Just one more week now. *hides*



Moving on to this week’s newsletter:

📰 News & updates

Search Console adds INP issue reporting: This is to prepare for the change coming in March 2024. Find out more here.

🔝 SEO

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): One of Google’s Core Web Vitals. This is the amount of time it takes to load the single largest visible element in the viewport. A good value is <2.5 seconds and should be based on Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) data.

First Input Delay (FID): The last of Google’s Core Web Vitals, alongside CLS and LCP. This is the time from when a user first interacts with your page to when the page responds. A good FID value is <100 ms.

How to do link prospecting: This depends on two factors: the type of link building strategy you’re using and your evaluation criteria. For example, if you’re doing guest blogging, you need to identify relevant sites in your niche that meet your evaluation criteria and are open to publishing content from guest authors. 

Preparing your brand for upcoming AI search features: Lily Ray shares her experiments and findings at the recent SEonthebeach conference. Interesting ones: SGE answers are not always pulled from the top-ranking results, and third-party mentions across multiple sites are important.

Creator-led content marketing as the future of search: Google’s introduction of “Perspectives” supports its move to E-E-A-T and search users’ preference for “lived experience” in the content they engage with. The best people to provide that content today are content creators.

GymShark noindexed its website: Popular apparel brand GymShark appeared to noindex its entire website. Or did it not? GymShark’s SEO manager explains what happened.

Hiding your address impacts Google Business Profile rankings: Joy Hawkins ran an experiment where they removed the address from a listing. Result: a massive decline in rankings.

💻 Digital marketing

Finding a good blog niche: A good blog niche has three things: high traffic potential, low keyword difficulty, and it’s a topic that interests you or you are an expert in.

Thinking outside “outside the box”: Why are some people called “creative” while others aren’t? Our current understanding and definition of creativity are too limited. Elan Ullendorff suggests some ways we can expand and broaden the definition—for example, just like how a bridge would cease to be a bridge if we allowed it to crumble and fall instead of actively reinforcing it, conservation could be existentially creative too.

Productivity hacks: Some useful reminders. I’ve never heard of the “Sticky Note Challenge,” but here’s how it works: For three weeks, every time you switch tasks, write it on a sticky note. At the end, separate them into revenue and non-revenue producing stacks. Evaluate and adjust.
 

Till next time ;)
Cheers,