SEO
Weekly News Recap for Search, Social, And AI
Keeping track of the latest industry news is hard to do. Enter: the SEJ Sum-Up.
Every Friday, we condense the top stories you need to know – from search to social to AI and beyond – into one easy-to-digest post.
This week’s top stories include an update to Google desktop search, Bing reaching new heights, the RESTRICT Act (and how it may affect TikTok users in the U.S.), new AI tools for Slack, and WordPress plugin vulnerabilities.
Search News Recap
Google updated its desktop search UI to display favicons and site names, making it easier for users to identify websites in search results and ads.
Google Search Central published the transcript for its latest SEO Office Hours discussing WEBP images, duplicate content in different markets, moving large quantities of indexed pages, and more. (Google Search Central)
Google Trends has been updated with a new interface to make it easier to find real-time trending topics and see how other industries utilize Google Trend data. (The Keyword)
Microsoft reported that Bing search reached 100 million daily active users, with approximately one-third new it, in both the Edge browser and the Bing search engine.
DuckDuckGo launched DuckAssist, an AI-assisted feature that generates natural language answers using Wikipedia.
Brave Search announced a new AI feature summarizing webpages in 17% of their search results in rich results.
PPC News Recap
Google Ads introduced a new feature providing direct access to the GA4 audience builder and Performance Max for travel goals. The new AI-powered feature enables hotel advertisers to create multi-format ads and reach more travelers across channels.
Microsoft announced several updates to its advertising platform, including local search ads for Bing to improve visibility in Bing’s local search results and a code-free conversion setup wizard.
Social Media News Recap
Question of the Week: Will the new RESTRICT Act ban TikTok and other technologies from a select list of countries?
TikTok introduced Series, a new way for creators to monetize premium video content behind a paywall.
YouTube relaxed its rules on the profanity in monetized videos. Moderate profanity is eligible for full ad revenue, while strong profanity may receive limited ads.
Meta announced a new top-level product group focusing on generative AI features for Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
Facebook announced upcoming changes, including making Messenger accessible inside Facebook again. (Facebook Newsroom)
LinkedIn unveiled new collaborative articles with AI-powered prompts to encourage creators to share knowledge and insights.
Reddit introduced new features, including the ability to search post comments and separate feeds for users to read or watch trending topics. (upvoted)
Discord announced new AI integrations for Clyde, its platform’s bot assistant. (Discord blog)
Spotify introduced a new interface with a TikTok-like feed and new tools for podcasters – free hosting, recording and editing tools, and monetization features. (Spotify Newsroom)
AI News Recap
Microsoft casually mentioned the upcoming introduction of multimodal GPT-4 (as predicted) at the AI in Focus Digital Kickoff.
Slack introduced a beta ChatGPT app for Slack from OpenAI that can summarize conversations, instantly find answers, and draft new messages. (Salesforce)
HubSpot announced new AI tools to assist with content creation and managing tasks. (HubSpot)
WordPress News Recap
WP Statistics, a WordPress plugin with over 600,000 active installations, patched the CSRF vulnerability.
An Elementor Contact Form Builder plugin XSS vulnerability affected up to 200,000 WordPress websites.
Wrapping It Up
It’s been a busy news week for search marketers and social media marketers. With the fast-paced nature of AI development, we expect to see many more changes coming to search and social networks in the coming weeks.
Featured Image: sebra/Shutterstock
SEO
HARO Has Been Dead for a While
I know nothing about the new tool. I haven’t tried it. But after trying to use HARO recently, I can’t say I’m surprised or saddened by its death. It’s been a walking corpse for a while.
I used HARO way back in the day to build links. It worked. But a couple of months ago, I experienced the platform from the other side when I decided to try to source some “expert” insights for our posts.
After just a few minutes of work, I got hundreds of pitches:
So, I grabbed a cup of coffee and began to work through them. It didn’t take long before I lost the will to live. Every other pitch seemed like nothing more than lazy AI-generated nonsense from someone who definitely wasn’t an expert.
Here’s one of them:
Seriously. Who writes like that? I’m a self-confessed dullard (any fellow Dull Men’s Club members here?), and even I’m not that dull…
I don’t think I looked through more than 30-40 of the responses. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt like having a conversation with ChatGPT… and not a very good one!
Despite only reviewing a few dozen of the many pitches I received, one stood out to me:
Believe it or not, this response came from a past client of mine who runs an SEO agency in the UK. Given how knowledgeable and experienced he is (he actually taught me a lot about SEO back in the day when I used to hassle him with questions on Skype), this pitch rang alarm bells for two reasons:
- I truly doubt he spends his time replying to HARO queries
- I know for a fact he’s no fan of Neil Patel (sorry, Neil, but I’m sure you’re aware of your reputation at this point!)
So… I decided to confront him 😉
Here’s what he said:
Shocker.
I pressed him for more details:
I’m getting a really good deal and paying per link rather than the typical £xxxx per month for X number of pitches. […] The responses as you’ve seen are not ideal but that’s a risk I’m prepared to take as realistically I dont have the time to do it myself. He’s not native english, but I have had to have a word with him a few times about clearly using AI. On the low cost ones I don’t care but on authority sites it needs to be more refined.
I think this pretty much sums up the state of HARO before its death. Most “pitches” were just AI answers from SEOs trying to build links for their clients.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not throwing shade here. I know that good links are hard to come by, so you have to do what works. And the reality is that HARO did work. Just look at the example below. You can tell from the anchor and surrounding text in Ahrefs that these links were almost certainly built with HARO:
But this was the problem. HARO worked so well back in the day that it was only a matter of time before spammers and the #scale crew ruined it for everyone. That’s what happened, and now HARO is no more. So…
If you’re a link builder, I think it’s time to admit that HARO link building is dead and move on.
No tactic works well forever. It’s the law of sh**ty clickthroughs. This is why you don’t see SEOs having huge success with tactics like broken link building anymore. They’ve moved on to more innovative tactics or, dare I say it, are just buying links.
Sidenote.
Talking of buying links, here’s something to ponder: if Connectively charges for pitches, are links built through those pitches technically paid? If so, do they violate Google’s spam policies? It’s a murky old world this SEO lark, eh?
If you’re a journalist, Connectively might be worth a shot. But with experts being charged for pitches, you probably won’t get as many responses. That might be a good thing. You might get less spam. Or you might just get spammed by SEOs with deep pockets. The jury’s out for now.
My advice? Look for alternative methods like finding and reaching out to experts directly. You can easily use tools like Content Explorer to find folks who’ve written lots of content about the topic and are likely to be experts.
For example, if you look for content with “backlinks” in the title and go to the Authors tab, you might see a familiar name. 😉
I don’t know if I’d call myself an expert, but I’d be happy to give you a quote if you reached out on social media or emailed me (here’s how to find my email address).
Alternatively, you can bait your audience into giving you their insights on social media. I did this recently with a poll on X and included many of the responses in my guide to toxic backlinks.
Either of these options is quicker than using HARO because you don’t have to sift through hundreds of responses looking for a needle in a haystack. If you disagree with me and still love HARO, feel free to tell me why on X 😉
SEO
Google Clarifies Vacation Rental Structured Data
Google’s structured data documentation for vacation rentals was recently updated to require more specific data in a change that is more of a clarification than it is a change in requirements. This change was made without any formal announcement or notation in the developer pages changelog.
Vacation Rentals Structured Data
These specific structured data types makes vacation rental information eligible for rich results that are specific to these kinds of rentals. However it’s not available to all websites. Vacation rental owners are required to be connected to a Google Technical Account Manager and have access to the Google Hotel Center platform.
VacationRental Structured Data Type Definitions
The primary changes were made to the structured data property type definitions where Google defines what the required and recommended property types are.
The changes to the documentation is in the section governing the Recommended properties and represents a clarification of the recommendations rather than a change in what Google requires.
The primary changes were made to the structured data type definitions where Google defines what the required and recommended property types are.
The changes to the documentation is in the section governing the Recommended properties and represents a clarification of the recommendations rather than a change in what Google requires.
Address Schema.org property
This is a subtle change but it’s important because it now represents a recommendation that requires more precise data.
This is what was recommended before:
“streetAddress”: “1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy.”
This is what it now recommends:
“streetAddress”: “1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Unit 6E”
Address Property Change Description
The most substantial change is to the description of what the “address” property is, becoming more descriptive and precise about what is recommended.
The description before the change:
PostalAddress
Information about the street address of the listing. Include all properties that apply to your country.
The description after the change:
PostalAddress
The full, physical location of the vacation rental.
Provide the street address, city, state or region, and postal code for the vacation rental. If applicable, provide the unit or apartment number.
Note that P.O. boxes or other mailing-only addresses are not considered full, physical addresses.
This is repeated in the section for address.streetAddress property
This is what it recommended before:
address.streetAddress Text
The full street address of your vacation listing.
And this is what it recommends now:
address.streetAddress Text
The full street address of your vacation listing, including the unit or apartment number if applicable.
Clarification And Not A Change
Although these updates don’t represent a change in Google’s guidance they are nonetheless important because they offer clearer guidance with less ambiguity as to what is recommended.
Read the updated structured data guidance:
Vacation rental (VacationRental) structured data
Featured Image by Shutterstock/New Africa
SEO
Google On Hyphens In Domain Names
Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Reddit about why people don’t use hyphens with domains and if there was something to be concerned about that they were missing.
Domain Names With Hyphens For SEO
I’ve been working online for 25 years and I remember when using hyphens in domains was something that affiliates did for SEO when Google was still influenced by keywords in the domain, URL, and basically keywords anywhere on the webpage. It wasn’t something that everyone did, it was mainly something that was popular with some affiliate marketers.
Another reason for choosing domain names with keywords in them was that site visitors tended to convert at a higher rate because the keywords essentially prequalified the site visitor. I know from experience how useful two-keyword domains (and one word domain names) are for conversions, as long as they didn’t have hyphens in them.
A consideration that caused hyphenated domain names to fall out of favor is that they have an untrustworthy appearance and that can work against conversion rates because trustworthiness is an important factor for conversions.
Lastly, hyphenated domain names look tacky. Why go with tacky when a brandable domain is easier for building trust and conversions?
Domain Name Question Asked On Reddit
This is the question asked on Reddit:
“Why don’t people use a lot of domains with hyphens? Is there something concerning about it? I understand when you tell it out loud people make miss hyphen in search.”
And this is Mueller’s response:
“It used to be that domain names with a lot of hyphens were considered (by users? or by SEOs assuming users would? it’s been a while) to be less serious – since they could imply that you weren’t able to get the domain name with fewer hyphens. Nowadays there are a lot of top-level-domains so it’s less of a thing.
My main recommendation is to pick something for the long run (assuming that’s what you’re aiming for), and not to be overly keyword focused (because life is too short to box yourself into a corner – make good things, course-correct over time, don’t let a domain-name limit what you do online). The web is full of awkward, keyword-focused short-lived low-effort takes made for SEO — make something truly awesome that people will ask for by name. If that takes a hyphen in the name – go for it.”
Pick A Domain Name That Can Grow
Mueller is right about picking a domain name that won’t lock your site into one topic. When a site grows in popularity the natural growth path is to expand the range of topics the site coves. But that’s hard to do when the domain is locked into one rigid keyword phrase. That’s one of the downsides of picking a “Best + keyword + reviews” domain, too. Those domains can’t grow bigger and look tacky, too.
That’s why I’ve always recommended brandable domains that are memorable and encourage trust in some way.
Read the post on Reddit:
Read Mueller’s response here.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Benny Marty
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
Turkish startup ikas attracts $20M for its e-commerce platform designed for small businesses
-
PPC7 days ago
31 Ready-to-Go Mother’s Day Messages for Social Media, Email, & More
-
PPC7 days ago
A History of Google AdWords and Google Ads: Revolutionizing Digital Advertising & Marketing Since 2000
-
MARKETING5 days ago
Roundel Media Studio: What to Expect From Target’s New Self-Service Platform
-
SEO5 days ago
Google Limits News Links In California Over Proposed ‘Link Tax’ Law
-
MARKETING6 days ago
Unlocking the Power of AI Transcription for Enhanced Content Marketing Strategies
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Google Search Results Can Be Harmful & Dangerous In Some Cases
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 12, 2024