Table of Contents
  1. Intro
  2. Marie's Podcast
  3. Not a premium subscriber? You're missing out!
  4. News about Google’s Algorithms
  5. MHC Announcements
  6. Google Announcements
  7. SEO Tips
  8. Other Interesting News
  9. Local SEO
  10. What Marie's reading this week
  11. Jobs
  12. Want More?
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Ep. 255 - October 6, 2022 - Light version

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This episode discusses a lot of SERP changes, some of which are making tracking difficult for SEOs. There are really good tips in this episode including a look at a site with increasing rankings in GSC but plummeting clicks and a bunch of keyword research tips.

Marie's Podcast

It’s an off week for podcast, so below is last week’s episode. I talked about the new things announced at SearchOn. Search is changing so quickly. I honestly feel that Google is attempting to completely change how people shop online. If you sell products or write product reviews at all, you should listen to this episode!

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:

  • Good tip for analyzing sites hit by recent updates
  • Marie’s speculation about the importance of the HCU
  • Ignore anything talking about “link juice”
  • Overlay algorithm update dates in data studio
  • GA4 now has enhanced measurement option for form interactions
  • Does the order of pages on a site: search matter?
  • The latest on what a title tag length should be
  • How to easily look at 50K rows of data in GSC
  • Can speed problems cause reindexing?
  • Several excellent keyword research tips – including a new one using Google shopping data that blew my mind
  • Using AI to translate videos and answer questions about it
  • Interesting case: Celebrity Net Worth being outranked by scrapers
  • Google doesn’t hate affiliate sites
  • Interesting read for those using AI generated content
  • Upcoming changes to medical SERPS?
  • Bug in Image Search in Creative Commons Corpus
  • What Marie’s reading – my summary and thoughts on recent SEO articles
You’ll also have access to all past episodes, including this one.
I

News about Google’s Algorithms

Is it worthwhile separating out product review content into its own subfolder/subdomain?

This was an excellent question.

Alan did not answer it directly, but instead mentioned that you can use structured data to help Google determine which parts of your content are relevant to products. 

Danny Sullivan jumped in to clarify that structured data is not a ranking factor.

It could be one of the signals Google uses to determine if something is a product review

I asked for more information but did not get a reply so far.

However, Danny implies here that the product review updates are not a sitewide signal.

We’re hoping for clarification on this as it seems to me that many sites hit by the PRU had a sitewide drop. It is possible though that the issues that caused the site’s content to be considered low quality are present on all pages of the site making it appear like a sitewide penalty.

SearchOn

I agree with Mordy. I think we’re in for some massive changes in how people use Google. I’d encourage you to read his thoughts in this thread:

I liked Kevin Indig’s take on SearchOn

  • We’ll soon have to deal with people searching for images+text.
  • Google is going to serve more information from within Google maps. Pay attention to GBP!
  • More shopping features – and this is a priority! Kevin says, “Ecommerce companies need to build stronger image assets and compete on price + delivery.”
  • More first hand experience and ugc content in the SERPS
  • “Ecommerce companies will have to embrace eco-friendly signals.”

MHC Announcements

Marie’s upcoming SMX talk

I’m in the midst of preparing my deck for SMX Next presentation. Funny story. They initially rejected my slides because the example I used to show good vs bad content had the word “testicle” in the heading. I will be spending my weekend editing out potentially offensive words and improving my deck now.

I’ll be recording next week. The conference is on November 15. You can register for this virtual event for free.

Book a strategy session with Marie

I have thoroughly enjoyed doing zoom consultation with several of you over the last couple of months. I realized that some of these calls are more helpful to site owners than having me spend a couple of weeks doing a full written report. We’ve been screensharing, looking at competitors, analyzing analytics and strategizing about how to adapt and win as Google’s algorithms change.

I’m experimenting with offering this as a regular service. You can use this link to book a strategy session with me to discuss your website.

There will be more coming! I am hoping to start doing some group webinars to discuss Google updates, improving quality and more. If things go as planned, we’ll have some large group sessions that all premium newsletter subscribers can join, and also some smaller groups where we can really get into analyzing sites. There will be a fee for the smaller groups. I’ll have more info on that in the weeks to come.

Google Announcements

GSC is missing data in the performance report for Sep 21

This was apparently a reporting error on Google’s side. I have not noticed this outage for any of my clients, but if you are analyzing GSC data, and already were confused by the many updates, this is not going to help!

Problems with GA’s GSC query report

SEO Tips

Are unique images important for ranking?

John says no, unless you are trying to rank in image search.

I do think that for some queries, unique imagery can be a way to add value beyond what competitors have. Given the upcoming changes with MUM and the increasingly more and more visual changes we are seeing in the search results, I think that having unique images could be one of the unmeasurable machine learned ranking factors for some queries in the near future if not already happening.

Why would GSC show improved average rankings but decreased clicks and impressions

This is from one of the site reviews I am currently working on. They suffered a massive drop in traffic on May 16. This was before the core update. Although May 16 was not announced as an update, many sites saw massive drops. I wrote an article about it.

There’s great discussion in the replies to this tweet (plus the likely answer):

Other Interesting News

Please contribute to the state of technical SEO report

Is Google reviewing manual actions in batches?

We had three sites get their manual actions lifted this week after waiting for a while.

Local SEO - Google Announcements

Search console may miss tracking activity from the 3-pack

If you do local SEO, it’s worthwhile clicking through to read Joy’s testing on this as described on the Local Search Forum. It looks like these clicks may not be tracked in GSC.

Increase in GBP suspensions lately

What I'm reading this week

This section has changed! Premium readers get my summary and thoughts on the articles I’m reading this week:

Winners & Losers of the September 2022 Core Update & Product Reviews Update
https://www.amsivedigital.com/insights/seo/winners-losers-of-the-september-2022-core-update-product-reviews-update/
Lily Ray – September 28, 2022

What is semantic search: A deep dive into entity-based search
https://searchengineland.com/semantic-search-entity-based-search-388221
Olaf Kopp – September 29, 2022

Long tail SEO keywords: Leverage your market niche for better visibility
https://www.wix.com/seo/learn/resource/long-tail-seo-keywords-for-better-visibility
Myriam Jessier – October 4, 2022

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:

  • Good tip for analyzing sites hit by recent updates
  • Marie’s speculation about the importance of the HCU
  • Ignore anything talking about “link juice”
  • Overlay algorithm update dates in data studio
  • GA4 now has enhanced measurement option for form interactions
  • Does the order of pages on a site: search matter?
  • The latest on what a title tag length should be
  • How to easily look at 50K rows of data in GSC
  • Can speed problems cause reindexing?
  • Several excellent keyword research tips – including a new one using Google shopping data that blew my mind
  • Using AI to translate videos and answer questions about it
  • Interesting case: Celebrity Net Worth being outranked by scrapers
  • Google doesn’t hate affiliate sites
  • Interesting read for those using AI generated content
  • Upcoming changes to medical SERPS?
  • Bug in Image Search in Creative Commons Corpus
  • What I’m reading this month – my summary of the latest SEO articles
You’ll also have access to all past episodes, including this one.
I

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