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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.

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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)
Full show notes and blog post: https://opinionatedseo.com/s2e13

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.”
https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1483757660302417921?s=20

OK, to the main event - Cats got backlinks.

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!

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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/

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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/

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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.