Think Tank Ranking Preview

Sources Cited:

• Google Search gets Status Dashboard to provide updates during outages
• Google December 2022 Link Spam Update
• Google Launches Visual Guide To Search Elements
• Lily ray on google updates
• A guide to Google Search ranking systems

In a short episode, Cord and Einar preview the new and improved Tallest Tree Think Tank Ranking. The new rankings will be automated, updated monthly, and incorporate more data than ever. This includes:

• Budget data from ProPublica
• Traffic, traffic value, domain rating, and backlink data from Ahrefs
• Pages indexed  from Serp API
• Web software from Wappalyzer

We're now able to pull historical traffic data from Ahrefs, which will give us insights into the last 36 months of performance for each of the 300+ groups in our study. We thank Ahrefs, who reviewed and approved our use of this data, for their support of this project.

We're also working with a new statistician, assistant professor of marketing at Clemson University, Lura Forcum. We're grateful for her insights on the data.

A few trends popped up in data review:

• About 12% of groups are still dealing with www vs non-www canonical issues
• Many sites have pop-ups that likely violate Google's Page Experience guidelines
• We found "spikey" traffic patterns for many groups, especially state-based think tanks, which may be explained by the location from which the traffic data was collected
• We saw a few sites that relaunched w/o redirects in place, which resulted in their referring domains crashing and large losses in traffic
• Many groups were affected by recent Google updates
• Many groups saw growth in referring domains w/o growth in traffic

Cord & Einar discuss how to optimize your website for web crawlers. How do things like robots.txt, site speed, HTTP codes, URLs, links, redirects, XML sitemaps, PDFs vs web pages, robots meta tags, and canonical URLs all affect web crawlers? How can you optimize these aspects of your site to make sure all the content you want robots to discover can be crawled and indexed?

Sources Cited:

• Google Robots Testing Tool
• Merkle robots.txt Validator
• PageSpeed Insights
• Lighthouse
• Pingdom Speed Test
• Robots Meta Tags

Cord & Einar discuss all things linking. Can JavaScript links pass PageRank? How to HTTP to HTTPS redirects work? Are old links irrelevant? Will links always be a ranking factor? What's a link graph?

Sources Cited:

• Search Engine Roundtable: Google Updates Help Documentation To Say Using JavaScript For Links Can Be Fine
• Google Search Central: Make your links crawlable
• Search Engine Roundtable: Google Can Pass PageRank From HTTP To HTTPS URLs With Redirects
• Search Engine Roundtable: Google: Some Old Links May Be Irrelevant (AKA Link Rot)
• Search Engine Roundtable: Google: Links Will Be Less Important As A Ranking Factor In The Future
• Kevin Indig: https://twitter.com/kevin_indig/status/1590115045236965376
• SEMRush: Get a Bird’s Eye View of Any Website’s Link Network
• Search Engine Roundtable: Google Search Console API Delay To Be Fixed In Days
• Search Engine Journal: Is Bounce Rate A Google Ranking Factor?

In this episode Cord & Einar discuss the ever-evolving Tallest Tree approach to SEO audits.

Here's the outline Cord & Einar used on the show:

Tools

• Sitebulb: run both an HTML-only and JavaScript crawl
• Ahrefs Crawler
• Ahrefs Site Explorer
• Ahrefs Chrome extension
• Google Search Console
• Chrome Inspector w/Lighthouse
• Google’s Robots Tester
• Inspect URL in GSC
• Schema Validator
• Merkle’s https://technicalseo.com/tools/
• The Wayback Machine

First look

• Explore the site by hand, view source on whatever the half dozen most-used templates seem to be
• Turn off JavaScript using Chrome extension and review the site again
• Explore the backend and get some counts on posts, categories, authors, etc.
• Look at plugins/modules
• Review Sitebult/Ahrefs crawl results
• Review Google Search Console

The goal of the first look is form a basic hypothesis about how technical SEO and site structure can be improved. Take screenshots and start making slides right away.

Checklist

• Review 192 items in 35 categories

Reporting

• How a search engine works
• Crawling
• Indexing
• Ranking
• E-A-T
• Measurement
  • Rank Tracking
  • GTM & GA4 for Traffic  & Conversions
  • Link Growth
• Google News

In this episode Cord & Einar review the best of "SEO Twitter" discussing topics like Facebook's profit nightmare (and why you should do SEO instead of Facebook ads), Google Search Console's new messages on max-image-preview, the 4th edition of "The Art of SEO," the new 2022 Web Almanac, how "Early Hints" can improve your Core Web Vitals, measuring E-A-T, 8 confirmed Google ranking factors, content hubs, and measuring topical authority. 

Sources Cited:

@antoniogm  cites The New York Post: Meta’s profits plunge more than 50% as ad revenue dwindles

@rustybrick  tweets about Google Search Console Notices For max-image-preview

@LeeFootSEO  shouts out  The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization 4th Edition

@HTTPArchive  hightlights the new  2022 Web Almanac

@alonkochba show how Early Hints can boost Core Web Vitals

@creativetrnd spreads the word about @lilyraynyc's Measuring E-A-T Whiteboard Friday talk for @Moz

@ahrefs on  8 confirmed Google ranking factors

@aleyda links to a @sistrix list of Content Hubs Performance Leaders

@jsvxc links to an Ahrefs study that uses a topical authority measurement method from @Kevin_Indig

In this episode Cord & Einar discuss whether or not AMP is ranking factor, priority hints, Google Search Essentials, the October 2022 spam Google spam update, title tags, WordPress 6.1, how Yoast pings search engines, and an article about topical authority by the late Bill Slawski.

Sources Cited:

• brightonSEO online: October 2022
• Search Engine Journal: AMP: Is It A Google Ranking Factor?
• web.dev: Optimizing resource loading with Priority Hints
• Search Engine Journal: Goodbye Google Webmaster Guidelines, Hello Google Search Essentials
• Search Engine Land: Google releases October 2022 spam update
• Search Engine Journal: Google Replaces Title Tags With Site Names For Homepage Results
• Search Engine Land: Google rolling out site names and updated favicon logos in search results
• Search Engine Journal: WordPress 6.1 Is Jam-Packed With Performance Upgrades
• Yoast: Disabling search engine pings
• Go Fish Digital: Google Using Website Representation Vectors to Classify with Expertise and Authority

In this episode Cord & Einar discuss Google changing Data Studio to Google Looker Studio, SEO conferences, Kevin Indig's take on the latest Google updates, previously visited sitelink icons, and the trouble with timestamps.

Sources Cited:

• Search Engine Roundtable: Google Data Studio Is Now Looker Studio
• Search Engine Journal: The Best SEO Conferences In 2022-2023 (Virtual And In-Person)
• Kevin Indig: Google's latest updates leave no room for low-quality content
• Search Engine Roundtable: Google Tests Previously Visited Sitelinks Icons
• Search Engine Roundtable: Google Still Working On Getting Timestamps Accurate In Search Results

In this episode Cord & Einar discuss the title tag length, "link juice," AMP is dead, measuring forms with GA4, how Googlebot handles iframes, and how to think about copies of original content on the web.

Sources Cited:

• Search Engine Land: What should the title tag length be in 2023?
• SEO Roundtable: Google: Anything That Talks About Link Juice Should Be Ignored
• Lily Ray 😏 on Twitter: "The "nail in the coffin for AMP"
• Search Engine Land: GA4 now has an enhanced measurement option for Form interactions
• Search Engine Land: Technical SEO testing: How Googlebot handles iframes
• SEO Roundtable: Google Gives Advice On When Copy Sites Outrank Your Original Content

In this episode Cord & Einar discuss the changes to mobile search, iOS 14.5 makes the case for programmatic SEO, September core update winners/losers, changing URLs, website quality scores, and 4 ways to measure SEO effectiveness.

Sources Cited:

• Search Engine Journal: Google Announces 5 Changes Coming To Mobile Search
• Venture Beat: Decreasing ad revenue, iOS 14.5 make case for programmatic SEO
• Amsive Digital: Winners & Losers of the September 2022 Core Update & Product Reviews Update
• Search Engine Journal: Website Quality Score: Is It A Google Ranking Factor?
• Search Engine Land: 4 smarter ways to measure SEO effectiveness