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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. Recommended Reading
  12. Recommended Reading (Local)
  13. Jobs
  14. Want More?
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SNYCU Ep. 242 (July 7, 2022)- Light Version

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In this episode, we discuss late June SERP turbulence, pros & cons list in the SERPS, SEO tips, and news from across the industry!

PLUS: a new blog post!

Missed our last episode? Check it out here.

 

SNYCU Podcast

Marie’s Podcast for this episode

If you would like to subscribe, you can find the podcasts here:

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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!

 

Not a premium subscriber? You're missing out!

It’s well worth the $18 per month. Want to see a sample premium newsletter episode? View it here.

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

  • Marie’s thoughts and analysis this week
  • Search experiments and new SERP features in Google land!
  • SERP features that can cause an increase in impressions while click data remains low
  • Discover new ideas and terms for your content marketing
  • 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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News about Google’s Algorithms

SERP turbulence June 21-23 and 29

The Semrush sensor has shown some interesting patterns this week. There was a moderate spike in SERP turbulence on June 23 followed by low levels of change. 

Our client data shows several sites with changes starting June 21-23 and also several with changes around June 29.

 

MHC Announcements

New blog alert!

In case you missed it, Marie recently wrote a fantastic blog post on the pros and cons and other SERP annotations that give users clues to creating great content. This is definitely a must read with a wealth of detail!

 

Google Announcements

Google’s rich results guidelines have changed!

The latest version of Google’s rich results product content guidelines has added the following section:

“Don’t mark up content that promotes widely prohibited or regulated goods, services, or information that may facilitate serious and/or immediate or long-term harm to self or others. This includes content related to firearms & weapons, recreational drugs, tobacco & vaping products and gambling-related products.”

To be clear, Google is asking applicable site owners to remove all forms of rich result markup. However, Google obviously has a lot of power and won’t be showing rich results snippets for these product categories even if you don’t manually remove them. Google has also clarified that there is no risk of a manual action, you simply just don’t have any opportunity for rich results snippets to be shown, and that goes for all applicable sites. 

Glenn has given his two cents which helps contextualize the impact on those affected. 

 

Google SERP Changes

Google creating pros and cons list in select search snippets 

Okay, this isn’t brand new but many webmasters are seeing this pop up more frequently! What makes this SERP change super interesting is that the terms “pros” and “cons” that appear within the search snippet do not appear on the actual pages. Instead, Google is likely extracting information from the pages and repurposing/reformatting it.

In Marie’s section of the newsletter, our premium subscribers can hear her thoughts on the importance of this!

 

SEO Tips

10 useful call-to-action marketing tips!

Do you use CTAs? Well, you’ll want to give these 10 CTA tips by Jeremy Moser a read-through.

  1. Use language that takes the risk away for users. As Jeremy mentions, don’t give people a reason to second guess!
  2. Use language that avoids friction. Instead, it can be helpful to have a CTA that clicks to a result as opposed to the standard “sign up” or “buy now” CTAs we usually see.
  3. If you include CTAs in an email campaign, try using a softer language CTA. Think of it this way, not everyone in your email campaign will be ready to buy the product right away or be immediately interested in a discount. Instead, use a softer CTA to get more people to visit your page before they finally commit.
  4. Instead of flat out telling people to buy, imply scarcity. For instance, including something such as “while spots last!” might imply that limited spots and spaces are available.
  5. If you are able to, having CTAs that provide some sort of instant gratification can be helpful. After all, humans are all about instant results and gratification!
  6. If you have CTAs in your ads, having language that triggers impulse buying or a desire to click on the CTA can be useful.
  7. Essentially, a CTA is more than just good copy. Consider adding arrows and features that focus the user’s attention. 
  8. We’ve seen these CTAs frequently and actually like seeing them. Use social proof as part of your CTA. In doing so, you tell users that they won’t regret signing up or downloading especially if their friends have.
  9. Building on the point of avoiding friction, consider using other words other than the standard sign-up, submit, get started, etc. which may indicate more steps in the process.
  10. Lastly, try using first-person language where possible.

While not all of these may apply to you, they are certainly some great tips that you might want to consider using if they apply. Make sure you like and read through the entire Twitter thread as well!

 

The true potential of Google Autocomplete (beyond being a free keyword research tool)

Google Autocomplete is something so many of us use on a daily basis without even realizing it. But believe it or not, there’s more to gain from this search bar feature. It’s actually perfect for keyword research and finding specific phrases or queries. Suggestions provided by Google Autocomplete can help you find new queries with different (or more specific) angles that you might not have initially considered. Some examples include finding queries in question format (why, how, where, etc.). You can even research related concept entities to aid in broadening your content topics.

This article from Moz gives loads more tips about keyword research, so we highly recommend you give it a full read.

 

Google Help Hangout Tips

Is it acceptable to delete your disavow file?

Disavowing links has always been a polarizing topic in the SEO community. Recently, during a Help Hangout, John Mueller was asked if sites could delete their disavow file from Google’s Disavow Tool. John says that yes, you can indeed delete the file as long as that file was not created to address major issues, such as a manual action. 

If the disavow file is just a number of spammy links and/or links that were not created by the site’s owner, and if the site hasn’t had manual actions or isn’t currently dealing with one, there should be no issues when deleting the file. 

 

Other Interesting News

Reports of Google Analytics audience overview not tracking hourly data

Google Analytics “Audience Overview” has not been counting data in Home View. If you filter your results on July 1st at 2/3pm ET drops to zero then you might be one of the few sites impacted by this bug. Google has yet to respond to these complaints.

 

Recommended Reading

Oh, My MUM. Or how to think SEO in the era of algorithms based on AI – Gianluca Fiorelli
https://www.iloveseo.net/oh-my-mum-or-how-to-think-seo-in-the-era-of-algorithms-based-on-ai/ 
June 22, 2022

This is a very interesting, slightly more theoretical, article from the wonderful Gianluca Fiorelli. Gianluca proposed two questions. First, what if the traditional top, middle, and bottom-funnel system did not actually exist? Secondly, what if the ‘dreaded’ zero-click SERP is the result of outdated SEO strategy more than anything else. You’ll definitely want to give this a read!

 

Why We Stopped (Most) Manual Link Building After 1M+ Emails – Ross Hudgens
https://www.siegemedia.com/marketing/manual-link-building
June 1, 2022

Ross Hudgens’ agency mostly put an end to manual outreach link-building. So, what can we learn from it? Read the full article to find out!

 

The SEO Skills Maturity Matrix – Tom Critchlow
https://newsletter.seomba.com/p/the-seo-skills-maturity-matrix
June 21, 2022

This piece of content is a little different than our usual recommended reading but we absolutely had to include it! 

 

Recommended Reading (Local)

9 Local Search Developments You Need to Know About from Q2 2022 – Miriam Ellis
https://moz.com/blog/q2-2022-local-search-developments
June 27, 2022

Want to see what has been developing in local search during Q2? Check out this awesome Moz blog article to see! 

 

Jobs

Looking for a new SEO job? SEOjobs.com is a job board curated by real SEOs for SEOs. Take a look at five of the hottest SEO job listing this week (below) and sign up for the weekly job listing email only available at SEOjobs.com.

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:

  • Marie’s thoughts and analysis this week
  • Search experiments and new SERP features in Google land!
  • SERP features that can cause an increase in impressions while click data remains low
  • Discover new ideas and terms for your content marketing
  • 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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