niche surfer - Wave Issue 146

SEO

Advanced Insights into Googlebot Crawling

SEO pro Barry Adams discusses how to optimize Googlebot's crawling efficiency on your site, particularly for news publishers, Barry has some fascinating insights, including how to stop LLMs from crawling your site if you wanted. Other interesting things:

• Google crawls URLs seen as more important more frequently - those with numerous backlinks and frequently updated content.

• Ensure articles are SEO-optimized upon first publication as Google may not re-crawl to register changes immediately.

• The robots.txt file can control not just crawling but ranking in specific Google verticals.

• Google's crawl rate temporarily increases when significant site changes are detected.

• Avoid internal links with URL parameters to save on crawl effort. Also, avoid deleting older articles as they showcase your topical authority.

SEO Ripples

• Google's John Mueller tossed out a nugget of wisdom on Twitter, declaring "programmatic SEO is often a fancy banner for spam."

• Google has recently updated its sites name system that was introduced in May. The system now supports subdomains on all devices in English, French, German, and Japanese. Google's also tweaking how it selects site names to better represent sites in search results.

• Karolina Knapik at SALT agency dives deep into the world of XML sitemaps and shares some best practices to optimize them for Google.

• Google's decided to exclude gameplay imagery from its 'Shocking Content' policy starting August 30th. There will still be some exceptions. No content with gruesome acts, violence, or systemic discrimination.

• Google updated their list of indexable file types with some image types.

CONTENT

Best Readability Score To Rank in Google?

A study by Originality.AI on readability scores and Google rankings. Their research found that:

• Top-ranking pages on Google demonstrate similar readability levels.

• Readability systems like FORCAST, Gunning-Fog, Flesch Reading Ease, and Dale-Chall offer more accurate predictions of top-ranked content, while systems like SMOG, Coleman-Liau, Flesch-Kincaid Grade, and Automated Readability should be avoided.

• There is no significant correlation between readability and Google rank, but top-ranked pages have tightly clustered readability scores.

• Most online content is tailored to a 12th-grade reading level.

My Take: One interesting to me is the 12th-grade reading level conclusion. I would still say that you consider your target reader and write for them. It would be helpful to know what the keywords and industries they tested content from. That would provide better insights.

Outsourcing Video And Design: A Guide For Agencies And SEOs

FATJOE's latest guide covers why and how agencies should outsource video and design services. It's not just about meeting increasing client demand - outsourcing these services can add value to your agency's offerings and deliver improved results.

Even though this is geared to SEOs and Agencies, understanding what a good outsourcing strategy should include is important: finding reliable vendors, setting clear deliverables, and maintaining brand consistency.

The creative brief outlined in the guide is something you will want to do yourself whenever making videos. Plus there’s a good Dollar Shave Club video ad that was the first one they made in 2012.

Content Ripples

• Nick Eubanks at Traffic Think Tank covers the FRENCH TOAST acronym to share his 11 steps to persuasive content for an engaging and thorough experience for visitors.

AI

Publishers want billions, not millions, from AI

Publishers, led by Barry Diller, are aiming for a whopping payout from AI companies that trained models on their data. The idea is that if AI relies on publishers' input, they should have a larger share of the pie.

The key issue is the amount of money publishers should receive if AI models rely on their content. Some predict it could reach into the billions! 😮 

Tech companies counter that they've yet to work out a solid business model for AI, and there aren't any profits to share just yet. Some publishers are not waiting and have already started striking deals with AI companies, like the Associated Press and OpenAI (no financial details have been announced).

Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI are launching the Frontier Model Forum

Tech giants Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI have teamed up to launch the Frontier Model Forum, a group focused on the responsible and safe development of advanced AI models.

Core objectives include AI safety research, identifying best practices, knowledge-sharing about trust and safety risks, and developing applications for global challenges like climate change and early cancer detection.

The Forum defines frontier models as large-scale machine-learning models that outdo the most advanced existing models in capability and task variety.

Researchers Chart Alarming Decline in ChatGPT Response Quality

Have you been seeing lower quality responses from ChatGPT-4? Recent research suggests it might not be living up to its hype. A joint team from Stanford and UC Berkeley has discovered an alarming drop in response quality, with the prime number identification accuracy plummeting from 97.6% to a mere 2.4% in just three months.

AI Ripples

• OpenAI quietly pulled the plug on its AI Classifier. This tool was designed to sniff out content generated by AI tools like ChatGPT. The only announcement was a small note on its blog page that originally announced the AI Classifier to detect AI-written text.

• The rumor mill is stirring that Apple is developing their own AI chatbot, ‘Apple GPT’. Apple is using a proprietary AI framework called 'Ajax' to create this chatbot that they’re already using internally.

• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating OpenAI, the brains behind ChatGPT. They're curious whether OpenAI has violated consumer protection laws, focusing particularly on a recent bug that leaked some user data and any complaints about false or harmful statements made by the AI.

LINK BUILDING

How Chris Panteli Mastered HARO With These Great Tips

In the latest Niche Pursuits podcast, Chris Panteli from Linkifi shares his masterclass on how to make the most out of the Help a Reporter Out (HARO) platform for link building. Here are some key things he mentioned:

• Responding to HARO queries: Be timely and make sure you're an expert in the query topic.

• Vetting reporters: Focus on relevant queries from reputable domains to maximize your success.

• Follow-ups: Engage with journalists to ensure your link is included in the final piece.

• Timing: Respond quickly but efficiently to stand out.

• Use of AI: Automate research and pitch generation for better results.

My Take: I paid for a 10-link package with Chris and Linkifi and was pleased with the results. I do wish they didn’t count all the syndicated links, but I do understand why they do it too. In the end, I still ended up with around 17 links in total and all the DRs were relevant and DR 72-95. I wrote about the results in this past issue.

MARKETING

Marketing 101: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners

Erin Rodrigue shares a guide on marketing for novices and seasoned pros. She discusses the variety of channels, tactics, and formats that can work for any business, regardless of budget.

My Take: This is a good example of a pillar post that you can use for your topic clusters / silos. It’s not super long and contains many “Further Reading” links.

WooCommerce Merchants Can Now Sell Directly On TikTok

WooCommerce stores can now sell directly on TikTok. The two have partnered to create a program allowing US-based merchants to market to TikTok users via TikTok Shops. The feature is currently in beta, but it promises a massive audience of over 150 million, 61% of which engage in ecommerce.

Some very interesting insights here on TikTok in general too:

• 1 in 4 TikTok users use the platform for product research or purchases.

• The opportunity is seen as a boon for diverse brands, especially in fashion, beauty, wellness, tech, and culinary trends.

• 95% of TikTok users agree that finance-related topics are very important to them.

• 92% of TikTok users said they take action after watching a TikTok.

• 81% of TikTok users who made a Back to School purchase said the platform played a role in purchases/gifts bought.

• 44% of Gen X TikTok users say the platform helps them discover new things.

EDUCATION

11 Top SEOs Share Hot Tips

Alex Cooper from WP Eagle went to the Search Birmingham SEO event hosted by Charles Floate and interviewed 11 of the top SEOs there for tips. Some of the tips include:

• Chris Panteli emphasizes tracking unlinked mentions from HARO, as 40% of these can be converted into backlinks.

• Charles Floate suggests reverse link building, obtaining links from non-direct competitors already ranking for your keywords.

• Nick Jordan debunks traditional SEO notions, suggesting Google prioritizes user experience metrics over backlinks.

• Jamie I.F. shares a strategy of using guest posts to enhance the E-E-A-T of authors by posting about winning fictional awards, as Google doesn't verify these.

• Kyle Roof recommends a "niche edit" approach, where instead of buying external backlinks, you identify powerful pages on your own site and create internal links to important pages.

• Jason Mills suggests including a quick verdict at the top of affiliate posts to improve conversions, highlighting one to three top products or the best for particular use cases.

CASE STUDY

Disallow Humans (Bad Cloaking)

Interesting experiment by Oliver Mason, who played around with cloaking their website content from human users for a month. Cloaking isn’t recommended since it’s goal is to manipulate search rankings and mislead users. Here are some key takeaways from it:

• While traffic to their site declined gradually over the test period, it didn't drop sharply, suggesting that their method didn't trip any automatic cloaking detection system Google might have.

• The experiment revealed the potential significance of user interaction signals in Google's algorithm. Despite his initial belief, the gradual traffic decline suggested that user satisfaction metrics could indeed be impacting their rankings.

• Interestingly, the site's traffic saw an unexpected surge, likely due to a Core Update, before it plummeted again, reinforcing the importance of user interaction signals.

• He also advises against ignoring the 'bot experience' while designing your site, contrary to the common phrase "Build for users, not for bots."

BUSINESS IDEAS

Email Signature Essentials: Key Statistics to Know for 2023

Hubspot has a study on email signatures that’s interesting and not something that I’d normally go through because I don’t personally much though into it. But it appears others do: Around 44.4% of users update their signatures 2-4 times a year, while about a third only do it every few years.

Here’s what I’ve been using:

Yep, that’s it. Looks like it’s time to update it. Hubspot has another article with examples to jumpstart ideas.

NEWS

Twitter changes its official handle to @x

Twitter has made a bold move and rebranded its official handle to @x. Twitter's other official handles have also undergone changes, dropping 'Twitter' from their names and replacing it with 'X'.

There could be legal troubles ahead, as Twitter's new 'X' branding potentially infringes on trademarks owned by Microsoft and Meta. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out and if there will be any trademark lawsuits!

My Take: This is a big branding exercise that’s going to be reviewed in all the major universities and business/marketing courses, not to mention all the marketing journals, magazines, newsletters, etc. The sudden change without consideration for things like infringements. And it just feels weird to say “Check out his X” or “I’m going to X about it.”