Ep. 246 - August 4, 2022 - Light Version
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In this episode we discuss the early impact of the latest product reviews update, a look at why some pages are appearing to rank without author E-A-T, an update to the QRG, and a LOT of SEO tips including advice to affiliate site owners, programmatic SEO and earning a knowledge panel without a Wikipedia entry.
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The following topics are covered in the premium version of this episode:
- Interesting thoughts on the May core update – do visits from quality raters mean you’re getting hit?
- Why are these pages ranking well for YMYL queries without author E-A-T?
- The QRG have updated and there are a lot of interesting changes
- Perspectives in the SERPS
- Important advice from John Mueller to affiliate site owners
- How to earn a knowledge panel without a wikipedia entry
- This site improved page experience scores dramatically with one small change
- Should you update your internal links from http to https
- Internal links case study
- Google tag manager bug borking preview mode
- What is the first thing you do when you get access to a new GSC profile?
- Really useful Google Sheets tips
- Big changes coming to Youtube shorts
- Interesting insight into Local Pack headers
News about Google’s Algorithms
The latest on the July 2022 product reviews update
As mentioned last week Google announced a new product reviews update was rolling out, starting on July 27, 2022. They told us it would take 2-3 weeks to roll out. So far MHC data is showing very little movement, if any at all.
The Semrush sensor showed that perhaps there was some SERP turbulence related to the update on Wednesday, August 3.
Yesterday's @semrush sensor showed some volatility – perhaps related to the ongoing Product Reviews Update?
Anyone seeing significant ranking changes? pic.twitter.com/XloEfdgNyo
— Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) August 4, 2022
Glenn Gabe has shared some early data:
For two of those sites, here is what some of the keyword ranking drops look like. E.g. ranking the top 10 or 5 before the PRU and then dropping heavily (and even out of the top 100) for the query. If you are on the wrong side of the PRU, it can be catastrophic… pic.twitter.com/rRc2B39M8V
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 2, 2022
Quick update on the July Product Reviews Update. As others started noticing yesterday (like @vladrpt), the PRU really started to kick in. Visibility tools are just starting to show the impact, but GSC & GA show the reality already… I'll be sharing more data soon: pic.twitter.com/rVA8fTLg63
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) July 30, 2022
Almost one week into the July PRU & there are some big drops & surges… For some sites, they have dropped by over 80%. I haven't seen any adjustments yet by Google, but tremors are always possible. Here are 4 extreme drops I have seen. Eager to see what the next week brings… pic.twitter.com/Y6BvvmlIYA
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 2, 2022
Yep, it kicked in on Friday and there have been some crazy examples of drops/surges since then. Now we'll see if Google pushes a tremor or two… I'll be sharing an interesting example this morning regarding tremors. Stay tuned. https://t.co/mWSEQho1YQ
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 3, 2022
Danny Sullivan was asked whether this update would affect sites in Spain. He said, yes, if the reviews are in English. He also hinted that the product reviews update may affect content in other languages soon.
If the reviews are in English, yes. No change from when we first shared about this: https://t.co/nTOauRvOlu
But anyone might want to consider the guidance for other languages, because we do tend to bring these updates into other languages. Guidance here: https://t.co/kmUGBZNf2A
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) July 27, 2022
MHC Announcements
New blog post!
As we mentioned elsewhere in newsletter Marie has written a thorough blog post on her thoughts about the latest updates to the QRG.
We’ve reduced the price on our QRG book!
Many SEOs use this book as a checklist in their site audits to help them assess site quality like a quality rater would. Marie hopes to have a new edition of her guide to the search quality evaluator guidelines out by the end of the year. As such, we’ve lowered the price on this book from $99 to $20!
Google Announcements
Changes coming to GSC!
This week a few SEOs noticed an odd message in the index coverage section of GSC:
has anyone got this notification in GSC?@rustybrick @glenngabe @Marie_Haynes pic.twitter.com/c6RIUd3xEh
— Vijay Chauhan 📈 (@VijayChauhanSEO) August 1, 2022
“Limited functionality: We are making some minor changes in the next few days. During this period you will not be able to issue new validation requests.”
Shortly after Google shared with us that they are soon making changes in the GSC interface:
We're simplifying the way we classify pages, items, and issues in Search Console reports. We hope this will help you focus on critical issues that affect your visibility in Search, and will help you better prioritize your work. Learn more at https://t.co/17fv54LhCb pic.twitter.com/8qnwX3kZ6X
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) June 15, 2022
The changes are further explained in a Google blog post. The new reports will group problems into two groups: critical issues and non-critical issues. The example of critical issues in their screenshot shows invalid items that can’t generate rich results because of missing fields such as “description”, “uploadDate”, etc. Their non-critical examples say, “Items with these issue are valid, but could be presented with more features or be optimized for more relevant queries”. One example is “Date/time not in ISO 8601 format in field “duration”.
This change doesn’t affect your search presence and will take a few months to roll out. For users of the GSC API, you won’t see these changes until the full rollout is complete.
SEO Tips
How to structure pages for programmatic SEO
We hesitated on whether to include this because often “programmatic SEO” produces large amounts of thin content that is designed more for search engines than for users. Google’s quality guidelines say that programmatically generated content that is intended to manipulate search results is against their guidelines.
Still, if you can use these techniques as a starting point to create good helpful content there may be some value here.
Been getting more questions about how to structure pages for programmatic SEO, so here's a little write up on my approach: pic.twitter.com/Xgy2BJXo5M
— Allison Seboldt (@allison_seboldt) August 1, 2022
Allison’s advice boils down to this:
- Choose a focus keyword for each page.
- Use these keywords in your H1, URL, meta description, etc.
- Make sure you’re not competing against other pages on your site.
- Where there’s potentially competition between pages roll them up into one and use multiple subheadings (i.e. H1 How to grow tomatoes, H2, How to grow tomatoes in containers)
- Use paragraphs instead of tables or bullet forms
Tips for Bing ranking and indexing issues
This Twitter thread discussed a site that was deindexed from Bing.
Fabrice Canel from Bing responded with this advice:
Reminding you and all to first use URL Inspection https://t.co/QXL35kBaKD then our guidelines https://t.co/OdlufsC6lW as most escalations are sites not following them especially the section Abuse and Examples of Things to Avoid. Then contact again support https://t.co/ehA7HEgmK9
— Fabrice Canel (@facan) July 29, 2022
First, use the URL inspection tool from within Bing’s Webmaster Tools. Next, read Bing’s guidelines. We’d recommend taking some time to read these guidelines even if you are not having trouble with indexing content on Bing. They are very good! And if after this you still don’t have an answer you can actually reach out to Bing support. We have done this for several sites in the past and quite often the webmaster team at Bing is very helpful via email support.
Local SEO - Google Announcements
Really good Local SEO tips from LocalU
We loved these tips that came out of the latest LocalU conference:
Encourage customers to upvote your other reviews that they find helpful@JoyanneHawkins #localu
— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 28, 2022
Interesting: @JoyanneHawkins noticed a strong positive correlation between the number of review upvotes in GBP and how long a review stays live/pinned to the top of GBP #localu pic.twitter.com/8D1Oo96vvh
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) July 28, 2022
If you're going to do practitioner listings for your business – get reviews on them to get the max benefit @JoyanneHawkins #localu
— Carrie Hill 🗺️🎙️ (@CarrieHill) July 28, 2022
Recommended Reading
TikTok as a search engine with Annie-Mai Hodge
https://withcandour.co.uk/blog/tiktok-as-a-search-engine-with-annie-mai-hodge
Jack Chambers-Ward
Aug 1, 2022
You can listen to this as a podcast episode or read the transcript. We really think people should be paying attention to TikTok as a search engine as much of the younger generation prefer to use it over Google for searches.
15 Quick SEO Wins (To Improve Your Rankings)
https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-wins/
Si Quan Ong
July 27, 2022
This was a great article with some basic, but helpful SEO tips.
Jobs
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.
- https://www.seojobs.com/job/user-growth-seo-manager-tiktok-mountain-view-ca/
- https://www.seojobs.com/job/expert-blog-writer-and-editor/
- https://www.seojobs.com/job/junior-seo-snippet-consulting-25-30-hr-remote-training-provided/
- https://www.seojobs.com/job/content-seo-manager-atlassian/
- https://www.seojobs.com/job/director-seo-shutterfly/
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:
- Interesting thoughts on the May core update – do visits from quality raters mean you’re getting hit?
- Why are these pages ranking well for YMYL queries without author E-A-T?
- The QRG have updated and there are a lot of interesting changes
- Perspectives in the SERPS
- Important advice from John Mueller to affiliate site owners
- How to earn a knowledge panel without a wikipedia entry
- This site improved page experience scores dramatically with one small change
- Should you update your internal links from http to https
- Internal links case study
- Google tag manager bug borking preview mode
- What is the first thing you do when you get access to a new GSC profile?
- Really useful Google Sheets tips
- Big changes coming to Youtube shorts
- Interesting insight into Local Pack headers
- 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.
.@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