Table of Contents
  1. Intro
  2. SNYCU Podcast
  3. Not a premium subscriber? You're missing out!
  4. News about Google’s Algorithms
  5. MHC Announcements
  6. Google Announcements
  7. SEO Tips
  8. Other Interesting News
  9. Local SEO
  10. Recommended Reading
  11. Recommended Reading (Local SEO)
  12. Jobs
  13. Want More?
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Ep. 190 - June 30, 2021 - Light Version

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In this episode, we discuss the latest on Google’s Spam Update, a content guidelines hub, how network and status errors affect search, creative link building tips, dealing with a core update hit, and lots more!

SNYCU Podcast

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

  • How HTTP status codes and network and DNS errors affect Google Search
  • Google adds a warning to Search when users may be looking for new and possibly unreliable results
  • A flowchart for dealing with a core update hit
  • Creative link building tips
  • A roadmap and guide for learning SEO
  • How does Google handle agency-placed links in a client’s website footer?
  • Experts discuss the past, the present, and the future of link building 
  • Did you know this data might be available within your GMB Insights?
  • Google My Business for vacation rentals — a guide to help clear up confusion surrounding holiday homes
  • An update has been made to this popular tool (plus a handy resource!)
  • Here’s a Chrome extension that allows you to analyze GMB listings
  • Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles
You’ll also have access to all past episodes, including this one.
I

News about Google’s Algorithms

Marie is off again this week but the team noted two small updates rolling out within the past seven days – part one & part two of what Google is calling a “spam update”. 

The first rolled out on June 23rd, along with the recommendation that webmasters follow Google’s standard webmaster guidelines. They also linked to their post on how Google fights spam in 2020.

The post on how Google fights spam in 2020 is interesting because it notes that Google is using AI to ‘revolutionize’ their approach to removing spam from the search ecosystem. In using AI systems, Google asserts that they have removed over 80% more sites with auto-generated and scraped content. 

The update’s second part started rolling out on June 28th.

Danny Sullivan confirmed that this was part and parcel of the same update. As noted in the first update, both are “global” updates targeting both web and image results. We assume that by rolling out in two parts, Google was monitoring the impact some changes were having.

Lily Ray did some digging and spotted a niche that appears to have been hit hard – the file conversion / keygen generator niche!

We don’t think anyone will be shedding tears over these sites being dropped from the index. Barry has a Twitter thread/discussion going to see if anyone has seen significant changes in their traffic or the SERPs, but so far there doesn’t appear to be much chatter. 

As a few SEOs have pointed out, this is not all that surprising – spammers are unlikely to come out and admit that they are spamming, let alone that Google has caught up with them!

With that said, while every change that Google makes is tried and tested to ensure an overall positive impact on the SERPs, there will naturally be a few good sites that get caught up in the mix and are impacted inadvertently. If you think that may be the case for your site, we would love to hear from you!

MHC Announcements

Canada Day and Fourth of July 

As we mentioned last week, this episode is a day early as tomorrow is a statutory holiday in Canada. Following the traumatic events and discoveries related to residential schools in Canada, we will be taking the day off to reflect and give back at this time. 

Support is available for anyone affected by the lingering effects of residential schools, and those who are triggered by the latest reports. The Indian Residential School Survivors Society (IRSSS) can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-721-0066. 

Sunday is also the Fourth of July, so we want to take the time to wish our neighbours down south a lovely holiday weekend. 

 

No podcast this week 

Marie is still off getting the healing time she needs, so there will not be a podcast episode this week. We truly appreciate your understanding and hope to get back to recording soon!

 

The industry mourns the loss of Russ Jones

This is never a topic we hope to write about. We are sad to share the passing of Russ Jones, Search Scientist and great contributor to the SEO community. Our team would like to give our condolences to Russ’s friends and family, and thank him for all he has done to better search. Barry has created a beautiful thread full of happy memories and more information about Russ and a fund has been set up for his family. Thank you, Russ.

Google Announcements

Google has created a hub for all of their content guidelines

As our friend Barry Schwartz mentioned, Google has now included a single comprehensive page that outlines all of their search policies. 

Within this single page, you can now find overall content policies, search feature policies, and feature specific policies. These policies were developed over time to ensure real concerns and issues were addressed within search. 

If you have questions about any of Google’s search policies, this would be a great place to seek some answers. 

SEO Tips

Barry Adams has compiled a series of Google News resources 

This is a wonderful bookmark-worthy resource for news publishers courtesy of Barry Adams.

Barry’s seoforgooglenews.com substack is completely worth a subscription for any of our readers working in the publishing space. We’ve been reading each edition and can confidently state that it’s chocked full of good, up-to-date advice on qualifying for and succeeding within Google News.

Other Interesting News

Google’s plan to block third-party cookies has been delayed

Earlier last year Google announced that they would be blocking third-party cookies on Google Chrome. The move would block advertisers, publishers and data brokers from getting user information for targeted ads.  

However, Google is now pushing this update to 2023 to give itself time to develop and test its new privacy settings, as well as to give companies enough time to adapt to these changes. One of Google’s worries is that by pushing these changes too quickly it could result in companies using sneaky ways of getting data from users.

Local SEO

There have been fluctuations spotted on the Local Rank Flux tool, but we aren’t sure of their legitimacy. A popup on their website indicates that since the May technical difficulties, they are continuing to see more daily spikes than normal. We’ll let you know if any of these are noteworthy.

Recommended Reading

Demonstrating E-A-T: Tactics to implement, and avoid, for greater search visibility – George Nguyen
https://searchengineland.com/demonstrating-e-a-t-tactics-to-implement-and-avoid-for-greater-search-visibility-349885
June 24, 2021

As more and more content is being generated every day, search engines are, more than ever, paying closer attention to a site’s expertise, authority, and trust. During her most recent talk at SMX Advanced, Lily Ray discussed tactics that can hurt your E-A-T as well as ways to improve your site’s visibility. 

 

How to Build Links at Scale Without Sacrificing Quality – Paddy Moogan
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-scale-link-building/410464/
June 22, 2021

Paddy says in this article that, although a good volume of links is crucial to compete, it’s becoming less important compared to the value of those links. Knowing how to scale your efforts effectively is needed for long term organic traffic.

 

Rich Snippets, including review, how-to, and faq, can be impacted by Google’s broad core updates (and other major algorithm updates). Here’s what it looks like and why you should care. – Glenn Gabe
https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/rich-snippets-impact-google-algorithm-updates/
June 23, 2021

If you think quality doesn’t matter for your site, think again! Glenn Gabe wrote an amazing article on why site quality is so important, how it relates to core updates, and the implications it has on rich snippets. 

 

Google Patent Aims to Solve Searchers’ Need for Related Media Content – Bill Slawski
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-patent-related-entities-media/411542/
June 25, 2021

In this article Bill Slawski gives us a run down of a new Google Patent. The patent discusses related entities and how they fit together in the world of media.

Recommended Reading (Local SEO)

To Post or Not to Post: 7 Quick Tips for Google Posts – Joy Hawkins
https://moz.com/blog/7-google-posts-tips
June 25, 2021

This Whiteboard Friday is a sneak peek of Joy’s learning for MozCon this year. They analyzed over 1000 Google Posts and shared some of their findings. She discusses the four different types of Google Posts, and which type performs best. If this interests you, or you want to learn more about Google Posts, be sure to register for MozCon to get full details about Google Posts and their study.

Jobs

Want 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:

  • How HTTP status codes and network and DNS errors affect Google Search
  • Google adds a warning to Search when users may be looking for new and possibly unreliable results
  • A flowchart for dealing with a core update hit
  • Creative link building tips
  • A roadmap and guide for learning SEO
  • How does Google handle agency-placed links in a client’s website footer?
  • Experts discuss the past, the present, and the future of link building 
  • Did you know this data might be available within your GMB Insights?
  • Google My Business for vacation rentals — a guide to help clear up confusion surrounding holiday homes
  • An update has been made to this popular tool (plus a handy resource!)
  • Here’s a Chrome extension that allows you to analyze GMB listings
  • Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles
You’ll also have access to all past episodes, including this one.
I

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