5 Takeaways From Google’s Revised SEO Starter Guide via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google completely revamped their SEO Starter Guide in a way that shows five ways to create a focused webpage that inspires trust and a positive user experience.

1. Topic-Rich Links

Being useful to readers is a practical approach to web content. The recent Google anti-trust trial revealed that user interactions are a strong ranking influence in Google’s algorithm that is known as Navboost. A patent that may be about Navboost describes how user interactions create a document-level score that can help a site rank better. That means creating a document that encourages positive user interaction signals may help a site rank better (read about what may be the Navboost patent).

The old version of the document had sentence-level internal links to other webpages but they weren’t always semantically relevant within the context and didn’t use anchor text that adequately described the linked-webpage.

Here’s an example of how a link to a site map explainer webpage was improved.

The old version linked to the explainer with this entire sentence:

“Learn more about how to build and submit a sitemap.”

The new version links to the same page like this (linked words in bold):

“If you’re open to a little technical challenge, you could also submit a sitemap—which is a file that contains all the URLs on your site that you care about.”

Topic-rich internal links are a useful way to create an internal link to another webpage that is useful to readers because the context of the link is the topic which makes more sense than linking to another webpage that lacks the context. .

2. Orderly Page Structure

The most obvious change is how much shorter the starter guide is compared to the old version. The original webpage contained approximately 8,639 words. The updated document contains about 4,058 words. The new version of the SEO starter guide is 53% smaller than the original one.

Further, the original contained 92 heading elements, from H1 to H5. The updated document contains 27 heading elements ranging from H1 to H3.

The interesting part is that the starter guide shrunk by 53%, but the use of heading elements declined by 71%. That means that if the rate of heading use had stayed the same, the updated document would have contained a relatively equal percentage of headings (53%) but it didn’t stay the same.

The actual percentage of change was 71% less, which represents and absolute difference of 18% but is almost twice that in relative terms, which is the most important measure. The relative difference in use of headings reveals that Google used 34% less headings in the new version.

These changes have the effect of giving the entire document cohesiveness, with all the parts logically flowing one into the other.

3. Topic-Focused

The reason why there are less headings used in the revised SEO starter guide is because it no longer covers granular sub-sub-sub-topics. The old version used 31 H4 heading elements and 12 H5 heading elements.

A consequence of the new webpage structure is that the updated version is more tightly focused on the topic, giving the absolute necessary information while providing readers with the option of following a contextually relevant link to another webpage with more information.

The shorter format makes it easier for a reader to understand the topic in its entirety as one focused-document.

The number of topics covered in the new webpage is roughly the same as the old webpage (new = 11 topics/old = 12 topics). The main difference is in the tighter focus on the topic.

These are the main topics of the new webpage:

[H2] How does Google Search work?
[H2] How long until I see impact in search results?
[H2] Help Google find your content
[H2] Organize your site
[H2] Make your site interesting and useful
[H2] Influence how your site looks in Google Search
[H2] Add images to your site, and optimize them
[H2] Optimize your videos
[H2] Promote your website
[H2] Things we believe you shouldn't focus on
[H2] Next steps

Here are the main topics of the previous webpage version:

[H2] Who is this guide for?
[H2] Getting started
[H2] Help Google find your content
[H2] Tell Google which pages you don't want crawled
[H2] Help Google (and users) understand your content
[H2] Manage your appearance in Google Search results
[H2] Organize your site hierarchy
[H2] Optimize your content
[H2] Optimize your images
[H2] Make your site mobile-friendly
[H2] Promote your website
[H2] Analyze your search performance and user behavior

Only five topics were carried over to the new starter guide:

1. 1. Help Google find your content

   2. Organize your site

   3. Make your site interesting and useful (subtopic in old version)

   4. Avoid distracting advertisements (subtopic in old version)

   5. Promote your website

These are the discarded as main topics:

[H2] Who is this guide for?
[H2] Getting started
[H2] Tell Google which pages you don't want crawled
[H2] Help Google (and users) understand your content
[H2] Manage your appearance in Google Search results
[H2] Optimize your content
[H2] Optimize your images
[H2] Make your site mobile-friendly
[H2] Analyze your search performance and user behavior
[H2] Additional Resources

4. Concise Is Sometimes Better Than Comprehensive

The context of reading an article on a mobile device has completely changed how content is consumed. Content is consumed on a need-to-know basis. Pre-mobile, it was impossible to look something up on the Internet without having to get up and walk to the nearest desktop computer or laptop. Now, whatever information is needed, no matter how trivial, is just a few clicks away and what’s needed isn’t always a comprehensive article.

Leaving aside the convenience of anytime/anywhere content, it’s inconvenient to scroll over a hundred times to read a long article.

What the new webpage accomplishes is a compromise of providing a precisely on-topic webpage that is also comprehensive without being unrealistically long.

5. Similar Image Elements

Lastly, the images on the new webpage share similar colors and design. The old version had colors that varied widely, with one that’s yellow, another bright red, another had photos in it. Many of the images felt like they were players from different teams, like teammates wearing different uniforms.

Even if you’re using stock images, picking images from the same artist will help promote a sense of cohesiveness to the webpage.

The new webpage, because the images feature similar colors, makes the entire webpage more focused and confers a professionalism which in turn can inspire trust.

Takeaways

There are probably more takeaways but these are what stand out for me:

1. Topic-Rich Links
Enables a concise reading experience and provides links where they make sense for a reader.

2. Orderly Page Structure
Topic order provides a logical progression from one topic to the next, like doors opening onto the next room one after the other in a linear manner, which makes it easier to consume the entire document as a whole.

3. Keep Tightly Focused On The Topic
Off-topic segues are distracting. Keeping to the topic creates a better reading experience and might increase comprehension of the overall topic.

4. Concise Is Sometimes Better Than Comprehensive
Too much information can be confusing, especially when it’s more than is needed for a given topic.

5. Similar Image Elements
Attention to details like the images and graphics within the webpage confers a professional presentation which may encourage trust. Even when using stock images, keeping to the same artist portfolio will enforce visual similarity.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Kues

Google Retires Cached Site Links, Pushing Users Towards Internet Archive via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has officially retired the “cached” link feature that allowed users to access archived backups of websites.

The cached links were a longtime staple of Google Search, functioning as a way to view unavailable or changed webpages.

“It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it,” said Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan in a statement confirming the change.

Sullivan mentioned the possibility of Google partnering with the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to show historical versions of web pages in Google’s “About This Result” feature. However, he clarified that these discussions are ongoing and any collaboration is unconfirmed.

For website owners and developers who want to see how Google’s crawler interprets their pages, Sullivan recommended using the URL Inspector tool in Google Search Console, which remains available as a resource.

The Cost Of Data Storage

Previously, cached links were accessible via a dropdown menu next to every search result. As Google’s web crawler indexed the internet, it created backups of websites – amounting to an archive of much of the internet’s content.

With Google’s recent focus on cost savings, deleting this cache data will free up computing resources.

The cached link feature has been sporadically disappearing over the past few months. Currently, no cache links are visible in Google Search results. All Google support pages regarding cached links have also been removed.

The Internet Archive’s Increasing Role

With Google retiring cached links, archiving websites largely falls to the Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine.

Browser extensions like the Official Wayback Machine Extension allow users to view archived copies of sites easily.

The Wayback Machine Extension provides features to save webpages, restore missing pages, read digitized books, share archived links on social media, and more. Most features work without needing an account.

Building Personal Cache Links

An alternative exists for users who still wish to access cached pages. Typing “cache:” plus a URL into Google Search can still reveal some cached versions.

Additionally, you can create your own cache links by appending a website URL to “https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:”

Looking Ahead

Google’s decision to discontinue its web caching service signals a change in how online content is stored and made available over time. With Google removing this feature, the responsibility for preserving old versions of webpages and keeping Internet history intact falls more heavily on groups like the Internet Archive.

As the online world keeps developing rapidly, entities like the Archive that intentionally maintain caches of websites and data will only grow more important for retaining a record of the internet’s past.

Featured Image: Sharaf Maksumov/Shutterstock

Google Confirms Indexing Issue Affecting Some Websites via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google investigating indexing delays affecting some sites since Monday night, working to identify and resolve root cause.

• Google confirmed an indexing issue affecting some websites.
• The issue started around 11:30pm ET Monday night.
• Google is investigating the root cause and working to fix it.

Google Updates Core Web Vitals With Interaction To Next Paint (INP) via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has announced that its new Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric will officially replace First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital on March 12.

INP measures when a user interacts with a page (e.g., clicking a button) to when the browser can render the changed pixels to the screen. It aims to capture aspects of interactivity that FID didn’t.

Evolving Web Metrics

FID, which measured the time to first paint after a user’s first interaction, was introduced in 2018 as part of Google’s Web Vitals initiative. Web Vitals provides metrics to help web developers optimize critical aspects of the user experience.

Over time, Google realized FID’s limitations in assessing interactivity, leading to INP’s introduction as an experimental metric in May 2022. After a transition period as a ‘pending metric,’ Google has confirmed that INP will officially replace FID in March.

Preparing For Change

As the INP transition approaches, developers should verify if their website’s INP meets the “good” threshold, which reflects performance at the 75th percentile of page loads.

For sites not currently meeting the “good” INP threshold, Google recommends taking these steps to optimize for the transition:

Evaluate current INP performance using tools like PageSpeed Insights and Chrome’s User Experience Report.

Diagnose issues slowing down INP, like long JavaScript tasks, too much main thread activity, or a large DOM.

Optimize problematic areas following Google’s optimization guides. This may involve streamlining JavaScript, reducing input delay, simplifying the DOM structure, or refining CSS selectors.

Broader Implications For Web Development

Google’s implementation of INP as a Core Web Vital could impact web development and user experience in several ways:

• INP scores may influence websites’ search engine rankings and user engagement, as Google uses Core Web Vitals in its ranking algorithm.
• Web development practices may evolve to focus more on optimizing interaction readiness, which could require application architecture and code changes.
• Performance monitoring tools and strategies may need to be updated to track and analyze the new INP metric.

In Summary

As Google transitions to the INP metric in March, web developers should evaluate their site’s performance and take steps to optimize areas impacting interactivity.

With interactivity becoming a more significant factor in search rankings and user engagement, developers should prepare now to ensure a smooth changeover.

Featured Image: salarko/Shutterstock

Google’s ‘Circle To Search’ Now Rolling Out To Select Android Phones via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has announced the rollout of a new search feature called “Circle to Search” that allows users to quickly look up information on their mobile devices with simple gestures like circling, highlighting, or scribbling.

The feature is launching globally on the new Pixel 8 and 8 Pro phones and the Samsung Galaxy S24 series.

With Circle to Search, you can search for more details on anything you see while browsing the web or social media.

You can find related information without switching apps or typing a search query by long-pressing the home button and circling or scribbling an item.

In a blog post, Google outlines five key ways Circle to Search can be used.

1. Shopping For Items Seen Online

You can circle or scribble over images of products to find shopping options from across the web.

This allows easy price comparisons and purchasing of items spotted on social media or in videos.

2. Looking Up Definitions

Words or phrases can be highlighted to pull up definitions and relevant background information without leaving the app you’re currently in.

3. Travel Inspiration

Interesting buildings or landmarks spotted in videos or posts can be circled to identify them and get more details that may inspire travel plans.

4. Comparing Options

Names of restaurants, stores, or other options mentioned in texts or chats can be highlighted to view information like menus, reviews, and locations to compare choices.

5. Asking Complex Questions

Circle to Search uses AI to provide an overview, answering broader questions about trending topics or items that have sparked curiosity.

In Summary

Google’s Circle to Search offers an intriguing new way to look up information while browsing on their mobile devices.

For content creators and SEO professionals, this feature presents an opportunity to optimize written and visual content to be more discoverable by gesture searches.

As Circle to Search rolls out more broadly, it will be interesting to see how it shapes search behavior and the strategies used to meet evolving user needs. For now, developing mobile-friendly content anticipating people’s desire for quick access to knowledge could provide a competitive advantage.

Google’s Q4 Earnings Reveal AI’s Growing Role In Search via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announced its financial results for Q4 and the full year of 2023.

Alphabet’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, was pleased with the company’s ongoing success. He pointed to gains in Google Search advertising, YouTube ad revenue, and demand for Google Cloud products and services.

“We are pleased with the ongoing strength in Search and the growing contribution from YouTube and Cloud. Each of these is already benefiting from our AI investments and innovation. As we enter the Gemini era, the best is yet to come,” said Pichai.

Ruth Porat, CFO of Alphabet, also reflected on the company’s financial health, stating, “We ended 2023 with very strong fourth-quarter financial results, with Q4 consolidated revenues of $86 billion, up 13% year over year. We remain committed to our work to durably re-engineer our cost base as we invest to support our growth opportunities.”

Earnings Report Highlights

Alphabet announced Q4 revenues of $86.31 billion, up 13% compared to last year. Operating income for the quarter reached $23.7 billion, an increase from $18.16 billion in Q4 2021.

For 2023, Alphabet’s total revenues were $307.39 billion, representing 9% growth over the previous year.

The company attributed its ongoing revenue growth to investments in AI technology, which drove the expansion of Alphabet’s service offerings and cloud computing business.

Further details from the earnings release and call can be found on Alphabet’s investor relations website.

Highlights Of Earnings Call Webcast

AI: The New Frontier in Search

During Alphabet’s fourth-quarter 2023 earnings call webcast, Pichai discussed the company’s strategic focus on leveraging advanced AI models across its products and services.

He reported early results from integrating AI models like Gemini into Google Search to enhance the user experience and advertiser performance.

Pichai stated that early testing of Google’s Search Generative Experience, which utilizes the Gemini AI model, showed a 40% decrease in search latency times for English language queries in the United States.

He attributed these improvements to Gemini’s ability to process diverse inputs, including text, images, audio, video, and code.

“Gemini gives us a great foundation. It’s already demonstrating state-of-the-art capabilities, and it’s only going to get better,” Pichai stated during the earnings call.

SGE is designed to serve a broader range of information needs, especially for more complex queries that benefit from multiple perspectives.

“By applying generative AI to search, we’re able to serve a wider range of information needs and answer new types of questions,” Pichai explained, highlighting the user-centric approach that Google is taking.

However, Pichai acknowledged that SGE surfaces fewer links within search results, sparking concerns about impacts on publishers who rely on Google traffic.

“We’re improving satisfaction, including for more conversational queries,” he said. “As I’ve mentioned, we’re surfacing more links with SGE and linking to a wider range of sources.”

Ad Growth Driven By AI

On the advertising side, Pichai cited momentum for AI-enabled products like Performance Max, responsive search ads, and automatic ad asset creation. These leverage AI to optimize campaigns and creatives.

“More advanced, generative AI-powered capabilities are coming,” said Philipp Schindler, Senior VP and Chief Business Officer.

Schindler highlighted a new conversational ad experience for search campaigns using Gemini. Early tests found it helps advertisers, especially SMBs, build higher-quality ads with less effort.

As Google doubles down on AI, Pichai said the company will continue investing in compute infrastructure to support growth. He expects capital expenditures to be “notably larger” in 2024.

Google Cloud’s AI-Driven Ascent

Alphabet’s cloud computing division, Google Cloud, continued to grow, with revenues surpassing $9 billion this quarter.

Pichai said this growth was driven by the integration of AI, attracting many customers, including over 90% of AI startups valued at over $1 billion.

Google Cloud aims to be a leader in providing AI-enabled services for businesses, offering customers performance and cost benefits through its AI Hypercomputer technology.

In Summary

Alphabet’s Q4 2023 earnings reveal steady revenue growth and increasing traction of its AI-driven products and services.

The report signals a strategic focus on leveraging AI to enhance core offerings like Search, YouTube, and Cloud.

The key takeaways from Alphabet’s earnings report for SEO and advertising professionals are:

• Monitor impacts of AI integration on Google Search as it surfaces fewer links but aims to improve satisfaction. This could affect publisher traffic and SEO strategies.
• Leverage AI-powered ad products like responsive search ads and automatic creative generation to optimize campaigns. But stay updated as more advanced generative AI capabilities emerge.
• Consider Google Cloud’s AI platform to power data-driven decisions and workflows. Its growth signals a strong demand for AI services.

Above all, prepare for ongoing evolution as Alphabet doubles down on AI to transform search and ads. Proactively adapt strategies to benefit from the positives while mitigating the risks of changes.

Featured Image: IgorGolovniov/Shutterstock

Google Answers Question About Signals And Syndicated Content via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller answered a question about what happens to the signals associated with syndicated content when Google chooses the partner as the canonical instead of the original content publisher. John’s answer contained helpful information about the murky area of ranking and syndicated content.

The question was asked by Lily Ray (@lilyraynyc) on X (formerly Twitter).

She tweeted her question:

“If an article is syndicated across partner websites, and Google chooses the partner as canonical (even if canonical on partner site ➡️to original source), does this mean all SEO value is consolidated to partner URL?

E.g. link signals, UX signals, social media signals etc. from the group would be consolidated into Google’s chosen canonical?

& each time this happens, does that represent an “opportunity cost” from the original site, in the sense that they lose out on that SEO value?”

Lily asked about cross-domain canonicals and this:

• Link signals
• UX signals
• Social media signals

John Mueller tweeted:

“Hi Lily! It’s complicated, and not all the things you’re asking about are things we necessarily even use.

In general, if we recognize a page as canonical, that’s going to be the page most likely rewarded by our ranking systems.”

John Mueller answered that Google didn’t use everything on her list but didn’t specify which items. Regarding the canonicals, Google does have a policy about the use of cross-domain canonicals on syndicated content.

Google announced last year that it no longer recommends cross-domain canonicals on syndicated content and instead it suggests using the meta noindex tag on the partner site to block Google from indexing the site entirely if the original publisher wants to be certain that link signals for the content accrue to them and not the syndication partner.

This is Google’s current guidance for cross-domain canonicals:

“Tip: If you want to avoid duplication by syndication partners, the canonical link element is not recommended because syndicated articles are often very different in overall content from original articles. Instead, partners should use meta tags to block the indexing of your content.”

John Mueller didn’t address what happens to the link signals but he did say that the site that is recognized as canonical is the one that’s rewarded Google’s ranking systems and that is ultimately the most important detail.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Graphic farm

Google: Changing URLs On Larger Sites Takes Time To Process via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Someone on Reddit asked a question about making a sitewide change to the code related to a website with ten languages. Google’s John Mueller offered general advice about the pitfalls of sitewide changes and word about complexity (implying the value of simplicity).

The question was related to hreflang but Mueller’s answer, because it was general in nature, had wider value for SEO.

Here is the question that was asked:

“I am working on a website that contains 10 languages and 20 culture codes. Let’s say blog-abc was published on all languages. The hreflang tags in all languages are pointing to blog-abc version based on the lang. For en it may be en/blog-abc

They made an update to the one in English language and the URL was updated to blog-def. The hreflang tag on the English blog page for en will be updated to en/blog-def. This will however not be dynamically updated in the source code of other languages. They will still be pointing to en/blog-abc. To update hreflang tags in other languages we will have to republish them as well.

Because we are trying to make the pages as static as possible, it may not be an option to update hreflang tags dynamically. The options we have is either update the hreflang tags periodically (say once a month) or move the hreflang tags to sitemap.

If you think there is another option, that will also be helpful.”

Sitewide Changes Take A Long Time To Process

I recently read an interesting thing in a research paper that reminded me of things John Mueller said about how it takes time for Google to understand updated pages relate to the rest of the Internet.

The research paper mentioned how updated webpages required recalculating the semantic meanings of the webpages (the embeddings) and then doing that for the rest of the documents.

Here’s what the research paper (PDF) says in passing about adding new pages to a search index:

“Consider the realistic scenario wherein new documents are continually added to the indexed corpus. Updating the index in dual-encoder-based methods requires computing embeddings for new documents, followed by re-indexing all document embeddings.

In contrast, index construction using a DSI involves training a Transformer model. Therefore, the model must be re-trained from scratch every time the underlying corpus is updated, thus incurring prohibitively high computational costs compared to dual-encoders.”

I mention that passage because in 2021 John Mueller said it can take Google months to assess the quality and the relevance of a site and mentioned how Google tries to understand how a website fits in with the rest of the web.

Here’s what he said in 2021:

“I think it’s a lot trickier when it comes to things around quality in general where assessing the overall quality and relevance of a website is not very easy.

It takes a lot of time for us to understand how a website fits in with regards to the rest of the Internet.

And that’s something that can easily take, I don’t know, a couple of months, a half a year, sometimes even longer than a half a year, for us to recognize significant changes in the site’s overall quality.

Because we essentially watch out for …how does this website fit in with the context of the overall web and that just takes a lot of time.

So that’s something where I would say, compared to technical issues, it takes a lot longer for things to be refreshed in that regard.”

That part about assessing how a website fits in the context of the overall web is a curious and unusual statement.

What he said about fitting into the context of the overall web kind of sounded surprisingly similar to what the research paper said about how the search index “requires computing embeddings for new documents, followed by re-indexing all document embeddings.”

Here’s John Mueller response in Reddit about the problem with updating a lot of URLs:

“In general, changing URLs across a larger site will take time to be processed (which is why I like to recommend stable URLs… someone once said that cool URLs don’t change; I don’t think they meant SEO, but also for SEO). I don’t think either of these approaches would significantly change that.”

What does Mueller mean when he said that big changes take time be processed? It could be similar to what he said in 2021 about evaluating the site all over again for quality and relevance. That relevance part could also be similar to what the research paper said about computing embeddings” which relates to creating vector representations of the words on a webpage as part of understanding the semantic meaning.

Complexity Has Long-Term Costs

John Mueller continued his answer:

“A more meta question might be whether you’re seeing enough results from this somewhat complex setup to merit spending time maintaining it like this at all, whether you could drop the hreflang setup, or whether you could even drop the country versions and simplify even more.

Complexity doesn’t always add value, and brings a long-term cost with it.”

Creating sites with as much simplicity as possible has been something I’ve done for over twenty years. Mueller’s right. It makes updates and revamps so much easier.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/hvostik