Last updated on January 20, 2022.
It’s Olga from SEOSLY here. Welcome to episode #29 of the SEO Newsletter.
If you haven’t already, make sure to follow me on Twitter. I will be sharing more useful SEO tips there soon.
📰 Top SEO News
A lot of interesting things have been happening in the SEO industry over the last week. Here is what I have selected for you.
A dedicated desktop section in the GSC Page Experience report
To support the upcoming rollout of page experience ranking to desktop, Search Console now has a dedicated desktop section in its Page Experience report to help site owners understand Google’s ‘good page experience’ criteria. The Google page experience update for desktop is coming in February.
Do URL structure changes affect SEO? #AskGooglebot
In this episode of AskGooglebot, John Mueller explains what happens when you change your URLs and what steps to take to make sure Google can index the site. Make sure to watch it if you are planning a migration.
Unconfirmed Google Search Ranking Update on January 14th and 15th
As Barry Schwartz reports (and has been reporting a lot recently), there might have been yet another unconfirmed Google algo update last Friday and on Saturday. If you saw ranking fluctuations on your sites, then you are not alone.
Year in Google Search
In this episode, John, Martin, and Gary wrap up 2021 by reflecting on updates, debates, and events. They discuss the status of JavaScript and Search, bridging the gap between SEOs and developers, core updates, and much more!
Can Google documentation be trusted?
Host Martin is joined by guest Michael King, founder and managing director of iPullRank, a technical and marketing SEO agency in New York. They discuss issues with documentation leading to developers not trusting SEOs, the importance of context in regards to automation, tools, rules, and more!
Improve your SEO with Google Search Console (Webinar)
How much time do you spend in Google Search Console? Probably not enough! There’s a great deal of valuable data for SEOs inside of Google Search Console and in Episode 25 of Old Guard vs New Blood we explore what data you might be missing out on and how to incorporate the use of this data into your work patterns. Join me!
📰 SEO Guides To Check
I will soon be going through the SEO guides I created for you in 2021 and updating them. Below is the list of the SEO guides you liked the most.
⚙️ SEO Tools
Ahrefs [Main Sponsor]
I am very happy to announce that the SEOSLY newsletter and the site have a new sponsor. Yes, it’s Ahrefs, my favorite SEO tool.
I strongly recommend you check Ahrefs Webmaster Tools which is a free SEO tool that lets you improve your website’s SEO and monitor how your site is doing. All you need to get started is to verify the ownership of your site.
Check Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Soon I will publish the first of a series of guides where I show you how to use Ahrefs to make your SEO analyses and SEO audits better. Stay tuned!
☝️ SEO Tips
And here are the SEO tips for you.
#1: Don’t use non-standard URL encoding for faceted navigation
John Mueller confirms that using non-standard URL encoding parameters, such as commas or brackets (instead of key-valyes&pairs ) is still a bad idea for faceted navigation.
#2: Keyword density is NOT a ranking factor (a reminder)
“So it is now 2022 and some folks are asking if keyword density is an SEO Google search ranking factor. The answer is still no, according to John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google.” Barry nicely summarizes this topic here.
#3: Disavow the entire domain
The advice given by Matt Cutts in 2013 still holds true. If you are unsure of the links from the domain, it’s better to disavow the entire domain instead of disavowing specific links. It’s a huge time saver!
If you want even more tips, check my list of 60+ SEO tips I have prepared for you.
🤓 Don’t Miss These SEO Resources
100 things to know about Google Core Updates by Marie Haynes (MUST-SEE)
In this video, Marie Haynes is sharing 100 things that will help you understand Google core updates. Marie is probably one of the greatest SEO experts on earth. We are all lucky that she wants to share her wisdom with us. Make sure to watch this.
5 technical SEO issues on large e-commerce sites & how to solve them
In this post, you’ll find proven solutions for some of the most persistent technical SEO issues plaguing sites like yours. You’ll learn how to tackle issues around crawl budget, site architecture, internal linking, and more that are holding your site’s performance back.
HTTP Status Codes: The Complete List
In this article from Ahrefs, Patrick Stox walks us through the complete list of HTTP status codes and what they actually mean. This is an essential read for every technical SEO.
Why we need to talk about audits
Host Martin Splitt is joined by guest Bartosz Goralewicz. They discuss what happens when SEOs don’t consider everything about a project or product, an approach for SEOs to work well with web developers, the complexity of JavaScript, content marketing, web performance metrics, and more!
What Is Googlebot & How Does It Work?
Googlebot is the web crawler used by Google to gather the information needed and build a searchable index of the web. Googlebot has mobile and desktop crawlers, as well as specialized crawlers for news, images, and videos.
Verifying Googlebot and other Google crawlers
You can verify if a web crawler accessing your server really is a Google crawler, such as Googlebot. This is useful if you’re concerned that spammers or other troublemakers are accessing your site while claiming to be Googlebot.
SEO first principles
It’s easy to get lost in wild speculations with SEO, but good strategies and tactics are always the results of reasoning from first principles. Here Kevin Indig shares the SEO first principles you should be aware of and follow in your daily SEO routines.
What I Learnt from Analysing 7 Million Log File Events
“This blog post is not about an SEO case study, but more of a research and learnings piece based on my experience of over 7.2 million user agent events. The only user agent I tracked during this research is Googlebot’s, which had 124 different user agents and several thousand real IP addresses.”
Top 25 blogging SEO tips for 2022
In this article from Search Engine Watch, you will learn the top 25 blogging SEO tips to help all blog posts compete for a first-page Google ranking. Very nice tips!
5 Competitor Analysis Tools You Should Be Using
In this article from Ahrefs, you will learn about 5 competitor analysis tools that you should be using. The tools include Ahrefs, Brand24, SparkToro, BuiltWith, and Visualping.
📢 Other Announcements
As you probably noticed there was no SEO newsletter in December. That’s because I have been involved in a lot of new projects and have been transitioning to my new role as the Director of SEO at Market JD and planning out the content strategy for SEOSLY. New cool things are coming soon.
🙏 Please note that I am getting hundreds of messages and I am not always able to respond to all of you quickly. Please be patient. I will get back to you. I am doing my best.
See you next week!
Olga Zarzeczna is a senior SEO specialist with 8+ years of experience. She has been doing SEO for both the biggest brands in the world and small businesses. She has done more than 150+ SEO audits so far. Olga has completed SEO courses and degrees at universities, such as UC Davis, University of Michigan, and Johns Hopkins University. She also completed Moz Academy! And, of course, has Google certifications. She keeps learning SEO and loves it. Olga is also a Google Product Expert specializing in areas, such as Google Search and Google Webmasters.
