts have not been expiring after 7 days
• Google testing opening dates in the Local Pack
• Google may have removed star rich results in the SERPS for this profession 
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

This was an interesting read on Search Engine Roundtable this week.

Does anyone else feel like Google's "medic" lift needs to get toned down a little? Like, I see healthline and medicalnewstoday ranking in verticals they really don't/shouldn't have authority in…

— Jimmy ❤️🤍💙 (@itsjimmyw) January 19, 2021

He shared that Healthline was ranking really well for keywords like, “how to stretch shoes,” “how to get rid of ants,” “baking soda vs baking powder,” cream of tartar substitute” and “white vinegar”.

What we thought was most interesting was John’s Mueller’s response. “Most of those queries also have a ‘health’ aspect”

I get what you mean, but most of those queries also have a "health" aspect, so I can see how we might tip that way. I'd love to see clear non-healthy queries if you run across any, but I'll also pass some of those on to the team as feedback. Thanks!

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) January 19, 2021

The article on how to stretch shoes discusses some health aspects such as foot stretching exercises. The article on white vinegar has a section called “health benefits”.

For sites that discuss medical content, Google really does need to have a certain level of trust. As they state in their document on how they fight disinformation, Google’s algorithms often will prefer to rank a site that they deem authoritative, such as Healthline.

What we thought was interesting here was that these weren’t really queries that we would call medical. We suspect that Google’s algorithms can determine that sometimes when people search for “how to stretch shoes” they are doing so because their feet hurt. If their intent is to find medical information, then this is a health issue and Google will want to rank an authoritative medical site.

We’ve saved our advice on this for our premium members, but recommend checking out the article nonetheless!

Special podcast episode with Rand Fishkin 

This week Marie is joined by Rand Fishkin on our podcast to discuss his recent article on inferred links, major Google topics, and of course, Marie’s current theories. We’ve recorded it and will transcribe it on our blog. It is one not to miss!

Getting insights from how people link to your competitors (Sponsored, but good for everyone)

We loved this tweet thread:

When creating content, you should try to understand why people are linking to the pages you wish to beat—and then apply those insights to your post.

How do you do this? 👇

— Ahrefs (@ahrefs) January 26, 2021

Let’s walk through the example Ahrefs gives here. They typed in “seo copywriting” into Ahrefs’ Keyword explorer and saw that all of the top results have many sites linking to them. They then looked at the anchor text of these links as this can tell us what specifically captured the linking site’s attention. 

We gave this a spin for one of our top queries, “EAT and SEO”. We looked at the anchors pointing to one of the top pages, which was from SEMrush and it was interesting to see that several people linked with the anchors “Google’s E-A-T score” and also “YMYL”. Our article on EAT ranks really well. But, after doing this exercise, most likely we could gain even more search traffic if we produced content that people would want to reference when it comes to these terms. 

There is no “Google E-A-T score”, but if we added a section to our article that explained that this is the case, it may get some visitors. Similarly, while we describe YMYL throughout our article, we don’t have a section that describes what it is. If we were wanting to spruce up this content, we could add a section called, “What is YMYL”, or if there was enough information on the subject, we could actually create a whole new article describing what YMYL is and it likely would rank and attract links from people who are looking for a reference to describe to their readers what YMYL is.

There is a lot that can be learned by looking at how people reference your competitors!

Dissecting the AMP plugin for WordPress

AMP Project has officially released the AMP plugin for WordPress. They have also released a video breaking down the tool in full.

How to gain trust with your audience (plus marketing freelance tips)

Tom Hirst has listed seven ways to gain trust alongside a thread of great marketing tips. You can see the trust gaining tips below, and Tom added the whole thread into an article if that’s what you prefer. These are great tips if you’re starting out your business, or need some motivation to keep it going. 

7 ways to gain trust:

– Be discoverable (online and offline)
– Be authentic (don't fabricate)
– Be transparent (show results)
– Be accessible (help people)
– Be relatable (tell your story)
– Be brilliant (do great work)
– Be useful (spread value)

— Tom Hirst (@tom_hirst) January 21, 2021

Learn about SEO and Web Stories (presented via a Web Story!)

If you are curious about Web Stories and its features, check out Kenichi Suzuki’s Web Stories on why SEOs should be focusing on this new feature. 

A fantastic look into SEO & Web Stories — thanks for writing this up, @suzukik ! https://t.co/NXrDX0Vimj

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) January 21, 2021

25+ excellent link building campaigns

This article has looked at various marketing campaigns agencies produced that were really great. If you need some inspiration, or just want to see what your competition is up to, we recommend checking it out. 

At NeoMam, we spend our days trying to produce the best link-worthy content we can. But we also follow the work of others, and every so often we feel a slight pang of jealousy.

We curated those pangs into a list of the best work of 2020 by our peers:https://t.co/evqXVPGVSB

— Gisele Navarro (@ichbinGisele) January 18, 2021

Google threatens its withdrawal of Search in the Australian market

This is a big headline. Why? Australia wants Google to share royalties with news publishers. The continent is introducing a law that would require tech giants like Google and Facebook to pay for news content. Google clearly did not take this well, threatening to remove their services from the Australian market. In 2019, Google made $3.7 billion in gross revenue from Australia directly with $7.7 billion of their $160 gross revenue from news content. That’s a fair chunk of change. 

We don’t know what will come of this, but it is definitely interesting to see the government push back against tech giants like Google. If search was removed from the continent, that would be a massive change for local businesses that rely on the search traffic. Definitely something worth keeping an eye on.

Looking at the local flux from BrightLocal’s tool, it appears that all is calm. We’ll continue to update you if there are any changes, but for now sit back and relax!

Should You Use Nofollow, Sponsored, or UGC Links? – Adam Riemer
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/using-nofollow-sponsored-ugc-links/389902/
January 19, 2021

Adam responds to a question about the new ‘rel=‘ attributes. “Is it necessary to use Nofollow, Sponsored or UGC links in coupons/vouchers/offers websites where there are a lot of outbound links? If yes, which of the links above is better to use”. If you’re looking for more clarification on each type of link, check out the article as Adam breaks down each specific type of link and how to stay within the guidelines. 

How to avoid layout shifts caused by web fonts – Simon Hearne
https://simonhearne.com/2021/layout-shifts-webfonts
January 19, 2021

This is a massive resource that details ways to optimize your late-loading web fonts to ensure you’re preventing layout shifts from occurring. As Simon points out in his guide, there are resolutions for a number of things which can cause your page’s layout to shift around — solutions involving the pre-allocation of the required space for dynamic elements, and using width and height attributes on images, for example.

Unleash your faceted navigation: How I increased a company’s organic traffic by 230% in 2 months – Andy Chadwick
https://www.andy-chadwick.com/technical/unleash-your-faceted-navigation/
January 19, 2021

Andy Chadwick discusses a recent project which saw him tackle transactional long tail keywords through the uses of faceted navigation. In this article, you’ll learn get an introduction to faceted navigation, potential problems that can arise from this, how select CMS’s help site owners mitigate risk, and potential workarounds that may need to considered when a CMS fails to provide the necessary capabilities.

Outranking Tough Competitors: My One-Year Study of a Google Local Finder – Miriam Ellis
https://moz.com/blog/google-local-finder-study
January 25, 2021

Miriam Ellis from Moz blog conducted a one-year study over the course of 2020 to better visualize a year’s worth of movement within a specific local finder results page. It’s a lengthy but very informative read about the various factors that may or may not affect one’s positioning in the local finder over an extended period of time. It will surely benefit any business owner or local SEO with clients who are striving to perform better in Google’s local search.

Should a Small Business Have a Blog in 2021? – Colan Nielsen
https://www.sterlingsky.ca/should-a-small-business-have-a-blog-in-2021/
January 29, 2021

This is a great question, and one that SterlingSky is asked often. Carrie Hill took to Twitter to see what people thought, and the majority think SMBs should have blogs. So is their value in having a blog as a small business? It is definitely a well debated topic, so read the article to discover their opinion. 

*taps mic*

WE'RE GUNNA HIRE A DIRECTOR OF MARKETING! EVERYONE GET IN HERE!

shout out to @areej_abuali for spreading the word! pic.twitter.com/pYjE1P9MTn

— Crunchy Links (@crunchylink) January 20, 2021

I'm hiring. SEO Director, SEO Managers, SEO Associates, Content Director/Strategist, Copywriters. All levels. Full-time, NYC-based (remote is an option, within the US only). #SEOJobs

— William Álvarez (@williamalvarez) January 21, 2021

I have been informed that this link is not working. Here is the correct link to the role – sorry for the confusion! https://t.co/OvTmAhrmDd

— Jacque Urick (@moarinternets) January 22, 2021

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:

• Full algorithm news insight
• Google admits they’ve had a GSC bug related to messages sent to site owners
• How to request content removals
• New structured data feature to report
• A technical SEO guide to Lighthouse Performance Metrics
• Useful tip for auditing layout shifts
• New Web Vitals lane in the Performance panel recordings
• What kind of negative effects come with a mobile popup?
• Possible reasons why your site has not yet moved to mobile-first indexing
• Possible Google Search Console reporting issues
• Updated options for flagging GMB reviews
• Google Posts have not been expiring after 7 days
• Google testing opening dates in the Local Pack
• Google may have removed star rich results in the SERPS for this profession 
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent 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