Today is December 27th, 2021 and here’s some of the top stories I am covering:
- Is 100k pages on your site an issue for crawl budget?
- Updated image results?
- A great thread about ranking in a top position for a highly searched term. 80k in value
- Does google use analytics data? Does google use CTR on SERPs data?
- Bing and shopify integration
- Google Ads issues with GMail ads
- If you aren’t looking at tiktok in your 2022 marketing plan, take a look at this article
- Facebook is losing a bunch of execs, especially in the advertising segment
News items discussed:
Google does not use Google Analytics 4 for ranking purposes, and has always said it has never used Google Analytics in its algorithm.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-analytics-4-google-ranking-32622.html
Google Image search on mobile has these labels for sections of the images it sometimes shows in the search results. A new label I have not seen before is showing “top categorized results.”
A look at how to use meta descriptions to help search engines understand your page’s content. Meta descriptions are considered an indirect signal, in that they do not directly influence search rankings. They do help with other goals such as improving click-through rates.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/on-page-seo/optimize-meta-description/
A Reddit user woke up to an additional $80,000 in monthly traffic after his site reached the fifth rank for a competitive keyword. What should he do to the page with a weak call to action?
https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/rm5la2/woke_up_to_80000_increase_in_monthly_traffic/
Microsoft Bing has announced a Shopify integration that allows products to be purchased from the Bing Shopping and Search features.
https://www.seroundtable.com/microsoft-bing-shopping-shopify-ethical-shopping-32639.html
Google has a new serving issue with Google Ads that is impacting ad serving on the desktop version of Gmail. So if you are serving Google Ads on Gmail, your ads may not show to a “significant subset of users,” according to Google. Google is working on resolving the issue but has yet to resolve it.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-serving-issue-32649.html
According to our research, 68% of marketers said they didn’t plan to use TikTok for marketing purposes in 2021. Those who did plan on increasing their use of TikTok were also heavy users of Facebook and Instagram.
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/tiktok-growth-projections-and-the-opportunity-with-gen-z/
Facebook’s most notable departures from the company in 2021. Many senior executives left or announced plans to depart in the coming months.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/23/here-are-facebooks-most-notable-executive-departures-in-2021.html
Transcript:
Welcome to the opinionated SEO, where we talk about recent news and updates in the digital marketing world of SEO paid advertising and social media that impact you as a marketer. Also throw in some of my opinion to the mix. All right, let’s go.
Today, we’re going to look at a few different areas. First is a hundred thousand pages on your site and issue for crawl budget, maybe some updated image results. There’s a great thread about ranking and top position for a highly searched term that brought in about $80,000 in value. Some interesting notes on that.
Does Google use analytics? Does Google use click through rate on SERPs? John Mueller weighs in on that. A new bang in Shopify integration went live Google ads issues with Gmail ads on desktop. So if you’re advertising there, something to look into, if you aren’t looking at tick-tock in your marketing 20, 22.
Take a look at this article, it might change your mind. And then Facebook is losing a bunch of executives. So especially in that advertising segment. So is this a, are we starting to see the end of Facebook or is it turning into meta and pivoting and not going to be as great for you to advertise with?
We’ll look a little bit into that, but first let’s start with that first story. So this was just a search engine round table. Discussion here. John Mueller had weighed in on this, on some tweets from Matt Tut, basically saying, we have a hundred thousand of these URLs that don’t really have a whole lot of value from a crawler.
We’re thinking no indexing. Cutting the amount of robots texts, how does this really apply? And I think the big thing that John replied was really, why would you want to cut these out? And, over, over a three month timeframe, this isn’t going to affect crawl budget, a hundred thousand URLs.
Isn’t going to add remove. Now I can tell you. We average on one of the sites I manage anywhere between about eight, 900,000 and about 2.5 million crawls a day. That ranges anywhere from about eight to 15 upwards of 20 visits a second. As long as your site can handle it. So we have about 40 million pages.
We see that our site gets crawled pretty much every about one to two months, almost all the pages. Now there’s some pages that don’t get visited, but every, few months they don’t really change much. But in general, a hundred thousand. In my opinion, shouldn’t be that big of a difference. Now, if they’re junk URLs, the question is why do you even have them on your site?
Maybe start looking at that and understanding if that actually gives value to a user or not, is there a way you can make those better? In the end the big response was. I don’t really think that’s going to affect your crawl budget. So don’t worry about it unless it’s going to affect your server because it actually impacts the load time, things like that for crawling a hundred thousand pages.
The next a little item here was a interesting little discussion. This was mostly from Twitter. I think it was a K on Twitter. I’m seeing that there’s a top categorized results. So maybe changing things around Google has been doing a lot with image search And this is a kind of interesting one.
I think definitely an area that can be improved. So take a look at this. There was a latest filter that was added that was about three, four years ago. But I think that they’re probably starting to look back is. Honestly, I think it’s that Google realizes that Pinterest is still such a powerhouse and they have so much similar data and images they should be able to compete directly.
So that’s a big one to take a look at. This was an interesting thread here. This was actually on Reddit. Fun little anecdote here was actually a few days ago woke up to being in fifth place for an extremely high volume, high difficulty keyword, something like a 7.4 million volume 6000% traffic increase.
And it looked like they were holding steady for a while. So that’s a. That’s pretty impressive there. What what’s interesting about this is a couple of the discussions we’re trying to understand. You know what you do, if you’re in that situation, do you change anything? He said, I don’t really have a good call to action on that, but his concern was, do I change it now that I’ve got all this traffic coming in or do you think that might affect my traffic overall?
So my opinion capitalize on it, go for it. At a better call to action just don’t change the meaning of the page, any major content, anything like that. Because you want to take advantage of that traffic, if you don’t and you’re ranking and you get all this traffic and it’s for nothing, he can’t show any value from it, then just don’t.
That’s my opinion on that now. The next here is talking about. Does Google use Google analytics? And this specific was Google analytics four, for ranking purposes. Google’s come out and said this. I don’t know, like every month it seems like this comes up and they keep saying, no, we don’t use analytics and tracking.
And I think actually this is probably pretty accurate. And the reason why is that? Not every site uses Google analytics and I’ve seen sites that definitely don’t use Google analytics and they still rank. Absolutely. And it’s just one of the easiest things that you could fake because. You can fake analytics data all day long, you can implement it incorrectly and make it look like you have 0% bounce rate and you have twice, three times as much traffic.
And I definitely see that and people don’t even realize it’s implemented incorrectly correctly. I really don’t feel like Google uses any data in there at all. And probably couldn’t because they have no way of making that. Something that they can access across every website. Definitely just a a really interesting actual summary here.
I think that I liked that SEO round table put together with a bunch of links showing some of the myths and all the different times that Google has come back and set this. So take a look at this in case someone ever brings it up and you just want to have a little bit of data to say, no, it absolutely doesn’t matter.
And as a test, if you really want. Remove Google analytics from your site and see if the ranking changes and a guarantee you, because I’ve seen it before where a analytics plugin breaks on a WordPress site, or they upgrade to a, they’re supposed to be a paid version. It stops working or some API connection, and there’s no analytics tracking for a month.
And guess what? The ranking never changed. Okay. Now. Really good article came out about a week ago, actually before days ago here from search engine journal on optimizing meta descriptions. Definitely something to look at. I’m a huge proponent of really good meta descriptions. I think that they are one of those few areas that you can put a really good call to action that maybe isn’t.
Keyword rich, so to speak that actually hooks someone. And it’s something that as a marketer you put your marketing hat on that you can actually have a lot of influence on this. Take a look at that has some really interesting takeaways there pretty actionable. So definitely take a look at that.
They do mention Whether or not, you should include keywords in your search. Remember keywords tend to get bolded when they’re in the description and also in your search, which makes you stand out, however, it’s not a ranking factor. So whether or not you use that keyword or something else, that’s a little stronger definitely up to you, but take a look at.
Good article. Good examples in there. Something that you should definitely look at. Okay. Click data used in Google rankings. So this is aligns with this. So the question is, does Google use click data like. From their SERP. So if I click on a result and then click back, is that something that Google considers won’t the response here in, this was a couple of weeks ago, but basically the question was originally posed if, this happens a dozen times or two, because I’m checking on something, things like that, does it affect it?
And the response was no, if you’re doing this a dozen times, it doesn’t however, What’s not stated explicitly as if this has done a hundred thousand times and you’re in, position 2, 3, 4, are you going to drop to 5, 6, 7? Because of that? Personally, I think it would because that’s the kind of data that Google has and I’ve always been a believer in, if Google has the data, then they’re going to use the data.
In this case, they can tell that you visited something and came back in a specific amount of time. I click the next result, maybe stayed there, or if you clicked through two or three, now the other thing is that Google uses this data in their Google ads. So if they’re using it in Google ads, they’re probably using it in their SEO.
Okay. So my opinion, yes, they’re using. But you have to hit some kind of actual threshold. So a couple people doing this, or, you outsource it to someone, you just tell them, search this click and hit back. Probably not gonna affect it. It’s only gonna affect it when they consider how you are against others.
Okay. Now one of the next things looking a little bit more into the paid and e-commerce side Shopify. Microsoft. So being is a hundred percent now live with their integration. So you can now actually search for products through Microsoft shopping versus. So that’s pretty neat.
So if you’ve ever been to the shopping tab and you type something in, if you have a Shopify store, you can actually be integrated into there. So a great way to, shop local. Definitely something to consider doing. And if you’re running, e-commerce jump on this because even though.
Bing, isn’t your number one search engine being able to have your Shopify integrated into their shopping systems? Definitely. Can it be a big win for you? Okay, so we’re talking about e-commerce ads, things like that. Google ads has a serving issue for desktop Gmail. So if you are doing anything in desktop Gmail, maybe take a look at that.
That started on December 23rd, 2021. The issue looks like it’s still going as of the 27th here. But could definitely be some issues going on. Pay attention to that. If you’re seeing any kind of drop or anything like that’s not holiday related. That could be an issue. Okay. Next thing is.
I’m sure. Your favorite topic in the whole world, tick tock. Why is this important? Actually social media examiner put together a really great article. Mostly talking about opportunities with gen C, but I think the big takeaway I took from this is that Tik TOK is. Pretty much neck and neck with number of users is Snapchat and probably about 60% of the users of Instagram.
Okay. However, that percentage change in 2020 was 87%. And in 2021 was 18% where Instagram was single digit percentage increases. And for example, Facebook in 2021 had a 0.8% user growth. Okay. Tick. 18% red at 14%. Everyone else was single digit. So it’s fast growing gen Z is your ages nine to 24 right now.
It’s basically the largest growing segment expected in the next five years to about 46 million people. It’s definitely an area to consider focusing Especially when you look at the amount of time spent on the platform TikTokgot something like 35 minutes on average, Facebook’s 32 Twitter, 31, Instagram Snapchat 28.
So you’re talking close to, 30%, 40% more time spent on Tik TOK than on any of the. Instagram or anything like that. And that’s for users 18 and over. So that’s pretty impressive. Something to definitely take a look at and we’ll look at how this might work into your marketing.
The thing is TikTok ads has. Started using a Nielsen DMA fiscal boundaries. So you can now target at the same way. You might be targeting some of your other advertising there’s lead gen ads. So definitely some information there that you can that you can use in coming up with some ideas on marketing there.