SEO Snack: Week of March 3rd
Quick Week Summary
What I worked on this past week
This past week the big to do was quarter two strategy internal meetings for almost all clients. We talked through the feedback that the clients gave us, the KPIs and goals they have, what is going well this quarter, and where we can improve/ideas we have for this upcoming quarter. Outside of that, there was some more tweaks in GA4 and some work on website CTAs as we’ve seen that have a bigger impact the past handful of months.
Week Insights
What I struggled with
Unique Clients Strategy
With quarterly strategy being the main piece this past week, one thing I struggle with at times is figuring out a strategy for clients that have very unique offerings. At times, there are “true” competitors that you can research and other times the industry they are in can be tough to understand. It’s not that strategy is extremely hard to come up with but I often feel like there are pieces to the strategy that would have a great impact that I’m just not seeing or coming up with…
What was a bigger headache than it needed to be
GA4 (Don’t want to talk about it…)
More struggles with GA4… Good thing we hired someone who can take a better/closer look at where I might have missed the boat or what is out of our control to hopefully make it as optimal for each client as possible. If you’re struggling with some GA4 stuff, let me know, because I’m wondering if my struggles are the same as others.
What went well
Quarterly Strategy Framework
Quarterly strategies went extremely well. It was the first go around with the new process we have and although there are areas we can improve, they all had a lot of great conversations and ideas during those meetings. It wasn’t that we weren’t doing this before but we’re now putting more intention behind it.
What to look out for or tune into
GOOGLE CORE UPDATE
This section is going to take up more than usual… To be honest, I’m not surprised by this update. I’ve been mentioning it the past few months and was more shocked it took so long for them to “do” (mainly just tell us that it’s happening).
Starting off, I have to mention how helpful content updates are now just part of core updates. I’m a huge fan of this. I think these have been some of the most impactful updates for a good cause than other updates they push out. Helpful content is truly what search engines are for in my eyes. Take away the idea that I’m working in SEO, the reason we search things is to find answers that are truly helpful, not just some company trying to rank for a bunch of keywords. It’s the approach I take with SEO, writing content for people, not just rankings.
Second piece is the spam part of the update. Similar to helpful content, this is a big win in my opinion. The other piece of this is that I believe this is Google’s way to push back on only AI-created content (something I’ve been talking a lot about recently). AI content can be good but it should only be a start and not the whole thing. It’s lazy if you use just AI content and don’t take an active approach to changing it for the people it’s intended for.
Jumping into the third piece (adding into spam), expired domain abuse is now considered spam (as it should be!). I get that a lot of people see SEO as playing a game and at points, I see it that way, but it truly should be for the user on the other end. Just because you have the budget to buy expired domains in the hope that it improves your ranking of the content that isn’t optimal doesn’t mean you should and now you definitely shouldn’t.
Fourth is site reputation abuse (Parasite SEO) is now also spam (as it should be part 2). I could say a lot of the same things but if you’re trying to play a game where you just try to get crappy content to rank better for the purpose of people getting to your site, I don’t think you should be working in SEO. Not all content we produce is amazing, some hit and some don’t, but that doesn’t mean we should play a game to get all of that to rank when truly, it probably shouldn’t.
Instead, we should work on creating more HELPFUL CONTENT and learn from where we’ve missed the boat in the past. There is a lot more you can dive into but this is my short thoughts on this update. Helpful, real, human-created, meaningful content will continue to perform well and in my eyes, it’s the push that Google is working towards as well.
What weird things happened
Just look up, that’s enough “weird” for the week
Come back next week if this is your favorite spot…
Key Takeaways
1. Intentional Content Creation
Create content that is truly helpful for your target audience, NOT content that will just rank well for things you shouldn’t even work to rank for. Again, I look at SEO as a service to clients but also for potential customers of those clients. It’s not to just show clients great analytics but it’s to connect potential customers to our clients that are actually looking for what they offer.
2. Lazy SEO
Don’t be lazy with SEO. A lot of this update is just pushing us in SEO to work with intention. It’s not about playing the game, it’s about truly doing the work you should to see results. Do steroids work? Yup, and there is nothing wrong with that, but there is a reason you can’t use them in sports. Same thing here. There are “steroids” that you can do but should you use them? Probably not. Just do the work, learn, pivot, and EARN results.
Resources To Look At
1. More Information On Core Update
I believe I shared this before but here is more info on the past update to get more information on what is being worked on.
