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SEO updates you need to know
Sponsor: Topic Compass
Topic Compass Beta: The Missing Piece in Your Content Research Stack
AlsoAsked pulls the questions folks have.
Topic Compass highlights connected concepts—coffee to meditation and anxiety, sneakers to status and identity.
Perfect as the next step after AlsoAsked as once you know what people question, overlay common associations.
Reshape your content strategy beyond the obvious.
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Search with Candour podcast
How to build brand authority with digital PR
Season 4: Episode 36
In this episode of Search with Candour, host Jack Chambers-Ward sits down with freelance SEO consultant Ian Ferguson to discuss the delicate balance between UX and SEO.
They delve into the importance of integrating SEO at the start of web design processes, the impact of AI on SEO, and how to create valuable content that serves both users and search engines.
The episode also touches on practical tips for improving UX, managing client expectations, and the future of SEO in an AI-driven landscape.
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This week's solicited tips:
Unlimited...paywalls!
If you have paywalled content marked up with the appropriate structured data and you're showing it to Googlebot, their GenAI might still show it to users for free, unless:
You use the nosnippet meta tag. You can specify the maximum length for your snippets by using the max-snippet:[number] meta tag or prevent certain parts of the page from being shown in a snippet by using the data-nosnippet attribute. Here's the Google documentation.
It's a tricky mix; generally, if you're going to reveal content to Google, a determined user will be able to access it. If you hide it completely (say behind a login), Google generally isn't going to be able to index, and therefore rank it.
h/t Lily Ray who noticed this thing happening several months ago.
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I'm not the Redditor I should be. I want more.
I am honestly surprised that so many marketers believe that using AI to take a massive branded sh*t in the communities their customers love is a good marketing strategy. 🤦♂️ 💩 ⤵️
Yesterday, a Redditor shared one of the “Reddit AI workflow” posts shared here on LinkedIn which allowed marketers to automatically monitor and draft posts for Reddit ‘in their brand voice’. I have screenshot some of the thoughts Redditors had about this in the image below for you.
✅ Nobody on Reddit wants to read your AI content
✅ Reddit has a lot of eyes and there is a lot of nuance, it is a matter of time before you are rumbled
✅ Redditors will roast you, and this will be the digital footprint you leave in search and LLMs
Sure, use it for monitoring, sentiment analysis, and finding opportunities, but make the engagement real.
Just because “Reddit ranks in search” or is “used by LLMs” does not mean the optimal thing for you to do is start blasting your branded content all over it. Become the story, provide the data, be the spark of the conversation and then join in. That scales. Don’t try to be the loudest person in the room, joining in every conversation.
I cannot over-emphasise the stupidity of using a community-based marketing strategy that literally destroys and pollutes the community you are trying to ingratiate yourself with. 🔥 🌲 🔥I am honestly surprised that so many marketers believe that using AI to take a massive branded sh*t in the communities their customers love is a good marketing strategy. 🤦♂️ 💩 ⤵️
Yesterday, a Redditor shared one of the "Reddit AI workflow" posts shared here on LinkedIn which allowed marketers to automatically monitor and draft posts for Reddit 'in their brand voice'. I have screenshot some of the thoughts Redditors had about this in the image below for you.
✅ Nobody on Reddit wants to read your AI content
✅ Reddit has a lot of eyes and there is a lot of nuance, it is a matter of time before you are rumbled
✅ Redditors will roast you, and this will be the digital footprint you leave in search and LLMs
Sure, use it for monitoring, sentiment analysis, and finding opportunities, but make the engagement *real*.
Just because "Reddit ranks in search" or is "used by LLMs" does not mean the optimal thing for you to do is start blasting your branded content all over it. Become the story, provide the data, be the spark of the conversation and then join in. That scales. Don't try to be the loudest person in the room, joining in every conversation.
I cannot over-emphasise the stupidity of using a community-based marketing strategy that literally *destroys and pollutes* the community you are trying to ingratiate yourself with. 🔥 🌲 🔥
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There's always a bigger question
More unrevealed info from last year's Google exploit: Google calculates a "question_fringe_score" when processing user searches. What does it mean? ⤵️
I can't find any direct mention of this in Google patents or docs, however my guess would be it is likely a score estimating how far a query (especially a question) sits on the 'fringe' of Google’s known entity/knowledge space and how atypical or long‑tail it is.
There is an associated BOOL of is_question_fringe (true/false) which is likely determined by a threshold of this score.
If a question is identified as fringe, this would help decide when to lean on semantic generalisation (e.g., RankBrain‑style) versus exact signals. We have been previously told RankBrain is used for "previously unseen" queries where Google doesn't have much data on how to act, so this makes a lot of sense to me.
This means it is leaning on other types of metrics and computing to calculate ranking vs a lot of the user engagement metrics we talk about regularly.
Source: We reported a Google exploit that revealed thousands of parameters used in Google ranking, including their actual scores. Google deemed this bug as high severity/high impact and paid the max bug bounty of $13,337 (which Candour gave to charity 😎 )
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This is how content length dies...with thunderous applause.
I honestly don’t care what length of content correlates with good visibility in waves hands whatever engine/surface. That’s short-term thinking, and you will lose 🥉
What I am interested in, as Talia did such a good job of explaining yesterday at the Digital Olympus conference is: are you solving the problem for your target audience?
Rather than creating content to an artificial length, it actually makes you think about:
✅ Am I talking about what problem I am solving for them in context to how they feel, or am I just listing questions I found online?
✅ Is the language right for this audience? Is it too technical, or not technical enough for an expert audience?
✅ Is text the right format? Should this be a video? Does it need summarising? Audio? Do I need diagrams, illustrations?
✅ Have I understood what other questions, queries, concerns come up in the usual journey of solving this problem?
✅ Is there a next action I can help with? A conversion tool, a calculator or similar?
✅ Do I have a way to measure how satisfied users are with the page?
While it’s nice to have some kind of guidance or idea what ranks, approaching content from a min/max word limit is the back-to-front.
SEO is a marathon, and building content and systems with these marginal gains is what will make you win 🥇I honestly don't care what length of content correlates with good visibility in *waves hands* whatever engine/surface. That's short-term thinking, and you will lose 🥉
What I am interested in, as Talia did such a good job of explaining yesterday at the Digital Olympus conference is: *are you solving the problem for your target audience?*
Rather than creating content to an artifical length, it actually makes you think about:
✅ Am I talking about what problem I am solving for them in context to how they feel, or am I just listing questions I found online?
✅ Is the language right for this audience? Is it too techincal, or not techincal enough for an expert audience?
✅ Is text the right format? Should this be a video? Does it need summarising? Audio? Do I need diagrams, illustrations?
✅ Have I understood what other questions, queries, concerns come up in the usual journey of solving this problem?
✅ Is there a next action I can help with? A conversion tool, a calculator or similar?
✅ Do I have a way to measure how satisfied users are with the page?
While it's nice to have some kind of guidance or idea what ranks, approaching content from a min/max word limit is the back-to-front.
SEO is a marathon, and building content and systems with these marginal gains is what will make you win 🥇
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Your Dashboard determines your reality
Want to stay up to date with Google updates and issues?
They actually have a public Search Status Dashboard, which you can even subscribe to via RSS, so you can integrate it with Slack channels and the like.
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Refer subscribers and earn rewards!
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