00:49 John Mueller Steps in to slap dodgy Link Builders
1:26 Google Putting Yell and Yelp at the top of the SERPs
2:56 New Redirect Checker in Search Console
4:15 Search Console let’s you diagnose and trouble shoot rich results in the SERPs
5:30 Google introduces new places for product ads
– Now when it comes to link building, most SEOs are straight up junkies.
– I’ll proceed directly to the intravenous injection of hard drugs please.
– And it seems some members of the community will literally do anything to get their hands on them, literally beg, steal, or borrow.
– Yoink!
– Now being scrappy and industrious around getting links is one thing but being deceptive is another. On this week’s Chronicle Chronicle, we’re gonna talk about the latest in all things Google including, clamping down on deceptive link schemes, new local SERP listings, new features for redirects inside of Search Console and also new Shopping Ad placements in Gmail, Discover, and YouTube. So please click that like button and without further ado, let’s get into it. This week on Twitter a highlighted an unscrupulous webmaster that was targeting her, asking for links. Now link outreach is perfectly normal behavior, but this time some dodgy SEO was asking for an image credit link to an image they didn’t even own.
– You naughty, naughty!
– Naturally Google engineer and banana enthusiast John Muller stepped in to ask for the culprit’s URLs, to see how they handle it on their site. How they handle it on their site? I give you one guess how they’re gonna handle it on their site.
– Say hello to my little friend!
– Sometimes when I hear SEO advice it’s like hearing an ad from the distant past.
– It’s Proctor and Gambles, Golden Fluffo.
– So when I heard that Google is now putting directories like Yell and Yelp at the top of the local SERPs, I was a little bit mifted. However they’re actually doing this to comply with the EU Anti-Trust regulations. So from now on we’re gonna see brandless things at the top of our local SERP from www.yell.com and yell. So should you go out and sign up to all these directory listings so that you can get alongside millions of other businesses.
– Take a ticket and have a seat.
– Yes you probably should but not for the reason that you think. So Google uses third party directories to understand who you are as an entity. So do you feature in the British Medical Associate Directory? Probably a doctor. Are you in the Legal 500? Probably a vulture, I mean a lawyer. Are you in every single directory on the internet with spin tact descriptions and links back to every service page that you have? You’re probably in SEO. No, I’m only joking. So being understood as an entity is a really big deal cause it gives your brand name a different weighting and a different treatment inside of the search engines. But before you rush out and sign up to all of these directories, I’d recommend fast tracking it by using a service like Yext. Yext helps you control all of your structured data around the web and helps you sign up for all these directories at scale, plus it helps you manage all your information if it changes. Now when a client comes to Type A Media to help migrate a site to new URLs, our first reaction is that of a calm, strategic thinker. A Yogi if you will.
– Why god, why?
– And then when it comes to the migration itself that’s a breeze. Everything is under control from start to finish.
– Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
– Na, I’m only kidding. Migrations are hard work so we take whatever help we can get to make sure that our clients traffic goes for one URL to another without being disturbed. So now that search console have released a new feature to help validate redirects we’re all very happy. ♪ Because I’m happy ♪ ♪ Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof ♪
– Then new tool gives you the top five URLS in the migration and shows you the actual redirect flow. So this allows you to validate your redirects to see if Google themselves can actually follow and understand them. This should go a very long way to helping us being much more successful with migrations as Google themselves are giving us two thumbs up for the migration. If you want an in depth guide on doing site migrations check out this migration guide by SEMRush. I have personally contributed along with a bunch of other senior SEO’s, it’s a really good workflow and I think it’ll really help you the next time you’re running a migration. So if you cast your mind back to the September core update, I viewed a lot of snippets in the SERP. Like ratings, reviews and answer boxes and essentially none traditional looking search stuff. You’ve probably seen a change in traffic. That’s right a lot of people reporting large visibility losses due to a lot of RET results being lost. Now thankfully Search Console has a brand new feature where you can look at the RET results and actually diagnose where the traffic’s coming from. On top of that this week they’ve literally just introduced new tools to help with featured snippets in particular review snippets. So if you have got star ratings in the SERPs you can now actually build a report on how they’re affecting click throughs to your website. So further to that Google have actually an enhancement report that lets you see any issues with the review mark ups so you can easily fix the problem. So if you’re an eCommerce website this is gonna be a very important report to get your head round. To see if your product page is eligible for a review snippet you can actually use the structure data testing tool which is on the screen now. It will give you an indication if you’re eligible or not based on the structured data that is on the page. What is Google really good at?
– That’s right, taking your money. And guess what? They’ve found even more ad inventory on their platform to squeeze your ads into.
– Air is pushing the egg down.
– So if you are on product terms you’re gonna be very, very interested in this because Google now let’s you run them on Discover, Gmail and YouTube. I’m a huge fan of product ads cause they drive easily the most revenue at the lowest prices for our clients. In particular I really love YouTube ads it’s cause they have quite a high dwell time which makes it really good for long tail targeting. To enable these ads simply go to targeting options when creating a brand new ad and select YouTube, Gmail or Discover, and your ads will start showing. One tip however, definitely separate the product feed into multiple different campaigns because the intent on these places is gonna be completely different to the SERP. Definitely run them as retargeting campaigns and definitely split out things like best sellers per demographic and push those one by one onto this new ad formats. That’s everything for this weeks Chronicle Chronicle, if you like it, please like it. If you love it, please do subscribe and until next time we will see you later.
