The Tides Are Changing - digital surfer wave 198

Google Core Update; Search Traffic Without Ranking; Leveraging Search Intent; YouTube Videos Training AI; GPT-4o mini Released; and Much More!

Author

Yoyao
July 20, 2024 • Est. Learning Time: 17 minutes

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FIRST …

I’m making a change to these weekly intros. They’re going to be short, quick intros to put the focus on the amazing resources from others each week.

I’m going to create separate emails that allow me to go deeper and offer more insights with SEO, AI, and marketing tips and tricks that I’ve been using. The intro space here is limited.

My priority now is 2.0 of the topical maps course. Until I can get into a regular rhythm with this adjustment, I’m thinking it’ll be 1-3 emails each month that I’ll send out mid-week.

These will be more in-depth and actionable. I’ll set up separate lists, so you only get what you want. I’ll send the first one out to everyone and if you don’t want them in the future, them just click the unsubscribe button for it and you’ll be off that list, but still get these weekly curated emails.

Until then, check out some of the articles and videos below! 🏄️

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SEO

According to Danny Sullivan, a new Google core update is expected soon, but the exact timing remains uncertain. He says he does hope that the update will help those “creators with their heats in the right places, and who are doing the real content effort behind that” and that they’ll be rewarded.

My Take: These volatility spikes happen ALL the time. Sometimes these are minor algo changes. Other times, these are the ‘tests’ before a larger algo update is pushed live. You’ll often see delays in Google Search Console too.

Saying a Google update is coming is also like saying “2025 is coming.” Unless you’re part of the Google Search team, no one really knows when it’ll happen, just that it will happen.

John and Gary from Google's Search team answered various SEO questions in this month’s office hours video (it’s just audio). Read the transcript here. Some of the interesting questions and shortened answers in italics:

  • When a user searches Google in Korean, does a com.kr or .com domain do better? com.kr will do better.

  • I manage a lot of sites on Google Search Console, can I have unlimited index requests? No 🤣 

  • I have launched a new site recently and Google still references some links from the previous site. I'd like to remove them from search results. How can I do this? “Google Search is a reflection of what people seem to want, so sometimes it can't let go of old names as easily.” Go cry me a river 😭 

  • Is it possible to get an API link to status.search.google.com/summary? It’s your lucky day! There’s a RSS file and a JSON 🎉  

  • Is there an HTML markup or tag to tell Google to ignore text parts? No.

  • Can recipe schema for structured data be used for non-edible recipes such as deodorant or washing machine powder? No. 🤦 

  • Can the Google team help transfer SEO rankings from one previous domain to the new domain? YES! But first send $100k to Digital Surfer before sending us your request 🌊 

  • How can I tell if someone/agency has been actively optimizing my site's SEO? Look through data and couple of our guides. (The more interesting thing to me here is that John said Google worked with an SEO agency for some of their Search Central content 🫢 )

  • I updated my logo for the SEO of my website on Thursday, but there hasn't been any changes yet on Google, why? “New logos are cool…” It takes time.

  • Does blocking crawl or indexing on a URL cancel the linking power from external and internal links? Basically, yes.

My Take: I’m having a bit more fun here because these “office hours” have become more and more useless. There are maybe 1 or 2 things that are interesting/useful, but for the most part, you would’ve wasted about 17 minutes of your life if you listened at 1x speed.

Tim Soulo shares an insightful tactic to boost your search traffic without the need to outrank your competition - “second-hand search traffic” (SHST). This method focuses on leveraging the traffic of other sites that already rank for your target keywords. Tim explains how to get your business featured on these high-ranking pages and shares practical steps to implement this strategy effectively.

The STAT team research report covers the intricacies of how understanding and leveraging search intent can significantly boost your SEO efforts, guiding users smoothly from discovery to purchase. By analyzing different stages of a searcher's journey and examining a wealth of SERP data, the team reveals how intent shapes search results and what it means for your strategy.

source: getstat.com

Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media Studios shares a comprehensive 14-step guide to help you manage a rebranding process with your domain while minimizing SEO impact. This article covers everything from vetting your new domain to monitoring search traffic post-launch, ensuring your traffic and rankings are preserved.

My Take: His first step is to vet the new domain and I definitely agree. You don’t want to have a domain with a bad history. One major tip that I tell people is to add the domain to GSC first, before transferring pages. Usually in a couple days, the “Links” section will populate with some of the link history that’s still relevant. You won’t see every single link, but you’ll see many that other tools don’t give you. I’ve found spammy links that the usual tools didn’t have. Of course, you need to have the domain to do this, so you can’t do this vetting before purchasing, unless the seller adds you to the GSC.

SEO Ripples

  • Mia Sato shares the story behind AdVon Commerce, a company responsible for flooding prestigious platforms like Sports Illustrated and USA Today with low-quality, AI-generated content. At the center of this web is cofounder Ben Faw, whose questionable practices have spanned years, including manipulating backlinks to pump up his ventures.

  • Matt Diggity discusses the advantages and strategies of e-commerce SEO, claiming that it's easier and more profitable than other SEO forms. He explains how his agency has significantly increased clients' traffic, especially for e-commerce, due to lower competition.

AI

Annie Gilbertson and Alex Reisner discover that AI giants like Apple, Nvidia, and Anthropic have been using YouTube videos without permission to train their AI models. The investigation reveals the extensive scope of the dataset, known as YouTube Subtitles, and highlights the frustration and demands for compensation from affected creators.

The training data contained 173,536 YouTube videos, more than 12,000 of which have been deleted from the platform but were still ingested by AI models. There’s also a tool in the article to search for creators in the YouTube AI training dataset.

OpenAI released a new model this week - GPT-4o mini. It’s replacing GPT-3.5 Turbo and is 60% cheaper too. 15 cents per 1m input tokens and 60 centers per 1m output tokens. It outperforms many other small models and doesn’t look that far off the full GPT-4o.

My Take: Definitely replace your gpt-3.5-turbo with gpt-4o-mini, but do not replace gpt-4o with the mini just yet. Test for yourself, but the mini isn’t good enough to replace gpt-4o for me.

source: openai.com

AI Ripples

MARKETING

Michelle Martin discusses some of the lesser-known benefits of social listening in social media marketing. From driving innovation to refining localized marketing strategies, she highlights how you can unlock hidden opportunities through social listening tools.

Kirsti Lang provides a beginner’s guide for marketers and creators on how to leverage Reddit for brand growth. She breaks down Reddit’s structure and offers practical steps for getting started, finding the right subreddits, and engaging effectively without coming across as overly promotional.

My Take: I haven’t had time to focus too much on Reddit myself, but will try to get on occasionally. It’s a different animal and you do need to put in some time because of the moderation. You can’t just go on, create a post/comment and add your link. I’ve also tried a service and 5 out of their 7 posts/comments were quickly removed.

CONTENT

Michael Stelzner and Lianna Patch explore why humor is an effective tool for creating positive brand associations and building rapport with audiences. They share real-world examples where humor significantly boosted engagement and conversions. Some of the key takeaways:

  • 5 main types of humor: Wholesome and goofy; Lowbrow and crass; Highbrow and intellectual; Dark and morbid; Absurd and surreal.

  • Experiment fearlessly: Start small and safe with observational or self-deprecating humor.

  • Target specific touchpoints: Use humor in personal interactions like emails and social media, but be cautious on critical pages like your homepage.

Dennis Shiao dives into the art of crafting extraordinary hooks to capture your audience's attention instantly. He explains how essential hooks are in engaging your audience and keeping them invested in your content. He highlights various techniques and examples, including effective strategies used by YouTube sensation MrBeast and practical applications for SaaS companies.

LINK BUILDING

Millie White discusses the importance of shifting focus in digital PR from sheer volume to the quality of coverage. She emphasizes the need to move beyond traditional link KPIs and adopt a more holistic approach to measuring success. Include metrics such as organic traffic increases, keyword rankings, and brand mentions to showcase overall impact.

Jodie Booras discusses how to ideate and pitch city studies like “Best Places to Own Income Property.” She offers up a comprehensive guide to creating city studies with data that attract top-tier links.

TOOLS AND RESOURCES

I use both of these tools myself and good to get with their lifetime deals:

  • URL Monitor, Lifetime deal - Automate your site indexing on Google search to boost traffic and visibility. Helpful to quickly see what’s indexed and it will automatically request indexing for you.

  • Afforai, Lifetime deal - Upload hundreds of documents and URLs to get answers for any question, complete with citations.

Glenn Gabe explains bulk exporting translated results from Google Search Console (GSC) by country using the GSC API and Analytics Edge. Since translated results appear in search results now, it’s good to know how to manage and analyze this data effectively. He also covers how to opt out of having your content translated if that's a concern. This is a good read for SEOs looking to leverage translated data for their international SEO strategy.

Starting August 23, 2024, Google URL Shortener links (goo.gl) will begin showing an interstitial page. Full deactivation is by August 25, 2025.

CASE STUDY

The Authority Hacker guys discuss their site redesign and the whole process that started a year ago. They say conversions have doubled as a result. Lots of interesting changes they’ve made.

I really like what they did on the right sidebar to add their diy-link-bio.

They use GeneratePress+GenerateBlocks and with their new GenerateCloud, it makes copying your formats/patterns across sites easily. There are many nice full-site templates and individual patterns, but much of what they did will require customization, so it’s not out-of-the-box.

EDUCATION

Olaf Kopp dives into the intricacies of what Google considers "helpful content.” He challenges common perceptions, emphasizing that helpfulness is more about user signals than just content quality. Olaf argues that to truly grasp Google's criteria, one must think like an engineer and act like a human. He explores the role of user behavior metrics such as CTR, dwell time, and click quality in determining content helpfulness.

This article gets technical at some points due to covering things like patents and the leak, but still pretty easy to follow.

Anna Postol dives deep into Navboost, one of Google’s most critical ranking systems since it helps refine search results based on user interactions. She discusses how it works and offers practical tips to optimize your pages for better visibility. From understanding the significance of clicks to leveraging location-based data slices, it’s a good overview of Navboost based on what’s publicly available, like the antitrust trial testimonies.

NEWS

Did you know there was a World Emoji Day? Well, apparently there is and Google shares fun facts about emojis.

There are also some new emojis officially being added to the Unicode 16.0 release, the international encoding standard. The Face below is one I’d be using a lot.

source: blog.google

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