Has the Helpful Content Update done anything yet? We took a look at all of the good and bad advice for this update specifically covering how to improve your content and whether you should do anything until it’s fully rolled out.
In this week’s episode, we also cover how metadata impacts visibility, the deprecation of the International Targeting Report in GSC, and how long it takes to rank.
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Host: Garrett Sussman | Demand Generation Manager
Google Helpful Content Update Is Now Rolling Out
Officially launched Thursday, August 25th, the Helpful Content Update is being rolled out over the course of 2 weeks. As of Monday morning, there has not been any reports of significant volatility in the SERPs.
Helpful Content Update Feedback
Have you encountered a specific SERP that leaves a lot to be desired? Search team evangelist John Mueller has a form that you can fill out that the team will review and add to the feedback for the algorithm. They’re not going to explicitly address that SERP, but it could provide hints to the Search team where the algorithm is not surfacing the best content.
More Updates: Dave Snyder and CopyPress
Dave Snyder created the website HelpfulContent.com to document information about the update. He is also collecting examples of really bad SERPs to see if the update is doing what it claims to help improve.
Spreadsheet for Content Helpfulness and flow cart for content updates – Aleyda Solis
Aleyda put together two great resources for ensuring your content is helpful and whether you should update old content, delete it, or merge it with other content.
(We actually covered that in our own webinar on content rebalancing as well.)
Why Deleting Pages Can Harm Your Site and Hot to do it properly – Lyndon Nelson-Allen (@darth_na)
Last year, Lyndon put together a great step-by-step Twitter thread on whether you should delete your content. It addresses reasons to keep it independent of SEO.
Content Update Recommendations – Ross Simmonds
Ross details all of the ways you can make your content more helpful with this tactic-driven Twitter thread.
It’s always tempting to get ahead of an update by taking action immediately. Kevin Indig shared his recommendations on what to do with your website during an update and how to assess changes without jumping to conclusions.
Google Deprecating International Targeting Report ( hreflang)
Google is removing a useful tool in GSC that helps you monitor issues with your international Hreflang usage as well as the ability to tell Google which countries a page is targeting. The international SEO community is not happy about it. Patrick Stox shared his experience with international SEO in a great Twitter thread.
List of Hreflang tools – Dave Smart
For those of us that need an hreflang monitoring replacement, Dave Smart curated a list of tools that you can use.
Structured data for web developers – Ryan Levering – Google
Ryan provided a great walkthrough of the value of structured data, what it is, and how important it is for SEO.
Follow over 200+ SEOs across every SEO discipline.
Using Google Search Console for Crawl Reporting – Cyrus Shepherd
Cyrus walks through GSC’s and shows how you can prioritize crawl errors for fixing.
Google Search Console Video index report performance – Gianna Brachetti-Truskawa
Gianna reviews whether the new Video Index report is accurate. Despite erring on the side of caution, the report still is overreporting errors so far.
Wondering about the state of SEO TikTok? According to SEO Twitter, it’s not good. See the responses in this Tweet from Lidia.
7 things I wish I understood earlier as a technical #SEO – Kristina Azarenko
What do you need to know about Technical SEO? Kristina reflected on her career and what she wishes she knew early on that she knows now.
How Long Does SEO Take to Show Results?
(https://ipullrank.com/rank-file-does-seo-take-6-months)
Where Can You Go to Learn Local SEO?
JavaScript SEO: How to Optimize JavaScript Content for Search – Crawling Mondays
Prevent Metadata From Sabotaging Your Visibility – Danielle Antosz – iPullRank Blog
Google Sheets Function Updates – Ben Collins
Rankable Ep. 79 – Language Technology, NLP and SEO ft Dr. Rachael Tatman
Coming Wednesday – Areej Abuali – Cracking In-House SEO
Did you miss all of the awesome Rankable Podcast Episodes that we published while Garrett was out on parental leave?
Check them all out below and let us know which one you loved the most!
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iPullRank is a pioneering content marketing and enterprise SEO agency leading the way in Generative AI, Technical SEO, Audience-Focused SEO, and Content Engineering. People-first in our approach, we’ve delivered $4B+ in organic search results for our clients.
iPullRank is an NMSDC-certified Black-owned business. We support the NMSDC network in its mission to reshape the diversity landscape.
iPullRank is a pioneering content marketing and enterprise SEO agency leading the way in Technical SEO, Audience-Focused SEO, and Content Engineering. People-first in our approach, we’ve delivered $4B+ in organic search results for our clients.
iPullRank is an NMSDC-certified Black-owned business. We support the NMSDC network in its mission to reshape the diversity landscape.