Table of Contents
  1. Intro
  2. SNYCU Podcast
  3. Not a premium subscriber? You're missing out!
  4. News about Google’s Algorithms
  5. MHC Announcements
  6. Google Announcements
  7. Google SERP Changes
  8. SEO Tips
  9. Google Help Hangout Tips
  10. Other Interesting News
  11. Local SEO - Tips
  12. Recommended Reading
  13. Jobs
  14. Want More?
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Ep. 186 - June 3, 2021 - Light Version

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In this episode, we discuss the initial buzz around the big Google announcement (and pre-announcement) of a June Core Update followed by a July Core Update, Google fight for spam-free results, the sources behind Google News, Google’s description of the “honeymoon period” for new sites, and much more.

SNYCU Podcast

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

  • How Google fought for spam-free results
  • Understanding the sources behind Google News
  • “Also covered on this page…” spotted within some featured snippets
  • Useful info if you’re finding 5xx errors in Google Search Console
  • What’s the best execution of your link-building campaigns? Here’s an expert analysis…
  • Tips to prevent spam abuse
  • What to know before you delete tag and category pages
  • A useful reminder about doorway pages
  • Scholarship links have been cited in a recent manual action penalty
  • HTTP Archive is seeing positive results surrounding Core Web Vitals
  • Does upvoting reviews help it show higher on Google?
  • Whitespark discusses the new Google My Business Products feature
  • Tool (and guide) for using Google Trends to find top and rising keywords that are relevant for you (basic Python knowledge required)
  • A browser-based tool for sourcing competitor structured data
  • Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles
You’ll also have access to all past episodes, including this one.
I

News about Google’s Algorithms

Google has released the June core update! And preannounced a July update as well

It is worthwhile clicking on that tweet to read the entire thread written by Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison. 

It is quite unusual for Google to pre-announce an upcoming core update. Google says that they were not quite ready to proceed with all of the planned improvements for this core update, so they are moving ahead with the parts that are done. They say, “Because of the two-part nature of this release, it’s possible a very small slice of content might see changes in June that reverse in July.”

In our experience, the sites that have done well with core updates over the last couple of years are ones that demonstrate good E-A-T and do a good job at meeting the needs of searchers. If you are affected by this update, Google’s recommendation is to read the information in their article on what webmasters should know about core updates. In this article, Google lists many questions to ask yourself to help determine whether your content is high quality.

We feel that many SEOs discount this blog post because many of the questions discuss things that seem impossible for a computer algorithm to understand. For example, how could an algorithm determine that your content is substantially more valuable than your competitors? How could they know that your page has “interesting information that’s beyond obvious?”

If you are in this camp, we would recommend watching Google’s video called Trillions of Questions, No Easy Answers in which they share about some of the incredible advances they have made in improving search recently. 

We hope that your traffic and rankings thrive following the June core Google update. Marie will be off next week, but will be digging into analysis with her team following that. 

If your site does not do well following this update, with most core updates our recovery advice remains the same:

  • Study and do all you can to meet the standards suggested in Google’s blog post on core updates.
  • Read the Quality Raters’ Guidelines and pay special attention to examples given that are similar to your site or situation. (Or you can read our book with a checklist of things that we look at when assessing websites through the eyes of the QRG.)
  • Improve how you demonstrate E-A-T both on and off your site wherever possible
  • Improve on technical aspects of SEO where possible (although technical fixes usually are not the solution to core update hits.)
  • Look at keywords that lost rankings and try and determine why the sites outranking you could be seen as better meeting the needs of searchers. Adapt your content to be even better.

There is more information here on having an MHC site auditor review your website to help you find ways to improve as mentioned in the bullet points above. Keep in mind we usually end up with a bit of a waiting list when Google releases a core update.

MHC Announcements

Marie is presenting at SMX 2021

SMX 2021 is two weeks away! Marie is scheduled to talk in two weeks (1:00 PM EDT – 1:33 PM EDT on June 16th (day two)) alongside a series of industry talent. You will not want to miss her talk on Google’s algorithms, the Quality Raters’ Guidelines and most importantly, on how we can use the information in Google’s Blog post on core updates. The agenda is jam packed with tons of amazing content worth paying attention to. Grab your tickets today!

No podcast episode next week

Marie is taking a well-deserved week off. The rest of the team will keep you updated on all of the most important changes in the newsletter, but you’ll need to wait an extra week to hear Marie discuss the news in podcast!

Google Announcements

Google sunsets the generic “Rich Results” Search appearance in Google Search Console

More or less exactly what it says on the tin – this week Google announced that they are sunsetting the “rich results” element within GSC. Previously, GSC would report any pages that had rich results under this tag, but they are now advanced enough to provide accurate subcategories for webmasters, making the “rich result” category redundant. 

Google now has an Ads Liaison

We typically don’t cover the topic of paid ads in our newsletter, but we’re confident that some of our readers will be excited to hear this news. Similar to Danny Sullivan on the Search side of things, Ginny Marvin, also from Search Engine Land, will be the go-to communications person responsible for handling the relationship between Google Ads and any questions, concerns, or feedback you might have.

Google SERP Changes

Related Keywords appearing in mobile snippets (again)

This was a spot by Brodie Clark this week – highlighted keywords related to the query appearing on the mobile SERPs.

As Brodie notes, he saw this a few months ago and wrote about it here. However, this time around the keywords being chosen (he thinks) are more related to entities related to the query whereas before, they appeared to be driven by content on the page. 

As a number of people have commented, it is not clear what value Google believes this addition would have to mobile searchers, so it will be interesting to see whether this SERP test rolls out at any point. 

SEO Tips

Google describes the “honeymoon period” that new sites go through

In response to a recent Twitter thread, John Mueller once again addressed the “sandbox” and the “honeymoon period” myths. 

The sandbox essentially refers to the belief that Google prevents new websites from ranking higher in the SERPs, whereas the honeymoon period is the belief that Google will temporarily rank websites higher to test them out. 

Google has confirmed on a number of occasions that the sandbox does not exist. John Mueller has previously stated in another tweet that “We have a number of algorithms that might look similar, but these are essentially just algorithms trying to understand how the website fits in with the rest of the websites trying to rank for those queries.”

Essentially, what John says actually happens is that when a site is new, Google does not have a lot of ranking and quality signals yet, and therefore needs to make assumptions about the website and where the pages should rank. 

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1397798520879468545?s=20

If you have a new site and see a bit of a drop after initially being ranked higher, it could just be that Google now has more signals for your website and the algorithms are doing their job. Pay close attention to the quality of your content, and try to be objective about how your pages stack up against your competitors.

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1397875331550396416

Does Google consider lab or field data when assessing Core Web Vitals?

When looking at your Core Web Vitals, if there is a discrepancy between lab data and field data, Google only uses your field data. That’s right, it’s the one you should pay the most attention to. 

Lab data is helpful to use when you’re testing things and you’re looking for real-time info (ie. so you can quickly see if a change or optimization has made a difference). Google has commented in the past that field data will generally take ~28 days to validate any improvements you’ve made. 

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1399358542868631553

Izzi Smith gives a lesson on unused and render-blocking JavaScript

What a great thread! 

The tip from Izzi about consulting with the usage visualizations within DevTools is really handy. It is understandable if your eyes roll back into your head when you hear the phrase unused JavaScript, but there are sometimes some quick wins in the form of unnecessary or redundant plugins if you simply know where to look (More Tools > Coverage > Unused Bytes & Usage Visualization). Be mindful that some JS can come into play after the page load and once a user interaction occurs.

Consider checking your log files if you’re using Cloudflare

Carl Hendy launched a recent survey asking webmasters whether Cloudflare has any kind of impact on their crawling and indexing performance within Search. The results were mixed, to say the least, and are a good reminder to analyze your server log to determine if anything here is a little suspect.

Google Help Hangout Tips

On page references should be followed, says Google

If your site has any medical, legal, financial, or scientific content, it is important that you provide information that backs up any claims being made. By using citations and references, you can strengthen your content while also providing search engines with a better context on what your content is about and/or if your content follows scientific consensus.

If your citations and references are not affiliate links, Google recommends that you always use followed links. The idea here is to allow search engines to fully understand what the link is about and how it connects to your content. 

How to handle an influx of spammy links to your domain

Have you ever seen an increase in spammy links pointing to your site? In last week’s Google SEO office-hours hangout, John Mueller states that big sites that are seeing a couple hundred spammy links can just ignore them. He goes on to say it’s not a problem unless you are or have been involved in link building. If you examine a link and it appears to be one that’s been purchased, then that’s worth disavowing.

Here at MHC, we agree! We believe Google can differentiate between spam and purchased links pointing to your site. When we disavow, it’s usually for sites that have a manual action or have had one in the past. So if we’re already filing a disavow, we’ll often add those spammy links in there too while we’re at it.

Sudden declines in traffic are often not the result of a technical issue 

In a recent Google SEO office-hours hangout, a site received a sudden drop in traffic and attributed the decline to recent changes they made with their images.

If you see a sudden decline in traffic, in most cases this is likely not the result of a technical issue. Larger traffic declines in shorter periods of time (such as two days in this case) are much more likely to be the result of the algorithms re-evaluating the quality of the website.

Google is constantly tweaking their algorithms which could potentially affect your site’s traffic. We recommend cross-referencing your own traffic fluctuations with our algorithm updates page where we keep an up-to-date list of instances we believe are significant dates of increased turbulence. 

Other Interesting News

Google is sharing less ranking details with some of their staff 

Interesting insight from a recent Javascript hangout with Martin Splitt on who has access to ranking information. He said that when he joined his team in 2018, that information was no longer shared, but had been previously. John and Gary have shared some details with him, which tells us that they’re in the know in regards to ranking information. We’ve gathered that both John and Gary know quite a bit more than they let on, but it’s interesting to see that things are kept rather quiet. 

Local SEO - Tips

Google Posts are free ads, so use them!

Don’t forget to take advantage of Google Posts, as they can help earn you some extra attention in the SERPs! This tactic appears to be commonly overlooked by many businesses but as Darren shows, they can be impactful.

We’ve added two guides below that should help you get started with — or better use — Google Posts:

Recommended Reading

The Ultimate Guide to Duplicate Content & SEO – Wayne Barker
https://sitebulb.com/resources/guides/the-ultimate-guide-to-duplicate-content-seo/
May 19, 2021

Duplicate content: it’s unavoidable. We’ve all had to deal with it at some point. Hopefully the next time it’s put on your plate, though, you’ll be able to use this super helpful resource from Wayne Barker to make things a little bit easier. In this resource, Wayne tackles what duplicate content is, how to identify, and most importantly, how to fix it.  

 

Twitter Carousels & Google Search: An Experiment (Real Data), How Measurement Works & More – Brodie Clark
https://brodieclark.com/twitter-carousels-google-search/
May 28, 2021

Twitter Carousels in Google’s SERPs are undoubtedly eye-catching, and the content can gain a huge amount of visibility in Google’s SERPs… but is there any way to tell what influence traffic has from it on your GSC and Analytics data? Well, Brodie Clark swoops in to get to the bottom of this in an experiment with the help of 100+ SEOs.

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:

  • How Google fought for spam-free results
  • Understanding the sources behind Google News
  • “Also covered on this page…” spotted within some featured snippets
  • Useful info if you’re finding 5xx errors in Google Search Console
  • What’s the best execution of your link-building campaigns? Here’s an expert analysis…
  • Tips to prevent spam abuse
  • What to know before you delete tag and category pages
  • A useful reminder about doorway pages
  • Scholarship links have been cited in a recent manual action penalty
  • HTTP Archive is seeing positive results surrounding Core Web Vitals
  • Does upvoting reviews help it show higher on Google?
  • Whitespark discusses the new Google My Business Products feature
  • Tool (and guide) for using Google Trends to find top and rising keywords that are relevant for you (basic Python knowledge required)
  • A browser-based tool for sourcing competitor structured data
  • 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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