A New Google Guideline Testing Tool, Conversational Shopping and SEO Questions from Listeners as John Carcutt and Ross Dunn feature some of the early news from SMX West such as conversational shopping, AMP, and user generated Google SPAM reports.

Conversational search has become a huge part of how users are searching Google, particularly with the way voice search queries tend to be formatted when compared to desktop or type-in queries.

During yesterdays keynote as SMX West, Behshad Behzadi, Director of Search from Google in Zurich revealed that Google is currently working on conversational shopping, an extension of regular voice search but specifically for shopping.

They wrap up the last third of the show with more answers from great questions provided by SEO 101 Podcast listeners. Questions includeadvice about reposting someone else's content on my site,working on off-page seo optimization

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Listeners know we have had the Mueller Files for a while now, well… it’s time for the Illyes Files to make its presence known. This is because Gary Illyes of Google was the bearer of a ton of news at this year’s PubCon. That news includes Google Search Switching to Mobile First Index from Desktop Index, Machine Learning Will Never Take Over the Whole Search Algorithm and more.

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Ross and John talk about Google Crawl budgets and what you need to know. Click to close mobile ads will now be penalized by Google. Plus, they explain what is Website Authority, and lay out the steps you should take to build Website Authority?

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Ross and John talk about Google Crawl budgets and what you need to know. Click to close mobile ads will now be penalized by Google. Plus, they explain what is Website Authority, and lay out the steps you should take to build Website Authority?

Yahoo out, Altaba in, and the mobile interstitial penalty is rolling out. The bulk of the show, however, is focused on some key steps to creating a site that is ready for SEO.

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Starting in the New Year, we learn about how John's work setup is evolving into a new team increasing SEO team by close to 500%. Plus Google Blog highlights The Year in Search 2016, and Google teams with Gupshup to develop voice-activated Actions for Google Home. 

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BuzzSumo study on content and SEO reveals that 50% of content gets less than 8 shares (across all social),75% of content generates ZERO links. John and Ross discuss how few links make a large difference in some very high volume terms. Quality links are still the key, widespread link building techniques can rarely create the quality links needed to see these types of results. Listen as they break down the Stone Temple Study and the Google AMP Case Study.

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Google makes more changes to local schema requirements, local box results, asks for topics for the Google Webmaster Hangouts, we answer a question from another listener, and more.

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Google’s mobile-first focus and announcements to that effect led many to believe the indexes would be split but, the latest news seems to discount that. John and Ross discuss the potential accuracy of the news, along with similar discussions around hidden content. They also discuss the latest on Google’s Possum Update, the “200” ranking factors, and an SEO Firm that was slapped hard by Google.

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Hacking and phishing took an abnormally significant portion of this show. In addition, John & Ross discussed SEO budgets, determining SEO value, and a couple of great questions from the SEO 101 community.

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