Jim and Dave speak to Mike Rhodes, a serial entrepreneur and founder of one of Australia's largest digital marketing firms, Websavvy about his book, the Ultimate Guide to Google Ads. Rhodes had immigrated to Australia from the UK and founded and exited three other businesses before founding Websavvy in 2006. He is now a conference speaker, an investor, and a father. He joins us from Melbourne Australia. Covering the latest breaking news in Google AdWords, the book's fifth edition introduces revi...
Dec 23, 2021•30 min
The SEO Who Wasn’t or You Don’t Need Links to Rank. The SEO who wasn’t (learned a few tricks) https://www.seroundtable.com/seo-learned-a-few-tricks-job-32596.html Google <3’s affiliates just like affiliates <3 Google – No nofollow? No Problems https://www.seroundtable.com/google-wont-penalize-no-nofollowing-affiliate-links-32597.html You don’t need links to rank. Links are not mandatory. https://www.seroundtable.com/links-are-not-mandatory-for-ranking-in-google-search-32558.html Susequentl...
Dec 16, 2021•57 min
The Effect of Expired Landing Pages and other items from your website’s landfill on SEO https://searchengineland.com/how-expired-landing-pages-kill-your-google-rankings-377055 Great piece by Kasper Szymanski at SEL.Google local search algo update last week – coinciding with the introduction of the new Google (my) Business environment https://www.seroundtable.com/google-local-search-ranking-algorithm-update-32562.html Relevancy and Core Update Factors, John Meuller refers SEOs a blog post Google ...
Dec 10, 2021•56 min
Jim Hedger hosts a Holiday SEO Roundtable Discussion with Kristine Schachinger, Jenny Halasz, and Ryan Jones. 6 signs you need to migrate your ecomm store Now that online shopping season is ending it’s the time for migrations https://litextension.com/blog/6-signs-website-replatforming 18 years Congrats to Barry Schwartz and Search Engine Roundtable https://www.seroundtable.com/18-years-old-32491.html https://www.seroundtable.com/google-url-change-seo-drop-32516.html Old changes don’t make a lot ...
Dec 04, 2021•59 min
Jim and Dave speak with Mark Traphagen (VP of Product Marketing & Training) and Mitul Gandhi, (Chief Architect & Co-Founder) of seoClarity. They discuss the findings of new a new CTR study where they used over 750+ billion impressions across 17+ billion unique keywords to analyze CTRs by position, device (mobile and desktop), country, seasonality and even industry. What makes seoClarity’s study remarkably different from all other studies is the sheer volume of actual data analyzed - 750+...
Nov 25, 2021•58 min
Old XML Sitemaps won’t help your migration recoveries very much https://www.seroundtable.com/google-old-xml-sitemaps-url-migration-32441.html Google isn’t crawling pages based on the XML sitemap. New sitemaps might prompt new crawls but old ones won’t push Google to new pages faster. -- Google’s SEO Interactive Checklist https://www.seroundtable.com/google-interactive-seo-checklist-32447.html https://developers.google.com/search Google Translated Search https://www.seroundtable.com/google-transl...
Nov 18, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Google November spam update is fully rolled out by @rustybrick. November Spam Update might be a bit less well adjusted than... https://www.seroundtable.com/google-november-spam-update-impactful-32394.html Hi Robot https://www.seroundtable.com/googlebot-ip-addresses-32402.html Google releases the IP addresses of its various bots in a JSON file. Google can kill your ads if you violate the organic webmaster guidelines – very rare but it’s happened. I know it happens in reverse too eh? https://www.s...
Nov 12, 2021•57 min
Google Tackles Spam and Adult Content An update targeting content that doesn’t follow the Google guidelines started rolling out today. Named the November Spam Update... https://www.seroundtable.com/google-november-2021-spam-update-32365.html Google doesn’t necessarily know what smut is but it knows smut when it sees it. Google has no objective measure of “adultness” Lily Ray asked about the rating = adult tag and when it should be applied https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-metric-adult-c...
Nov 04, 2021•57 min
Facebook changes company name to Meta https://cnb.cx/3blo77s The company will also change its stock ticker from FB to MVRS, effective Dec. 1 Out of the Box Core Web Vitals Speeds Who wins the CMS race? WordPress, Duda, Drupal, or Wix? https://www.searchenginejournal.com/core-web-vitals-wordpress-drupal-duda-wix/425071/ Images don’t help you rank... (not so sure this answer is entirely thought out) https://www.seroundtable.com/google-web-search-images-32318.html John Mueller suggests images aren’...
Oct 28, 2021•58 min
Facebook Corporate Rebrand To Reflect Role In the Metaverse https://dailyhive.com/toronto/facebook-new-name-rebrand-report Story broke in TheVerge https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/19/22735612/facebook-change-company-name-metaverse Facebook doesn’t know how they will rebrand (short history of renaming efforts at FB) https://mashable.com/article/facebook-zuckeberg-new-name Facebook slammed by its own oversight board for VIP treatment of VIPs https://www.npr.org/2021/10/21/1047928585/oversight-boar...
Oct 22, 2021•58 min
More actionable error reports for Rich Results in Google Search Console https://www.seroundtable.com/google-rich-results-status-reports-detailed-32212.html Penalizing Interlinked Link Schemes https://www.seroundtable.com/google-interlinked-link-schemes-32207.html Carbon Rating your Flying Routes – Sustainable with Google https://www.seroundtable.com/sustainability-with-google-32206.html Google Search Console Adds New Rich Results https://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-adds-new-rich-r...
Oct 07, 2021•59 min
Are You Older Than Google? MUM (multitask unified model) It’s not just a new algorithm; it’s a new way of ordering and facilitating search -Things to Know – paths users take when exploring this topic (web surfing?) -Topic Exploration – Using related topics user can zoom into or broaden topic -Visual Exploration – Image search but actually useful. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-redesign/421415/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-mum-is-coming-to-lens/421385/ -Google Mer...
Oct 01, 2021•1 hr
Google Search Console Performance Data outage appears to have ended https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-performance-report-back-32131.html SMX will remain a virtual conference until at least 2022. https://www.seroundtable.com/smx-virtual-through-2022-32128.html Google is now allowing advertising of at-home COVID-19 test kits https://www.seroundtable.com/google-at-home-covid-19-test-kits-listings-32134.html Author Byline Critical, Needed, or Just Good Practice? https://www.seroundt...
Sep 23, 2021•56 min
Jim and Dave interview Lily Ray, the Sr. Director, SEO & Head of Organic Research at Amsive Digital, where she provides strategic leadership for the agency’s SEO client programs. Born into a family of software engineers, web developers and technical writers, Lily brings a strong technical background, performance-driven habits and forward-thinking creativity to all programs she oversees. Lily began her SEO career in 2010 in a fast-paced start-up environment and moved quickly into the agency w...
Sep 16, 2021•52 min
Sometimes website quality can’t be fixed with technical changes Maybe it’s not the Core Web Values. Perhaps it’s not links or that nasty pagination problem. You can make it fast and sometimes Google still doesn’t care. Sometimes a website’s quality isn’t found in the presentation. Sometimes it’s what’s being presented. “if you want search engines to take your site more seriously, you really, really need to improve the game there." So making changes to your site speed, core web vitals, changing y...
Sep 09, 2021•57 min
Google’s Data’s Gone Dave it’s Gone, the Data’s Gone... the data’s gone away https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-performance-report-data-gone-32011.html (read from page if necessary) Twitter $uper Followers Twitter is allowing a select group of creators (read, American residents) to charge a $3 premium to exchange $uper $pecial inspirations with their followers. Currently available to American users only, $uper Follower Creators need to be •18 years old •Have 10K+ active followers...
Sep 02, 2021•59 min
Rumour has it TikTok might have just bought a Virtual Reality company – Robert Scoble FB Tease The metaverse is quickly gentrifying from a virtually real place to a very real place. I think people really need to think about this space. UK, as part of Brexit to do away with many EU privacy laws, including the laws covering use of cookies. The plan is to create a more flexible data environment with less bureaucracy and very probably less transparency. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-99288...
Aug 26, 2021•58 min
Core Update Recovery – How do you know you’re on the right track? https://www.seroundtable.com/google-core-update-quality-changes-track-31940.html Keep Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’ – Google Spam Update still rolling out after three weeks https://www.seroundtable.com/google-link-spam-update-still-rolling-out-31948.html Google using H1 tag to form title tags https://www.seroundtable.com/google-header-tags-vs-title-tag-snippet-change-is-not-related-to-passaging-ranking-31954.html Write content t...
Aug 19, 2021•1 hr
Maximize Discover results with the Max Image Preview tag. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/increase-google-traffic-with-max-image-preview-tag/416123/ Explaining Google’s new Work at Work or Lose at Home Pay Scale Plans https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pay-cut-google-employees-home-100348715.html In which Google gives three options on audit plans for Core Web Vitals. (First they say it’s a thing and they say it’s not such a thing and then they say it’s much more than that and then they say... . ...
Aug 12, 2021•57 min
Google: If You Remove A Part Of Your Site, The Site Will Rank Differently https://www.seroundtable.com/remove-part-of-site-google-seo-31854.html User Queries Help Google Determine What To Show In Knowledge Panels https://www.seroundtable.com/queries-google-knowledge-panels-31869.html Make Every feature Binary: A 135B parameter sparse neural network for massively improved search relevance https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/make-every-feature-binary-a-135b-parameter-sparse-neural-networ...
Aug 05, 2021•56 min
Webcology – July 29, 2021 We have another sad announcement to start the show with this week. Erik Stafford, the witty and well loved Creative Director at aimClear passed away last night. He had a heart attack two months short of his 48th birthday. If you grew up in Chicago in the 80s and 90s, you might have known him as the guerilla street artist, GEAR. Eric was a frequent writer and conference speaker. He was a father of two children and passed way too young. Erik D. Stafford, rest in peace, yo...
Jul 30, 2021•53 min
SEO Bob Gladstein – died last Friday at age 57. https://www.seroundtable.com/bob-gladstein-rip-31788.html Bob was one of the originals. He’s one of the guys who taught second gen superstars like Aaron Wall and Rand Fishkin. He was QWERTY in the early community spaces like Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Forums or the IHelpYou community. On Twitter he was @bubba_ji. His employer, Overdrive Interactive suggested honouring Bob with donations to the Mass SPCA in his name: @MspcaAngell – a renowned leade...
Jul 23, 2021•58 min
July 2021 Core Update is over https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-july-2021-core-algorithm-update/413204/ seroundtable.com/google-local-core-update-31739.html Yandex SEO Comrad https://www.searchenginejournal.com/yandex-seo-guide/252885/ Google hit by fine by French Government https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-fined-e500-million-for-french-news-negotiation-breach/413436/ News Corp Website set up as reaction to Google./Facebook deal in Aus. Fails https://www.searchenginejournal.co...
Jul 16, 2021•56 min
Brand SERP optimisation and knowledge panel management with Jason Barnard This is a day of reflection and contemplation in Canada. Please take care wishing us a "happy Canada Day". Many Canadians are thinking about the buried history of cultural genocide and ethnic cleansing that made Canada. This month Canadians have been reminded of the tens of thousands of children of First Nations who died in residential schools run by religious orders after being stolen from their parents and families in a ...
Jul 01, 2021•57 min
Google puts all its policies on one page. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-content-policies-31648.html (list of all it covers) https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/10622781 Spam Updates – Spam Algo update ran yesterday, another scheduled for next month. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-spam-algorithm-update-june-23rd-31649.html Algo Updates don’t affect direct traffic https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-algorithm-updates-direct-traffic-impact-31647.html Quality ...
Jun 24, 2021•58 min
Google Page Experience update is slowly rolling out. Will ratchet it up between now and end of August. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/04/more-details-page-experience June 2021 Core Update v1 done. July 2021 Core Update V1.5 still to come Google serves 48% of all ad traffic on “fake” news sites - researchers Lia Bozarth and Ceren Budak at the University of Michigan School of Information https://searchengineland.com/new-research-shows-google-serves-almost-half-of-all-ad-traffic-on-...
Jun 17, 2021•59 min
June 2021 Core Update:Lots of movement but this is a two part update so... Not really much to say. Google Search Central UnConference 2021 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-central-unconference-31568.html •June 21st, 11amET •Application to attend is necessary, space is limited Search ain’t Stable Sunshine https://www.seroundtable.com/google-never-be-stability-in-search-31566.html “Here's a secret: there will never be stability, unless someone turns off the internet.” John Mueller, 2021 ...
Jun 10, 2021•57 min
It’s almost the middle of the year! COVID is almost over in much of the developed world. A summer full of hope and opportunity is almost upon us and what does Google do? It hits us with a double whamy of a Core Update, the June/July 2021 Core Update. Thanks to Erika Varagouli (who has today’s coolest ever SEO name) SEMRush for naming Webcology the #1 podcast in a strong field to learn from. After who the hell knows how long of doing this show it is good to know we’re still relevant. Get ready fo...
Jun 03, 2021•57 min
Half the URLs Google is now crawling are HTTP/2 which saves a lot of bandwidth. This would affect your crawl budget. “Using stream multiplexing and header compression, the number of connections and the bandwidth have both gone down significantly. These improvements help both our crawling as well as your website serving infrastructure.” – John Mueller at Google I/O https://www.seroundtable.com/google-crawling-half-of-the-urls-over-http-2-31444.html MUM – Big BERTa with a lot more input. Imagine i...
May 27, 2021•57 min
Half the URLs Google is now crawling are HTTP/2 which saves a lot of bandwidth. This would affect your crawl budget. “Using stream multiplexing and header compression, the number of connections and the bandwidth have both gone down significantly. These improvements help both our crawling as well as your website serving infrastructure.” – John Mueller at Google I/O https://www.seroundtable.com/google-crawling-half-of-the-urls-over-http-2-31444.html MUM – Big BERTa with a lot more input. Imagine i...
May 20, 2021•1 hr
