Google Announces TWO Updates AND Data Studio Tips
In issue 271 of the #SEOForLunch, we cover Google's announcement of a recent algorithm rollout as well as a known bug that is still in the works.
Hi Lunch Buddies!
This week is Spring Break for my kids. We drove a few hours up north and are renting a cabin on the lake. While it’s a “workcation” for me, I’ve been plenty happy taking a few calls, snowmobiling in the afternoon, and finishing up deliverables (including this email) after the kids get to bed.
While the thought of me snowmobiling is exciting, I know what you all really want… The announcement of the Seerfest giveaway winners! The five winners are the following:
Dave Sewich
Joelle Hershberger
Edwin Acevedo
Eric Carlson
Celeste Gonzalez
I’ve reached out to the big winners and you should have access to your Seerfest ticket very soon. For anyone that didn’t win (sorry!) you can still pick up a ticket for as low as $25.00. Seerfest kicks off March 17 and goes through March 18th.
-Nick
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Official Search Engine Updates
Article
Connecting Search Console to Data Studio
What's Important:
Daniel Waisberg, Search Advocate for Google has published the first post within a series about utilizing Google Search Console data within an automated Google Data Studio report.
Nick’s Take:
A lot of SEOs love the power of Google Data Studio. Historically, teams spent hours or even days manually exporting and formatting data into a presentable report. Google Data Studio with its direct connections to various data sets allows you to invest your time in creating a report that is able to automatically update as new data is collected. I’m excited to read future posts in this series.
Tweet
Google: “The page experience rollout is now complete for desktop”
What's Important:
Google’s Search Central account announced last week that the page experience rollout is now complete.
Nick’s Take:
Last week I covered Google’s announcement on the rollout beginning. It’s always nice when Google confirms when rollouts are complete as previous updates have been anywhere between single days to multiple weeks. Mark March 3 down in your analytics although I suspect people aren’t going to see a significant impact from this update alone.
Tweet
Google: “We're experiencing an issue with the URL inspection tool”
What's Important:
Google Search Central tweeted on March 1st that they are aware of “an issue” with the URL inspection tool within Google Search Console and its API. No additional update has yet to be provided.
Nick’s Take:
I personally haven’t had issues with the tool but those who are power users of the new API might run into the issue. If/when Google provides an update on this issue i’ll make sure to include it in that week’s #SEOForLunch.
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Top SEO Resources From Last Week
How SEO Consultant Eli Schwartz Earned 159K+ Freelancing PART-TIME
Nick LeRoy, TheSEOFreelancer
I recently interviewed SEO consultant and author of “Product-Led SEO” Eli Schwartz. He was kind enough to accept my invite and we discussed everything behind his side income of over $150,000. His story (and tips) make this a great read.
Toxic Links: Here Is Why You Can Often Ignore Them
Marie Haynes, MarieHaynes.com
My friend Marie and her team at MHC are widely known as one of the best teams to work on sites impacted by search updates and or penalties. Back in the day, Marie was known for her aggressive (yet effective) disavowing services. She now goes into detail about why her team doesn’t offer this service and why she also thinks you can avoid disavowing links that many tools refer to as “toxic.”
BERT 101: State Of The Art NLP Model Explained
Britney Muller, Huggingface.co
I’m not going to lie. Prior to this article I felt that I had a pretty good idea of what BERT was and how Google leverages the technology. This article by the brilliant Britney Muller was a great overview and helped fill in a lot of gaps on the topic. It even goes as far to help you USE BERT if that’s of interest to you.
Ranking Rich Results (With Structured Data Examples)
Jean Christophe Chouinard, jcchouinard.com
This post has been needed for a long time. It’s not hard to find information for any ONE rich snippet but to get a guide that covers nearly all of them? I don’t believe it’s been done before. This is a great resource to bookmark and keep in mind whenever your analyzing a site to understand what markup might be appropriate.
Pay For Performance SEO Explained
Dan Richardson, DanRich.co
I want to be very clear upfront. I don’t recommend pay for performance SEO for 99% of SEOs. Unless you are being given equity in a company its very likely a losing proposition for the SEO taking on this deal. However, with that said, I think this was a though provoking article, to the point that I wanted to include it in this weeks newsletter simply to share my opinion. :)
You Made It To The Bottom. You’re AWESOME!
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Learn About The Guy Behind The #SEOForLunch
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.