I realized that this is the Halloween Episode and it sure fits the scary environment in Google when it comes to getting new content into the index. And when I say scary - it's bad.

Some of my musings include the following:

Hope you have a good candy day.

You can find me on Linkedin - Carolyn Holzman.

American Way Media AmericanWayMedia.com Austin, TX

Music from Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-state

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Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

Is this real life? Or is this fantasy?

This week I share my deepest fantasy SEO ideas that sprang from a conversation with a colleague about time to ranking once working on a page. And well, you might listen to this and think I've lost my mind, it doesn't work that way. 

I'm a fan of challenging my own beliefs on what client SEO could be if we tried. And do things in a way where we're not trading hours for dollars but value for dollars.

Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback - what's your best SEO life?

For more information on the Google Index Detector - Google Index Detector

To learn what data says about Core Web Vitals - Core Web Vitals Field Evidence

You can find me on Linkedin - Carolyn Holzman.

American Way Media AmericanWayMedia.com Austin, TX

Music from Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-state

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This week is an example of transmuting what seemed like a failed expedition to talking about the kind of things SEO's don't normally talk about - how do we get answers to our SEO questions.

Two questions posed in the last few weeks illustrate the problem as I see it- too many people trying to chart a course in SEO without a map, who ask questions of strangers in social media and those that conflate the information they get from tools as a short cut to what it takes to rank within Google.

We as SEOs may work in isolation, but it doesn't mean we are consigned to be alone. And social media may not be the best place to build your SEO chops.

Just like we can not get into shape with just a gym membership alone, we can not short circuit the work necessary to understand how Google works by avoiding actually interacting with a search engine. No one answer, no one person, no one tool can relieve us from the work investment and using our brains.

All of us started somewhere. Find where you are and deliberately work from there. 

For more information on the group I mention in the show - https://bit.ly/seofriends

You can find me on Linkedin - Carolyn Holzman.

American Way Media AmericanWayMedia.com Austin, TX

Music from Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-state

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This week I share and tell about a couple of projects - one is the index detector project, is it a tool? What the heck is it supposed to do and where I suspect our conditioning is the reason why it's initially viewed as a tool.

I talk about indexation and what makes it so essential to SEO testing. I talk about my first SEO test and an underground SEO training for intermediate and advanced SEOs that you won't hear about unless someone like me tells you about it.

You can find me on Linkedin - Carolyn Holzman.

American Way Media AmericanWayMedia.com Austin, TX

Music from Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-state

License code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA

It's been a long time in coming. This past week John Muller confirmed that Core Web Vitals has been rolled out and in in play as of the end of August 2021.

We've been told Core Web Vitals would be a ranking factor. Higher page scores for CWV will be beneficial and conversely, low scores will be harmful. But what evidence do we have that these efforts, beyond common sense site speed efforts, to mold our pages to Core Web Vital "standards" going to yield something we can get an ROI out of?

That changed this past week and someone actually did roll up their sleeves and look at what those scores tell us about how Core Web Vitals can be seen to be in effect.

The content in this podcast in order to get the full effect is going to need a visual. For that reason I've published a companion article here https://www.americanwaymedia.com/core-web-vitals-unmasked/

 Let me know what you think. Feels like this might be evolving into more of an SEO tips podcast!

You can find me on Linkedin - Carolyn Holzman.

American Way Media AmericanWayMedia.com Austin, TX

Music from Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-state

License code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA

If you've listened to any of Confessions, you know that I'm a strong advocate of seo testing. It's a relatively new slice of SEO and has been instrumental in teasing new observations out of Google that helps us understand how relevance works as well as a host of other things.

Today in addition to updating you on the Google Index Detector project - https://www.AmericanWayMedia.com/index-detector/ and some other things, you'll mainly hear about new seo testing opportunities as well as what it looks like to actually BE an SEO tester.

What SEO testing is and what it is not.

Here are links to some of the things that were referenced in this episode and my suggestions on other episodes you might find interesting.

IMG - Internet Marketing Gold Testers Group - https://bit.ly/seotesters

Episode 8 - What is SEO Testing?

Episode 27 - This Isn't Your Dad's SEO

Episode 1 - Why I Love SEO

You can find me on Linkedin - Carolyn Holzman.

American Way Media AmericanWayMedia.com Austin, TX

Music from Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-state

License code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA

You know you're a nerd if you're like me and excited about this discovery of new SEO key performance indicators (KPIs) but these address some real-world issues for client SEOs.

For too long we have absorbed all the weird stuff we have seen all the time to something wrong with what we're doing but in reality, we're seeing built-in conditions in search. To be able to have the language to describe and a tool to discover it is progress in professional search.

You might brush up hard on your beliefs about ranking but you might also find some freedom and peace in here which can increase the quality of your work life and that inner voice!

I make a serious offer to run some scans for a limited number of listeners - you can email to [email protected] with your keyword, county and if you need local the city and state. One (1) scan per listener please. And for those that do, I'll provide a video rundown of what you're seeing in your scan. 

You can find me on Linkedin - Carolyn Holzman.

American Way Media AmericanWayMedia.com Austin, TX

Music from Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-state

License code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA

In this Episode I talk about the current SEO testing project that has sort of taken over my life - every day new content is published to a site for the purpose of finding out if Google is even indexing new content anymore. Plus there are two kinds of rendering possible on each page - simple html content and javascript.

I have questions. Most SEO's are confounded by what they are seeing when they publish new content but consistently see in search console - Excluded - discovered not crawled, crawled by not indexed or the dreaded Google doesn't know the URL.

It's time we know what's going on and this research project I hope will yield what is broken, when it comes back and for how long so SEOs and content producers of websites that aren't monster enterprise authority sites, which is most of us, stop thinking it's something we did wrong.

I'm hoping to hear from you.

You can find me on Linkedin - Carolyn Holzman.

American Way Media AmericanWayMedia.com Austin, TX

Music from Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-state

License code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA

This week's topic comes from a Search Engine Journal article by Amanda DeSilvestro https://www.searchenginejournal.com/hiring-local-seo-agency-questions/414522/

This is going to be in two parts - this one is in the beginning of the article where they advise what a business needs to do before seeking out SEO proposals.

There are five suggestions and most are good but there is one that I think defies the reality of the situation. See if you can tell which one I think is fantasy.

There's an announcement about new data from the Google Index Detector - https://www.americanwaymedia.com/index-detector/

You can find me on Linkedin - Carolyn Holzman.

American Way Media AmericanWayMedia.com Austin, TX

Music from Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-state

License code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA

This week's topic is something we probably don't talk about a lot because it's not always an easy one.

This comes from a listener. an independent SEO and  I took some time on this one because I think it’s far more common than we want to let on - questioning ourselves on how do we know if we’re a good SEO or not. And who has the right to tell us.

And at the end there's an announcement about a public source - an index detector - https://www.americanwaymedia.com/index-detector/

This is a labor of love - every day a new page will be published and tracked so the data will say IF Google is indexing, WHAT type of content is Google able to render - you can see at a glance is Google indexing simple content or also Javascript frameworks. I'll be happy to make the raw data available upon request.

You can find me on Linkedin - Carolyn Holzman.

American Way Media AmericanWayMedia.com Austin, TX

Music from Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/doug-organ/fugue-state

License code: HESHAZ4ZOAUMWTUA