Table of Contents
  1. Intro
  2. This week in SEO: What you need to know
  3. Local SEO
  4. Podcast
  5. Marie's speaking and articles
  6. SEO Jobs
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Marie Haynes' Newsletter - October 27, 2022 - Episode 258 - Light Version

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There are some very odd things happening in the search results. There are reports of People Also Ask and FAQ results completely dropping from the results and a huge reduction in local results as well. October’s spam update was catastrophic to many sites. In the paid version I share my thoughts so far. There are excellent SEO tips in this episode and some very interesting news on what is new and important to pay attention to on the AI front.

This week in SEO: What you need to know

Here is the most important news that all of us should be up to date on this week.

1) The October spam update has finished rolling out

The update ran from October 19-21. For those impacted, the hits were large.

2) SEOs are seeing very strange things in the search results

There are reports of search results with no PAA’s, FAQ’s and far fewer local packs. We’re not sure at this point whether this is an issue just affecting tools that scrape results or legitimately happening in real searches. I still see PAA’s and the like. But if you append &num=100 to your Google search, you’ll see what many of the tools are seeing.

To go along with this, there are many changes in the Google SERPs to show more product/shopping options.

3) GSC mislabeled structured data errors as errors

If you’ve been scratching your head trying to fix structured data errors, this was apparently a mistake on Google’s side. It did not impact the actual search results.

What’s in the paid version this week

Well, once again, there is a bit too much in the paid version😂 I would like Google to be boring for a week or two so I can catch up. In this week’s paid version there is:

  • Detailed discussion on the spam update
  • A bit about some possible unannounced updates in October
  • My thoughts on why we should all pay way more attention to YouTube (and also why I’m going to be making more YT content)
  • More discussion on the wild new SERP features and changes seen
  • Lots of SEO tips on improving content, understanding user intent, ranking with buying guides and using Screaming Frog to scrape forum discussions on your topics.
  • The latest AI news you should know including really fun and useful AI tools
  • What I’m reading. My thoughts on:

Local SEO

Drops in the number of local packs seen

 

Local SEOs are seeing large numbers of reviews removed

There is a great discussion on this in the local search forum. The consensus appears to be that most of these reviews being removed were acquired in shady ways. My bet is that if you have legitimate reviews you should not be affected by whatever is going on here.

Podcast

No podcast this week – but I have some new stuff coming!

This is normally a podcast week, but I am making some big changes so you’ll need to wait an extra week. I am now going to be doing both an audio podcast and a variety of Youtube videos.

A while back I started putting my podcast episodes on YouTube because, well, why not? When they started picking up traction, I played around with doing a video version of podcast.

Now that I’m close to having 2000 subscribers on my YouTube channel I’m amazed to see how much business this is generating. A lot of my new client work in the last few months has come from people who watched my YouTube videos. I’m also starting to mention my book in videos and making regular sales.

The other thing that has happened is that I find I thoroughly enjoy making videos. Each week I’m learning a little bit more about making thumbnails and tweaking my content to do better in YouTube’s algorithms. As I mentioned elsewhere in this week’s episode we’re seeing more and more YouTube videos appearing on searches. As TikTok gets bigger and more people search for video results, YouTube will be Google’s response. I believe we’ll see more and more changes to promote creators who provide helpful content, especially those with E-A-T.

I’d encourage you to pay attention to what Google calls the “creator economy.” Oxford Economics estimates that in 2021 YouTube’s creative ecosystem created more than 425,000 full time equivalent jobs in the US. In July, Google partnered with Shopify to “scale the creator economy.” Soon we’ll see “YouTube Shopping” to make selling products directly from YouTube videos possible.

I’m by no means abandoning SEO for YouTube. But, for the next little while, I’m saying no to speaking engagements and focusing on creating my own content to help people understand Google.

Next week, if all goes well you should see:

  • A new podcast – back to the old version, voice only, where I can be a bit more free to ramble and tell stories. Youtube doesn’t like this. I can see engagement drop off on Youtube when I stray from the topic of a video. Here’s more on how to subscribe to my podcast.
  • A series of YouTube videos to help business owners understand what the most important Google changes are.

Once I get this going, I will want to hear more personal stories of the struggles you have with Google Search. I will soon be starting some Zoom call sessions where all paid newsletter subscribers can gather to discuss the important changes to Google’s algorithms. I’ll have more information on this in the next few weeks.

If you’re looking for something to watch this week, here’s a throwback from a couple of years ago that is still relevant. I really enjoyed talking to John. Funny story – this was my first time doing an interview online. I spent a full 20 minutes trying to get my mic to work before John and I could talk and I was so frazzled!

Marie's upcoming speaking and articles

Upcoming SMX talk

I finally recorded my talk for SMX Next. This will be my last public talk for a while as I’m going to take time to focus on creating my own content.

This is a really important talk. I share my thoughts on how machine learning is likely determining how much to weigh ranking factors for most queries. No SEO can decode Google’s algorithms. The more Google uses machine learning the better they will get at ranking content that is simply the most helpful. Thankfully Google has given us so many resources to draw on to understand how to create helpful content.

The talk is November 15 and it’s virtual and free for everyone.

SEO 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.

Thank you for your patience in waiting for this week’s podcast episode. I can’t wait to show you the content I have coming!

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