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In this episode, we discuss the latest on the June and July Core Updates, how Google handles soft 404s, manual actions and penalties, Google’s new markup property, some great tips from John Mueller and more!

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

• Full analysis of the recent core updates
• Google introduces a new markup property and editorial content policy
• The AskGoogleSeries tackles whether or not you should hide affiliate links?
• Why does GSC show things that aren’t necessarily reflected in the SERPs?
• Using regex in Google Search Console queries
• Manual actions: what they are and how they’re caused
• How Google handles soft 404s on mobile and desktop
• Two lightweight ranking signals running in parallel
• You can now see this in GMB Messaging
• A recent Google test is leveraging entities and reviews
• What you should know about Events and Google My Business
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

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Over the past 4-5 weeks, we have seen quite a lot of updates rollout, including two spam updates, the page experience update, the June core update, and the July core update. 

Barry actually had a really good infographic made up to show how much activity there has been in the last 1-2 months. Our premium subscribers will get our full analysis of the updates. 

Podcast and newsletter update

As Marie is still on her recovery journey, we wanted to let you know that there will not be a podcast episode this week. For the latest algorithm news, our staff are taking a stab at writing the algorithm section of the newsletter to keep you up to date on what’s happening. You can also keep an eye on our socials (Twitter) and our algorithm changes page. We appreciate your understanding.

Best practice for showcasing your customer support methods in Google Search

Google made an announcement July 7th, 2021, encouraging businesses owners to provide more clear information on how people can contact or get support from them. Google emphasizes that they strive to show the most accurate information possible, but things aren’t always perfect. In order to help with this, they described a few ways businesses can show information that customers or Google might want or need.

Customers are often looking for ways to contact businesses, and Google works to show them the best available information in a variety of ways. Businesses can help us with this by following several best practices. Learn more in our post: https://t.co/h9Aey7sUF1

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) July 7, 2021

Some great tips from MozCon 

The latest MozCon just wrapped up and fortunately for you, Lily caught some excellent tidbits. Below she covers Jackie Chu’s (SEO @ Uber) tips on internationalization:

Great tip by @jackiecchu about using extra signals beyond hreflang to show Google which version of your site is targeted to which international audience, such as linking to that country's respective social profiles, or editing the NAP to reflect that country's info.#mozcon pic.twitter.com/2T24euwRyZ

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 12, 2021

"Add all your international subfolders into GSC and set international targeting for each of them" – @jackiecchu

BRILLIANT#mozcon

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 12, 2021

We hope to have more MozCon tips in the next newsletter as well!

This is when you’ll start seeing positive effects in your CWV 

If you’re being shown as “poor” in your CWV score, then you likely won’t see any positive effects, says John. To improve ranking, make sure you understand how Google measures page experience, continuously optimize for users, and consider improving relevancy. After all, good content trumps page speed and should be the priority!

You'll start to see positive effects once you get out of the "poor" area in core web vitals. It's not a magic bullet, we use lots of factors for ranking, and relevance is still very important. There's more about these at https://t.co/7cNmVFo2Xo and in lots of docs linked there.

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) July 11, 2021

Joy’s observations on local for the past two core updates 

We’ve summarized what our clients and the industry have seen in regards to core updates at the beginning of this newsletter, but here’s a look at what Joy Hawkins has seen in the local sphere. 

She has noticed her clients benefiting from the last two updates. This client has seen noticeable traffic improvements for high-intent keywords that include the name of their city. This seems to be the trend. She dives into what SEO changes they’ve implemented for this client, so if you’re in a local niche, we’d recommend giving this a read. 

It has been a while since I published anything about an algorithm update. I’ve been spending a lot of time digging into this one client of ours and they are benefiting a ton from the last 2 core updates so I thought I would share what I’ve been noticing. https://t.co/CcvmN7iMTh

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) July 8, 2021

Looking at the rank flux tool from BrightLocal, we only see a one day spike on Saturday with all returning to normal.

Google’s Inverted Index of the Web – Bill Slawski
https://www.seobythesea.com/2021/07/inverted-index-of-the-web/
July 9, 2021

If you’re interested in how Google used to organize its index in its early days, then you’ll probably find this article from Bill Slawski interesting. Back around 2005, the Google Librarian Newsletter existed, a quarterly newsletter aimed at librarians to help explain how Google indexed the web and rank the results. Definitely check out Bill’s article if you want to know more information on the invertex index patents he found.

How to Optimize for Google Featured Snippets: A 12-Step Guide – Himani Kankaria
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/featured-snippets-optimization/410622/
July 8, 2021

Search Engine Journal gives a great 12-step guide on strategizing and optimizing for Google featured snippets. SEJ explains how tools like SEMrush and content trackers can really help when trying to plan out content for featured snippets. If this sounds like a process that would work for you, we recommend reading the article in full.

The Teammate Technique: How I Achieved a 45% Outreach Success Rate – Itamar Blauer
https://www.itamarblauer.com/teammate-technique/
July 6, 2021

Are you struggling to get high quality backlinks? Itamar reminds readers that thousands of others are doing the same thing. For successful link building, you need to do something different. At MHC when we do our link audits, we look at this type of strategy as a natural way of building natural, valuable, and strong mentions. In fact, this is the way link building should be done by building relationships and adding value.

Local Search Industry Survey – Rosie Murphy
https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-search-industry-survey/
June 29, 2021

Whether you’re looking to see how you measure up in the local SEO industry, looking to work as a local SEO or possibly thinking about hiring one, you’ll want to read the valuable insights from the Local Search Industry Survey 2021 on BrightLocal.

Anyone looking for a remote Head of SEO role? A past client is looking to fill a new position.

Job description: https://t.co/6KzhTZ3BMq

Feel free to DM me if you have questions.

— Anthony D. Nelson (@anthonydnelson) July 7, 2021

Are you an experienced SEO being pressured to go back to an office and don’t want to? Are you looking for a new remote seo director role? Check this out 👇 https://t.co/CgxNhINCqT

— Aleyda Solis 👩🏻‍💻 (@aleyda) July 7, 2021

Looking for two more SEOs to add to our team. Principal SEO Product manager (7+ years experience) and Sr. SEO product manager (5-7). Looking for individuals with experience in SaaS, Product, and Local SEO.

— Tessa Bonacci Nadik (@tessabonacci) July 8, 2021

We have a remote position open with technical SEO and data engineering as required skills. You must have strong Python and Apache products experience. Send me a DM or tag someone who may be interested.

— Ryan Siddle (@ryansiddle) July 12, 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:

• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

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