Ep. 198 - August 26, 2021 - Light Version
Looking for the premium members version? Log in here
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
Podcast is currently on break
If you would like to subscribe, you can find the podcasts here:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Play | Soundcloud
Ask Marie an SEO Question
Have a question that you want to ask Marie? You can ask them on our Q&A with Marie Haynes Consulting page and Marie will answer some of the best questions each week in podcast!
It’s well worth the $18 per month. Want to see a sample premium newsletter episode? View it here.
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
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).
The link spam update is now complete.
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) August 24, 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.
Definitely looks like a bug!
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) August 18, 2021
This bug has now been largely mitigated.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 19, 2021
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.
3 SEO Questions to Ask when prioritizing your SEO efforts:
* What will have the higher impact to the established goals with lower effort?
* What will have the higher benefits to the overall product/Website?
* What will be more easily supported by management & other areas?
— Aleyda Solis 👩🏻💻 (@aleyda) August 17, 2021
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.
One of my favorite quick-and-dirty keyword research / content planning tricks: combining the * wildcard with google auto-suggest. pic.twitter.com/7KuBCkaMpd
— David Mihm (@davidmihm) August 18, 2021
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!
In need of guidance on responding to reviews in a sensitive or highly regulated industry? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️@SydneyMarchuk is here to help! — "When you respond to reviews you show people that your business cares and you help increase engagement on your listing"https://t.co/jboLGlIy5K
— Elizabeth Linder 🌻 (@Its_Liz_Linder) August 18, 2021
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
We’re looking for a new SEO analyst! LOCOMOTIVE is honestly the best agency I’ve ever worked for. If you know someone looking for a position feel free to DM me
— Amanda Jordan (@amandatjordan) August 20, 2021
✨Twitter we need your help✨
We are officially on a hiring spree🚀
👉Digital PR Managers + Execs
👉Studio Manager
👉IT Technician
👉Content Manager
👉Campaign Manager
👉Client leads
👉Technical SEO roles
👉Social roles& morehttps://t.co/qhOuUQZCT6
RT's appreciated🙌 pic.twitter.com/q4q3RbQGeo
— Rise at Seven (@riseatseven) August 23, 2021
#SEO job klaxen thing 🚨
Job ad will go up Monday, but if you know (or are) a digital PR types that has a talent for creating content and getting links, we're hiring at @candouragency pic.twitter.com/UEJvyOd21A
— Mark Williams-Cook = 🅼🅰🆁🅺 🅲🅾🅾🅺 (@thetafferboy) August 20, 2021
I need to hire a Sr. SEO strategist, a site side analyst, and a social media analyst to work with mere here in the Detroit area. if you know anybody, send me a resume. seo at razorfish dot com
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones) August 23, 2021
📢I'm hiring! 📢 I'm looking for an #SEO Executive to join my team at TUI ✈️🌴 Helping people find their perfect holidays starts with great SEO – that is where you come in! https://t.co/smZGNCGuVS
— Louise 🌈 (@louise_sarah) August 24, 2021
Looking for SEO or WordPress help? Jill is available!
Anyone looking for a 15 year #seo veteran with mad #wordpress skills? Looking for long term contract work…open to opportunities! (Or full time with an amazing company is an option too!) Thank you.
— Jill Caren (@iamjillcaren) August 21, 2021
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
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.
https://twitter.com/goinflow/status/1368997931253108741?s=20