Welcome to episode #68 of the SEO Newsletter by #SEOSLY!
Here are the latest and the most important news from the world of SEO. I have curated the best pieces for you. Enjoy!
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JetOctopus is a cloud-based website crawler and SEO log analyzer. The tool allows you to analyze your website structure, check for broken links, detect technical SEO issues, and monitor your website’s ranking in search engines.
JetOctopus is the fastest and most affordable SaaS crawler and logs analyzer without limits.
Watch my interview with Areej AbuAli from Women in Tech SEO
Episode #25 of the SEO Podcast by #SEOSLY features a special guest – Areej AbuAli – founder of Women in Tech SEO and probably one of the most prominent people in SEO.
Top SEO News
Here is the most important news from the world of SEO from the last two weeks. A lot has been happening!
Google is working on AI search feature users can “engage directly with”
In the Google Q4 earnings call, Sundar Pichai confirmed the company’s plans to deliver ChatGPT-like features. READ MORE.
Yandex Search Ranking Factors Leaked & Revealed
Yandex, a technology company, had a large amount of its source code leaked, including that of Russia’s largest search engine, reportedly by a disgruntled employee. As a result, SEO specialists and others are examining the code to gain insights.
Unconfirmed Google Update Impacting Product Reviews Sites
On Thursday, January 26th, there were some signs of a possible Google search ranking algorithm update. Glenn Gabe shared some really shocking charts of sites previously impacted by Google updates but now seeing a big swing. READ MORE.
💰 Introducing SEO Cash Flow: FREE Help to Grow Your Business!
More and more SEO experts are choosing to become freelancers or consultants. Everyone talks about how to level up your skills but nobody talks about $$$.
Enter SEO Cash Flow: a new FREE monthly column about how to increase your bottom line.
We, Myriam Jessier from Pragm and me, Olga Zarr from SEOSLY are teaming up. We’re going to be talking money in SEO, discussing insights and strategies to help you maximize your earnings.
Need help pricing your services? Want to accurately gauge the value of your work? SEO Cash Flow aims to empower professionals like you to confidently negotiate their worth. This column is for you if you are a freelancer, agency owner, or in-house SEO specialist.
So what next?
Ever heard of Myriam? Check out our interview to get to know her.
Other SEO News
English Google SEO office hours from January 2023
Don’t miss the latest episode of the Google SEO office hours where people from Google answer SEO questions.
Google Does Major Refresh Of The Canonicalization Help Documentation
Google has updated its search help documentation around canonicalization this morning. The Google Search Relations team split into three distinct sections and updated a lot of the content to provide clearer details about how Google Search and canonicalization work. READ MORE.
How Vimeo improved Video SEO for their customers
In 2022, Vimeo adopted Google’s best practices, which included implementing VideoObject structured data and applying the best practices to their video player, so that Vimeo customers could benefit from features like Key Moments without additional work. READ MORE.
New updates to the Search Console Video indexing report
Google has added to the Video indexing report in Search Console, which helps users understand their video performance on Google and identify areas for improvement. A new video impressions overlay now allows for an easier understanding of performance, showing daily video impressions over time and aggregated by page. READ MORE.
Microsoft Bing is integrating ChatGPT into its search engine
Want to dive deep into lawyer SEO? Check this out.
Here is the interview with Rafi Arbel, president of a lawyer SEO agency based in Chicago. I had the pleasure of working with Rafi for a year (as Director of SEO) before I decided to fully commit to my own thing.
You will find a lot of interesting insights and tips around lawyer SEO. My computer crashed during this interview (and I had to record in a different way) and Rafi had some connectivity issues but still, the interview has tons of lawyer SEO bombs.
Top SEO Tips
And here are the SEO tips for you.
#1: Bing: The “lastmod” tag in the XML sitemap is essential
Microsoft Bing recently released a blog post that highlights the importance of the “lastmod” tag in XML sitemaps. According to the post, this tag is one of the most crucial elements to include in your sitemap. Furthermore, Bing is making changes to its crawl scheduling system to put more emphasis on this “lastmod” field, making it even more critical to include. READ MORE.
Google suggests that if you have control over the credit links in your footer, you should apply the “nofollow” attribute to them, such as links that say “site designed by,” “powered by,” or “made by.” If you are unable to do so, Google stated not to worry about it. READ MORE.
#3: Google: When you redesign a site, its rankings in search engines may go nuts.
Gary Illyes from Google posted a reminder on LinkedIn saying that search engines use the HTML of your pages to understand the content. If you modify the HTML by breaking up paragraphs, replacing H tags with CSS styling, or adding line break tags, especially for CJK languages, you alter the way the HTML is parsed, which may impact the site’s ranking. READ MORE.
#4: Google: Google Search Console verification has no impact on rankings
Gary Illyes from Google said during the most recent SEO office hours that having your site verified in Search Console or changing the verification code and method has no effect on indexing or ranking whatsoever.
#5: The most frequent cause of blocking Googlebot are misconfigured firewalls or CDNs
Gary Illyes from Google has recently published a post on LinkedIn highlighting that the most frequent cause for a site unexpectedly blocking Googlebot from crawling is a misconfiguration of either a firewall or a CDN. He advised website owners to check the traffic their firewalls and CDN are blocking and emphasized that, in the majority of cases, the blockage is accidental.
Don’t Miss These Resources
Here are the resources that will help you stay updated with the world of SEO.
Weekly SEO Recap by Barry Schwartz
Weekly SEO Recap by iPull Rank
SEO News from the Edge
Super Video from Doug Cunnington
JavaScript page performance problems
ChatGPT for SEO: Opportunities, Threats, Tips & Future in SEO and Search
Don’t Miss These Articles
Here are the best articles about SEO I’ve selected for you for this episode.
ChatGPT Won’t Replace Google Search (Yet)
Even in the relentless news and noise of early 2023, you’ve probably heard about ChatGPT, the GPT-3-powered (technically, 3.5) chatbot that’s eerily able to simulate human-like responses. READ MORE.
Product Knowledge Graph and E-E-A-T: How to Use Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trust Combined to Improve Your SEO
Learn how to use the Product Knowledge Graph and the E-E-A-T factors together to gain a competitive advantage for your SEO. READ MORE.
How to Block ChatGPT From Using Your Website Content
ChatGPT gets access to website content to learn from it. This is how to block your content from becoming AI training data. READ MORE.
Yandex Local SEO Ranking Factors!
Local SEO Guide has identified 154 local-related factors thus far and has added our guesses at their interpretation for the first 10. READ MORE.
9 Common Technical SEO Issues That Actually Matter
In this article, we’ll see how to find and fix technical SEO issues, but only those that can seriously affect your rankings. READ MORE.
Best AI Tools for Digital Marketers in 2023
Whether you’re ready or reluctant to use these tools, AI is likely here to stay. Our roundup below will helpfully empower you to determine which tool(s) could benefit you most. READ MORE.
How to Automate Dull SEO Tasks
With the right tools, you can automate various SEO processes—and free up resources for tasks that need more creative, human input. In this post, I’ll share two examples of SEO tasks you can automate. READ MORE.
What Does Artificial Intelligence Mean for Local SEO?
In this article, you will learn AI usage in SEO with a special focus on local SEO. This is a really awesome read. READ MORE.
Google Research, 2022 & beyond: Responsible AI
“In this blog post, we share ways we have approached Responsible AI across our research in the past year and where we’re headed in 2023. We highlight four primary themes covering foundational and socio-technical research, applied research, and product solutions, as part of our commitment to building AI products in a responsible and ethical manner, in alignment with our AI Principles.” READ MORE.
SEO Twitter nuggets
And before we end, here are a few Twitter nuggets for you. We don’t know if Twitter is going to be here in the future, so let’s use it while it still is here.
Thank you for reading my newsletter! I hope you found the information useful and informative. If you enjoyed this issue, be sure to check out the next one next week.
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