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. Local SEO
  9. Local SEO - Tips
  10. Recommended Reading
  11. Jobs
  12. Want More?
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Ep. 198 - August 26, 2021 - Light Version

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In this episode, we discuss everything you need to know about the title tag changes, an influx of Google bugs, optimizing your content, improving your email outreach, great indexing tips and more!

SNYCU Podcast

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

  • Title tag update
  • Introducing Web Stories Dev-Tools
  • An updated How Search Works website
  • AskGooglebots answers ‘why doesn’t a site query show all of my pages?
  • Important questions for optimizing content
  • Crawling Mondays discusses how to increase your outreach emails success
  • A guide to optimizing SEO on the Magento CMS
  • How to know if you’re on the right path after an update
  • Insight on links pointing to noindexed pages
  • Handling the Remove URLs tool in GSC
  • Don’t get too caught up on low traffic, it can be improved!
  • Indexed media attachment URLs
  • New filter in GSC Performance Report for cross-language results
  • Check your title tags
  • 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

First things first, after initially launching on July 26th, the Link Spam Update finally finished rolling out as of this Tuesday (August 24th 2021). 

As we discussed in last week’s newsletter, we haven’t seen any major impacts across our client base that could be related to this update. We also wanted to point out a change Barry spotted in the “How Search Works” documentation from Google. It tells us that Google made 4,500 changes to Search in 2020, which is up about 40% from the previous year (which had approximately 3,200 changes).

Premium members can look at the full recap of algorithm changes including the title tag update. 

MHC Announcements

Episode 200 giveaways!

With episode 200 quickly approaching we’ve planned some great giveaways to celebrate our loyal subscribers. We’ll be issuing 1) a one-year premium subscription of our newsletter and 2) a complimentary hour of consulting with one of the senior SEO analysts! Please note that these are two separate prizes.

So how do you win? You must be a subscriber of SNYCU for the chance to win. But to thank our premium subscribers for their support, all premium subscribers will receive an extra entry into the draw!

Google Announcements

Top Stories bug fixed

This was a bug that’s causing some image thumbnails to be blurry or blank, as well as issues with Google News, Top Stories and Discover. It is now resolved and has all been chalked up to a bug confirmed by John. If you’ve experienced issues with these, it’s likely due to this rendering bug. It didn’t last long though as Search Liaison reported it mitigated the following day. 

SEO Tips

Questions to ask yourself when prioritizing SEO efforts

If you are working on SEO optimizations, Aleyda Solis asks that you consider a few questions before going forward. At the end of the day, webmasters should be aiming for content that will achieve the same goals without needing much management. 

 

Handy tip for keyword research

Here’s a really helpful search tip from Dave Mihm on Twitter that can be useful for content planning ideas. When doing a Google search, throw in the asterisks (*) wildcard within your long-tail keyword and you can see what variations of the keyword/phrase users are also searching for. This is a great and easy way to generate valuable content ideas. It’s also a useful way to increase your chances of being displayed in SERP features, such as in the People Also Ask boxes.

Local SEO

We’ve seen some spikes on BrightLocal’s flux tool, but no one has reported anything major. There have been a lot of bugs as of late, so unless one of the local experts says otherwise, we’re going to let this one pass. 

Local SEO - Tips

Great guidance for responding to reviews

We’ve always discussed the importance of responding to reviews, whether good or bad. Well, this takes it a step further and helps provide a great guide for not only why you should respond to reviews, but how to approach them. We support this!

Recommended Reading

A Technical SEO Guide to Lighthouse Performance Metrics – Jamie Indigo
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/core-web-vitals/technical-seo-lighthouse/
August 18, 2021

We really enjoyed reading through this very detailed guide written by Jamie Indigo and Rachel Anderson on Lighthouse and the associated performance metrics. If you are unfamiliar with the tool, Lighthouse is a free open-source tool that allows you to improve the quality of your pages and provides users with the ability to generate audits and receive standardized scores.

 

Google title Tag Update: A Highlight for Extraction Methods & Approaches to SEO – Brodie Clark
https://brodieclark.com/google-title-tag-update/
August 18, 2021

As we mentioned earlier, around August 17-18th, 2021, Google made some changes to how title tags are shown for sites in the SERPs. Google is planning to move ahead with what they’re referring to as a ‘change to their systems’. 

This is quite the controversial topic at the moment and Brodie has written an excellent piece giving his thoughts.

 

Why lab and field data can be different (and what to do about it) – Philip Walton
https://web.dev/lab-and-field-data-differences/
August 17, 2021

It can be confusing to understand what numbers you should prioritize more when it comes to Core Web Vitals. This article has you covered! 

Jobs

Looking for SEO or WordPress help? Jill is available!

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:

  • Title tag update
  • Introducing Web Stories Dev-Tools
  • An updated How Search Works website
  • AskGooglebots answers ‘why doesn’t a site query show all of my pages?
  • Important questions for optimizing content
  • Crawling Mondays discusses how to increase your outreach emails success
  • A guide to optimizing SEO on the Magento CMS
  • How to know if you’re on the right path after an update
  • Insight on links pointing to noindexed pages
  • Handling the Remove URLs tool in GSC
  • Don’t get too caught up on low traffic, it can be improved!
  • Indexed media attachment URLs
  • New filter in GSC Performance Report for cross-language results
  • Check your title tags
  • Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles
You’ll also have access to all past episodes, including this one.
I

Note: If you are seeing the light version and you are a premium member, be sure to log in (in the sidebar on desktop or below the post on mobile) and read the full article here.

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