🔥 The SEOs Diners Club - Issue #136 - Weekly SEO Tips & News

Welcome to another edition of The SEOs Diner's Club! Each week, I bring you a digest of the latest SEO updates and AI-driven insights, all crafted to fit into just a few minutes of your time. With over a decade of experience in SEO, my goal is to break down the week’s most important developments into a quick, insightful read. This way, you stay ahead of the curve in less than seven minutes. Let's jump into what matters this week!

1. Latest SEO News

Google Updates Their Spam Policy Documentation
Search Engine Journal / Roger Montti
Google updated its spam policy documentation to make things more transparent and focused. The changes include better guidelines and extra details to help users understand and apply the policies. This update shows Google's commitment to maintaining a great user experience while ensuring that all content meets the latest standards for relevance and accuracy.

Google Removes Cache: Search Operator Documentation
Search Engine Journal / Roger Montti
Hey, did you hear? Google finally removed the documentation for the cache: search operator! It's a good reminder that search and SEO are constantly evolving.

Report: Small Google Business Profile Updates May Trigger Re-Verification
Seroundtable / Barry Schwartz
Krystal Taing, a Google local product expert in the Google Business Profiles forum and Vice President at Uberall, said she is seeing a rise in re-verifications from Google Business Profiles even after making minor changes or additions to your Google Business Profile.

Google Shows How To Use Alt Text For SEO
Search Engine Journal / Roger Montti
Google’s John Mueller explains the importance of using alt text for SEO, detailing how it enhances accessibility and helps search engines understand the content of images. He emphasizes that while AI can assist in generating content, it should not be solely relied upon for alt text, as human input is crucial for accurately conveying the context and relevance of images to improve overall search visibility and user experience.

AI On Innovation [Part 2]: More Insights From +546,000 AI Overviews
Search Engine Journal / Kevin Indig
Let’s dive into how common crawl data connects with AI Overviews! It's interesting to see how user intent shapes these Overviews and how top-ranking domains are distributed.

2. Featured Articles

Faceted Navigation Best Practices for SEO

The article from the Search Engine Journal offers insights into optimizing faceted navigation, a common challenge in e-commerce and large websites. Proper handling of faceted navigation can prevent SEO issues like duplicate content, crawl waste, and keyword cannibalization.

Essential Best Practices Include:

• Robots.txt Management: Use robots.txt to block irrelevant URL parameters that don’t contribute to unique content.

• Canonical Tags: Implement canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of pages, minimizing duplicate content.

• Noindex Directives: Apply noindex to low-value pages, keeping them out of search results while still being available for users.

• URL Parameters: Configure URL parameters in Google Search Console to guide how search engines crawl and index specific filters and facets.

• AJAX-based Filtering: Opt for AJAX-based filters, ensuring the content is dynamically updated without generating new URLs, thus avoiding crawl waste.

Read More ➔

Google Recognizes Content Creators: A Breakthrough for E-E-A-T and SEO

This article from Jason Barnard on Search Engine Land discusses Google's move to acknowledge individual content creators, marking a significant shift in the realm of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) for SEO.

Key takeaways include:

• Boosting E-E-A-T for Creators: By focusing on individual authors, Google enhances content credibility and transparency, as content creators' identity becomes a ranking factor.

• Author Profiles: Incorporating detailed author profiles with credentials and expertise is now more crucial than ever for building trust with users and search engines.

• Impacts on SEO: Acknowledging content creators helps websites improve their E-E-A-T signals, making it vital for brands to highlight qualified, trustworthy authors in their content.

• New Ranking Considerations: This change encourages SEO professionals to focus on creator expertise, signalling the importance of associating quality content with well-known, authoritative figures.

• Read More ➔

3. Tips and Tricks

• Quick Tip:

  Brodie Clark highlights a recent update in Google Search Console for eCommerce sites. This update allows stores to track when the 'Merchant listings' experience appears within Google Images.

  

  Key points include:

  • New Report for Image Search: Previously, the merchant listings filter was available only in Web Search, mainly for product grids and knowledge panels. Now, data for merchant listings in Google Images has been recorded from June 4th onwards.

  • Product Label Overlay in Images: This new feature applies a product label overlay on images, indicating the product is purchasable (with details like price, availability, and brand). It helps eCommerce sites better filter and analyze their Image Search data.

  • Combined Data in Shopping Reports: The GSC Shopping > Merchant listings tab includes impressions from both Web and Image searches, explaining any mismatches in impression counts.

• Did You Know? The Information posted the survey results of 1,088 subscribers it surveyed, and it said that 77% said they are using traditional search engines like Google because of generative AI products.

4. Tools and Resources

Intelligent Analysis with Google’s NotebookLM:

NotebookLM is an AI-powered note-taking tool developed by Google that functions as a virtual research assistant. It not only stores information but also analyzes and extracts insights from content. Leveraging advanced natural language processing (NLP), it summarizes facts, explains complex ideas, and helps users brainstorm.

Key Features:

• Summarizes and suggests insights from imported content.

• Adapts to different learning styles, including video, podcast, and text.

• Integrates with YouTube, providing automatic summaries of video content.

Ideal for digital marketing, this tool simplifies the creation of content summaries, facilitates idea generation, and efficiently extracts research insights. You should give it a try!

Gain SEO Insights with AI Overviews via Advanced Web Ranking

Advanced Web Ranking helps users track the impact of Google's AI Overviews on SEO, providing valuable weekly data to enhance strategies.

Key insights include:

• AI Overviews appear in 1 out of 4 SERPs.

• These overviews average 156 words and 820 pixels in length.

By analyzing over 1 billion data points weekly, the platform offers an in-depth look at how AI shapes search results, making it an essential tool for those closely monitoring AI's influence on SEO.

5. Industry Events

• Brands Rule Google: Why Building a Brand Is Key To SEO, Wednesday, October 2 at 2 pm ET - Dr Pete Meyers, Loren Baker

  Brands take over Google search results, whether we like it or not. As AI continues to churn out more results and machines better understand both online and offline worlds, big brands will only get stronger. Join Mete Meyers and Loren Baker as they dive into how you can compete with these powerhouse brands in search results. They’ll chat about why big brands tend to rank higher and how you can measure your brand’s impact against them. Plus, you’ll walk away with practical tips to boost your visibility by weaving your brand into your SEO strategy.

  Register Here ➔

Support My Newsletter:

If you find my content valuable, consider buying me a coffee to support my work. Your contribution will help me continue sharing the latest SEO developments. Let's achieve more together!

Best,

Mert Erkal