How Google Fights Web Spam in 2021+
In issue 278 of the #SEOForLunch we cover two Google updates, expired domain trickery, gender gap in SEO authorship and much more!
Hi Lunch Buddies!
By the time you are reading this, I’ll already be at the annual Zenith Digital Marketing Conference in Duluth, MN. I’ve never been to this conference before but I’m very excited to see industry friends in real life. I’ll likely be sharing some tips/insights on Twitter throughout the day — go ahead and give me a follow for updates.
If by chance your at the conference and see me make sure to say hi!
BTW. I re-launched my personal site over the weekend. What do you think? Hit REPLY to this email and your note will come directly to my inbox.
Let’s jump into this week’s newsletter
-Nick
The Full Agenda For MnSearch Summit Is Here!
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Get ready for 2 great days of learning from industry leaders and lots of opportunities to network with speakers and peers throughout, or after over drinks at the Post-Summit Bash! Day 1 is jam-packed with learning opportunities with actionable lessons in a variety of topics from growing your brand, managing an agency, DEIB initiatives, PR, Local SEO, and Link Auditing. The second day is filled with sessions focused on SEO, PPC, analytics, email, content, social media and much more! Save $100 by registering for both days of programming! Do you have your ticket yet?
Save On Workshop + Session Tickets
Official Search Engine Updates
Video
How to grow your WordPress site with Site Kit?
What's Important:
Google product manager, Mariya Moeva shares a new Google tool for WordPress sites called “Site Kit”. It will help you track and provide updates on how you progress against your site’s performance.
Nick’s Take:
While Site Kit does sound interesting to those without a marketing background, I think the key takeaway is the four-step process: 1. define goals + map to online metrics, 2. find tools for each metric, 3. establish a baseline, and 4. take action (repeat).
Article
How we fought Search spam on Google in 2021
What's Important:
Google’s Principal Engineer, Cody Kwok discusses how their AI-based spam-prevention system called “SpamBrain” caught 6X the number of spam sites compared to 2020.
Nick’s Take:
The amount of spam that is published on the web is absolutely crazy. In many situations, it still works which is why Google is busy creating new versions of “SpamBrain” and other search quality efforts. Makes my brain hurt thinking about fighting this fight each and every day.
Did You Notice That Change On Your Site?
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Know exactly what is happening on your site with ContentKing Change Tracking™.
Every change is tracked in real time, including on individual pages. Have access to a full changelog of page titles, meta descriptions, hreflang implementations, canonical links and everything else in between.
Top SEO Resources From Last Week
SEO Testing: How to Run Successful SEO Tests
Aleyda Solis, YouTube.com
Emily Potter and Nick Swan join Aleyda in her Crawling Monday’s video discussing how to successfully run SEO Tests. If you want to learn about mistakes to avoid and even surprising test results, check out this video.
Scammers snatch up expired domains, vexing Google
Haje Jan Kamps, techcrunch.com
I love when SEO gets mainstream coverage. The fact that one of the industry’s “dirty little secrets” is getting covered makes it even better. Haje talks about expired domains and how many webmasters are still able to leverage them to gain an advantage in Google’s search results.
The Definitive Guide to Google Business Profile Optimization
Jessie Low, Whitespark.ca
Do you have questions on how to build optimize your Google Business Profile (previously GMB) listings? This guide walks you through everything you need from the first step all the way to a “complete” listing.
Can AI Perform SEO? Experimenting With OpenAI’s GPT-3
Vincent Terrasi, SearchEngineJournal.com
Should SEOs be scared that technology is going to take their job away from them? Vincent runs multiple SEO scenarios past a GPT-3 trained artificial intelligence to see how “it” responds. The results are VERY interesting! Vincent even had the AI take a popular SEO test - check this post out to see how it did.
The gender gap in SEO publishing
Lidia Infante, Lidia-infante.com
According to this post, 69% of all published SEO authors are male… let that sink in for a moment. OK, this number didn’t sit well with me either. Unfortunately, I’ve even seen my freelancing podcast skewing very heavily male so I published a tweet to get connected to more awesome female SEO freelancers. My hope is that from this article (and genuinely being more aware) our industry will continue to make progress on equality. Thank you, Lidia, for holding us to a higher standard.
You Made It To The Bottom. You’re AWESOME!
Thank you for reading this week's issue of the #SEOForLunch. If you know anyone who may also enjoy this newsletter please consider sending them to the signup page. https://nickleroy.com/newsletter
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.