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SEO updates you need to know
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Search with Candour podcast
How negativity bias affects the way we search
Season 3: Episode 40
Giulia Panozzo joins Search With Candour to discuss the neuroscience behind negativity bias. Giulia combines her knowledge of neuroscience and marketing to bring some fascinating neuromarketing insights to the podcast!
Why do negative headlines get more clicks than positive ones?
How does negativity bias affect the way we search?
Why does one piece of negative feedback standout against positive feedback?
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This week's solicited SEO tips:
CTR is not a direct ranking factor
Google does not use the CTR of a specific site within ranking and scoring of that site.
During ranking Google does use a predicted CTR from models they have made, much like they have done for years with Google Ads.
CTR is used to re-rank results (post-ranking), when click data dramatically changes, but is almost always a temporary effect.
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Things to remember about crawling, rendering and indexing
Discovery, crawling, rendering, and indexing are the main steps Google goes through. Here are 10 facts worth remembering when you're diagnosing SEO issues: 1) Just because it's discovered doesn't mean it will be crawled. 2) Just because it's crawled, doesn't mean it will be indexed. 3) Crawling and rendering usually happen within minutes of each other. 4) The indexing of crawled and rendered versions may be hours, days, or even weeks apart. 5) Google sometimes has issues with rendering Javascript, it's not always a perfect system. 6) The super secret that Google uses hamsters for indexing - definitely one to cover in comments. 7) "IndexNow" is an invite to crawl, not index 8) Google has different purposes for crawling you can see in GSC in "Settings" 9) Rendered versions of pages may change things like how PageRank is internally distributed 10) Google will translate documents into HTML (such as PDFs and even Lotus files!) for indexing.
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Alternative tools to the cache: operator
Now Google has finally killed off the cache: operator, testing how Google understands pages will get harder.
While it isn’t a perfect diagnostic tool as it wasn’t reflective of what Google has “seen”, the cache: operator did have some uses.
🛠️ Here are some things you can do and other tools for your box:
✅ GSC is still your first port of call. Live previewing in GSC should give you a preview of what Google can potentially see, although as I have posted about recently - this is not always the case. Sometimes there are bugs at Google’s end and GSC can obscure them.
✅ If it’s other sites you need to view as Google, sometimes using Google’s Rich Results tester can be a good way to view with a Google user-agent and verified IP address that won’t be blocked
✅ If you’re unsure if a specific part of your page is rendering correctly, building a test version of that page with a unique string of characters is a great way to test. This way you can do a Google search for that unique string that doesn’t appear anyone else on the web and see if Google has managed to read it.
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Get digital PR inspiration with this new free tool
BrightonSEO edition!
If you’re trying to increase the satisfaction of your pages, you can use Perplexity AI search engine, with the “social” option to summarise what people on Reddit are complaining about on a specific topic.
For instance: “what problems are SEO professionals are having with content creation?” Via the UX/CRO panel with Myriam Jessier Mel Barfield Julie Farley Itasoha Akhibi
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John Mueller isn't good at unsolicited SEO tips
John Mueller BrightonSEO edition (inspired by Itamar Blauer) ⬇️ I stopped John Mueller and asked him for an unsolicited SEO tip for you and this is what he said:
“I went to BrightonSEO and this is what I learned about B2B sales” I tried 🙂 🤷🏻♂️ Photo by Kirstie Cartledge
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