Ep. 222 - Feb. 17, 2022 - Light Version

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In this episode, we discuss the latest ranking shifts, a few great ways to earn good links, Dawn Anderson joins Marie on podcast to discuss Google AI and lots of great readings!

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

• What does Google do when it finds a meta noindex tag?
• Get traffic and sign ups in one link building campaign
• Are links with UTM parameters paid links by default?
• Do you know how Google Maps reviews work?
• Tools that have incorporated the Inspect URL API
• Lost GSC impressions URL Inspection
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

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Ranking shifts February 8, 2022

We have several sites seeing changes in rankings and traffic starting February 8, 2022.

Search Engine Roundtable is reporting some chatter amongst SEOs, but it’s not off the charts. 

It's interesting to see how the @semrush sensor peaks on Feb 8 and then things get a bit quieter than we've seen for a while. pic.twitter.com/J56h9PZB9q

— Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) February 15, 2022

At this point we do not see any obvious patterns worth investigating. If this does turn out to be an update worth learning about, we will let you know!

This week’s to watch

This week’s to watch is Brie E Anderson, who owns the digital marketing agency BEAST Analytics. In addition to auditing and coaching, Brie is a total pro with Analytics and regularly shares tips, jokes, and SEO advice on Twitter. For the Super Bowl, Brie provided us with some SEO-tainment by live tweeting the ad breaks with data and musings about the effectiveness of those 30 second, $6 million dollar slots (are people still talking about Coinbase’s QR code?). You can also hear Brie chatting about data-driven SEO with the always delightful Jason Barnard on his most recent Kalicube Tuesdays webinar. Two very smart people talking about Analytics — what could be better?!

Using forums to leverage content ideas and traffic

Researching and writing unique content can often be time consuming and overwhelming. If you are looking for a, somewhat, easy alternative to start your content and keyword research, Ahmed suggests looking at high-quality forums in your niche. 

Aside from being a place filled with passionate people, the content of these forum threads tend to be heavily oriented to what consumers in the niche desire. 

Ahmed also describes a process to sort through these threads and focus on the most valuable ones, we recommend checking out his recent tweets.  

How I used FORUMS in my niche to find KILLER topics to EXPLODE my traffic?

THREAD 🧵🧵

— Ahm@d (@ahmed_SEO_) February 9, 2022

Debbie Chew highlights a tactic for earning backlinks

To get backlinks, your data-backed research reports don't have to be:

• a fancy, interactive landing page
• 3,000+ words with lots of charts

Here's a look at the "bite-sized reports" that @zapier has been doing 👇

— Debbie Chew 🔗 (@justdebbb) February 10, 2022

Using Zapier.com, Debbie points to a few pieces of content that have been well optimized which resulted in a ton of great links.

Reports of GSC crawl stats missing data for Feb 8 or 9th 

Looks like many SEOs are reporting crawl stats data missing in Google Search Console. The dates missing seem to be either on February 8th or 9th for the missing data points. Google has not yet commented on these missing data points but a similar instance happened back in November of 2021 where Google noted that the missing data was due to a bug in reporting and did not impact crawling of that day.

LocalU hosts advanced marketing seminar

On April 5th, LocalU is hosting a virtual marketing seminar featuring all new content! There is a great lineup of speakers including Joy Hawkins, Andrew Shotland and Amanda Jordan. Tickets are available now for the event. Learn more here.

Everything Publishers Need to Know About URLs – Barry Adams
https://www.seoforgooglenews.com/p/everything-urls-news-publishers
February 9, 2022

We always look forward to reading articles from Barry Adams! In this article, Barry discusses a topic that comes up fairly often – URLs. We go over some of the common questions that publishers ask but would encourage you to give the whole article a thorough read. 

Top Stories 7-Pack Tops the SERPs – Dr. Peter J. Meyers
https://moz.com/blog/top-stories-7-pack
February 9, 2022

In December 2021, Google released a redesign of Top Stories. Over time, a different variety appeared – the 7 pack. The 7 pack takes up a huge amount of space as compared to before where Top Stories lists were limited to 3 stories. Learn more about them in the article. 

SEO Experiments – 28 ideas to move stuck rankings – Nick Swan
https://seotesting.com/blog/seo-experiments/
February 7, 2022

There is a great checklist from SEOtesting.com that could help move the needle in terms of your site’s rankings when you’re stuck on page two of the SERPs. This list consists of 28 checks you can do for your pages that could help with a ranking boost.

Ultimate Guide to Noindex Tag for SEO – Gosia Poddębniak
https://www.onely.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-noindex-tag-for-seo/
February 14, 2022

Noindex tags can serve webmasters a number of benefits but, if done incorrectly, can also cause some negative impacts on a site. Gosia Poddębniak’s piece on noindex tags is a fantastic guide for webmasters looking for more information and guidance on how to properly implement the tag. 

Ignore the timing but @screamingfrog are looking for new Digital PR & SEO consultants (https://t.co/CO5IhGaJAv), you know, if you're looking for a new agency 😅

— Patrick Langridge (@patlangridge) February 10, 2022

Looking for a Tech SEO to join our team at The Home Depot. DM me if you are interested. The position can be remote within the US.#seojobs https://t.co/8lqoflFF6X

— Kristin Tahirovic (@knmille7) February 12, 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 does Google do when it finds a meta noindex tag?
• Get traffic and sign ups in one link building campaign
• Are links with UTM parameters paid links by default?
• Do you know how Google Maps reviews work?
• Tools that have incorporated the Inspect URL API
• Lost GSC impressions URL Inspection
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

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