Dear <<First Name>>,

I hope you and yours are well and staying safe this fall. I highly recommend taking some time off, if you can this year. We had the fortune of taking an RV trip in early September and it made all of the difference in my stress levels.

As usual, the digital marketing space NEVER takes a vacation so we have quite a few updates this month - starting with signs that Apple might be creating its own search engine.

Let’s get into the updates.

SEOs have been noticing increased activity from AppleBot (Apple’s crawler) and over the summer the company updated information about its crawler as well as published information about its ranking factors. It also seems that Apple search is possibly not using Google (or Bing) anymore for its results.

Here are the details:

In July of this year, Apple updated its search ranking factors in its help documentation. It includes the following:

• Aggregated user engagement with search results

• Relevancy and matching of search terms to webpage topics and content

• Number and quality of links from other pages on the web

• User location-based signals (approximate data)

• Web Page design characteristics

It did not say which factor has more weight in its rankings. And note that Apple is mentioning that it’s watching CTR and pogo-sticking when it ranks items. Apple also uses the content and topic of your pages for ranking, it looks at links, user location, and even the design characteristics of the page.

It also published information about Applebot - how to verify the traffic via its user-agent, and expanded robots.txt rules. They also highlighted that they don’t just crawl HTML, but can also render pages with JavaScript.

Back in July, Google was still powering Siri’s web results. At times it was using Bing, but now in Spotlight Search on iOS and iPadOS 14 beta shows up as Siri Suggestions - allowing users to go to sites bypassing Google search. This new move is probably due to European regulatory pressure that would force Apple to use its own search engine. 

If you’re curious about Apple’s search focus, Bill Slawski has saved parts of a machine learning job description at Apple - focused on building out its search offering. Bill’s deconstruction of the Apple search patent is definitely worth a read.

URL Parameter Tool to be upgraded once it moves

Google still uses the URL Parameter tool even if it hasn’t migrated to the new Google Search Console and when they DO migrate it, John Meuller hints that it will have upgrades that are “really cool”. OK. Stay tuned.

Recovering from an unnatural link manual action

During a recent Google Webmaster Hangout session, John Meuller clarified that if you get a manual action for unnatural links, you're not always going to recover rankings as those "previous positions in search were artificially, strongly inflated." Watch here:

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Asks You To Verify These Facts.

Google is asking some searchers with some queries to "verify the facts to help others. This looks a bit like what you would see if you were a Google maps contributor but now it looks like it’s helping Google verify facts.

New SEO Myth Busting videos from Google:

Google released a few more myth-busting videos last month including:

• Is more content better?

• The relationship between Google and the SEO community with Barry Schwartz

Search Engine Journal: Bing Announces Enhanced Robots.txt Testing Tool

Google’s Webmaster Conference Lightning Talk about HTTPs

This is a great step by step video for how to transition correctly to HTTPs. I have seen this gone wrong SO many times with folks who come to me with lost rankings. I love that John mentioned setting up one to one 301 redirects a few times.

Persuading others to implement structured data

This is a great presentation on when your site might need for you to implement structured data and how to persuade your developers to make time for it in their development queue:

Leveraging the powers of Structured Data

Tools to test your schema implementations

Personalized Entity Repository and Personal Knowledge Graphs

A Content Audit Process + Template

This is a great outline of how to conduct a content audit with a free downloadable template.

What to do to improve Poor CTR in SERPs

Alyeda shared a great flowchart of how you can improve your click through rate that’s worth printing and adding to your wall:

A great way to find content ideas where you can rank.

A great tip from @danshure. Add one of your competitors with a lower DA than you in SEMRush to see where they rank and write something better. 

Google Entity Carousels: How to Earn Your Spot

Here's a great case study from WordLift on how to use sameas schema.org markup, as well as claiming your entities in the Knowledge Graph to clean up issues in your Knowledge Panel.

Google is Ending Template Actions for Google Assistant Support

Those templates which power personality quizzes, flash cards, trivia apps, and how to videos will stop working on March 31, 2021.

Other voice updates:

• Alexa Can Now Print Recipes, Crosswords, and Coloring Books, Committing Voice Commands to Paper

• Microsoft Adds Voice Commands, Transcription to Office 365

Local search is now pay to play: Google’s Local Trust Pack.

Here are the two most important quote from Search Engine Land’s article: 

“Google has a new form of trusted answers (called Google Guaranteed) that are revealed through a unique and compelling sponsored ad unit. The advertisers that participate in this new layer of trust are proudly displayed next to a green, check-mark badge. This designation is quickly becoming the symbol of trust for Google users.”

“What makes LSA so unique is its use of methods such as hours of operations, answer rate, conversation quality, booked transactions, archived calls, customer reviews, and other advertiser feedback loops to calculate ad serving rules.”

If you are in the local SEO space, the above article is a must-read.

Amazon enters the Podcasting Market

Amazon Music now lets you discover and play podcasts - in its iOS and Android apps, on the web, as well as via Amazon Echo smart speakers. You can also pick up where you left off in any podcast. FYI, this does not mean that you’re immediately in Audible, but it will allow your podcast to be available to Amazon Music’s 55 million users. To submit your podcast via your podcast host, or (if you can’t do that) directly with Amazon Music.

A podcast test - podcasts are surfacing in Google Discover

Google Discover is testing surfacing podcast episodes. I am not surprised by this as for the last three years I’ve been saying that Google is working toward providing audio-only answers for questions and has a goal to double podcast listening.

Spotify creating algorithmic and editor curated playlists for podcasts

The power of video structured data on your site

This is a solid article that outlines the benefits of embedding video into your landing pages. Using video structured data even when embedding YouTube Videos can result in your video appearing in the following:

• Video search results

• Google Images

• Google Discover

According to Google, the structured data can also trigger other rich results like:

• LIVE badges

• Video clips

• Video host carousels

A reminder of the importance of uploading transcription to YouTube videos

Video channel growth tips

A great Kalicube Tuesday interview with Tim Schmoyer from VideoCreators.com. 

Here are my crib notes:

Should you ask for subscribers? And can you get subscribers with your video strategy without directly asking for subscribers?

First, a quick reminder: YouTube looks at the following related to your video:

• Watch time.

• How does this video contribute to the overall viewing session on YouTube?

• How satisfied do your users feel at the end of the view session? They measure this with how likely your viewers are to come back to YouTube the next day, or a satisfaction survey to users. 

At the end of your video, you want to make sure you don’t give the user any signal that your video is almost over as it impacts your overall watch time. You want them to keep watching your videos to extend their YouTube session time. 

With this said, they recommend:

• At the end of your video, use the end screens while you’re still delivering value - quickly give a 10-second pitch for the next video you want them to watch. Or a playlist. 

• And say: “I’ll see you in the next video”. Don’t say goodbye.

VideoCreator sees a normal click-through rate on end screens of  .7% and he has seen (with this new approach) a CTR get as high as 42% on that end screen link.

And what if the “next” related video is not published?

Here’s his recommendation:

• Do a verbal and visual call to action, but on-screen put a “coming next Thursday” note in the end screen box. 

• Then when the video is published, put it in that end screen spot on top of that box on the video.

And a note that YouTube has a “best for viewer” option on the end screen, but it's not as high as if you do a verbal pitch and pick something strategically. 

Also, you can put up someone else’s video if you don’t have a relevant video as it still increases the YouTube viewer session. Great stuff!

YouTube Shorts - YouTube’s TikTok  

Backlink tools review

A great review of the various backlink tools and who has the most backlink data.

New App+Web Data Studio Connector is now available in Google Data Studio

Instructions are here

This is a new section because it’s a passion of mine that you can see in my new podcast Digital Marketing Victories - where we dig into the soft skills required to persuade others to adopt your digital marketing strategy.

This article by Kevin Indig about in-house SEO is great. And I agree with this focus of the article:

The biggest problem in SEO is not knowing what to do, but HOW to get things done.

And his solutions focus on:

• Developing business cases to rally for resources - by connecting your ask with revenue.

• Show immediate results within the first 30 days with your recommendations.

• Figure out who holds power and help them accomplish their goals.

A Search Performance/Device GDS Dashboard 

A great Google Data Studio template from Aleyda Solis to help you analyze mobile vs desktop search behavior. 

LGBTQ + Digital Marketers Slack

There is a new Slack channel - which is a “safe space for digital marketing professionals under the queer umbrella to support one another, share knowledge, and discuss”. You can sign up here.

Entity Search free eBook

Free eBook on entity-oriented search, written by Krisztian Balog who was a visiting Scholar at Google for over a year. It’s worth a read due to Google’s work in developing user-specific Knowledge Graphs.

Structured Data Testing Tool Alternatives

Find it here: Structured Data Testing Tool Alternatives

We Love SEO Virtual Summit

John Mueller and others are speaking at the end of October and it’s free. While it’s a French conference, their agenda is adjusted for EST.

You can register here: We Love SEO Virtual Summit

I was recently invited to a video call by WorldlyXP and it was an exciting one with their students. We discussed social media management and ways to make a career out of the skills involved.

WorldlyXP is creating an online educational experience where recent high school grads can explore different fields, grow as individuals, and form a community with others around the world before (or instead of) going to college or a university. They aim to help people discover their passions and find out what is the best way forward for their futures.

Thanks for reading my newsletter! Please forward it to anyone who you think would be interested and check out my new podcast.

Until next time,
Katherine

Katherine Watier Ong WO Strategies LLC www.wostrategies.com