Finally, I mentioned links in the beginning.


Google Search News (Jan ‘21) - crawling & indexing updates, link building, and more

Google uses links to find new pages


and to better understand their context in the web.


Next to links, we use a lot of different factors in search.


But links are an integral part of the web,


so it's reasonable that sites think about them.


Google's guidelines mention various things


to avoid with regards to links, such as buying them.


And we often get questions about what sites


can do to attract links.


Recently, I ran across a fascinating article


from Giselle Navarro on content and link building campaigns


that she saw last year.


While I obviously can't endorse any particular company that


worked on these campaigns, I thought


they were great examples of what sites can do.


It's worth taking a look at these


and thinking about some creative things


that you might be able to do in your site's niche.


I added a link in the description below.


Creating awesome content isn't always easy,


but it can help you to reach a broader audience.


And who knows, maybe get a link or two.


And just a short note on news about structured data.


As we mentioned in one of the previous episodes,


we've decided to deprecate the old structured data testing


tool and to focus on the rich results test in Search Console.


The good news is that the structured data testing


tool isn't going away, but rather finding a new home


in the schema.org community.


And that's all for now, folks.


In closing, I'd love to hear more news from you


all, especially around this video series.


Which parts did you find particularly useful?


Which parts less so?


What should we focus on more for this year?


Please let me know in the comments below or drop


me a note on Twitter.


I really appreciate all feedback, yours too.


Finally, if you'd like to see more of these episodes


or catch up on the new series for sustainable monetized


websites, make sure to subscribe to the chat form.


I look forward to seeing you all again


in one of the future episodes of Google Search News.


How to improve Largest Contentful Paint for a better page experience

Have you ever thought about how hard it is to answer how long does it take for a web


page to load? I mean seriously, think about it. It's not as easy as it seems. The first


time I did it, I confidently rattled off a couple of options. They're document.onload,


right? Well, that only fires when everything is done. I mean, if an ad that's 10 trillion


pixels below the article I'm reading took two seconds or 200 seconds to show an image,


why would I care? I don't, not really. If that final image isn't blocking me from my


reading, document.onload is a pretty meaningless milestone as a user.


Well, okay. So what about DOM content loaded, right? Well, it's sooner, but it's too soon.


I mean, it's just when content's been downloaded. Images may not have rendered, style sheets


may need to be lay out the entire page still. I mean, scripts could still have a ton of


APIs that they have to call before the web app even gets close to being useful. So we


look to more modern options like first meaningful paint. It's better for sure, but it's the


first thing that is painted and that's not necessarily always that useful. I mean, if


it's just a spinner, it doesn't really represent a loaded page, at least in a meaningful sense.


It's weird, but something that is as important as how fast our sites are loading is kind


of complex to figure out. But lucky for us, a lot of people feel that way. And with Core


Web Vitals and Page Experience, we finally have a definitive answer to this question


and so much more. That's why today we're taking a look at improving our largest contentful


paint. The issue with the older ways that we use to figure out when a page is loaded


is that we were looking at the wrong abstraction. We were mentally tying vaguely related DOM


events to things that were much more nuanced than they could actually be used for. That's


why I love Page Experience. It's all about kind of stepping back from the problems and


getting an answer to the questions that matter the most to our users on today's web. I mean,


each of its parts is trying to answer a fundamental and essential question to make sure that we


can get the best user experience possible. With Largest Contentful Paint, or LCP, we


answer that how fast question. People using our site don't care when a DOM event is fired.


They care about when a page is usable, or rather when they think it's usable. And that's


what LCP gives us, a new browser rent to know the point at which most users perceive that


a web page has been loaded. But before we can discuss improving LCP, let's make sure


that we all understand just what LCP is. Largest Contentful Paint is admittedly a mouthful,


but once we break it down to what individual parts means, it is a fairly straightforward


idea. The paint in Largest Contentful Paint is referring to a paint event. This is browser


terminology. It's for when pixels on your screen are rendered or painted in. Every time


that a pixel changes the color on your screen, that's a paint event. Well, maybe. It gets


murky, but we'll talk about that later on. For now, you can just remember when a pixel


changes, that's a paint. Just like the other web vital events discussed throughout this


series, paint events are exposed as performance entries that we track and analyze through


the Performance Observer Browser API. Every time the browser paints, we know about it


and understand each and every element on the page is loaded. It's cool. I mean, it's very


powerful, but it's overwhelming. I mean, every paint, every time a pixel is updated, it's


a lot of events, which is why there's a separate, more useful Largest Contentful Paint event.


A Contentful Paint is a paint event that specifically draws the pixels of a handful of DOM elements,


namely image elements, the image elements used within SVG, elements with the background


image, video elements, block level elements, as in display block, yeah, those, when they


contain text. In short, Contentful Paint is a paint event that paints content. It kind


of makes sense. So, what is the largest Contentful Paint? Well, that's when the element that


uses the most amount of pixels of all the elements on our user screen is painted. Well,


mostly, but again, we'll talk about the edge cases later on. When we measure LCP, we do


so in seconds. It's the number of seconds between the very first byte that the page


is loaded and the final Largest Contentful Paint event. As soon as our users touch, tap,


or interact with our page, that window of time closes. LCP stops being measured. Whatever


element had the highest number of seconds between the first byte and when it was painted


is what is reported for the LCP for that URL. Like every other part of page experience,


every page on your website has its own LCP score. Your homepage may have a less than


stellar LCP, but your product or article pages could have fantastic results. Neither page


impacts how the others perform on this metric. All of these results are generated by and


collected from people using your site. So, if you see that your page has an LCP of one


second, that's what your real world users are seeing when they visit. So, we know what


LCP is, but now you may be wondering what a good or bad LCP result even looks like.


Most important thing I think to keep in mind is that LCP is just one part of page experience,


which in turn is just one of the many, many inputs that search has inside of its secret


sauce. There isn't really a pass or fail number when we're talking about these things. It's


just a number that's used to compare similar sites in order to figure out which one users


may have a better experience with. Think of it like this. If you had two otherwise identical


pages that exist, but one takes twice as long to render and paint, which one would you rather


use? I mean, the faster one, right? Knowing all that though, a good goal to aim for is


that your largest contentful paint happens in less than 2.5 seconds for at least 75%


of the sessions on your page. If that sounds complicated to calculate and track, then I've


got good news for you. If you've been with us throughout this series, you will already


know that you can quickly get all of your web vitals and page experience results on


your Search Console page experience report. If you aren't already using the Search Console,


you need to sign up for a free account using one of the links below, and I highly recommend


that you do so. The Search Console gives you extremely valuable insights into how your


web pages and entire website is performing. Once you're logged in, we can check out the


web vitals section of the page experience report, and any URLs that are below a 2.5


second goal that we talked about for LCP will be highlighted for you. Hopefully, there's


nothing there. But if your sites are anything like mine, there could be a few places where


things can be improved at least a little bit. Once we have a specific URL that we want to


improve, we can roll up our sleeves and figure out the reason behind our score. We can open


up dev tools in the browser, turn on Core Web Vitals overlay, load the URL, and... Huh.


Even though we're just starting, we're coming up to the first potential issue. See, my LCP


results that are showing here are a lot faster than what's in the Search Console. The only


LCP score that truly matters is the one in the page experience report. This is the exact


same information that Search is going to get. So remember, this value is coming from your


actual users. So if we're seeing a discrepancy between our Search Console report and when


we view the site, we may need to tweak our development setup a little bit to more closely


align with the score being recorded inside of the Search Console. If you're working on


a more powerful development machine, but your users are all on five-year-old phones, you


may have a much harder time noticing the problem or finding a solution. Ideally, when you're


working with page experience, especially the Web Vitals portion, like LCP, you are testing


on devices that are the same or at least similar to what most of your users have. If you aren't


sure what your users have, you can actually usually find this out inside of your site's


Analytics. It doesn't have to be exact device models, just an understanding of what the


most common kind of experience is for people interested on that page of your site. Are


they using a higher, lower-end device? Is it an older or newer browser? What's their


screen size? That sort of thing. If you don't have similar devices available, Chrome DevTools


lets you set up mid-tier or low-end mobile device emulation to get a little bit closer


to what your users may have. Once we get our LCP reporting close to what is actually in


the report, we can use the Performance Observer API to get more detailed information about


this LCP event, like exactly which element is taking that long to paint. By observing


the largest contentful paint type, we can iterate over every LCP entry. From there,


we can directly check out the element attribute for each and every entry. This will give you


the actual live DOM node that triggered this LCP event. This could be any of the DOM types


that we talked about before, images, videos, even just text. I mean, web fonts can actually


frequently inflate your LCP. It's definitely something to look out for. Now that we know


our page's LCP score and the elements that's causing it, we can finally dig into some solutions.


We can pretty much reduce all LCP problems down to slow servers, slow network, and or


slow code. Whenever I troubleshoot my problem, I like to start from the start and go to the


finish. So we can start with the server. LCP measures from the very first byte that the


browser receives until our users interact with the page. So if our server is running


slow or just not fully optimized, we are inflating our LCP before we even get a chance to start


running our browser code. We could create an entire series just based off of optimizing


a server, so I can't go into too much depth here, but we can share some high-level guidance


to get you started. You'll want to reduce your server logic and operations to just what's


essential. Make sure that your CMS or whatever the backend is, is caching pages rather than


rebuilding them on every request. Speaking of caching, make sure that your static files


like images, stylesheets, and scripts are served with long-lived caching headers. This


will reduce the number of files your server has to send out over and over again. Once


we've verified that our servers are doing their best, we can move on to the next step,


the network. Even if our server is turbocharged and our front end is the height of performance,


if our network is slow, it will undermine all of that work. That's why it's essential


to be using a CDN. CDNs, or content delivery networks, are services you can get to serve


copies of the content on your server on their servers. So if your server is in San Francisco,


but your user is in Lagos, rather than every file having to crisscross a whole bunch of


oceans and continents on every single request, a CDN will copy those files and store them


a lot closer to the end user. Less distance means less time spent on the wire, so files


load faster, bringing down our LCP. The most popular CDNs will have data centers located


near the vast majority of people in the world, but make sure that you're looking at your


analytics for your sites to make sure that the CDN that you choose is the best for them.


Of course, the fastest way to fulfill a network request is to just never lead the user to


this device. So using a service worker is a great choice to make our sites load instantly.


If you're unfamiliar, service workers are special JavaScript files that let you intercept


and respond to network requests directly within the browser. Philip Walton, an engineer on


the Chrome team, had a post on his blog recently about how he lowered the LCP for pages on


his site by nearly 80% by using a service worker with a cache-first strategy. You can


read more about this specifically in the links below. Much like server optimizations, though,


we could create an entire series based off of service workers, so we can't get into too


much detail in this video, but there is a ton of great information available online.


I really, really encourage you to check it out yourself. If you've never used them before,


there are tools like Workbox, which is linked in the description below. It gives you a fantastic


starting point and prewritten samples that you can start using today. So our servers


are tight, our networks are screaming fast, but our LCP still isn't perfect. Next place


to look would be our own front-end code. We learned that LCP measures only what is on


the user's screen and stops being reported once the page is interacted with. That means


that the element that triggers our LCP will likely be in that initial area shown at the


top of your page when the URL is first loaded. We'll call that the initial viewport. Our


job is to make sure whatever is being rendered in that initial viewport is able to do so


as fast as possible. The first thing we can do to accomplish this is just remove stuff.


Remove any scripts and style sheets in the head of our document that aren't being used


on this page. Those can block or slow the browser down while rendering what is actually


being used. It's just eating into our critical LCP budget. Taking this a step further, we


could remove an entire network round trip. Rather than linking separate files, we can


directly add the CSS and JavaScript essential to the initial viewport right inside of our


head. This means that the browser does not have to find our CSS, download it, parse it,


and then lay out the page. It can just jump straight to the layout the millisecond it


gets there. It's a great way to squeeze just a little bit more performance out of each


and every page. If we still use scripts on the page, we're going to be looking into both


defer and async. These are attributes that we can add to any script tag. Think of them


as signals we can give to the browser of different ways that they can speed up its rendering.


See, a browser can only do one thing at a time. By default, it will go from the top


to the bottom of our code, downloading and parsing everything pretty much one line at


a time. If we add the async attribute to our script tag, and we're telling the browser


that we are not going to be relying on any other resource on the page, that it can download


the other stuff in the background, it'll execute as soon as it's done downloading. If the script


is important to the site and needs to run as soon as possible, the async attribute is


a great second choice after directly injecting the script into the head. If the script needs


to be on the page but can wait a little bit, then I like to use defer. Scripts that use


async may interrupt the browser from rendering other parts of the DOM. They execute the second


that they're finished downloading. Defer is more polite. It will also tell the browser


that it can download and process other stuff on the page, but it won't interrupt the browser


to be executed. It will run after the page has been fully parsed. Defer is a great idea


for anything that isn't critical for our initial viewport. Things like libraries, video players,


or widgets used lower down on the page. Removing extra network downloads is great, but it isn't


always practical. I mean, some remote resources like images or web fonts can't be inlined


without really bloating our file size. If any of our assets are hosted on other domains,


like those in a CDN, we can jumpstart the work the browser needs to do by adding DNS


prefetch or preload metadata to our page. These are more hints that we can share with


the browser to let it do more work simultaneously. DNS prefetch is a signal saying, I'm going


to need to download content from this domain in the future. It may seem kind of silly,


but it can actually help quite a bit depending on how our site's structured. The browsers,


they don't know how to get to every single website in the world. You know, when they


look up something new, they use a system called DNS. Normally, as the browser processes our


code, it will discover a URL of something that we want to be downloaded. They will use


DNS to figure out the IP address of that site server and then figure out how to get to it


on the internet. Even though it's pretty quick, normally it still takes time and even possibly


dozens of trips through space or around the world. Using DNS prefetch, we're telling the


browser to do all that work in the background while processing the page so that by the time


we get to that URL in the code, that DNS has already been resolved, making our site all


the faster. That's not the only work that needs to be done, however. If we're following


best practices and only loading content over HTTPS, the browser needs to initiate what's


called a handshake to the server before bytes can be downloaded from it. That handshake


is when a few messages get passed back and forth from the browser to the server and back


to secure any communication that happens between them. Just like DNS, it happens incredibly


fast already, but we can make it all the faster just by adding a preconnect statement to our


page. Just like DNS prefetch, it's letting the server know it's okay to do that work


in the background. Therefore, we can kind of skip past it once we get to it in the code.


Parallelizing these network tasks is especially helpful on slow networks or less powerful


devices, two situations that can easily result in our LCP taking longer than that 2.5 second


goal. If you have remote content in the initial viewport, DNS prefetch and preconnect can


shave even more milliseconds off of our LCP. A similar concept to DNS prefetch and preconnect


is preload. This is yet another piece of metadata that will tell the browser that we can actually


download and parse the content, so it's going to be a lot more research intensive. If we


use preload on too many things, the browser can actually get bogged down. It can perform


even worse than it does without it. Therefore, it should only be used on content that is


extremely important, like the stuff in our initial viewport. We can use preload on scripts,


file sheets, images, videos, web fonts, pretty much anything that can trigger an LCP event.


I think the most common cause of bad LCP that I've seen has got to be images. It's just


not surprising. Images make up nearly half of the bytes on the average desktop or mobile


page, according to the HTTP Archive. Yet again, image optimizations could be its own series,


but there are some key things that you should be ensuring on your page to make sure that


your site is running efficiently as possible. Number one, use efficient images. Make sure


that you're not shipping images that are way larger than they actually need to be displayed


and that you're compressing your images down as much as possible. Tools like squoosh.app,


linked below, can actually automatically compress the image and check for visual degradation.


This allows you to get an even smaller version of an image that is going to be the absolute


tiniest thing possible. Every byte saved on our initial viewport means our LCP can happen


that much faster. For images that are not in the initial viewport, we're going to make


sure to add loading equals lazy to them. This is a fairly new attribute that can be added


to any image tag that will tell the browser that we can delay loading these images a little


bit because they're less likely to be seen right away. This will allow it to free up


other resources for more critical content. But just make sure you're not adding this


to content that could be in your initial viewport. That will deprioritize it and more than likely


negatively impact our LCP. Perhaps more importantly is to use modern image formats. Browsers and


servers have content negotiation. This is a really cool thing. It basically means that


every time a browser sends a request to a server, it also tells the server the type


of contents that it supports. This is really helpful because we can use it to know if our


users' browsers can support things like WebP or ADIF. See, those are modern image formats


that we can use that can result in images that are up to 90% smaller than traditional


JPEGs. So when the user's browser is parsing our code and finds an image, it sends a request


to our CDN or server to download that image. At the same time, it also says, hey, I support


WebP or I support ADIF. On the server, we can check for this information. And then rather


than reply with the JPEG or PNG that we would otherwise serve to other browsers, we can


serve that modern, smaller file format. This can have a gigantic impact on our LCP. I mean,


it can cut double digit percentages out of the bytes that are needed to download for


our site. If you haven't already, make sure that you look into shipping modern image formats


today. So I know I've said a couple of times that we'll talk about that later. Well, later


is now. So here are some of the gotchas and nuances to keep in mind when you're exploring


LCP. We've already gone pretty long in this video, so let's run through these as fast


as possible. Number one, LCP does not look at the largest element on the user's screen.


It looks at the element with the most number of pixels that are visible. If you have a


gigantic element that's clipped or has its opacity sent to zero, then those non-visible


pixels aren't counted towards its size. Number two, in order to make sure that we don't hurt


browser performance when checking our performance, LCP only looks at the initial position and


size of an element. If it's rendered on the screen and then is moved off, it can still


count. Likewise, if it renders off the screen and then is animated onto the screen, it will


not be counted by LCP. Number three, since LCP is what your users are actually seeing,


you may get some unusually bad LCP scores if a page gets loaded into the background


window or tab. See, those pages are going to be loaded much more slowly and lower priority


than tabs with the foreground. So when in doubt, dive into your own analytics to look


for patterns that may explain weird results. Number four, due to the security model on


the web, you can't get LCP information from an iframe on your page, at least by default.


As far as the browser is concerned, however, that content still impacts your URL's LCP.


That means that if you're monitoring your LCP via Performance Observer, you may actually


miss the LCP events that are being reported by the browser. You can avoid this by adding


cores to the iframes and having them report their values to the parent iframe, but just


don't have iframes as little as you can. And if you do keep them out of your initial viewport,


I mean, they're a headache. You try to avoid it if possible. Number five, Performance Observer


does not emit events when you get to the page by the back or forward browser buttons. This


is because those pages are cached in the browser. And so the same events in the pipeline aren't


being executed. However, the browser still reports the LCP information for those situations


since as a user, it's still a page view. I mean, why would you split those hairs? Edge


cases, got to love them. And finally, number six, not so much an edge case, but more of


a super important tip. You know, you can actually get a sneak preview of your LCP scores. See,


while the canonical information only comes out every 28 days, we can keep track of how


we're doing every day using our own analytics and the performance of the code we looked


at earlier. With Google Analytics, for example, we can create a custom event and then add


the LCP information to it whenever a visitor comes to our page. This means that we get


up to the minute LCP results for any improvements we're working on rather than waiting an entire


month to know if we even move the needle. There is a lot to LCP and all the web vitals.


I hope that this has been able to shed a little bit of light on it for you though. You know,


there absolutely is more to the topic. So please be sure to share any questions that


you may have on Twitter or in the comment sections below. We'll be sure to answer them


for you. Make sure that you also subscribe if you haven't already. We'll be back soon


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

Today's question comes from Bossguy, and it is,


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

how does one turn off or delete a sitemap in the new Search


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

Console?


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

Well, this one's pretty easy, but only once you've seen it.


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

In order to remove a sitemap in the new Search Console,


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

you go to the sitemaps menu.


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

Then you click on the sitemaps file there,


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

and now click on the dot, dot, dot menu in the top left


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

and select Remove Sitemap.


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

By doing this, Google will stop tracking the sitemap file


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

in Search Console.


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

Alternately, you could just remove the sitemap file


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

from your website so that it returns either a 404 or a 410


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

HTTP result code, which basically just means


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

that the file isn't available.


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

Over time, Google systems will stop


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

trying to use that particular sitemap file.


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

Note, removing a sitemap file doesn't


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

prevent crawling of the URLs that were


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

specified in the sitemap file.


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

A sitemap file helps us to crawl more efficiently,


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

though, which is generally why we recommend using it.


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

In particular, a sitemap file helps


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

us to find new and updated pages slightly faster, which


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

is always a good thing, right?


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

For more information about sitemaps,


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot

check out the link in the description below.


How to remove a sitemap #AskGooglebot


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So, thank you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Wow, so many people here.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

What did we sign up for?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I have no idea.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So cool to see so many SEOs here.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I can almost see you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I hope you're real people.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We're here today to do kind of the last session of the day,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

which is a little bit more fun.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's technically a podcast recording.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So it's kind of in the style of our podcast, which


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I think will be kind of a little bit weird, a little bit fun,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

maybe also some useful stuff along the way.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Today I'm joined by Lizzie.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Hey.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Lizzie works on the search documentation at Google.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So all of the documentation that you all


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

are hopefully quoting, right?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes, yes, yes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

One person.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

She makes all of that.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And I'm also joined by Miriam, who's an SEO trainer.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And here to keep us straight, or better honest,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I don't know about straight.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That's a different topic.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But here to keep us honest.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And we got a bunch of questions that


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

were submitted through the forum.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So it's not a live Q&A, but rather it's like a live Q&A,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

but the questions came earlier.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We picked a bunch of questions that we thought


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

would be interesting to discuss.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So we'll kind of see how it goes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And curious to see how you all like it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So anyway, this is Lizzie's first big presentation.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So it's almost like a first time speaker.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Woo-hoo, so cool.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

When I invited them to join this,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I didn't actually tell them what kind of session it was.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

How could he do this to us?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Look at the stage.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yeah, so it was fun.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But they agreed, and they didn't jump out.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So I'm pretty happy, really thankful that you're here.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

How do you like the conference so far, Lizzie?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Well, it is also my first SEO conference.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I've never been to one before.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

This is a first of many things.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I know I'm a little peopled out.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But it's going well, and I'm glad that we're


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

reaching the end.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So you've had enough of SEOs.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK, no comment.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Is this on the record?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

This is search off the record.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We're only being recorded live by camera and through the podcast.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's like off the record, but kind of on the record.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Sorry.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Gray record.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK, all right.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

All right.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Anyway, Miriam, you have the first question


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

that we picked out.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

What do you have on your mind?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, yes, a very important question.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

The question you are all wondering when it comes to SEO.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

What's your favorite movie quote, John?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh my god.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Did someone actually submit this?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

They did.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, it was a real question.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yeah.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Just for you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Legit, and it was just for me.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So do you recall what your favorite movie quote is?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Have you ever seen a movie before?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK, good.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I have one on my Twitter profile, but I can't remember it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's the pinned one.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's the pinned tweet.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, the SEO answer.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It depends, right?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That's just your opinion, man.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That's just your opinion.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, yes, of course.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We have the answers.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We have you covered.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Cool.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We'll see.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

All right.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Wait, that's in the script.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

John struggles.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Lizzie interrupts.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh my god.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Check, check.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Well, it's like, good we have clipboards,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

because then we look official.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, we're a podcast, so nobody sees what we looked at.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

E-A-T.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, eat the words?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So the next question we've got here,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Neil asked, which is your favorite, subdomain


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

or subdirectory?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Mm.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

This is kind of a trick question, I think.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Why is it a trick question?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I keep hearing it brought up.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Everyone laughs.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I don't feel like I'm let in on the joke.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Because you haven't had to suffer through the joke.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Enlighten me.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

All right.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I don't know.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Do you want to start, Mira?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I have opinions.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I think we all have opinions on this.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Subdomains.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You just pick one at random.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So let me start ranting about subdomains.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

After 15 years in the industry, I


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

can tell you that whenever a developer or engineer comes up


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

to you and goes, oh yeah, your marketing thing,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

that's going to be a subdomain, you should know something.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

They don't want you messing stuff up.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

They are afraid of you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And they're just going to put you


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

in a little box with a nice little subdomain,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

because everything is safe.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Marketing cannot touch us.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So you should always ask, hey, are we


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

doing the subdomain for security reasons,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

for any technical reasons?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Are there constraints?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Are you just doing this because you can't?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Why?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Well, John, the Google end, tell us about it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And I can continue ranting.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Continue ranting.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So I don't know.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, when we ask the search quality engineers,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

they're always like, do whatever you want.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And then we tell them, well, we can't tell people


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

to just do whatever they want.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We have to give them some advice.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And they're really opinionated about this topic, right?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I don't know.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Who here is for subdomains?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No one.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, really?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's subdirectory?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, I'm telling you, no one.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No one?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

How about subdirectories?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Well, everyone's subdirectory.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh my gosh.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But it's more syllables.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's harder to say.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Have you ever optimized a website?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, apparently not.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yeah, no, I mean, it's kind of weird.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We talk with the engineers, and they're like, oh, just


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

do whatever you want.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And from a practical point of view,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

oftentimes subdirectories are seen more


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

as being a part of the main website.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And I think that's where a lot of the SEO kind of input


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

comes from, where they're like, oh, we


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

want our part of the website to be seen


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

as a serious part of the website,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

not just something separated out that is safe.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But once upon a time, because I am old enough to know this,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

SEOs could rank multiple subdomains for queries


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and just push the competition down.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We can no longer do this.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So obviously, subdomains have lost their shine


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

from that standpoint.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But from another standpoint, I'm keeping you honest.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK, fine.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Let's not forget our history.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So if you have the constraint of having to use a subdomain,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

ask why.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Figure out what's going on, and try to work with your team.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Because ultimately, this is not a Google problem.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

This is your client or your company type of problem


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

that you need to negotiate together


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

to figure out what are the pros, what are the cons.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK, so you're saying it depends?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I didn't say it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We are allowed two it depends per person.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Per person, that's too many.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, no.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I just used my it depends.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You did.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

All right, what's next on the list?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I think, Mariam, you might have a question.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So someone asked, not me, totally not me,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

what is the appropriate reaction after an update?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So let's start with you, Lizzie.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, appropriate reaction.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Well, for me, it's kind of weird because I'm publishing


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

when the update happens.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So I sometimes know a few days ahead of time


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

to publish a blog post or an update to that updates ranking


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

change log page that we now have.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So when I'm pushing that, I'm thinking, OK,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

this is all I have to do.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's like publishing a blog post, no problem.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And then I see the reactions on Twitter.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And then I start thinking, should I be panicked?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And then it makes me panic as well.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Because honestly, one of the last updates,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I just posted an innocent picture saying, huh,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

whenever my partner wears this t-shirt, an update happens.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And then John shows up on Twitter


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and goes, what are you worried about if you optimize things


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

properly?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And I trust you, too.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You should be fine.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And if anybody tells you, you'll be fine,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

that's the time you start stressing out and wondering,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

am I doing something wrong?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Everybody is having meetings and webinars


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

explaining how I should survive this thing that I


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

should be fine for.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So if that is the reaction, what is the appropriate reaction?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

What should we be reacting to these updates with?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, I'm pretty sure you have helpful content, right?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But it feels like a trick question.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Or are you going off and deleting half of the website


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

when the update happens, just to be sure?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, no.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And no, no, no.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, nobody would do that, right?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, nobody would do it, would they?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, they wouldn't tell us.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I don't think so.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, what do you think, Miriam?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

What should be the appropriate reaction?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You're saying, like, it'll be fine is not appropriate?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

In the event of an algorithmic depression,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

please fold yourself in the brace, brace position.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So there's a physical position to be in.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Can you show the physical position, John?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I will be providing the alt attribute for this


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

since we are doing a podcast.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh my gosh.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

John's looking stressed.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Do you need to Google this?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I need to Google it, yes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Insert transition sound effect here.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Next question.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So what are you doing on Monday, Lizzie?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Like, we're talking about updates.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

What do you think?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Well, I was hoping to recover from this event,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

but what are you saying?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I don't know.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You didn't prepare the blog post?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

The big, big, big, big update, that one?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

All right.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Never mind.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, don't panic.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Don't panic.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It'll be fine.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No bracing.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Not yet.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Anyway, so another question that we got submitted.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Natalie asks, what will the above the fold


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

look like in 20 years' time?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

20 years is a really long time.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But I don't know.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Lizzie, what do you think?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I think it will be origami.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I think not just one fold.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I think we need multiple folds.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So like folded phones?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Maybe 20 folds.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

20 folds.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yeah, yeah.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

20 years, I think one per fold.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I think we already have the device that opens like this.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

There could be a more interesting device that


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

turns into a bird or something.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So above the folds.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

This doesn't sound very serious.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Well, what do you think?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, Miriam, do you have a serious answer?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I actually do, though.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

All right.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I really, really do.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Let's hear it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So we've seen things evolve very, very fast.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I've been around for a while, and things


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

keep getting faster and faster.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So in 20 years, well, things will have evolved.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And so will the fold.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Even today, I find myself making cocktails in my kitchen


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and asking, hey, Google Home, next,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

for the next step of the recipe.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So the way I consume your content


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

isn't the way you think I'm going to.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And that's going to keep accelerating.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Because as humans, that's what we do.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We aren't made to just stand in front of a desktop or phone.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Well, the phone is now a part of me.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But it will keep evolving.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Do you think that the fold will ever disappear?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We will be in VR goggles, metaverse, walking around,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

seamless type content experience.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I don't know, like 20 years.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It could be.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Who knows?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I don't know.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That seems like.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That's a spicy question.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Is spicy?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

3D glasses, search results.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I think the tricky part for us, because we work with the Search


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Console team, is what is Search Console going to show?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

When things evolve like that, will


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

be hit like two-dimensional rankings, like left and right.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, it's already something where


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

when you look at the search results, there are videos,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and there are things you can swipe to the side,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and things you can swipe up.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And you click on them, and they get bigger and everything.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So it's already like there are lots of changes there.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But what Search Console show is a ranking position?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Is it like a 3D position?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We should take a stroll behind the graph in 20 years.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I want to be able to see the behind the scenes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I see.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So a three-dimensional graph of the three-dimensional material.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Picking stuff.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Moving it around.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But that's really hard to print out.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

If you create a PDF, you print it out for your clients.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You think there will be printers in 20 years still?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Sure.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We must have them.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That's what I mean.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We have paper here.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Like paper remains.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We need the clipboards.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Moving over to links.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Links.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Who submitted this?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

What kind of question is this?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's yours.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's my question.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I'm prompted.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

All right.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Chris.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Chris asks, as an SEO, we are interested in backlinks.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

However, actively working on backlinks


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

often becomes a gray area in terms of link schemes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

What are Google's main criteria for penalizing backlinks?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

John, over to you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

John.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh my gosh.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's algorithmic.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So now that you have the Google opinion,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

can we have the SEO opinion?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Wait.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

He didn't even give his opinion.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Let's hear it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, it's not just algorithmic?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Well, I mean, it's something where I imagine, over time,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

kind of the weight on the links.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's at some point will drop off a little bit,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

as we kind of can figure out a little bit better how


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

the content kind of fits in within the context


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

of the whole web.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And to some extent, links will always be something


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

that we care about, because we have to find pages somehow.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And it's like, how do you find page on the web


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

without some reference to it?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But my guess is, over time, it won't be such a big factor


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

as sometimes it is today.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And I think already that's something that's


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

been changing quite a bit.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I have an opinion, though.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Like an SEO opinion, Chris, we have to talk, you and I.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Because when you say here that it often


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

becomes a gray area in terms of link schemes, I want to know,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

did anyone hear the words link and schemes together and think,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

yeah, that's going to be a good, clean SEO?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Just wanting to know.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

If I come into your inbox saying, hey,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

can I interest you in some link schemes?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Are you convinced?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes, no?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

How much, Joe?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We have three people who are going, how much?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK, let's talk after this while they're out of earshot.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So how much?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Ultimately, how organic are the backlinks, though?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, I think he wants a link from you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, I do get a lot of propositions


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

like this on LinkedIn.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But seriously.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That's why it's called LinkedIn.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, that makes sense.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yeah.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Woo!


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

All right, next question.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Miriam, what's up?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Hi, Lalindra.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I got your question.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Schema documentation says we should mark up


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

any relevant information on web pages.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

When adding schema types like organization or sitelink


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

search, is it all right to add it to all the pages,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

even if there are tens of thousands of pages?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Well, is it all right?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's fine.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You can do whatever you want.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's schema.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You can put whatever schema you want on pages on the web.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's open.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But you don't need to.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So you really only need to put the organization


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

schema on the home page.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And that's what the documentation says.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But if there are other kinds of site setups,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

so maybe you have multiple organizations on the site,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

you might want to have specific for that store or something.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So it might be an e-commerce platform


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

that has multiple stores.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Then you might want to have the organization markup for each


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

of those store pages.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But you don't need to duplicate it


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

across every page on your website.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Just the home page is fine.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And for other schema types, the documentation


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

spells out what pages it should be on.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But that's really up to you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So if it makes sense to put it on more pages, go for it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But you don't need to.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So if it's causing problems, you don't need


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

to go and put it on every page.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Do you see this differently, Miriam?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

A little bit.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But it's more of an opinion than an SEO opinion.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So I'm a human being, and I wonder about things online.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And you're suspicious.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You're a suspicious user of the internet.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I'm very suspicious.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You don't trust Google's opinion.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, you can have an opinion.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But there's a reason why schema exists beyond Google.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

There's more than Google.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So schema ultimately is something


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

that, as a website owner, somebody


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

who works to improve a website, you should be interested in.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's a way for you to communicate semantically,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

like give meaning beyond what you have on the page,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

beyond the code you would normally have.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So for me, I'm very interested by the concept


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

of multi-entities.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So what do I mean by that?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

If I'm talking to you about a house,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and I'm talking to you about something that's for sale,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

these are two concepts.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But put together, you know that a house for sale,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

it's something else.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Just like the act of cutting, hair, haircut


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

becomes something different.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So when you want to communicate that information,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

because you're stuck in that murky, ambiguous,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

in-between sometimes, multiple entities


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

can help with that beyond what a search engine would


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

want to understand and display.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Because at the end of the day, most of us here in this room


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

are going to be using Schema to get those sweet, sweet stars,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

that extra information that will push some of the competitors


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

down, make you look good, spiffy.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes, but there's more to this.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So I highly recommend you look into Schema.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's constantly evolving as well.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So it's a living thing that you can contribute to.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It should also be relevant to the page.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Like, don't just put every schema


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

that you've ever heard of.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It needs to be.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's not because you can that you should.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And that should be a mantra.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So what do you mean you can contribute to it?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You can just make up a new schema?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Can I?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I think you can propose it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So if you wanted to write a proposal


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and submit to schema.org, you could suggest something.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I don't know if Dan Brickley is here from schema.org,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

but we can chat to him after.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Absolutely.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So same goes for you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You can genuinely propose something.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

If you're part of an evolution or something that you go,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

hey, this is kind of new.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We're having a hard time describing this thing.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Schema can help.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Cool.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But what will search engines do with it?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Put the cat picture schema on my pages?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Is there a cat picture schema the public wants to know?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I would be surprised if there isn't.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Cat as an entity and then types of cats, breeds of cats?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Or multi-entity cat pictures?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Multi-entity cat pictures.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, I guess there is always a difference between what


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

you need for some specific feature in search


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and what you can do.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And kind of that range of what the minimum requirement is


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

versus what, I mean, the maximum is kind of open-ended.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You can do whatever you want.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yeah.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But I think that they don't want to get carried away


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

with naming things.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, you can name so many things


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

with the taxonomy and everything.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It really needs to have a purpose.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So I think when you are proposing something,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

it goes through some kind of review process


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

to make sure, will it be used somewhere?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Because we don't want to just add it


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

for the sake of adding things, I guess.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

The problem when you work in search engine optimization


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

is that you have to convince people to put that schema


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

there.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Sure.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Don't burn any goodwill by putting it all on all pages


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and forcing people to do extra work.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You will lose a lot of the goodwill


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

from any team that works with you that has to slog through


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and implement this.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So be wise.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's not because you can, that you should use


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

all the schema on all the pages.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But for optimization, you have to get all of those tiny things.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Are you trying to stuff schema everywhere?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Fine.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I won't.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Just like bare minimum to get stars everywhere.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK, so just the review stars.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That's the only one you know.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Those are my favorites.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

The reviews.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Five stars everywhere.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So another question we got.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Ian asks, what is your take on templated content outlines?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Like using a similar set of headings and subheadings


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

across all pages on a site, and of course,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

with unique body content.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

What do you think about that?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Like Lizzie, you're a writer.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yeah, I mean, my first reaction is


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

it can be helpful to have a templated approach,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

because there might be certain pages on your site


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

that you could replicate something, especially


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

with reference documentation.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Like in the structured data documentation,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

things follow a certain pattern, where


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

we start with an intro about what the feature is,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

the feature availability, examples, how to do it,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and then the reference table at the bottom.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It follows a certain pattern, and it


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

can be helpful for people to get familiar with that pattern,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and then they know where to find those things.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And from a writer's perspective, that


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

can be helpful to plug things in.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So if there's a formula that is working,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I think that that can be a helpful framework.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But Miriam's going to interject with the concerns,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

because I generally look at these questions


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

with a little bit of rosy eyes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You just said plug-in.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yeah, buckle up, I guess.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Plug-in means that some folks are going to go,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

let me stuff this page.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, that's not how you should work.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So what are the concerns here?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So what am I not seeing?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Well, first of all, just before anything,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

we love templated content, because that


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

enables us to work with different writing teams,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

for example, and always have the same consistency,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

the same coherence.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And if you have a template as a brand,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

like you have a specific type of, let's say, article,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and it's trusted, you know how it's going to go.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Any SEO publication out there, we know, templates.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But ultimately, you can have some great things


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

going on with templated content.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It brings rigor, et cetera.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

If you're doing this, like spinning up some content


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

or letting GPT-3 vomit something in there,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

just because you selected your H1, H2, H3, and you're like,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

go, this may not be super helpful for you,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

because Google and any other search engine


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

doesn't owe you indexing.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So you may submit that content going, I'm done.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

They are fixed it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But then you're like, it doesn't work.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I had one of those cases recently.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But it was a legit.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, no, don't judge me.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It was a legitimate template.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Tell us more.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So I work with a company that sells alcohol.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

When times are good, it goes quite well.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

When times are bad, it goes even better.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

However, these distillery pages that we had


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

were very important, and we had to keep the same approach.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And Google, not you, John, not you, Lizzie,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

but just Google as a whole, all of Google just went,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

no, we're not indexing this.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And if you have this issue,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

please don't scrap your templated content.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Just go and ask yourself, hey,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

why would anyone or any bot or any machine or anything


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

think these distilleries are the same?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

The easiest way to get out of this rut


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

is to optimize your H1.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Just have it be meaningful, please.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So were all the H1s the same for every distillery?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, not even.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It just said random distillery name up in the highlands


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

or the lowlands or all the lands.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I see.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So by optimizing the H1, you mean including


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

relevant keywords?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Like say the thing.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Say it's a distillery, for example.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Okay, and for the H2s, you should use,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

like the people also ask questions.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No H2s, you skip them, right?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No H3s.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

H3s, which ones are the bad ones?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, I don't know if you followed that Twitter thing


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

where somebody demanded justice for H3s.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We really do need more H3s in life.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

They were not loved enough?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, I thought we were not meant to use them.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Is that right, John?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, no H3s.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That's like a sign that you're like disorganized.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, but if I put it on top above the H1, does that help?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That's kind of confusing.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes, okay, no, no, no.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, maybe like with CSS, you can tweak it around.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, no, no, no, you use the proper order.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Don't do that.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Don't listen to his advice.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Okay, keeping you honest here, let's get back to it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Templated content works because it brings consistency,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

coherence, and human beings have a tendency


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

to like certain anchors.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We like familiar things.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We like to know how a template is going to take us


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

on this journey and we trust it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So at the end of the day, Ian,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

what was the official question?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Templated content outlines, yes, they should work


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

unless they're not helpful content,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

in which case, make it helpful.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Ooh.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, it's like the helpful content update.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, no, no, no.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You'll be like the H1, H2, H3 content update.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We're not talking about the helpful content update.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, okay, good, that's fine.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

All right.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

John might go rogue here.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, it's okay.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, he's not?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, okay.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Didn't that just happen?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's fine.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's fine?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Okay, so next question we've got here.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

B asks, should the image alt be purely about the image


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

or specific to the webpage topic?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

What does the crawler look for?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh, so the alt tag.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes, the alt tag.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Okay, it says here Miriam has feelings


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and Miriam does have feelings.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Folks, it's not an alt tag.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's called an alt attribute.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But I posted it on Twitter that it's an alt tag.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes, the team allowed him to get this through.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It is a misinformation that is not helpful.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It is called an alt attribute.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, that's just like a technicality.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I shall overcome.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

She's never gonna come back to this podcast, I don't think.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You will overcome though.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes, I am overcoming.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Let's get you back on the train of thought.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So purely about the image or specific to the webpage.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I do have an anecdote about this, first and foremost.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

More than 10 years ago, a French company was tasked


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

with optimizing political figures website


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and the SEO agency did not get paid.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So they decided to optimize every single alt attribute


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

of this woman who was in politics for Pamela Anderson.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And in France, if you typed Pamela Anderson,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

this old lady who does not pay SEOs showed up


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

until she realized this and then paid the agency.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It was great fun.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Today, would you be able to pull this off?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Not necessarily.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

However, it is very important to keep in mind


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

that this alt attribute is very useful


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

for other human beings.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So for example, folks coming into Brighton


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

had a few train troubles and I did get feedback on Twitter


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

going, hey, my internet connection is not good.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Fill in the blank.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But your alts are giving me life.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I feel like I'm there.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's really fun.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Thank you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So this is one of those cases that you wouldn't expect


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

because I know the word accessibility just popped


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

into your head and you went, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, there is a real use for this.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And you should describe what is on the image.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Don't do the SEO thing of, oh, my article is talking


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

about Core Web Vitals, but I have like this piece of toast


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

that is a great image.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Let me rename it Core Web Vitals


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

so I can like boost things.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, it's a piece of toast.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Just say it's a piece of toast.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Maybe provide some context as to why you chose a piece of toast


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

there.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

What if the toast is one of those special toasts that


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

has a burned in image that says Core Web Vitals on it?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's special toast.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I bet there's a toaster that exists.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You are great SEO, actually.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I'm inventing products now.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So you're saying like fill the alt tag with lots of keywords?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

But you can always explain the context.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And if the context is filled with keywords,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

well, good on you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean, the thing that I kind of like to think about,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

especially for the alt attribute to kind of avoid too much


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

trouble, is that oftentimes you have an image on a page,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and you could just describe the image,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

but you really need to kind of describe the context


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

of the image as well.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So if you're searching for a beach,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

and like there's a picture of a beach, and that's fine.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

If you have a hotel web page, and you


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

have a picture of a beach, then it's not like,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

this is a picture of a random beach,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

but it's like this is the beach near the hotel.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I'm offering a contest.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So do not hesitate to tweet any Brighton SEO


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

picture with an interesting alt that you think would be correct.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And John may, may, should give feedback


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

if you're hesitating on how do I write a good alt.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's funny because I include a lot of information


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

in my alt attribute.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Me too.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Information.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

A lot of information.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK, Easter eggs.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Which is like more interesting sometimes than the tweet


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

itself.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And nobody responds to it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's terrible.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I don't know.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Like nobody reads my alt attribute.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I have information on this.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

The first time I ever had an SEO publication talk about me


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

is because there was information in an alt regarding Crawley.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That is the name of the spider.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That is how we released, did a soft secret release of the name


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

was in the alt text.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

And somebody found it.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It did take a few days, but.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Somebody.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Yes, somebody.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Was it you?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Cool.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Was it me?


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Martin is saying, yeah, it was you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

No, he is confirming that it was me on the mall.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

OK, OK, OK.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's fine.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I believe you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So someone is reading the alt text.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I mean text, attributes, ataroots.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Oh my god.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I'm going to get murdered afterwards.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Alt attributes.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Tags is short.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

It's easy to say.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Tags, subdomain, you know, it's punchy.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

You have more misinformation than TikTok.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Shots fired.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

All right, all right.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Maybe we should stop here.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

So that's all for this episode.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Don't forget to like and subscribe.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I don't know how you do that live, but make sure to.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Cling the bell.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Thumbs up.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Like and subscribe.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Thanks for joining us here live at Brighton SEO.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

I hope you had a fantastic conference.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Thanks a lot, everyone.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Cool.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Thank you.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

That's great.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

Well, that's it for this episode.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

In the next episode of Search Off the Record,


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

we'll be chatting about redirects.


LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO


English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from September 3, 2019

All right, welcome, everyone, to today's Webmaster Central


Office Hours Hangouts.


My name is John Mueller.


I am a webmaster trends analyst here at Google in Switzerland.


And part of what we do are these Office Hour Hangouts,


where webmasters and publishers like you all


can join in, ask your webmaster web search-related questions,


and we can try to get you some answers.


We have Martin joining us today.


So any fancy JavaScript questions?


I am sure he'll be good to go.


Yes.


But I'm sure we have tons of other questions as well.


So if any of you want to get started with a question,


you're welcome to jump in now.


Everybody.


I have a question related to JavaScript rendering.


And Martin, since you're here, so in the new version


of Google Search Console, when you do the fetch and render


element there, if your content is not appearing in there,


is it safe to assume then that's something that Google's not


going to find?


Generally speaking, yes.


So the testing tools sometimes are not


able to fetch certain resources due to various constraints


and certain things that we are working out on.


But generally speaking, if we can fetch all the sources


and the content does not show up,


then it's likely that it's not going to be indexed yet.


OK, perfect.


Thank you.


You're welcome.


That's what I'm here for.


Yeah.


Come on.


Hi.


Yeah, I have questions related to Google Search Console.


I have around 40 sitemap XML files in my sitemap indexing


XML.


And I have around 1,47,000 web pages.


But in the Google Search Console status,


it shows only 65,569 URLs have been discovered.


May I know is there any mistake in my sitemap index


or any issue which can be fixed or from the Google end?


Whoops.


In general, the thing to keep in mind


is we generally don't index all pages that we know.


So even though we might know a lot of URLs


from a sitemap file, it doesn't mean that we automatically


index them.


That's kind of the first step.


So it's pretty normal, especially for larger sites,


to have a lot of pages that are known,


but they're not indexed themselves.


So I wouldn't panic and try to think


like you're doing anything wrong.


But what you can do to make it a little bit easier


is to internally link those pages better so


that when we find one page in your website,


we can discover all of the pages on the website,


even without the sitemap file.


OK.


But how many have URLs have been discovered?


But where can I check that status in the Google Search


Console?


That's in the coverage report.


That should be in there.


OK, the coverage report also shows 65,569.


But even I am doing internal crawling,


and I have 1,47,000 which I can do,


which are linked when I'm doing the same process, which


I can do, and I've figured out 1,47,000.


But why is Google not able to do this?


I think if the internal linking is well within your website,


then it's probably just a matter of, well,


Google knows a lot of URLs, but we don't index all of them.


And that's not really a matter of a technical thing.


It's more that we've seen a lot of pages from this website,


but we're not sure if it's worth indexing every one of them.


So we index as much as we think makes sense.


And if we see that this website does really well,


that it's an important website overall,


then we try to index more.


OK, thank you.


I have one more question.


In the coverage section, you say the sitemaps read.


Right?


Yeah, in the sitemap index XML, I have 40 sitemap links.


But in the sitemap read section, there is no results displayed.


There are zero results.


I don't know, that's hard to say.


What I would do there is maybe post that in the Webmaster Help


Forum with a link to your sitemap file


so that someone can double check to make sure


that everything is OK there.


Sure.


All right, let's look at some of the questions


that were submitted.


New people keep joining, which is great.


I think there's a little bit of noise somewhere.


So let me see if I can mute some of you.


Feel free to just unmute if there's anything on your mind.


Let's see, got hit by the June core update.


We're now working on quality content.


How many months do I have to wait for recovery?


I mean only a chance of survival in case of the next core


update, or can Google bot decide to remove a penalty


without any core update?


So I think, first of all, a core update is not a penalty.


It's not a matter of the Google algorithm


saying this is a bad website.


It's essentially just saying, from the way


that we determine which pages are relevant,


we've kind of changed our calculations


and found other pages that we think are more relevant.


So it's not a matter of doing anything wrong,


and then you fix it, and then Google recognizes it and shows


it properly.


But more, it's a matter of, well, we


didn't think these pages were as relevant as they originally


were, and these kind of changes, they can happen over time.


We have a whole blog post that goes into fairly well detail


on what we look at with regards to these core updates,


so I would double check that.


With regards to kind of seeing changes in one core update


and when would you see the next batch of changes


if you make significant effort to improve your website,


for example, in general, this is something


that happens on an ongoing basis.


So on the one hand, we have the core updates,


which are kind of bigger changes in our algorithms.


And on the other hand, we have lots of small things


that keep changing over time.


The whole internet changes over time.


And with that, our search results


are essentially changing from day to day,


and they can improve from day to day as well.


So if you've been making significant improvements


on your website, then you should see these kind of subtle


changes over time as well.


So it's not a matter of waiting for a specific change


to see those changes in effect.


But again, these core updates are not


a sign that there's anything bad on your website,


that there's web spam on your website.


It's essentially just a way of us recognizing or trying


to recognize the relevance of individual pages


for individual queries.


MIHAI APERGHISLAVA, MD, PhD, FITZER MARTIN, MALCOLM


MARTIN, MALCOLM MALCOLM, MALCOLM MALCOLM, MALCOLM MALCOLM,


MALCOLM MALCOLM, MALCOLM MALCOLM, MALCOLM MALCOLM,


MALCOLM MALCOLM, MALCOLM MALCOLM, MALCOLM, MALCOLM,


MALCOLM MALCOLM, MALCOLM MALCOLM, MALCOLM MALCOLM.


So we work with a fairly authoritative website,


and they have a large blog section.


And it's fairly popular, and we noticed every time


when your blog post is published,


it tends to start ranking and attracting traffic fairly fast.


Like within a month, there are already


top 10 for fairly competitive keywords


that started attracting traffic.


So we created a new section on the website.


It's kind of more for evergreen content,


like guides and things that don't typically expire.


But it is essentially, we're still


talking about articles in the same niche.


But we noticed that with this new section,


the articles published there tend


to start ranking much less slowly.


So they attract traffic much later than posts


that are published within the blog section, the existing


blog section.


So is it something that matters to Google,


whether Google trusts certain sections, like subfolders


or anything like that, on the website in terms


of it sees something new?


I don't know what that is about.


So I'm kind of testing it more a bit or anything like that.


I don't think we have anything in that direction.


So not that we would say, this is a blog.


We must rank its content quickly.


And this is a wiki or an FAQ page.


We should rank it slowly.


I don't think we would have anything like that.


What you might just be seeing is that within a blog, sites that


are built up, for example, on WordPress, they have a fairly


well set up internal linking.


And they have an RSS feed.


And they have kind of the whole setup for making


content easily available.


And you might not have it set up similarly optimal


for the other parts of the website.


I don't know.


I'm just kind of guessing there.


But it's not that we would say a blog should be treated


differently than a normal web page.


Well, so let's assume both our blogs is just that one of them


is in a brand new section of the website that Google hasn't.


So instead of slash blog, it's slash guides or something


like that.


But Google hasn't seen that section before.


Would it kind of split it away from the rest of the website


and kind of treat it differently in terms of,


let's test it to see whether you're


going to publish actual quality content there for some time?


I don't know of anything where we would split it off like that.


So trying to think what the options might be where


something like this can happen.


I think with adult content, that might be possible.


If we think a part is adult content and the rest is not,


that might be something that plays a role.


But it sounds like that wouldn't play in there.


Otherwise, the only thing that I have seen


is that sometimes from a pure crawling point of view,


we might crawl different parts of the website


with different speeds just because we


think these parts of the website are updated


more quickly than other parts.


But if you've had these regular updates


on both parts of the website for a while now,


then that's something where I wouldn't


think anything like that would be playing a role.


So that seems like something where probably it's


just, I don't know, our normal algorithms at play


and not something special that comes from it being


a different part of the site.


I'm asking only because we kind of tested it.


So we published something on the guide section.


Then a week later, we published something on the, well,


it's different topics, of course,


but kind of the same process and not necessarily one


is more competitive than others.


And the one published in the blog section


just ranked right away.


The other one is kind of struggling


and keeps building up in impressions,


just much, much slower.


So we didn't know whether it was anything special


about that new section.


I don't know.


I mean, in your case, I would just keep on testing.


Try to figure out if you can narrow things down.


Maybe it's something kind of unique.


Maybe it's just that you recognize, OK, well,


if Google sees it like this, I will just put my content here.


That might be kind of the other approach.


But I would keep an eye on it.


It sounds like maybe it's something


specific with your website.


Again, I don't think we would do anything like that by design.


So it's not that someone has hardcoded something


like saying, well, blogs are updated like this


and other pages like this.


Yeah.


MIHAI APERGHISLINGA. You mentioned RSS feeds


and everything related.


It is a WordPress-based website.


And indeed, the blog section does have everything


that you mentioned, and that other section does not.


But wouldn't that just help with indexing, not necessarily


ranking?


So once the content is indexed, would it


perform differently if you don't have those elements?


JOHN MUELLER.


No.


RSS would help with indexing, yeah.


But sometimes there are things within a blog where


you have the category set up, or you


have the monthly overview pages that link


to the individual blog posts.


You have this internal linking fairly well optimized.


And depending on how you set up the website,


other parts of the website might not


have that well-optimized internal linking.


And that kind of internal linking, that


could play a role with regards to ranking.


MIHAI APERGHISLINGA. OK.


We'll check it out.


Thanks.


Yes.


All right.


Let's see.


For search queries made in Google from a desktop computer,


our mdot domain ranks for some of our very important keywords.


It seems to us like this is a bug on Google's side,


and then there's a link to forum thread.


I didn't check the forum thread, so I'm not quite sure


exactly what you're seeing.


But one of the things that is worth mentioning


is that, especially with the shift to mobile-first indexing,


if you have a separate mdot site,


it's more likely that something like this


can happen in that we might show your mdot


version in the normal desktop search results.


And often that's due to an inconsistent linking


between the mobile and the desktop version,


where we can't map that exactly.


Sometimes it's just a matter of the way


that we crawl and index pages, where maybe we'll


pick up one version first, and we'll see the canonical,


and we'll stick with the mdot version,


because that's the one that we would choose as canonical


there.


And we would show that.


So from our point of view, with an mdot site,


with mobile-first indexing, it's more likely


that you would see the mdot version in the desktop search


results.


Because of that, what I would do is


make sure that you redirect desktop users from the mdot


site to the appropriate desktop site.


Wait, desktop users to the mobile site


to the appropriate desktop version.


So kind of catch it on your end, rather than rely on Google


showing the appropriate URL.


This is a bit similar to the situation


before mobile-first indexing, where sometimes we


would show desktop URLs for an mdot site on mobile.


And essentially, it has just kind of shifted around here.


And this is something from the mobile-first indexing team.


I talked with them about this earlier today.


And from their point of view, we do


try to catch this as much as we can,


but we can't catch it completely.


And at the moment, we're thinking


that this is probably something that, over time, will become


less of an issue anyway, because people will redirect.


And more and more people are using mobile anyway to search.


So it's something where we would expect that, potentially,


if you have an mdot site, this will


kind of remain in kind of an unstable situation like this.


Again, what I would just do there


is make sure that you redirect from the mdot version


to the desktop version for desktop users.


That also helps us to understand that connection better


and to show the right URL at the right time.


So that's kind of the best way to handle it,


or rather, the easiest way to handle it.


Of course, the best way to handle it


would be to use a responsive site


or to use dynamic serving, where you just


have a single URL where you don't


have all of these differences between the mdot


and the desktop version.


Because every time you have a separate mobile version


or a separate version of the site,


again, it just makes everything a little bit more complicated.


So it's not that we will stop our support for mdot versions.


It's just that if you have this setup


and we've shifted to mobile-first indexing


or we're shifting it to mobile-first indexing


for your site, then it's possible


that you will see this.


SPEAKER 2 Hi, John.


Hi.


So yeah, the question was from us.


So thank you very much for stepping onto it.


Yeah, the case is we actually didn't receive any notification


from Google in the search console


that we would be on mobile-first yet.


And the redirect from mobile to desktop is there.


So setup should be stable.


But it was last week that we noticed not only


for the German market.


Since we're having products in many markets,


we realized it has been in the UK and other markets too.


And we have the right canonical and the right alternate.


Exactly, yeah.


So we have done everything Google recommends.


So we're pretty sure we've done the setup well


for a separate URL situation.


Yeah, actually, it's really painful to see it.


But I mean, if you have redirect setup for desktop users,


then they will see the mdot version.


But they'll be redirected to the desktop version anyway.


So it's something where users wouldn't really see it as much.


But I agree, it does look weird.


We have also lost rankings.


That wouldn't change anything with the rankings, though.


Because it's not that these pages would rank differently.


It's essentially just the URL that's being shown.


OK.


So if you're seeing changes in the rankings there,


then that would be due to something else.


Another problem.


All right.


Thank you.


Yeah, someone with a question in between?


Hello.


Hi.


It's also regarding these mobile versions.


So we do our best to follow your guidelines


and run these mobile usability tests.


And it went quite well.


So it checked your site, like several thousand pages,


and then stopped at the last 20 or 20-something pages.


And now for weeks, nothing happens.


So we think maybe it has frozen or something,


but we have no influence to change this.


So what could this be?


I don't know if you could follow my question.


So this mobile usability test you have on your search console.


OK.


I think you asked this question in the post as well.


Is that correct?


Yeah.


I gave a link.


So I took a quick look at the site there.


And from our point of view, it looks pretty OK,