The SEOs Diners Club - Issue #19 - Weekly SEO Tips & News

July 03, 2022

Here are the weekly SEO insights for the SEOs Diners Club members. In addition, you can also join our free SEO Diners Club network to ask questions and share your thoughts on these topics and more.

Google: 8 SEO Tips for Your Ecommerce Site

If you have an e-commerce site, these recommendations shared by Google can increase your SEO performance.

Alan Kent, one of the Google developers, released a video this week where he talks about eight tips for e-commerce sites.

I have summarized the suggestions shared in the video for you;

  • Quickly resolve the problems that Google detects on your site, specified in the Google Search Console Coverage report section, in line with Google's recommendations.

  • With Google's URL inspection tool, you can examine the pages with indexing problems and try to resolve the issues by considering the suggestions on Google's reference page:

Explore this set of guides and best practices on how to make your ecommerce website more discoverable in Google Search.

  • He mentioned how vital product page titles are on an e-commerce site. So please pay close attention to your titles and page descriptions and ensure they benefit users.

  • If you publish the descriptions on your product pages as they are delivered to you from the supplier, try to rewrite them uniquely and consider user needs.

  • The Google Search Console performance report will clearly show your performance on any search query.

  • Ensure that you define product variants with the correct structural data

  • The site loading speed can play a decisive role in rankings when pages of the same product on different sites compete with the same or nearly the same product descriptions. Make improving your site load speed a routine task.

  • With the pandemic, there has been an explosion in the number of e-commerce sites. So, naturally, there is an explosion in SEO competition. Be patient to reap the fruits of your SEO efforts.

Bulk Load Performance Tests with PageSpeed ​​Insights API and Python

Analyze and test several pages simultaneously for user experience, crawl efficiency, conversion rate, and ranking improvements with scripting.

I wanted to share the article by Koray Tugber Gubur, published in the Search Engine Journal this week.

Google offers the PageSpeed ​​Insights API to assist SEO experts and developers by mixing real-world data with simulation data and providing loading performance timing data for web pages.

The difference between Google PageSpeed ​​Insights (PSI) and Lighthouse is that PSI contains both real-world and lab data, while Lighthouse simulates a page load by changing the device's connection and user agent. Another difference is that PSI does not provide information regarding web accessibility, SEO, or progressive web applications (PWAs), while Lighthouse offers all of the above.

Analyze and test several pages at once for user experience, crawl efficiency, conversion rate, and ranking improvements with this script.

Google Rich Results Guidelines Bans Guns, Recreational Drugs, Tobacco - E-Cigarettes and Gambling Products

Google's new update aligns Google Search guidelines more with merchant guidelines.

Google has updated the rich result content guidelines to align with the general Google merchant guidelines. In addition, he declared that he would no longer allow rich consequences for widely banned or regulated products that could seriously harm yourself or others.

This better aligns Google Search guidelines with merchant guidelines.

How Can You Leverage Multimedia Content in Your SEO Strategy?

I wanted to share an interesting video about Multimedia Content.

Where does the multimedia content appear in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page)?

It often seems in featured snippets.

So many different types of media can rank today because search engines are so much brighter. Looking at statistics from a study by SimilarWeb as of October 2021, about 20% of all keyword searches result in a different SERP feature. In other words, our probability of appearing in Google results in any search query is not limited to the relevant page of our website. SERP features have grown more than 15% since March 2021 in the US alone.

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There is an interesting detail in the video prepared by the SMA Marketing agency, which you can find below. With the arrival of Google's MUM algorithm, website owners will need more multimedia content to express themselves and meet user expectations.

In the video below, you can see how SMA Marketing effectively uses multimedia content based on page examples:

What is the Difference Between Search Queries and Keywords?

Understanding the difference between search queries and keywords is key to creating search strategies that work.

Marketers unconsciously use the terms search query and keyword interchangeably; however, how the two terms differ needs to be clarified.

Because not knowing the difference between a query and a keyword can lead to underperforming search marketing strategies, this article, published in the Search Engine Journal, has examined the essential characteristics of both search queries and keywords, starting with the definition.

Understanding the difference between search queries and keywords is the key to creating search strategies that work. 

What is a Search Query?

Search queries are what people are searching for. For example, when you ask Siri something (a query) or type something into Google (query) and hit the "search" button — this is known as a search query.

The term search query refers to the literal text used to initiate a search. The information a user wants to get is known as the search intent (user intent).

What is a Keyword?

Keywords are the foundation of search campaigns—the words or phrases you use to get a paid ad or organic traffic.

Keywords are the terms or phrases you want your website to appear on Google.

What is the Difference Between the Two?

Users don't know keywords and don't care about keywords. They are just looking for answers to their questions.

Understanding what our audience writes to Google and how it relates to content and ads is crucial to successful marketing campaigns.

The following image summarizes the situation very well;

This example shows that different search queries can redirect users to the same root keyword.

You can continue to use search queries and keywords interchangeably. But remember that the difference between search queries and keywords has the power to change the way you think about marketing strategy.

Surfer SEO Announces New Semrush Integration

Surfer SEO, one of the favorite tools of content producers, started to create SEO recommendations integrated with Semrush.

Surfer SEO is a service we have been using for about a year, allowing us to produce and analyze content from a semantic SEO perspective.

It allows us to evaluate from a semantic SEO perspective, especially when creating a content brief. It is beneficial not only in terms of keywords but also in terms of learning the expectations of the user who will read the relevant content.

As you know, Google no longer evaluates the content of a page solely based on the keywords in it. In my opinion, to think that this is still the case is the same as saying that the earth is flat.

Evolving towards a semantic search engine, Google makes it necessary for us content producers to start thinking like this too. Therefore, I recommend you start using such tools as soon as possible.

Surfer SEO and Semrush went into integration; With the Semrush integration, Surfer SEO's Grow Flow, an artificial intelligence-supported recommendations tool, will also begin to share the recommendations of Semrush. You can find detailed information in the article below:

Machine learning tool Surfer SEO has partnered with Semrush for a first-of-its-kind integration.

Everything You Need to Know About the Google Freshness Algorithm

Google's Freshness Algorithm dramatically changes the way sites are ranked.

Google's Freshness Update was a significant ranking algorithm change that revealed the trend to make search results more precise and sensitive to user intent.

The result of the update was the ability to add time as a measure of relevance for search queries. This change allowed Google to reveal trending content regularly (like an annual event) or frequently updated (like new product models).

Google announced the algorithm update on November 3, 2011. Google's official blog post announcement stated that the change impacted about 35% of search queries and markedly impacted about 6% to 10% of search queries. As a result, this update was a very significant change in the way Google ranked web pages.

You can learn fascinating details about this important update in the following article:

Google's Freshness Algorithm changed how sites are ranked for three categories of search queries.

15 Project Management Tools for SEO Professionals

As the number of your SEO projects increases, tracking can become difficult. However, this list of project management tools can help you.

I believe in the importance of managing an SEO campaign as a project. As someone approaching his 15th year in the industry, I have witnessed that SEO projects are organized in many ways. In my journey that started with Excel files, I used Jira, Basecamp, Asana, Trello, etc. I used many different tools.

You should handle SEO project management from the perspective of both your team and your customers. In my opinion, the project management tool you choose should act as a bridge between the customer and the SEO consultant or agency as plainly and simply as possible. 

In other words, the project management tool you choose and the task creation process through this tool should not create a bureaucracy in itself. For this reason, we prefer to move forward with Trello lately. Creating an effortless flow makes it easy for all parties to follow.

In the following article, 15 project management tools that you can use in SEO projects are evaluated with their pros and cons:

Staying on top of all your SEO campaigns can be tricky. This list of project management tools can help you out.

How to Prevent Your Content from Appearing on Google Search

Googlers discussed this topic in this week's Search Off The Record podcast episode.

Lizzi Sassman, Gary Illyes, and John Mueller chatted about the role of Robots.txt files and Robots meta tags.

What roles do they play in crawling and indexing? What other apps can you apply to remove unwanted content from Google Search? You can listen to this podcast to discover some helpful Search tips and tricks for content blocking.

Book Of The Week: The User's Guide to Sleight of Mouth: How to Unleash the Magic of Language to Persuade Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere - Robert Dilts

I recommend reading this book to discover how language shapes our lives.

This summer, I chose the books I will recommend based on our thinking system. Because although most of us are unaware of it, the way we live our lives can vary greatly depending on how we think and react to events that happen to us.

While the pandemic embitters most people, some people can see this as an opportunity and progress faster than we expected. So how can this happen?

I want to recommend an excellent book full of this and similar examples, which I am currently reading.

The author of the book, Robert Dilts, has been working as a researcher, writer, trainer, and consultant in the field of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) since 1973. In addition to the various NLP practices he has developed in organizational development, learning, creativity, and health, he has personally contributed to developing systemic NLP with strategies and belief systems.

In his book "The User's Guide to Sleight of Mouth," he explains in a compelling way how we can achieve different results in life by changing the language we use and the way we think.

The User's Guide to Sleight of Mouth: How to Unleash the Magic of Language to Persuade Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere [O'Brien, Doug] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The User's Guide to Sleight of Mouth: How to Unleash the Magic of Language to Persuade Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere

I hope you enjoyed my weekly SEO insights. Hope to see you the following Monday in the new episode. I wish you all a great week.

Best,

Mert Erkal