Table of Contents
  1. Intro
  2. SNYCU Podcast
  3. Not a premium subscriber? You're missing out!
  4. Algorithm Update News
  5. Google Announcements
  6. SEO Tips
  7. Local SEO - Google Announcements
  8. Local SEO - Google SERP Changes
  9. SEO Tools
  10. Recommended Reading
  11. Jobs
  12. Want More?
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Ep. 179 - April 15, 2021 - Light Version

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In this episode, we discuss the Product Review Update and what we know so far, how unnatural links can hurt your site, changes to the Discover documentation, Google discusses Web Stories, and lots of actionable SEO tips.

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

  • A deep dive into the product review update 
  • Change to how Cumulative Layout Shift is calculated
  • GSC makes improvements to the Performance reports
  • Changes made to the Google Discover Documentation
  • Discussing the value of three vital click-based signals for SEO
  • Google discusses Web Stories
  • Common eCommerce issues and how to fix them
  • Content marketing ideas for industrial and B2B type companies
  • A simple way to generate Regex for GSC/GA
  • Complaints about Google mishandling soft 404s
  • Live inventory showing on GMB listings for major retailers
  • What’s new and different about Google Review Summaries (a.k.a. review snippets)
  • How to make your service location pages unique
  • How to fix the Google My Business SAB ranking issue
  • Is there any merit to buying ‘Google My Maps Citations?’ on Fiverr
  • New in the WebPageTest tool
  • Attention content creators, this one’s for you!
  • Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles
You’ll also have access to all past episodes, including this one.
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Algorithm Update News

The product review update is live! Here is what we know and are seeing so far 

On Thursday, April 8 Google announced a new update was live – the Product Review update. So far our analysis is showing that this is an unusual update. We’re seeing increases for several of our eCommerce clients, which doesn’t make complete sense as this update was supposed to elevate high quality review content. Many of the pages for which we’re seeing increases have nothing to do with reviews.

In our premium version of the newsletter, we’ve described what we know so far, and also what we’re seeing. It’s early, and many of the ranking changes we investigated seem to be fluctuating somewhat. Given that Google has told us this update will take two weeks to roll out, we really should have even more in depth information for you next week.

 

If your site fluctuates between good and bad rankings with subsequent Google updates, here’s likely why

We get a little excited when a new client comes to us who has seen many ups and downs with Google updates. Usually this means that they are “on the edge” in terms of quality when Google is assessing the site. In most of these cases, making improvements to the site to help it better line up with Google’s Quality Raters’ Guidelines can result in great improvements for cases like this.

 

Can unnatural links hurt a site beyond getting a manual action?

We all know that if you have enough unnatural links pointing to your site, it can lead to a manual action. But what if there is no manual action present? Can those unnatural links still somehow impact the site’s ability to rank?

In 2019 Marie spoke with John Mueller during an in-person help hangout at Google’s offices in NYC. She asked whether unnatural links could hurt a site algorithmically. John’s reply was as such:

“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.” 

In a recent help hangout, John reiterated this thought. He was asked about whether old unnatural links from ten years ago could still cause problems with Google’s algorithms, even if there was no manual action listed in GSC. John said, “One area where you might see some kind of after effects for a while is with regards to links. If the old website had a lot of really really bad artificial links associated with it then that might be something that at some point would count kind of against your website in that sense, even if in the meantime you have a different website up there.”

At MHC we are currently in the process of studying traffic patterns following filing disavows last year for several of our clients. We do believe that there are some sites that can see improvement by disavowing. However, if you do not have a history of building your own links at scale, most sites do not need to disavow. We will be publishing an article soon with our findings!

Google Announcements

Google I/O announced for May 2021

Sundar himself has announced the upcoming Google I/O. This will be a virtual conference for developers from around the world to learn about Google technologies, get information from Google experts and product insights. It will be held from May 12-20 for free and is now open for registration. 

SEO Tips

A look at slow WordPress plugins and suitable alternatives

This is a really great write up of Jonathan Sulo’s talk from WordCamp Nordic earlier this year. In the full presentation, Jonathan discusses “Plugin Hygiene” for WordPress sites, and in particular he looks at the most common (in his opinion) examples of plugins that can really slow down the performance of a WordPress site.

 

Can cookie consent banners cause Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) issues?

If your consent banner is leading to CLS, seek out some of the solutions readily available says Martin Splitt. If you’re feeling stumped, jump into this thread and Martin (a Developer at Google) will take a peak.

Local SEO - Google Announcements

Phone numbers are no longer allowed in GMB Posts

In order to help avoid the risk of abuse, Google has said that phone numbers are not allowed in GMB Posts. You can keep your phone number on your GMB profile, or add a call button, but Joy says having a phone number in your post was always problematic, Google has just now made it official. 

Local SEO - Google SERP Changes

Possible issue with reviews not publishing

Joy recently shared with the Twitter community that there may be an issue with reviews on GMB not being published. Businesses are complaining that they’ve been given reviews, but they simply aren’t showing up. If this is happening to you, hop in to their thread and let Joy know. 

SEO Tools

A look at Sitebulb’s auditing capabilities (sponsored)

Since launching in 2017, Sitebulb has evolved from being a crawler, into a comprehensive SEO auditing tool.

But at its heart, the tool is still powered by cutting edge crawling technology, utilizing the latest version of Chrome for JavaScript rendering, which means it can literally crawl any website you need to audit.

Audit any website you want, whenever you want, however you want – with no limits or credits to worry about.

Out-of-the-box, Sitebulb enables you to audit websites from a few pages, to hundreds of thousands of pages.

If you’d like to give Sitebulb a try for free, you can get a special, extended trial licence with ‘Search News You Can Use’. Just go to: Sitebulb.com/SearchNews

Recommended Reading

The Sky Garden Method: Discover Evergreen Link Building Opportunities Using Search Data – Darren Kingman
https://moz.com/blog/sky-garden-link-building-method
April 12, 2021

If you are looking into being one of the top resources in your niche, your content should be the one that offers the most unique value. This technique of creating good content that will bring people’s attention was playfully labeled by Darren Kingman as the “The Sky Garden Method”.

This method is connected to Brian Dean’s “Skyscraper Technique”, where SEOs focus on finding link-worthy content, improving content and reaching out to the right audience. To learn more about this process, we recommend that you read Darren’s article. 

 

How to Grow a Blog (from 0 to 15k Monthly Visitors) tactics, no fluff and other stuff – Samuel Schmitt
https://samuelschmitt.com/how-to-grow-a-blog/
April 8, 2021

We’re a big fan of Samuel’s work and this is another great post that you should be paying attention to. It examines a brand new blog he launched nearly 24 months ago which has amassed up 15k unique visitors monthly. For more detailed info, including the methodology for building skyscraper content, be sure to check out the full article.

Jobs

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:

  • A deep dive into the product review update 
  • Change to how Cumulative Layout Shift is calculated
  • GSC makes improvements to the Performance reports
  • Changes made to the Google Discover Documentation
  • Discussing the value of three vital click-based signals for SEO
  • Google discusses Web Stories
  • Common eCommerce issues and how to fix them
  • Content marketing ideas for industrial and B2B type companies
  • A simple way to generate Regex for GSC/GA
  • Complaints about Google mishandling soft 404s
  • Live inventory showing on GMB listings for major retailers
  • What’s new and different about Google Review Summaries (a.k.a. review snippets)
  • How to make your service location pages unique
  • How to fix the Google My Business SAB ranking issue
  • Is there any merit to buying ‘Google My Maps Citations?’ on Fiverr
  • New in the WebPageTest tool
  • Attention content creators, this one’s for you!
  • Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles
You’ll also have access to all past episodes, including this one.
I

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.

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

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