Hi everyone! I hope you’re doing well.
With Black Friday coming up, I wanted to share some exciting news about my SEO Audit Mastery course.
This course is truly my passion project, and I’m always working to make it the best possible resource for SEO audits.
Currently, the course has over 100 students and more than 50 in-depth videos, and I’m working on it almost every day.
I’ll be talking more about it as Black Friday approaches, so bear with me... 😉
Here’s a quick look inside the SEO Audit Mastery course:
The course is now priced at $1,500 – subscribers can grab it for a pre-Black Friday price of $999.
It’s grown so much that I’ll be splitting it into separate courses in the future, so this is the last chance to get lifetime access with an 80% discount.
You can learn more about the course here.
Latest in SEO
ChatGPT Search shows promise for informational queries but lags behind Google for commercial searches
According to Aleyda Solis' analysis, ChatGPT Search excels at informational and long-tail conversational queries through its summarized answers and easy-to-verify sources.
However, it falls short of Google's capabilities for commercial searches, where Google's product carousels, knowledge panels, and intent-focused features provide a more complete shopping experience.
Google's AI Overview updates push organic search results further down
"The data clearly shows that AIOs are optimized for early-stage research and discovery," - BrightEdge.
Google's AI Overview (AIO) feature is expanding its shopping-related panels and ads, pushing organic search results lower, while showing increased stability in rankings and a 300% jump in product carousel displays since launch.
Google's featured snippets show contradictory health and political information based on search phrasing
"It's one big bias machine," - Sarah Presch, Dragon Metrics director.
Google's featured snippets algorithm prioritizes user intent over accuracy, displaying opposing information from the same source when users phrase their searches differently.
Google inspection tool shows third-party domains as canonical URLs in potential spam attack
A rare spam technique called "Canonical Confusion" is causing Google's URL inspection tool to show third-party domain names as canonical URLs.
This potentially allows copied content from legitimate sites to outrank the originals through 301 redirects to spam sites.
22% of Google helpful content update affected sites see partial recovery
Of the 400 sites tracked after Google's September 2023 helpful content update, 22% saw at least a 20% traffic increase following the August 2024 core update, though most haven't fully recovered; meanwhile, 13% of sites experienced further traffic drops.
Google tests AI-generated answers in 'People also ask' section
Google is testing AI Overviews to replace traditional featured snippets in its 'People also ask' section, though the test appears limited to select users in US English.
7 pieces of AI news we announced in October
Here’s a recap of seven AI updates from October, including Google Maps’ biggest AI update ever, tips for getting started with NotebookLM, and more ways people can ask questions, search for information and get an AI Overview.
My SEO newsletter has a new name
If you have been following me for a while, you know that I am a huge pigeon fan and pet pigeon owner.
Therefore, I cannot think of a better name for my SEO newsletter than SEO Coo.
SEO Newsletter by SEOSLY is now SEO Coo Newsletter.
Cora SEO Tool
Cora SEO measures 100K+ factors and pinpoints exactly which ones impact SEO, and what you need to get to the top.
My newsletter subscribers get a lifetime deal with 25% OFF + free unlimited training.
Don't just take my word for it – try it yourself!
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Video content
Did My SEO Audit Course Really Succeed? Here’s What Actually Happened
In this chat with Doug Cunnington, we dive deep into the journey behind creating an ultra-detailed SEO audit course and how my ADHD-driven focus influenced every part of it.
The video premieres today! Make sure to watch it.
"With SEO, I get to design my life—not just my clients’ websites." - Veteran SEO Lisa Parziale
In this episode of my podcast, SEO veteran Lisa Parziale shares her extensive journey in the SEO industry.
Together, we explore the challenges of overcoming past mental conditioning, finding purpose beyond financial success, and the importance of mindset in achieving business goals.
Google Election Day Volatility, Helpful Content Update Status, Creators vs SEOs, AI, Ads & More
The essential summary of the week by Barry Schwartz
Ranking Raccoon
What's the quickest way to burn money in SEO? Cold emailing for backlinks.
But what if there were a better way? It's Ranking Raccoon.
This isn’t another spammy tool — it’s a genuine platform where you connect directly with trusted sites in 54 different niches.
With Ranking Raccoon, you’ll chat directly with site admins and build strong backlinks in days and start seeing real results.
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More News
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) platform to shut down after 16 years
Cision's Connectively Platform, formerly known as HARO (Help a Reporter Out), will discontinue its services on December 9, 2024.
This will end a 16-year run of connecting journalists with expert sources for stories and providing SEOs with link-building opportunities.
OpenAI's ChatGPT search confirmed to use Bing's web index
ChatGPT's new search feature relies heavily on Microsoft Bing's index, meaning websites that aren't indexed in Bing won't appear in ChatGPT search results, even if they're visible on Google.
SEO Tips
Understanding how users experience your website [Search Off the Record]
In episode 85 of "Search Off the Record," Lizzi hosts Iva, a quantitative UX researcher at Google, who shares insights into user experience research (UXR) in large companies.
Some of the key takeaways include:
- Large companies use data-driven UXR to improve usability based on broad user insights.
- UXR in industry aims for practical, quick improvements rather than broad academic insights.
- The goal is to enhance user satisfaction by making products easy and enjoyable to use.
- Smaller companies can adopt UXR practices without formal roles by learning from industry examples.
- Good UXR prevents user frustration and encourages loyalty, especially when alternatives exist.
Google's srsltid parameter causes controversy in organic search attribution
In August 2024, Google began adding this to organic search URLs, leading to confusion over tracking and SEO impact.
Initially used in Google Shopping for tracking clicks accurately, especially with “auto-tagging” on.
Now appearing in organic results, it misattributes organic search traffic to Google Shopping.
SEO Concerns:
- Adds session-specific IDs to URLs, creating duplicate URL versions.
- Complicates link-sharing by adding unnecessary parameters to organic URLs.
- Ignores Google’s own advice to avoid “irrelevant parameters” in URLs.
- Adding this parameter conflicts with the purpose of rel=canonical tags, potentially impacting SEO hygiene.
- John Mueller suggested turning off auto-tagging, but Google’s guidelines often require it.
Action Steps for site managers:
- Disable auto-tagging in Google Merchant Center if possible.
- Use Google’s Campaign URL Builder for manual tagging in GA4.
- Monitor inbound links for unwanted srsltid= parameters and stay updated on Google’s response.
Learn more here.
Resources from Other SEOs
How cosine similarity helps measure content relevance in ecommerce SEO
Google uses cosine similarity to measure content relevance in search results by converting text into numerical values (embeddings).
Ecommerce sites can improve their SEO by optimizing product names, category pages, related searches, and reviews to align better with target search terms.
Google's AI Overviews signal the future direction of search competition
While competitors like ChatGPT and Perplexity challenge Google's search dominance with AI features, Google is gradually integrating AI Overviews into search results, showing higher click-through rates than featured snippets and typically citing 5-6 authoritative sources from a selective pool of top domains.
Google's helpful content update leaves creators with few recovery options
At a recent summit with website owners affected by Google's helpful content update (HCU), Google acknowledged their systems struggle to recognize quality content.
While recovery is technically possible, most impacted sites shouldn't expect improvements anytime soon. The situation is prompting many creators to consider new directions as AI continues to transform how knowledge is shared online.
Server access logs provide crucial insights for advanced SEO analysis
Server access logs help SEOs track bot behavior, monitor crawl efficiency, and identify technical issues by providing unfiltered data about how search engines and users interact with websites, offering insights that traditional analytics tools cannot capture.
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Thank you for getting to the end. That's all I have for you today!
See you in the next episode!
Best,
P.S. Do you want me to share a specific article or resource in the newsletter? Do you want me to give a shout-out to some SEO?