In this episode we discuss:
Wordpress 5.3changes
Google's latest ads strategy
SEO Veterans getting penalties for no reason
and much much more!
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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 Throw your hands in the air if you're a big player.
Ross: 00:02 I love it when you call me Big Papa.
Ross: 00:05 Welcome to Canonical Chronicle. Episode 7,000,302.
Ross: 00:09 Let's get into it.
Ross: 00:16 So, first Google started adding more ads and eating into the standard desktop results.
Ross: 00:22 Then they came out with the comparison tables, the product ads,
Ross: 00:25 the mobile ads, which take up to two to three screens, and most SEO's were thinking-
Speaker 2: 00:31 Right, that's enough. He's had enough.
Speaker 2: 00:32 Get him out of here. Go on and get him the (beep) out of here. He's had enough.
Ross: 00:38 But hey, guess what. Apparently they have some more ads for us
Ross: 00:43 Now, can you guess where they're going to go this time?
Ross: 00:45 Maybe in your emails. No, no. Already done that one.
Ross: 00:49 What about image results? No, no. We've done that one as well.
Ross: 00:54 What about on a branded Google My Business profile?
Ross: 00:58 An advert on someone's (beep) business listing.
Ross: 01:03 That's right. They're putting ads in people's business listings, which are leaving us all like-
Speaker 3: 01:08 Oh, shut up, you tart.
Ross: 01:09 Last week, an industry veteran and a white hat evangelicalist,
Ross: 01:12 Dan Petrovic, from Dejan SEO in Australia, received a manual link penalty from Google.
Ross: 01:18 Now, the industry, were in a bit of shock, because Dejan has actually been a pillar of the community
Ross: 01:23 for at least 10 years and has never intentionally built any dodgy links.
Speaker 4: 01:27 Everybody's innocent in here. Don't you know that?
Ross: 01:31 However, there was a bunch of bad scraper site links pointing to a site.
Ross: 01:35 that actually had nothing to do with them, as well as a potential negative SEO attack.
Ross: 01:41 Luckily, Chris Cemper From LinkResearchTools stepped in to diagnose the issue,
Ross: 01:45 and it appears that those spam links that Google professes to ignore,
Ross: 01:50 are actually working, and have caused the penalty.
Ross: 01:52 So that's not really a surprise for a lot of the SEOs in the room.
Ross: 01:55 But long story short, if you see bad back links in your back link profile do this ...
Speaker 5: 02:01 Kill it. Kill it with fire.
Ross: 02:01 What the real surprise is that John Miller said that,
Ross: 02:08 even if all the contents ported from one domain to the other,
Ross: 02:11 Google will just assume that the new domain is canonical and
Ross: 02:14 carry all the links over to the new domain.
Ross: 02:18 However, what he didn't say is, if the penalty also carries over.
Ross: 02:22 In our experience, it doesn't, but that's on a very small anecdotal evidence basis.
Ross: 02:28 So if you're familiar with WordPress,
Ross: 02:30 you're going to know that they have a feature that discourages search engines from indexing your content.
Ross: 02:35 And the way they've typically done that is with a disallow inside of the robots.txt.
Ross: 02:40 You know what I mean? That little bit of code that simply says-
Speaker 6: 02:43 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Ross: 02:46 The thing is, this is not 100% effective.
Ross: 02:48 You really need to add a no index, no follow in order for something to stay completely out of the index.
Ross: 02:54 So now, if you're a WordPress user, they're going to stop putting a disallow
Ross: 02:58 in the robots file and move to no index meta information inside your pages themselves.
Ross: 03:04 So a quick warning. If you do this,
Ross: 03:06 it's going to be much harder for you to get pages back in the index quicker,
Ross: 03:10 unless you're building links to them.
Ross: 03:12 So if you're going to be rocking a brand new WordPress website with WordPress 5.3
Ross: 03:16 and you use this no index feature, you may find yourself a little bit like this
Ross: 03:20 when you're looking for your pages and the SERPS.
Ross: 03:27 Now, I've been in search for most of my adult life.
Ross: 03:30 I appreciate I look 12 years old, but I am actually in my 30s.
Ross: 03:34 And every year something amazing happens that just makes me
Ross: 03:37 fall in love with the community all over again.
Ross: 03:40 Well, this year it's the Kerboo Challenge from Dom and Paul,
Ross: 03:43 the owners at Kerboo. Essentially, they're going to be racing to BrightonSEO
Ross: 03:48 via Paris in an old Rover 25 and raising money for charity along the way.
Ross: 03:54 The promo video does an excellent job of actually describing what they're doing.
Ross: 03:58 So, I'm just going to it roll after this and say my goodbyes.
Ross: 04:02 So please do subscribe to the Canonical Chronicle
Ross: 04:04 and follow us on social. And until next time we will see you later.
Ross: 04:09 Oh, and also, go Team Dom.
Speaker 7: 04:11 Dom and Paul are launching a new product for their company, Kerboo.
Ross: 04:16 The only question is, who gets to press the launch button?
Speaker 7: 04:20 After hours of discussions-
Speaker 8: 04:22 I think I should press the button.
Speaker 7: 04:23 Debate.
Speaker 9: 04:24 I'm definitely going to press the button.
Speaker 7: 04:25 They decided to have a race.
Speaker 8: 04:27 No.
Speaker 9: 04:28 We haven't.
Speaker 8: 04:28 No.
Speaker 7: 04:29 In cars?
Speaker 8: 04:30 Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 9: 04:31 Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: 04:31 To BrightonSEO.
Speaker 9: 04:32 BrightonSEO?
Speaker 8: 04:35 BrightonSEO?
Speaker 7: 04:35 Via Paris.
Speaker 8: 04:36 What?
Speaker 7: 04:36 That's right. Dom and Paul will drive from Leads to Dover,
Ross: 04:40 hop on the Eurotunnel and race to the Arc de Triomphe,
Ross: 04:44 before heading back to the conference the next day.
Speaker 7: 04:47 The first one to BrightonSEO gets to press the launch button.
Speaker 9: 04:51 This is ridiculous.
Speaker 7: 04:52 But what about the challenges?
Speaker 8: 04:54 The challenges?
Speaker 7: 04:54 On the way to France, Paul and Dom will have a multitude of challenges,
Ross: 04:58 and each win gives them a vital head-start the next day.
Speaker 7: 05:02 The Arc de Triomphe challenge. The first to take a picture in front of the Arc de Triomphe.
Speaker 7: 05:08 The Gregg's challenge. The most pictures with pastry items from unique Gregg's locations.
Speaker 7: 05:14 The eBay challenge. The best eBay item to be purchased and collected on route. Voted for by you.
Speaker 7: 05:22 The Beetle challenge. The most pictures of different coloured Volkswagen Beetles.
Speaker 7: 05:27 The charity challenge. Recreate the Martin House logo, using elements they see on the way down.
Speaker 7: 05:33 The sponsorship challenge. The most money raised by selling space on their cars for sponsorship.
Speaker 9: 05:38 You're not putting stickers on my car.
Speaker 7: 05:40 You're not using your car. You have a budget of £250 to buy a car of your own,
Ross: 05:47 which you'll be racing to Brighton in.
Speaker 7: 05:50 Just look at the quality of those automobiles.
Speaker 8: 05:57 Start it up again.
Speaker 7: 05:59 Follow the race online as both teams post regular video and social updates.
Ross: 06:04 The entire race is raising money for Martin House Children’s Hospice,
Ross: 06:07 and you can contribute.
Speaker 10: 06:09 A £10 donation.
Speaker 7: 06:11 Get your message written on the car.
Speaker 10: 06:13 £25 pound donation.