Ep. 189 - June 24, 2021 - Light Version

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In this episode, we discuss changes coming to the Top Stories Carousel, link building outreach and tips, PAA declining, the latest on the June Core Update and more!

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

• Changes are coming to the Top Stories Carousel!
• Google made a change limiting FAQ rich results per snippet 
• People Also Ask feature on the decline
• Tim Soulo sheds some light on link building outreach
• A lesson in link building courtesy of Mark Rofe
• How to categorize keywords when building a topic cluster
• A library of regular expressions you can use in GSC
• Wondering if the links you recently disavowed were the reason for your rankings drop?
• Shopify has finally made their robots.txt editable
• The state of Ohio bans this
• How Google is selecting which reviews to highlight in GMB
• How to improve your Google Hotel listing in GMB
• The ability to edit Google Posts and Products within the SERPs is becoming more widespread
• Robots.txt parser
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

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There is not much to report this week regarding any algorithm updates or news. 

According to Barry, there have been some reports of increased ranking fluctuations and chatter over the weekend. As Barry notes, fluctuations like this are fairly common after a Core Update like we experienced in early June. 

Some of the weather tools are also showing mild changes, but largely nothing to write home about. 

We did want to highlight an interesting pattern from the June update that Lily Ray picked up on where she is seeing more affiliate pages ranking near the top of the SERPs for transactional queries that were previously dominated by eComm stores. 

1 pattern I'm seeing from the June Core Update across many queries is Google adjusting its understanding of user intent.

For example, the below 'transactional' keyword previously returned 5 ecomm sites in the top 5, but now 2 affiliate pages rank there (incl. 1 from 2019?)

1/2 pic.twitter.com/M8SzkEVSss

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) June 16, 2021

The "Who What Wear" affiliate page fell entirely out of the top 10. It has much less unique content than the other affiliates.

The WWW site was hit pretty hard across the board by the core update.. another example of how this core update seems tied to the Product Review update. pic.twitter.com/4QewxQdrkO

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) June 16, 2021

This could suggest that in Google’s assessment of searcher intent for some transactional queries, they have reason to believe that instead of looking for direct purchase options – some users responded positively to more information driven pages. 

It will be interesting to see if this trend continues across other transactional queries, and whether after some time of user interaction, it persists!

Google released a spam update to their systems

Announced by the @searchliaison account in Twitter on Wednesday, Google has advised that a spam update has been released which will have concluded by the time of reading this.

There will be a secondary update conducted next week and Google promises to announce it when it’s released. 

This spam update will conclude today. A second one will follow next week. We'll add to this tweet thread when that happens.

We encourage sites to follow our best practices for Search: https://t.co/jK3ArQEuir

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 23, 2021

Temporary break from podcast

Marie has unfortunately been ill and therefore will not be recording podcast this week. We’ll let you know if it will resume next week or not. We really appreciate your patience and understanding. 

Next week’s newsletter will be released on Wednesday

Next Thursday is Canada Day for us up north and a national holiday. Newsletter will be published on Wednesday June 30th instead of Thursday July 1st. We’ll resume back to publishing on Thursdays the following week.

Google updated their documentation on robots.txt and structured data

As an FYI, Google has made a few updates to their documentation on robots.txt, as well as their documentation on structured data. Most of it was just to make things more clear or remove redundancies, so nothing notable should have changed for you, but Barry Schwartz has a full list of all the changes made here.

Technical SEO tips to help with getting your content discovered and indexed

Technical SEO alert: you need to know this!#Google ranks pages, not websites. In order to get your page indexed, it should have a separate URL that Google can discover and follow. Here are the main tips to make this happen:

1/5

— Kristina Azarenko (@azarchick) June 15, 2021

Here are some more important tips from Kristina’s Twitter thread based on Martin Splitt’s Webmaster Lighting talk:

• Always use an HREF attribute so Google can discover and follow links.
• Use HTML links. JavaScript links are fine so long as they use an HREF attribute. 
• Google won’t index URLs with fragments (ex. store.com/catalog#gifts).

7 tips for giving a better presentation

Matthew Howells-Barby of HubSpot has shared great tips for anyone doing an upcoming presentation. This isn’t just for SEOs, but all presenters in general. Here are a few of the tips:

• Tell a story. We’ve shared this before, but stories are a very powerful tool.
• Start with your recommendation. It just flows better!
• Keep each slide to one point. Presentations are meant to be visual aids, so keep it organized. 
• Continuously repeat your core message. This is a method used in storytelling as well as emphasizing your point. It’s important to engrain your point with your audience. 

Great leaders are great storytellers.

If you're bad at creating internal presentations, you'll struggle to progress.

I’ve delivered 100s – if not 1000s (seriously) – of presentations during the span of my career.

Here are 7 principles I use to deliver great presentations 🧵

— Matthew Howells-Barby Ξ mhb.eth (@matthewbarby) June 14, 2021

Google releases their ‘Digital Essentials Guide’ aimed at helping businesses succeed online 

Google has just launched a new guide to help businesses online. If you’re new to creating a business profile, starting a website and business email, and how to reach customers. This is a helpful guide for anyone starting a new business or wanting to expand their growth. 

Introducing our 🆕 Digital Essentials Guide, offering key recommendations to help businesses succeed online. Learn more about the tools and resources our guide has to offer: https://t.co/vwn98rRcIQ #SmallBusinessWeek pic.twitter.com/EvTPLhvAOz

— Google Small Business (@GoogleSmallBiz) June 22, 2021

SEO Success Case Study: Encazip.com – Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR
https://www.authoritas.com/blog/encazip-case-study/
June 14, 2021

We found this SEO case study on Encazip.com, done by Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR particularly interesting! As we’ve been saying at MHC, improvements often take the shape of a “kitchen sink” approach, where it’s not just one thing that contributes to SEO success, but rather a compilation of elements. Koray goes into a wealth of detail in this case study, so if you are looking to learn more, be sure to give the case study a read!

What Is HTTP/2? Everything You Need to Know for SEO – Ruth Everett
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-is-http2/410586/
June 18, 2021

If you have seen HTTP/2 come up on your Lighthouse report and you are confused on what it means, what to use it for and how it relates to SEO, Ruth Everett’s newest article for SEJ has all the details for you. 

Is Having One Product Page With Multiple Products Bad for SEO? – Adam Riemer
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/multiple-products-one-page-seo/408123/
June 15, 2021

Should products belonging to the same family be grouped together on a single page or split apart? Well, it’s best to consider what makes sense for users and any missteps could create plenty of thin content and possibly canonical issues. 

Hey, @DeepCrawl is hiring! #SEO #Job https://t.co/YqtoD39eD9

— Melissa Fach 🇺🇦 (@SEOAware) June 16, 2021

We're actively hiring and looking for a skilled #SEO analyst to join our small, award-winning SEO agency. #SEOjobs. https://t.co/m3k5bXwDjP

— LOCOMOTIVE Agency (@LocomotiveSEO) June 16, 2021

https://twitter.com/getvisible/status/1406935255295090690

Hey, y'all. We're looking for a Content Manager? 60k annual salary.

Know anyone who fits the description? Do YOU fit the description? https://t.co/VncTQ3aS9E

— Crunchy Links (@crunchylink) June 21, 2021

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It’s well worth the $18 per month!

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

• Changes are coming to the Top Stories Carousel!
• Google made a change limiting FAQ rich results per snippet 
• People Also Ask feature on the decline
• Tim Soulo sheds some light on link building outreach
• A lesson in link building courtesy of Mark Rofe
• How to categorize keywords when building a topic cluster
• A library of regular expressions you can use in GSC
• Wondering if the links you recently disavowed were the reason for your rankings drop?
• Shopify has finally made their robots.txt editable
• The state of Ohio bans this
• How Google is selecting which reviews to highlight in GMB
• How to improve your Google Hotel listing in GMB
• The ability to edit Google Posts and Products within the SERPs is becoming more widespread
• Robots.txt parser
• Our tl;dr summary of some awesome recent SEO articles

⎋ SUBSCRIBE NOW

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