Opinionated SEO - Digital Marketing News (Philip Mastroianni)
Explore every episode of Opinionated SEO - Digital Marketing News
| Pub. Date | Title | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Feb 2022 | Screaming Frog and the Search Console URL Inspection API | 00:10:46 | |
Today is February 10th and I wanted to talk about Screaming Frog as well as the new Search Console URL Inspection API. Full Blog Post / Show Notes: https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e20 Let’s jump right in, what is screaming frog and what can you do with it? Let’s start at the beginning, it’s free but limited, and you don’t run it online. The paid version is 149 pounds / year, or about $200 US dollars. So you are talking about $16 a month if you wanted to break it down that way. Buy it, write it off, and call it a day, it will save you that money in the first hour you use it. So what can it do? Screaming frog is an SEO spider, think GoogleBot but you get to save the data it captures. Here’s a list of the top features for it:
But the real power comes in when you use the paid version, and I’m going to just touch on a few of the features.
Integration with the new Search Console URL Inspection API which was officially launched on January 31st, 2022 by Google - and it allows you to see indexation status of your URLs via an API. This was integrated in the latest release in the last few weeks and you’ll see a good share of tutorials out there. You probably want to know - what am I doing with this new data, and what data do we get that we can use? First, the data is used to understand indexation status in Google, errors that are coming up, and last crawl date. And what am I doing with that data? Let’s start with indexation status - you have a few variations of the summary of indexation, things like index and submitted, indexed not submitted in sitemap, crawled not indexed, discovered but not crawled, soft 404, error, and probably a few more I’m forgetting. By pulling this data on pages, you can get a better understanding of how Google sees your s | |||
| 15 Feb 2022 | Can AI Content Rank on Google? | 00:40:19 | |
Today I wanted to talk about AI content and my tests on its success as a viable option for creating content that ranks on search engines. I’ll start with some background on the latest publicly available AI system, an example output that I pick apart, some additional example outputs, and then my opinion on how to utilize an AI system to write content. See the full show notes / blog post with tons of examples, transcript, and links @ https://opinionatedseo.com/2022/02/can-ai-content-rank-in-google/ | |||
| 03 Jun 2022 | Exact Match Domain Names SEO Myth | 00:04:01 | |
There are a number of common SEO misconceptions or myths. Some of these include the belief that SEO is all about stuffing keywords into content, your keyword density, that link building is the only important SEO tactic. And many, many more, but let's first talk about domain names. | |||
| 05 Jun 2022 | Interviewing SEO Ryan Ricketts - Moving Verticals and Agency to In-house | 00:50:48 | |
On today’s show I have Ryan Ricketts. I’ve actually known Ryan for six years now, and we’ve worked at several companies together. | |||
| 09 Jun 2022 | Ahrefs Free Tools - A Summary Discussion | 00:09:23 | |
On today’s show, I wanted to talk briefly about a free tool called ahrefs. Many of you have probably already heard of them, but I’m not sure if everyone knows they have a free version you can use by connecting your Google Search Console data. It allows those specific sites to have access to some features in ahrefs. Go to https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools and you can sign up there. | |||
| 20 Jul 2022 | Interview with Wade Carlson - Advice for new SEOs, Local SEO, & Dos Equis | 00:49:05 | |
Wade Carlson is an SEO professions based out of Orange County, CA. | |||
| 25 Jul 2022 | Jonny Rockz - Marketing in the Music Industry | 00:24:37 | |
I interview Jonny Rockz, aka Jonny Polanco about his latest single, marketing in the music industry, and his non profit he's working to help young artists get recording time. | |||
| 04 Aug 2022 | Ashwin Balakrishnan Interview - Writer, Marketer, Strategist | 01:01:19 | |
Today, I'm excited to interview Ashwin who is a full life cycle content marketer, currently working as the head of marketing at Optmyzr. We'll dive into topics like diversification of your content strategy, branded search, how to break into the industry, AI content and it's future with marketers, and a bonus question that Ashwin has never been asked in an interview before. Twitter: @TheCopyTrail - https://twitter.com/thecopytrail | |||
| 19 Sep 2022 | Gerald Murphy Interview - Original Content, User Journey, Google Realtime Algo updates | 00:27:41 | |
We have Gerald Murphy talking about everything SEO, marketing, AI content and also his work that he does at similar web as a senior solution business manager.
| |||
| 07 Oct 2022 | Offline Marketing & Local Real Estate Marketing Interview with Raj Sharma | 00:12:48 | |
Raj Sharma is an award winning real estate agent and brokerage owner in Southern California - DRE# 01886334, and we chat about some of the marketing efforts he’s done and how they’ve evolved over the last few years with a bit of emphasis on his offline efforts.
This is a great episode to listen to if you are a small business owner, or are doing marketing for a small business owner, and especially if you are in the real estate space. | |||
| 16 Dec 2022 | ChatGPT - What is it and what should I know about it as a marketer | 00:12:17 | |
In this episode of the Opinionated SEO, I discuss the capabilities of and implications of chat GPT, the free AI-based service from Open AI.
Have a happy holiday season and I look forward to seeing everyone next year! | |||
| 15 Feb 2023 | What's Going on With Google? Content AI Tips. | 00:09:07 | |
Welcome to episode 1 of Season 3 - 2023's first episode of the Opinionated SEO podcast!
Finally, we provided tips on how to use AI to help create content for SEO purposes and how to share it effectively on multiple platforms. | |||
| 03 Apr 2023 | Google Analytics 4 Alternative - Plausible Analytics | 00:17:06 | |
In this episode of The Opinionated SEO, we discuss an alternative to Google Analytics, specifically for those who don't want to switch to GA4. We introduce one of my favorite alternatives, which is a lightweight and open-source web analytics tool that is fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and PECR - Plausible Analytics. | |||
| 13 May 2023 | Hassan Ud-Deen - Content Strategist For Tech & Ecommerce Brands | 00:31:35 | |
Today I have Hassan on the podcast and we’re going to dive into his journey, which started with a lie to his parents! We’ll dive a bit into entrepreneurship, the merit of agencies as a way to jumpstart your career, AI, and some of the original research and work he’s doing in his current role. | |||
| 24 Jul 2023 | AI LLM Prompting Tests - My Results on Prompt Engineering | 00:10:43 | |
I discuss my experience testing different AI systems prompting including Google Bard, OpenAI GPT-4 / GPT 3.5, Anthropic Claude 2, Llama 2, and Jasper to generate location-specific content. Most of this is based on the last 18 months of building out prompts, and now testing on models released over the last 4-6 weeks.
Full show notes: https://opinionatedseo.com/2023/07/ai-prompting/ | |||
| 19 Jun 2024 | Revolutionizing Search: The Impact and Future of AI-Powered Chat Interfaces | 00:21:04 | |
Ever wondered if AI chat interfaces could revolutionize your search experience? Imagine having a virtual assistant that not only answers your queries but understands the context and nuances behind them. In this episode, Philip Mastroianni takes you on a journey through the world of AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, shedding light on their growing popularity and transformative impact on traditional search engines like Google. We’ll discuss Perplexity AI, a unique search engine that combines conversational abilities with real-time data retrieval, offering a more personalized and interactive approach to finding information. Philip compares Perplexity's strengths and limitations against traditional search engines, providing a comprehensive look at how these advanced tools are changing the landscape of online searches. | |||
| 26 Nov 2024 | Trends and Takeaways from BrightonSEO - San Diego 2024 SEO Conference | 00:18:39 | |
What if the future of SEO is being rewritten right before your eyes? Join us as we explore this fascinating landscape as we recap Brighton SEO in San Diego. Together with my insightful guests, Venkata and Zak, we unpack the engaging discussions around AI integration in SEO, brand consistency, and Microsoft and Google's latest innovations. The event was not just about absorbing expert knowledge but also experiencing the synergy between SEO and paid search, thanks to the concurrent HeroConf. This crossover provided the opportunity for additional insights, especially in the realms of reporting and data analysis. Specializing in AI-driven content creation, site migrations, and technical SEO, Venkata excels at simplifying complex challenges to deliver measurable results. Featured on platforms like Spotify and SEOFOMO, he’s dedicated to building impactful online presences, sustainable growth, and revenue optimization in the digital landscape https://www.venkatapagadala.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/venkata-pagadala/
His background spans SEO, front-end development, UX/UI design, conversion rate optimization, accessibility and AI. He brings a holistic and data-driven approach, aimed at maximizing online visibility, improving user experience, and driving results. https://www.linkedin.com/in/zakperez/ | |||
| 27 Dec 2021 | Meta Descriptions, Crawl Budget, Google Ads Issues, and TikTok in your 2022 Marketing Plan | 00:13:41 | |
Today is December 27th, 2021 and here's some of the top stories I am covering:
News items discussed: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-analytics-4-google-ranking-32622.html
https://twitter.com/SaadAlikhan1994/status/1473330087147802637
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/on-page-seo/optimize-meta-description/
https://www.seroundtable.com/microsoft-bing-shopping-shopify-ethical-shopping-32639.html Google has a new serving issue with Google Ads that is impacting ad serving on the desktop version of Gmail. So if you are serving Google Ads on Gmail, your ads may not show to a "significant subset of users," according to Google. Google is working on resolving the issue but has yet to resolve it. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-serving-issue-32649.html
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/tiktok-growth-projections-and-the-opportunity-with-gen-z/
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/23/here-are-facebooks-most-notable-executive-dep | |||
| 28 Dec 2021 | Google Office Hours Key Takeaways - Are Scrapers Using Google’s Own Servers? | 00:09:00 | |
A lot of today’s podcast is going to be focusing on the Google SEO office hours with John Mueller - some of the more important things I think were discussed and my additional thoughts. From how scrapers are using Google’s own servers to crawl budget concerns.
https://twitter.com/abondance_com/status/1473925258281426951 SEO expert Alan Bleiweiss asked John Mueller of Google if Google has a "Google Book of Secrets" where it stores all the algorithmic changes it makes in a single location. John Mueller said that yes, Google does document all of the changes it made. https://youtu.be/LHf8DvfPbRU?t=2306 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-book-of-algorithm-updates-32650.html
https://youtu.be/LHf8DvfPbRU?t=2385 When looking at multilingual sites, especially as you start out - you don’t have to translate every page. Google looks at multilingual sites by page. https://youtu.be/LHf8DvfPbRU?t=2636 Another question came up about crawl budget on Google SEO office-hours, and again John asked the number of pages. About 10,000 pages and John quickly said you don’t have to worry about crawl budget. The question was more about auto-generated pages that are no-indexed and showing up in search console and John gives a good answer on when you would no-index vs block in robots.txt and how those pages might still show up in the index. https://youtu.be/LHf8DvfPbRU?t=2751 Scrapers are getting smarter and using Google Cloud services to run their quote GoogleBots to scrape site content. Doing this at first glance is a Google IP and may not set off red flags, and even allow more unrestricted access to your site. Make sure the IPs reverse domain to googlebot and not just google. https://youtu.be/LHf8DvfPbRU?t=3502 Most of the search algorithms Google launches work across all languages. There are exceptions, like when Panda first launched and the product reviews update and some others. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-algorithms-languages-32643.html
https://searchengineland.com/seo-2021-year-in-review-endless-updates-t | |||
| 29 Dec 2021 | Bots, JavaScript, and Google hiding website links in 59% of local packs | 00:06:13 | |
Today we’ll be talking about the most blocked crawler bot, some takeaways from SEOs & Devs: Harmony in Tech, and a new notification system on Google Search Console that wasn’t supposed to be public yet. Ahrefs is the most blocked bot from robots.txt files as tweeted by Malte Landwehr from data via builtwith. Something to note - Ahrefs is blocked by default on Shopify sites as well as by default on any plesk servers. Majestic and SEMRush were the only other SEO tools in the top 10. Some more data: https://trends.builtwith.com/robots https://twitter.com/MalteLandwehr/status/1473392514833043465
https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-industry-story Worth a listen talking about separating the content and the technical and making sure that’s not the same person. In fact, it can be two completely different agencies that you work with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMIKtfVD21g&t=625s SEO and JavaScript - a hot topic for many as Google recommends server side rendering instead of client side rendering, but how can you work with you dev team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMIKtfVD21g&t=273s You might have seen this happen to your advertisements on Google. You may have had an ad that was originally disapproved because of a past violation, but now it's not! https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-past-violations-32652.html
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-business-profile-products-mark-as-special-option-32660.html
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-product-reviews-update-other-languages-32658.html
https://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-testing-announcement-bar-378064 | |||
| 30 Dec 2021 | Can Google Crawl Bigger Pages than Bing? What Links Does Google Ignore? How Awesome is Screaming Frog? | 00:06:34 | |
Today we’ll be talking about Google’s ability to crawl large pages, who uses screaming frog, what backlink types are simply ignored, and was there an algorithm update over the last few days? Google’s HTML size limit is in the 10’s to 100’s of megabytes. Confirmed via tweet by John Mueller. This was in response to a Bing Webmaster Tools notice. https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1468538974406946823 Screaming Frog is one of the best pieces of software you can buy. It’s somewhere around $150 - $200 for year and you run it locally on your system. It’s invaluable for ad hoc reports, technical analysis and more. A recent reddit thread got a little more visibility when John Mueller chimed in that he personally pays for a license. https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/rrcji8/how_to_justify_screamingfrog_cost_to_my_boss/ No Follow, User Generated Content, and Sponsored backlinks are all treated the same, basically they’re ignored. https://youtu.be/wdE3ElNf4LA?t=2036 Confirmation - you don’t need to keep a 301 redirect on an old domain for more than a year. According to recent SEMRush data, in December of this year was when things started getting really volatile. We saw a lot more movement than usual with Google and their products. In fact, this year is one of the most volatile years according to SEMrush. https://www.seroundtable.com/semrush-google-december-2021-most-volatile-32668.html Around December 27th and 28th we may have a Google search ranking algorithm unofficial update. It is not unusual for Google's search results to fluctuate without Google manually pushing an algorithm update. There’s a lot of chatter especially in the affiliate groups.. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-algorithm-jolt-32670.html There are many strategies and tactics in the SEO world that seem completely backwards at first, but if you take them into consideration they may actually work. Aleyda Solis' recent Twitter thread asking “what's the most counterintuitive recommendation/implementation I've done over my career which paid off as expected?” https://twitter.com/aleyda/status/1455613252663193605 Also, while you are at it, sign up for her weekly SEO Fomo Newsletter @ https://www.seofomo.co/ | |||
| 31 Dec 2021 | Product Rich Snippets, Spark Toro Crowdsourcing QA, Gift Keywords, And Emoji Bugs in GSC | 00:02:33 | |
Google has made a change to the rich result reports for product structured data on December 28, 2021. This means that it is viewable in Google Search Console and may lead to different numbers of entities than before this update was implemented- which could affect your rankings! A nice tip from Dan Shure about finding gift keywords which saw a lot of visibility in 2020 and 2021. Adding adjectives like “funny” or “unique” came up with a lot of new mid & long tail keywords opportunities. https://twitter.com/dan_shure/status/1476240334740934665 If you were getting a Search Console Emoji Alert, it was a Google bug, so you can ignore it as confirmed by John Mueller on reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/bigseo/comments/rqrbec/weird_seo_spam_search_console_emoji_alert_lol/ SparkToro has a new homepage - Rand asked if anyone has 2 minutes to look at it and let him know any mistakes / issues. If you don’t have enough budget for a QA department, this is a great example of how you can get a lot of people looking at something and giving solid feedback. | |||
| 03 Jan 2022 | Recap of Google Office Hours with John Mueller from December 31st, 2021 | 00:09:24 | |
There wasn’t a lot of SEO news over the holiday weekend and the new year, but I wanted to recap what I felt were the most important takeaways from Friday’s English Office hours with Google’s John Mueller. As always, a synopsis, my opinion, and a link to the question in the video. https://youtu.be/MrgtKt4u8nk?t=334 Poor translation automated translation of an alternate language, how does this affect the SEO’s main language version. This comes down to metrics that Google uses that are sitewide factors vs single page factors. If you have low quality pages, whether that’s thin content, badly translated content, or another issue, this can bring down overall site / domain quality rankings and be harmful to your SEO efforts. https://youtu.be/MrgtKt4u8nk?t=412 Google crawler ignores all permission requests from your site. This came up in a question that was related to IP based content detection that was causing their site to skew towards a specific geographic area for indexing. https://youtu.be/MrgtKt4u8nk?t=1056 If you have pages that are authoritative, have good backlinks, but you don’t want them indexed, consider using a rel canonical tag to flow that authority to a different page. The question was asking about using a redirect for just GoogleBot, which is very borderline against Google guidelines. https://youtu.be/MrgtKt4u8nk?t=1190 This question is really relevant to work I’ve been doing recently where we saw over 150k pages removed from the index within about a week as Google picked up a no result message that we had in the source code but was hidden. If you have any text in your source code, whether hidden or not, Google CAN index it and use it. https://youtu.be/MrgtKt4u8nk?t=1424 Using the indexing API to get your results indexed faster than letting Google find it via a sitemap. John says that yes, it will crawl the page so it can review the content and the structured data associated with jobs. https://yoast.com/live-indexing-bing-google-yoast-seo/ https://youtu.be/MrgtKt4u8nk?t=1988 Discussion about title rewrites that don’t make sense: Seems like it is still happening and can definitely be an issue if you are adding new types of content or products and Google hasn’t fully aligned that with your domain. https://youtu.be/MrgtKt4u8nk?t=2492 This is the big one, my site isn’t getting indexed. How long does Google take to pick up on quality changes? https://youtu.be/MrgtKt4u8nk?t=2556 Screaming Frog updated their software to ver 16.5 which closed another log4j vulnerability that showed up, however a new one surfaced again, and they responded to my tweet to see what their timeline is for a fix. They can provide one via an email to their support team. | |||
| 04 Jan 2022 | How to take down Reddit, IP addresses ranking, Meta makes advertising harder | 00:05:34 | |
Today we’ll be looking at some negative SEO issues that have come up including how an onlyfan performer may have taken down reddit’s homepage, your IP address in Google results, Meta’s new restrictions on advertising, and the worst practice for handing over a site from one agency to another. How easy would it be to remove reddit’s home page from Google’s index? Apparently a simple DMCA is all it took. Cyrus Shepard noted on twitter that the main reddit homepage wasn’t ranking #1 anymore and some further investigation looks like a DMCA request was the culprit. While you are checking out the tweets, also take a look at Cyrus’ company Zyppy and their SEO success factors. Probably one of the better put together lists of ranking factors you should and shouldn't care about. https://twitter.com/CyrusShepard/status/1478101570646540289 https://zyppy.com/seo-success-factors/ We’ve all been there, a staging version or just the straight IP version of the site gets indexed. I didn’t bring this up yesterday as part of the office hours recap as John somewhat touched on this issue, but there was a reddit thread where he put in a lot of effort into the reply and I think it’s important enough to mention. John Mueller said that generally, Google will list a site in its search results with the domain name rather than using an IP address. But if you see both and know your website is crawlable via this protocol then there's no reason to worry about being deindexed. https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/comments/rs7pjb/perfect_storm_caused_a_tank_in_ratings_ip_address/ Starting January 19th, 2022 Meta (You know, Facebook) will no longer allow you to market certain targeting options relating to sensitive topics. A list containing examples for all types of sensitive categories was given
I think this is a great move, and I am happy to see this. Having worked in marketing in the medical field, I did sometimes feel like we were able to target a little too accurately and it felt someone intrusive. Little by little, we’re getting less targeted ads, but we’re also safeguarding our privacy. I think the balancing act is a tough one, but this is the right direction. This also is something I think will help balance out the ability to influence a specific group too much, and forces advertisers to broaden their ads to a larger spectrum of people with differing political or social beliefs. https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2021/12/08/updating-metas-detailed-targeting-options/
htt | |||
| 05 Jan 2022 | Y2K is back? Out of stock affecting SEO? Core Web Vitals Winners | 00:07:36 | |
Y2K 22? How does an out of stock product page affect SEO? What platform is winning the Core Web Vital Game? A new app to improve SEO with Shopify, the metaverse and ecommerce, and a Search Console bug fixed. Y2K strikes again. This time for 2022, but it’s actually the exact same issue we had 22 years ago with dates being stores as 2 digit numbers. If you are active in email marketing, especially B2B, this may have affected you.
https://twitter.com/mckeinze1997/status/1478421272161927168 https://moz.com/blog/how-to-handle-temporarily-out-of-stock-product-pages
https://twitter.com/badams/status/1478340899088343040
https://yoast.com/yoast-seo-is-coming-to-shopify/
Some brands to note: Nike filed several trademark applications directly related to downloadable digital goods specifically for the metaverse. To see some real world implementations, visit on your browser in the links below. https://hbr.org/2022/01/how-brands-can-enter-the-metaverse https://www.emarketer.com/content/social-commerce-2021 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/02/nike-is-quietly-preparing-for-the-metaverse-.html Perfect Corp. virtual booth experience @ CES 2022: https://www.perfectcorp.com/business/CES2022 And since it seems we can’t go a day without talking about TikTok, an article from the Verge suggests that TikTok is testing a new feature that is similar to the Twitter retweet function. https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/4/22867456/tiktok-share-repost-retweet | |||
| 06 Jan 2022 | IndexNow, Domains, 2022 Local SEO success, and Disney in the Metaverse | 00:06:57 | |
Today is January 6th, 2022 and today I’ll be talking about IndexNow from Microsoft, a couple domain related questions answered by John Mueller during his “ask googlebot” video from yesterday, a thought provoking local SEO article by Mirriam Ellis at Moz, and finally Disney is getting into the metaverse.
https://searchengineland.com/indexnow-plugin-for-wordpress-378228 Ask GoogleBot - Domains Lightning Round From January 5th 2022. Does Google care about tld?For example a real estate agent might want jimsmith.realtor instead of jimsmithrealtor.com. https://youtu.be/9ERB7gJV7o8?list=PLKoqnv2vTMUM9wKeb-Gvm8bgpFM72yiXw&t=16 Can I rank globally for a domain with a ccTLD. The example was using .fr and you are a French site, but you want to target Brazil as well. In Search console, you can only setup one Country to target. Once you remove that, you are no longer targeting a single country. Also, having a ccTLD send a signal to Google and tells it which country you are targeting. https://youtu.be/9ERB7gJV7o8?list=PLKoqnv2vTMUM9wKeb-Gvm8bgpFM72yiXw&t=80 Miriam Ellis puts together another great article over at Moz - this is giving me whiteboard Friday feels. The article talks about 2022 Local SEO success. There were a few really great takeaways as I read the article and I encourage you to take 5 or 6 minutes and read it all the way through. But what I liked most was the talk about supply chain gaps and how you couldn’t buy name brand anti-bacterial, but then your local brewer started making them. How you couldn’t buy masks but there were teams of Etsy sewists. Did you Google making your own bread or where to buy flour locally? The savvy business owners came up with new solutions. https://moz.com/blog/2022-local-seo-success And a few days ago we talked about Reddit’s homepage getting taken down a notch from a DMCA request. To follow up with that, a Reddit thread by user dustyd22 discussed a site that is copying their site word for word and just adding a “the” in front of the domain name. A quick response links to Google’s content removal form. https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/comments/rwvaqi/website_duplication_by_a_competitor/ https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en Disney has entered the metaverse. Remember yesterday’s news where I talked about Nike the perfect Corp entering the metaverse. Well, Disney has just entered and they’re looking to make it big. IGN has an article on this, outlining the several patents that Disney just filed on An Augmented Virtual World Simulator That Doesn't Need a Headset Or Glasses. https://www.ign.com/articles/disney-patent-augmented-reality-theme-park-rides | |||
| 07 Jan 2022 | Display Ads for Podcasts, Making Money From a Site Hack, Google Ads Error, SERP Updates | 00:05:52 | |
Today is January 7th, 2022 and I’ll be talking about some Google SERP updates, a Google ads error, New Display Ads for Podcasts in Spotify, WordPress major security release, Making money from a site hack, and some actionable tactics to help drive customers to buy. Full Show Notes @ https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e5 Google has launched a “Shops” section in the mobile search results with three results that can be expanded to 10. Google’s statement: “We recently launched Shops, a new module available on mobile devices for select US-English shopping-related queries,” https://searchengineland.com/google-launches-shops-section-in-mobile-search-results-378256 https://twitter.com/b4k_khushal/status/1477337833643786242 Google looks to be testing or updating their Google Discover section with trending searches. See if it’s updated on your device. https://twitter.com/jasonmandragona/status/1478748397372940290 Google Ads has an error right now when saving exact keywords saying they are being saved as broad. Google Ads Liason replied that it was a bug and they were working on fixing it. So don’t be alarmed, but is this the beginning of the end of match types? https://twitter.com/adsliaison/status/1479189369529450496 While we’re talking about ads, Spotify is going to be bringing display ads to Podcasts. Spotify is calling them Call-to-Action cards. These will be visual and interactive during ad plays as well as retargeting while exploring the app. https://www.newsroom.spotify.com/2022-01-06/spotify-introduces-call-to-action-cards-for-podcast-ads/ Wordpress released a security release yesterday which patched 4 major vulnerabilities. This affects versions 3.7 to 5.8, so pretty much any WordPress install out there. https://wordpress.org/news/2022/01/wordpress-5-8-3-security-release/ So, if your site is hacked, what do you do? First, you get it cleaned up and then make sure your IT or Dev Ops is taking proactive steps to ensure that it can’t happen again. If you don’t know anything about cleaning up - check out SUCURI, I’ve used them in the past to clean up a hacked site and they took care of things in just a matter of hours. So what did years ago when her main site was hacked and started ranking for Michael Kors handbags. she was able to remove the hack and then redirected all of those pages to Amazon using her affiliate link. She made a few hundred dollars before turning it all off. https://twitter.com/Marie_Haynes/status/1479143529020592130 Katelyn Bourgoin spent over 1500 hours learning about cognitive biases and heuristics, the stuff that drives customers to buy and she put together a Twitter thread of the top 19 concepts that marketers need to know: https://twitter.com/KateBour/status/1478792178726019073 | |||
| 10 Jan 2022 | SEO Office Hours with John Mueller Jan 7th, 2022 Recap | 00:13:11 | |
Today is January 10th, and I’ll be recapping the Google SEO Office Hours from January 7th 2022 which ran just under an hour. There was somewhat of a theme this office hours with a lot of questions around internationalization and language, subdomains and subfolders, and of course indexing and crawl budget. As always, a synopsis of the question and answer, my opinion, and a link to the question in the video. I’ll skip questions that didn’t really have an answer or were so unique I don’t think it would apply to most marketers.
| |||
| 11 Jan 2022 | Video results in Google SERPs, Google Ads Updates, 301s, CWV Slow Countries | 00:03:26 | |
Today is Tuesday, January 11th, and a few Google and marketing news updates for you from updates to video results in Google to a few google ads updates, redirecting a website and blocking slow counties to increase CWV scores. Full Show Notes / Blog Post: https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e7 We saw trending results on mobile for the discovery section, and now it looks like Google is rolling this out as a test to videos in mobile search. It looks like it’s been seen in the wild for food, music, and restaurants. I continue to like seeing this, I think it helps push new results to more people and allows for some virality in the SERPs. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-trending-videos-32725.html A couple Google Ads updates: This happened a few days ago, but Google is allowing ads for sports betting from certified and state-licensed entities in New York. Advertisers must apply for certification which started on the 7th of January. https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/11522848?hl=en&ref_topic=29265 The IndexNow Plugin for WordPress was updated on Monday with a few bug fixes and domain resolutions. https://wordpress.org/plugins/indexnow/#developers A question was asked during last week’s SEO office hours about dates, and John had a bit of a follow up type question where he linked out to the Google documentation on the best way for Google to understand the date for your page. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/03/help-google-search-know-best-date-for https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1480641280384376832 A TechSEO Reddit thread where Marwoob had asked about blocking counties that have much lower core web vital scores, and also happen to be counties they don't serve. https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/comments/rywrgk/should_i_block_slow_countries_from_accessing_my/ Last one here is a reddit thread about migrating your site and keeping the old pages live even though you have 301 redirects. https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/s15pg9/after_creating_301_redirects_from_an_old_site_to/ | |||
| 13 Jan 2022 | Shopify SEO, Server Logs, Newsletters To Signup For | 00:07:09 | |
Today is Wednesday, January 12th, and I’ll be talking about Shopify, Server Logs, winners and losers from Google’s December 2021 Product Review update, Google Search Operators, thread on all the different templates/checklists/flowcharts, women in tech SEO newsletter, and shocking, someone’s site isn’t getting indexed and John Mueller kindly responds. Full Show Notes / blog: https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e8 Was there an algorithm update on the 11th? The guys over at Search Engine Roundtable may think so. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-update-january-11-32742.html Yoast released an in depth article on SEO for Shopify. They cover everything from optimizing core web vitals, lazy loading images, how to blog with shopify, and of course, how to use their new app with Shopify. Yoast also announced version 17.9 of their plugin which integrates with Wincher https://yoast.com/shopify-seo/ https://yoast.com/yoast-seo-17-9/ Search Engine Land published an article on Monday about server logs. https://searchengineland.com/why-server-logs-matter-for-seo-378199 Screaming frog Log File Analyzer had an update yesterday as well: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/log-file-analyser-4-0/#4.5 Lily Ray tweeted about the winners and losers from Google’s December 2021 Product Review update. https://twitter.com/lilyraynyc/status/1481354389004693507 https://twitter.com/lilyraynyc/status/1467948310094823425 Looking to take some of your knowledge up a step - check out SEO nerd Switzerland meetup with Brenda Malone who will discuss Advanced Google Search Operators For Smarter SEO. https://twitter.com/SEOnerdSwitz/status/1481276706308689923 Meetup Link: https://www.meetup.com/SEOnerdSwitzerland/events/282426514/ Aleyda Slis shared a 2021 thread on all the different templates/checklists/flowcharts she’s shared over the past year. It’s an incredible thread full of amazing content for any SEO. https://twitter.com/aleyda/status/1477639252783828992 Another newsletter to sign up for besides the #SEOFomo - is the women in tech SEO newsletter by Areej AbuAli. Help them get to 3K newsletter subscribers before their January edition, they’re about 167 subscribers away! https://twitter.com/areej_abuali/status/1480984918012448770 And what better way to end today’s podcast than another - my site isn’t getting indexed: Veerendar Sunkara said his site isn’t getting indexed on Google, it’s been 2 months. It’s an Amazon affiliate blog. John Mueller chimed in | |||
| 14 Jan 2022 | Search Console Properties & Coverage Warnings, HTTPS, & We Don’t Talk About Google Algo (not Bruno) | 00:03:20 | |
Today I’ll be looking through some items I found around the web that I think will be of interest from search console tips to top marketing campaigns on 2021. Tomorrow I’ll have a recap of the SEOs & DEVs video with Michael King from iPullRank - I just didn't have a chance to go through the whole video today. If you have multiple properties in search console, http https domain etc., it’s fine according to John Mueller in response to a Reddit thread. I think it’s actually good to have them, you’d be surprised what you end up finding and it’s better to have them to ensure you don’t have any potential old data around. https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/s30xqy/google_search_console_properties/ Page indexed without content in Search Console? Might just be a server related issue. John Mueller chimes in again on Reddit that it’s usually an empty page that’s returned when you get this error. I’d suggest also to try crawling your site with screaming frog and turn on save html as well as render html, and see if there’s any issues going on there. My guess is they’ve got a low end host that’s restricting bandwidth usage even from Googlebot. https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/comments/s22dxn/confused_about_new_coverage_warning_help/ Have you had your site’s non secure version get indexed instead of the fully secure one? This question was posed on Twitter - and it looks as though sometimes Google will index both versions, and as long as you are properly 301’ing the domains, it will settle down over time and won’t cause any issues, so long as the redirect is done properly. It looks like this can sometimes happen if you have a large number of links coming into the non secure version, but Google will understand, so not much to worry about. https://twitter.com/ChrisNicholsSEO/status/1481732282629165059 Matt Southern put together a nice article on the reasons that Google can’t provide details about core algorithm updates. There are a lot of quotes from various folks at Google including John Mueller, Martin Splitt, and Gary Illyes. Their hands are actually pretty tied, but a real takeaway is this: “write good content, don’t buy links” There’s also no penalty for a site during a core update, rather a re-optimization and improvement for other sites that are just doing a better job. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-cant-provide-details-about-core-algorithm-updates/432651/ Want some inspiration in marketing campaigns? Marketing Dive put out a last last month of the best marketing campaigns on 2021. To give a few overviews: Chipotle entered the metaverse with a virtual maze and $1 million in free burritos. Wendy’s transformed into Morty’s of Rick and Morty Tide did a large push for reduction of greenhouse gasses with their $TurnToCold campaign Burger Kings leveraged NFTs Starbucks leveraged TikTok https://www.marketingdive.com/news/best-marketing-campaigns-2021/611068/ | |||
| 15 Jan 2022 | SEOs & Devs - Can Documentation Be Trusted? | 00:06:58 | |
We’re going to be recapping the SEOs & DEVs video published yesterday on YouTube with guest Michael King from iPullRank. URL to watch: https://youtu.be/Lp2wAqWeOgw Full Show Notes / Blog Post: https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e10 Checklists, beginner SEOs, and tools: From a developer’s point of view, it seems like a lot of times with SEOs that we’ve got this fire drill mentality and sometimes a single thing can seem like it’s the absolute most important thing to one SEO but not to another. Furthering the conversation - why do the tools push out a 30 page report? And this comes down to reports and tools that don’t know the context of your site. Our job is to interpret that through the frame of what the business actually needs to do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp2wAqWeOgw&t=60s
A lot of SEO can be automated, but you really need human interpretation to ensure that it doesn’t go overboard. https://youtu.be/Lp2wAqWeOgw?t=320 The up-to-date, the out-of-date and the myths: Things like text to code ratio and W3C compliance. They’re out of date, with no backing, and the tools still show them. https://youtu.be/Lp2wAqWeOgw?t=439 Documentation drift & Doing your own research: Google’s documentation may be out of phase and the pagination rel previous next was brought up as an example of discussing how Google should even handle it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp2wAqWeOgw&t=623s The audience challenge: The documentation is often positioned to the middle, between engineers and SEOs. https://youtu.be/Lp2wAqWeOgw?t=829 Give us feedback: They actually read the feedback. A lot is constructive and helpful, and of course not everyone has nice things to say. https://youtu.be/Lp2wAqWeOgw?t=983 Why docs sometimes create misunderstandings: There’s even tools that have different scores after different runs and that is due to things like network conditions. https://youtu.be/Lp2wAqWeOgw?t=1112 Getting past “us vs them” together: We all come from such varying backgrounds as SEOs and learning to work with the engineers in a more effective manner by understanding what they do and see from their perspective. https://youtu.be/Lp2wAqWeOgw?t=1426 How to support each other: Making sure that its understood when working with engineers that everyone did the best they could on this, and we’re as SEOs only looking at this from a different perspective. https://youtu.be/Lp2wAqWeOgw?t=1526 Summary: SEOs should value the different perspective of different people and be receptive to do their own research, and developers need to be more trusting towards SEOs and take them on the journey with them to figure things out together. That would make things a lot easier. Mike sums it up well: “No SEO is trying to ruin your website. They just want to help its vi | |||
| 18 Jan 2022 | Google Office Hours with John Mueller Jan 14th, 2022 Recap | 00:13:53 | |
Today I’ll be recapping the Google Office Hours with Google’s John Mueller from January 14, 2022. I’ll provide a synopsis of the question and answer, my opinion, and a link to the question in the video. The video was an hour, I summarized this for you in 15 minutes. Are there any negative SEO effects with a large robots.txt file? https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=45 If we don’t include the sitemap in the robots.txt, is there any negative SEO implications? https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=118 How does Google handle non user relevant HTML fragments, and AJAX calls. https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=134 Is there any guideline to the robots.txt file as far as file size. https://www.robotstxt.org/ https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/robots/intro https://github.com/google/robotstxt https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=285 Heading Text: How important is it to use hierarchical vs just however you want. Does size matter? https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=375 Adding a new domain for a new service offering. How long until we start seeing the traffic looking like our current domain. https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=528 Custom content or rather a custom page that is geo-located by state. https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=854 The questioner is seeing good conversion rates on their app, but not so much on mobile website. https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=1228 They wanted to know if the pages had to be exact but different currency and language. https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=1500 This question was about backlinks and removing spam backlinks once you hit the 2MB file size limit on the disavow. https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=1643 Do I need to mark up content on my page with HTML semantic elements for example, footer? https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=1789 Should we expect a drop in traffic if we remove AMP? https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=1845 https://kinsta.com/blog/disable-google-amp/ They’ve got a few thousand links that they’ve disavowed, but they’re worried they may have done some legit ones. https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=2014 Seeing knowledge panel on mobile but not desktop and does Wikipedia influence when someone would be shown? https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=2117 Jason Barnard - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OFPrIcv7_8 - mentioned by John. Synonyms - The entire system is automated, there’s nothing manual. https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=2284 Several locations, what is the best way to include local schema? https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=2410
https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=2440 Can Google use content that is initially hidden for structured data. https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=2494 Product reviews: https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=2776 Coverage issue - crawl currently not indexed, discovered, not indexed. https://youtu.be/GZ_wSeQqPZk?t=3109 Should I add unique content to my ecommerce site? | |||
| 19 Jan 2022 | Algorithm Update, Reviews In Maps, Open 24/7, Page Experience On Desktop | 00:05:45 | |
Today is January 18th and I’ll be talking about a potential algorithm update, Reviews in maps, Google My business hours, page experience going to desktop, Travel & Google Ads webinar, Competitive analysis and more! Full Blog Post and Show Notes @ https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e12 January 14th and 15th seems to be a lot of movement in the algorithm trackers - was there an update? Some of my sites that are relatively newer content seems to have jumped up quite a bit in this time, but I think that might just be a coincidence. This podcast’s main site had a jump to about 1400 impressions in Google Search Console compared to its average 50-100 per day. That ended up dropping back down a bit, so if Google was doing something, it might have been temporary if this site was an indicator. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-update-january-14-32762.html Allie Margeson, the Director of SEO Services at Whitespark noticed review snippets getting visibility on maps. See her tweet. https://twitter.com/SeoAllie/status/1483166745980456966 Colan Nielsen for Sterling Sky writes about Google My Business and when to list your hours as 24/7. https://www.sterlingsky.ca/when-should-i-list-my-google-business-profile-hours-as-open-24-7/ We mentioned it a couple weeks ago, but Yoast officially launched their Shopify SEO app. https://yoast.com/release-yoast-seo-for-shopify/ Google has been giving us a heads up on Page Experience rolling out to desktop. Search Console now has a dedicated desktop section in its Page Experience report to help site owners understand Google’s page experience criteria. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/11/bringing-page-experience-to-desktop In case you missed it, Google Ads put on the “Travel On Air” with Episode available for on demand viewing. If you are a marketer in the Travel industry (I’m talking to you Louderback and Dylan!) then this may be of interest! https://adsonair.withgoogle.com/events/travel-on-air-episode-4 SEMRush published an article on their blog about not the ten, but the 12 Best Competitive Intelligence Tools for Market Research. https://www.semrush.com/blog/top-18-competitive-intelligence-tools-advanced-market-research/ And, since we seem to always talk about internationalization, John Mueller answered a question on Reddit asking if Google used the same algorithm for each language. “Mostly. Search uses lots & lots of algorithms. Some of them apply to content in all languages, some of them are specific to individual languages (for example, some languages don't use spaces to separate words -- which would make things kinda hard to search for if Google assumed that all languages were like English).” https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/s64i0e/does_google_use_the_same_algorithm_for_every/ | |||
| 20 Jan 2022 | Cats got me backlinks and SEMRush buys Backlinko? | 00:04:17 | |
I thought today would be fun to talk about a single marketing newsworthy campaign revolving around cats and a mixer and 100 backlinks from major news networks. (I'll also talk about a few noteworthy SEO items) Backlinko was just purchased by SEMRush, Brian Dean, maybe one of the best marketers out there and a crazy good newsletter. News broke this morning on Twitter and SEMRush’s news site. https://twitter.com/BrianEDean/status/1483915288815022082 Someone asked John about a high DA website and spam checked score of 6+. I didn’t really read anything more than that in the question because those are number like in the Whose Line is it anyway game show, “where everything is made up and the points don't matter.” Also, the word “link juice” was used, which feels very cringy to me. Can we stop saying that. How about we just say authority, because that’s really what it is. John responded: “Since Google uses neither DA nor the spam score, it doesn't really matter either way, right? That's why I said to just ignore all of that and do something real instead. If experts are telling you to do this, then find other experts.”
So a few weeks ago a couple name Nikki and Jessica bought a vitamix. Upon the arrival, they sat it down on their kitchen floor and promptly their cat decided to sit upon the unopened box. Jessica took a photo and posted this to a Facebook group called THIS CAT IS C H O N K Y. The group boasts nearly a million members, and the post immediately took off. Over 10k interactions by the next day. They have three cats, and they wouldn’t leave the box. They resorted to feeding the cat on the box as she refused to get down even to eat. Jessica continued to post updates and then reached out to Vitamix via their facebook page to ask for three empty boxes, enough for their three cats. The saga got it’s own hashtag that trended, The Great Vitamix Incident of 2021 and/or #Appliancegate, has developed. https://www.facebook.com/1606875812956981/posts/2924246927886523/ OK, that’s all, folks, see you tomorrow! | |||
| 21 Jan 2022 | Discussion of Rand Fishkin's Lost and Founder (Founder of Moz and SparkToro) | 00:05:35 | |
I wanted to do something a little different today. Since I didn’t see much that was really newsworthy - the usual rumblings about a potential algorithm update, and some ongoing Twitter drama about SEO in general. I thought I would talk about a book that should speak to most of us. The book is Lost and Founder by Rand Fishkin. The full title: Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World, is really just that, Rand is brutally honest, to the point where you can feel his pain in his words. If you listen to the audio book, he narrates himself. This book is really for anyone who is an aspiring startup founder, an entrepreneur looking for insider tips, or just anyone fascinated with the world of business and especially how venture capital ties into that. The book really talk to you about investors and how the wrong ones can be devastating for your business. How a transparent office culture can make or break a business. And what happens when you take shortcuts. Rand started out like so many of us, doing small projects and then took the leap to starting his own company to do it full time. His story feels like the untold story of most startups, a lot of money issues, wrong moves, over-extending. But Rand had built a name for himself and his company. His “whiteboard Fridays” were the stuff of SEO agency legend, many companies would stop all work and watch, just because they were so insightful and well done. SEO Moz, or now just Moz, was really one of the first SAAS (software as a service) companies for SEOs. It started in 2004 and finally found itself around 2017, it took nearly 13 years for it to become a stable profitable company. At the time of publication, the company was bringing in 45 million in annual revenue. What I find fascinating about his next area in the book is talking about the success of companies, which 5% of venture backed companies actually become profitable, is market research. His new company Spark Toro does exactly that and I can see how his identification in the book here and his years of experience led him to starting that company. For example, Uber used search trends for “taxi” to determine their markets to move into. Once you get about half way through the book, you start really disliking venture capitalists, and I understand his frustrations. The push for large returns is never ending, and only three in ten venture backed companies will yield even minimal returns. Rand gives several scenarios where Moz simply failed internally, from how it catered to employees with unique needs to its racial diversity. He takes a long hard look at how he led the company and how it was hard to recognize the changes that needed to be made. Once made, he saw huge changes and attributes that new culture to the success of the company. The big takeaway from his book for me: If you are starting out on your own, even just as a freelancer, this is a good book to give you an idea of what the next stage might look like. Rand does go into a lot of detail about his early years building websites and optimizing them as a small business of 2 or 3, and the insights are still valid today. Thank you - I hope you found this interesting. Have a great day and see you tomorrow. | |||
| 25 Jan 2022 | Privacy in Search Engines & Blocking Extensions | 00:05:12 | |
Today I wanted to focus a bit on privacy and security. This is central to every marketer and I think it’s something we should be considering heavily. Full Show Notes Blog Post @ https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e15 The biggest name right now in private browsing is duck duck go who is averaging 105 million queries per month so far in January 2022. Duck Duck Go is actually the #2 search engine on mobile in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the Netherlands. On desktop, it has about 2.5% market share in the US, around what Bing’s market share is at. If you feel have been using Bing for advertising or doing SEO for Bing, then don’t discount DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo is also launching their desktop browser which will be in my opinion a major competitor to Google. Their mobile browser has a huge install rate, and it would only make sense that mobile users would like this experience on the desktop systems. Another search engine that you may have heard of is Neeva. This is a subscription based search engine with no advertising created by Sridhar Ramaswamy (ex-SVP of Ads at Google) and Vivek Raghunathan (ex-VP of Monetization at YouTube). Some things that I really like about their platform is that they give 20% of their topline revenue with content creator partners when their content is used to directly answer a Neeva customer’s query. This is great for newspapers and other content creators to get revenue back for content that a search engine like Google would normally have as a zero click result. They just introduced a free (at least for 3 months) tier, and then it’s $4.99 per month. https://neeva.com/blog/introducing-neeva-free-basic-and-neeva-premium https://neeva.com/blog/supporting-humanitys-curiosity-with-quality-content As you are looking at marketing channels, consider that this model may become more popular as people prioritize their privacy over highly customized ads. I do like the idea of paying under $5 a month and knowing that my search results are not skewed by how much an advertiser spent. It also has a lot of privacy features which help keep other advertisers from being able to track. As marketers, we may not love this, but it emphasizes why we need to make sure to fully utilize all marketing channels and not rely on a single one. It also emphasizes how important SEO can be as well as creating top quality content. Now I wanted to talk about browser plugins that you may not realize are affecting your numbers. The main ones are ad blocking plugins, and I wanted to focus on one in particular as it’s the most popular, but does one thing by default that may surprise you. And that one thing - it blocks Google Analytics by default. There are over 10 million installed users actively blocking Google Analytics with this one plugin. It may not seem like a huge number, but depending on what vertical your users are in, you may be surprised with the percentage that use a plugin like this. One thing I suggest doing is pull your Google Analytics data, and cross reference that with your Google Search Console click data and then against your server logs. You’ll have to take into consideration things like bots that GA doesn’t count, but this could give you an idea of the number of people visiting your site that don’t trigger Google Analytics. So in summary, we’ve got millions of users blocking your tracking software, millions of users moving to new search engines which tout privacy first, and even search engines that have no ads. How are you planning for these numbers to grow in your marketing. What moves are you making to measure impact of your marketing efforts that don’t involve digital online tracking? I’ll b | |||
| 26 Jan 2022 | Google Office Hours with John Mueller Jan 21st, 2022 Recap | 00:15:52 | |
Today I’ll be recapping the Google Office Hours with Google’s John Mueller from January 21st, 2022. As always, I’ll provide a synopsis of the question and answer, my opinion, and a link to the question in the video. The video ran an hour, I’ll try to summarize this for you in about 15 minutes. Questions seemed to focus a bit on internationalization, and internal linking. Hope you enjoy:
https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=41 Seeing links - they are paid, and the sites are ranking #1, why is that contradiction from what Google says? https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=88 Some links are not crawling according to Google Search Console. https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=203 25% of the pages have dropped being indexed, quite dramatically a few months ago. Submitted pages dropped by 50%. They thought it might be structured data that’s not valid. https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=342 Seeing images in organic search results, not the image tab. There isn’t documentation in google Search Central. https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=655 Multiple websites for each location but just a different phone number and address. https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=833 Allright, then it was my turn. We have a strong US presence and moving into international. Should we go with ccTLDs or a single domain with subfolder country / language. Technology isn’t an issue, and I think being able to target Google Search Console to each unique domain by country may be the most advantageous option. https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=1217 Is there a way to capture a folder without a trailing slash in Google Search Console adding a new property? https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=1998 Site downtime, and how that affects indexing. https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=2064 Splitting the domain, what should we do in search console? https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=2321 This is kind of a reverse internationalization, removing the countries from the site and just focusing on one. But all the countries were already in subfolders, so would moving the main language to the root have a big impact on ranking? https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=2684 This person really asked, can we trust the answers given. https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=2868 Internal Linking, more important than URL structure? https://youtu.be/Waynp8mMqRg?t=3058 I then had a chance to talk to John again and ask about client side rendering issues a client was having, this particular client was having trouble replicating the issue as GoogleBot sees it. | |||
| 27 Jan 2022 | A New meta tag and Walmart is making big moves into the Metaverse | 00:06:53 | |
A New meta tag and Walmart is making big moves into the Metaverse Full Show Notes / Blog Post @ https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e17 Last Friday, January 21st, 2022, Google Search Central released a new tag. This tag called indexifembedded, you can tell Google you'd still like your content indexed when it's embedded through iframes and similar HTML tags in other pages, even when the content page has the noindex tag.There are a few use cases which Malcom Slade over at Creative Race outlined in their blog post. I’ll give a few here and a link to the full blog: 1- Embedding sharable content 2 - Embedding comments - like Disqus where it’s an iframe and the comments are not indexed 3 - Embedding video where you want the video to be indexed on the page 4 - Reviews from 3rd party embeds 5 - They asked for other ideas. One that we’re talking about is a widget that we’ve had around for a while that other companies embed and they can display specific content. Think being able to embed stock tickers. Now, with each of these being indexed, and having links coming back to us, this could really change our link profile. Overall I like the idea that we can have more control of our content in the wild, but also to allow others to have that content indexed. https://creativerace.co.uk/indexifembedded-what-does-this-new-meta-tag-do/ https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/01/robots-meta-tag-indexifembedded And it’s been a week or two since I mentioned the metaverse, but it looks like Walmart is the next big name to file patents associated with the metaverse. One trademark application was for “Financial services, namely, providing a digital currency and a digital token of value for use by members of an online community via a global computer network.” In another filing they mention an on-line retail store featuring virtual merchandise. If you remember I mentioned other big names like Nike and Disney with similar type filings, but also Under Armor, Urban Outfitters, Ralph Lauren and Abercrombie & Fitch have also filed similar trademarks with intent on virtualization of retail stores. Right now, Meta (the King formerly known as Facebook) seems to be pushing both the software and the hardware to the masses. With their Oculus headsets and requirements for a Facebook account, we’re seeing virtual connections that are coming right from existing web 2.0. So Meta has Oculus, Microsoft has HaloLens, Apple is rumored to be working on hardware, and Google just ramped up their AR hardware with plans to ship in the next 2 years. Remember Google glass came out in 2012, so they have a lot of previous hardware experience in this field, and I know they don’t want to lose out to Meta in the coming MetaVerse wars. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/16/walmart-is-quietly-preparing-to-enter-the-metaverse.html My personal belief is we are going to see a huge transformation in the next 2-4 years with how we work and interact in business. Right now we are seeing that you don’t necessarily have to be in an office together, though there are some advantages to having access to people right away. Middle and upper management like to have a visual that people are focusing on their work, whether you agree with that or not, it’s something that may never go away. | |||
| 01 Feb 2022 | Acronyms and Abbreviations, Link Juice, and Domain Authority is Fake News | 00:21:23 | |
See Full Blog Post / Transcript / Show Notes @ https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e18 Three things – 1: Acronyms and abbreviations 2: Link Juice 3: Domain Authority | |||
| 02 Feb 2022 | Google Office Hours with John Mueller January 28th, 2022 Recap | 00:12:00 | |
Today I’ll be recapping the Google Office Hours with Google’s John Mueller from January 28th, 2022. As always, I’ll provide a synopsis of the question and answer, my opinion, and a link to the question in the video. The video ran an hour, I’ll try to summarize this for you in about ten minutes. Full blog post, show notes, and transcript @ https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e19 How does Google recognize paid links? They have a lot of factors that they look into, not just did someone report this as a paid link. Does Google care where the internal link is located in the site, header / content / footer? https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=36 Running a blog type site without any actual products, but more information about products, they want to know if Google will treat it as a classic product review site? https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=265 Local Directories: Does Google really care if you are listed on local directories and the information is correct? https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=451 Links: Are there any issues with linking to a site that is also linking to you? https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=685 Myths: Are there any myths or inaccuracies that you see out there that you can just debunk right now? https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=785
Malware: Malware is still being shown in the search results. https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=1449 A tool to help index sites faster: https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=1718 Emojis in titles and descriptions: https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=1971 Search Console API Data Accuracy: Is the data from the API more accurate than the web interface? https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=2054 FAQ Schema: Our schema looks good from a technical perspective, but isn’t showing on Google. https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=2176 Seasonal content: What should we do with content that’s seasonal like Black Friday? https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=2257 CWV Impact? Of the 3 metrics, my CLS isn’t passing, how much of an impact will that have? https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=2418 Will CWV impact crawling? https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=2555 Migrating from a subdomain: The subdomain is old, like 20 years, and we’re looking to migrate to the main domain. https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=2677 New Local Site Starting out: What signals should we look out for or pay attention to. https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=3015 Geo redirects on site: Should you geo-redirect on a new site? https://youtu.be/a5J73nYDU8E?t=3195 The last question had to do with branded search - I don’t think it was relevant as it seemed they may have other issues, but feel free to watch that part if you are having any issues with your branded search being visible. | |||