Google's Newest Update Makes The Internet A Bit Safer For Minors
SEOForLunch #252 covers Google's minor images update, clarifies URL length, and updates to both its structured data and API.
Hi Lunch Buddies!
I hope you all had a killer week. Mine was beyond busy and the weekend was welcomed with open arms.
Speaking of the weekend, I hope everyone who celebrated Halloween had a blast. I took the kids out trick-r-treating. Naturally, I had to taste test about 20 pieces of candy to make sure it was “safe.” I’m a good Dad like that :-)~.
Let’s jump into this week’s #SEOForLunch.
-Nick
Case Study: How Seer Interactive avoided 100% of the traffic being removed from SERPs with ContentKing Alerts
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Seer Interactive was performing weekly audits for their client’s websites, but found this left them vulnerable to changes and issues that arose between scheduled crawls.
That’s when they discovered ContentKing. With real-time alerts, the team could immediately detect issues that may have gone unaddressed.
Katelyn Sidley, Technical SEO Manager at Seer Interactive: “ContentKing has been great in giving us visibility into changes on our clients sites in real time! We are able to discover problems like noindex tags and others BEFORE experiencing the drop in our client's traffic.”
Stay ahead of the search engines too
Search Engine Updates
Article:
Help job seekers understand your job postings by including a complete description
What's Important:
Google shares a “tip” for job posters looking to an edge in getting their job listings infront of people. Make sure your description is complete and exhaustive.
Nick's Take:
This might go in the “duh” section but as someone who’s worked in the job posting / recruitment niche, this is rarely done right. Too often employers seek to publish a job opening ASAP and provide minimal information assuming they can elaborate in the interview. Google now confirms this is less than ideal for optimimal search exposure.
Article:
Google Removes 12 Structured Data Fields From Support Docs
What's Important:
Barry Schwartz reviewed recently updated support documentation and found that 12 structured data fields were removed and are no longer supported.
Nick's Take:
Barry notes that if you are using these it’s not likely a high priority to edit or remove the code from the site. We simply need to understand that no Google tool will validate them and we shouldn’t anticipate any rich results within Google’s search results by continuing to use them.
Video:
Does URL Length Matter?
What's Important:
Google’s John Mueller tackles the question of URL length and its impact on search. In short, no. However, Google’s canonical system may prioritize shorter URLs over longer in a situation where content is available via multiple URLs.
Nick's Take:
Not completely earth breaking, but these types of questions are fairly common from clients in my experience. It’s great to have official Google documentation to point to a solid answer.
Article:
Search Analytics API now supports Discover, Google News, and Regex
What's Important:
Google announced last week that data from Discover and Google News is now available through its Search Analytics API.
Nick's Take:
This update is only beneficial to those who get traffic from Google’s discover and news. The fact that Google continues to integrate more and more data into its API is only a good sign for additional updates to come in the future!
Article:
Giving kids and teens more control over their images in Search
What's Important:
Google’s Danny Sullivan, writes about a new tool that gives underage individuals more control of their images in Google’s search results. At this point, a form (located here) can be filled out and if approved the image(s) will be removed from Google.
Nick's Take:
It’s no surprise that the internet is no longer a safe place for minors. This tool is one more step to keeping people safe which is great to see. It is important, however, to recognize that an image being removed from Google does NOT mean that it is being removed from the original source where it’s hosted.
Top SEO Resources From Last Week
Structured Data - Change History & Alerts
Written by the Sitebulb team, Sitebulb.com
It’s very possible that I’ve been living under a rock but I just came across this great change history for structured data updates. If you like insights on changes such as what I covered above (12 structured data fields removed…) then you’ll love this resource.
SEO Glossary: 190+ Terms and Definitions You Should Know
Written by Si Quan Ong, Ahrefs.com
Talk to any SEO for 10 minutes and you can typically guage their experience and knowledge by the terminology they use. This is a great glossary worth going over for the next time you go to that industry event.
Robots.txt Easter Eggs – Make Your Robots Directives Fun For Humans!
Written by Gosia Poddębniak, onely.com
I’m not going to lie. I LOVE creative robots.txt files. From Nike’s swoosh to unlisted technical SEO positions, a sites robots.txt file is always worth checking out. Thanks for writing this Gosia!
Let's talk about (Google) AMP
Article by Barry Adams, SEOforGoogleNews.com
Barry has never been shy to share his opinion on AMP. He recently published a post about the benefits and drawbacks of AMP with recent changes in SERP features. If Google continues to show more and more non AMP content in its (historically) AMP exclusive SERP featured snippets, is now the time to ditch AMP?
What Kind of Content Appears in Google Discover [Case Study]
Article by Mordy Oberstein, SEMRush.com
Mordy tracked 6 months worth of Discover content to better understand the type of content that is regularly displayed. Interestingly enough, niche sites were far more prominent than I would have guessed. I bet you won’t be shocked to see how often YouTube is shown though! :)
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