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In this episode, we discuss a possible April update, updated CWV page, insight into how Google’s algorithms have changed, Google penalty recovery tips, why Prince William is the sexiest bald man and more!

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

• Possible update Apr 3/4? Probably no, but March 29 looks important
• Google Engineer Paul Haahr gives some very interesting insight into how Google’s algorithms have changed
• Are open redirects advisable?
• A complete list of Google Penalties and recovery tips
• Should you index your product pages?
• How long does it take Google to process changes to your site?
• Research a domain before you attempt to purchase it
• Reputation sites have plummeted in Google
• Have you caught wind of the “Prince William is world’s sexiest bald man” study?
• GMB sending out suspension notices
• A technical issue is impacting service areas businesses
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

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Google has updated the Core Web Vitals & Page Experience FAQs

We updated a bunch of things in the core web vitals / page experience update FAQ thread in the help forum. Check it out at https://t.co/yZsZNwGKmO if you're curious. pic.twitter.com/JJBDvXDe9U

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) March 30, 2021

For those who haven’t read it, there is a lot of great information in this guide that answers most of the questions you could come up with about the Core Web Vitals, the tools available to us for auditing them, the implications for AMP, and the upcoming page experience update.

This line in particular is really worth highlighting:

Publishers should be focused on making improvements to page experience a relative priority over time as page experience ranking becomes the norm that users expect and other publishers would want to match.

The reality is not likely to be that if your site does not have great Core Web Vitals scores by the time the page experience updates arrives next month, it is going to immediately have its rankings obliterated in search. That doesn’t mean it should be ignored, though. Rather, similar to mobile friendliness in the past, as it gradually becomes the standard expected by users and more of your competitors are making investments and improvements in this area, you’re likely to fall behind in search performance if you’re not making the page experience of your webpages, as Google phrases it, “a relative priority” in the coming months and years. 

With all of that said, we are going to be very curious to see what the immediate impact is when the update arrives in May. Google calls it a “tiebreaker” in cases where the relevancy and quality of the content appears to be very similar. Do we see notable impacts in highly competitive verticals — say among news publishers that compete in the Top Stories carousel and organic search results against dozens of other high quality, highly authoritative news outlets covering the same stories?

SEO lightning round from Google

In the most recent episode of SEO Lightning Round, John Mueller answers a few questions from users.

🔗 📅 Will putting the date in URLs affect my Google ranking? Can a self referential canonical override an existing canonical? 🤔

👉 Find out answers to these and many other SEO Qs in our latest #AskGooglebot ⚡️ lightning round ep. with @JohnMu

Watch → https://t.co/4zo8Do1Eo3 pic.twitter.com/DV45K4C0ao

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) March 31, 2021

503 errors are only supposed to be (very) temporary

This site owner had their server down for ten days and opted to return a 503 page (ie. Service Unavailable) for the site. In that space, the site has been unintentionally de-indexed and clicks have understandably plummeted. 

In response, John advised that longer term usage of a 503 status code will cause pages to be dropped from the index. They’ll return, but he says that you shouldn’t expect the results/performance to be the exact same. As a worthwhile reminder to anyone who owns or manages a site, the web evolves at a rapid pace and performance changes should be expected. 

We don't recommend using 503 for more than a handful of days – otherwise pages will drop from the index. They'll come back when they work over time, but nothing (removed or not) is ever in it's "previous state" — the web is dynamic and always changes.

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 4, 2021

Here’s a reminder to test your viewports

Friendly reminder here to test the layout on your pages. After all, different viewports can produce unexpected and undesirable results (see below!). Let this serve as a good reminder to screen your pages either by a tool or humans.

Always test your hero image + text alignments on different viewports 👀 pic.twitter.com/HQ2nT8nwa0

— Izzi Smith (@izzionfire) April 3, 2021

Bot traffic has no effect on Google Search

This might not come as much of a surprise to you, but third-party bot traffic — even if it’s faked to show up as organic traffic in your Analytics — should have no effect on your organic traffic in Google Search:

That has no effect on Google Search.

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 3, 2021

There is a one day spike in the Local RankFlux tool on Monday March 30th. Marie wrote about her thoughts pertaining to the possible organic update on the 29th in last week’s newsletter so it’s hard to say if it’s connected, but makes sense to see some local spikes around that time given it was Easter.

Get to Know the Google Knowledge Graph & How it Works – Dixon Jones
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-google-knowledge-graph-works/400485/
March 31, 2021

At a base level, knowledge graphs are ways for search engines to understand the relationships between concepts, ideas, and known entities. We highly recommend reading Dixon’s easy to digest primer on the knowledge graph if you feel like it is a topic you are in the dark on. 

What Is a Google Knowledge Panel and How To Get One – Jason Barnard
https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-knowledge-panel/
March 29, 2021

This is a wonderfully in depth guide from Jason Barnard on knowledge panels, and most importantly, how to get one for your site/business. The first half of the guide goes into great detail regarding what knowledge panels are and how Google generates them. The second half of the guide details how to go about developing a presence for your brand in the knowledge graph as a known entity, and claiming your knowledge panel. 

The Beginner’s Guide to Link Building – Paddy Moogan
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building
Updated: March 30, 2021

Realizing your site needs better mentions and don’t know where to start? Paddy Moogan has written The Beginners Guide to Link Building over at Moz. In this incredible 6 page guide Paddy goes through the basics of links from what a link is, to the anatomy of a link, to what links mean for search engines, all in the first chapter. In other chapters Paddy explains how to structure a link building campaign, finding your audience, outreach, link building tactics and measuring success and metrics. In this guide is everything you need to know to create your link building campaign. 

6 Common Google SERP Feature Misconceptions in SEO – Brodie Clark
https://moz.com/blog/google-serp-feature-seo-misconceptions
April 6, 2021

When we talk about the SERPs evolving, we often mean that new features have been integrated. It can be a lot to keep up with, so much so that Brodie and Izzi Smith created a quiz which ended up fielding this very article.

Debug Web Vitals in the field – Philip Walton
https://web.dev/debug-web-vitals-in-the-field/
April 1, 2021

This latest web.dev offering provides a detailed guide of how to utilize the available performance APIs to collect via your analytics tools the most valuable debugging information for each Core Web Vitals metric, pulling from the interactions with your pages by real users in the field. This will allow you to detect the patterns needed to identify the most critical issues in need of addressing across your site’s pages. It’s not strictly useful for Core Web Vitals debug information, either — this can be helpful for any performance metric that can be measured by JavaScript.

Consolidating Locations and Google My Business Listings Due to COVID-19 – Miriam Ellis
https://moz.com/blog/consolidating-gmb-listings
April 5, 2021

How to manage permanent location closures and location consolidations in GMB has been a commonly asked question since the impact from the pandemic began to set in for many local businesses. Miriam Ellis over at Moz blog has written up an excellent guide for local businesses in this situation.

.@pexels is hiring a Remote Based Head of SEO (w/ 5+ years of experience, $70k – $110k) 👇https://t.co/QNxhIyJVTX

— Aleyda Solis 👩🏻‍💻 (@aleyda) April 4, 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:

• Possible update Apr 3/4? Probably no, but March 29 looks important
• Google Engineer Paul Haahr gives some very interesting insight into how Google’s algorithms have changed
• Are open redirects advisable?
• A complete list of Google Penalties and recovery tips
• Should you index your product pages?
• How long does it take Google to process changes to your site?
• Research a domain before you attempt to purchase it
• Reputation sites have plummeted in Google
• Have you caught wind of the “Prince William is world’s sexiest bald man” study?
• GMB sending out suspension notices
• A technical issue is impacting service areas businesses
• 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