Loading summary
Transcript75 lines
- [00:01]
Kristen
Are you tired of juggling contacts manually following up and deals falling through the cracks? We can fix it so you never lose another lead enabling 24. 7 sales and support via an AI that learns your business Ready to close more deals with less hassle? Get a free trial of our marketing automation@thebuzzcrm.com Are you tired of juggling contacts manually following up and deals falling through the cracks? We can fix it so you never lose another lead. 24. 7 Sales and support via an AI that learns your business Ready to close more deals with less hassle? Get a free trial of our Marketing Automation@thebuzzcrm.com.
- [00:55]
Ross Dunn
Hello and welcome to SEO101 on WMR FM episode number 480. This is Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing and my co host is my company Senior SEO Scott Vanak. All right, well we've got lots to share today and we're going to start off there's no non SEO news, so we're going to go right into the SEO news and I'll start off with content creation and this is a promising result. Essentially, Google is recognizing content creators much better than they have before. This is based on an article by Jason Barnard on Search Engine Land and he's recently discovered that knowledge panel subtitles like Content creator and in brackets medicine as well as Content creator in brackets travel are showing up in the SERPs underneath author names. This is showing, according to him, Google's explicit identification of individuals as authoritative content creators within specific fields. Now, trying to simplify what he's written here, essentially these updates, along with events from 2023 until now, there's been certain updates and stuff that have been instrumental in helping this indicate a positive progression towards identifying and rewarding content creators when their author profiles are properly or appropriately designated. Now, what this means is if you have an author profile on your page, you only need to have one. You want one on your main site or your own website. Like I've got RossDunn.com, some people have different author pages within one page, whatever it might be, and then they link to that from wherever they're writing as their main bio or author page. And if they do that everywhere, Google will start to see that this is a person who is an authority on that topic. They can see their credentials on that page. Everything comes together and Google can understand that you are an authority and you deserve the right to show up in rankings and and that's what appears to be happening here. And Google's starting to really pull all those pieces of the puzzle together. So that's, that's really good news. This is what's going to help with a lot of the work people are doing to try and improve the quality of their blogging sites. Any kind of authoritative site on a particular product line or let's say a person is a surfer. But they didn't do too well, didn't do too well during the helpful content update, quote, unquote helpful. Anyway, they would want to be doing this kind of work. They'd want to be pulling all the pieces of puzzle together, maybe going back to other pieces of content they've written in the past and have people link to their bio page to try and again show Google that there's one entity here that was the writer. And as they do that, their main site will probably see the benefits of that. It's not perfect yet, but this is pretty promising. So good to see what's next here, Scott.
- [04:09]
Scott Vanak
Yeah, so we spoke, I think it was just in the last show actually that there was a bit of an issue going on at Google Search Console and they fixed it. So we were talking about how in the performance report in Search Console they were reporting impressions and clicks for product snippets on sites that don't have products. So clearly that's a bug. Google did write that a logging error affected Search Console reporting on product snippets from August 13th until September 20th. That's a long time to have a bug in place. You think they would have fixed it a bit faster. As a result, you may notice increased an increase in displayed clicks and impressions during this period for the product snippet search appearance type in the performance report and impressions overlay in the product snippet rich results report. This is just a logging issue, not an actual change in clicks or impressions. So again, you know, you've got over a month of data there that is going to be wrong in that report specifically. So when you see that, ignore it. It's too bad that they can't go back and retroactively fix it. But I guess if it wasn't logged correctly, you can't really make it up. Or maybe you could. Would anybody know? I don't know. Maybe not just average out. Whatever it's been a few months before.
- [05:25]
Ross Dunn
There you go, you're set.
- [05:27]
Scott Vanak
Yeah. So just a quick update there. Nothing super fancy, but at least you know it's fixed. So that's good.
- [05:32]
Ross Dunn
Good. Sadly, Google Search has completely killed the cache feature. Back in January, Google removed the cache link from search results and the cache Operator continued to work, but you had to search for it specifically using the cache colon and then the domain. At the time, Google mentioned that they would be removing it. Now it's completely gone. In January, Denny Sullivan said that originally the feature was meant to help people access pages when a page would not load. Now that things have greatly improved and Google feels this feature is no longer necessary, it's gone. This comes about two weeks after Google added links to the Wayback Machine, which I guess they're considering the best alternative.
- [06:19]
Scott Vanak
Let them deal with it.
- [06:20]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, so if you're just looking for a view of what a page looked like, the Wayback Machine will work great. However, if you're more interested in seeing how Google views your page, use the URL inspection tool in Google Search Console. That will only work for your own site though, right, Scott? Yes. Yeah. So, dang it. That takes away yet another thing you can do for competitive research.
- [06:40]
Scott Vanak
Yeah, I know. Just making everything a little bit harder. And, and I like your example you said before is not having this cash link is going to make it harder to see content behind a paywall if you don't want to pay. And I don't think I've done that in a long time. And you mentioned that it's like, oh, right, totally used to do that. I don't know if it even still worked anymore.
- [06:59]
Ross Dunn
Well, it doesn't very often. It didn't very often anymore. Most of them had figured that out. But just once in a while I get so annoyed, I go, try it. But last time I did, there was just no way around it. I couldn't find it. Maybe they'd already removed the operator too, because I couldn't get anything to work.
- [07:13]
Scott Vanak
Oh, okay.
- [07:14]
Ross Dunn
Yeah. Sad times. All right, local SEO news. What's this?
- [07:21]
Scott Vanak
Yeah, so Google Maps fake review notice on business Profile. So Google is now placing a warning on some Google business profile listings within Google Maps when it thinks some reviews are fake or fraudulent. So Google may do one of three main things here. They may the business profile will not be able to receive new reviews or ratings for a set period of time. The business profile's existing reviews or ratings may be unpublished for a set period of time, or the business profile will display a warning to let customers know that fake reviews were removed. Um, if they're accurate. I think this is great because fake reviews are frustrating as heck. I don't know how good they will be at identifying fake reviews. I mean, we definitely see cases where, I don't know, say, a video goes viral and there's A company in it and they're the ones that are bad in the video. And then that company gets bombarded with sometimes hundreds or thousands of reviews instantly bad or good in some cases, I suppose. But. But I think they're pretty good at finding that stuff already. So it's probably going to be more people buying reviews or. I don't know. But you know what?
- [08:32]
Ross Dunn
This is going to totally create though, a major problem. Negative SEO. Yes. Companies will say, you know, for this amount of money, I won't post fake reviews on your profile.
- [08:46]
Scott Vanak
You get your army of fake review. Well, AI bots.
- [08:49]
Ross Dunn
Oh yeah. It would easily harm people. And dollars to donuts, Google has not considered this. And poor companies are going to get nailed because fake reviews are being created. And a competitor can easily do this to one of its own competitors and just laugh and you know it's going to happen if it hasn't already done so.
- [09:11]
Scott Vanak
It would be so easy. Like it absurdly and not even expensive. There's so many cheap companies overseas and all over the place that will just. Yeah, I need, I need a million reviews. You don't even have to worry about the number because you're not trying, you're trying to get banned. So get as many as you possibly can.
- [09:26]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, it's terrifying. I, I do not want to see how this is going to shake out. And I, I pray that Google has considered this because it is the glaring issue. Glaring and. But they're so juvenile when it comes to management of local SEO that I have very little faith and I think this is just going to blow up. I really, really hope not enough businesses have been hurt by this lackadaisical approach to managing Google business. Local businesses. So just pray, pray, pray. Yeah.
- [10:03]
Scott Vanak
So you are very optimistic about.
- [10:05]
John Mueller
Yes, about this change.
- [10:08]
Ross Dunn
You nailed it. You nailed it. Yeah. I'm sure Google will do a fantastic job.
- [10:12]
Scott Vanak
I can read between the lines. I'm good at that.
- [10:15]
Ross Dunn
You know, it's just like links. You know, people were using that to nail other clients. They could easily go through and create a thousands of thousands of fake links to someone's site as negative SEO and they would feel it. Granted, that was at the beginning. It's harder to do now. But this is the beginning of this. So you just know it's just going to be shitstorm.
- [10:37]
Scott Vanak
I look forward to seeing examples of it, though I'm not really, but you know, I kind of do. I want to see it in action so we can talk about it. Gives us something.
- [10:45]
Ross Dunn
Just hopefully not on our clients. Please.
- [10:47]
Scott Vanak
No. Yeah. Skip our clients. Do other people's clients please.
- [10:50]
Ross Dunn
Our clients are decent hard working people that do not deserve anything like this.
- [10:55]
Scott Vanak
So I hope if they do hit our clients so or they hit you and you feel that you know you've been affected in error, you can appeal it. And if you take a look at our show notes, it's a long URL. I'm not going to try to say it, it's got underscores and stuff in it. Anyways there will be a link in the show notes for how to appeal it. A simple Google search would probably bring it up as well.
- [11:13]
Ross Dunn
So yeah, just the search because the actual page name is this is probably just look for submit your business profile for review and just to search for that and you should find it. No problem. And on another note, you know I'm frustrated as heck about the filtering systems they have on Google business profiles because I know for a fact we've had a number of clients leave very positive reviews on our business profiles and our business profile I should say and none of them appeared. What the hell. It's hard enough to get good, solid, authentic reviews but how they how do they reward us for not showing it? It's infuriating. Loving Google right now. Okay.
- [11:58]
Scott Vanak
They're our friend.
- [11:59]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, a small thing here but the Google blue map pin and city name on search results snippets there's been some changes there with some searches below the listing Google is now showing a blue map pin along with city name. An example by provided by Barry Schwartz shows a search for' sunglasses. One listing in the results is for sunglasshut.com and below the listing is a blue pin, a city name and distance away. Also whether or not it's open or closed, some handy additions there. Guess we'll see how long those last.
- [12:36]
Scott Vanak
Typical. I haven't seen it in the wild yet but it's kind of like a mix. It's kind of neat because it's a bit of local thrown into the regular serps without all the maps and things and it might be helpful for some.
- [12:47]
Ross Dunn
People in a way it's a good example of how local does affect organic and vice versa. There is a definite connection there and I've heard people argue what is Dax.
- [13:00]
Kristen
Are you tracking all our cars on Carvana value tracker on all our devices? Yes Kristen, yes I am.
- [13:07]
Ross Dunn
Well I've been looking for my phone.
- [13:08]
Kristen
For In Dax's domain we see all so we always know what our cars are worth.
- [13:13]
Ross Dunn
All of them. All of them.
- [13:15]
Kristen
Value surge trucks up 3.9%.
- [13:18]
Scott Vanak
That's a great offer.
- [13:19]
Kristen
I know.
- [13:20]
Ross Dunn
Sell Sell.
- [13:23]
Kristen
Track your car's value with Carvana Value Tracker.
- [13:26]
John Mueller
Today, people are driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search. Match with Indeed. The hiring process can be slow and overwhelming. Simplify hiring with Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed Data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Ditch the busy work. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. Join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@indoubtedly.com p o d k a t z 12 that's indeed.com p o d k a T z 12 terms and conditions apply otherwise.
- [14:28]
Ross Dunn
But it's so clear and it made sense back then. So I just went with that because a lot of over, over the years of doing SEO, the one thing that's always standard stood the test of time with the exception of Google business profiles, I guess because nothing makes sense there is that what made sense was the way they went with even if they didn't do it right away. Like for example when you said at the time that from the beginning Google should have just ignored bad links instead of penalizing people for them because it was. It opened a window to negative reviews or negative, I was thinking reviews again now negative links causing, you know, lots of problems. Well, they finally did do that and it was a no, it was. It was the way they should have done it. But no, they wanted to play play the police and hurt businesses that could very well have been nailed by a competitor. And in a way they should just do the same thing with these reviews. If they feel they're fake, they should just remove them and not penalize people for this. That way they're wasting money and that's what they're going to do next. I bet that's what they're going to do.
- [15:36]
Scott Vanak
We'll be talking about it in six months from now if we're lucky because.
- [15:39]
Ross Dunn
That took years for the links to.
- [15:41]
Scott Vanak
Do that six years from now. Tune into episode 1063 here. We will talk about that in the future.
- [15:49]
Ross Dunn
Terrifying. All right, let's take a quick break and we jump back. We're going to get into some AI news. SEO 101 will be back right after recess. Welcome back to SEO 101 on WMR FM hosted by myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing and my company senior SEO Scott Vanack. All right, new data. Google AI overviews show more often to signed in users. This is a study from Brightedge. Why don't you follow through on that?
- [16:23]
Scott Vanak
Yeah, so they did a study of oh I thought I had how many it was. I think it was something like a million websites or a million search terms. And they found that AI overviews are triggered 10 to 20% less for signed out users. So if you want to see more AI overviews, you better sign in. This does vary by industry and this kind of caught me off guard a little bit. I found it interesting. E Commerce queries trigger AI overviews 90% less for signed out users. So if you're not signed in, you're not likely to see an E commerce review which is, you know, it was pretty much in the 10 to 20% across the board with all industries except E commerce. So that's kind of interesting. AI overview citations are being decreased for consumer focused media and blogs and increasing for specialized, expert, authoritative and trustworthy domains. One example that was listed in the Search Engine Land article was in healthcare. They found verywellhealth.com saw a decline in citations where arthritis.org saw a substantial increase and you know, kind of makes sense. Arthritis.org I've heard of it even though I've never been there. Very well, health.com I'm not familiar with that one.
- [17:34]
Ross Dunn
So cheesy domain.
- [17:35]
Scott Vanak
Oh my God, I love, I love that. That's our example and I'm going to.
- [17:39]
Ross Dunn
Start feeling, feeling great. Health.com yeah, that's right.
- [17:43]
Scott Vanak
I, I didn't look in detail at the study itself, so I'm guessing that it's listed as one of the domains that they've discovered in the study because it's pretty random. Seems random to me. But anyways it's just some more evolution at AI overviews really.
- [17:59]
Ross Dunn
My. Well that perfect dovetail is another article from Search Engine Roundtable. This is about A study from SEO Clarity shows that 96% of Google AI overviews linked to informational intent pages, which is really close to what you were mentioning there. In this case, informational was 96.5% informational/transactional was 1.79% transactional 1.2 navigational 0.4 I'm surprised any navigational show up, but this helps. This helps to illustrate how high quality informational pages on your site are a great supplement to other product or service oriented pages. So do keep writing great content and you have a better chance of showing up in AI overviews. Which you may think, why? What's all this fuss about AI overviews? Why do we care? It's the first scene that's appearing at top of search results. It's become number one. It doesn't always appear, but when it does, if you can be there, that's a great thing. And frankly, if Google feels that you deserve to be there, they're also paying attention to you and they're seeing that you're an authority on that topic, which leads to better results elsewhere. So it's a win, win, win. Pain in the ass, but a win, win win. Okay. Oh, I love this. This is a fantastic article. So as a Mueller file here Google shows How to use alt Text for SEO Now Question asked via Reddit Image alt Text in the era of computer vision, are image alt text still relevant for SEO? With all the computer vision and images recognition advancement, is there any info of Google or other search engines using machine learning models to crawl images rather than relying on the user provided alt text? Pardon all the poor grammar there, I'm just read it as it was written. John Mueller for image search, there's the context that also that also the context that comes from the page plus image combination that matters. A photo of a beach might be a relaxing poster. It might be the beach from a hotel. It could be the site of a chemical spill. Just knowing that the image is of a beach doesn't really give sufficient background information to be able to show it in an image search appropriately. A lot of it does come from the page, and the alt text is unique in that it's what directly connects the image to the page with context. Unless your site is a photo agency, traffic for photo of the beach isn't going to be that useful. But for a hotel, having hotel with beach in x can be relevant. Again, a lot of that can come from the rest of the page, but the alt attribute value is a unique opportunity to give context. And with that, if you use AI to create alt text based on the image file and get photo of a beach as the alt text for that image, you're not getting the most out of the alt text both for users and search engines. Unquote. Love that analogy of the chemical spill versus a beach at a hotel. Perfect. And it's very true. And I think a lot of people do get hung up on the SEO aspects of alt attribute optimization. They just think photo up beach. But yeah, there is more context. I would Normally if I was just. If even if it was just a photo of a beach in front of a hotel, I'd still put the name of the beach there and say by hotel name, whatever. Right. That just makes good sense. But yeah, if it was. Anyway, being more descriptive is. It's not going to hurt you as long as you're not going crazy.
- [21:42]
Scott Vanak
Yeah, you don't have 400 words of alt text on every image, but you know, a full sentence. There's nothing wrong with a sentence. It used to be like six words max. But we're, we're past that now.
- [21:52]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, exactly. I mean, again, be brief if you can and just add detail, make it useful. What's next?
- [22:04]
Scott Vanak
All right, so Google has confirmed with a person on Reddit, well, John Mueller has confirmed that it is okay to ignore spam score. So I'm going to read this question via Reddit the way Ross read the other one. And any grammar problems are not my doing. This one I don't think is quite as bad. My site is less than 6 months old with less than 60 blog posts. I was checking with some tool. It says I have 302 links and 52 referring domains. My worry is on the spam score. How should I go about reducing the score? Or how much is the bad spam score? So how much what? How bad is the bad spam score? Anyways, so John replied and he said, and I kind of agree with this, obviously, so it's good to hear it coming from them. Him I would worry about. Sorry, I would, I wouldn't worry about the spam score. Google doesn't use these spam scores. You can do with them as you want. They're not going to change anything. For your site. I'd recommend taking the time and instead making a tiny part of your website truly awesome and then working out what it would take to make the rest of your website like that. The spam score tells you nothing in that regard. Ignore it. And I, I basically we've been saying this for a while and, and you know, some people will still, we'll still have clients come to us and wonder if they need to be disavowing their bad links and things like that. And my answer is almost always no. My almost always I'll say just ignore the bad links, worry about getting good links, worry about good content, worry about, you know, other SEO aspects and other business aspects you've got to deal with. In extreme cases, maybe I would disavow them, but even then I don't know.
- [23:45]
Ross Dunn
Well, and we've already heard that. Disavowed tools not being used.
- [23:49]
Scott Vanak
Oh, right. Because that's how often I do it. I forgot.
- [23:51]
Ross Dunn
Yeah. So I wouldn't bother that I would do anything.
- [23:55]
Scott Vanak
Yeah.
- [23:56]
Ross Dunn
Yeah. I mean, if you were really concerned, I wouldn't bother disavowing. I would just try to remove them if you're really that concerned. But I really. It's not. It's your, your better efforts would be to with. Towards creating better links. Just ignore the other ones and, and outweigh them with quality. That's your best approach. So. Yeah, I'm glad that John said that. I mean, sometimes we have to take it with a grain of salt when Google says to ignore something, but that's, you know, just an indicator from a tool and it. If you didn't know you had bad links, it might be something to wake you up a bit. And that's a good thing. But yeah, don't take it too seriously.
- [24:35]
Scott Vanak
Yeah. Usually the only time I look at bad links is not so much to find if the bad links are having a negative effect, but rather to see if volumes of good links are really there or not. So if I see that a client has a thousand links and then I discover after diving deeper that 900 of them are bad, well, really you only have about 100 links is the way I look at it. So if they're trying to compare against your competitors, you might want to look at how many good links they have versus how many good links you have and try to filter out the bad ones. Tools like Semrush makes it super easy. Like they. You can just see those numbers. You don't have to do any math or calculations or digging. It's just right there. So look at that number more than your total inbound links. Look at the number of inbound good links and you should be fine.
- [25:21]
Ross Dunn
Perfect. Well, on behalf of myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing, and my company, Senior SEO Scott Vanak, thank you for joining us today. Remember, we have a show Notes newsletter you can sign up for@seo101radio.com where you'll get the link we mentioned earlier and a few other really interesting tidbits and ways to refresh your memory of a past show. If you have any questions you'd like to share with us, please feel free to post them on our Facebook group, easily found by searching SEO101podcast on Facebook. If you go there, you'll actually notice that when people ask questions, we're posting when we've answered them in which episodes so we're there, we are responsive and we'd love to have your questions. Have a great week and remember to tune into future episodes, which air every week on WMR fm.
- [26:04]
Scott Vanak
Great. Thank you for listening everybody.
- [26:41]
Kristen
Are you tired of juggling contacts manually falling up and duels falling to the cracks? We can fix it so you never lose another lead. Enabling 24. 7 sales and support via an AI that learns your business. Ready to close more deals with less hassle? Get a free trial of our marketing automation@thebuzz CRM.com.
- [27:03]
Scott Vanak
Yeah, sure thing.
- [27:05]
Ross Dunn
Hey, you sold that car yet?
- [27:07]
Scott Vanak
Yeah, sold it to Carvana. Oh, I thought you were selling to that guy. The guy who wanted to pay me in foreign currency, no interest over 36 months. Yeah, no. Carvana gave me an offer in minutes, picked it up and paid me on the spot. It was so convenient.
- [27:24]
Ross Dunn
Just like that.
- [27:24]
Scott Vanak
Yeah.
- [27:25]
Ross Dunn
No hassle?
- [27:26]
Scott Vanak
None. That is super convenient.
- [27:29]
Ross Dunn
Sell your car to Carvana and swap hassle for convenience. Pick up fees may apply.
- [27:33]
John Mueller
People are driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search Match with Indeed. The hiring process can be slow and overwhelming. Simplify hiring with Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed Data and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Ditch the busywork. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. Join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed. Com podkatz12 that's indeed. Com podkatz12. Terms and conditions apply.