SEO e-Newsletter Issue 37 – 2021.07.16~2021.07.31

Google launches "Link Spam Update"

This isPrevious issueDuy's announcement has just appeared. On July 26, Google launched an algorithm update named "link spam update". It is expected to be fully launched within two weeks. The purpose is to more efficiently identify and ignore spam caused by links. The scope of impact is global and ignores language.

The discussion of backlinks will not be extended here. Those who are interested can read myBacklink Article, especially the two paragraphs about the webmaster’s mentality and Google’s views.

The algorithm (Google Penguin) to combat unnatural backlinks has been around since 2012. I think Google made a special announcement to warn SEOs about possible ranking fluctuations. In the coming weeks or even months, this can be included in observing changes in traffic.Possible factors。

link:Link Spam Update Announcement / SER report

"About This Result" tells you why a certain web page ranks top

Issue 26introduced "About This Result", an additional information box that appears on the SERP. Now Google also displays the reasons why this page ranks top. This feature currently only appears on the English results in the United States, and will be used by more people in the next few months.

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The main purpose of providing this information is to allow ordinary users to trust Google's search results more, know why Google recommends these web pages to them, and suggest some search techniques (ex: use double quotes). For those with some SEO experience, I believe the following factors will not be surprising.

• Matching Keywords- This page uses the words you searched for
• Related terms- Related words for the word you searched for appear on this page
• Links (Looking at links)- There are other pages linked to this page using the words you searched foranchor text。
• Local relevance- This result is related to the language you use or the country or region you are in

link:official announcement

WordPress officially launches "Pattern"

WordPress has changed the default editor to the block-based Gutennberg editor since version 5.0. Although many people are not used to it, the block editor (ex: Gutenberg, Elementor...etc) has its useful features, such as the Patten function officially launched in v5.8 this time.

Similar to themes and plug-ins in WordPress, Pattern allows you to turn a designed block into a template and then reuse it. What's more, you can browse blocks designed by others in the Pattern Directory and apply them to your own web pages. It's as easy as downloading a plug-in or applying a theme!

Because it has just been launched, there are not many available blocks in the Pattern directory now, but for webmasters using WordPress, this update has a great impact and should not be missed!

link:Official announcement / WP Pattern Directory / WP v5.8 revision announcement

Gary: Keep the redirection active for at least a year before removing it.

Of course, it would be best if you can never take it off.

In most cases, it is recommended not to remove it after redirecting it, because (1.) users may still visit the old URL accidentally, and you want them to see the correct web page, and (2.) you hope that the SEO value collected by the old URL can be transferred to the new URL.

Gary's answer is that, aside from (1.), the official recommendation is to maintain the redirection for at least one year to ensure that Google has enough time to transfer all signals to the new URL.

For example,URL AThere are so many backlinks that on a given dayURL A 被設定轉址到URL B, after redirection is setURL AThe value of will be passed toURL Bsuperior. One year after the redirection was set, the redirection was removed for some reason.URL AIt becomes a 404 page or a new web page,ThatURL AThe value gained from backlinks will remain inURL B, it will not disappear due to the disappearance of the redirection.

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Most people may think that just keep the redirection, why should we remove it? Ideally, it is best not to remove it, but in practice, it may be because other groups really, really want to use it.URL ATo create web pages, or engineers want to clean up the back-end redirection conditions and come to ask SEO for their opinions, then we can maintain professional citation of official answers.

link:SER report / Official documentation

Google officially launchesSeekToActionvideo structured data

Google announced that SeekToAction is out of beta testing and now everyone can use this structured data.

To make Key Moments appear in the video, there are two structured data that can be used. One isClip(The digital engine wasintroduce), the other isSeekToAction. The difference between the two is:

• Clip: You need to define the start and end time of each paragraph yourself, and provide the name of the paragraph.
• SeekToAction: Let AI determine the paragraphs and paragraph names of the video by itself, and only need to provide the video format (ex: ?t=45 means the 45th second of the video)

If the video is on YouTube, you can also add it in the description box of the videovideo chaptersTo achieve the effect of Key Moments.

link:SeekToAction official announcement / Video Key Moments structured data

Tip: Simulate user behavior to debug CLS issues

"When using PageSpeed ​​Insights, it says that the website's CLS is fine, but the Search Console shows that the CLS score is extremely poor. Why is there such a difference?"

Cumulative layout transfer(CLS, Cumulative Layout Shift) is a difficult indicator to debug becauseIt measures more than just unexpected tectonic movements of a page as it loads, also includes the user's movements while browsing the website. When using tools such as PageSpeed ​​Insights, because the tool does not interact with the website (ex: scrolling, waiting for more than a certain period of time), some section movements will not be detected by the laboratory tool, resulting in such a gap.

Rick Viscomi wrote an article. In addition to explaining the above reasons, he also provided two solutions, (1.) Usebrowser plug-in, and actually interact with the web page, or (2.) use the Inject Script function in WebPageTest to force the tool to scroll down after the web page is loaded, and then determine whether there is a CLS problem.

I think the second method is very clever. Inserting additional scripts is also a function of PageSpeedTest that I didn’t know before. I recommend it to everyone!

link:Article by Rick Viscomi

Image search commandsrc: & imagesize:

Google updated its Documentation for thesearch command, Introductionsrc:andimagesize:These are two rare commands specific to image search.

among themsrc:can return "images from a specific domain". A very practical method is to know which other websites your images are referenced by. For example, enter-site:darrenhuang.com src:darrenhuang.comYou can see which web pages have my pictures embedded in them. Of course, this is limited to the situation where the other party directly uses your image URL. If the image is downloaded and then re-uploaded, it will be invalid.

another This is the first time I know theimagesize:command. Its function is to find pictures of a specific size. For example, entertokyo olympics imagesize:900X1200You can see the Tokyo Olympics picture with a length of 1200px/width of 900px.

According to the test, the numerical part must be accurate. If it is a little different, different results will be obtained. In addition, this command cannot find pictures based on "proportion". This is a function that I think may be more useful.

The above two are exclusive search commands for images. If you have any good usage scenarios, please leave a message to share! In addition, if you want to know more about the search commands for general web pages, you can refer toThis Moz article, introduces some common applications in practice.

Complete XML Sitemap Guide by Sitebulb

An XML Sitemap tutorial published by Sitebulb. For this kind of basic article, I will read it again from time to time to ensure that my understanding is correct, absorb new details or tips, and learn how others express the concept (understanding and speaking in a way that others can understand are different realms).

I recommend that SEO novices read this article in detail, and veterans can read it quickly as a review. After reading it myself, I was reminded of the following points:

1. How to find the XML Sitemap of a website? This is very useful when analyzing opponent websites.
2. What are the main tags (url, loc, lastmod, priority...) in the XML Sitemap, and which ones does Google care about and which ones don't? Where should
3. XML Sitemap be placed - the root directory or anywhere? This article is written differently from my understanding. After checking, I think the article iserror For, the xml sitemap does not have to be placed in the root directory only.

Another piece of trivia: the sitemap for search engines does not have to be an .xml file!

link:Sitebulb Article / Google Docs

[Official article] Analysis of the reasons for the decline of natural traffic

This article published by Daniel Waisberg should give everyone a better direction when traffic drops and know how to analyze the reasons through GSC or other tools. He believes that there are five possible reasons for the website's traffic loss - 1.) Technical issues, 2.) Security issues, 3.) Human intervention, 4.) Algorithm changes, 5.) Changes in search interests.

Usually the first three factors are quite obvious. The more difficult ones are changes in the algorithm or the opponent has made some changes to the website. In practice, it is quite complicated to attribute traffic changes. Usually, we can only point out possible reasons, but cannot know the exact factors.

I think the point of this article is that there are many reasons for the decline in website organic traffic, and what tools are available to assist webmasters in analyzing them.

link:official article

[Video] Will using a shared server be bad for SEO?

This video episode answers a very common myth - "Sharing the server with other websites (shared hosting) will result in poor SEO performance of the website?", the answer simply isNo, but there are usually two reasons behind such concerns:

1.) The person sharing the server with me may be a bad website. I am afraid that if he is punished, I will be punished too!
No, sharing servers or sharing IP addresses is a natural thing in the online world. Google looks at the website, not your "neighbors".This is not the first time John has answered this question。

2.) Shared servers may cause unstable server performance. My website will be overloaded because the neighbors are too popular!
This does cause problems, but shared servers can be very stable; dedicated servers can also be terrible. Although dedicated servers are generally better than shared servers, stability and performance still depend on the provider and should not be generalized. My suggestion is that small and medium-sized websites should consider VPS (shared physical server, non-shared server resources).