SEO Newsletter #90: The Essential Mid-August SEO & AI Update – SEOSLY

I cannot believe it’s been 90 episodes of the SEO Newsletter by #SEOSLY! You can rest assured that episode 100 will be a special one with lots of cool things and surprises for you!

Mondays are for you and here is the SEO news and resources I’ve carefully curated for you so that you can stay updated with what’s currently going on in the world of SEO and AI.

I want to thank you for being my subscriber. My goal is to make this newsletter better and better.

Let’s dive into this week’s news, tips, and resources.

The SEO Newsletter by #SEOSLY is sponsored by JetOctopus

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.
I would not be able to do my work the way I do it without JetOctopus (seriously).

SEO Off the Record: SEO Obsession, Black Hat SEO, Python & More #57

Subscribe to me on these channels

If you haven’t already, I invite you to follow me across all these channels (to never miss any important SEO news, tip, or article and stay up-to-**** with the world of SEO).

Top SEO news

Here is the most important SEO & AI news from last week.

Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich results

To provide a cleaner and more consistent search experience, Google is changing how some rich results types are shown in Google’s search results. In particular, they are reducing the visibility of FAQ rich results, and limiting How-To rich results to desktop devices.

Google: CNET’s Content Pruning Plans Reasonable But SEO Impact Would Be Unnoticeable

In short, despite CNET’s plan being “pretty reasonable”, John Mueller from Google said also that the SEO impact would “unlikely to be noticeable.”

English Google SEO office-hours from August 2023

The latest dose of SEO wisdom and tips from the Google team. A must-watch!

Cora Pro SEO Software 25% OFF

Cora SEO Software has been an absolute game-changer for me. I can honestly say that this the the ONLY tool you may need if you want to improve rankings and do it in the most efficient and effective way.

Cora SEO Software is capable of measuring thousands of factors and tells you exactly which ones appear to influence rankings and how much you need of each to compete with higher ranking competitors. More and more we are finding that having a broad diversity of ranking signals is the most important ranking factor and no SEO tool on the market handles factor diversity better than Cora.

You don’t need to believe what I’m saying. Just try for yourself! I have a special lifetime deal 25% OFF (and free training) for my newsletter subscribers.

Check my interview with Ted Kubaitis, the creator of Cora.

Watch my interview with Ted Kubaitis, the creator of Cora, to learn more about how game-changing this tool is.

More AI & SEO news

Here is other SEO news, less breaking but equally important.

Google warns against content pruning as CNET deletes thousands of pages

Google says deleting old content just because it’s old isn’t beneficial for SEO. However, pruning content can be helpful – when done right.

Google Answers If Semantic HTML Element Has An Impact

John Mueller answers question about the impact of using the ARTICLE Semantic HTML element

Many large language ****** are trained using website content without permission – and some brands are demanding compensation.

Bing AI Celebrates 6 Months With New Features & Impressive Stats

Discover new features and usage statistics for Bing AI, including multimodal visual search, more browser support, and enterprise chat.

SEO Interviews

New amazing interviews with SEO stars like Cyrus Shepard, Barry Adams, Kaspar Szymanski, Kristina Azarenko and more are coming! Stay tuned!

100 SEOs to follow

☝️ THROWBACK: One of the resources I’m creating is the list of 100+ SEOs to follow. I initially wanted to publish my own version, but that wouldn’t be objective enough, so I want to ask you to suggest SEOs to put on my list.

If you haven’t already done it, please fill in this Google form, and I will add you to the list together with a link to your site and your social media profiles. Thank you!

Top SEO Tips 

And here are the Google SEO tips for you.

#2: Google: Human Oversight For AI Generated Content Is Important

Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said it is important that there is human oversight when it comes to using AI-generated content. He said this on Twitter after speaking at the Google Search Central Live event in San Francisco last *****.

#3: Google: Text To HTML Ratio Makes No Sense For SEO & Ignore It

Google’s John Mueller is at it again, saying that text-to-HTML ratios are not a thing for SEO. He said on Reddit, “It makes absolutely no sense at all for SEO,” and you should “ignore any report that gives you a text:html ratio.”

#4: Google: You Don’t Need A Niche Site To Rank On A Topic

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter, “You don’t need to have a niche site in order to rank in Google; in fact, sometimes that’s a good way not to rank.” He explained that “A page doesn’t have to be on a site that’s “related to the niche” in order to be useful & helpful.”

Videos to watch this week

Here are the latest videos from other SEOs I find especially interesting and worth watching.

Other articles & resources to read

And you need to allocate some time to read these articles from other SEOs. They are brilliant.

Tracking 20 years of search

Key takeaways and findings from an analysis of seroundtable.com’s historical Google Analytics data from 2003 to 2023.|
By JR Oakes

Business acumen in SEO: four ways to adapt and do more meaningful work

As one advance in their SEO career, you realise that soft skills become more critical. With time, business acumen also becomes an important skill. In this article, I’ll give you a few scenarios where this knowledge is applicable and how it might help you to do more meaningful work, in less time.
By Gus Pelogia

All the useful Data about SGE you need to know right now

This article will show some of the findings we have gathered over the last couple of months, some trends that show the exact verticals that Google seems to be focused on, and some verticals that Google seems to be cautious about when it comes to SGE. 
By Bartosz Góralewicz 

The Complete SEO Content and Technical Audit Guide

In this guide, we walk through a four-step process for conducting an SEO content and technical audit, and then acting on that insight.
By Stephen Jeske and Patrick Hathaway

Interaction to Next Paint: What SEOs need to know

Interaction to Next Paint is Google’s latest Core Web Vitals metric and, in less than a year, it’ll replace First Input Delay as a measure of web page interactivity. Ahead of that change, technical SEOs will need to estimate the impact of the shift for their website(s) and make recommendations to stakeholders.
By George Nguyen

How Do Blogs Make Money: 10 Ways to Cash In (+ Pros & Cons)

In this article, we will discuss 10 popular methods bloggers use to cash in on their passion, along with the pros and cons of each approach.
By Jenny Abouobaia

Local Listings Management Explained: Google Maps, Apple Maps, Facebook, and Bing

To help you build a clear picture of best practice across Google Maps, Apple Maps, Bing, and Facebook, we’ve compiled a list of the most commonly asked questions for each. Read on for the answers. 
By Jamie Pitman

Cracking Google’s Code: The Impact of Core Updates and Search Intent on Your SEO

Adapted from the MozCon 2023 presentation, Google’s Just Not That Into You: Understanding Core Updates and Search Intent by Lily Ray, Sr. SEO Director and Head of Organic Research at Amsive Digital. 
By Lily Ray

A Guide To Enterprise-Level Migrations (100,000+ URLs)

Don’t be intimidated; migrating an enterprise website without losing traffic or search rankings is possible. Here’s how.
By Dan Taylor

We ran the largest hreflang study ever, nearly 10X larger than any other study. In total, we looked at issues on 374,756 different domains that used hreflang tags. Our findings show that 67% of them have at least one issue.
By Patrick Stox

5 SEO use cases for the ChatGPT code interpreter plugin

Learn how OpenAI’s latest plugin can help you analyze internal linking, perform server log analysis, and more for better SEO results.
By John McAlpin

Thank you for reading my newsletter! I hope you found the information useful. If you enjoyed this issue, be sure to check out the next one next week.