In this episode we:
Ross: 00:00 This hit, that ice cold, that Michelle Pfeiffer, that white gold.
Ross: 00:04 Welcome to Canonical Chronicle episode 7,000,302.
Ross: 00:09 Let's get into it.
Video: 00:11 (music)
Ross: 00:15 Google is now retiring the old search console.
Ross: 00:19 Like many Google products before it, the Wonder Wheel, Google Plus,
Ross: 00:24 SEOs all over the world mourn the loss of our dear old friend
Ross: 00:28 going out like dust in the wind.
Video: 00:33 You're my boy, Blue.
Ross: 00:35 Just kidding.
Ross: 00:36 The old interface is going to be going away and we won't be able to use it moving forward,
Ross: 00:40 but the new interface is where all the action is going to be.
Ross: 00:45 So if you're still using the old search console, I've got one thing to say to you.
Video: 00:50 We are so old.
Video: 00:51 Yeah.
Ross: 00:53 Now, the back link checker arms race has been pretty single track for some time.
Ross: 00:58 Most companies believe that adding features and features
Ross: 01:00 and features onto their tool set is going to make them win,
Ross: 01:03 and others have just been investing really heavily in a big deep index.
Ross: 01:08 First Moz came out with their new index a couple of months back,
Ross: 01:11 now SEMrush have come up with a big massive index.
Ross: 01:15 But recently, Majestic have been like...
Video: 01:22 That's not a knife, that's a knife.
Ross: 01:23 The recent updates from Majestic allow you to understand the context of a link,
Ross: 01:28 so it's where the link physically shows on the page.
Ross: 01:30 With this new update we're now able to model something similar to Google's Reasonable Surfer patent,
Ross: 01:36 which details that the value of links further up the page are better than
Ross: 01:40 ones further down the page or outside the body copy.
Ross: 01:44 Further to this, you can now see where your outbound link stacks up on the page versus other outbound links.
Ross: 01:49 So if you've got a link in a directory, it's going to be weighted down because the main
Ross: 01:53 link is surrounded with other outbound links.
Ross: 01:55 It also lets you look at surrounding words and how it's placed in the document,
Ross: 02:00 so you can get a whole heap of really stellar features to properly understand the true value of the link.
Ross: 02:05 Some massive innovation in this space and I highly, highly recommend that you go check out.
Ross: 02:11 Google has this document called the Search Quality Raters Guidelines,
Ross: 02:15 which essentially is a document that instructs manual search quality raters
Ross: 02:18 what it deems to be good and bad in terms of websites.
Video: 02:23 Right. Wank, wank, good guy. Wank, good guy, good buy, wank.
Ross: 02:30 So naturally, whenever they change things us SEOs definitely pay attention.
Ross: 02:35 This recent update isn't really anything to write home about.
Ross: 02:38 It's still important to exercise good EAT, expertise, authority and trust across your site.
Ross: 02:44 Some things to come from the update are around YMYL sites,
Ross: 02:47 or your money or your life. It's now asking raters to identify sites that might spread hate and
Ross: 02:53 they're paying a lot more attention to sites that could cause harm to end users.
Ross: 02:59 Shopping and finance are now in two separate categories.
Ross: 03:02 Shopping YMYL content now includes information about services related to,
Ross: 03:07 or the research of purchase of goods and services.
Ross: 03:11 So for example, reviews. Essentially, Google's looking to demote review sites that simply say...
Video: 03:17 I want that one, that one, and that one. And that one.
Ross: 03:22 So if you run a review site,
Ross: 03:23 it's going to be essential to make sure that the person doing the reviews is public
Ross: 03:27 and has a good reputation. It's an important read for people who are deep,
Ross: 03:32 deep in the weeds, but for your average SEO, bit of a snooze fest.
Ross: 03:37 If you're a hardcore SEO, most of you are going to say that you couldn't do your job without this one thing.
Video: 03:44 Cocaine and hookers, my friend.
Ross: 03:46 No, no, no, no, not that.
Ross: 03:47 I'm talking about Excel.
Ross: 03:49 Well, now they've came out with an amazing new innovation called XLOOKUP.
Ross: 03:56 For all of you that are very familiar with INDEX MATCH, it's kind of a quicker,
Ross: 04:00 cleaner way of doing that. You can now look up vertical and horizontal arrays
Ross: 04:04 and do computation based on that.
Ross: 04:07 Here's an example from the site.
Ross: 04:09 If you're a nerd like me, you're absolutely guaranteed to love it.
Ross: 04:12 That's everything for this week's Canonical Chronicle.
Ross: 04:31 We hope you have liked it. If you do, please do subscribe,
Ross: 04:34 and until next time we will see you all later.
Author
Ross