Search Engine Roundtable Podcast

I start off announcing the winner(s) of the Squid Game contest I had last week. Google finished the rollout for the November spam update after 8 days. That Google November spam update seems to be big, at least, it has some legs.  Some suggest that this update also target cloaked spam content with injected links. Google said do expect more algorithm updates, more core updates, more spam update and more of all the good updates. Google said it may begin testing the IndexNow protocol for sustainability efforts. Google has confirmed that the desktop page experience update will also look at intrusive interstitials. Google said there is no need for separate guidelines or requirements for interstitials that are for legal or consent reasons. Also John Mueller, Gary Illyes and Martin Split spoke about the future of SEO on a recent podcast. Google listed out all of the IP addresses Googlebot uses. Google sitelinks can now do scroll-to-text and highlight. Google said again one day machine learning developed content won’t be against its guidelines. Google Ads accounts can be suspended over Google webmaster guideline violations. Google said embedding videos on your pages can slow your site down but if you use other methods, Google may not notice there is a video there to index. Google said you should not create links to your site, well, kind of. Google Ads Editor version 1.8 is now available. Google’s keyword planner tool added year over year data. Bing Shopping added departments, stores, editors picks, deals, pricing trends and Amazon integration. Google local has updated its inventory design, ship to store and a new offline sales feed for Google Ads. Google has an easter egg for the no results found page, it shows a fishing game. Google posts a big EU antitrust deal over shopping but won an even bigger legal case in the UK over iOS tracking. And we all mourn the sudden and unexpected loss of John Carcutt. That was this past week in search at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Sponsored by Semrush!

In part one, Bryan Cush, the co-founder of Tidal Health Group, and I spoke about how to use health data for content and search marketing and here we dig into using medical databases, local search and E-A-T & YMYL.

How To Create Content Pages Based On Medical Databases:

Then they construct pages for consumers and to rank in search - for these terms. We discuss how he goes about creating these pages. Often they will create pages that has many of the variations on the same page and will only expand on that if there is enough supportive and unique content to warrant it. He said 90%+ of the work in building sites is done in a spreadsheet and not in the actual content, coming up with the taxonomy and the relationship database. Mapping how the client defines what they do, to how consumers are looking for it.

Local Search in Health:

A lot of their work also is done in local search because there are high intent searches lead to local search. So like “near me” queries, such as “urgent care near me” and so forth. So here, they build out local pages and use structured data here to help Google understand the business.

He said 11% of the appointments their clients generated were driven through Google My Business, and for every one provider appointment, there were seven brand appointments. 38% of the traffic to these health care facilities were driven through organic web search, medical profile sites like WebMD, ShareCare, etc were 9%.

E-A-T & YMYL For Healthcare SEO:

I asked Bryan, how in the world does he get a doctor to put his or her name on a piece of web content. He said they are able to get doctors to write, some are just good at it, some need to be trained, and sometimes they have people produce the content. The schema will convey if it is written by a doctor or reviewed by a doctor, in every case. 10-20% of the doctors they work with write their own content, which is why they hire a lot of content writers at Tidal. We then went off on a tangent about doctors in general.

But what Tidal does it really promote and more importantly, translate, what the doctor is doing in his practice, in medical journals, at conferences, for marketing pieces for consumers on the web site. These doctors would do all this great work and leave it all within the medical community; Tidal brings it to light.

We discussed the topic of how does Google know if a doctor legitimately wrote a piece or if it is a fake. He spoke about a Google patent on the topic. He thinks some of this is related to structured data - which took us off on another topic on giving up all your data to Google. I think how Google determines something to be legit is not based on structured data but rather about general consensus on the web as a whole. He shared his theory on how Google knows this, including using schema that might not be officially approved by Google.

More to come in part three next week.

It turned out to be a busy week because we have a confirmed Google search algorithm update - the November spam update that is rolling out. I posted my monthly Google webmaster report as well. Google has said the page experience update for desktop will rollout starting in February 2022 through the end of March 2022. Google said that Penguin does try to ignore spammy links but in some cases can target the whole site. Google Search Console overcounted mobile page experience data for four months. Google updated its help documents to say to gain maximum exposure for your videos, you should make sure to put them on dedicated landing pages. Google also gave us more details on job postings, saying put more information in your description field for structured data. Google says it uses many signals to detect guest posts, it is not just about anchor text. Google is killing off Google My Business and replacing it with Google Business Profile, this is like the 6th name for this product. Google Merchant Center has new ways to calculate shipping speeds. Google Merchant Center added new deal features and ways to report on deal badges. Google Search Console is sending out notices that Chrome is automating changing passwords with the help of Google Assistant. Google Ads launched performance max campaigns to all plus there is more news there. Google Ads has a glitch with location based campaigns, it might be two glitches. The Google policy center has been updated for AdSense, AdMob and Ad Manager. Google is testing tags and labels in the search result snippets again. Google has a new search box for “behind the Doodle” which is kind of ironic. Google is hiring a spam fighter - did you ever want to penalize sites in Google Search? That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

CONTEST: Also for fun, I am giving away this 456 Squid Game sweatshirt and squid game invitation cards. To win, you need to subscribe to my YouTube channel, watch the video I post on Friday November 5, 2021 and figure out how many Squid Game invitation cards I am holding in the video. More details in the video.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Sponsored video by www.LOUD.us

Bryan Cush, the co-founder of Tidal Health Group, a healthcare marketing company, stopped by my office to chat SEO and healthcare marketing. Bryan is pretty technical and is able to bridge that with his deep understand of medical and health, with marketing and site development - I find it to be a beautiful thing. They work primarily on patient acquisition and authority building for their clients. We dug a bit into this and how he works with his clients.

Challenges Using Health Data For Content:

We briefly spoke about the delicate aspects of using your internal health data and client health data for content marketing purposes. Bryan explained he shares an office with an attorney and has tons of insurance because of the sensitivity of this data. He shared some stories of how he used some of his clients data to map keyword data around technical terms versus what the consumers type in search for that technical term. So there is a key need to map your data for marketing purposes. This may be more important in health than in other industries.

Did you know Google used MUM for a similar purpose, to identify and map 800 or so different variations of the COVID vaccine names. Bryan said they don’t necessarily use AI or machine learning for this but rather a simple structured taxonomy where you do data mapping over time. He said you can use this method over and over again, no matter who the client is.

You can learn more about Bryan Cush at Tidal Health Group.

This week, we almost made it without reporting on a Google search ranking update but we did have one, maybe on October 26th.  There is confusion around Google’s continuous scroll and the impact it has on Search Console reporting. Google said when it comes to web search, images on your pages really don’t matter.  Google Search Console API now supports Discover and News data and also Regex controls. Google said it does not hard code categories of sites into the YMYL algorithm.  Google said trust is not just a matter of the links pointing to your site. Google said when it comes to author bylines, don’t use “admin” or “author.” Google does not classify sites based on the technology platform of infrastructure it uses. Google’s John Mueller dropped some knowledge on reducing duplication by a factor of 10 times.  Google said it might be a good idea to have an “often updated” XML sitemap for some URLS.  Google updated its Merchant Center unique product identifier enforcement to make it less severe. SEOs are split on if they do SEO that might be considered black hat SEO.   Links were voted the most challenging area of SEO.  Google now lets you remove images of minors with a new tool and policy.  Google Ads has new code to help you with the three strikes and you’re out policy, called Google Bowling.  Microsoft Advertising partnered with Spotify and Google Ads partnered with BigCommerce. Google Ads app campaigns no longer need deep links.  Brave Search said they use click data for search ranking purposes. Google and Microsoft reported earnings and they both are up over 40%.  Attorneys General Paxton’s claims against Google were unredacted and the SEO community went nuts with what they saw.  Facebook announced its new company name - Meta - and Google Search picked up on those changes quickly. That was this past week in search at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Search Topics of Discussion:

In part two with Miriam Schwab is the co-founder and CEO of Strattic, a static hosting and publishing platform for WordPress, I asked her about what is less stressful. Is agency work less stressful or is the startup world less stressful. She said it depends; but she always found agency life stressful because clients would come and go and there was less recurring revenue opportunities. With the startup world, the early days was super stressful with raising money and building the company but now it is less stressful because there is more stability now.  

We spoke a bit about the new skills she learned in this startup world, from scaling the company, to managing larger teams and investments and she loves it. The ultimate goal she has with Strattic is for the company to be known as the no-brainer for sites using WordPress.  

Miriam opened up about her next challenges around reaching a larger market through different mechanisms. One of those mechanisms is a content marketing strategy, of course.  

We ended our conversation about some SEO tips she might have around what data she has. Strattic has some metrics but does not have access to Google Analytics, but overall, they often see an uptick in traffic after a site moves to Strattic. They have a number of over here or on Twitter @miriamschwab.

First, sorry for the static in the beginning, it stops after 30 seconds. This week, we had another Google search ranking algorithm update to report on, but at least Mordy Oberstein from Semrush proved I am not crazy about reporting on these updates. Google has updated its search quality raters guidelines document, it was last updated about a year ago. Microsoft Bing and Yandex announced IndexNow, an initiative for all search engines to enable instant indexing, but most search engines are not partaking. Google looks to have begun rolling out the things to consider, refine this search and broaden this search features. Google review snippets has a new author name length guideline of 100 characters. Google said different content intents on a site is okay but avoid it on the page level. Google spoke about centerpiece annotations, an internal word they use at Google. Google said authors are not a direct ranking factor. Bing said it checks your XML sitemap file daily. Google asks if you had more exportable data for the Search Console performance reports, how would you use it. Google My Business replaced the “led” attributes with “owned.” Google local is testing purple hears for women owned businesses. Google My Business has a new “crowd” section of attributes. Microsoft Advertising launched health insurance ads. Google has a new policy to prohibit false claims that undermine the democratic process. Google Analytics had a bug on October 18th where an hour of data was lost, and is unrecoverable. A Google survey asks if you’d pay a subscription fee for search results without ads. And Frederic Dubut announced he left Microsoft Bing after 13 years at the company. That was this past week in search at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Miriam Schwab is the co-founder and CEO of Strattic, a static hosting and publishing platform for WordPress.  I’ve known Miriam for many many years, maybe as far back as 2004 or 2005.  She owned an agency for 13+ years named illuminea where she did many things, including SEO and digital marketing.  She spoke at SMX Israel and other events over the years, we reminisced about the first SMX Israel named SphinnCon Israel.  After many years she went from the agency world to the startup world.

(3:31) Agency World To Start Up World:

Miriam explained that her agency, illuminea, were WordPress experts.  So not only did they do technical WordPress development, they also worked on marketing those sites and loved SEO.  The concept for Strattic came from running her agency, the frustrations she had with WordPress.  Like those Wix commercials, which did not really go too well with most people. 

During her research on solving these WordPress issues, she stumbled upon static site generators and that is where her inspiration for Strattic came from.  She loved WordPress and figured out a solution to use WordPress but produces a static version of the site. Miriam explained the headless concept versus her solution. 

(9:00) Strattic Helps With SEO:

Strattic helps with SEO with site speed, easier to crawl, less server issues, overall site performance, improved conversion rates and so on.  Strattic is working on solutions for improving core web vital issues as well. They have lots of plans for the future of the software. 

Part two coming soon…

You can learn more about Miriam Schwab over here or on Twitter @miriamschwab.

This week, we covered yet another Google search ranking algorithm update this past weekend. Some of the tracking tools went nuts this week, but I think it might be related to the UI changes Google rolled out, I am not sure. Google released new help docs on titles and snippets, with a new term named title link. Google responded to the crawled, not indexed errors saying it is a reporting delay. Google is rolling out on the mobile search results what they are calling continuous scrolling. Google is testing 3D rotating images in the search snippets. Google has a new design on desktop for knowledge panels and is also rolling out knowledge panels for podcasts. Google performance report has been updated for news/good page experience data. Google rich results report may show more errors for job postings. Google said it does not rank sites that use a popular WordPress theme worse in search. Google said basic SEO does not mean it is easier SEO. And Google said SEO is all about not requiring search engines to read your mind. Bing is testing a light bulb to expand search result snippet details. Google is testing customized query based search suggest footers. Google is displaying two local screened ads and scrollable local reviews. Microsoft Advertising updated its smart pages website builder. Peter Norvig, a 20 year Google vet, who leads R&D at Google and also was the director of search quality for some point, is stepping back from Google. 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.

Search Topics of Discussion:

This week, I started off with the big monthly Google webmaster report - it is a good way to catch up or remind yourself of what changed. Google Search had this really weird Google Search update this past weekend, maybe. And then October 6th and 7th we saw yet another Google ranking update. Facebook had a 6 hour outage and I discussed how Google Search dealt with it. Google’s John Mueller dropped this cryptic tweet maybe hinting at a new set of penalties around links schemes. Google Search Console released more detailed and actionable errors for the rich results status report. Google announced a slew of new search features around sustainability. Google is testing a 5 local pack and also is testing a new offer label in the local pack. Google Chrome is testing side by side search and a feature named Journeys. AMP links stopped working in Google Search on iOS 15, for now. Google is testing full width featured snippets. Google is testing query refinements in the autocomplete search suggestions. Google is testing a vertical site link design. Google Ads keyword planner tool now has trending data. Google will ban advertisers, publishers and YouTube creators from its ad network if they promote climate change denial information. Google Search officially dropped support for Internet Explorer 11. Google said that the number one search on Microsoft Bing, by far, is Google. 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.

Search Topics of Discussion: