google

The March 12, 2019 Google Core Algorithm Update – A Softer Side Of Medic, Trust And The Link Graph, Quality Still Matters, And The Importance of the “Kitchen Sink”

In 2018, we saw three broad core ranking updates that caused massive volatility in the search results globally. Those updates rolled out in March of 2018, August of 2018 (Medic Update), and then late September of 2018. All three were huge updates, which sent some sites dropping off a cliff and others surging through the … Read more

7 Examples of Untrackable Clicks From Google’s Ecosystem of Search, Chrome, and Feeds

Information is powerful. And for SEOs, it can help inform, guide, and drive change. That’s why we’re always looking for more data from Google to better understand where traffic is coming from, what people are searching for, which elements in the search results are driving those clicks, and more. And that’s also why tools such … Read more

A Holly Jolly Load Balancer Christmas – How Google Treated A Major Site Performance Problem From A Crawling And Ranking Perspective [SEO Case Study]

Ah, the holidays. Who doesn’t love a festive atmosphere, ugly Christmas sweaters, eggnog, singing Christmas carols, and major performance problems that can take down your site? Wait, what was that last part??The holidays are always interesting for me SEO-wise. Every few years, I receive an SOS from a site owner right around Christmas Day based … Read more

Searching For Buried Treasure – How To Find More Of Your Featured Snippets Using Google Search Console (GSC), Analytics Edge, And SEMrush Position Tracking

A few years ago, I wrote a post about how to surface your featured snippets via SEMrush’s powerful SERP features widget. I love using SEMrush to plug in any domain and view (many of) the featured snippets it has. It’s a quick an easy way to conduct competitive analysis from a featured snippets standpoint. Remember, … Read more

How To Find The True Size Of Your Site Using GSC’s Index Coverage Reporting (And Why It’s Important For SEO)

So, how large is your site? No, how large is it really?? When speaking with companies about SEO, it’s not long before I ask that important question. And I often get some confused responses based on the “really” tag at the end. That’s because many site owners go by how many pages are indexed. i.e. … Read more

How To Use Scroll Depth Tracking, Adjusted Bounce Rate, and Average Time On Page As A Proxy For User Engagement and Content Quality

I was helping a company a few months ago that got hit hard by recent algorithm updates. When digging into the audit, there were a number of problems that were surfaced, including content quality problems, technical SEO problems, user experience issues, and more. From a content quality perspective, the site had an interesting situation. Some … Read more

Night of the Living 302s: How SEO Crawlers and GSC’s Index Coverage Reporting Helped Me Surface A Sinister 302 Redirect Problem [Case Study]

I recently started helping a new client that has seen a continued drop in search visibility over time. After getting up to speed on the site, its history, business model, etc., I started a thorough crawl analysis and audit of the site. The crawl analysis involves performing an enterprise crawl and then subsequent surgical crawls … Read more

The September 27, 2018 Google Algorithm Update And October 4 Tremor – Google Experiments, Relevance, Trust Signals, Reversals, and “Staying in your lane”

I was asked on September 26 whether or not I had seen another significant update after the August 1, 2018 update. That was a massive update and many sites were impacted across the web. Well, I said we were due, but didn’t realize how close we actually were. Just one day later on September 27, … Read more

The Magically Moving Meta Robots Tag And The Potential SEO Danger It Brings [Case Study]

{Update: Google’s John Mueller replied to my question on Twitter about this situation. You can read John’s feedback here.} {Update 10/27/18: My client’s dev team figured out the problem and I provided more information about that below.} I’ve been helping a client with a large-scale CMS migration recently and came across a very interesting, and … Read more

Meet Newsguard, A Team Of Quality Raters For News Publishers – And Another Way To Check Site Trust, Credibility, and Transparency

Update: April 2022 I just published a post explaining how sites can use NewsGuard’s nutritional labels to avoid manual actions for violating Google’s medical policy (for News and Discover). This is based on helping sites that received manual actions in January of 2022. —– Based partly on the August 1 Google algorithm update, there’s been … Read more

Analysis and Findings From The August 1, 2018 Google Algorithm Update – A Massive Core Ranking Update

{Update July 2022: I just published my post about the May 2022 broad core update. In my post, I cover five micro-case studies covering drops and surges based on the update.} —– On August 1, 2018 Google rolled out one of the biggest algorithm updates I’ve ever seen. It was huge and many sites saw … Read more