#007: Google’s on the hunt for bad content 🦁

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Pinky Up Thursday — Special Edition: What in the wrrtt is going on with Google?!

Google is running a new “Core Update” and dishing out “manual penalties” to websites as we speak. Over the course of the next month, Google will continue to roll out these changes and issue more penalties.

Before we get into it — this is the last two days to sign up for Spree – Plan + Publish Content in One Week until doors close on Friday (tomorrow). If you have last minute Q’s, feel free to hit reply to this email!

Quick Vocabulary Brush Up

Core Update — “Several times a year, Google makes significant, broad changes to our search algorithms and systems. We refer to these as core updates, and we give notice when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates. Core updates are designed to ensure that overall, we’re delivering on our mission to present helpful and reliable results for searchers.” — Google Search Central

Manual Penalty — “Google issues a manual action against a site when a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google’s spam policies. Most manual actions address attempts to manipulate our search index. Most issues reported here will result in pages or sites being ranked lower or omitted from search results without any visual indication to the user.” — Search Console Help

For most website owners, there likely isn’t anything to worry about. However, I’ve seen more and more small business owners turn to AI to write their content. They think, “Wow, this SEO stuff really works! I’ll use AI to write a bunch of blogs.” They watch some YouTube videos and listen to some “SEO wizard” on Twitter, only to realize sometime later that Google is onto them. And not only do they get a warning from Google, but Google shuts down their entire business operations.

What’s the moral of the story this week? Write content for people, not Google.

If you have questions about using AI for your website content, check out the blog I wrote a few weeks ago on AI SEO content. Think you’ve been hit by a manual penalty? Reach out with any Q’s.

Action Invitation: Check your website appearance.

Does your website even show up on Google? Sometimes we don’t realize we could have a technical issue with our websites that prevent Google from seeing, understanding, or ranking our websites in search results.

For a quick manual check, enter the below in your browser: “site: yoursitename.com”

You can also check your search appearance in Google Search Console by selecting the “Indexing” dropdown and selecting “Pages,” or by entering any of your page URLs in the search bar.

How does your website look? Does it look how you thought it would? Let me know!

The Marketing World Roundup

🎙️ Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines Untrustworthy Pages Section Updated by Barry Schwartz. Google gives more examples of what untrustworthy content means. This is important for any founders hoping to write SEO content as part of their education. Make sure you’re using factual information, citing sources, and using your firsthand experience to provide value to your readers.

🎙️ Four Actionable Tips For Influencer Marketing by Girl Power Marketing. These are pretty good tips if you’re just getting started with influencer marketing. I’d also add here that you want to think about your influencer marketing in terms of campaigns AND ongoing engagements. Doing both allows you to be top-of-mind regularly, but also gives you a bit of a push at the right time (such as a new product launch).

🎙️ YouTube analytics: How to analyze your YouTube data by Sprout Social’s Brent Barnhart. YouTube is a great way to drive additional traffic to your website, so having a keen eye on the analytics will be essential as you work through your overall organic strategy.

Spree — VIP 1 Week Sprint SEO Content Strategy Week March and April. One more day to sign up!

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading this special edition of the Pinky Up Thursday Newsletter! Pass this along to a friend!

Bye for now 🙂

Hasta la pasta, Crystal Ortiz

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