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In this episode, we discuss MHC’s thoughts on what to focus on in 2022, link building tactics that work, Shop launched on mobile, John Mueller discusses YMYL and lots more.

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

• What MHC is focusing on in 2022
• Shops launched on mobile devices
• How to assess when GSC queries are actual queries vs. refinements
• Link building methods that work
• How changing URLs can impact you
• John Mueller shines some light on Google’s viewpoint of YMYL
• Don’t index your internal search pages
• Is there a penalty for duplicate content?
• How much interlinking between your properties is too much?
• What might be happening when you’ve lost some rankings following a site migration
• Will new ecommerce sites face difficulty ranking in light of the Product Reviews Update?
• GSC International Targeting
• Why competing with Google is so hard
• The top legal directories for rankings and visibility (4th annual study)
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

No obvious algorithm updates this week

It has been a long time since we had a newsletter episode with no significant turbulence in Google’s search algorithms to report. Almost every week last year had us talking about significant shifts in rankings across many verticals.

At MHC, we have several clients with nice gains in early January. However, most if not all of these cases can be explained by seasonality. We do not feel there was a Google update of note in the last week. 

Semrush sensor data lines up with this observation as well.

This week’s to watch

This week’s one to watch is someone who is a bit more focused on the technical aspects of SEO, JavaScript in particular. Jamie Indigo is currently a senior technical SEO analyst at Deepcrawl, and you can find them all over the place sharing information about how search engines crawl, render, and index content. Basically, if you’re wondering anything about Google’s rendering process, Jamie is your expert.

If you’re like us and also interested in the ethics in SEO and the responsibilities we have as marketers to incorporate ethics into our digital spaces, then not only should you be following Jamie on Twitter, but we’re also recommending that you check out the webinar series that Jamie is doing at Deepcrawl called Human First. Jamie and Ashley Berman Hale (VP of Professional Services at Deepcrawl) are using this space to examine ethics in marketing and the responsibilities we have as marketers and technology specialists.

Reminder: the page experience rollout is coming soon to desktop

Since its introduction, Google’s page experience rankings were only available for mobile search results but starting next month, February 2022, Google will be bringing page experience to desktop as well. 

The ranking elements (LCP, FID, CLS, etc) will be the same as the ones used for mobile, so there is no need for site owners to work on two different implementations. The obvious difference, of course, is absence of mobile friendless scores, as it is not relevant for desktop. 

Google expects the complete roll-out to be done by May 2022.

Page experience ranking in Google Search based on Core Web Vitals on Desktop (Laptop/Tablets/the 523.94 remaining actual Desktop computers) is going out next month. Metric threshold are the same as on mobile. https://t.co/oVFF0W2Zih https://t.co/KKBIEi6v0Z

— Malte Ubl (@cramforce) January 10, 2022

You can ignore “toxic backlinks”

Google says you can ignore “toxic links” because tools make assumptions about Google that simply are not true https://t.co/Txxjy8JaCu pic.twitter.com/bgHfsIudqw

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) January 7, 2022

Toxic links are something a number of backlink tools often warn site owners about, recommending they take urgent action and disavow them. John Mueller mentioned via Twitter that these can generally be ignored, saying “We don’t have a notion of “toxic” links”. He added that if you have been buying unnatural links, this is when you should be using the disavow tool. 

If you are unsure about your website’s backlink quality, please inquire with our team about conducting a link overview.

Links shown in Google Search Console are just a sample of your links

Again, John says that these links are just a sample and not a judgement on whether they have any effect on your site. Even disavowed and nofollowed links (i.e. the types of links that Google has told us they usually ignore in their algorithms) are listed in Search Console.

The links shown in Search Console are a sample of all the links to the site that we know about. It's not a judgement on whether or not they have an effect; it includes nofollow & disavowed links.

— 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) January 7, 2022

Google’s latest #AskGooglebot video discusses domain names

John Mueller answers some interesting domain questions on the newest episode of #AskGoogleBot. John touched on whether or not .com domains are evaluated higher than other top level domains and if it’s better for the site to use www. or not. In both of those cases, Google has no preference and site owners are welcome to use whatever suits their site better.   

⚡It’s time for the lightning round! ⚡

You asked us questions about domain names and @JohnMu is here with some answers.

🤔 Can I rank internationally with a ccTLD?
🤔 Are .com domains preferred?
… and more!

Watch the #AskGooglebot episode → https://t.co/WurxTyrwhv pic.twitter.com/xZ2cdFBWgL

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) January 5, 2022

Heads up, there is a backlog in manual actions

If you’ve been waiting for a response from Google on your manual action, Danny Sullivan confirms that there has been a backlog. They’re making their way through it, but it can take several months to get a response. For us, we’ve experienced much of the same with some clients waiting months for a response from Google.

Wincher announces a partnership with Yoast

Wincher, a company that helps businesses analyze traffic from organic searches and monitor their keywords’ performance, is excited to announce that they are partnering with Yoast to help users improve their SEO efforts. We’re very excited to see what comes of this! Read more here.

Forming good client relationships – 11 actionable tips for consulting success – Robin Lord
https://aira.net/blog/forming-good-client-relationships-11-actionable-tips-for-consulting-success/
January 7, 2022

Are you an SEO consultant? If so, this excellent resource is a must-read. Robin Lord of Aira discusses a series of actionable tips to help make your consulting successful. There are 11 tips in total which are all based on the idea of investing in long-term, productive relationships. A few SEOs have lended their own opinions (independently) at the tail end of the article which are also a nice addition. Again if you’re a consultant, this article is not to be missed!

What I Learnt from Analysing 7 Million Log File Events – Roman Adamita
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/what-i-learnt-from-analysing-7-million-log-file-events/
January 10, 2022

Keep in mind this log-file analysis by Roman Adamita was based on a single e-commerce website (over 100k pages), but there were a lot of great insights provided Roman’s findings on pagination and robots.txt crawl frequency.

Why server logs matter for SEO – Kaspar Szymanski
https://searchengineland.com/why-server-logs-matter-for-seo-378199
January 11, 2022

According to Kaspar Szymanski, if you are operating a site of over 100k URLs you really should be recording and analyzing your server log files. Server log files record every request for a URL made on your site made to a server, but for the purpose of SEO we are most interested in requests from bots. We highly recommend taking a look at Kaspar’s article for an easy breakdown of how to get started with log file analysis.

Like many SEO companies, we are aggressively hiring for various roles right now 😅

This one, in particular, is a rare opportunity for anyone looking to get their foot in the SEO door to help us with keyword research/content projects.

Know anyone?https://t.co/2sSjx3wcun

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) January 5, 2022

Want to join the marketing team at @WaveHQ? We're looking for an #SEO Manager!

Shoot me a DM if you/someone you know is interested in the role.

I’ve been at Wave for 9 months and it’s one of the best places I’ve ever worked in 10 years ❤️https://t.co/WYwMC2HdeZ

— Juliana C (@attackofthetext) January 5, 2022

🚨🚨We're hiring 🚨🚨

We've got roles for SEOs, developers, designers, and PRs. Check out our careers page to see salary brackets and application info: https://t.co/AdnB8dcgzr

💥💥If you needed a sweetener, don't forget we only work four days💥💥

— Type A | We're hiring SEOs, PRs, devs & creatives (@type_a_media) January 7, 2022

📢 We're hiring 📢
Any technical SEOs out there looking for a new role? We’re on the lookout for a Sr. Technical SEO Analyst to join our growing SEO team @Glassdoor. Find out more here or feel free to drop me a DM ⏬https://t.co/rxvTNKYqQH

— Sam Marsden (@sam_marsden) January 10, 2022

Looking for a new role? @KoMarketing is currently hiring for the following:

* SEO Strategist
* PPC Analyst / Strategist
* Digital Marketing Manager
* Paid Media Manager

Let me know if you're interested and/or please forward to anyone who might. https://t.co/fn5QMtfxh3 pic.twitter.com/PfJBO3HjIB

— Casie Gillette (@Casieg) January 11, 2022

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:

• What MHC is focusing on in 2022
• Shops launched on mobile devices
• How to assess when GSC queries are actual queries vs. refinements
• Link building methods that work
• How changing URLs can impact you
• John Mueller shines some light on Google’s viewpoint of YMYL
• Don’t index your internal search pages
• Is there a penalty for duplicate content?
• How much interlinking between your properties is too much?
• What might be happening when you’ve lost some rankings following a site migration
• Will new ecommerce sites face difficulty ranking in light of the Product Reviews Update?
• GSC International Targeting
• Why competing with Google is so hard
• The top legal directories for rankings and visibility (4th annual study)
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

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