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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

Why context matters for automation:

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The up-to-date, the out-of-date and the myths: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 They’re out of date, with no backing, and the tools still show them.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

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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.

Microsoft Webmaster Tools released their IndexNow WordPress plugin over the holiday weekend.

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.
Google says they don’t care, it’s treated the same.

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

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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.

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Today is December 27th, 2021 and here's some of the top stories I am covering:

• Is 100k pages on your site an issue for crawl budget?
• Updated image results?
• A great thread about ranking in a top position for a highly searched term. 80k in value
• Does google use analytics data? Does google use CTR on SERPs data?
• Bing and shopify integration
• Google Ads issues with GMail ads
• If you aren’t looking at tiktok in your 2022 marketing plan, take a look at this article
• Facebook is losing a bunch of execs, especially in the advertising segment

News items discussed:
Google does not use Google Analytics 4 for ranking purposes, and has always said it has never used Google Analytics in its algorithm.

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-analytics-4-google-ranking-32622.html

Google Image search on mobile has these labels for sections of the images it sometimes shows in the search results. A new label I have not seen before is showing "top categorized results."

https://twitter.com/SaadAlikhan1994/status/1473330087147802637

A look at how to use meta descriptions to help search engines understand your page's content. Meta descriptions are considered an indirect signal, in that they do not directly influence search rankings. They do help with other goals such as improving click-through rates.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/on-page-seo/optimize-meta-description/

A Reddit user woke up to an additional $80,000 in monthly traffic after his site reached the fifth rank for a competitive keyword. What should he do to the page with a weak call to action?
https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/rm5la2/woke_up_to_80000_increase_in_monthly_traffic/

Microsoft Bing has announced a Shopify integration that allows products to be purchased from the Bing Shopping and Search features.

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

According to our research, 68% of marketers said they didn't plan to use TikTok for marketing purposes in 2021. Those who did plan on increasing their use of TikTok were also heavy users of Facebook and Instagram.

https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/tiktok-growth-projections-and-the-opportunity-with-gen-z/

Facebook's most notable departures from the company in 2021. Many senior executives left or announced plans to depart in the coming months.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/23/here-are-facebooks-most-notable-executive-dep

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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.
Full post here: https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e1Some people may rely on the cache pages in search result pages to verify the indexing of the content correctly. The cache pages are handled separately from the index, so you may have a page in the index that you don’t have a cache page for.

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.