seo press review 13

SEO Press Review #13

This week’s press review focuses on a range of news articles and rumors concerning Google, Facebook, and the general state of SEO now. It comes from all over the SEO world, so you should, ideally, find something you like.

1. Facebook Reveals Cause of July 3rd Outage, Also Affecting Instagram

There was a massive outrage on the 3rd of July, just a day before Independence Day caused by bugs in some recent changes to the underlying framework at Facebook – the bugs caused a segment of users to be completely unable to upload any photos or videos on Instagram and Facebook. Instagram being primarily a platform just to photos and videos, it was almost completely useless, and the user base wasn’t happy about it, especially right before such an important holiday. Thankfully, Facebook was able to fix the bug after some time, and now, you can use the platforms normally. This news is important for two reasons – firstly, it further confirmation of the fact that social media has penetrated every aspect of our daily lives. Secondly, the risks involved in tech companies getting bigger and acquiring more platforms. Facebook and Instagram both stopped working because they are managed by Facebook Inc with a shared codebase.

Read more: Facebook Reveals Cause of July 3rd Outage, Also Affecting Instagram [searchenginejournal.com]

2. Google To Drop Any Support For crawl-delay, nofollow, and noindex in robots.txt

Robots.txt is where websites can communicate with internet crawlers (including Google’s search engine crawler and indexer), and they can put a few commands there to help bots understand and index the website properly. Recently, Google decided to drop support for a few of those commands – effective from September – analysis by top Google employees shows most webmasters don’t know how to use those commands, and they hurt their websites more than they help them, and Google has been saying it’ll drop support for them for years now, and the decision was finalized last week. The list includes: the noindex and disallow directives, 404 and the 410 HTTP status code, indexing password protected pages. If you’re using any of these features, you might want to look for a replacement.

 Read more: Google To Drop Any Support For crawl-delay, nofollow, and noindex in robots.txt [seroundtable.com]

3. Seven Time-Tested Tactics to Generate More Google Reviews

97% percent of online shoppers use internet reviews to decide whether they should do business with a company or not, and this clearly shows that if you want to have a thriving business with a good profit margin, you need to have good reviews. This is doubly true for the reviews people leave for your business on Google Maps because Google gives more weights to them when they are ranking your page in the SERP. So, if a business doesn’t have good reviews on Google Maps, it’ll rarely show up in searches, and when it does, potential clients won’t trust it. That’s why you need a comprehensive approach to ensure your business’s page gets regular good reviews from the users, and this article proposes one such approach based on data and past success stories.

Read more: Seven Time-Tested Tactics to Generate More Google Reviews [searchenginewatch.com]

4. 10 Rich SERP Elements You Can Leverage to Make Your Brand SERP Sexy

Google, lately, has been introducing one feature after another aiming to make the SERP (search engine results page) more varied and relevant, and in that effort, they’ve started allowing SEMs and webmasters more leeway and display options for their articles and products. On the internet, the most important thing for your business is standing out, and looking different on the SERP will drive more clicks to your website. Since many of these features are new, they aren’t widely used, and right now is a good window of opportunity for you to give a push to the websites you manage with these SERP elements. This article talks about the 10 most useful ones, their purposes, and how you can effectively use them.

Read more: 10 Rich SERP Elements You Can Leverage to Make Your Brand SERP Sexy [semrush.com]

5. 15 Questions About Ranking Factors – Yoast Webinar Recap

Ranking factors are the most contest area of SEO – everyone is arguing about what are the factors, how important each is, and how you can best comply with its requirements. If you have intimate knowledge with the factors, you can effectively use them to game Google’s algorithm and get the websites you manage to the top of the SERP much easier. The problem, however, is that no one knows for sure what those factors are, and Google keeps a tight lid on the details – only dropping small hints once in a while. That’s why Yoast (one of the most popular organizations in the SEO world) organized a webinar by industry leaders discussing ranking factors in great detail. This article talks about 15 important questions that were answered during the webinar. It is sure to shed light on the inner workings of the Google Algorithm to a degree.

Read more: 15 Questions About Ranking Factors – Yoast Webinar Recap

6. How to Use Guest Blogging for Natural Link Building

Guest blogging is an excellent way to build links and drive more traffic from relevant sites to your project or business, and this is due to a few reasons:

  • Most blogmasters realize the importance of constantly posting content, so they love it when people approach them with a completely free guest post they don’t need to work on. It is a mutually beneficial transaction between blogmasters and you, and if you craft your outreaching emails carefully, you’ll see easy and great success.
  • While the amount of traffic that comes to your website is important, its quality is also important. If you’re running a business related to gardening, you won’t see much increases in sales if a blog on videogames linked to you for one reason or another. However, a gardening blog linking to you means visitors that are already interested in gardening.

These two qualities make guest blogging an excellent strategy for SEMs, and this article helps you start with it.

Read more: How to Use Guest Blogging for Natural Link Building [searchenginejournal.com]

7. Off‐Page SEO: What It Is and Why It’s Important

If you’ve spent a great amount of time optimizing your website’s code and content, and you’ve still not seen much improvement in your ranking, it is likely that your ranking is affected by things outside your website, which is referred to Off-Page SEO. It is important to learn to differentiate between On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO, because the first category is completely under your control while the latter isn’t. If your website’s content is badly written or there is a bug that slows down the loading time, you can simply change the content and fix the code with ease – the same isn’t true with off-page SEO. This is why it is much harder, takes longer, and needs a more comprehensive strategy to ensure you’re successful. This article is a good primer on the subject that should teach all the basic crucial info you need to know about the subject.

Read more: Off‐Page SEO: What It Is and Why It’s Important [ahrefs.com]

8. How to Make a Technical SEO Recommendation – Whiteboard Friday

Although many people don’t think of the SEO field as overtly technical, and this is mostly due to the marketing elements of the field, there are still many technical aspects that are much closer to software engineering. The problem is that SEMs work with clients directly most of the time, and they need to have the skills to clearly and concisely communicate with clients and other team members that don’t have technical qualifications. But it is always difficult to communicate effectively with laymen, especially when SEO is full of buzzwords and obscure terms that no one has heard of. That is most SEMs must practice and read up on effective communication techniques that will save time and reduce miscommunication. This article presents some great methods that can improve your communication skills in key areas.

Read more: How to Make a Technical SEO Recommendation – Whiteboard Friday [moz.com]

9. Clients Who Pay More for SEO Services Report Higher Satisfaction Rates

A new study finds shows small businesses who monthly spend above industry-average rates on SEO report more satisfaction with the results they got. According to the study, on average, small businesses only spend $500 dollars a month on SEO, and this study is possibly signaling the fact that most business owners don’t know the ROI (return on investment) if they spent money on a full-scale SEO strategy. Especially considering that more than half of the companies that spend more $500 are extremely satisfied with the results. This study shows that there is a large unexploited and uninformed market of small businesses that are both easy to expand to and largely leads to success for both parties. SEO agencies should consider how to market to them better.

Read more: Clients Who Pay More for SEO Services Report Higher Satisfaction Rates [searchenginejournal.com]

10. Google My Business Tests New Design For Console

Google My Business is a service that was released in 2014 that is centered around providing a platform for business owners to manage their products, customers, and content during the multiple Google platforms. Some people have reported seeing a new UI when they log in into the platform – this could signal a new update coming for Google My Business, so you should keep an eye on it.

Read more: Google My Business Tests New Design For Console [seroundtable.com]

11. Google Probably Won’t Be Turning Off Any Other Search Console Features

Google made a lot of changes to its Search console from introducing new features, redesigning parts of the program, and removing legacy features that aren’t useful anymore. As with all changes, the community needs some time to adapt to it, and the sweeping changes were causing anxieties among parts of the SEO community fearing the tool will not be as useful anymore. That’s why Google came out and definitely stated that they won’t be removing any more features from the Search Console.

Read more: Google Probably Won’t Be Turning Off Any Other Search Console Features [seroundtable.com]

12. How To Talk to Your Clients in a Language They Understand

This is another article on how to communicate with your clients. There are common themes, functions, and programs that almost all SEMs use and interact with on a daily basis, and sometimes, the need arises to explain them to your clients. That’s completely normal, but you should be ready with a good explanation and not just fumble your words. Explaining technical subjects to laypeople is difficult, and if you don’t do a good job of it, the client will think you’re bad and don’t know what you’re talking about. This article attempts to address that by helping you understand how you can explain the more technical aspects of an SEM’s work easily with relatable examples.

Read more: How To Talk to Your Clients in a Language They Understand [moz.com]

Conclusion

This was about it for this week’s press review. It seems Google was slowing down and not making changes and releasing new products after the few previous weeks of nonstop releases. Hope you enjoyed reading it.

Neadoo Digital

Neadoo Digital

Neadoo Digital is a dynamic and innovative marketing agency that primarily specializes in website SEO and conducting effective Google Ads campaigns. We passionately craft effective SEO strategies tailored to the unique needs of our clients. Our expertise and commitment have been recognized by many clients worldwide, positioning us as a leading choice in digital marketing solutions.