🤔 Understanding & Analyzing a Search Rankings Drop

GM nerds,

Welcome back to the newsletter that’ll give you that Zhang Ziyu edge:

Here’s what’s good this week:

→ Is It Worth Blocking AI Bots? 🤖

→ Navigating the YouTube Algorithm 👀

→ How to Analyze Your Search Rankings Drop 🤔

→ SEO Tips: Simple Link Building Principles, Cashing In on Community Activities for Backlinks, International SEO Mistakes & Fixes💪

→ more, obviously 💬

But first…

​This Week's Video 🗣️🎙️​

In this week's video, I discuss a local SEO case study that will focus on a catering company in London that specializes in Indian food delivery and catering. The goal of this case study is to show a step-by-step process for making 1K a month through performance-only local SEO. The case study will also cover various strategies such as optimizing citations, CTR, natural reviews, tiered Kevin's PBN, and local guest posts. So buckle up and get ready to join me on this exciting journey.

​YouTube​​

What’s Going Down @ Google 📊

→ Google just added new Performance Max reporting tools (conversion metrics in asset-level reporting, YouTube video placement reporting, third-party verification for brand suitability on YouTube and Display) and yet another suite of generative AI-powered creative tools (expanded image editing capabilities incl. object removal and addition, improved asset generation for multiple campaign types, easier access to creative tools from the “Create” menu).

Could help— we’ll see.

→ This piece takes a critical look at Google’s site reputation abuse spam policy and argues that an algorithmic approach to enforcing violations is superior to manual actions. The TLDR is that manual actions can fail and aren't scalable.

→ If you’ve dropped in organic Search rankings, it might be worth asking these questions to guide your analysis, then digging up some answers. For example:

"Is my organic search traffic drop correlated with a Google Search Update visibility change or major content change?"

or

"Which are the queries and pages that have dropped (and also increased) the most?"

or even

"Are the traffic decreases or increases correlated with a position shift or change of impressions and/or CTR only?"

There are 4 more, click thru for those, and some in-depth commentary on how to answer each, and why it matters to ask them.

AI Insight 🤖

→ IMO this post won the internet this week.

→ This post asks the question: “Should you block AI bots?” The TLDR is basically… if you’re a large publisher who could strike a deal and cash in, then yes. If you’re everybody else, it’s probably “significantly more valuable for you to be mentioned in AI-written content than it is for you to try to protect the unique value of your content.”

→ If you're considering AI-powered creative search ads on Google Ads, this piece describes how to “leverage the power of automation to improve the efficiency of your PPC campaigns.”

Social Media Round-up 📲

→ NGL, stuff like this tends to catch my eye. This tool’s creator describes his own tool as “A LinkedIn post generator that doesn't suck* ​

​*most of the time.”

It’s no secret that LinkedIn posting has become insanely formulaic, which means something that takes your “unique ideas, experiences, and data” and transforms them “quickly into killer LinkedIn posts that get views” has to be at least worth trying, right?

→ It’s no secret that YouTube has become a massive growth driver for many digital marketers. Its algorithm, however, is still a bit of a puzzle. Which means that these “20 Confirmed Facts About YouTube’s Algorithm” are sure to help you navigate the platform.

The piece is organized into facts about How Videos Rank On The Homepage, How YouTube Ranks Suggested Video Recommendations, and External Ranking Variables. With all this in mind, the piece is capped off with some "Strategies For Creators.”

Digital Marketing Tips & Tricks From Around the Web

→ These Psychological Principles to Boost Conversions explain why what works, works. Not only that, each of the 6 tips provides an “Action Step” that you can put into practice. For example, The Law of Pragnanz states that humans prefer simplicity to complexity, so the action step is to reduce the number of choices and options.

The 5 other principles are Conformity, Visual Salience, The Miligram Principle, the Principle of Reciprocity, and Social Proof Through Success Stories.

→ Nathan Gotch’s “3 simple link building principles to follow” are worth checking out. Here’s the TLDR;

1. Understand Link Intent
2. When in Doubt, Throw it Out
3. Content is the Only Scalable Link Building Strategy

For commentary on all 3 of these, click thru.

→ Local SEO folks, this one’s for you: “How community and local activities lead to backlinks.” The piece covers local citations, local business activities, and business partnerships as pathways to link building in a local context. From leveraging local media and sponsoring local events, to maintaining "a topically and locally relevant blog,” Celeste Gonzalez gives us a lot to chew on here.

→ On the other side of the scale, we’ve got “8 International SEO Mistakes & Fixes.” Mistakes include: "Overlooking target market research," "Neglecting marketing-specific content," and "Not performing multilingual keyword research."

Jacky Chou​
Founder of Indexsy
hello@indexsy.com
Let's Connect on Twitter👇

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