Google Sends Out Error Email To Website Owners
SEOForLunch issue #258 focuses on Google's internal error sending out redirect error alerts to site owners despite no issue existing.
Hi Lunch Buddies!
Does anyone here like snow? We received TWENTY inches of snow from Friday afternoon to Saturday night. I’m used to snow here in Minnesota but this was pretty impressive.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I was out of town during the snowfall. I took my first business trip since the pandemic started to meet a client. We had a meeting, threw some axes, and enjoyed an amazing meal. For all your viewing pleasure, I share with you my ax-throwing skills below. No Santa’s were hurt during the shenanigans.
Let’s jump into this week’s #SEOForLunch.
-Nick
WIX announced big SEO upgrades
[sponsor]
In the latest of a series of major SEO upgrades, Wix now offers full URL customization.
You can customize subdirectory names, edit, remove or add a prefix to your URLs or even create a completely flat URL structure in blog and product pages. Plus, Wix automatically takes care of creating 301 redirects for all impacted URLs.
That’s on top of a long list of advanced SEO capabilities that are already built-in:
Structured data out of the box
Bulk 301 redirects
Editable robots.txt file
GMB integration
Enhanced eCommerce for GA
Bot log reports
Full control of meta-tags
Automatic page caching
Instant homepage indexing (Google)
Official Search Engine Updates
Tweet:
Google: Redirect Error GSC Emails Are An “Internal Error”
What's Important:
Google’s Search Central Twitter account announced that redirect error email alerts that many site owners are receiving are an internal error. They are not believed to be due to anything being wrong with the actual website. An update should be put in place soon.
Nick's Take:
I have access to quite a few GSC accounts. One of two errors didn’t concern me but when I saw a significant amount of alerts come through I had figured it might be an error. Glad to see this was the case. If your inbox looks like this, no need to worry.
Video:
How To Handle A Website That Will Be Down For WEEKS In Search?
What's Important:
Aakash asks Google’s John Mueller in his December 10 “office hours” session what to expect if their website needs to be taken offline for a week or two. John walks him through a few solutions but ultimately sets the expectation for their site to lose indexing and rankings. The answer is worth listening in full. [4:14]
Nick's Take:
In a perfect world, anytime a website update needs to take place, it’s done and complete within a few hours. This solution will rarely if ever see an impact within search. Unfortunately, being down for a few weeks is almost a guarantee that the pages of the site will start falling out of the index.
Top SEO Resources From Last Week
December’s Product Reviews Update Was Bigger Than Aprils Update
Barry Schwartz, SearchEngineLand.com
Barry utilizes data provided by SEMRush and Rank Ranger to demonstrate the impact to search results as a result of Google’s December product review update. What’s interesting is that the update seems to be even larger than the initial impact that the original update had when launched back in April.
Do Links Still Matter for Rankings?
Patrick Stox, Ahrefs.com
Boy do I love case studies — especially when it involves backlinks. So what happens if you disavow links to specific pages on your website. If links no-longer matter (as some in the SEO space like to believe) then you’d expect to see little to no impact. This article shows exactly why all SEOs should still care about backlinks. This is your must read of the week if you only have time for one article.
100 Things To Know About Google Core Updates
Marie Haynes, MarieHaynes.com
Given the recent core algo update back in November, this post is a great refresher on all things core updates. Marie is well known as one of the few people in our industry that specialize in core updates and Google specific penalties. This is a rare article worth bookmarking and coming back to anytime you have a core update question.
Does adding FAQ Schema Help SEO Performance
Daniel Haugen, SearchPilot.com
When in doubt, adding schema markup to your site is never going to hurt you. That’s my personal take. However, don’t take my word for it, create tests and track your performance pre/post implementation. On that note, Daniel and the Search Pilot team tested the impact on organic performance by adding FAQ schema. I’ll let you read in detail the results of the test. Hint: use FAQ schema :)
How Do You Know If A Link Is Safe?
Michael Martinez, SEO-Theory.com
Want to follow a very similar process to how I personally vet acquiring links? It doesn’t matter if you pay for your links, guest post, or practice “clean” manual outreach for editorial links. This guide walks you through steps to determine your not getting a link from a garbage site that may hurt you more than help.
Ever consider freelance career? Check out my second newsletter The SEO Freelancer!
[#SEOForLunch Partner]
Most of you know that I made the transition from 10+ year agency SEO to full-time freelance nearly 2 years ago. Want to read more about my first 8 months? I share all the details in this post. FIRED To $165,036.20 in 8 Months. My Freelancing Story
Whether you want to freelance full-time or part-time to help make paying the bills just a bit easier, I recommend you sign up for the monthly email.
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Learn More About The Guy Behind The #SEOForLunch: Nick LeRoy
Nick LeRoy is a professional SEO Consultant specializing in technical SEO, content strategy, and website migrations.
Nick is also the author of two SEO focused newsletters: #SEOForLunch and The SEO Freelancer.
You can connect with Nick online through Twitter and LinkedIn.