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In this episode, we discuss Google’s release of the Link Spam Update rolling out, the latest on the July Core update, how to engage shoppers, some great recommended readings and more!

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

• Full algorithm update news
• Engage shoppers with deal pages in Google Search
• Google adds new insight to their ‘About This Results’ panel
• Keyword tags are being tested in Search results
• New documentation from Google on how various types of search operators work and their limitations
• How long should you keep redirects in place?
• #AskGooglebot: Is shared hosting ok?
• Clarifying edit made to official docs
• What brands should focus their time on
• Why Google may remove FAQ rich results
• A dozen experiments for tabbed content reveal an array of results
• Google’s timeline for privacy sandbox
• Great list of SEO tools
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

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Another week has gone by and low and behold there is more news of updates being released by Google. It looks like “Summer 2021 – Update-Palooza” is just the gift that keeps on giving! 

Premium members can look at what we have been seeing for this week.

Throwing it back to great podcast episodes

With our podcast on summer break, we thought we’d share some great podcast episodes with you in case you may have missed them. First up is this great episode with Lily Ray. If you want to jump ahead, you can always view all episodes here. 

With podcast on a summer break, we thought we'd throw it back to some of our favourite episodes that you may have missed.

First up: @lilyraynyc joins the podcast!
Her and @Marie_Haynes discuss badge icons, Google Discover and the latest SEO news. https://t.co/Y77Mg9IACH pic.twitter.com/nsdXQNOmda

— Marie Haynes Consulting (@mhc_inc) July 23, 2021

Increase in GSC reported soft 404 issues is a bug, says Google 

If your soft 404s have been on the rise lately, you’re probably not alone. Google has identified an issue within their GSC reporting and has deactivated the classifier experiencing issues in order to rectify it.

You may have noticed an increase in soft 404 error reports in Search Console the past few weeks. Thank you for all the reports you've sent our way!

The team identified the classifier that was causing the issue and deactivated it while they fine-tune it.

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) July 23, 2021

Bye bye AMP icon

This past week Google sunsetted the AMP icon from Top Stories and the organic SERPs. If you’re a heavy user of AMP, Glenn wonders if this’ll result in any chance regarding click-through rates. Although not all web users fully recognize what the icon meant (we’re saying this based on previous studies), Lily Ray’s analysis from earlier this year suggested that CTR could in fact be impacted. 

Bye-bye AMP icon. It's gone (from both Top Stories and the 10 blue links). If you heavily use AMP, will be interesting to see changes in CTR (if any) from this change. Not like there's anything you can do about it, though. 🙂 https://t.co/0eFORRcfzS

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) July 20, 2021

The presence of review snippets has dropped (Google bug)

Late last week a number of SEOs noticed that review snippets were on the decline. Fast forward to this week and Google’s Danny Sullivan has confirmed that it appears to be a bug.

ICYMI: Google review snippets (stars) go missing from the search results https://t.co/QOJZwuajbr pic.twitter.com/1zS6EHSG4Y

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) July 23, 2021

It appears that the bug may be finally resolved as Brodie spotted review snippets coming back. Remember, once your pages get crawled, they should return to normal. 

Good news: review snippets have finally started to return in Google's search results 🙌

This is after the confirmed bug from last week – preventing pages from having the treatment

For pages that had review stars prior to this, they should return soon (after G crawls them next). pic.twitter.com/OIahCotJio

— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) July 26, 2021

Landing page optimization tips 

This is a great thread on Twitter about creating impactful and optimized landing pages for conversion. They go in depth about the steps and thinking process behind every decision to generate a landing page that converts with over an 18% conversion rate. They focused on two main things: great copy and conversion centered design. 

They go further in depth about these two thoughts and how they implemented them to create a landing page that converts! Definitely recommend reading this entire Twitter thread if you want to try and optimize your landing page or are struggling to build one right now! 

Posts for hotel GMB listings to be removed 

Allowing hotels to have GMB posts was not intentional according to Joy. This was not happy news for many hotel owners out there who were looking forward to this feature. Hotels, bed and breakfasts and hostels have not been allowed to post because they are one of the restricted businesses for posts. Sorry to anyone out there in hospitality that thought this had finally been changed. 

Just heard from Google that posts being allowed for GMB listings for hotels is not intended and is going to be removed.

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) July 26, 2021

The Ultimate Web Content Writing Checklist for SEO – Ashley Segura
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ultimate-seo-content-checklist/414159/
July 26, 2021 

If you’re regularly writing content for your website, you understand how important it is to write good content — good for humans, and good for search engines. This article from Ashley breaks her tips into three main categories: reader experience, SEO friendliness, and content quality, and has a checklist of questions at the end of each section that you can use to self-review before you publish. 

How To Adjust The Shopify Robots.txt File – Chris Long
https://gofishdigital.com/shopify-robots-txt/
July 22, 2021

Shopify recently announced that users will now have access to robots.txt files! The file automatically includes things like the internal site searches, cart pages, checkout pages, account pages, and duplicate category pages. If this sounds applicable to an e-commerce store of yours, the article gives step by step instructions on how you can alter things. As with any robots.txt file, it can have some pretty devastating impacts if done incorrectly, so proceed with caution. 

How to Build User Trust With CRO & UX Tweaks – Oliver Brett
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/how-to-build-user-trust-with-cro-ux-tweaks/
July 22, 2021

At this point, the majority of webmasters know that E-A-T is extremely important for a site. However, if E-A-T hasn’t been one of the key priorities to your site since its conception, restructuring and better implementing those components to your site can become quite expensive, especially if you have a medium to large-sized website. Luckily, there are a few budget-friendly tweaks that webmasters can do to improve their site’s E-A-T. 

The 80/20 Guide to SEO – Sam McRoberts
https://www.vudumarketing.com/the-80-20-guide-to-seo/
July 18, 2021

Have you heard of the 80/20 principle? Or the Pareto principle? Sam relates this principle to the SEO world in saying 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your clients. Whether you agree with this metric or not, Sam addresses the five key principles of importance and themes website owners should know to get the most out of the 20%. There is definitely much more involved in SEO but this is a great starting point outlining the fundamentals of a fantastic website.

A Guide to Google My Business Services and Google My Business Products – Claire Carlile
https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/google-my-business-products-and-services-guide/
July 22, 2021

For our readers who may just be getting introduced to GMB, this is a really great and simple read that tediously breaks down all things beginner-GMB. This article contains definitions, many how-tos, and the benefits that may not be so obvious to GMB beginners. It is a great resource and is certainly worthy of a bookmark.

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 update news
• Engage shoppers with deal pages in Google Search
• Google adds new insight to their ‘About This Results’ panel
• Keyword tags are being tested in Search results
• New documentation from Google on how various types of search operators work and their limitations
• How long should you keep redirects in place?
• #AskGooglebot: Is shared hosting ok?
• Clarifying edit made to official docs
• What brands should focus their time on
• Why Google may remove FAQ rich results
• A dozen experiments for tabbed content reveal an array of results
• Google’s timeline for privacy sandbox
• Great list of SEO tools
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

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