Meredith: 0:24

Thank you for holding.

Meredith's husband: 0:25

The Google leak the.

Meredith: 0:26

Google leak.

Meredith's husband: 0:27

Remember the Google leak I?

Meredith: 0:28

do remember the Google leak. We talked about it a couple episodes ago. Yes, and there was a webinar coming up.

Meredith's husband: 0:32

Yes, kind of translate the Google leak into actionable.

Meredith: 0:34

Yes, but that was like a gazillion pages.

Meredith's husband: 0:37

Yeah, it was like a gazillion pages lots of marketing language. I remember some things. So after I took a look at it in sort of initial reports, I kind of thought that the Google leak was kind of a nothing burger A nothing burger. Yeah, not real earth shattering, not really surprised by much. And remember I said that Rand Fishkin and his colleague, a prominent SEO person, was doing a webinar on the 27th to interpret the information that had been leaked and explain it to people?

Meredith: 1:07

Yes, so that happened and I did and explain it to people yes, so that happened. And.

Meredith's husband: 1:11

I did not make it to that webinar.

Meredith: 1:13

Oh no.

Meredith's husband: 1:14

But I have followed up and watched a summary of it, what he said about it, Okay and so yeah, it's kind of some big news.

Meredith: 1:22

Oh really.

Meredith's husband: 1:23

Yeah, it is. It's much bigger than I thought.

Meredith: 1:26

Really.

Meredith's husband: 1:27

First, a lot of different information was leaked. It wasn't limited to like the Google Maps system, which is what I kind of thought initially. It's a lot from Google Maps. It's a lot from search. It's a lot from Android, it's a lot from Pixel.

Meredith: 1:40

It's a lot from.

Meredith's husband: 1:41

Chrome, it's a lot from YouTube, et cetera, et cetera et cetera.

Meredith: 1:44

Can you just very, very briefly? The leak was leaked by and can you?

Meredith's husband: 1:48

just very, very briefly. The leak was leaked by Some dude at Google. Wasn't there a?

Meredith: 1:51

question of like was that person actually?

Meredith's husband: 2:03

So the leak, based on how Rand explained it or he didn't really explain it, but evidently it must have leaked first from an engineer, like it got off of some very secure systems due to either a mistake or intentionally by an engineer, oh dear. Then someone else, it got into the hands of someone else at Google or maybe several other people, I don't know and made its way onto GitHub. That's where a lot of technical GitHub, github, yeah. Onto the internet, wow, okay, and that's where people found it. Okay. So there was, there's an engineer either in trouble or who has already been fired or who was very disgruntled.

Meredith: 2:37

Yeah, does google have?

Meredith's husband: 2:39

as google responded, uh, sort of okay okay continue okay, so I'm gonna talk about a couple different things over the next couple episodes. I'm going to talk about what I thought was the biggest issue, what I was the most surprised about.

Meredith: 2:58

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 2:59

And that was what they call click stream data.

Meredith: 3:02

Click stream.

Meredith's husband: 3:03

Click stream. Okay, and click stream data is basically Google measuring in aggregate how are clicks happening, where are people going, and they do this like. Remember we mentioned that one of the lies that was in the news is that people, or Google, said they were not using information from Chrome to influence rankings, but in fact they are. Yeah, it goes a bit deeper than that and actually Google acknowledged this aspect. They call this nav boost, so how people navigate helps inform Google of what's popular and what?

Meredith's husband: 3:40

they should promote or demote in their search engine. So they use a lot of data from Chrome. In fact, it is the single biggest ranking factor.

Meredith: 3:47

Really yes, okay, and let me just just Chrome is the search engine.

Meredith's husband: 3:54

Chrome is the browser.

Meredith: 3:55

The browser. That's what I meant the browser.

Meredith's husband: 3:57

And the suspicion is that Chrome was even developed by Google, at least partially for this purpose to get click data.

Meredith: 4:05

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 4:06

Okay, so inside of this and I'm reading from my notes here which I took while I- was listening.

Meredith: 4:11

Oh my goodness.

Meredith's husband: 4:12

So they're kind of a mess. So I'm a little bit kind of a mess right now.

Meredith: 4:17

Never, of course, not Always the most beautiful mess.

Meredith's husband: 4:20

Okay, and so within that, there is something that it was very actually surprising from an SEO perspective. So links are really important for SEO, right?

Meredith's husband: 4:29

Links are yeah, you want to get links from what we have always thought from really high authority domains, other websites that have lots of links to them. Those are the places you want to get your links from Wrong. It is more important to get links from highly trafficked websites. That's kind of one of the main takeaways from inside this clickstream issue that clickstream is so important. It is much more valuable in terms of SEO to get links from a highly trafficked web page than a web page that has a lot of links pointing to it, which is not what I would have thought for the last 10 years, up until when I watched this thing.

Meredith: 5:10

So wait for those that are a little slow. Describe the difference.

Meredith's husband: 5:16

Okay, so the difference?

Meredith: 5:17

Do you know, because I would think Okay.

Meredith's husband: 5:19

Right. So here's an example of how you might be able to use this. Let's say you have a website, right? Yes, on your website you have, maybe, a landing page for your email marketing campaign. So there are no links to that page. People arrive on that page Through links in emails, but there are no links to that page from other websites.

Meredith: 5:48

Okay, yeah.

Meredith's husband: 5:48

So, from an SEO value, my approach and SEOs, professional SEOs approach for years would have been like there is no value to getting links from that page, right Right, because there's no links going into that page. So there's no link juice, there's no link value to be redirected to, no links going from that page. Let's say you have another page on your site and it's a really resourceful blog that you did and lots of people link to it. Lots of other blogs Maybe it's how To Do, I don't know XYZ and other mommy blogs or mommy blogs link to it. So it's got a lot of what we call inbound links, seo goldmine or so we thought. If nobody visits that page, then there's no real value to links coming from that page. And on the flip side of that, the email landing page that I talked about, that has no incoming links to it but a lot of people visit from your emails.

Meredith's husband: 6:47

let's say, A lot of SEO value from links coming from that page. The exact opposite of what we've thought. Now, so I'm going to hopefully wrap this up a little bit in a nice little package.

Meredith's husband: 7:03

So let's say you have a page on your website that you want to promote your children's photography page. You want that page to do well in Google. Let's say you have a page on your website that you want to promote your children's photography page. Sure, you want that page to do well in Google. Yeah, it would be more valuable to link from the email landing page than from the blog page with lots of inbound links, and that's the exact opposite of what we have thought for a long time.

Meredith: 7:23

Oh boy.

Meredith's husband: 7:24

Does that make sense?

Meredith: 7:26

No, no, it doesn't make any sense, but it probably will for somebody. I'm trying to figure out the difference between what you said. Like we want visited links, not necessarily.

Meredith's husband: 7:38

We want highly trafficked pages, so a highly trafficked page means a lot of people are visiting it.

Meredith: 7:45

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 7:46

Doesn't matter how they get there. Doesn't matter if it's coming straight from Google, from other websites, from emails. If it's a bookmark, maybe they just open that page and they have it bookmarked in their browser. It doesn't matter how people get there. If a lot of people get there, links from that page are valuable.

Meredith: 8:03

Okay, See now. Thank you, that makes more sense.

Meredith's husband: 8:06

Yeah, whereas, let's say, you have a blog that's doing really well in Google yeah, like has a lot of inbound links. Yeah, you would think that a link from that blog to another page on your site is going to give that other page a lot of SEO. No, not the case. Wow, not the case. And again inbound links mean. Inbound links mean a link from another website to your website. That's an inbound link for you.

Meredith: 8:31

And when you link to other websites in your blog, that's an outward.

Meredith's husband: 8:36

Outbound link. Outbound link. Okay, so this gives me a couple ideas. Let's say, for example let's say you do have an email marketing campaign. Yeah, let's say you do have an email marketing campaign.

Meredith's husband: 8:48

There would be an advantage, according to this data, to have an email landing page where you send out an email newsletter, say this month and next month and the following month. If you get traffic coming from your email every month, it would be advantageous to have them going to a central page that doesn't change with every new email and then just update that page. Keep updating't change with every new email and then just update that page. Keep updating that page with every new newsletter. It's a highly trafficked page. So what I would have told you two weeks ago is every email you send out, you want to have a different landing page specific to that email. No, I think it would be better to have one central email landing page and update that page every time you send out a newsletter and then, from that page, link to your most important page, link to your children's photography page, for example. That's going to give the most value, the most SEO value, to your children's photography page.

Meredith's husband: 9:44

Does that make sense.

Meredith: 9:45

I think it might Okay.

Meredith's husband: 9:49

Something else.

Meredith: 9:50

Oh boy.

Meredith's husband: 9:50

Local citations. Local citations Local business listings. We've talked about WhiteSpark. Yes, I'm talking about WhiteSpark and how as? A local business. You want to get yourself listed in all these local business directories. Yeah, there are things like, if you remember CitySearch, there's dozens and dozens of these things.

Meredith: 10:08

Yeah, yeah, there are things like if you remember city search?

Meredith's husband: 10:09

There's dozens and dozens of these things and it used to be, and still is to some extent. That being in all of those local business directories helps you appear in the Google Maps results yes. Now, that's true, but it is becoming less and less important because people don't visit all those local business directories. They are low traffic.

Meredith: 10:30

But they give the appearance that they're high traffic.

Meredith's husband: 10:33

Yes, because most people just do Google instead of going to those things, and Google relied on those listings, having your website constantly and consistently listed in those listings, but so many of those sites, they do not get much traffic. That's the important factor. So there is a story, a kind of narrative in SEO, right now that local citations are dying, and sometimes local citations charge you, don't they? They do Most local business directories.

Meredith's husband: 11:03

they will have a free claim this business and you do that and then, once you do that, they'll call you up or send you an email and they'll try to sell you a premium listing don't ever do the premium listings, they're almost never worth it. That's a very good good thing to know there's some more value so yeah, so this kind of changes, all of link building for seo, like as in terms of like going out and actively trying to build links yeah.

Meredith's husband: 11:28

Yeah, our focus for a long time has been find what we called high authority domains, right, domains that have a lot of inbound links, and that's where we want to. Those are the sites that we want to target to get our links from. That's not the case. You want to find highly trafficked pages and get links to your site from those pages. Those pages can be internal, like I said. It could be an email landing page or what you should really do is go to Google Search Console or Google Analytics, find your high-traffic pages yeah, what pages get the most traffic? And then, from those pages, link to your money pages like your service pages, your children's photography page.

Meredith: 12:13

The pages that you want to do well in Google link, whatever those are, link to them from your high traffic, Because I was going to ask how do you find what are high traffic?

Meredith's husband: 12:16

You can use either Google Analytics or Google Search Console. Google Search Console will tell you which pages get the most traffic directly from Google, but Google Analytics will tell you what pages get the most traffic just overall.

Meredith: 12:31

And that's the one you want.

Meredith's husband: 12:34

Either. Yeah, yes, either one is going to be helpful.

Meredith: 12:37

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 12:37

There's not good. There's probably not going to be a huge difference between those two. They're both going to kind of tell you which pages are most popular. Okay, and I would say also it's your homepage is going to get a lot of traffic almost always.

Meredith: 12:49

Right.

Meredith's husband: 12:49

Be sure to link directly to your most important pages from your homepage. Sometimes people don't do this.

Meredith: 12:55

You be surprised so okay, a little confused yeah, I can tell yeah everything starts slowing down. Link so even something, and this is gonna sound really, but this is my job. So if you were to put a email signature, on your emails you want that to be your homepage, oh yeah, probably Right, probably yes. Does that have anything to do with what you were just talking?

Meredith's husband: 13:27

It could. I mean if, if a lot of people you think are going to be clicking on that link, I wouldn't think that you're, the personal emails you send out, are going to be getting that much click volume Right, but if they are, yeah, I mean, that's the whole point of what I was talking about in the email marketing campaign. If you have a say, a 10,000 email list, and you probably don't, but let's say you do as a local business. That would be impressive.

Meredith's husband: 13:49

But, let's say you get a hundred people visiting your website every time you send out an email.

Meredith: 13:55

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 13:56

Okay, whatever page that those people are going to, it's going to be a reasonably high trafficked page, so my point is don't keep sending them different links. You can just have an email landing page and then update that page.

Meredith: 14:13

Every time you send out a new email, update the content on the page or just move the old content down and put the newer content at the top Something like that, and when you're talking about an email landing page, that could be like a book. Me that could be like could be anything.

Meredith's husband: 14:34

I wouldn't, I wouldn't make it a book me page specifically because that sort of page you wouldn't want to link away from Right. But let's say you're promoting, like I'm sending out a newsletter about this latest episode we're doing right now Right, rather than link to a page that is just specifically about this episode.

Meredith's husband: 14:53

I would link to like my podcast page Right and on my podcast page. Yes, this episode would be at the top. Yes, after the next episode it would be moved down in the newest episode. But I would always be linking to this podcast page, not the individual episode page, so that the podcast page would become a more, a more highly trafficked page, so that makes right.

Meredith: 15:13

So it's kind of an umbrella page for yeah oh, you know what I'm saying. That's what I was asking. That's the specific of like what.

Meredith's husband: 15:23

Don't, don't here's maybe another way to phrase it Don't send out an email linking to a page that you're never, ever going to link to again. Right, Because you're going to be kind of, you're not going to be utilizing that traffic as best you can.

Meredith: 15:35

Not that I do, but yes I know what you're talking about be utilizing that traffic as best you can Not that I do, but yes I know what you're talking about. Yeah, that makes more sense. Thank you, yeah, does that help you? Oh, wondrous listener.

Meredith's husband: 15:43

Okay we're going to cover something else from the Google leak next episode.

Meredith: 15:47

Oh, very exciting.

Meredith's husband: 15:49

Yeah, but this is the big one, this one yeah, that's kind of huge. This changes link building significantly, and link building is kind of the most important thing about SEO.

Meredith: 15:58

So would you go back and fix all the other links or just move forward?

Meredith's husband: 16:02

I would just move forward. Okay, just think about moving forward. Actually, if you know, if you, what I would do in terms of going backward, just like I, said make sure you link to your important pages from your homepage?

Meredith: 16:18

yeah, some people don't do that.

Meredith's husband: 16:19

Yeah, I don't think I have any links from my home page yes, internally, you should include a link to your your children's photography page, or whatever page you think is most important. Okay, okay and check to see if you have going looking backwards. Check to see if you have any very popular blogs. What are the most popular pages on your website in general, Outside of your homepage? There's a good chance they might be blog pages. If so, make sure you have links from those pages to your service pages.

Meredith's husband: 16:49

Those are two things that you can do.

Meredith: 16:51

You can spend your whole next week Looking backwards.

Meredith's husband: 16:54

No, those are not difficult things to do, okay.

Meredith: 16:56

For you. Well thank you, that's pretty huge.

Meredith's husband: 17:01

Yeah, it is.

Meredith: 17:03

I would almost use the word game changer.

Meredith's husband: 17:06

Yeah, don't, please don't. But I know you hate it.

Meredith: 17:08

I know.

Meredith's husband: 17:09

Okay, thank you, bye-bye.

Meredith: 17:10

Thank you, bye-bye.