The SEOs Diners Club - Issue #103 -Weekly SEO Tips & News

Welcome to another insightful week with The SEOs Diners Club newsletter. Leveraging over a decade of SEO expertise, I aim to distill the week's most critical developments into a concise read that won't take more than seven minutes of your time. Let's dive into the insights that matter.

Unexpected Problems And Solutions in Technical SEO

Improving the SEO performance of websites is not just limited to keyword research and content production; Technical SEO also plays a big role.

However, you may encounter some unexpected problems during the technical SEO process. This week, based on the article “3 Unexpected Examples of Technical SEO Problems (And How to Fix Them),” published by Kristina Azarenko on Moz, we will discuss common problems such as the differences between buttons and links, the use of background images, and the lazy loading method. I will offer suggestions on three technical SEO problems encountered and how to solve these problems.

Buttons and Links

To increase user interaction on your website, you must clearly understand the difference between buttons and links.

Buttons trigger specific actions, such as submitting a form or adding a product to a cart, while links direct users from one page to another.

Using links effectively in the main navigation strengthens the internal structure of your site and helps search engines understand your site better.

Web developers often want to stylize links as buttons, which requires redirecting with JavaScript when adding the link to the button. Although it is not noticeable to the user, this method creates significant differences for search engines.

In particular, Google may not directly detect such JavaScript redirects when interacting with content. It's best to use links to navigate from one page to another or buttons when you want to trigger an action.

Placing internal links correctly using the href attribute in critical places, such as primary navigation, helps Google crawl and index your site accurately. This simple rule will help you in situations where you need to decide which item you should use.

Background Images

It is expected to add images as background images on websites with CSS. However, images added with this method cannot be indexed by Google or included in the rankings because these images are seen as part of the design and are not considered content.

If you want the images to be indexed and ranked by Google, <img>add them directly with their tags and specify their sources.

This method ensures that images are correctly detected and indexed by search engines. In summary, use direct image sources for indexable and sortable photos, and use CSS and background images only as part of the design and not intended to drive traffic.

Lazy Loading

Lazy Loading is an important technique to improve user experience, but when implemented incorrectly, it can negatively impact SEO performance.

Whether the content is text or images, it must be visible so that Google can see the page and evaluate the optimization level.

It is important to note that Google does not interact with the content and does not scroll. So, waiting for Google to engage or scroll with your content will lead to disappointment.

In particular, indexing placeholder images instead of actual images is an excellent example. Placeholder images are lightweight images replaced with the exact image when the user scrolls and are designed not to affect the page loading speed.

But Google doesn't scroll, so all images need to be visible to Google. Even if placeholder images are used, there should always be a default image URL that Google can index. To do it right, don't expect Google to engage or scroll with your content; instead, use the image source and default image that Google can see and index.

Technical SEO requires attention to detail. Correctly identifying the problems you encounter, understanding their causes, and implementing practical solutions will ensure your website performs better in search engines. Adjustments to button and link usage, image optimization, and lazy loading strategies will help make your site more friendly to users and search engines.

What's Going On In Search?

• The Google Search team has improved the JavaScript documentation with minor updates, removing a large portion of the dynamic rendering documentation that was long considered a workaround.

• Google has announced that March 12, 2024, will be the official date for when Interaction to Next Paint (INP) will replace the First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital metric. We knew it was coming in March but we didn't have the specific date until now.

• Google is integrating its Gemini AI system into consumer and business products, bringing AI capabilities to apps like Search and Workspace.

• Yandex was sold to Russian investors in a $5.2 billion deal following the difficulties experienced after Russia invaded Ukraine.

• Research shows that providing hints to ChatGPT makes responses more aligned with user intent.

• The Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan gave a good analogy of the differences between ranking systems, signals, and factors. He said signals and factors are the same; the "signal/factors are like fuel; systems are the machine that uses them," Sullivan wrote.

Tip Of The Week

Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is a new Core Web Vital metric focused on responsiveness scheduled to replace First Input Delay on March 12, 2024. Optimizing for INP is easier with the right tools to monitor and track it.

You may use these tools to monitor INP and track it:

• Site Kit by Google - Integrates Google's services directly into WordPress for actionable insights on performance improvements.

• DebugBear - Offers free and paid versions to monitor page speed and diagnose INP issues.

• Web Vitals Chrome Extension - Provides a real-time overlay of core web vitals, including INP, for website development.

• TREO Site Speed - A tool that showcases Page Speed insights with an easy-to-understand interface and country-specific metrics.

• Chrome Web Vitals Library - An advanced tool for measuring real visitor metrics, deployable on publishers' servers.

Recommended Tools & Services

• Cannibalization Explorer Looker Studio Report is a tool that helps identify keyword cannibalization. It provides insights into how keywords are performing across different pages.

• Copilot Pro: Copilot Pro is available for $20/month for cloud-based GenAI models and $27/month with Microsoft 365. Copilot Pro is integrated with Microsoft 365 applications, providing access to GPT-4 Turbo and advanced AI rendering tools.

• AlsoAsked is a helpful tool that can boost your visibility on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages in the “People Also Ask” section.

• ContentShake AI is an intelligent writing tool that combines AI with real-life competitor insights. It guides you from ideation to publishing directly to the blog, generates SEO-friendly articles, and helps you optimize them for organic traffic and engagement.

• Microsoft Clarity has recently introduced a feature called Copilot, which incorporates Generative AI through Large Language Models (LLMs) into the analytics tool. This integration aims to make data more accessible and understandable for users by leveraging the same technology created by OpenAI, which powers the new Bing or ChatGPT. Copilot in Clarity offers capabilities such as Clarity Chat, which allows you to query your Clarity project in natural language and receive concise summaries, and Session Replay Takeaways, which uses Generative AI to generate key takeaways from session replays in natural language.

• InLinks is an SEO tool that uses a knowledge graph to optimize content for search engines. It automates internal linking and schema markup, simplifying SEO processes and content strategies.

I hope you enjoyed this week's SEOs Diners Club.

See you next week for a new episode of SEOs Diners Club full of further information, tactics, and strategies...

Have a great week!

Best,

Mert Erkal

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