Search Engine Roundtable Podcast

This week we had another confirmed update to the Google helpful content system; it is now global. Google also had a lot of volatility over the previous week, unrelated to this confirmed update. Google officially rolled out continuous scroll on desktop search this week. Google also officially launched topic refinements in the mobile search results but is also testing it on desktop. Google Search Console said the Subscribe with Google sites might see an increase in impressions and clicks in the search performance report. Google’s Gary Illyes recommended you load content before JavaScript if you get a Search Console notice. Google is testing removing the estimated number of search results. Google is testing showing short product reviews in the product thumbnail images. An SEO poll asks if link building is as effective or not. Google said SafeSearch could be triggered by a lot of explicit and extreme cursing. Google said set up tests to see if your site is blocking Googlebot. Google Business Profiles has a bug with uploading logos or images. Google updated the keyword planner to let you organize keywords into ad groups. Microsoft Advertising released a bunch of new features. I posted the monthly Google webmaster report this week. Finally, Google posted the top trending searches for 2022. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSOR: This week's video recap is sponsored by Semrush.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Part one and part two with Jeremy Meindl was more on black hat SEO stuff and now in part three, we get into more white hat topics. We start with CRM targeting and how he got into CRM targeting. It started with him trying to get a date with a girl he liked. He photoshopped his face into ads that this girl would see and now he is married to her with two kids. This CRM targeting strategy worked well for him.

Jeremy Meindl then spoke about how to use CRM targeting for digital marketing. They targeted a specific client's product and her connections and pummeled those ads and it ended up getting them the meeting they wanted with the client. It was clever and it worked.

He gave more tips on what to do with the PII restrictions and how to go around them. So his company, Target IQ does that and you can get a free t-shirt if you reach out to him.

You can learn more about Jeremy Meindl by Googling him.

Since Friday of Thanksgiving last week, we have been seeing a lot of chatter and volatility with Google Search. Google said they improved the accuracy of the Discover performance report in Google Search Console. Google said links have a lot less of a significant impact today than they did years ago. Google said they have algorithms to detect and demote AI-altered scrapped plagiarized content. Google said it does not crawl or index niche or shorter content faster. Google said the URL does not have to be in the same language as the content on the page. Google also said HTTP/3 does not help with ranking or SEO. Google said if your most important pages are terrible, that is much worse for you. SEOs are mixed in their opinion of the importance of domain age in Google ranking. Google is testing a new map interface in Google Search. A study shows how longer reviews stay at the top of the reviews section for longer. Google sued a company that impersonates Google to scam small businesses with their Google Business Profile. Google Business Profile can now show when an edit will be reviewed. Google local reviews show positive and unfavorable mention graphs. Google Local Service Ads is testing different headers. Google AdSense launched new side rail ads. And today is my 19th year anniversary of covering search and search marketing. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

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Search Topics of Discussion:

In part one, we learned about Jeremy Meindl, why he loves pushing the line in SEO and how he never was caught with any of his SEO spam efforts. In part two we talk more about that, specifically, he said sometimes with Google what is old is new again. Sometimes he just pushes as hard as possible for fun.

Transparency with his clients is super important and sometimes he will encourage clients to take more risky steps but in a safer way, he said. You can use third-party sites and not touch or risk your own site, he explained. The old fashion churn and burn SEO strategy.

Jeremy said his talking about this topic publicly might result in his site being hit and he seemed excited by that possibility, which is cool.

But he does not use the same Google accounts across his client sites or his own sites. He is super safe with that, he said.

Then he moved onto no-link backlinking, which is basically creating personas on the web and then seeing how much of an impact that author, the fake author, had on search. So you build up a fake person across the site, with LinkedIn profiles, Facebook, etc. Then they took it by just placing URLs, and links, without them being a hyperlink. So they would drop links without the a href to make it a link. So they would use people’s search boxes and inject URLs and domain names there and feed Google these. This is another example of bringing back the old as new, so it was shocking to me to hear this still works according to Jeremy.

He also spoke about the Google redirect issues with some 302s and taking advantage of those, specifically with YouTube.

You can learn more about Jeremy Meindl by Googling him.

Google probably did yet another weekend search ranking algorithm update, I see a pattern here. Google’s Hyung-Jin Kim said E-A-T is used for all queries, not just YMYL. Google documented its notable search updates, they now call systems, even some of the retired ones. Google has a new spam policy for those who circumvent other spam policies. Google has a new system in place to be able to crawl from outside of the US, Google announced. Also, Gary said 60% of the internet is duplicate - 60%! Google asked for examples of discovered but currently not indexed URLs that you think should be indexed. Many SEOs still use guest posting for SEO reasons despite it being against Google’s guidelines. Google’s John Mueller was caught talking about subdomains. Google documented the supported languages for key moments SeekToAction markup. Google said the last batch of mobile-first indexing sites will be soon. Google is testing a new people also ask interface. Google changed the "more recommendations" label to more products. Bing is promoting TikTok in its search results. Google AdSense is a beta testing rewarded ad gate program. And did you know that Matt Cutts fought with Sergey Brin and Larry Page about if Google can be spammed? And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSOR: This week's video recap is sponsored by Duda, the Professional Website Builder You Can Call Your Own.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Jeremy Meindl is the co-founder of Target IQ and we spoke about the hotel we are in, its history of it, and the fire he risked his life showing how you cannot burn yourself. Jeremy spoke about his history in a super transparent way and how he got into spam and then became a professional digital marketer.

It was fun to talk about the early days of search marketing, how easy it was, how it was like legal hacking and you can do this with no budget. Jeremy said this is why he loves this space, the internet is the great equalizer, he said.

Although I think it is much harder to game the system now, Jeremy thinks otherwise. He said spamming and manipulation still work and are still not hard. One example he gave was Google Cache bombing, where he said a simple keyword search by the Google Cache IP and site command triggers better rankings. But he said this is not a long-term strategy and it won’t last.

Jeremy does enjoy experimenting like this but he also enjoys the more straightforward SEO, like correlation, entity tagging, etc. But he said at the end of the day, you are trying to game the algorithm and he said Google hates SEO (despite Google saying they do not).

But SEO is a cat-and-mouse game and he is brave enough to talk about this black or gray-hat SEO topic.

To be clear, he does not do black hat techniques for his big clients but understanding how to manipulate Google does help him better understand SEO in general. He explained you simply cannot do the same thing to win and beat your competitors, so you sometimes need to push the envelope.

But he is happy to report he was never caught, not yet at least, and has never been penalized.

You can learn more about Jeremy Meindl by Googling him.

This week, we learned that Google’s Panda update at one point in time evolved into what was called the Google Coati update. Google also had another weekend update last week. Google Search Console added a new shopping tab with more streamlined Merchant Center integration. Google said they now recommend dots over commas for review snippet numerical decimal separators. Google said rich result manual actions can lead to not just the removal of rich results but a broader spam manual action. Google said cross-linking words in your content should be done only when relevant. Google does pick up on URL parameters that don’t work but learns to drop them over time. Google said redirects from nonrelevant pages won’t cause harm to the target page. Google rolls out new search, shopping, maps, AR, and more features. Google is testing more Explore features in Google Search. Google is testing picture-in-picture features in search. Google reviews dropped out due to some weird suggest edit bug, but we are told it is fixed. A local study says review recency matters for rankings. You should be cautious of fake ownership claims of your Google Business Profile. Google is testing new local knowledge panel photo interfaces. Google Business updates tool now has a crop image tool. Google Business Profiles added an attribute for the World Cup and if you are showing it live at your venue. Google is bribing advertisers with $100 or more to enroll in applying auto recommendations, but PPCers say no. And Apple Search is at least four years away. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSOR: This week's video recap is sponsored by Wix - Did you see the new Edit by Page SEO features from Wix?

Search Topics of Discussion:

In part one with Rick Mariano we spoke about helping build LocalEdge to provide high volume digital marketing services at a low cost and then in part two we spoke more about using automation and the human touch. In this final part, we talk about advice for clients to work with agencies and get the most out of the agency.

Rick often thinks a lot about how to help all his clients, the thousands of them, and how they can all perform well online. He explained the more engaged customers often do better than the ones who just throw money at it and are not engaged.

So customers and clients that provide feedback to the agency and the strategist will always have a higher performing campaign. They want customers to send images, videos, and details of what they are doing on the ground so that the agency can share those details. Also, it is important to set expectations with the clients and have them understand patience is required in digital marketing, especially organic marketing.

We then spoke about hiring and retaining employees, especially post-COVID. He said he is now able to hire people anywhere but with that, the salary expectations have increased drastically. At the same time, he cannot increase his client costs tremendously. So you need to be creative with the budgets and figure out how to make it work. Losing employees is super hard for agencies to recover from, so retention is super important for them. Clients want consistency and have their strategist stick around during the campaign.

Then you need to be sure to have a system in place to be ready for employees leaving by having the systems in place to transfer knowledge and new employees ready to come on board.

You can follow Rick Mariano on LinkedIn and at LocalEdge.

We had yet another biggish unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update on November 4th and 5th. Google also removed the annotation about the search features bug and added a Discover performance report bug to the list. The Google Search Console API is delayed a bit. Google spoke more about AI content, it is content by the people for the people. Google said just because Google may rewrite a title of a page, it doesn't mean that the page is low quality. Google updated its documentation to say it can crawl JavaScript links and also said child elements don't count toward the sitemap URL limit. Google Ads had a bug where it disapproved ads using the word “get.” Google Ads API added code examples for version 12 of the API. Google Ads Editor released version 2.2 with new features. Google is supposedly working on a new Google Merchant Center user interface design. Google also is rolling out the pre-owned green lead labels in the product results. Google local find shows auto-play videos in the local results. A limited study says 10 reviews give you a bit of a ranking boost. Microsoft Bing is testing an AI chat feature in the featured position slot. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSOR: This week's video recap is sponsored by Semrush.

Search Topics of Discussion:

In part one we spoke about how Rick Mariano has helped build LocalEdge to provide high volume digital marketing services at a low cost. In this next part, Rick explained more specifically how he was able to structure the business and staff to do these tasks.

Rick explained they have a very good development and business intelligence team where they can quickly see where the priorities should be with the businesses. Rick said it is all about prioritization, and knowing where to focus today is key to running a successful business here. Each account strategist t can quickly see what they need to focus on when they start their day is important.

He also said project management systems are crucial in these efforts. This way you know what to do, how to do it, and then see how the results were. Then if the PM leaves, the new PM also needs to know where to pick up from, quickly and efficiently.

In running a business through automation and strategies human touch is critical, it is a blend of the two.

We then touched on the growth of the agency again, a bit from the topic we covered in part one. He gave some tips including hiring the right people, try not to rush into hiring, and building tools and reports that are all important to scale. We spoke a lot about the process of building out these software tools and reports.

You can follow Rick Mariano on LinkedIn and at LocalEdge.