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In this episode, we discuss what we know about Google’s recent algorithm fluctuations, clarifying misconceptions about robots.txt, what the upcoming page experience update may look like, we’re almost at the MFI rollout, and some great tips from John Mueller in recently transcribed help hangouts.

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

• What we know about Google’s recent algorithm fluctuations
• John Mueller shares insight into core updates in a recent help hangout
• Should your tag pages be indexed?
• Clearing up a misconception regarding robots.txt
• A quick analysis re the potential impact of the upcoming Page Experience update
• Trust issues could hinder your rich results
• Relevance is far more important that Core Web Vitals metrics
• John Mueller talks about the benefits of pyramid navigation structure for larger sites
• Google discusses their assessment of duplicate content
• Google’s crawling efforts for news publishers heavily focuses on these two things 
• If you’re unhappy with the dates showing alongside your SERP listing, here’s what you need to know
• Spike in FAQ rich results errors for sites that use this 
• This updated GMB documentation mentions an important change to your performance metrics
• Does optimizing for ‘near me’ work for Local SEO?
• A look at the GMB ‘Opening Date’ field
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

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Possible significant Google update March 5-6, 2021

Once again, we are seeing signs of a possible significant change to Google’s algorithms. Barry Schwartz reported an update over the weekend where he pulled several quotes from a Webmaster World thread from site owners reporting very large drops in traffic.

There have been far more significant updates in the last few months than usual. In the next section, Marie explains what we know so far and what Google has told us we can do if affected by a Google update.

Changing newsletter and podcast publishing date!

This week you may have noticed something different, we published our newsletter on Thursday! We are going to do this moving forward every week so that you can enjoy your coffee and read the latest SEO news throughout the day. Thanks for your understanding.

Full Coverage news hits the SERPs

Full Coverage News was introduced in 2018 and let you see the major headlines and topics of the day. Now, the full coverage options lets you see more news related to that topic by scrolling to the end of the carousel or clicking “more news on…”. This essentially lets you explore more information about that news topic and be delivered a variety of perspectives. 

This is likely a part of Google’s goal to provide an array of information, not just the major sources dictating the same news. It also helps provide context and more information that a searcher may want if a news topic is spanning several days.

Dissecting the crawl stats report in GSC

If you want to find out how often Google crawls your site, you should use Search Console’s

Crawl Stats report. This tool provides webmasters statistics about Google’s crawling behavior. You can figure out what your site’s general availability is, the average page response for a crawl request and even how many requests were made by Google to your site in the last 90 days. 

🧙‍♂️ Become a crawl wizard with the Crawl Stats report 📈!

In this special feature of #SearchConsole Training, @danielwaisberg dives into:

🕷️ How Google crawls pages
💰 Crawl rate / demand / budget
✨ NEW Crawl Stats report

📺 Watch it now → https://t.co/pt6AEiSPKg pic.twitter.com/4AYgHjehQG

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) March 3, 2021

Page Speed Insights scores may have risen as of March 3rd, 2021

Google has announced that they’ve moved from making network requests with http/1.1 to http/2 which could potentially improve your metrics and performance score. We suggest that you be mindful of this if you’re comparing scores before and after this date. 

Your PageSpeed Insights scores might go up as of 3/3/21 -> "PageSpeed Insights now uses http/2 to make network requests, if the server supports it. Previously, all requests were made with http/1.1…" https://t.co/xcyN6eM0fh h/t @tldrMarketing pic.twitter.com/btA4RNiepK

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 5, 2021

Reminder: mobile-first indexing for all sites is ~60 days away

By late March 2021 all sites will be moved to mobile-first indexing (meaning all indexing will stem from the mobile version of your site!). To date Google has moved sites that they feel are “ready,” but this wave could have big implications as unprepared sites will be moved regardless.

We’d estimate that sites who have not already transitioned have approximately 60ish days to make the necessary changes to their site. If you’re unsure as to whether or not you’ve switched or you’re looking for tips for transitioning, check out our mobile-first indexing post — the complete guide for this and much more. 

After delaying the switch, Google will finally switch all sites to mobile-first indexing in "late March". Eager to see some of the remaining sites get moved. For sites that haven't been moved yet, I hope they are ready. They've had quite a bit of time to prepare. pic.twitter.com/cRFd4oJEQ2

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 6, 2021

A new Bing Search interface prompts a more ‘visually immersive’ experience

Bing has added more features to their SERPs to help make the results visually immersive. These come in the form of infographics, expandable carousels, more information pertaining to a local search, find similar looking images in search and more. 

It’s a pretty neat upgrade for UX as it not only provides more context to the search, but does so in a way that is easily digestible. If you use Bing for rankings, you’ll definitely want to pay attention to these and see how and if they affect your traffic or require optimization.

You received a notification that someone wants to access my GMB, what should you do?

Joy puts this simply: delete the email! Don’t give access to your GMB to someone you don’t know as this can detrimentally affect your profile and business!

A9: Easiest thing to do is delete the email. #gmbchat https://t.co/ARMnPS7opS

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) March 9, 2021

30+ tools for finding search data and trends

Anne Crowe has put together a massive list of tools to add to your keyword research and UX toolkit. Some of these are the obvious industry standards like SEMrush, Ahrefs and Yoast. This is a big list and there may be some you may not have had tried. We are excited to test out quite a few of these; GTMetrix for page speed results, Nightwatch’s SEO Search for position ranking and SERP simulator for testing how your title tags and meta descriptions appear to users.

What Happens If Canonicalizing E-Commerce Pagination Pages to First Page? – Roman Adamita
https://www.boostroas.com/canonicalization-pagination-pages-on-e-commerce/
March 7, 2021

We found this to be an interesting SEO test. Essentially, what kind of an impact will there be on product pages if an e-commerce site canonicalizes their category pagination pages to the first page? Lily Ray from Path Interactive has a really nice resource on handling pagination that we like to refer to, but if pagination is something you’re always looking for ways to streamline or optimize and this piqued your interest, the article’s author, Roman, has more details about his process and results here.

https://twitter.com/hanfbutcher/status/1369215706915561475

I am HIRING 3 Paid Search professionals to my Discoverability group! Will post links ASAP. Interested? DM me.

Kansas City and Chicago are our top choices, but could also consider a few other North American cities.#hiring #jobopening #paidsearch #ppc #sem

— Heather Physioc (@HeatherPhysioc) March 8, 2021

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 we know about Google’s recent algorithm fluctuations
• John Mueller shares insight into core updates in a recent help hangout
• Should your tag pages be indexed?
• Clearing up a misconception regarding robots.txt
• A quick analysis re the potential impact of the upcoming Page Experience update
• Trust issues could hinder your rich results
• Relevance is far more important that Core Web Vitals metrics
• John Mueller talks about the benefits of pyramid navigation structure for larger sites
• Google discusses their assessment of duplicate content
• Google’s crawling efforts for news publishers heavily focuses on these two things 
• If you’re unhappy with the dates showing alongside your SERP listing, here’s what you need to know
• Spike in FAQ rich results errors for sites that use this 
• This updated GMB documentation mentions an important change to your performance metrics
• Does optimizing for ‘near me’ work for Local SEO?
• A look at the GMB ‘Opening Date’ field
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

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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