Search Engine Roundtable Podcast

Jill Fecher is the Chief Growth Officer at Cypress North and we spoke about her work history and her previous experience in traditional media. We spoke about how she joined Cypress North and why she joined that company. She loves how working in a smaller company is easier to make quicker moves and be more nimble.

She joined Cypress North in a position the company originally did not have and she explained how she joined the company and made her own job description. She makes decisions with the owners and they are able to “try things and see what works”, Jill said.

We then spoke about if having titles in small agencies is important or not. She made some really good points about why titles are important at Cypress North. Company culture is important to not get in the way of employee titles. He gave examples of how the owners to the normal staff do all sorts of jobs, from taking out the trash, to building desks or chairs on a Friday night. Some of you may notice that in my Search Engine Land newsletter intros, I make up a unique title for myself when I sign my name.

Part two coming soon to a podcast near you...

You can learn more about Jill Fecher at Cypress North or on LinkedIn and subscribe to the Cypress North YouTube channel.

This week we covered the new big Google update that is coming next week named the helpful content update, I dig deep into it. Google has been talking about content issues for a while, so it is not surprising. Google will then launch its fifth product reviews update, the timing is weird. If you are not happy with the last product reviews update, you can let Google know. Google had a bug with the coverage report in Google Search Console that labeled pages as indexed when they were not indexed. Google fixed the validate fix button and rolled out the new labels for the coverage report and also added a new source column and unsubmitted pages filter. Google said sometimes the model for your website is no longer feasible in Search. Some affiliates are trying to swap out their tracking URLs, thinking it will help with rankings. Google's John Mueller said again, that URLs do drop out of the Google index over time. Bing’s Fabrice Canel said Bing discovers tens of billions of URLs each day that are new but most are junk. IndexNow is growing a lot, a lot. Google is testing a Google Ads summary box in search. Google Ads released version 11.1 of the Ads API. Google Merchant Center updated how it enforces some of its policies. Google Discover is now showing the author name, over some site names. Google is testing expandable maps and tabs in the map results. Google is also testing popular destination overlays. And Google finally fixed its timer and stopwatch search feature after 30-days. 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: Wix has been doing a lot of cool things for SEO. Definitely check out what they've been doing.

Search Topics of Discussion:

In part one, we learned about Sarah Burke, the Data and Analytics Manager at Cypress North. We also spoke about some of the differences between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics 3. Here we talk about the benefits of Google Analytics 4.

Some of the benefits of Google Analytics 4 include:

I mentioned some of the confusion around Firebase and Google Analytics 4 and how making a new profile for Firebase can cause issues. This is a topic most people don’t talk about and you should be aware.

Sarah then spoke about how important it is to have the data talk to each other in a single dashboard tool. So the importance of bringing all data from various data platforms into one location to get a holistic view. So bring in your Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Search Console, GA4, etc into one place. She uses a lot of CRM software and prefers Hubspot, but they all have mechanisms to integrate with.

I then went off on a tangent of Hubspot’s office and worked from home, sorry about that.

You can learn more about Sarah Burke on Twitter @DataBySarah or on LinkedIn.

This video is sponsored by SE Ranking.

Google launched new features in search, one where Google is using MUM to give featured snippets a consensus - it is pretty cool. Google also released new about this result features and expanded content advisories in search. Google Search broke this week, really badly, causing a lot of indexing issues with pages dropping out of the index, it was all fixed in about 24 hours. Google Search may have had a ranking algorithm update last weekend. Google image search now uses Google Lens, finally. But Google Search Console won’t do Lens reporting and Search Console also had an issue with reporting for Google Discover a few weeks ago. Google now classifies duplicate photos, posts, videos, and logos as spam. Google local service ads now marked reviews as not guaranteed. Google supports pros and cons structured data now. Google said a noindex in an hreflang cluster can cause the whole cluster to be noindexed. Google people also ask rises, FAQs drop and review stars in shopping drop. Google said dynamic rendering is not recommended, it is a workaround and not a long-term solution. Google said to use descriptive titles for your RSS feeds and use a single feed when it comes to the Chrome follow feature. Google clarified that GTIN values should be numerical and added GTIN12 property support, which was always supported. Google removed the rich media best practices document. Google’s keyword planner tool now lets you organize keywords into ad groups. Google Search’s image preview launched a new overlay feature. Google tests refinements in the desktop autocomplete. Google is testing a new design for mobile sitelinks. 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:

Sarah Burke is the Data and Analytics Manager at Cypress North, she has been with the company for seven years, starting as a digital marketing manager. Prior to that, she worked for two years at LocalEdge.

We discussed some of the early SEO strategies used when she was doing SEO at her previous job. Her SEO job was pretty old, touchpoints, do specific tasks, and move on to the next site. She really didn’t see the whole picture of what was going on with the account and she wanted to see a larger picture. So when she came to Cypress North she was able to see more of the full view of the projects. Then Sarah moved into more of a data analytics role in the company.

We then reminisced about the old days of analytics, from printing out raw log files, then how Urchin (now Google Analytics) would process log files and now analytics does not look at log files but you add a snippet of code to track. Now we have Google Analytics 4 and its new way of tracking, which isn't good. But historically we have gone through big changes with analytics, so some of us are getting used to it.

We then spoke a bit more about the Google Analytics 4 change and how there is no way to migrate data over. We spoke also spoke about some alternatives to GA4. We spoke about the differences between Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics 3.

You can learn more about Sarah Burke on Twitter @DataBySarah or on LinkedIn.

Part two is coming soon.

Shockingly, Google finished rolling out the Google product reviews update on August 2nd and didn’t even tell us on social. We are seeing some volatility and fluctuations in Google Search may be due to the Google Product Reviews update starting late last Friday and the tools noticed it on Wednesday but that was after it was done rolling out. Google added new links to content guidelines, one of those guidelines was for best SEO practices for bloggers which were later removed. Google is still moving sites over to mobile-first indexing, over 5 and a half years later. Google Search Console temporarily suspended the validate fix feature during some classification changes. John Mueller from Google had a beautiful SEO rant, which some might not like. Google changed how it shows snippets for search results with quoted text. Google is testing “perspectives” in the search results. Google is testing site names and favicons for image results in web searches. Google is loading new people also ask in the footer. Google is also showing the view in 3D for some products again. Google Business Profiles is testing an expandable menu for editing your listing. Google added Asian-owned attributes for Google Business Profiles. Discovery Ads now work with Google Ads Editor and Api and more... Google has a new tag, called the Google Tag. Microsoft Advertising released a boat load of features including rolling out automotive ads, new ad formats, more bidding options, and more. Google’s secret algorithm may be exposed to Rumble due to a legal ruling. 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.

Sponsored by BruceClay who has been doing search marketing optimization since 1996 and also has an amazing SEO training platform.

Search Topics of Discussion:

This week, it was awkwardly quiet with the Google rankings and then Google dropped the bombshell, the July 2022 Google Product Review update touched down. Google also released new search quality raters guidelines, a refresh from the one updated 9-months ago. Google’s Things To Know feature went missing on desktop search. Google no longer counts the core web vitals scores for pages not indexed. Microsoft Bing said the new Bingbot makes up 5% of all crawls now. Google said age verification requirements may prevent a site from showing in Google Discover. Google Merchant Center now allows login required and restricted purchase to show in free listings. Google now shows three Local Service Ads on mobile, up from two. Google Local Service ads are seeing a lot of fake reviews. Google is testing list view top stories that overtake the web results. Google Search displays the return period in the search result snippets. Google Maps is testing infinite scroll in the map listing results. Google product carousel is displaying “appears on these lists.” Also, Google hotel listings show a section for “featured in.” Google tests explore more search refinements. We posted tons of new Microsoft Bing features. Google Ads is automatically switching some conversion actions to data-driven attribution. Google Maps may remove selfies, and blurry and poor-quality images. Google Ads and Bing Ads revenues were both up but both slowed. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSOR: Whitespark - Everything you need to increase and track local ranking.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Jaimie and Jon Clark came for a visit and we all spoke SEO and a lot more. Jaimie Clark is the VP of SEO at Centerfield, she was previously the Head of SEO at Wirecutter, a New York Times company. Jon Clark runs his own firm, Moving Traffic Media and was previously an SEO at some large companies. In part one, I pinned Jaimie versus Jon in an SEO challenge - guess who won... Then in part two, we spoke about Jaimie and Jon Clark's career paths, in part three we talk about Jaimie Clark's professional career and growth to the title of Vice President of SEO at a major corporation. Then in part four, we spoke with Jon about building an SEO agency.

In part five, I spoke to Jamie Clark about the Google Product Reviews update, since she worked at Wirecutter during the product reviews update. And she said this update was a long time coming and she was happy to see it and explained why that is the case. She said Google was good at weeding out the fakers. This Google update helped Wirecutter in a big way and it was perfect timing.

We also discussed maybe the internal fights about investing in such amazing content and reviews but Google ranking lower quality sites for so many years. But then one day, with this product reviews update, it ended up paying off in a big way. But fighting that fight before this update could not have been easy.

She is applying the same principles to her work at Centerfield and those principles are the only way to have long-term SEO success.

Jon explained why Google has to do it because users just want to be told what they want.

Then we spoke about doing SEO for startups and Jon spoke a lot about that. Jon said startups are moving so fast and growing so fast and he has a passion for it. He was amazed to see how SEO can help with investor funding. He explained a lot of the difference between working with startups versus large companies - you can just move faster with less red tape. SEO is sometimes simply more fun with startups. He mentioned a few red flags with working with startups. Startups should be hiring, if the startup is not hiring, that might be unusual.

And then we ended the interview about how it is for two SEO couples working at home in the same house. They can bounce SEO ideas off each other, which is great Jaimie said. Jon said that his clients benefit from Jaimie’s wisdom and Jaimie said the same thing, Wirecutter benefited from it as well. They spoke a lot about the benefits of working together and at home from a professional and work point of view.

Google had plenty of bugs, some really big ones, this week including not indexing new content for a day in Google Search. Note, there were rumblings of a Google algorithm update shortly after the indexing bug, but it might be related. Google Ads, Analytics, AdSense, and so on all had not just one outage, but two reporting outages in a 5-day period. Google may also be investigating a recipe search bug. Google’s people also ask feature is now back to normal levels in desktop search. Google is testing a knowledge panel card layout box that is interactive. Google Search Console now lets you verify your site using DNA CNAME. Google Business Profiles messaging now lets you add FAQs which will be used to automate answers to questions submitted by customers. Google is taking action on the recent one-san review blackmail scams. Google is testing a new label for reviews noting they are not verified. Google local pack has an hours filter that lets you filter by day of the week or specific hour. Google Ads announced that Google will start the process of automatically "upgrading" accounts to Performance Max for Smart Shopping campaigns. Google Ads is testing map pins with photos for locations. Google Ads has a new political policy around ad visibility and language. Google soon will be testing a new augmented reality prototype, like Google eyewear. Google’s timer and stopwatch in Google Search stopped working. 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:

Jaimie and Jon Clark came for a visit and we all spoke SEO and a lot more. Jaimie Clark is the VP of SEO at Centerfield, she was previously the Head of SEO at Wirecutter, a New York Times company. Jon Clark runs his own firm, Moving Traffic Media and was previously an SEO at some large companies. In part one, I pinned Jaimie versus Jon in an SEO challenge - guess who won... Then in part two we spoke about Jaimie and Jon Clark's career paths and in part three we talk about Jaimie Clark's professional career and growth to the title of Vice President of SEO at a major corporation.

So now that we heard about Jaimie Clark’s SEO career path within various companies, I asked Jon Clark about building an agency. We spoke about the differences between running your own business and working for one. Jon spoke about the benefits of COVID for running his business. But he then explained all the concerns around running a business from payroll, taxes, insurance and so much more. What helped Jon was getting mentors to work with during his process of building his own business. He spoke about a couple of things he did to help him build his business.

He then spoke about some methods he uses to compete as a smaller business and how they interview, hire and handle employee benefits. He said it is about building the company culture in the company even without having everyone in the office.