SEO Snack: Week of March 17th

Quick Week Summary

This past week was a bit all over the place in terms of what I dove into. It consisted of making new pages, optimizing current pages for new clients, putting plans in place for merging old/existing content, and a few other odd pieces here and there. The big push is to just make sure that we’re wrapping up all Q1 work which is why the to do list was all over the board.

Week Insights

1. What I struggled with: Optimizing While Still Working To Understand

One piece that’s interesting when working with a new client is that I potentially don’t have a of background in what they do/offer but then work to optimize their website. More on this in the key takeaways section.

2. What was a bigger headache than it needed to be: Older Websites

When making small adjustments or working to set up quarterly plans, one thing that can be consistently in the way of doing what we think is best is an older website. Whether it doesn’t have the capabilities that we might want or just takes a lot more time than usual to get things done, it can be a nice roadblock.

3. What went well: Google Core Update “Feedback”

Since it’s been around two weeks, I normally see this as a time to start looking into how sites are performing after a core update, all in all, it’s been solid but more on that below.

4. What to look out for or tune into: More Of The Same

I’m going to hit on both of these below but I’d be on the “look out” for how your site(s) are performing after the update has been announced for a bit and I’d also work to test updating/merging old content.

5. What weird things happened: GA4 Key Events

If you haven’t heard about this, you might be wondering what they heck it is… I still am. Google is changing “conversions” in GA4 to “Key Events” ultimately to help the reporting/match up of GA4 and Google Ads. Do I think this will fix the problem? Not really. Do I think it makes sense? No but a lot of what GA4 consists of and how it operates baffles me.

Key Takeaways

1. Early Work With A Client

I mentioned this in the “struggling” section but one thing that I continue to work on is learning a client, what they offer, and their industry as quick as possible.

One of the first few things we do is take a look at their current website and make page edits based on the strategy, keywords, etc. that we think will have the be impact for them. The tough thing here is that at times, these clients offer services and work in industries I have zero or little knowledge on. So being able to learn and work on the go can be difficult. What I’ve found helpful is to first have good conversations upfront and ask good questions while onboarding a client. Don’t feel like you have to showcase that you know “everything”, instead ask those questions about their industry you might feel are “stupid”.

Secondly, take a solid crack at page edits but know that the best thing that can happen is they come back with a lot of edits and notes for you based on your first draft. This is some of the best feedback you’ll get and can help you start to truly understand their company, services, and industry.

2. Update/Merge Old Content

Old content can be a headache at times, especially if you have a lot of it. To me, it’s important to either regularly update this old content (good SEO benefits here as well), delete it, or merge it to more recent pieces. Think if you’re searching for an answer to a question on someone’s website and you find a blog with the answer, problem is, the blog is 7 years old. You ask yourself if that answer is still true…

Maybe a bad example but you get the idea. Overall it’ll help users locate correct answers and also have positive SEO impact.

3. Google Core Update “Feedback”

Now some will say it’s too early to tell how this update has impacted your site(s) but I think it’s a good time to start getting at least an idea. Now I’ve seen some people talk about how Google overlapped updates (which they say they try not to do) but this has cause some initial extremes and then some additional extremes for folks in terms of traffic and rankings.

Ultimately, I haven’t seen a ton of this for our clients. There have been a few initial extremes (mainly positive, some negative) but other than that, it’s been steady. So what do I mean that now is an okay time to start getting a feel for how the update impacted you? If you’re not just seeing massive ups or downs in terms of rankings or traffic (but instead a general trend down or up) you might have an insight into your answer of how you’re being impacted.

Now that doesn’t mean that it’s 100% true and you need to do a 180 on your strategy but if I saw traffic or keywords steadily trending down for two weeks, I’d have an idea that it might not just be a one off. Also think about the updates main purposes of keeping spam/AI only content out of search, if you know you’ve been doing this but still question why things are not looking great, the update announcement alone should have had you starting to at least pivot a bit.

Resources To Look At

1. March 2024 Update News

Interesting article on what folks are seeing with the update. It goes a bit against what I said (so who knows maybe I’m wrong) but still a great piece to dive into.

Check it out here

2. Key Events Explanation

Here is a video diving into the new “key events” in GA4. It’ll explain it better than I can…

Check it out here