The SEOs Diners Club - Issue #25 - Weekly SEO Tips & News

August 14, 2022

Here are the weekly SEO insights for the SEOs Diners Club members. You may also join our free SEO Diners Club network to ask questions and share your thoughts on these topics.

Google Experiences Rare, Widespread Outage

Google suffered a rare outage on August 9 that significantly impacted search results.

Google had a major outage this week, affecting Search and Maps. Site owners and SEO experts have reported issues with search indexing. Although there are occasional reports of problems, the issue appears to have been largely resolved.

I noticed it thanks to the following post by Orhan Kurulan on the SEO Diners Club network:

The issues seemed to be resolved as of today, but there are still URLs missing from search results;Quick actions that worked/didn't work for me for google.com.tr + google.co.uk- URL Update requests...

If you want to become a member of SEOs Diners Club and be one of the first to know about such situations, you can click on the link below:

Our mission is to organize the world's SEO information and make it universally accessible and helpful.

According to a statement made by a Google spokesperson in the Guardian, the issue was caused by a software update and has been resolved. During this time, rumors spread that a fire broke out in one of Google's Data Centers in England due to extreme heat.

Users reported the search engine was down and problems with Gmail, Google maps and Google images

What Is Topical Authority and How Does It Work?

With topical authority, you can boost rankings and improve organic traffic. Here are some tips to help you start building topical authority.

You've probably heard the term "authority" a lot regarding Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Authority refers to the power or influence of certain content over other information on the internet.

In SEO, the higher the perceived authority of a page, the better its chances of ranking well in organic searches.

If you want your content to rank high on Google, you need to create authoritative — reliable content. By creating quality content, you gain the trust of both visitors and Google.

Quality content helps your reputation and increases your chances of being found on search engine results pages (SERPs).

What is Topical Authority?

Authority is a measure of credibility or reliability.

It defines the importance of a particular web page or site for search engines. For example, Google uses authority signals to determine how vital certain pages are to user searches.

A topical authority is a measure of authority you gain through quality content. Higher quality, informative articles mean more people will trust your website as an authoritative source on a particular topic.

For example, a blog post about SEO written by a well-known expert in the industry (For example, dear Koray Tugberk Gubur's

Holisticseo.digital site) carries more weight than a beginner or someone who has not proven himself as a competent expert on a subject. On the other hand, a post from a brand new company doesn't carry that much weight because no one knows or trusts them yet.

Topic authority is significant because it shows how well you understand your audience and what they are searching for online.

A topical authority is also a metric that ranks websites based on the quality of the information they provide. You can gain up-to-date authority through high-quality content, reliable links pointing to your website, and social media shares.

You can find more in-depth information on the subject in the article below written by Loren Baker, owner of the Search Engine Journal site.

With topical authority, you can increase rankings and improve organic traffic. Here are some tips to help you start building topical authority today.

Google’s MUM Algorithm Can Understand When Sources Agree On Same Fact

Google's MUM algorithm has gained the ability to understand facts on the web that multiple sources have agreed upon. What does it mean?

Google's MUM algorithm can detect when multiple high-quality sources agree on the same fact.

This update to MUM is part of a significant effort to improve information literacy across the web.

A Google-sponsored survey by the Poynter Institute reveals that 62% of respondents encounter false or misleading information in Google results each week.

To help people distinguish fact from fiction, Google is starting to implement significant changes to its search results.

What Does This Improvement Mean for Search Results?

Google will now check their featured snippets to see if many reputable sources agree.

Pandu Nayak, Google's VP of Search, explains how advances in the MUM algorithm have made this possible:

“Our systems may check snippet descriptions (the word or words mentioned in a larger font above the featured snippet) against other high-quality resources on the web to see if there is general consensus for that description, even if the sources use different words. We found that this consensus-based technique significantly improves the quality and usefulness of featured snippet callouts.”

Additionally, MUM can help Google more accurately determine when queries will serve better without featured snippets.

As a result of this update, Google is reducing the triggering of featured snippets in these situations by 40%.

Expanding 'About This Result'

Google is expanding the 'about this result' feature with more context like:

  • How widely is a resource distributed

  • Online reviews of the resource or company

  • Whether the company has another legal personality

  • Whether Google found enough information about a resource

Currently, "About This Result" only appears in English, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and Indonesian SERPs.

Google's MUM algorithm gets updated with the ability to understand when multiple sources on the web come to a consensus.

Yoast SEO 19.5 Update Causes Fatal Errors

The 19.5 version of the Yoast SEO plugin caused WordPress site owners to report numerous bugs.

Yoast version 19.5 included several changes that improved the user experience, fixed a validation issue in structured article data, and fixed some minor bugs.

The Yoast SEO plugin's developers, who received many complaints after this update, solved the problem by releasing the 19.5.1 update very quickly.

If you use Yoast SEO on your sites or blog, it is better to update to version 19.5.1.

Yoast SEO plugin 19.5 update causes WordPress sites to report fatal errors.

Google: Avoid Duplicate Content in Business Profile Posts

An update to Google's Business Profiles guidelines says that duplicate content in posts is now considered SPAM.

Google has added a line to its Business Profile posts content policy warning users to avoid SPAM. Google has added the following line to the list of content users should avoid posting on their Business Profiles:

  • Duplicate photos, posts, videos, and logos

With this updated content policy, Google is sending a clear message that it wants businesses to post unique content.

Posting the same photo, video, or text block is not allowed. If you're not careful, it's possible for you to break Google's new rule, even if you're not trying to SPAM.

Let's say you run a Google Business Profile for a restaurant and publish the same charts weekly to advertise your specials. It could get you in trouble under Google's new guidelines.

Also, Google seems to want businesses to limit their use of logos. For example, putting a logo on every photo can get you in trouble. The best way to comply with the new guidelines is to ensure that each post published by your Google Business Profile is unique.

An update to Google's guidelines for Business Profiles says duplicate content in posts is now considered spam.

SEO Project Management Guide

What you need to know for effective SEO project management is summarized in this article.

Integrating SEO into marketing, website, development, or an agency team can be challenging. Many employees do not have experience working with SEO experts. They may not understand the value SEO can offer to exist workflows or believe these workflows work well enough without it.

That's why it's so important to explain the key benefits of SEO in a way that shows how they can be applied to various team needs in different departments and actively improve each one.

You can find essential advice on SEO project management in the following article:

Structure your SEO efforts into clear buy-in worthy actions and make a plan to integrate them into your team’s existing processes to become an SEO PM rockstar.

3 Essential Content Marketing Strategies to Get Website Traffic From The Start

See the easy content marketing strategy that generates 100,000 unique visitors from organic search in 6 months.

The article below shows the content marketing strategy the Hands-Off Publishing content company recommended.

Their proposed strategy generated over 100,000 unique visitors from organic search in just six months.

  • Key 1: Give Readers What They Want: Focus on the reader, and search engines will focus on you.

  • Key 2: Implement EA-T EAT for “Expertise, Authoritarianism, and Trustworthiness.” The ultimate summary of the excellent article.

  • Key 3: Create Something New What makes your content different from everything else on the internet?

You can find the details in the article below:

See the easy content marketing strategy that has produced 100,000+ unique visitors from organic search in just 6 months.

Wikipedia and SEO: Everything You Need to Know

Here are six ways to strengthen your SEO strategies with Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is one of the most popular resources for finding information of all kinds. A community-curated encyclopedia, it has more than 56 million pages in 328 languages, most of which anyone can edit.

Still, despite this free access, Wikipedia maintains a surprisingly high level of accuracy.

But what does Wikipedia have to do with search engine optimization?

We can say that it is quite a lot. For example, Wikipedia, the seventh most popular website in the world, appears on the first page of search engine results for any query, including some you're probably after.

With some strategy and digital know-how, you can leverage Wikipedia through off-site and on-site SEO tactics. Are you ready to learn more? You can start with the article below.

Six ways to turbocharge SEO strategies with Wikipedia

How SEO and Graphic Design Can Become a Dream Team?

While there are frictions from time to time, the SEO and graphic design teams go hand in hand. Here are some tips on how to reconcile and reconcile differences.

SEO experts and graphic designers don't always agree.

Modern graphic designers often prefer clean designs with a lot of white space, while SEOs care less about the latter.

Generally speaking, SEO professionals want the content to be crawlable by search engines. After all, if the keyword or keyword phrase does not appear on the page, the page will not rank high in the search engine results.

Anyone who has worked on a website project knows that disputes between SEO professionals and graphic designers will not be resolved by SEO professionals pointing to designer-specific design methodologies or unverified statistics.

After working closely with designers for over 20 years, Tony Wright has shared a few tricks to help SEO experts and designers get what they want. You can find them in the article below:

Despite natural friction, SEO and graphic design go together. Here's how to reconcile differences and tips on how to compromise

Book Of The Week: "The Power of Ignorance: How Creative Solutions Emerge When We Admit What We Don’t Know" - Dave Trott

This week, I'm adding a new one to the book recommendations about creativity.

“The wise man knows he doesn’t know.

The fool doesn’t know he doesn’t know.”

Lao Tzu

“In the West, they only respect experts.

But the expert mind is the closed mind.”

Shunryu Suzuki

What’s the essential step in fixing a puncture?

It isn’t jacking up the car, taking the wheel off, or finding the puncture.

There’s something more fundamental than any of those.

Something without which you can’t even begin to fix a puncture. The most crucial step is finding out you’ve got a hole. Without that, you can’t do anything.

Instead of saying, “It’s just a bit bumpy, must be the road,” and carrying on, you must acknowledge that something has changed and you don’t know what that is.

If you don’t admit you don’t know what’s happening, you can never find out.

If you don’t find out, you can never change it.

The most critical step, always, is admitting you don’t know.

That’s the power of ignorance.

In this latest collection of real-life stories, Dave Trott provides lessons about problem-solving and creative thinking that can be applied in advertising, business, and the wider world.

With his trademark wit, wisdom, and critical eye, he shows how great problem solvers and creative thinkers are those who are not afraid to say, “I don’t know.”

Amazon.com: The Power of Ignorance: How creative solutions emerge when we admit what we donât know: 9780857198358: Trott, Dave: Books

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

Best,

Mert Erkal