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Episode 99 - September 4, 2019 - Light Version

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In this episode, we discuss signs of a possible link-related algorithm update, our 100th episode next week, and more on the Dejan SEO penalty. We've also included the latest on SERP feature changes and have a great selection of recommended readings for you.

Marie’s Podcast for this episode

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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!

In this episode:

Paid members also get the following:

  • For paid members only: An early look into the possible August 22-29 link related update
  • Google introduces Auto-DNS verification in the new Search Console
  • Analytics for your AMP Stories
  • Aleyda Solis weighs in on the importance of adding a country code in hreflang
  • Whether or not your switched to mobile-first indexing, Google still crawls some pages with desktop Googlebot
  • Is it possible a new ad format is coming to Google?
  • Dejan SEO’s Manual Action update
  • If you use WordPress, this might be of some interest to you
  • GMB insights now appearing on the profiles you manage
  • New ad format has arrived in Google Maps for events
  • Joe Youngblood vs. GMB re: using a virtual office
  • Yelp makes improvements to features in an attempt to regain local momentum from Google
  • Google Help Hangout Tips
  • There may be a consolidation issue in GSC's Performance Report
  • Lizzi Harvey reveals a new structured data feature for job training programs
  • My tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO and Local SEO articles

Algorithm Updates

We may have had a big link quality update last week - Aug 22-29

We are early in our analysis of this data, but we are suspicious that there was a significant update last week. There is a high chance that this update was primarily about trust. 

We are seeing several sites in our profile that are seeing really nice increases shortly after filing a disavow. If you are a paid subscriber of the newsletter, you’ll see some screenshots in the next section that show fascinating data.

We have found that several sites for whom we have filed a disavow this year have seen a beautiful increase in organic search traffic starting this week. An interesting finding is that there were several sites that we have reviewed recently, and although we recommended filing a thorough disavow, it was not done. Many of these sites saw significant drops in traffic last week. 

It is still early to say this with certainty, but we feel that the update has to do with Google’s ability to assess link trust.

As a reminder, earlier this year John Mueller told us that there is still a place for disavowing links in 2019, even if your site does not have a manual action. When asked whether disavowing unnatural links could help a site algorithmically, he said, “That can definitely be the case. So it’s something where our algorithms when we look at it and they see, oh, there are a bunch of really bad links here. Then maybe they’ll be a bit more cautious with regards to the links in general for the website. So if you clean that up, then the algorithms look at it and say, oh, there’s– there’s kind of– it’s OK. It’s not bad.”  

It should also be noted, however, that the past weekend was a long weekend in many parts of the world. Many sites will see seasonal spikes and dips in traffic as it is back to school time. Also, it is often hard to determine whether the improvements in rankings that we are seeing can be completely attributed to disavow work as, in most cases, we are recommending other site quality improvements as well.

If you saw significant drops in traffic last week that you do not think are seasonal, we would highly recommend that you consider reviewing your link profile and filing a disavow. If you are not sure whether links are your problem, you can hire the MHC team to either do an overview of your links to assess your risk, or to do a full link audit. 

MHC Announcements

Celebrate our 100th Episode with us!

On September 11th, we are hosting a live webinar to say thank you to our subscribers! We will answer your questions, share our favourite newsletter tips, E-A-T cake, and announce the winners of our newsletter giveaway contest! Plus, we have an exciting update we can’t wait to share with you! Even more, the 100th episode will be free for ALL subscribers, not just paid. Submit your questions here.

Marie sits down with Barry Schwartz to discuss algo updates, E-A-T, and penalties

In her sit-down with Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Roundtable, Marie discusses her journey from being a full-time vet to becoming a full-time SEO with her own agency and team of employees. She also provides insights on Google’s algorithm history, when/how E-A-T became an important part of SEO, how Marie interprets Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and what happened with the ‘Medic Update’ in August of 2018 as well as subsequent algo updates in September of that year.

In Marie’s own words:

“The Quality Raters Guidelines talk about how the raters can assess whether a site has E-A-T. It’s not exactly how the algorithm does it. But I believe if something is in the guidelines, it’s something Google wants to measure or already is measuring. That’s what we focus on: What can we improve upon that could be seen as low-quality in terms of Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness?”

Thanks to Barry for this vlog feature!

A guide to no-follow links

In this week's Newsletter we have Andrew Nguyen’s Guide on No-Followed links, on our series of Wix SEO tips. In this guide, you can find definitions of no-followed and followed links, best practices for when to follow and no-follow, common problems when no-following or following links, and so much more! 

Google Announcements

Reminder: Sept 1st has passed which signalled the end of noindex being supported in robots.txt

Google Data Studio to stop using Drive

Google SERP Changes

Mobile SERPs showing a featured snippet containing a "Was this useful?" and a "Yes" or "No" button in it

Emojis spotted within tables that display in the SERPs

This is an interesting way to make your results stand out from the crowd. Click on the thread if you’re eager to see how it’s being pulled!

Google Image Search removed “exact” feature

The exact feature allowed users to enter the exact px size of an image they need. Now, the options are limited to selecting large, medium or icon size. 

SEO Tips

Use AMP Stories to take advantage of live events that people are searching for info on

Here's a great example seen by Mordy Oberstein of MLB using AMP Stories to post highlights throughout a baseball game!

Check your GSC to see if and when you’ve been transitioned to mobile-first indexing

Ask Google Webmasters: Old Search Console vs. New 

The question asked when will robots txt. be available on the new Search Console? John says they are still moving features but instead of just copying them over, they are rethinking them to improve the tools for webmasters. Keep an eye out, as tools are transitioning constantly.

John Mueller pro tip: Satisfying users helps you convert, not overdoing ads

Other Interesting News

DuckDuckGo says you should not use Google Search (and Google responds)

Yep, the privacy-focused search engine tweeted a short video about how companies such as Google collect and sell your personal data and why it should matter to you. Google's Search Liaison Danny Sullivan swings back, defending Google’s stance on those items which he directly deals with. For more on this, you can visit SER for Barry’s coverage.

Were G and YouTube sharing personal data?

Google and YouTube have been officially accused of sharing user’s personal data to advertisers. According to this article, a rival has claimed that Google was using hidden pages to feed data to third-parties without consent, so advertisers can access data and serve personalized ads. Google has stated that they do not serve personalized ads or send bid requests without consent. 

More examples of Google transcribing podcasts, this time with an example of our very own SNYCU podcast!

Local SEO - Google Announcements

GMB is removing remaining distance-based services areas

Any business currently based on a distance will be automatically transitioned to the closest named area (for example, San Francisco, CA). Should you be one of the businesses, you can review the update via your GMB account under Google Updates. From here you can either accept or select a new service area!

Local SEO - Google SERP Changes

Google testing a merging of the Local 3-pack with a "View more" call to action and suggested searches

These are all appearing above the organic results, so this test is pushing those down even further on the mobile search results page. Check out Mike’s tweet:

Google displaying competitor ads on local business profiles 

Part of the Local Campaign, the ads are meant to highlight local businesses and drive visits. The ads are displayed on YouTube, Maps, GDN and search. Businesses will not be able to pay to remove the ad making it more difficult to compete in a local setting. 

Local SEO - Tips

Did you know that you can import your GMB listing directly into Bing Places?

Not only can you import your Search Console listings to Bing Places, but now it seems you can do the same with your GMB listings. You can do this by logging in to Bing Places and selecting the sync option. 

SEO Tools

Search Console Helper bookmarklet

We’re sure you’ve thought about it, well now you can add the current browser URL to your clipboard, and open it up in GSC in a new window for that property.

Recommended Reading

We Analyzed 5 Million Google Search Results: Here's What We Learned About Organic Click Through Rate – Brian Dean
https://backlinko.com/google-ctr-stats
Aug 27, 2019

This was a pretty interesting analysis done by Brian Dean of Backlinko. They looked at over 5 million search queries and the click-through-rate (CTR) data from about 875,000 pages in order to see how certain factors may be influencing organic CTR. There are all kinds of great tidbits in this, and some really nice looking graphs to help visualise all that data, so we definitely recommend that you check this article out so that you can try testing out some of these findings on your own site as you create and optimise your content. 

 

Google Ranking Factors 2019: Opinions from 1,500+ Professional SEOs – Rand Fishkin
https://sparktoro.com/blog/resources/google-ranking-factors-2019/
Sept 3, 2019

Rand Fishkin, search veteran previously of Moz, and now the owner of SparkToro has released the results of their August 2019 Google Ranking Factors study. The study got responses from over 1500+ SEO. This survey is conducted year-on-year which makes for interesting comparisons. Having a survey like this is a great way to see the bigger picture, outside of our own twitter feed echo chambers, regarding what the community as a whole actually thinks - so, thanks Rand! 

 

Updated For 2019: Duplicate Content SEO Advice From Google – Shaun Anderson
https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/duplicate-content-problems/
Updated: Sept 3, 2019

Google tells us in the Quality Raters Guidelines that sites that feature pages with copied content with little or no time, effort, expertise, manual curation, or added value for users shall be given the lowest rating -- even if the page assigns credit for the content to another source. Shaun delivers an exceptional resource on all things duplicate content which dives into Google quotes and videos, best practices, solutions and tips to dealing with duplicate content, and much much more!

 

What Is a Google Penalty in SEO? – Kristine Schachinger
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-penalty-seo/323845/
Sept 4, 2019

A penalty in the world of SEO is otherwise known as a manual action. It seems that webmasters often get penalties confused with some kind of drop in traffic or visibility when a manual action has not been applied and the fault lies with more of an algorithmic devaluation. If you’re unfortunate enough to earn yourself a manual action, you will be notified in GSC, and you’ll be asked to submit a reconsideration request once you’ve made a solid effort to clear fix the problem. MHC offers Manual Action Removal and we have a proven success rate of 100% for unnatural link manual actions. If you need expert help, get in touch!

 

A Developer’s Guide To SEO – Ian Lurie
https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/developers-seo-guide.htm
Aug 28, 2019

This is an awesome guide from Ian Laurie over at portent.com. So often developers and SEOs exist in silos and it can lead to massive problems short and long term. Ian has broken down his developer considerations for SEO into three categories: viability, visibility, and flexibility. This is well worth reading and bookmarking.

Recommended Reading (Local SEO)

Kindness as Currency: How Good Deeds Can Benefit Your Local Business – Miriam Ellis
https://moz.com/blog/kindness-as-currency-local-business
Aug 27, 2019

More of a heartwarming read, this article discusses the concept of kindness as currency and we’re all for it. It’s time to look at your business and see if you have done enough to drum up positive mentions. Local businesses have a unique opportunity to do this. You can read the full article for stories on how people have accomplished this.

 

6 Ways to Answer Frequently Asked Questions Online – Brandon Schmidt
https://localu.org/2019/08/28/6-ways-to-answer-frequently-asked-questions-online/
Aug 28, 2019

If you’re looking to improve customer experience while easing the burden of your staff, online FAQs are a great way to provide value. Brandon breaks down two great options for answering FAQ’s online and provides some stats for certain items, important considerations, along with itemized checklists to ensure your maximizing potential! 

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Want More?

Paid members also get the following:

  • For paid members only: An early look into the possible August 22-29 link related update
  • Google introduces Auto-DNS verification in the new Search Console
  • Analytics for your AMP Stories
  • Aleyda Solis weighs in on the importance of adding a country code in hreflang
  • Whether or not your switched to mobile-first indexing, Google still crawls some pages with desktop Googlebot
  • Is it possible a new ad format is coming to Google?
  • Dejan SEO’s Manual Action update
  • If you use WordPress, this might be of some interest to you
  • GMB insights now appearing on the profiles you manage
  • New ad format has arrived in Google Maps for events
  • Joe Youngblood vs. GMB re: using a virtual office
  • Yelp makes improvements to features in an attempt to regain local momentum from Google
  • Google Help Hangout Tips
  • There may be a consolidation issue in GSC's Performance Report
  • Lizzi Harvey reveals a new structured data feature for job training programs
  • My tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO and Local SEO articles

Note: If you are seeing the light version and you are a paid member, be sure to log in (in the sidebar on desktop or below the post on mobile) and read the full article here.

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Part of the challenge of SEO is staying on top of industry news, trends, and techniques There is so much information out there that it is easy to get bogged down in information overload and trying to disseminate what's truly important from all that noise can be really time-consuming and challenging.

 Marie's newsletter is a game changer because it manages to cut through the fluff and deliver high-quality information that is not only really important for those that do SEO, but it is presented in a format that is really easy to absorb.
If you are looking for a trusted information related to search that is highly actionable I would strongly recommend Marie's newsletter.
Paul Macnamara - Offers SEO Consulting at PaulMacnamara.com

That's it for this episode! Stay tuned for our Youtube video (my channel is here). If you want to follow me on Facebook, here is my page.

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