Take Advantage of the Google Leak (part 2)

Meredith's husband: 0:24

All right, we're going to do part two of two about the Google leak today.

Meredith: 0:27

Yes, we are.

Meredith's husband: 0:28

Remember, we talked last week about the Google leak.

Meredith: 0:31

Yes, I do. I do want to clarify something. Oh good, it's about time.

Meredith's husband: 0:35

Because I've been getting a couple of questions and even when I went back and edited the episode I realized it may have been confusing. I gave the example of a landing page for emails.

Meredith: 0:47

Yeah, Remember talking about that. Yeah, I do.

Meredith's husband: 0:55

So I was trying to use that as an example. Yeah, Because a couple of people have been wondering does this? Mean I need to go out and create an email marketing thing at the landing page for SEO.

Meredith: 1:01

Yeah, because I was confused as to what that was, but by then, my brain had sizzled.

Meredith's husband: 1:06

So you do not need to go out. You don't need to create an email campaign in a landing page. You don't need to do any of that for SEO. That was just an example.

Meredith: 1:14

The point was I don't even know what the landing page was, and I should have asked.

Meredith's husband: 1:18

Well, don't worry about it.

Meredith: 1:20

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 1:21

The point was that links from trafficked pages are valuable. It doesn't matter where that traffic comes from. So if there's a page on your website that gets a lot of traffic, it can be from Google, it can be from social media, it could be from an email, which is kind of what I meant in the example. It could be traffic from anywhere. Then links from that page to other pages on your site are valuable in terms of SEO.

Meredith: 1:45

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 1:46

That's the bottom line.

Meredith: 1:48

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 1:48

Hopefully, like that's what to remember. The email example was just meant to help illustrate and seems to have done the opposite.

Meredith: 1:55

Yes, can you go and fix it?

Meredith's husband: 1:58

No, I'm not going to Okay. Today we're going to talk about two more things that came out, and at the end of this episode I'll wrap up the three things that I think are takeaways from the Google leak that you should take away. Yes, and use to your advantage.

Meredith: 2:14

Oh, excellent.

Meredith's husband: 2:15

Okay, number one so there were no weights assigned. So, remember there were tens of thousands of features leaked as part of this Google algorithm leak, so things that help determine rankings. Yeah, one thing to note is that none of those features were given weights, so they weren't. It wasn't like a feature was released and it said something like this counts for 10% of your ranking and this counts for 2%.

Meredith: 2:42

Oh, I see.

Meredith's husband: 2:43

There are no weights assigned. It's just, yes, nothing was weighted, it was just leaked information. It's just yes, nothing was weighted, it was just leaked information. And there were tens of thousands of features so-called features that were leaked, but without any sort of ranked importance. It's kind of hard to know which are important. Michigan, for example, and his colleague, have gone through and noticed that there are some features that are mentioned over and over and over in different parts of this leak, and so that tends to suggest that they are more important just by the fact that they are mentioned many, many times in many different areas of this leak.

Meredith: 3:25

You would think, one would think that was Buster I can't hear him.

Meredith's husband: 3:27

He's dreaming and stretching. It's very cute, you would think. One would think yes, that was Buster. I can't hear him.

Meredith: 3:30

He's dreaming and stretching. It's very cute.

Meredith's husband: 3:32

Doing dream yoga. Yes, so one of those things that was mentioned many, many times evidently was entities, google entities, and you probably are wondering what an entity is. Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. It's a little complex, but the definition of an entity is people, places, things or companies. Okay, so like, yeah, I know it's kind of vague.

Meredith: 4:01

Latpin pointed it down right there, yeah.

Meredith's husband: 4:03

Anything that shows up in the knowledge graph on the right hand, so you know when you do a Google search there's the main results and then on the right side there is a pen.

Meredith's husband: 4:14

It's where your Google business listing would show up. That area is the knowledge graph, so your business listing would be an entity, Basically, a good way to think about this. I think it's going to oversimplify it, but a good way to think about this is anything that would have a Wikipedia page is going to be an entity, Like. John Lennon is an entity. Ringo Starr is an entity. The Beatles are an entity. Meredith Zinner, the actress, is an entity. There is an entity out there. No, remember when. If you Googled Merida Zinner photography, that all of a sudden you're acting your IMDb page Also. Anybody who is an IMDb page probably a entity.

Meredith: 4:59

In their own minds.

Meredith's husband: 5:00

That's a good way to think of what entities are. The takeaway is pay attention to your Google business listing. It's really probably very important. Google uses it in a lot of different areas, not just search. Okay, so pay attention to that. And we have an episode. I don't remember the episode, I will link it below, but we have an episode about how to optimize your Google business listing.

Meredith: 5:24

Oh, that's good. Oh, that's good.

Meredith's husband: 5:26

And one of the other things that leaked that was kind of surprising to people inside the SEO industry is that mentions are no pun intended. Mentions are mentioned in the leak data.

Meredith: 5:39

Okay, so a mention.

Meredith's husband: 5:43

Thank you. So a link to your website from somebody's blog is great for SEO, right, it's a link. Well, what if somebody talks about Meredith's Dinner Photography but they don't provide a link? Oh, that would be a mention, right? They are mentioning something. Mm-hmm. Mentions appear to be, from this leak anyway, more important than we thought.

Meredith: 6:04

Really yeah, the same quote weight as links.

Meredith's husband: 6:09

No, probably not, but considerably more than I would have told you say a month ago, really, and Google can define that. Yeah, that's a good question because it's going to have to be a mention of something that's pretty specific, like Meredith Zinner photography. It can't be you know photography. Obviously, google's not going to know what somebody's talking about if they mention something more generic, but mentions about your brand name are good. So the takeaway here is if you provide like, let's say, you're trying to get links, like I have always said, that you should.

Meredith's husband: 6:47

Yes, if somebody uses your photography, let's say, and they don't want to link to your website, it's still going to be advantageous if they just say, hey, thanks, meredith's Dinner Photography in a little caption underneath the photo. Yeah, there's probably some, but make sure that it is something that is specific, like make try to be exact as possible with your either your brand name or your personal name, or something that is going to be most identifiable to you.

Meredith: 7:17

Right.

Meredith's husband: 7:17

If your name is like Frank White, you're in trouble.

Meredith: 7:21

Well, unless it's Frank White Photography.

Meredith's husband: 7:23

Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, then that's my point. Use Frank White Photography. Maybe even try to see if they'll throw in your city name, your location or something else that's identifiable, so that Google knows yeah. Yeah, this is the Frank White that they're talking about, Because there's probably more than one Frank White photography.

Meredith: 7:41

So if, for example, you've asked people to link and they already have mentioned you, you may not need to ask them to make a link, because the mention may be sufficient.

Meredith's husband: 7:55

Yeah, again, I use this as an example. Don't think this is the only way that a mention can happen, but this is fairly common, I know, for photographers. Sometimes people say, oh yeah, we'll give you a credit and we'll link to your website, and they don't. Right, well, if they put your name in the caption, that's still going to be good.

Meredith: 8:12

My question is with photographs, if your information is embedded in the image itself, when? You create it? Does that matter?

Meredith's husband: 8:25

If so, it would be very, very, very minor. Okay, when you say embedded in the image, what exactly do you mean?

Meredith: 8:33

I mean when you are creating the metadata.

Meredith's husband: 8:37

Okay, yeah, very, very, very minor. Okay, what might when you do that metadata, is there a location in there?

Meredith: 8:44

If you choose to, you can make a location.

Meredith's husband: 8:47

Yeah, you might as well just at least do your city or something Okay, or your neighborhood or whatever Like. Is that going to have a big impact on SEO? No, could it have a very, very minor impact? Yeah, maybe. More important than that would probably be the name, the file name of the photograph, even though if you supply an image to a company that has any sort of sophisticated website, they might rename that image. Of course, you might lose that, but go ahead and put like, if you're supplying an image to somebody to use online, I would say, make it Meredith Center, photography 004, and then just number them.

Meredith: 9:26

whatever it doesn't, yeah, it's okay.

Meredith's husband: 9:29

Just put your brand name in there. Great, thank you. And there are. If anybody is talking about you on their blog, that's also a mention. Okay, you know, it doesn't have to be that they're using a name, it's just any time somebody is discussing your brand name, that's going to be a mention. So the point is that those are better than we thought in the SEO world.

Meredith's husband: 9:48

Okay, so the three takeaways from this Google link. Like I have said multiple times now, there were tens of thousands of features. I'm trying to boil this down into a few things that can be beneficial. Number one the links Links. You want to get links from pages that get a lot of traffic. Yes, so this is a was a huge change for me and inside the SEO industry. The entire way that we research potential link partners changed. For a lot of people, it's not going to be a huge deal, but I encourage you to go to your Google Analytics, see what pages on your website get the most traffic. Yeah, and then from those pages link to your what I call your money pages, your service pages. So for you, that would be your children's photography page, your events photography page and your pets photography page, your service pages.

Meredith: 10:41

Right. I think it's interesting that this is one of the few cases that you actually will look forward to traffic.

Meredith's husband: 10:49

Don't you always look forward to traffic?

Meredith: 10:51

No, not when you're driving.

Meredith's husband: 10:54

You're making a funny.

Meredith: 10:57

I was making a funny.

Meredith's husband: 11:00

Okay, so the second. That's the first takeaway. The second takeaway is the entities. Pay attention to your Google business profile. Yeah, it's very likely important in a number of ways that we don't even know. We don't even know. So pay attention to that. And number three mentions are pretty good, it's pretty good if somebody just mentions you without the link. If they are willing to link, the link is going to be better. But you probably get I don't know three quarters of the value from just the mention alone.

Meredith: 11:27

Right there. How about that? That's nice.

Meredith's husband: 11:30

So those are the takeaways.

Meredith: 11:31

That's a nice takeaway.

Meredith's husband: 11:32

There was something else that I thought was interesting that I wanted to include, regarding what we talked about in the previous episode, in the links. Bring it Because there's always been this conspiracy theory. Inside the SEO industry. We would consider this a conspiracy theory. Lots of companies have always believed this. Lots of people think this if you buy ads on google, yeah, your organic rankings are going to also increase because you're spending money with google and so they're going to increase your organic rankings. That is false. There is no direct link google is even yeah google even has a team of people.

Meredith's husband: 12:13

Their job function is to ensure that that does not happen. However, with this latest leak, there is more of an indirect link than we thought, because if you start buying traffic and people and I mean by buying traffic, I mean paying for Google ads and people visit those pages, that traffic is not going to help your ranking. But if they share with a friend, if they bookmark, if they mention it on social, if they put it in an email, yes, that might help your ranking. So it's indirect.

Meredith: 12:49

It's kind of like a crossing guard, Just kind of like go that way.

Meredith's husband: 12:52

Yeah, anyway, this probably gives a little more credence to that conspiracy theory than we always would have thought. There's more of an indirect. It's still not a direct link, there's no way. It is absolutely not a direct link, but there probably is an indirect link, there may be a little sign.

Meredith: 13:14

Thank you for saving us the time of having to read those thousands and thousands of pages.

Meredith's husband: 13:20

Not even I did that.

Meredith: 13:21

I know. Thank you.

Meredith's husband: 13:23

All right, I hope that helps. And so next we will move on from the googly.

Meredith: 13:28

This was two of two Moving on.

Meredith's husband: 13:32

No, that's only at the beginning. They don't do that at the end, do they?

Meredith: 13:34

No, they just say cut and then they go wow, that was great, that was so great, that was just great.

Meredith's husband: 13:42

And then the people who were performing were like can I please do it again? No, that was absolutely. That was perfect. You're fired.

Meredith: 13:45

Yeah, exactly, pack your bags.

Meredith's husband: 13:47

Oh no, they wouldn't say that.

Meredith: 13:57

They would just say put the box outside their locked dressing room Quietly.