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SEO

"Core Update Notes" Part 3 - HCUX Sites, Tremors, Site Rep Abuse, YMYL

Glen Gabe dives into the ongoing August core update, sharing insights from his daily observations across various websites. Here are some of the highlights:

• 88 of 390+ HC/HCU-impacted sites showing recovery, varying in degree

• YMYL sites succeeding with quality content, not just strong link profiles

• Massive drops for sites abusing AI-generated content without human involvement

• LinkedIn Pulse and Advice sections experiencing significant visibility drops

The Sites Dominating Google’s Top Stories SERP Feature in 2024

Glen Allsopp dives deep into Google's Top Stories, analyzing data from 45 million keywords. He found that just 1,000 domains account for a whopping 97.3% of all listings! The big dogs like USA Today, Yahoo, and The New York Times are dominating, but there's still room for the little guys. Glen uncovered some impressive independent sites, including a cycling-focused one that's only a year old.

SEOzempic: Quality Over Quantity For Google Indexing

Kevin Indig argues that Google has changed its approach, now prioritizing quality over quantity when indexing web pages. He notes an inverse relationship between indexed pages and organic traffic, suggesting that expanding too aggressively can harm a domain's overall performance. He emphasizes the importance of monitoring domain quality, which he defines as a combination of user experience, content quality, and technical optimization.

Yelp Files an Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google

Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp's co-founder and CEO, shares news of Yelp filing an antitrust lawsuit against Google. The suit alleges Google abuses its monopoly in general search to dominate local search and advertising markets, harming competition and consumer choice. He argues Google manipulates search results to promote its own local offerings above rivals, regardless of quality. This keeps users within Google's ecosystem, siphoning traffic and ad revenue from competitors like Yelp. The lawsuit wants to level the playing field and allow local search providers to compete fairly, ultimately benefiting consumers with higher-quality, more relevant information.

My Take: Here we go. Not the first and not the last lawsuit. Here’s a quote that he shared in his post:

Holiday SEO Tips: Strategies to Boost Traffic & Sales

Elizabeth Arens shares some great tips for boosting your holiday SEO game in her latest article. She discusses planning ahead and strategically timing your optimization efforts. She recommends starting content creation 2-3 months before the holiday season (that’s now!) and deploying it at least a month in advance. She also dives into identifying holiday-related keywords, creating focused content, and optimizing existing pages.

1 Year Since HCU: What’s Working Now

Gael and Mark from Authority Hacker discuss various online business models that are thriving in the current digital landscape. They cover the aftermath of Google's HCU and explore alternative strategies for online entrepreneurs, including:

• Consider transitioning from purely affiliate sites to business models with higher-value offerings

• Focus on capturing email addresses to build a loyal audience you own

• Explore on-platform affiliate opportunities like the Amazon Influencer Program

• Look into local SEO as an easier alternative to national SEO campaigns

• Don't neglect the potential of agency work, especially for those with marketing skills

SEO Ripples

• Dominique Jabbour shares strategies for suppressing negative images in Google search results. She explains that anyone can fall victim to unwanted photos appearing prominently online, which can overshadow positive achievements. She outlines several approaches, including asking site owners to remove images, requesting removal from Google directly, and flagging problematic content. However, she emphasizes that the most effective long-term strategy is often to create and optimize new positive image content.

• Google's John Mueller has debunked the SEO tactic of adding outbound links for ranking benefits. He emphasized that Google doesn't count links or words in blog posts, and recommended writing for your audience instead. Focus on adding relevant outbound links that provide value to readers, not arbitrary numbers for SEO.

• Barry Schwartz reports that Google has recently issued manual actions for Google Discover policy violations, specifically targeting misleading content. This is separate from any traffic drops due to the August core update. The violations seem to focus on catchy headlines that don't match the actual content.

• Daniel Waisberg and Omri Weisman from Google dive into advanced Google Trends features. They show how to use special characters and comparison filters to extract precise data from the platform. They also demonstrate how to perform year-over-year comparisons and compare search interest across different countries. The video wraps up with tips on sharing, exporting, and monitoring trend data.

• Google announced that AVIF is now a supported file type in Google Search and for Google Images. You don't need to do anything special to have your AVIF files indexed by Google.

AI

The Ultimate Guide to SearchGPT

BrightEdge has a full comprehensive breakdown of SearchGPT, OpenAI's new AI-powered search engine. It covers how SearchGPT works, key features, and how it compares to other AI search platforms across various industries like e-commerce, education, healthcare, and finance. They show SearchGPT's clean, ad-free interface, its use of Bing's live index for up-to-date information, and its ability to provide detailed, well-structured responses with clear attribution to sources.

My Take: There’s a lot of good information here and I do like SearchGPT’s UI compared to Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.

Anthropic Publishes the "System Prompts" That Make Claude Tick

Kyle Wiggers from TechCrunch reports that Anthropic has published the system prompts used to guide the behavior of its AI models like Claude. These prompts instruct the models on how to act and what to avoid. For example, Claude is told to be intellectually curious, engage in discussions on various topics, and handle controversial subjects carefully. The prompts also specify things Claude can't do, like facial recognition. By making these prompts public, Anthropic aims to be more transparent about how its AI models work behind the scenes.

My Take: If you look at Claude’s system prompts note, you’ll also note that they do not apply to the API. I’ve always said that there are system prompts in the chatbots (ChatGPT, Claude) that are not on the APIs, so you won’t get the exact same results from the same prompts.

New in Gemini: Custom Gems and Imagen 3

Google's Gemini AI now allows Advanced subscribers to create custom Gems, personalized AI experts on any topic. These look like ChatGPT’s GPTs and Claude AI’s Projects. The new Imagen 3 model is also rolling out, bringing improved image generation capabilities to all Gemini users.

Yes, it’s the same image generator that was taken down. It’s been updated to include “built-in safeguards.” We’ll see 😅 

AI Ripples

• Noor Al-Sibai shares the hilarious quirks of Google's new AI-infused Pixel 9 smartphone feature called "Add Me." This AI-powered tool lets photographers insert themselves into group shots, but it doesn't always work as intended. Users have found creative ways to use it, like creating doppelganger photos. While not perfect for its intended use, "Add Me" offers some amusing possibilities for playful photo manipulation. Yay! 😒 

• Lauren Feiner reports that OpenAI and Anthropic are teaming up with the US government to boost AI safety. They'll give the AI Safety Institute access to their latest models before and after public release. The companies hope this partnership will help responsibly shape AI's future.

• Carl Franzen shares the scoop on Bland AI's recent $16M funding round to automate enterprise phone calls (think - AI telemarketers). This controversial startup is developing AI agents that can handle customer support, sales, and internal comms - potentially replacing human call center staff.

• Samuel Axon reports that Midjourney is branching out into hardware. They've hired Ahmad Abbas, who previously worked on Apple's Vision Pro, to lead their new hardware division. While details are scarce, Midjourney founder David Holz has hinted at multiple projects in the works exploring "new form factors" beyond traditional devices.

MARKETING

YouTube Rolls Out Paid Courses To More Channels

Matt G. Southern reports on YouTube's expansion of its course creation feature, allowing more creators to offer paid educational content. This opens up new revenue streams for content producers on the platform. Creators can now package their educational videos into structured, multi-lesson programs, complete with interactive features like quizzes and completion badges. Courses can be offered for free or via one-time payments, giving creators flexibility in monetization.

Niche Marketing: How Brands Can Use Influencers to Reach Niche Pockets of the Internet

Jasmine Williams explores niche marketing, highlighting its benefits and how brands can leverage influencers to connect with specific audience segments. She explains that niche marketing allows companies to understand and directly address the unique needs of a targeted audience, leading to greater brand loyalty, reduced competition, and optimized marketing spend.

Gen Z, AI, and the Power of Creator Marketing

Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan highlight how younger generations are placing more trust in creators than traditional brands, emphasizing the need for businesses to adapt their strategies. They suggest three key approaches: tapping into employee expertise for content creation, hiring dedicated in-house creators, and partnering with influencers to navigate increasingly closed social media platforms.

Marketing Ripples

• Ivan Mehta reports that X/Twitter is testing a video conferencing tool to compete with Zoom. An X employee shared that the company held its first internal conference using the new feature, with positive initial feedback. This move aligns with X's broader ambitions to expand beyond social media into areas like job listings and payments.

CONTENT

So You’ve Been Asked To “Humanize” AI Content

Louise Linehan tackles the controversial topic of "humanizing" AI-generated content in her thought-provoking article. She argues that this process is inherently flawed and demoralizing for writers. She explains how attempting to make AI content pass as human-written undermines the supposed efficiency benefits of using AI in the first place.

CASE STUDY

The Losing Test That Led to 4% More Leads (We Took the L so You Don’t Have To)

Curt del Principe shares a surprising CTA test result from HubSpot's marketing team. They tested three CTA variants on high-performing blog posts: the control ("Get the [Product Type]"), a "best practice" version adding "free", and a detailed version with the specific product name. Shockingly, the "best practice" tanked conversions by 14%, while the detailed version boosted them 4% overall and 7% for new visitors.

I Disavowed “Toxic Backlinks”: Here’s What Happened

Joshua Hardwick from Ahrefs conducted an experiment to test the impact of disavowing "toxic backlinks" on website traffic. He exported and disavowed 129 URLs flagged as toxic or potentially toxic by a popular SEO tool for three of Ahrefs' blog posts. The results were mixed - one page saw a 12% traffic drop, another dropped 8.25%, while the third grew by 12.82%. Overall, disavowing seemed to have minimal impact.

BUSINESS IDEAS

Here’s How You Can Outsource SEO Easily and Effectively

Chris Haines shares insights on outsourcing SEO effectively and breaks down the key aspects of SEO outsourcing. He covers everything from choosing between agencies and freelancers to best practices for managing outsourced work. Chris draws on his agency experience to provide practical advice on outsourcing various SEO services like content creation, link building, technical SEO, and keyword research.