In this episode our MD Ross Tavendale goes through:
Google two new link attributes
new feature in search console to see how your datasets are performing
JSON structured data can be inserted in the head and body of your pages
And more
✉️ Sign up to the weekly search newsletter: https://email.typeamedia.net
A free information pack with all this weeks search news, google updates and insider tips to circulate round your team to keep them informed.
🎙️ Our podcast: https://anchor.fm/canonical-chronicle
💻 Our website beautifully tagged up with UTM parameters: https://typeamedia.net/?utm_source=youtube
I’m Ross Tavendale, the managing director of Type A Media, a creative search agency based in London. I make videos about business leadership, web technology, SEO, PPC and how I turned being a Type A personality into a business.
I’d love to hear from you. Tweeting @rtavs on twitter is the quickest way to get a response or you can email me on [email protected]
If you’re interested in becoming a client, you can request a proposal or email [email protected] and we’ll get back to you ASAP to see how we can help you achieve your business goals.
Ross: 00:00 I'm sorry Ms. Jackson, I am for real.
Ross: 00:03 Welcome to Canonical Chronical episode thirty million, three hundred and two.
Ross: 00:07 Let's get into it.
Ross: 00:08 Now back in the day there was a lot of spam in the web.
Ross: 00:16 It was kind of like-
Speaker 2: 00:17 Well, there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and Spam;
Ross: 00:17 egg, bacon, and Spam; egg, bacon, sausage, and Spam.
Ross: 00:27 So then Google introduces the new follower attribute
Ross: 00:29 which signals to site owners not to vouch for the site they're linking to and definitely don't pass pagerank.
Speaker 3: 00:35 No. No, no. No.
Ross: 00:41 And for the most part, SEO's were pretty happy.
Ross: 00:43 It kind of cleaned up the web.
Ross: 00:44 Fast forward to 2019. We now have two new link attributes to deal with.
Ross: 00:49 So Google announced rel UGC and rel sponsored attributes to signify
Ross: 00:53 the nuance of what the link is for. And most SEO's on Twitter did not like it.
Ross: 01:00 However, assuming this isn't going to be another authorship markup-
Speaker 4: 01:04 He's dead, Captain. Stone dead. No pulse or nothing.
Ross: 01:07 We probably need to get on board with it.
Ross: 01:10 So Joost van de Valk from Yoast ...
Ross: 01:12 he's the guy who's working on the core build of WordPress ...
Ross: 01:16 says he's going to be building this in to WordPress itself
Ross: 01:18 and a bunch of other big site providers are probably going to follow.
Ross: 01:22 So if it's UGC, it's probably going to carry a bit more weight than a nofollow.
Ross: 01:27 Just because it's generated by a user doesn't really mean that it isn't genuine.
Ross: 01:31 Sponsored, on the other hand, that might also carry a bit of a positive ranking signal.
Ross: 01:37 As brands who do advertising typically have positive brand signals,
Ross: 01:40 this may actually be something that helps.
Ross: 01:44 So our prediction, normal links just got even more valuable and
Ross: 01:48 now we can eke out a little bit more value if we get nofollow links.
Ross: 01:52 One minute you do a review snippet on your SERP and the next minute you're like ...
Ross: 02:02 Well, that's because Google are clamping down on the review schema abuse.
Speaker 5: 02:13 Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
Ross: 02:16 In short, Google is now showing review rich results only for a clear set of schema
Ross: 02:20 types for review snippets that are non self-serving reviews,
Ross: 02:25 reviews that have the name property within the markup.
Ross: 02:28 So kind of means no catch all schema anymore.
Ross: 02:31 You need to specify the exact thing that is getting the review instead of using
Ross: 02:35 the entire website's review on one page.
Speaker 6: 02:40 Whoop de do. What does it all mean, Basil?
Ross: 02:44 As always with schema, make sure you check your implementation with Google's structured data testing tool.
Ross: 02:50 For all you data scientists out there, you're going to love Google's data set search
Ross: 02:53 that lets your people find more data sets that have the correct markup.
Ross: 03:04 Well now, you can see how they're performing inside of Google's search console.
Ross: 03:09 So this new report can be accessed under the enhancement section.
Ross: 03:13 It's essentially going to show you any errors and warnings that are in your schema implementation
Ross: 03:17 and show you how to fix them.
Ross: 03:19 On a side note, if you do any data journalism or need any data sets to maybe enhance some PR campaigns,
Ross: 03:24 seriously check out data set search.
Ross: 03:26 You get all the robust features of Google search,
Ross: 03:30 but it serves you up data sets for your campaigns instead of normal search results.
Ross: 03:35 Have you ever been watching a video and then were like-
Speaker 7: 03:37 Bored, bored, bored, bored.
Ross: 03:43 Well, fear not as Google have released a new search feature called, "In this video."
Ross: 03:48 The feature breaks up the main content of the video and highlights all of the topics in a timeline.
Ross: 03:55 It's kind of like having a menu for all the main talking points throughout a video.
Ross: 03:59 This is a great innovation for video producers that do how-to content
Ross: 04:03 and need multiple steps to explain what's going on.
Ross: 04:06 Google said it's available for English language videos on YouTube only and
Ross: 04:10 if you want to get these things on your video,
Ross: 04:13 make sure you've got timestamped transcriptions to make it easier for them
Ross: 04:17 to pull out the correct information and display it in the search.
Ross: 04:21 Big possibilities for ranking for more long-tail inside of YouTube, but also to give results.
Ross: 04:26 Schema can be really tricky to implement.
Ross: 04:28 Does it go in the head? Is it hard coded? Can I use JSON-LD?
Ross: 04:32 Will it work via tag manager?
Ross: 04:34 All SEO's are kind of like-
Speaker 8: 04:36 I said talk to me, damn it, or else I'm going to throw you in the fire.
Speaker 9: 04:42 You stupid bitch!
Ross: 04:42 Well, fear not as John Miller has come up with the goods
Ross: 04:44 and confirmed that Google will honor JSON-LD in the body of a document containing your markup.
Ross: 04:51 So if you've got a less than optimal tag manager implementation
Ross: 04:54 and end up putting your schema in the body instead of the head, don't worry.
Ross: 04:58 You're still safe. Google's going to read it and give you the right snippet.
Ross: 05:02 That's everything for this week's Canonical Chronicle.
Ross: 05:04 We hope you've liked it. If you have, please do follow us on social.
Ross: 05:07 And until the next time, we will see you later.