Preface
Heyyyy SEOs & DI’s. In an effort to pull myself back into the blogging game, I’d like to start a new weekly series: “A Smattering of SEO News From Around The Twitter-verse”. Get it? An astronaut featured image? Trying too hard? Probably yea.
At any rate, the concept of this series is to curate a list of quick news bits I’ve discovered from exploring the Twitter-verse each week. And also, a few other corners of the internet when they’re interesting.
You see, I’ve found that it can be hard enough to keep up with all of the big SEO blogs (Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch, and the like) covering breaking news and best practices — let alone peruse Twitter afterward for some sidebar industry chatter. That’s what this is post is for.
But before we get started, I need to welcome you all to the month of May properly with this Britney Spears meme that has officially replaced Justin Timberlake’s:
God I love Britney. Ok, with that all settled, let’s move onto the 8 things I discovered this week.
1. Google rolled out a new ‘Visual Stories’ SERP feature
I’m able to replicate this too when I use the same sample queries. It will be cool to learn more about optimizing for this feature in the months to come. I recommend checking out Brodie Clark’s article to learn more about how to optimize for web stories, and how they help boost SEO traffic. Also, I recommend following Chris Long on Twitter and LinkedIn.
2. Google also rolled out a new multi-source featured snippet SERP feature
Another shoutout to Chris Long is going to be needed here, as he posted about ANOTHER new Google SERP feature where the featured snippet shows multiple sources instead of just a single one. I actually haven’t seen result type yet, and can’t replicate Long’s ‘benefits of carrots’ screenshot. But very cool nonetheless.
3. People are coming out with awesome Google Analytics 4 / GTM YouTube tutorials and you should watch them
And my favorite creator that I’ve come across by far is Julius Fedorovicius. In addition to his strong YouTube game, he also has helpful e-books, newsletters, and even a Facebook group where members discuss GTM ‘recipes’, etc. Smash his YouTube like button ya’ll!
UPDATE (5/5/22): And for those who want help in setting up GA4 e-commerce tracking specifically within GTM, you have to, have to, have to watch what the ANGELSSSSSSSSS from MeasurementMarketing.io put together for us all on YouTube. The guy breaks down the ‘data layer’ super simply and also shares some sweet community variables to make set up a cinch. [* pauses to consider giving him my future first born child for this resource *].
4. The SEO gods remind us from LondonSEOMeetupXL that AMP is dying, and that we should dance on its ashes
I still have my blog’s AMP pages though. Ha.
5. Proactive indexing is the new black
Crystal Carter shares the Star Wars-themed benefits for taking a proactive approach to Google indexing. In her linked Slideshare deck, she provides great validation that all that crawl cleanup you’re doing (across the XML sitemap, Robots.txt, interlinking, etc) is worthwhile.
6. Google says bye-bye to page 1 (maybe) as it currently tests continuous scroll on desktop
I think I like this. But only if I’m currently ranking on page 2.
7. Bulk URL inspection just got eaaaaasssyyyyyy thanks to Google’s URL inspection API + Valentin Pletzer’s free tool
Aleyda Solis told us about it so you know the tool is good. Check it here.
8. V2 of the SERP feature timeline is here (… I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t know there was a V1)
Did you ever think to yourself: ‘How COOL would it be to have a scrollable timeline of all of the Google SERP features that ever came out ever’ No? Well, fortunately Brodie Clark did. And his is pretty cool. Check it out here.
Thanks for scrolling through to the end, everyone. Chat next week.
Liz
