SNYCU Ep. 242 (July 7, 2022)- Light Version

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In this episode, we discuss late June SERP turbulence, pros & cons list in the SERPS, SEO tips, and news from across the industry!

PLUS: a new blog post!

Missed our last episode? Check it out here.

Marie’s Podcast for this episode

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

• Marie’s thoughts and analysis this week
• Search experiments and new SERP features in Google land!
• SERP features that can cause an increase in impressions while click data remains low
• Discover new ideas and terms for your content marketing
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

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SERP turbulence June 21-23 and 29

The Semrush sensor has shown some interesting patterns this week. There was a moderate spike in SERP turbulence on June 23 followed by low levels of change. 

A couple days of very little SERP turbulence according to the @semrush sensor. pic.twitter.com/FnhKUU2HtM

— Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) July 5, 2022

Our client data shows several sites with changes starting June 21-23 and also several with changes around June 29.

New blog alert!

New article coming soon! These annotations are not generated by structured data. Google is actually pulling them from *un*structured data on pages.🤯 pic.twitter.com/qU4DiMNMol

— Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) July 5, 2022

In case you missed it, Marie recently wrote a fantastic blog post on the pros and cons and other SERP annotations that give users clues to creating great content. This is definitely a must read with a wealth of detail!

Have you seen these "pros and cons" annotations in the SERPS?

We need to pay attention to them!

Wrote up my thoughts on these including information from a Google patent that likely explains them:https://t.co/vlgKvwXGhH

— Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) July 6, 2022

Google’s rich results guidelines have changed!

The latest version of Google’s rich results product content guidelines has added the following section:

“Don’t mark up content that promotes widely prohibited or regulated goods, services, or information that may facilitate serious and/or immediate or long-term harm to self or others. This includes content related to firearms & weapons, recreational drugs, tobacco & vaping products and gambling-related products.”

To be clear, Google is asking applicable site owners to remove all forms of rich result markup. However, Google obviously has a lot of power and won’t be showing rich results snippets for these product categories even if you don’t manually remove them. Google has also clarified that there is no risk of a manual action, you simply just don’t have any opportunity for rich results snippets to be shown, and that goes for all applicable sites. 

Glenn has given his two cents which helps contextualize the impact on those affected. 

The bad news for those sites is they are losing rich snippets. The (sort of) good news it that all sites in their niche are also losing them (so it's not like the other sites have an advantage). See the screenshots I posted yesterday below. Review snippets are gone. Poof. https://t.co/Fo3EI9OFqo

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) July 1, 2022

Google creating pros and cons list in select search snippets 

Okay, this isn’t brand new but many webmasters are seeing this pop up more frequently! What makes this SERP change super interesting is that the terms “pros” and “cons” that appear within the search snippet do not appear on the actual pages. Instead, Google is likely extracting information from the pages and repurposing/reformatting it.

Google pros and cons added to the search result snippet without that content being on the page https://t.co/tAzj6cAv8C pic.twitter.com/Ms0ScSDRYU

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) June 28, 2022

In Marie’s section of the newsletter, our premium subscribers can hear her thoughts on the importance of this!

10 useful call-to-action marketing tips!

Do you use CTAs? Well, you’ll want to give these 10 CTA tips by Jeremy Moser a read-through.

10 KEY call to action (CTA) marketing tips that will increase conversions on your website, emails, ads, and more:

— Jeremy Moser (@jmoserr) June 27, 2022

1. Use language that takes the risk away for users. As Jeremy mentions, don’t give people a reason to second guess!
2. Use language that avoids friction. Instead, it can be helpful to have a CTA that clicks to a result as opposed to the standard “sign up” or “buy now” CTAs we usually see.
3. If you include CTAs in an email campaign, try using a softer language CTA. Think of it this way, not everyone in your email campaign will be ready to buy the product right away or be immediately interested in a discount. Instead, use a softer CTA to get more people to visit your page before they finally commit.
4. Instead of flat out telling people to buy, imply scarcity. For instance, including something such as “while spots last!” might imply that limited spots and spaces are available.
5. If you are able to, having CTAs that provide some sort of instant gratification can be helpful. After all, humans are all about instant results and gratification!
6. If you have CTAs in your ads, having language that triggers impulse buying or a desire to click on the CTA can be useful.
7. Essentially, a CTA is more than just good copy. Consider adding arrows and features that focus the user’s attention. 
8. We’ve seen these CTAs frequently and actually like seeing them. Use social proof as part of your CTA. In doing so, you tell users that they won’t regret signing up or downloading especially if their friends have.
9. Building on the point of avoiding friction, consider using other words other than the standard sign-up, submit, get started, etc. which may indicate more steps in the process.
10. Lastly, try using first-person language where possible.

While not all of these may apply to you, they are certainly some great tips that you might want to consider using if they apply. Make sure you like and read through the entire Twitter thread as well!

The true potential of Google Autocomplete (beyond being a free keyword research tool)

Google Autocomplete is something so many of us use on a daily basis without even realizing it. But believe it or not, there’s more to gain from this search bar feature. It’s actually perfect for keyword research and finding specific phrases or queries. Suggestions provided by Google Autocomplete can help you find new queries with different (or more specific) angles that you might not have initially considered. Some examples include finding queries in question format (why, how, where, etc.). You can even research related concept entities to aid in broadening your content topics.

This article from Moz gives loads more tips about keyword research, so we highly recommend you give it a full read.

Is it acceptable to delete your disavow file?

Disavowing links has always been a polarizing topic in the SEO community. Recently, during a Help Hangout, John Mueller was asked if sites could delete their disavow file from Google’s Disavow Tool. John says that yes, you can indeed delete the file as long as that file was not created to address major issues, such as a manual action. 

Site owner disavowed 11K+ links from hacked sites & spammy cruft, but they never bought/set up those links. Can they delete the disavow? Via @johnmu: If you're sure they aren't related to a manual action, then it's fine to delete the disavow file. Move on: https://t.co/hOl6pwBpXC pic.twitter.com/AqHC08Gxaf

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) July 4, 2022

If the disavow file is just a number of spammy links and/or links that were not created by the site’s owner, and if the site hasn’t had manual actions or isn’t currently dealing with one, there should be no issues when deleting the file. 

I know lots of SEOs who will disagree with this.

For the last few years now we only recommend disavow for sites that either have a manual action or have a link profile that clearly shows extensive link building (not spam). https://t.co/6vDxQ373FA

— Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) July 5, 2022

Reports of Google Analytics audience overview not tracking hourly data

Google Analytics “Audience Overview” has not been counting data in Home View. If you filter your results on July 1st at 2/3pm ET drops to zero then you might be one of the few sites impacted by this bug. Google has yet to respond to these complaints.

Oh, My MUM. Or how to think SEO in the era of algorithms based on AI – Gianluca Fiorelli
https://www.iloveseo.net/oh-my-mum-or-how-to-think-seo-in-the-era-of-algorithms-based-on-ai/ 
June 22, 2022

This is a very interesting, slightly more theoretical, article from the wonderful Gianluca Fiorelli. Gianluca proposed two questions. First, what if the traditional top, middle, and bottom-funnel system did not actually exist? Secondly, what if the ‘dreaded’ zero-click SERP is the result of outdated SEO strategy more than anything else. You’ll definitely want to give this a read!

Why We Stopped (Most) Manual Link Building After 1M+ Emails – Ross Hudgens
https://www.siegemedia.com/marketing/manual-link-building
June 1, 2022

Ross Hudgens’ agency mostly put an end to manual outreach link-building. So, what can we learn from it? Read the full article to find out!

The SEO Skills Maturity Matrix – Tom Critchlow
https://newsletter.seomba.com/p/the-seo-skills-maturity-matrix
June 21, 2022

This piece of content is a little different than our usual recommended reading but we absolutely had to include it! 

9 Local Search Developments You Need to Know About from Q2 2022 – Miriam Ellis
https://moz.com/blog/q2-2022-local-search-developments
June 27, 2022

Want to see what has been developing in local search during Q2? Check out this awesome Moz blog article to see! 

Looking for a new SEO job? SEOjobs.com is a job board curated by real SEOs for SEOs. Take a look at five of the hottest SEO job listing this week (below) and sign up for the weekly job listing email only available at SEOjobs.com.

• Senior SEO Specialist ~ California Closets ~ $75k-$100k ~ Remote
• Sr SEO Specialist ~ G2 ~ Remote
• Director of SEO ~ Disruptive Advertising ~ $125K-165K ~ Remote
• Technical SEO Strategist ~ Atlassian ~ Remote
• SEO Manager ~ CharterUP ~ $70K-$90K ~ Remote
  

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It’s well worth the $18 per month!

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

• Marie’s thoughts and analysis this week
• Search experiments and new SERP features in Google land!
• SERP features that can cause an increase in impressions while click data remains low
• Discover new ideas and terms for your content marketing
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

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.@marie_haynes: “She inspires me as the leading expert in EAT and also as a successful business owner. She puts out one of the best and most in-depth SEO newsletters in the industry.”

— Inflow® (@goinflow) March 8, 2021