This week’s digital marketing news with Site Strategics CEO Erin Sparks on the EDGE includes analysis and commentary by special guest Lily Ray, SEO Director at Path Interactive. Here’s the news roundup from Episode 315 of the award-winning EDGE of the Web podcast:
Google Disavow Tool Not Going Away
From Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable: Google’s disavow tool not going away, so just use the old version for now.
- Erin Sparks: And by “old version” we mean the old version of the Google Search Console, where you can still disavow.
- Lily Ray: I was helping a friend sort this out and we found a comment on Google’s Webmaster hangout page where they talk about technical issues and it said if you verify using the domain properties you’re not going have access to some of the old features. So it’s not just Disavow, it’s everything that’s back on the old Google Search Console, which I don’t know about you, but I’m in there all the time using a lot of the cool features. I’m still getting used to the new GSC. There’s definitely some features in the old GSC I still cling to and I hope they don’t get rid of, but whenever people speculate about these tools being taken away on the new search console, John Mueller’s pretty quick to jump in and say that’s not happening, we just haven’t built it yet, so everyone needs to calm down. I don’t think they’re taking these tools away from us just yet. And yes, you should still be using the disavow tool, but only for certain things. Bad links end up on sites for all sorts of reasons, but when you find them, the disavow tool as to how you own up to it and say mea culpa to Google. And recent algorithm updates have made the disavow tool more relevant now than it’s been for several years.
All New Sites will be Indexed Using Google’s Mobile-First Indexing
Also from Barry Schwartz but this time on Search Engine Land: Starting July 1, all new sites will be indexed using Google’s mobile-first indexing.
- Erin Sparks: Everything should be built mobile-first these days. Some older sites won’t be switched to mobile-first indexing right away, but they’ll get to them eventually, but all new sites are going to be reviewed and indexed via mobile-first indexing.
- Lily Ray: I think most webmasters are hiring web developers who know to build responsive websites and most people are already on-board, but there’s still some work to do with making sure the mobile version of websites is equivalent to what people see on a desktop and making sure search engines can access content in the mobile version as easily and things of that nature, so people are still kind of getting fully compliant with mobile-first indexing, but I don’t think this is big news to anyone at this point.
Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines Targeting E-A-T, Page Quality and Interstitials
As reported by Jennifer Slegg on The Sem Post, Google has updated its Quality Rater Guidelines targeting E-A-T, page quality and interstitials.
- Lily Ray: Some people were surprised that “E-A-T” doesn’t appear as much in this new set of guidelines, but when you look into it, they’ve just replaced it with “page quality” in a lot of cases. Google does stuff like that when they see the SEO community is overreacting to things. I almost wondered if Google was like people need to not make E-A-T this enormous ranking factor that everybody’s obsessed with and everybody’s freaking out about and completely changing the way they do things because what happens with those types of developments in the SEO industry is they start to get spammed. So people might develop E-A-T spam, which would just cause a lot of headaches as far as Google’s concerned, so I thought they were almost dialing back how much they talked about it, but you know everything else updated in the document is all kind of the same as last year. They’re still focused on high-quality content. They’re still very focused on E-A-T. They crapped out on interstitials a little bit so I think there are still a lot of sites trying to get away with immediately sending people to an ad or to an interstitial and that’s something Google is really not a fan of anymore
Connect with Lily Ray, SEO Director at Path Interactive
Twitter: @lilyraynyc (https://twitter.com/lilyraynyc)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lily-ray-44755615/
Website: http://lilyray.nyc
Path Interactive: https://www.pathinteractive.com
PI Twitter: @PathInteractive (https://twitter.com/PathInteractive)
PI Facebook: @pathinteractive (https://www.facebook.com/pathinteractive/)
PI LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/path-interactive/
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