Even well-crafted content might not perform up to par if your content is not aligned with your overall strategy or lacks clear objectives. In the same way, even well-meaning content creators can sabotage their own content strategy by overlooking key search engine optimization (SEO) tactics or focusing on the wrong approach.

At Hennessey Digital, we’ve identified seven critical ways you might be unintentionally hindering your SEO content strategy. We’ve talked about how to optimize your content for SEO, and now we’ll shed light on these common saboteurs and how to avoid them, making sure your efforts don’t go to waste and your content is driving the results you need.

Writing Content Without A Plan

Any project goes better with a plan. Having a strategic plan for your content ensures that the pages you publish work together to boost the rankings of each piece of content as well as your entire site.

Here are a few essential factors that should be considered in your content plan:

• Site structure: When search engines evaluate your content, they use bots to crawl through your website. A clear and consistent site structure will allow these bots to categorize your content and determine its importance, relevancy, and ranking potential. Without a plan, you might create a disjoined site structure that confuses crawlers and prevents pages from being categorized (and ranking!) correctly.
• Keyword research & mapping: Keyword research ensures that you are creating unique content around keywords and topics that are relevant and have actual search volume that will drive traffic to your site. Keyword mapping also helps you avoid cannibalization (targeting the same keywords in multiple pieces of content). Cannibalization will cause your pages to compete with each other and can negatively impact their performance.
• Consistency: By planning in advance, you can ensure that your SEO efforts are continuous and not sporadic. Consistently publishing content is a positive ranking signal to search engines that you are keeping your site active and up-to-date with fresh and relevant information.

Thinking in the Short Term

Organic SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, and consistency is critical. As such, you can’t treat your content strategy like a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign.  PPC campaigns are designed to be turned on and off. You need time to research and plan your strategy, create your content, and monitor the page as it begins to appear in search results. New pages often take weeks to “settle” into a ranking.

Quick, sudden changes to your content strategy will not garner immediate results. In fact, this could result in content that hurts your SEO performance. If you rush your content strategy, you risk creating disjointed, duplicate, or low-quality content. If you suddenly pause content for long stretches of time, as mentioned above, you might see a loss in rankings or traffic as search engines do not see you as a consistent source of content.

Not Knowing Your Goals

The number one reason we see content strategies shift is when clients don’t have a thorough understanding of their own goals or priorities.

Discussing priorities is one of the first—and most important—conversations I have with any client. In our first meeting, we look at the intersection of the services they offer and the locations where they offer them, and discuss what areas are most important or need the most attention. We discuss what drives the most business for our client and what areas have the highest ROI.

Based on this information, we can determine the objectives of our content strategy: not only what content we want to create, but also how we want to create it. We might take a “shotgun” approach and create content for multiple locations to establish brand visibility in those areas, or a “sniper” approach, hyper-targeting one market or service to increase conversions.

Every approach has its merits, but the best approach is the one that aligns with our client’s goals. Without having defined goals, you won’t get the most out of your content strategy. Similarly, if you are working with an agency, the best way to empower your SEO agency is to provide them with insights into your current performance and priorities.

If you’re unclear about your priorities, ask yourself these questions:

• What is my most profitable practice area, service, or product right now?
• For law firms, what is the average value of each case type?
• What practice area, service, or product do I want to be more profitable?
• Which of these has the highest ROI for my firm or company?
• Where do my clients or customers live (top cities or zip codes)?
• Are there any areas I know my competitors are not currently targeting?
• How much business growth can I handle without expanding operationally?

Writing for Yourself, Not Your Audience

Once your content plan is finalized, it’s time to get writing. At Hennessey Digital, we create meaningful and useful content that showcases Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) while also incorporating all the necessary SEO elements that search engines understand and value.

In some cases, however, in an effort to establish E-E-A-T, content can become too complex. When you are a subject-matter expert in your field, it can be tempting to want to dive into the details and explain the complexities of your work to make it accurate or more “valuable.” In the past, we have worked with clients who have wanted content to be written the way they would want to read it, without considering their audience.

Your audience is rarely experts. Using too much legal or technical jargon can overwhelm and alienate your potential clients or customers. The most meaningful content is understandable and accessible to the average person. That’s why we typically recommend writing content at an 8th-grade reading level. Simple, actionable content provides a positive user experience, which satisfies E-E-A-T and increases the chance of users converting.

Not Understanding Search Intent

In the same vein, writing content that does not consider search intent can also undermine your efforts. Search intent refers to the purpose behind a user’s search query, and falls into categories such as…

• Transactional
• Informational
• Commercial
• Navigational

If the content is not meaningful or useful to a user’s search, then they will quickly leave the page. For example, if a user arrives on an FAQ page looking for a quick answer, they will likely not stay on the page if it is full of calls to action to contact the business. Conversely, if there is too much tangential information on a transactional page, they may click away before they can convert.

These user actions indicate to search engines that your content isn’t relevant and will eventually lead to the page losing ground in the search results.

(Want to learn more about search intent and different types of content? Check out How To Optimize Content For SEO by our Senior SEO Team Lead Natasha Guy.)

Not Revisiting Your Content

One of the most significant ways to sabotage your SEO content strategy is to publish your content and consider the job done. Search results are constantly shifting which means even if your page is ranking right now, it isn’t guaranteed to stay that way forever. Certain industries such as the legal industry have particularly volatile rankings, sometimes changing from day to day.

As such, you need to regularly monitor the performance of your content and reassess your content as needed. This could be as simple as refreshing content to include more recent statistics to ensure it isn’t outdated, or completely rewriting a page to be more relevant to the primary keyword and the search intent.

Ultimately, revisiting your content ensures you’re staying on top of best practices and will better weather major core updates.

Using AI to Write All Your Content

AI is here to stay, there’s no doubt. We have spent months testing and learning the many advantages and disadvantages of using ChatGPT and other AI tools for SEO. For content, AI chatbots are capable of producing quality, readable content, and it’s understandable to want to leverage AI to start producing content at scale.

But relying too heavily on this new technology is still a big risk, for all of the reasons discussed above. AI content is often lacking in E-E-A-T signals, and any facts, statistics, or laws it does provide must be thoroughly checked. ChatGPT in particular creates content that is very repetitive and does not always meet search intent, and requires lots of human editing or rewriting with specific prompts. In addition, the content needs to be formatted, linked, and published with all the appropriate SEO signals.

Avoid Sabotaging Your SEO Content Efforts

Crafting a successful SEO content strategy requires a holistic approach and a long-term mindset. From developing a well-researched and structured content plan to understanding your audience’s needs and search intent, paying attention to these tactics is crucial in creating relevant content that drives traffic. Remember to revisit your content regularly, ensuring it stays fresh, unique, and impactful. Avoiding these common pitfalls can transform your content from just good to truly effective.

Want to learn more about how we craft content strategies that convert? As a leader in SEO and law firm digital marketing, Hennessey Digital creates ambitious, customized strategies in close collaboration with our clients. Contact us today and see how we can help your business grow.

The post 7 Ways You Might Be Sabotaging Your Own SEO Content Strategy appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

Let’s dive in with some history to see how we got to where we are today and why GIS so profoundly impacts the digital space.

What is GIS?

The key to GIS is geography. GIS is all about the use of any location data or any data that is related to the “where” of things. The more data that’s available, the better GIS can work.

One of the first instances in the history of GIS (long before computers) is the famous map created by John Snow, a doctor and epidemiologist from London in 1854. At the time, he was seeing a high number of patients suffering from cholera. Neither he nor anybody else could figure out what was causing this outbreak, so Snow started to mark on a map where his sick patients lived and marked the location of water pumps in the area. Quickly he began to recognize a pattern that there were more sick patients concentrated around one specific water pump. He reported his findings and the identified water pump was determined to be contaminated – and therefore, shut down. The number of cholera cases began to decline thanks to his work, and his study has now become one of the go-to examples of early GIS in practice.

How does GIS work?

Modern GIS didn’t really take off until the 1990s with the development of computer technology and the internet for better data management, processing, and sharing. But the logic and process are still quite similar to what it was decades prior.

The key thing in GIS is data layering as seen in the diagram above. GIS is able to take data and create it into individual layers that can then stack on top of each other to create unique visualizations and identify patterns that could go unnoticed. The unique layering and data patterns working alongside current digital marketing and SEO strategies and techniques can create better planning and new decision-making processes.

To begin any GIS project we need data. Unlike data in a chart, data for GIS requires a reference to a location. In GIS, there are three main data types and all of them can either be used alone or as a combination:

Polygon data – This is like drawing country or state boundary lines. But polygons aren’t just limited to political boundaries or pre-drawn data available. With the use of different GIS tools, custom polygon shapes can be made to fit an exact area you’re interested in knowing more about.

Line data – This is like roads or rivers. And just like polygons, lines don’t just have to be pre-made. Custom lines can be created to fit a project.

Point data – Point data is the most-used data type in GIS, and can either be single instance or distinct data points. This can be addresses for buildings or different points of interest. Point data can be downloaded from different reputable sources, or created and recorded in a table. As long as each row in the table has an associated latitude and longitude or an address, then it can be converted in a GIS program and placed on a map for easier data visualization.

Once you determine the type of data you want to use, it can be created, downloaded, or imported into GIS software to be manipulated and analyzed. The most common GIS programs used are the industry standard ArcGIS Pro developed by ESRI, or an open-source, free alternative is QGIS. Both softwares have pros and cons, but foundationally they both are able to do a high-level analysis of geographic data.

GIS softwares work with unique file types that are used to combine table data and information that is relayed to the software on how and where to draw data. Once all this data is put into the software, the fun part of the analysis begins. In GIS there are many different geospatial tools used that can be used in infinite combinations that can accomplish the goal.

Once all the data is analyzed, it can be shared as a static map using various cartographic methods or brought into even more software available to create interactive maps, which is becoming more and more popular.

Where is GIS used today?

In the early days of modern GIS, it was primarily developed for environmental research to allow scientists and geographers to get a better bird’s eye view of their data and research sites. Today, GIS has stretched long beyond the confines of environmental science to the point where nearly every industry does, could, or should be using GIS.

For example, GIS is used quite a bit in the real estate sector when creating built-in maps for real estate websites to allow customers to view properties easily. Realtors also use it internally to get a visual of real estate trends that show the appreciation and depreciation of an area.

Another great example of GIS in action is with logistics companies. Companies that deliver mail or transport goods heavily rely on GIS to develop the most efficient routes for their drivers or the best routes to transport goods along. This process allows for cost-saving planning before the trucks even hit the roads.

A newer trend is using data forecasting with geographic data. As time has gone on, many GIS data sources have been able to store longitudinal, historical data. The availability of this data has allowed the opportunity for data science and GIS to blend together to plan for future events. A current example of this is mapping coastal flooding and being able to plan and prepare for where floods are more likely to occur. This data forecasting also allows aid agencies to know where to send resources in the event of natural disasters.

These are broad-term examples, but the most specific example that perfectly encapsulates GIS in digital marketing and one that most people are familiar with is Google Maps.

GIS and Google Maps

Google Maps mixes every type of GIS data together, from generating red polygons when you click on a city’s name to see where Google draws a city’s boundaries, to using line data for navigation of your route. Google Business Profiles act as point data in the map showing you where businesses are located and includes information on a specific business from phone number to hours of operation and reviews.

In fact, Google Maps also has a sort of “behind the scenes” look. If you go to Google Maps, you can switch to different layers and one of them is the traffic layer. You can see the roads and the traffic overlaid on top. When you get directions from Google it takes several different factors into account, including road laws like speed limit, road type (residential road vs highway), flow of traffic, and actively pulls data on traffic patterns. It may navigate you around heavily trafficked roads that slow you down or direct you around construction sites.

What is the relationship between digital marketing and GIS?

GIS can provide a wealth of information that can go unknown or unnoticed unless you knew it was available.

Google Analytics has a very basic form of GIS visualization built into it. You can look at a location overview to see where your audience is coming from, but Google is limited in what data it can pull and collect. It heavily relies on tracking the user based on their IP address and their site activity, but that is all the information Google Analytics can get. This is where GIS comes in to fill in the gaps and build out even more information on your potential user audience.

GIS can be used to provide a much more educated strategy for SEO and digital marketing plans. For example, say you want your website to reach a specific target audience based on demographics. The United States Census Bureau collects this information every 5 and 10 years and makes that data publicly available. Using GIS, you can download this data and work with it to overlay all your different target audience characteristics to figure out where that ideal audience is. Then you can use that information to make more informed decisions in your SEO strategy to reach your target audience faster than before.

GIS can help reduce the chance of creating an SEO strategy that does not reach your intended audience because the audience is either limited or not where you thought it would be.

How we use GIS here at Hennessey Digital

Local SEO strategies for law firms 

One of the most common uses for GIS we use here at Hennessey Digital for our law firm SEO strategy is collecting car crash data that different state agencies provide to the public. Almost every state in the country collects information on how many car crashes happen annually in their state. Some states go further to include more granular data on where the accidents occur such as counties, cities, or even location data on where accidents occur.

This available data helps to identify areas with high numbers of car crashes based on different criteria, or to provide a bird’s eye view of the data trends for the state. We combine all of this data with our unique analysis methodology to help create a more targeted SEO strategy that can quickly meet your audience.

Seasonality

Historical data is valuable in recognizing seasonal patterns of different phenomena. Knowing the seasonal patterns of an area provides answers on why data collected in Google Analytics is either doing better or worse compared to previous periods. It can also predict when a website may see more traffic for specific pages because more people in that area could be doing web searches using those keywords. It can even be used to prepare new website content to cater to seasonal trends rather than miss the peak window of time for a topic.

New business locations for clients

Determining a new business location requires taking several factors into consideration, especially when it comes to SEO. Savvy businesses want to be strategically positioned in a good SEO market while also being in a location with people needing their services who can be directed to their site. GIS is able to take all these factors into consideration and create a unique analysis and map that reflect the potential best locations for new business locations. We take into account data such as demographics to find your target audience, historical data trends, and potential up-and-coming trends to ensure better success for a new location.

The Future Outlook of GIS

GIS is and will continue to be a growing industry as more industries begin to adopt its capabilities. And using GIS in digital marketing and SEO is no exception to that growth. Every day, new techniques and tools are being developed to continue to push the boundaries of what GIS is capable of doing. It is becoming more commonplace to use GIS and the popular coding language Python together to create custom tools for unique projects. Python’s popularity primarily in data science and analysis makes it complementary to GIS’s analysis abilities. It even helps develop automation processes and integrate data science methods to give more insights into data.

As the blended field of GIS and digital marketing is just beginning, so are the ideas that come with it. Creative uses for data and analytics can create a well-strategized website that can reach its target audience faster than before.

The post Location Data: How GIS is Used in Digital Marketing and SEO appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

What is the difference between GPT-3 and ChatGPT?

GPT-3 (short for “Generative Pre-training Transformer 3”) is the third-generation language model from OpenAI that uses deep learning to generate language that can sound remarkably human. As soon as it was released in 2020, digital marketers and people in the SEO industry (who were lucky enough to get access) started demonstrating remarkable examples of GPT-3 generating text that many would consider “good enough” for a lot of everyday uses. And offshoots of GPT-3, including OpenAI’s DALL·E, gave us a lot of laughs as we created AI-generated images in 2021 – frequently spectacular, sometimes disturbing, and often hilarious.

While GPT-3 was already impressive, OpenAI may have finally found its killer app when it released ChatGPT to the public. It’s a variant of GPT-3 that’s optimized for chat applications – you ask it a question or give it a task, and within seconds it gives you what you asked for. Ask it a follow-up question, and it remembers the context up to that point, so you’re not starting over with each question. Services such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa have been decent at answering users’ questions for a while now, but overnight it felt like the whole industry had taken a once-in-a-generation leap forward.

How can ChatGPT be used for SEO?

When GPT-3 and other large-language models were first released, swarms of people in SEO and content marketing said, “I bet you can generate a lot of content very quickly with this.” And now, there’s no shortage of copywriting tools that promise to unleash the power of AI to help you generate thousands of words in mere minutes.

Although Google was slow to directly answer the question of whether or not AI-generated content met their guidelines, John Mueller did eventually address the matter in 2022. According to Mueller, like all automatically generated content, AI-written content is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Later, however, Google tweaked some language to put the emphasis on “spammy” auto-generated content. Just last month, the company changed its quality rater guidelines to add “Experience” to its “Expertise, Authority and Trust” criteria. Clearly, Google is still figuring this all out.

The next obvious question is whether Google can detect AI-generated content. While we doubt Google or any tool can perfectly detect it, Google’s frequent “helpful content” updates and spam updates in late 2022 suggest that the company may already be dialing in that capability.

While we know some search marketers who have had great success with AI-generated content, we also have heard stories of sites that were doing great until they suddenly weren’t. So, proceed at your own risk. This may be a cat-and-mouse game that plays out over at least the next few years.

So, let’s leave “write a million words a day!” aside, and talk about other ways that SEOs can make use of ChatGPT right now. This article isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list; the following are just a few examples of how we’re already using (or testing) ChatGPT here at Hennessey Digital. These ideas may give you a good starting point if you’re still becoming familiar with ChatGPT and its possibilities for SEO:

Translation text with terrific results

Google Translate has been good for a long time, so much so that we think nothing of visiting a website that’s in another language and clicking one button in Chrome to be able to read the page. The understanding has always been that it’s a “good enough” translation for most everyday purposes, but try to translate a large passage with the tool, and the output will be crude compared to what a native speaker can write.

Things are changing quickly, though. A recent comparison of ChatGPT and Google Translate shows that ChatGPT can produce translations that are almost perfect, picking up on language subtleties that Google Translate rarely can. The bar for translation quality just got raised significantly, and it wasn’t Google that raised it. At Hennessey Digital we’re already playing with potential uses for our clients.

Generate schema markup for your content

Generating schema is not terribly difficult, especially if you use a WordPress plugin, but now you can simply go to ChatGPT and ask it to generate schema for you. We’ve tested this a bunch at Hennessey Digital already, and we’ve so far found it to be very reliable for this repetitive task.

Write (and learn about!) regular expressions

For those who can easily write regular expressions (regex), they’re powerful search operators when using tools like Google Search Console and Screaming Frog. But even computer science majors can sometimes get lost in the sea of backslashes and brackets. Enter ChatGPT, which will not only turn your plain-English input into regex, but it will also explain what it did so that you learn along the way.

Generate meeting summaries

Okay, this isn’t strictly an SEO use for ChatGPT. I have already tried uploading a Zoom meeting transcript to ChatGPT to generate a written summary, and the results have been impressive. “I’ll send you the meeting transcript” is sometimes helpful, but when it is a two-hour meeting and you want to make sure you didn’t miss the highlights, ChatGPT can come in handy. With a bit of extra work you can even do it starting with just the audio file of a meeting. Note that you may run into word limits if the transcript is too long. If that happens, just break it up into several sections, and submit them to ChatGPT one at a time.

These are some really helpful uses for ChatGPT, but…

How will ChatGPT actually affect SEO?

We already have many examples of how ChatGPT can change how SEOs work, but what could the technology mean for the industry overall? The biggest change may come from what it means to search the internet in a couple of years.

Right now “search” means a user typing in a search term, and the search engine presents a list of links along with ads. But what if there simply is no more list of links? What if searching “car accident lawyer” means the application returns one or two results of nearby providers? No Page 1 of results to work hard to get onto? No 3-pack of map results to fight for?

These questions aren’t entirely new – people have been fretting about what voice search could mean for search marketers for a while now. But voice search, as useful as it’s become for certain uses, still seems rather niche, and it hasn’t made an appreciable dent in how most people search for things online every day.

This does feel different, however. Just as most of us said, “Wow, I like this better” the first time we used Google search, there has been a lot of talk about how people can now sense how things will change in the next several years. Maybe Siri and Alexa will get a lot smarter (competition tends to do that). Maybe we’ll use Google search a lot less, and just trust an app to give us what we need, without the need to jump from page to page in a long list of links, hoping to find that perfect macaroni and cheese recipe. Maybe the app will understand each of us better after thousands of conversations over time.

If that happens, search marketing may become even more of a zero-sum game. Getting to the top of the Google SERPs is one thing, but if the “search engine” (that term may even become obsolete one day) talks to its user and recommends just one thing, marketers will have to fight like hell to become that one recommendation. And if there are no links for users to click on, then generating traffic from organic search may become less important than it has been for the past two decades.

How will ChatGPT affect the search engines themselves?

Without a doubt, the search engine leaders are spending a lot of time on ChatGPT right now. Google’s management declared a “code red” not long after ChatGPT was released, and many believe that there’s a huge debate happening inside the company about whether Google should disrupt its own business with its own version of the technology, or if it should protect its existing model for as long as it can.

The first place we will probably see changes is in how users interface with the search engines. It’s been little more than a month since ChatGPT was released to the public, and there are already reports that Microsoft is working on a version of Bing that will use ChatGPT to provide more conversational answers to users’ queries.

Search engine upstarts You.com and Neeva have also entered the fray, introducing “AI search assistants” over the past several weeks. I’ve tried You.com’s YouChat, and it’s not hard to imagine the majority of search queries being answered this way in a couple of years, if not sooner:

Whether these enhancements truly make search more useful for users remains to be seen, but this all seems a lot closer to reality than it did just two months ago. Who knows… we may finally get the elegant question-and-answer experience that Ask Jeeves promised back in the 1990s.

What else might happen to the search engine business? Let’s give ChatGPT the final word:

The post How Will ChatGPT Affect SEO? appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

The local SEO team and I are always on the lookout for potential scams and dubious claims. To help dispel myths about SEO and get the word out about these SEO scams, let’s break down what you need to know, things to watch out for, and how to protect yourself from being scammed.

SEO Scam #1: Fake listings in Google Maps

There’s a local SEO unethical practice that happens when agencies create fake business listings in Google Maps. False competition in Google exists for the purpose of intercepting traffic and reselling this organic traffic back to local businesses. This practice of buying traffic happens to a big extreme in Google Maps.

If you’re on the buying end of this transaction, what will often happen is the company you bought from will charge you more and more for traffic as you start to see results. As soon as this redirected traffic from fake listings is turned off, those listings can now be redirected to someone else—such as a competitor—but now, the fake listings that once helped you gain leads are competing unfairly against you.

Here are questions to ask yourself if you think a Google Maps listing might be fake:

• Does the business have a physical location?
• Is there an established date or legal documentation on the business?
• Are there any online reviews for the business?

If the answer is no to any of these questions, there’s a good chance the listing you’re looking at is fake. This is a “smoke and mirrors” game of local SEO where traffic from fake listings is repackaged and resold, and false competition takes over the top ranking spots again.

To protect our clients from this issue, we conduct regular audits of their rankings and competitors’ listings. If we detect an issue, we immediately report it to the client and to Google. Fake business listings are prevalent in the home services and retail industries and are seen throughout all markets within Google Maps. In the field of law firm SEO, fake listings have been an issue for car accident attorneys, but keyword stuffing is a bigger issue for this niche right now.

SEO Scam #2: Offer to remove negative reviews

First, let’s dispel a big myth in the SEO world: no one can remove negative reviews from Google Business Profiles.

If a review happens to be negative and fake, or negative and in violation of Google’s terms and conditions, that’s another thing. But if it’s a regular, real review that happens to be negative, you can’t get rid of it because this defeats the purpose of online reviews.

Remember: Google’s objective is to offer a third-party view into a business to increase transparency and trust. Search engines fight to maintain reviews from real customers so users can see feedback on the goods and services a business provides.

SEO Scam #3: Promising results within a specific time frame

Related to the promise of removing negative reviews, we also see offers from agencies saying they can guarantee a listing to rank within a week, or a set number of days. Making any kind of guarantee should always be a red flag, so don’t fall into the trap of these fly-by-night companies promising big results in three days.

While it might be possible to move the needle on a low-volume keyword within a short period of time, this is very different from ranking for a high-value keyword with a heavy search volume. SEO is a long game, and businesses spend a lot of time, money, and effort to rank for valuable keywords to attract leads.

Unless your business has zero online presence, higher rankings and call volumes within one week simply isn’t realistic. Most businesses have some established web presence, and some black hat SEO tricks might work, but 99% of the time, it’s a tactic Google hasn’t caught on and flagged it yet.

SEO Scam #4: Pricing that’s too good to be true

You know the adage: if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This is absolutely the case with digital marketing and SEO.

If you’re getting offers of tons of Google citations for your business for $30, this is highly suspect. It’s the same concept as looking for an apartment: if you’re seeing a $500 listing in a market where $2,500 is the norm, it’s a scam.

So, how much should digital marketing cost? It will depend on your goals and which digital marketing services you decide to employ. A quote of $400 a month is suspicious, considering all the moving parts that go into a comprehensive digital marketing plan.

Consider all the moving parts of a digital marketing agency. Hennessey Digital has a global team of more than 140 professionals, each with a specific skill that contributes to our clients’ success. If a single person is claiming to be an expert in all things SEO and digital marketing, this is a huge red flag.

A reputable agency has a team of people working together on SEO, paid media, content marketing, and other aspects of digital marketing. One individual saying they’re a full-stack agency just isn’t realistic, so watch out for this.

SEO Scam #5: Charging for things that don’t actually work

Related to the issue of unrealistic pricing, many agencies that charge lower amounts will include line item charges for things that don’t have any effect on SEO.

Injecting images with data is a prime example of this. Uploading keyword data and image descriptions to Google through an image upload doesn’t mean Google is obligated to do anything with it, and the variables Google considers ranking factors are constantly changing.

But there are agencies that will promote low-value or no-value actions to create a list of important-sounding line items to sell a large package of work. Google is not transparent with what they’re doing with data behind the scenes, so don’t trust an agency or SEO practitioner who says they know exactly what Google does with all the data you give it.

Another example of a bogus charge is Google image map directions put into a program to point to your business. This is a spammy tactic to get citations: sometimes, nothing will happen, but sometimes a negative impact happens as a result. Watch out for this if someone tries to sell you on it as it could have a negative impact on your Google business listing.

Unethical SEO practices

We also see things that, while not outright scams, should be classified as unethical practices that you should be aware of.

Guest posts

We get these requests all the time, and it usually means working with a third-party website to get presence onto their site. More commonly, you pay someone who has a list of hacked websites that are brute forcing their links onto your website. A guest post might “look” normal, but a hacked site might show content about your business and 20 links back to your site.

Price point will indicate whether you’re working with someone legitimate or not. To get onto a quality website like Forbes, for example, it may cost thousands of dollars for a link like this. Reputable guest post services know their worth and will get it.

At face value to any business, an offer of guest posts will look the same, but their low price might indicate that they’re working through black hat techniques and/or hacking websites to get links.

Google Maps tricks

This one is difficult to trace until after the fact, but some unreputable agencies will keyword stuff Google Maps accounts to get results. Doing this can get you to rank in the Google Map Pack, but this practice could get your Google business account suspended. Be aware of the negative effects that keyword stuffing can cause.

Another questionable practice is opening “virtual offices” so that you appear in more places on Google Maps. This is a bad idea because one ranking factor is people engaging with your address: if you create 10 fake virtual office listings online, people won’t drive to them, and you’re already at a disadvantage.

Charging for a demo

Sometimes shady agencies will do a small demonstration of their work or provide “free” advice, only to turn around later and charge you for it.

Pay attention to the signals that something is a scam: if an SEO practitioner offers a free demo of their work and then sends you a bill, that’s a good indicator of something being off. If you’re looking to hire a company to improve your website and their website has no effort behind it, that’s a red flag.

If something looks awry, it probably is!

Protecting yourself from SEO scams

When we catch wind of unethical SEO practices or if clients bring something to our attention, we take it very seriously. My team and I are sensitive to these shady practices and potential scams. Being scammed is a violation and a terrible feeling, and we do everything in our power to protect ourselves and our clients from falling victim to a scam.

So what can you do to protect yourself from an SEO scam? Here are our top tips from our cumulative years of SEO wisdom and experience.

• SEO is a long game. If an offer to get your website to rank in five days for $50 comes your way, it’s a scam. The reality of SEO is that it takes some time, especially if you’re starting from zero.
• Digital marketing is dynamic. What works today may not work tomorrow, and this is why we always advise potential clients to choose an agency for their expertise, even if it’s not Hennessey Digital.
• Google isn’t explicit on how to succeed. They keep their secret sauce to themselves as they’re a for-profit business. People have theories on how Google works behind the scenes, but don’t succumb to the “quick win” mentality from someone guaranteeing results.
• Trust your instincts. If you research a company online and can’t find anything about them, it’s a good indicator it’s a scam. Reputation means a lot, especially in the SEO industry, and it’s what Jason Hennessey founded our agency on.

It’s human nature to want to take the shortcut, but SEO success doesn’t happen overnight. Look out for promises that aren’t realistic. It all comes down to managing your expectations, knowing what to look for, and finding a reputable digital marketing agency to partner with for the long term to give you lasting results.

If you’ve received an email with an offer like what I’ve shared here and are questioning its validity, send it to us. It never hurts to ask, and it’s our job to vet potential partners and digital marketing vendors.

The post SEO Scams and Unethical Practices: What You Need to Know appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

So sit back and grab that cup of coffee (or two) for our November 2022 SEO news recap.

Google Changes Webmaster Guidelines to Search Essentials

In a move that nobody saw coming, Google revamped and updated their Webmaster guidelines significantly.
As a result, there are fewer references to things like PageRank, and more references to things like E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness).

I just noticed that Google removed all references of PageRank in Google’s “Search Essentials” (formerly Webmaster Guidelines).https://t.co/PyXRXzVOcG

— Dr. Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) October 31, 2022

There were other additional changes, including changes to the Sitemaps documentations, such as the following:
Previously, Google wrote the following about Sitemaps:

Don’t include session IDs from URLs in your sitemap. This reduces duplicate crawling of those URLs.

They ended up changing it to:

Don’t include session IDs and other user-dependent identifiers from URLs in your sitemap. This reduces duplicate crawling of those URLs.

They basically clarified it and said that other user-dependent identifiers as well as session IDs should not be used in your sitemaps.
John Mueller responded to Joost De Valk over on Twitter with the following when asked about it:

The Internet pic.twitter.com/sfXDESKqfv

— John Mueller is mostly not here (@JohnMu) November 1, 2022

Be sure to go read the new Google Search Essentials guides when you can. There is new information and additional insights to be gained.

Google Says 200,000 Words of Content Not Required to Be Authoritative

Over on Twitter, John Mueller continued debunking SEO misinformation at what seems to be just about every opportunity to do so. One SEO professional was spreading information about 200,000 words of content, and needing that to be authoritative in Google’s eyes.

John Mueller responded that this number was definitely not from Google, explaining that Google does not have this particular requirement.

1⃣ Check what your competitors are doing (their organic and popular keywords)
2⃣ Review the main Wikipedia article for the topic
3⃣ Use ahrefs and semrush to find “related” keywords and questions
4⃣ Use the related searches on Google (screenshot below) pic.twitter.com/kLKyXpnJkE

— Nat Miletic | natmiletic.eth (@natmiletic) October 28, 2022

I don’t know who made up that 200’000 word number, it’s definitely not from Google.

— John Mueller is mostly not here (@JohnMu) October 28, 2022

Possible Algorithm Update October 28th?

Barry Schwartz reported on yet another potential algorithm update on October 28th, 2022. It was a situation where quite a number of SEO professionals were noticing potential ranking update behavior.

More specifically, it was speculated that sites that were hit by an unconfirmed October 13th-ish update – along with the spam update in October – including others, were noticing swings in the opposite direction when it came to sites owned by SEO professionals.

A number of charts and graphs were shared by Glenn Gabe, who explained that there were some large publishers in the UK (and other countries) which were showing some massive swings in performance on October 28th after being hit by other updates.

Remember the UK news publishers that dropped with the September broad core update? Several of them are surging back starting on 10/28. This is also when some sites that surged/dropped on 10/14 are reversing. So, did Google decouple an algo (or several) from broad core updates?? pic.twitter.com/rkqXK8qGtE

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 31, 2022

And here are two examples of reversals from the 10/14 update. This is what led me to dig in further to 10/28, and then I saw a number of sites reversing course based on the September broad core update. I’ll keep digging in. Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/yAfi2nj2dK

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 31, 2022

More news about news publishers & the 10/28 update (where some sites are surging back from the dead from the Sep broad core update). CNN, which saw a pretty significant visibility drop then, is also seeing a surge. Super-interesting to see this across a number of news publishers. pic.twitter.com/zx2tmpqrPI

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 31, 2022

No Additional Crawling Benefit for Google Verified Websites

Over on Twitter, one SEO professional asked John Mueller about whether crawl frequency would be influenced with a Google Search Console account attached.

John replied that crawling is entirely independent of Google Search Console. This confirms the fact that just because your site is Google verified does not mean that it has a benefit from faster crawling or whatever else in Search Console.

Crawling is independent of Search Console.

— John Mueller is mostly not here (@JohnMu) October 28, 2022

Google: Having Duplicate Content URLs in Your Sitemap Will Not Cause Ranking Problems

Over on Twitter, one SEO professional asked John Mueller about whether having duplicate content in their sitemap URLs would cause ranking problems.

They asked how quickly a sitemap that accidentally allows for duplicate content across an entire site cause issues in rankings?

John explained that he wouldn’t think it would cause ranking problems.

The SEO professional then said “thanks.” That they were trying to figure something out for a friend. They had consistent ranking improvement, pushed some changes out on the sitemap and then 3 days of sharp decline happened without any other changes. They said they were just trying to rule that out as coincidence.

John explained that they would primarily see confused crawling as an early effect. John, however, does not see how this would cause immediate ranking changes for the whole site.

I don’t think it would cause ranking problems.

— John Mueller is mostly not here (@JohnMu) October 29, 2022

I think you’d primarily see confused crawling as an early effect, i don’t see how this would cause immediate ranking changes for the whole site.

— John Mueller is mostly not here (@JohnMu) October 29, 2022

Using Search Volume Lists to Write Your Content Only Results in Mediocre Content

One best practice that SEO professionals tend to use a lot is creating lists of keywords with their search volume as a target to go after in an SEO campaign.

An SEO pro over on Twitter asked John whether it was possible to write on similar topics separately without dealing with keyword cannibalization. Keyword cannibalization happens when you write multiple articles on the same topics and they “cannibalize” traffic from each other because of that dilution of topical focus.

John answered that if you base your content writing on a list of keywords, he’s worried that there wouldn’t be much quality there. And, that the work done by the SEO professional would be more superficial.

He also explained that he would look for topics that match your passion and expertise. He also recommends asking yourself: “Where can you contribute that isn’t already covered by lots of others, and do so in ways that provides something new and useful?”

Focusing on keyword search volume lists is an exercise in mediocrity and that’s all that doing this is likely to get you.

@JohnMu Please can you write on these topics separately without dealing with Keyword Cannibalization? pic.twitter.com/GNnMaPvZ8g

— KINGSLEY KUMI (@chatwithking) October 26, 2022

I’d look for topics that match your expertise & passion. Where can you contribute that isn’t already covered by lots of others, and do so in ways that provide something new & useful? Don’t focus on keywords & “search volume” lists like this, they’ll lead you into mediocracy.

— John Mueller is mostly not here (@JohnMu) October 26, 2022

Links Are And Will Continue to Decline as a Ranking Factor

When it comes to links, historically, they have been a significant part of how Google crawls and discovers new content.

But that is changing.

John Mueller explained on an episode of the Search Off The Record podcast from BrightonSEO that it’s his belief that links as a ranking factor will not be quite as important and not like the ranking factor that it is today.

He also said that links likely won’t be weighted in the future as much as it is today. In addition, he explained: “Well, it’s something where I imagine, over time, the weight on the links. At some point, will drop off a little bit as we can’t figure out a little bit better how the content fits in within the context of the whole web. And to some extent, links will always be something that we care about because we have to find pages somehow. It’s like how do you find a page on the web without some reference to it?”

Then, he also added the following: “But my guess is over time, it won’t be such a big factor as sometimes it is today. I think already, that’s something that’s been changing quite a bit.”

More from @johnmu: Links will always be something Google cares about (it’s how Google discovers content), but over time it probably won’t be as big of a factor as it is today. Actually, that’s *already* been changing quite a bit… https://t.co/eUGsF1nMBqpic.twitter.com/Za284MQbWb

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 3, 2022

Google Explains That AI Content is More About What’s Helpful

Over on Twitter, Michael King talked about the overall SEO echo chamber and disagreed with many who are saying that all new updates are going after AI content.

Michael says he is skeptical about that and needs to see a lot more evidence before believing this to be true.

He was referencing a tweet from Chris Frantz who claimed that Google is lowering the hammer on AI content with their latest updates.

Danny Sullivan himself straight out said that AI content is not bad. He said that they at Google have always had the position that content written for search engines rather than humans is the issue. He also likened somebody hiring 100 humans to write content just for ranking purposes, or they fire up a spinner, or uses an AI content generator tool, it’s the same issue.

Danny also elaborated, saying that they also talked about content “by people, for people” in that post about the helpful content system. The main nuance is that it’s unlikely that AI content will feel written by humans without at least some human review process in place.

A lot of what is happening in the SEO echo chamber is folks are saying that every new update is going after “AI Content.”

I’m skeptical and would need to see more evidence. DMs are open if you got it. 8/14https://t.co/wwprUXsflG

— Mic King (@iPullRank) November 7, 2022

We did talk about a focus on content *by people* for people in our post about improvements like the helpful content system. But the nuance is really that it’s unlikely some AI content is going to feel written by people without some degree of human review: https://t.co/uRiqh7ftDL

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 7, 2022

No, Google Rewriting Your Page Titles is Not a Quality Issue

One SEO professional asked John on Twitter about whether Google rewriting their page titles could be perceived as a site-wide quality issue.

John explained that no, overwriting page titles is not considered a quality signal. He went on to say that good sites have bad title elements, and bad sites have good title elements.

Either way, it would be a mistake to think that Google’s rewriting of any page titles is considered a quality signal.

Looking at https://t.co/H3qKn8c4uK while some of the items seem kinda quality-related (keyword stuffing), independently of Google, I wouldn’t consider most of those to be quality signals. Good sites have bad title elements, bad sites have good title elements.

— John Mueller is mostly not here (@JohnMu) November 2, 2022

Category Pages and Internal Search Results

It is a recommended best practice to set your internal site search result pages to be noindexed. Google should never be able to physically index those particular pages.

One SEO professional asked John Mueller on Twitter if it was considered a best practice to noindex site search results pages due to potential thin content, or for other reasons.

John explained that if you have good category pages, you shouldn’t ever also need the site search pages indexed. If you don’t take care of these pages ahead of time, it’s possible that you might end up with confusing search results.

If you have good category pages, there’s usually no need to also have search pages indexed. Also, it’s possible to accidentlly end up with “buy cheap pharmaceuticals at 1-800-PILLS4YOU” search pages indexed, if you don’t take care of them ahead of time.

— John Mueller is mostly not here (@JohnMu) November 8, 2022

HREFLANG Tags Do Not Need to be Hierarchical, Says Google

Over on Twitter, one SEO professional asked John Mueller about HREFLANG tags and whether they need to be hierarchical.

Their main question was, essentially “Do HREFLANG tag links need to be hierarchical”?

John responded that doing this did not matter.

Doesn’t matter.

— John Mueller is mostly not here (@JohnMu) November 9, 2022

The Coati Algorithm Update: A New Name for an Old Face

Barry Schwartz reported on the new Coati algorithm update during SMX in November. But, this is not new (sorry Barry).

During the SMX conference in November, the Vice President of Google Search, Hyung-Jin Kim, who leads core ranking at Google Search, talked about the new Coati algorithm update. Apparently Panda has been evolving behind the scenes, unbeknownst to us SEO pros, and has been renamed to the Coati algorithm.

He explained that Panda had evolved into Coati, which is a successor to the Panda algorithm. For those who don’t know, Panda is Google’s algorithm that deals with content issues.

He also explained that although Panda and Coati are a part of the core ranking algorithm, they are not actually a core update algorithm.

November Was a Lighter Month on Changes

Compared to the usual reporting that we do, such as October 2022 in SEO, November was a lighter month of SEO changes.

Still, there are changes happening every day in the world of search that we don’t even know about or that are never announced. And usually, these changes are not consequential when it comes to making changes on your website.

Just be aware of them. Just don’t become a prisoner to algorithm updates. So long as you continue to do things that don’t stray too far from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, you should not have to worry about these algorithms (much).

See you next year in 2023!

The post November 2022 SEO News Recap appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

From rankings and conversion rates to traffic and relevant keywords, it’s important to understand what these mean, why they matter, and how to qualify these changes as we move through another election season. If you run for office, drawing a clear line between an election, your business, and your stance on the issues will make all the difference.

Roles in politics and how they affect SEO

Whether running for a specific position in government or simply handling some of the hot topics as practice areas at your firm, your role will determine how your website is affected. The effects run throughout the entire SEO campaign: local SEO, on-site SEO and off-site SEO, content marketing, and more.

Running for government office

If you’re running for a government office, you likely have a campaign website that is separate from your law firm or business. Despite this separation, you may experience significant SEO changes on your business’ website.

From a search perspective, people use Google and other search engines to research your name and your background. Of course, your business website is going to be pulled into search results, and some users will click on the business website when it pops up, especially if you’ve done a great job of brand building and working on your E-A-T (Expertise – Authority – Trust) by showing your site’s relevance and authority to Google.

Not only will interactions with your website influence your SEO campaign, but they can also impact your presence in local organic searches and Google map listings (local SEO). The more times your name comes up and isn’t clicked on, the more Google begins to understand your listing is not relevant to what users are searching, even if it’s your own name.

Additionally, be highly aware of smear campaigns and the damage they can do to your business reputation as well as your political clout. You may see website conversions and interest in your business site decrease if a competitor decides to release a smear campaign or assigns particularly detrimental ideals to your identity or political campaign.

Representing clients in hot-topic fields

Running for office and voters looking up your qualifications aren’t the only ways you can be impacted by election year searches. If you or your business ranks for specific practice areas that are a hot topic of discussion for election years, more people may be coming to your site for information about these topics as opposed to your services around them.

What does this mean for you? It could mean increased visibility and clicks, but also higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates due to the changed intention of the visitors to your site. People are looking for your role or stance on the laws and issues instead of looking for actual professional services.

Hot topics for fall 2022 elections

Reproductive Rights

The focus on decisions made earlier this year on Roe v. Wade means an increased awareness of reproductive rights issues in this election cycle. In 2022, some political candidates are taking a heavy stance on one side of the fence or the other regarding abortion, and voters are absolutely paying attention.

Whether your business is representing survivors by taking on #MeToo cases or going after medical malpractice issues after a procedure goes wrong, when people are looking for information on these issues, you’re sure to see a few more visitors as well.

Economic issues

Local taxes and inflation are among the highest concerns for voters in the November 2022 midterm elections. Of course, no one wants to spend more money, and price hikes are always a concern as people navigate their budgets and how to maintain the lifestyle they desire. This may result in spikes in searches for mass torts and commercial litigation.

Additional areas in employment law may also see a rise in search volume as the economy ebbs and flows with employment rates.

Violent crime punishment

According to Pew Research, 61% of voters are looking at politician’s stances on violent crimes as a deciding factor in who they vote for. Tied into this subject are criminal defense lawyers, prosecutors, and even civil rights lawyers. Those who represent the wrongfully imprisoned are also sure to see an uptick in hits to their professional sites.

Takeaways and strategies

• If you’re running for political office, consider dedicating a page on your business website to direct those searching for your political involvement to a specific page to minimize effect on SEO for the rest of the site and conversion stats. Likewise, on your election website, consider mentioning your business site and the practice areas your firm handles.
• If hot topics matter to your personal brand, blog about it or highlight your site pages that show where you stand. Calling attention to these articles on your site (and on your Google Business Profile as posts) can help you make the most of visitors searching for this information.
• Additionally, if you have significant wins or landmark cases in hot topic areas, boost them by revamping an older blog post or by creating a new page to make the increased interest in these topics work in your favor with those looking for similar successes.
• Expect lower conversion rates as interest in related topics increases. This happens because visitors are likely looking for more information or understanding, versus an actual service from your company or firm. Reviewing year-over-year data in these cases can help adjust your SEO expectations on user behavior and conversion metrics.

What to consider in the future

As always, the Google search environment is forever changing and doesn’t operate in a bubble. Everything from politics to social media trends can dictate major swings in what Google is offering to users as search results.

Taking into consideration how these topics shift and understanding how they affect your business directly should dictate how you react. Knowing how to pivot your strategy in a swift and appropriate manner can be confusing, which is why an open and transparent relationship with your digital marketing agency is important to continued success in your industry.

Ensure you have access to the best knowledge about branding, marketing, SEO, PPC, and more by carefully selecting an agency with informed strategies you can trust and believe in!

The post How Do Election Year Trends Affect SEO? appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

We’ve also seen some interesting confirmations, new happenings on the Google side, and even more in the way of developments in Google’s ongoing fight against spam.

October even saw more comprehensive crawling from Microsoft’s new Bingbot user agent. In addition, some glitches occurred in Google Analytics, along with additional deflections on link juice and Google Business Profile suspensions occurring at an alarming rate.

So sit back, grab that cup of Joe, and enjoy our October 2022 Google SEO News recap!

Suspensions of Google Business Profiles were spiking

The beginning of October saw a few spikes in the suspensions of Google Business Profiles.

Barry Schwartz noted a much higher level of these suspensions spiking over the past couple of weeks.

Basically, what was happening was a higher than typical number of Google Business Profiles were being suspended on Google Maps: not only were they suspended, but they were also being entirely removed from the search results.

Users over on localsearchforum.com were describing events where they updated their Google Business Profiles after posting to them, and the profile had been suspended. This happened to at least 3 profiles that they were aware of.

Another user described the fact that they had tons of clients in a queue for doing an update on their listing. Apparently everything they even tried doing ended up leading to a suspension.

Local SEO Jason Brown noted in the thread that:

“Changing categories can trigger a suspension. I know that Google was suspended business profiles for updating the hours and that was a bug and shouldn’t be happening. Getting suspended for creating a post is not normal and sounds like a bug.”

Jason also noted that:

“Google doesn’t want you to edit the business profiles once it’s verified. You need to ask, do I really need to make this edit to enhance the business profile? Adding service areas doesn’t impact rankings, so if you are not ranking in that area, it won’t benefit you by adding it. Yes, there is a major backlog on reinstatements. They are averaging 22 days and if there is an uptick in suspensions, they delay can increase. The worst was 6 weeks to hear back.”

The Google Business Profile help forums also had a very high number of users who were complaining that their businesses were being suspended.

Google says to ignore anything that talks about link juice

John Mueller was asked by Twitter user Gyan (@Gyan92593415) about link juice. They asked John:

@JohnMu
its heard on internet that link juice is lost by giving outbound links, on the other hand, if websites are given good outbound links for reference, then the trustworthiness of article increases. These 2 are contradictory. For me both are necessary, what should be done?

John explained that anything regarding link juice discussed on the Internet should be ignored. He reiterated: “Make awesome websites with content that’s useful and inspirational to real people.”

Nothing is permanent, use 302 always (@JohnMu) September 29, 2022

New Google ranking update responsible for ranking swings

Early October also saw a new Google ranking update that saw massive Google ranking swings.

Glenn Gabe observed on Twitter that the examples of sites with these ranking swings indicate machine-learning models that are having a hard time figuring out a site. He pointed out that the site would drop and surge around major updates, including product reviews updates.

He noted that this site just dropped again with the September product review update, and some additional observations, below:

I just started digging in, but clearly Google is having a hard time understanding what the site does, if it should be classified as a product reviews site (it probably should…), & if it should rank at all. Like others impacted, the site dropped off a cliff for some queries… pic.twitter.com/c9SFmZay8k

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 30, 2022

Remember that site with INSANE trending based on Google’s machine learning systems having a hard figuring it out? Well, here we go again. IT JUST SURGED BACK LIKE MAD ON 10/15. That’s after tanking with the big PRU tremor on 9/25. It drops & surges w/multiple major algo updates: pic.twitter.com/amadolxaOH

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 17, 2022

As the algo turns, & turns, & turns. Yep, that site that dropped & surged over time…. NOW DROPS AGAIN. This is insanity. Just like the 8-day surge in mid-July, we now have a 5-day surge in October. That’s before tanking again. A crazy roller coaster for the site owner… pic.twitter.com/7SXil61i2R

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 23, 2022

Clearly, there are situations where things aren’t quite so clear when the Google algorithms are working to understand a site!

Google Business Profile Insights traffic had an unusual spike

Also in early October, reports began surfacing about spikes in traffic to Google Business Profile insights reporting platform.

In short, the data showed large spikes in traffic that were unaccounted for. The two Google products that showed these spikes were Google Maps along with Google Local.

The complaints first began on localsearchforum.com. More specifically, these spikes are happening within the auto dealership industry.

George Nenni was the first to report about this in one thread:

“We track GBP searches, views and actions for around 200 new car retailers, through a Jepto API into Data Studio. We are noticing more than half of these profiles received strange spikes in searches and views, but not actions. It is the same data we are seeing directly in the GBP dashboard (attached). We track separate profiles for sales, service, parts and body shop departments for each dealer. The issue is only happening with the nested department listings.

Anyone seeing similar, or have explanation?

I looked through threads for existing, hopefully not already answered!”

Another local SEO professional wrote:

“We’re seeing similar trends for a few of our clients in the car and restaurant verticals since July too. It’s been mostly from maps and direct searches. Haven’t been able to pin point where it’s coming from or if Google is tracking it differently now.

Being the uptick was mostly from direct searches, I would expect actions to improve directionally but that hasn’t been the case. If anyone knows what could be causing this increase in impressions you would be my new favorite person.”

Jason Brown, another local SEO professional, explained that he thinks this reporting spike is likely a bug.

In many areas, it’s rare for people to search visually

One SEO professional, Martin McGarry, asked John Mueller on Twitter about visual search. More specifically, he asked whether Google cares if they use the same image from Unsplash (a stock photography platform) that’s on 10,000 other websites.

John explained that if you’re focusing on web-search, you can go for it. Utilizing stock photos is just fine. He also explained that for image search, it’s harder to succeed with stock photos. Ideally, for image search, you would want more unique photos.

He also commented that searching in a visual way is quite rare in many areas.

If you’re focusing on web-search, go for it. Using stock photos is totally fine. If you’re trying to show up in Image Search, stock photos make it a bit harder (since we would try to just show one of the copies), but in many areas, searching visually is rare.

— johnmu: nothing is permanent, use 302 always (@JohnMu) October 4, 2022

Another user asked John what he meant by “visually.” Whether this meant Google Lens searches, or when a user searches a keyword phrase and then clicks on the image option from the search results.

John explained he was talking about both when he was talking about “searching visually.”

yes (both)

— johnmu: nothing is permanent, use 302 always (@JohnMu) October 4, 2022

HTML lang attribute still not used by Google

It has been known for a while now that the HTML lang attribute is not used by Google. This is different from the international HREFLANG attribute. Instead, the HTML lang attribute is a code declaration that shows up at the top of the heading of your document.

John explained the following and reiterated this on Twitter last month:

Google doesn’t use these, but screen readers do. Also, i think Bing might use them.

— johnmu: nothing is permanent, use 302 always (@JohnMu) October 6, 2022

John has explained in the past that they don’t use the HTML lang attribute at all. And, if you have HREFLANG links, Google is going to use those. So, if you use both, Google will always ignore the HTML Lang attribute.

Structured data can help identify content types

Google’s Danny Sullivan explained over on Twitter earlier in October that structured data, while not used for ranking, can help Google identify certain types of content like product reviews.

He also explained that this is the same case in terms of how Google uses many signals to understand content.

However, it’s not the same as ranking, and they (Google) would not solely depend on it because not everyone uses it.

Knee jerk reaction would be to recommend adding structured data to describe the page type. Because some systems use urls like /page?id=54321 Google cannot rely on meaning in URL structure.

— Alan Kent (@akent99) September 30, 2022

There is ranking (Eg product reviews) and presentation (Eg product snippets). Structured data is for the latter. But there are so many interconnected systems – hard to be definitive that SD does not sometimes help a system realize a page references products so might be a review

— Alan Kent (@akent99) October 3, 2022

Structured data isn’t used for ranking. Alan was saying it’s possible it’s used to help identify types of content, just as we use many signals to understand content. That’s not the same as ranking, nor would we solely depend on it as not everyone uses it.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 3, 2022

Product reviews update

On Twitter, earlier in October, Danny Sullivan also explained that the product reviews update is something tha tworks on the page-level, although Google can and does take action sitewide.

His additional comments explained that if a site has a lot of product review content, then Google is more likely to take action against that site.

These comments come after many people online expressed confusion about the product review update and how it’s applied to any given site:

If you don’t have a lot of product reviews (a really substantial not-single-digit-percentage part of your entire site is made up of them), a site-wide evaluation is not likely to happen…

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 7, 2022

Bingbot has a new user agent

Back on July 27th, Fabrice Canel of Bing announced a new Bingbot user agent. He also explained that it was at five percent of all URLs being downloaded.

Earlier in October, Fabrice announced that the new Bingbot has now downloaded 50 percent of all URLs.

Not bad progress at all.

bingbot user-agent change https://t.co/Zexqu3EuhU now at 5% of all URLs downloaded…

— Fabrice Canel (@facan) July 27, 2022

and now at 20%.

— Fabrice Canel (@facan) September 14, 2022

and now at 50%

— Fabrice Canel (@facan) October 11, 2022

Google Search ranking update happened around October 13th

Around October 13th, Barry Schwartz reported on a Google update that remains unconfirmed. He explained that over that last 24 hours or so, they were seeing some SEO forum discussions and that the SEO rank tracking tools began lighting up as if there were a major update going on.

Barry attributed changes in these rankings in Google Search to Google organic searches as well as Google search over that 24-48 hour time frame.

He also reiterated that it is unconfirmed and that Google has not announced any major update, but he is continuing to see major signals in this regard.

This thread over on Webmaster World talks about the ongoing situation with regard to these particular updates. Quite a number of SEO professionals were talking about some shifts in ranking and issues with their sites as a result.

“Anything you’re seeing now is not related to this September core update (rollout completed 2 weeks ago).

Time to close the thread maybe?”

“Yes, another drop today, BUT also googlebot is hammering my site like crazy.

Is like they want to have an up-to-date version in the DB!”

“Another day, another downgrade.
When you enter the teeth of “the Google”, you are crunched to nothing.
Another drop.
I can see the bottom now!

I have the impression that now the “Product review” category got much larger in a sense and this is causing problems.”

“I can show you site after site that is 100% really helpful and formerly top ranking content that has been smashed to the tune of 50% traffic lost. These sites talk about products in the sense of how to fix or modify them but they do not promote them, review them or make a buying suggestion at all. Zero affiliate links and in many cases the products are long out of production.

None of that mattered so yeah, it suggests something else is going on. Perhaps the product review update is mislabeling non-review pages?

Quote within a quote from another user: “I have the impression that now the “Product review” category got much larger in a sense and this is causing problems.”

YouTube videos flooded the results; bigger, indeed.

Anyway, if you suspect either update for a large traffic loss, and it would be unlikely anything else is to blame given the timing, check your internal links.

• Make sure internal links are truly topical and helpful to have on the page doing the linking
• Don’t keyword stuff. The link needs to make clear WHERE it is going and WHAT a visitor will find there. “Widget Grease” is bad anchor text, it doesn’t tell you where you are going or what you will find. Does it go to a review page? To another site to buy some? “Visit our widget grease guide”, or other verbiage/signal, is needed to tell visitors where they are going and what to expect if they click.
• Reverse the flow? You don’t need to create a lot of internal links to prop up an already well ranked page on a new-ish informational site. Consider adding them where they make sense on pages Google already favors to make the value flow more deeply into the site.

Remember: Google doesn’t even fully evaluate a page it feels isn’t ready for prime time. You see this in Search Console when looking up user metrics and you find “not enough data” and find the same.

Helpful content includes internal links but the anchor text has to be informative too. Source: Removing a related content plugin that wasn’t exactly helpful on many pages. A month later a lot of the content seems to be coming back to life and internal links were added manually to the top 4-5 pages only, according to G traffic/impressions.

Propping a good page up with lots of links from lesser pages is less effective than linking from a good page to pull up a lesser one, but it has to make sense.

*grasping at straws like everyone else*

Tiring, isn’t it?

Google spam update rolls out

Around October 19th, Google began rolling out the new October spam update. This update completed rolling out in less than around 42 hours.

Barry Schwartz noted that the previous spam update occurred in November 2021 and it took eight days to roll out. He also noted that other spam updates have taken just 24 hours to roll out.

The overall assessment of this update includes the fact that it has had a pretty major impact on the sites that it hit, but the net that was cast was not widespread.

Barry did not see a lot of complaints throughout the SEO community as he normally would have from other updates.

Yet another Google algorithm update

Google finally confirmed that the October 2022 spam update actually ended up finishing on Friday, the morning of October 21st.

Everything in the online communities and rank tracking tools reflected the nature of the spam updates, so nothing surprising really stood out there.

However, October 22nd saw renewed concern and discussion amongst the online SEO communities about this update. Also, major swings were observed in the rank tracking tools, which has likely indicated a major update was underway.

Google Analytics brings back query data

Earlier in October, a bug occurred in which Universal Analytics was missing all of its data after the 1st of October.

Thankfully, now it is fixed as of October 27th and Google has replaced all of the back data.

John Mueller himself confirmed the issue on October 5th, and explained that the team was looking into it:

I don’t have any insight on this at the moment, but the team has been looking into it. (cc @danielwaisberg )

— johnmu: nothing is permanent, use 302 always (@JohnMu) October 5, 2022

Google says human-written content isn’t necessarily helpful

On October 23rd, one SEO professional asked John Mueller on Twitter about human-written content and how it relates to the new Google spam update.

They observed that the “Google spam update is punishing a lot of human-written content. They commented that they are sure this update must be very helpful for consumers out there, but for sure the update needs a lot of correction.”

Google’s John Mueller explained that just because a piece of content is written by humans does not mean that it is helpful and good content. John also emphasized the point that he would really focus on making things awesome, unique, compelling, and that people would recommend to their friends. Don’t just set a low bar for “technically okay” content and expect to do well in the Google search results.

Just because something is human-written doesn’t make it helpful & good content. I’d really focus on making things awesome, unique, compelling, that people recommend to friends – not just something that’s technically ok.

— johnmu: nothing is permanent, use 302 always (@JohnMu) October 23, 2022

A consequence of the Google spam update

Over on Twitter, SEO professional Mark Williams-Cook posted that one of his sites was hit hard by the spam update.

He confessed that it was a really bad, really spammy website that he had created. One other user asked if he was using AI content on it. He explained that no, he was not.

He also mentioned that this is exactly what the site was designed for and that it was not actually monetized.

Mark also explained that he is not scraping articles or anything significant that others wrote or relied on for income. Most all of the content was programmatic stuff.

He also explained that he has a bunch of sites that he owns that he just runs tests on. If one of them tanks, basically this is a canary in a coal mine in terms of what SEO bad practices to avoid.

In addition, Mark went further and said that the site’s content was scraped PAA content – around 10,000 auto-generated pages.

Google’s spam update is working! pic.twitter.com/yv1HH5VLdp

— Mark Williams-Cook = 🅼🆁🅺 🅲🅺 (@thetafferboy) October 24, 2022

It’s working because that site was total spam

— Mark Williams-Cook = 🅼🆁🅺 🅲🅺 (@thetafferboy) October 24, 2022

It’s not AI content.

— Mark Williams-Cook = 🅼🆁🅺 🅲🅺 (@thetafferboy) October 25, 2022

It’s what the site was designed for, it wasn’t monetised.

— Mark Williams-Cook = 🅼🆁🅺 🅲🅺 (@thetafferboy) October 25, 2022

October was another month full of changes

As was the case for September 2022 in SEO, we can see that October is more of a bumpy month when it comes to Google algorithm updates. From spam updates to product reviews, many webmasters were experiencing near-total algorithmic losses as a result.

Which just goes to show: don’t make Google too angry. At least, don’t do it on a site that you plan to monetize and earn revenue from.

You may live to regret that decision!

The post October 2022 Google SEO News Recap appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

In September, as expected, we saw the proliferation of additional updates, including product reviews, and core updates, but surprisingly, also we saw the rollout of the unanticipated Google Helpful Content Update.

The HCU is meant to target helpful content in Google’s search results, and we have all the updates and insights here in the Hennessey Digital blog.

So, go ahead and grab that cup of Joe and let’s get rolling with the September 2022 SEO News Recap.

Google might remove word count reference in Google Search Console errors

On September 1st, Barry Schwartz reported that Danny Sullivan reiterated, yet again, that word count is not a ranking factor.

There is no word count, as we said. That @sistrix page is incorrect on that point (as well as some others). People can make claims about anything. Look to see how claims are backed up. If you can’t find sourcing, then you might reevaluate whether you believe a claim.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 31, 2022

The reference that sparked this question discussion is one in the Google Search Console section with a Google News specific article content error.

This error says that you should ensure that your articles have more than 80 words.

A Sistrix article mentioned this particular word count limit, to which Danny Sullivan retorted that they are incorrect on these recommendations. He recommended evaluating how claims on Google ranking are backed up, and if you find that they are dubious, you may want to reevaluate whether you believe a claim.

Microdata growth is stagnant overall, reports Google

In early September, on the 1st, Ryan Levering, a Googler for over a decade explained on Twitter that Microdata growth has been pretty stagnant.

But, he also said that there was still more visibility of microdata until around last year.

We (https://t.co/ooIuC1elTy) added this ages ago as workaround for shortfalls in Microdata syntax — it is why https://t.co/NMnMo6WvaQ says not to bother with it in RDFa notation since that has native support for listing several types on an entity. We should update it for JSON-LD!

— Dan Brickley (@danbri) August 30, 2022

The world is not “moving on” from microdata. There still needs to be a way to annotate html inline.

— Ryan Levering (@rrlevering) August 30, 2022

Growth of microdata is fairly stagnant but it was still more seen on the web until last year. There are use cases where you are literally annotating HTML content rather than mainly providing metadata where copying the complete textual contents can be off-putting for adoption.

— Ryan Levering (@rrlevering) August 30, 2022

Clearly, Schema.org microdata is not going anywhere. If you find that someone is not taking advantage of it, and you need to convince people to add this to your implementation, this should be a great conversation to reference.

Google can determine site quality from specific sections

Gary Illyes, a highly prominent Googler, hosted a Search Off The Record podcast where he explained that certain sections of your site could be judged for overall site quality.

Glenn Gabe was watching the podcast and reported this over on Twitter:

“Starter Signals -> Via @methode: Google can infer from a site overall which areas they might need to crawl more frequently. E.g. if there’s a blog subdirectory & there are signals that it’s popular/important, then Google might want to crawl there more.

And it’s not just update frequency, it’s also about quality. E.g. if G sees a certain pattern is popular (folder), & people are talking about it & linking to it, then it’s a signal that ppl like that directory.”

More from @methode about starter signals: And it’s not just update frequency, it’s also about quality. E.g. if G sees a certain pattern is popular (folder), & people are talking about it & linking to it, then it’s a signal that ppl like that directory https://t.co/7GQIh7xlb8pic.twitter.com/XKcsQSEmUJ

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 30, 2022

Google’s helpful content update: only 20 percent of SEOs noticed ranking changes

Over on seroundtable, Barry Schwartz reported that per a poll from Alyeda Solis, the Google Helpful Content Update was minor. It was not the earth-shattering rankings armageddon that everyone expected.

At the time of the poll, around 20 percent of SEO professionals surveyed said they saw rankings changes after the Google Helpful Content Update.

At the time of this writing, however, the poll’s percentage has increased to around 63.1 percent of SEO professionals who have noticed nothing from the Helpful Content Update.

We can corroborate what Barry says, based on our own review and reading of the search forums out there.

Here is the actual poll, for anyone who might be interested:

Have any of your Websites experienced any impact from the Google Helpful Content Update so far?

— Aleyda Solis (@aleyda) September 2, 2022

Danny Sullivan corroborates the above poll stating that HCU had no real shake-up

The Google Helpful Content update was not without a lot of controversy, with many SEO professionals wondering exactly what Google’s main goal of this update really was. This bewilderment, coupled with the fact that a vast majority of SEO professionals did not see any movement whatsoever based on the above polling, had many SEOs wondering why Google would make a big deal about it.

Danny Sullivan spoke with Glenn Gabe on Twitter about this and had some great insights. He explained the following:

The Helpful Content Update is very big. Big in the sense that it includes guidance that SEO professionals need to pay attention to. However, Danny also clarified that big doesn’t necessarily mean there will be a major shake-up in the search results. He also explained that this is “not the same as everyone claiming it would be a huge shake-up that they didn’t say to expect.”

Additionally, Danny defined the HCU as a “classifier” of high-quality content, and that they would keep refining this “classifier.”

He also explained that “If you went through this initial release and had no change then 1) congrats, lots of content is helpful and that’s probably you or 2) if you do have unhelpful content, you shouldn’t think that we won’t figure that out and consider changing what you’re doing….”

Danny then added: “Maybe the helpful content signal alone wasn’t enough to tip the scales and produce a change in someone’s particular situation, but when we do other updates (core, product reviews), it might add into that and be more significant….”

He also finished up the discussion with: “Beyond that, as we said in our post, we’ll keep refining the classifier. I expect it’s likely if we do a big revision, we’d share about that, release about that and some new forms of unhelpful content would be identified. That’s why we’ve said this is a continuing effort.”

The big bottom line that Danny explained was that “Content producers should review our guidelines and advice about helpful content. If you’re not succeeding, and you’re not following these, that might be something to reconsider:” and he linked to the following page on Google’s search documentation on the topic.

So overall, it looks like the update is really targeting the worst offenders. I wish I would have heard that from the beginning when speaking with Google. Like many others, I thought we were looking at medieval Panda-like impact. It’s not (at least with the initial rollout). pic.twitter.com/dztFKVp6nb

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 6, 2022

Google helpful content update finished September 9th

The Google Helpful Content Update began its rollout on August 25th, and as Google estimated, took around two weeks to fully complete its rollout. It finally finished on September 9th.

Also, around this time, there were more widespread fluctuations in rankings among many websites, which could have been related.

However, there is no conclusive evidence to support this.

To make matters worse, there was a core update shortly after the HCU on September 12, 2022, which we discuss further on in this SEO News recap.

Google updated its ranking updates page with the fact that the initial rollout of this update actually completed as of September 9, 2022.

Google review guidelines update: no incentives to remove negative reviews

One interesting update that happened to the Google Review Guidelines is that they are barring a business from incentivizing negative reviewers to remove those reviews.

Basically, if you’ve been paying people to remove reviews (or offering some other kind of incentive) this is no longer allowed and could be considered manipulation of Google reviews).

This guideline can be found in the prohibited and restricted content section of their guidelines.

More specifically, this is now categorized as fake engagement and deceptive content that’s no longer allowed by Google.

Local search ranking update on Google around September 7th

Over at the Sterling Sky forums around September 7th, there is a thread of many SEOs discussing significant local search ranking updates on this date.

Joy Hawkins, one of the administrators over at these forums, explained the following about these updates thus far:

I’m hearing a few cases like this lately and I’m starting to wonder if it’s related to the algorithm updates. Analyzing ranking drops is really time consuming and needs a pretty in-depth knowledge of the site, business, and competitors so I’m hesitant to offer advice on this. I would suggest looking to see if their organic ranking dropped as well or if it’s just the local pack rankings.

She also noted:

I think this is the third thread I’ve seen saying they can’t find themselves anywhere.

Is the listing still live on Maps? If so, can you link to it?

Can you confirm the last date you saw yourself ranking for the keywords you’re referring to?

Joy also noted that she has seen these drops for Sterling Sky’s listing:

I wanted to add that I’m actually seeing this as well for Sterling Sky’s listing. We don’t really care about our GBP much because it’s not how we get clients so I don’t often pay attention to it. We had it get suspended a little over a month ago and what was odd was that when I filled in the reinstatement form, the support team acted confused when they responded to me and said the listing was live (but it absolutely was suspended – I have the email alert telling me so).

Google reiterates that word count is not a sign of thin or unhelpful content

Barry Schwartz reported that Google’s John Mueller explained – yet again – on Twitter that word count is not a sign that a page has thin content.

Basically, John said that as the expert on your site’s topic, you should be able to make a qualified call on what’s helpful for your users (or isn’t helpful).

This tweet was triggered by another tweet by someone who talked to another SEO pro who had removed 50 percent of their pages that were considered low quality.

The SEO’s thinking was that any page with less than 1,000 words was getting cut.

The end result of this removal of supposedly thin content was a 60 percent organic traffic loss.

Here is the conversation over on Twitter:

Word count is not a sign that a page is thin content. You’re the expert on your site’s topic (or you should be), you can make a qualified call on what’s helpful for users, and what’s fluff. Don’t use word count. https://t.co/lnuYObPiY6

— 〈link href=//johnmu.com rel=canonical 〉 (@JohnMu) September 15, 2022

Google’s new HTTPS report adds confusion, could prevent site indexing

September also saw the release of a brand-new report in Google’s Search Console: the new HTTPS report.

You can read Google’s official announcement about the new report.

It’s worth noting that one of the warnings generated by this report is pretty confusing and could lead to your site not getting indexed if you follow the warning.

John Mueller explained that this particular warning is really only an FYI and not quite as scary as it’s presented.

Thanks! We dug through a bunch of these reports, and we’ll work on improving the UI to make this look less scary. When a page is not indexed, we don’t evaluate the HTTPS (it’s not blocking). For very new pages, it’s similar. We’ll make this more of a “FYI” and not an error.

— 〈link href=//johnmu.com rel=canonical 〉 (@JohnMu) September 19, 2022

There are many tweets and discussions on a wide variety of forums about this particular error.

John also clarified something about HTTPS, saying:

HTTPS would not prevent a page from being indexed. It might prevent it from being indexed as HTTPS, but we’d still index it as HTTP. We just don’t index all pages on sites, that’s expected, and independent of HTTPS status.

— 〈link href=//johnmu.com rel=canonical 〉 (@JohnMu) September 15, 2022

The following includes Glenn Gabe’s analysis of “HTTPS not evaluated” and what the error actually means. He also notes that this particular error is causing mass confusion for site owners and SEO professionals alike.

“HTTPS Not Evaluated” is causing mass confusion for site owners and SEOs. Reminds me of Discovered, not indexed…

Note, Google just might not have crawled the urls yet -> “Google has never seen the URL, or has seen the URL but not crawled it yet.” https://t.co/YoRrW8utkupic.twitter.com/q74xJG7dEq

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 16, 2022

Periodic, unannounced product review updates still happening

Earlier in September, Danny Sullivan reiterated that product review updates are still periodic refresh updates.

Just like Core Updates, Google is going to run these frequently. And they are likely not to be announced like Core Updates, or like Product Review updates have been announced in the past.

It’s still a periodic refresh situation. See: https://t.co/0gJccmGeoV

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 21, 2022

No, Google is not going to penalize for URLs that are keyword-stuffed

Over on Twitter, John Mueller reiterated that Google will not penalize URLs for keyword stuffing.

John explained that, essentially, doing this is not going to have any effect, positive or negative when it comes to search engines.

However, it is still good practice to mention your keywords in the URL, but the effect is minimal. Focusing on keywords in URLs is oftentimes the wrong prioritization.

No, you won’t get penalized for keyword-stuffed URLs. It basically has no effect, positive or negative for search engines. It’s a good practice to mention your keywords in the URL, but the effect is minimal. Focusing there is often the wrong prioritization.

— 〈link href=//johnmu.com rel=canonical 〉 (@JohnMu) September 21, 2022

Google releases statement on expertly written content

Over on Twitter, John Mueller discussed the fact that if you’re unable to tell that your content is expertly written, then it’s likely not.

For further context: if your content does not look like it was written by an expert, then it very likely is not written by an expert.

Making sure that your content is expertly written helps search engines understand it even better.

And making sure that your content is of high enough quality is also part of that expectation.

So, if you’re writing content for users and search engines, make sure your content has that extra air of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness that’s worthy of being included in a search engine.

One way to think of this is if you don’t know whether your content is expertly written or not, then it’s definitely not expertly written.

— 〈link href=//johnmu.com rel=canonical 〉 (@JohnMu) September 25, 2022

September product review and core updates finished roll outs on September 26th

Google launched the September Core Update shortly after the major Helpful Content Update. As predicted by our own iloveseo.com author Brian Harnish, it launched around September 12th:

Yep, back on September 6th I predicted a Google Core Update…right on schedule… pic.twitter.com/N4Y1TbjqvU

— Brian Harnish (@BrianHarnish) September 12, 2022

Finally, the Core Update rollout was completed around September 26th.

The Google Product Review Update for September 2022 also launched around September 20th and took about six days to roll out. It was fully completed on September 26th as well.

These updates were pretty large updates by their nature, and many many sites were very likely impacted.

Twitter user Glenn Gabe had the following insights into the product review update for September:

Here is my tweet from 7/31 saying I expected changes to be pushed by Google to correct the flawed July PRU. It took until the Sep PRU to see that… Again, several sites reached out about full recovery w/out doing anything. Welcome to Google Land https://t.co/QwXDTnq6U8

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 27, 2022

OK, here’s another site that got hit hard w/the July Product Reviews Update that surged back on Sunday when Google pushed a tremor. The site owner explained the July hit was a wakeup call & they have been addressing some things. But sure seems like this was a correction by Google pic.twitter.com/BnuaeY7zIY

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 27, 2022

Well, that sounds familiar! I’ve had a bunch of site owners reach out w/a similar situation. Great to see that recovery. Google seemed to address some flaws with the July PRU.

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 27, 2022

Insights from Hennessey Digital’s VP of SEO on September Google updates

Steve reported on Google’s September 2022 updates in his post on the Hennessey Blog that “Hennessey Digital saw a few of our clients experience a slight dip in site rankings on or around the release of this update.”

Dip in organic rankings after the Sept. 12th Google Core Update

He also reported that in spite of the latest September updates, our client’s local SEO continued to remain in strong standings.

In addition, around September 12th, Hennessey Digital also noted significant increases in organic rankings for several clients after the Core Update rolled out:

Spike in organic rankings after the September 12th Google Core Update

As Steve notes:

“At Hennessey Digital, the SEO team monitors our clients’ organic search results daily to make sure no opportunity is missed to rank higher in search. Tracking algorithm updates matters because we need to know if (and when) any of our clients are affected. What’s more, it is crucial to understand how these changes will affect your business moving forward.”

As usual, September has seen a large quantity of search news and updates, and it’s not expected to end anytime soon.

That’s why you can count on us to keep you informed on the news that counts.

We will see you all next month for October’s Search News Recap!!

The post September 2022 SEO News Recap appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

Many of our clients are law firms, where the competition for organic share of voice is fierce in efforts to gain more website traffic and better positions on search result pages. Many law firms look for potential customers to turn into cases from a limited source (organic positioning, social media, paid ads, etc.).

How we use data and tools to solve ranking problems

Primarily a law firm digital marketing agency, Hennessey Digital tracks over 30,000 keywords per day for our clients. We use various keyword research tools and have processes to ensure the data we monitor helps us proactively resolve organic ranking issues.

We also provide ongoing, transparent reporting to clients regarding how keywords rank and explain the correlation between rankings and search volume. This way, we can identify which keywords will move the needle regarding improved impressions in the SERPs (search engine results pages) to increase clicks and, more importantly, leads! Furthermore, this also allows us to evaluate which keywords are working well for our clients and which aren’t performing as expected.

We use various tools to help with keyword research. These include Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Trends, STAT, and Keywords Everywhere. These tools allow us to quickly pull data from various sources such as Google Ads, Google Search Console, and other popular data resources to determine some of the terms that may be relevant to our client’s campaigns.

Our team analyzes short-tail and long-tail keywords, optimizing for a combination of both to achieve maximum gains for our clients. There is no one-size fits all approach; only strategies informed by prior trials can be leveraged for individual clients.

Keyword research is integral to any SEO strategy because it helps us translate our client’s needs and goals into converting website traffic. We also must keep track of the changing trends within Google’s algorithm and competitor sites to rank high on search engines. It’s not enough just to throw words into these tools, cross our fingers, and hope for the best – we need to find out what people are searching for and create content around those terms that helps users.

One key focus is writing this keyword research-based content for the users first and search engines second, and a treasure trove of additional information that is most commonly overlooked is in historical search data. With proper keyword research, we will know within minutes whether or not the chosen keywords are popular. If they aren’t being searched for, it’s probably best to look elsewhere.

Why we use historical organic keyword ranking data

We’re often asked why we use historical organic keyword data rather than just looking at current rankings. As Maya Angelou once said, “You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been.” This holds true in SEO strategies as well.

Our tools utilize keyword sets for clients that segment ranking data into practice areas (like personal injury, car accident, medical malpractice, etc.) and geographical ranking data (covering major cities and even smaller towns where our clients provide services). In addition, we also provide a detailed analysis of the keywords used by each client.

We can provide this information because our tools allow us to track and analyze all search terms utilized by clients on Google and Bing. We can see what words or phrases are being searched for by potential clients and which words competitors seem to be going after as well. We can then use these results to help our clients create more effective SEO strategies, which should produce an increase in leads and better ROI.

Source: STAT – Lower is better, with organic position 1 along the very bottom axis.

We look back to the past to see which keywords worked and how they performed over time. With this information, we can identify trends that may be useful when planning future campaigns. Moreover, it helps us understand which words are most effective in different industries.

Keyword research is a vital component that helps us know what our client’s competitors are doing to ensure we stay ahead of them. Our SEO experts collect this for you and help find new opportunities by analyzing current content for optimization opportunities.

None of us know what the future holds for rankings, search engine updates or the exact ways trends may change, and historical data holds more answers than not. By looking at historical data, we can avoid being misled by short-term fluctuations in rankings. In addition, we can compare long-term trends in performance against competitors.

Source: Ahrefs – for current personal injury law client

When comparing performance metrics, it is important to understand whether the differences are caused by random variations or real progress. By looking at historical data, we can ensure our clients are making real progress and be transparent when it may be a brief fluctuation instead.

Why SEO keyword ranking history matters

Tracking a list of keyword history over time helps to determine how a site should rank for specific keywords. Getting caught up the moment a keyword ranking improves is easy, and thinking that a website will perform better if we simply start using specific techniques without considering trends is a misstep. However, predicting which methods will work best for any given keyword is difficult since many factors go into the ranking process.

The following are some examples of what we may use to track a list of keyword history:

1. Google Trends – This tool allows you to see how often a particular term has been searched on Google. You can also compare different countries or regions.
2. Keyword Discovery Tool– This tool allows users to enter their own keywords and search for related terms. The tool provides keyword ideas and suggestions based on the number of times the word appears on Google.
3. Google Autocomplete – This tool allows anyone to type in a phrase in the Google search bar and see what comes up as a search suggestion related to the phrase.
4. Google Search Console – This tool allows webmasters to check page rankings for various keywords.
5. Google Analytics – This tool allows businesses to monitor traffic from organic sources such as search engines, social media sites, and direct visits.
6. Search Console API– This tool enables developers to access information about individual pages.
7. Google Keyword Planner – The Google keyword planner is a tool that helps you determine which keywords will be best for your website. It gives us suggestions of keywords based on your current content, competitors’ websites, and other factors.
8. Google Ads – We manage Google Ad PPC accounts for many clients and leverage this data against our organic efforts to determine what is performing well.

Any combination of the above tools may be used to understand how keywords historically rank, including keyword difficulty, volatility, and search volume. That said, we also must take great measures to understand how and why keywords decrease in ranking outside of the random variations we expect.

How we diagnose a drop in organic rankings

Rank tracking tools are the first step in diagnosing site or link profile issues. They allow us to see what changes occurred over time and how they affected our client rankings. After enough analysis, we can pinpoint where things may have gone wrong and which course correction to begin.

We use our rank tracking tools to monitor every day, week, month, quarter, and year. If we notice anything unusual, it might indicate that there’s been an algorithm update or that a competitor has changed tactics. While Google announces a certain number of core updates, many more updates are suspected within the marketing community when we see dramatic keyword ranking fluctuations and extreme website traffic drops or increases.

When we detect a drop in rankings, we will generally try to determine if the drop was limited to a specific area of the site or if it is more widespread. We will also analyze how many pages were affected and whether other factors may have caused the drop – like site downtime or technical issues.

We then take steps to correct the problem. If the issue is with our code, we will fix the bug as soon as possible. We will generally dig into the content of the affected pages and use artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools, as well as our primary keyword research tools, to validate the topical relevance of ranking existing pages. We can make necessary content tweaks or additions to improve and recover organic ranking performance. We look at a variety of things, such as:

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) – LSI is based on the assumption that words in a document are related because they appear together frequently and thus can be used as an indicator of semantic similarity between several similar keyphrases (an example of similar semantic words would be – bar, tavern, pub, inn, and watering hole).

Natural Language Processing (NLP) – Google uses NLP to understand natural language and extract meaning from text. It does this by analyzing the context of each word within the sentence. Moreover, it can also explore the relationships between words in a sentence.

Page Authority – A Page Authority score is calculated using a combination of backlinks, domain authority, and page content.

Topic Clustering – The topic clustering algorithm is a method for grouping documents into topics. The algorithm works by first finding the most common words in each document and then grouping together all of the documents that share similar sets of words. This method produces clusters with a high degree of internal coherence.

Content Quality Score – The quality score measures the overall quality of a web page. It considers the quantity and quality of links pointing to a given URL. In addition, Google includes other elements that influence SEO, like content, keyword density, etc., in calculating its quality score. Google’s algorithm is constantly changing, so we have to keep up with all the changes.

Focus on keyword search volumes

Changes outside of Google algorithm updates include user trends that drive keyword search volumes. We look at keyword search volume as if you were going to place a billboard on the side of a freeway – the more cars that drive past it (impressions), the more likely people will contact your business (clicks). It is imperative to focus and ensure efforts are being placed to drive organic ranking for relevant keywords with high search volume and to produce a sound content strategy around this. Otherwise, we risk creating a lot of noise that no users are around to hear.

We use data from our proprietary database to estimate monthly search volumes for keywords. Our estimates include traffic estimates for both desktop and mobile devices. It’s important to know that the search trends on these two devices can make a huge difference in our analysis. We must consider and optimize for both.

If you want to know what people are searching for, we recommend checking out the Keyword Planner mentioned in the list above. You’ll find detailed information about the number of searches performed for different terms and estimated monthly search volume, cost per click (CPC), and pay-per-click (PPC) cost.

What about zero search volume?

Thanks to our many years of working in the legal sector, we have tons of historical data for keywords that our personal injury attorney clients are looking to target. Interestingly, our tools sometimes return “Zero Search Volume” (ZSV) phrases. As a result, we can target these keywords and phrases that may ordinarily be overlooked. Internally, we refer to these zero search volume phrases as “diamonds in the rough” since they will often drive impressive incremental traffic. Furthermore, by targeting these ZSV keywords in combination with other strategies such as link building, social media marketing, etc., it is easy to see why some of our most successful campaigns have been driven by ZSVs.

How to create a successful SEO campaign

With keyword research, where a successful search engine optimization strategy starts, it’s not where it ends. There are multiple factors and segments of SEO that must be taken into account to have successful results, like increased ROI, conversions, and revenue.

Keyword Research & Analysis

The first step in creating a successful SEO campaign is to perform thorough keyword research. The goal here is to find a list of keywords that have the potential to bring traffic to your website. These keywords should be highly targeted toward your products or services but not so competitive that they won’t convert.

On-Page Optimization

Once you’ve identified a set of keywords to target, you’ll need to optimize site content to support these terms. You’ll want to include those keywords in various places throughout your site’s copy, including title tags, meta descriptions, headers, body copy, and other appropriate areas.

Off-Page Optimization

Now that you’ve optimized on-site content, it’s time to take care of some off-page optimization. Link building is one of the most effective ways to get new visitors to your site since Google considers backlinks votes of confidence from other sites. We recommend focusing on authoritative link partners who are relevant to your niche.

Keyword Search Volumes

We use data from our proprietary database to estimate monthly search volumes for keywords. Our estimates include traffic estimates for both desktop and mobile devices. Furthermore, we also provide a breakdown of the estimated number of searches by device type (desktop/mobile).

If you want to know what people are searching for, we recommend checking out the Google Keyword Planner. You’ll find detailed information about the number of searches performed for different terms and estimated monthly search volume, cost per click (CPC), and PPC cost.

Google Analytics

Finally, you’ll want to ensure you track everything correctly through Google Analytics. There are many different views you can use to track data, such as:

• Top Keywords
• Landing Pages
• Referring Sites
• Sources
• Demographics
• Google Ads Conversion Tracking
• Social Media Conversions
• Website Traffic
• Organic vs. Paid Traffic
• Mobile vs. Desktop Traffic
• Time Spent on Site
• Bounce Rate
• Pageviews per Visit
• Average Session Duration
• Exit Pages
• Source/Medium/Referrer
• Campaigns
• Goals
• Leads
• Searches per Month
• Cost Per Lead
• Cost Per Sale
• Revenue Per Visitor
• Visitors Per Day
• Sessions Per User
• Users Per Month

The future of organic rankings and SEO strategy

Historically, our SEO keyword ranking efforts have been to dig into our clients’ past performance, focusing on the organic search histories and monitoring fluctuations. We’ve found that several factors can affect rankings on Google, and by using our proprietary tools, we can pinpoint which ones are affecting your campaigns positively or negatively.

Additionally, we can use this information to help make more informed recommendations about how best to optimize your website for maximum traffic that will convert into a client.

The SEO industry is constantly changing, and the reality of SEO keeps everyone on their toes. The internet evolves rapidly, so it’s hard to keep up with new technological developments. To stay ahead of the competition, you need a marketing team that understands how to quickly adapt by leveraging historical data and emerging trends.

We excel here at Hennessey Digital because we know where to look and which conclusions to draw while remaining transparent with our clients as strategies pivot along with the ever-changing digital marketing landscape!

The post SEO Keyword Ranking History: When Should Organic Performance Affect SEO Strategy? appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

What we’re seeing

Using the search analytics tool STAT, we can monitor our clients’ organic keyword rankings and keyword variations in near-real time. After the two Google updates occurred, Hennessey Digital saw a few of our clients experience a slight dip in site rankings on or around the release of this update.

Dip in organic rankings after the Sept. 12 Google core update

Despite a few dips that we’ve seen, our clients’ local SEO remains strong. Back in May 2022, we saw an increase in our clients’ local ranks, and those remain strong in spite of the recent dips we’re seeing on the organic search side.

On the other hand, we’ve also noticed an increase in organic rankings for several clients on or about September 12th when this Google core update was pushed out.

Spike in organic rankings after the Sept. 12 Google core update

Understanding Google’s “major updates” vs. “core updates”

For context, Google routinely pushes out updates to refine its search results. Some are classified as semi-regular “major updates” like the recent content update, while others are “core updates” that are rolled out monthly, like the one that started on September 12.

Google core updates often help improve and refine regular search results, and sometimes core updates are geared towards reducing spam results. In any case, Google has been known to push these changes out without warning, so our team at Hennessey Digital constantly monitors our clients’ site performance and closely watches Google for announcements.

What you need to know

• With these September 2022 Google updates, their impact on SEO and your search results is  a mixed bag. We’re seeing some clients’ organic performance dip after the updates while others made gains, so it’s too early to know definitively whether changes are due to algorithm updates or not.
• Google is always changing its algorithms. The search engine giant makes regular algorithmic changes every 1-2 months, so we’re always looking for ways to improve SEO strategies for our clients. (Does your agency do this?)
• Other factors besides Google can affect how your site performs. For example, rebuilding a website or adding new keywords to a site can affect volatility. This is why we continually monitor our clients’ site performance and create proprietary technologies in-house to track, alert, and fix issues as they arise.

How we manage Google algorithm changes

Google is constantly evolving and updating its algorithm. At Hennessey Digital, the SEO team monitors our clients’ organic search results daily to make sure no opportunity is missed to rank higher in search.

Tracking algorithm updates matters because we need to know if (and when) any of our clients are affected. What’s more, it is crucial to understand how these changes will affect your business moving forward.

Resources for tracking future Google updates

Many of our law firm digital marketing clients like to know what’s happening with Google as it ultimately affects their business. Fortunately, Google and other resources make it easy to track the latest Google algorithm updates. Here are a few of our favorites:

1. Google Webmaster Tools

The most obvious place to check out Google algorithm updates is the Google Webmaster Tools. This tool allows webmasters to monitor their rankings and identify potential issues, you can use it to find out if your site is affected by major updates, so it’s good practice to check this tool regularly.

2. Google Trends

Another great way to learn about Google algorithm updates is to take advantage of Google Trends. If you type in a keyword related to your industry, Google Trends will show how often people searched for that term over time. For example, if you type in “SEO tools,” Google Trends will show you the number of times people searched for those terms over the past few months.

3. Google Search Central Blog

If you want to know exactly what’s happening within Google Search, go to this blog. You can read posts about recent algorithm updates, tips and tricks, and even announcements about upcoming features.

4. Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land

Both of these sites are great for up-to-the-minute reporting on most things Google-related. They also provide a good in-depth analysis of Google algorithm changes and how they affect site performance. Hennessey Digital CEO Jason Hennessey is a respected contributor for SEO strategy and digital marketing thought leadership as well.

Check back in this space frequently as we post timely updates on Google algorithm changes here. At our sister site iloveseo.com, you can find valuable articles on SEO strategy, news and recaps from SEO expert Brian Harnish. We’re committed to doing the work for our clients and being transparent about what we know to help companies succeed.

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