Welcome to the latest episode of Canonical Chronicle, where we discuss:
Google’s new video series where John Muller talks about linking practice
New improvements to Google My Business
A new report by Merkle which shows that Google is delivering less organic traffic than last year!
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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.
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Ross: 00:00
Ross: 00:03 Welcome to Canonical Chronicle, episode dos. Let's get into it.
Ross: 00:13 So do you own an affiliate site?
Ross: 00:15 So are you crushing it right now on Amazon FBA or maybe
Ross: 00:18 you're smashing it selling ClickBank classics like Diet Tea,
Ross: 00:24 the German Shepherd Handbook, Reiki for Horses,
Ross: 00:28 Forex Trading Made E-Z, or my personal favorite,
Ross: 00:34 which is endorsed by big Donnie himself, How To Win Any Election.
Ross: 00:40 Spoiler alert, you need to get help from Russians.
Charlie Rose: 00:43 Are you curious about America?
Ross: 00:48 If you're running redirects on your affiliate site links,
Ross: 00:50 then don't worry because John Mueller has just given you the all clear.
Ross: 00:54 He does mention, however, that is a little bit complex,
Ross: 00:58 so it doesn't really matter if you use a naked affiliate link or cloak
Ross: 01:02 them via a 302 redirect. He also goes on to say that you should
Ross: 01:06 definitely smash the Like Button on this video so you can help
Ross: 01:09 us jump up the rankings on YouTube.
Ross: 01:12 Have you seen Google's new video series with Matt Cutts 2.0, Mr. John Mueller?
Ross: 01:20 In the first episode. John answers the following question:
Ross: 01:24 Does linking to other websites help or hurt SEO?
Ross: 01:30 And his answer is it's a complete known answer.
Ross: 01:34 He says, linking to other websites is a great way to provide value to your users.
Ross: 01:39 Oftentimes links help users find out more to check out your sources
Ross: 01:43 and to better understand how your content is relevant to the question that they have asked.
Ross: 01:50 He then goes on to talk about manipulative link practices , blahdy, blahdy blahdy, blah.
Ross: 01:55 Welcome back Google. I was kinda wondering what all those riddles and misinformation
Ross: 01:59 and FUD had went.
Ross: 02:01 So if you're still left scratching your head, don't worry.
Ross: 02:04 Let's look at the Quality Raters Guidelines to get an idea of what's going on.
Ross: 02:08 So we knew from Medic that citing sources is important to determine document quality.
Ross: 02:13 So linking out to high authority sources is probably a good idea.
Ross: 02:18 If we dive into the official guidelines on page 105 when determining page quality, they say
Ross: 02:25 "The main content of the article covers recent efforts to reform STEM education
Ross: 02:30 in the US and it includes citations from expert sources.
Ross: 02:34 This would result in something that is helpful for many or most users."
Ross: 02:39 So there you have it. Linking out and saying your sources is a very good idea
Ross: 02:44 if you want to rank well inside of search. Let's talk about local SERPs for local people.
Speaker 3: 02:51 This is a local shop for look at people. There's nothing for you here.
Ross: 02:53 Recently we have seen Google really improved their GMB offering,
Ross: 02:58 which has been mostly great for small businesses.
Ross: 03:01 You may remember from a few episodes back they started to introduce the ability
Ross: 03:05 to do things like buy tickets for concerts inside the SERP itself.
Ross: 03:10 We then saw them introduce a booking engine so customers can actually book appointments
Ross: 03:14 from within the GMB interface.
Ross: 03:17 And then we predicted that eventually they're going to take payment.
Ross: 03:21 Well we are know almost there.
Ross: 03:25 Local SEO legend Joy Hawkins pointed out on Twitter that you can know request a quote.
Ross: 03:31 She's also provided a thread on localsearchforum.com, where it goes into deep,
Ross: 03:36 deep detail about this new feature. So when I tried to do this for Type A Media,
Ross: 03:41 I could indeed set up an Appointments page by I couldn't get the Request a Quote
Ross: 03:45 since I'm not a US business.
Ross: 03:47 If you are a US business and you've opted in for the GMB messaging feature, then this will now start to show.
Ross: 03:53 It looks like Google are really doubling down on GMB
Ross: 03:56 as apart of search and it would be a really good idea to start properly optimizing
Ross: 04:01 your GMB profile and spending a bit more time getting that content really good.
Ross: 04:06 A new report that's come out by Merkle shows that in Q2 clicks from organic search
Ross: 04:11 are down 8% year on year. And it's not just Google, Bing and Yahoo
Ross: 04:16 are also showing declines of 26% and 11% respectively.
Ross: 04:21 In the words of Jay Sean, everything is going down, down, down, down, down.
Ross: 04:29 This report suggests that paid search on phones is actually the culprit
Ross: 04:33 of cutting into organic share.
Ross: 04:35 And to be honest, no wonder literally everything above the fold
Ross: 04:39 on a mobile phone is paid or one of those f****ng no click answer boxes.
Ross: 04:45 Just check this SERP out for train tickets.
Ross: 04:48 It's not even above the fold four times over.
Ross: 04:52 It's the equivalent of page two, sometimes page three rankings.
Ross: 04:56 So what are you going to do to avoid your search getting eroded?
Ross: 04:59 Well, to be honest, nothing. We are doomed.
Bender: 05:03 Doom.
Ross: 05:08 Just kidding.
Ross: 05:08 You can obviously not play in overly informational SERPs.
Ross: 05:13 Start investing a bit more money in nonorganic, probably in paid search
Ross: 05:18 and really look towards brand building as a core part of your marketing strategy
Ross: 05:23 so that your business is differentiated in the SERPs.
Ross: 05:26 That's everything for this week's Canonical Chronicle.
Ross: 05:28 We hope you've enjoyed it. If you have, please do follow us on social
Ross: 05:32 and until next time we will see you later.