Stay ahead of the game with May’s SEO updates and AI tips
Katherine Watier Ong
Enterprise SEO | Accomplished multi-industry digital marketer | CEO@ WO Strategies. Host of the Digital Marketing Victories podcast. Talks about #journals #.gov #associations, #SEO and #AI
We are definitely in full blown summer and my schedule has been wonky - solo parenting while my husband is participating in his sister’s wedding in Seattle and daily trips to the pool. AI is still exploding (I’ve added dozens of new tools to my?Double Your Marketing Output with AI?resource).
This month I also ran my first client training on using AI chat prompts in your SEO workflow (the associated resource you can grab is here). If you need help creating internal policies to support your SEO’s team's use of AI, drop me a note.
Bing’s usage is growing with its fully rolled out AI integration in search and Google’s Bard is still in testing. But as I send this newsletter, the new Google Perspectives view in search is now live.?
Let’s get into the updates.
Google Announcements and Updates
Google I/0 Announcements
The big announcement was that search results will have?Generative AI at the top?(Bard) and most of us in North America should now have access to test the feature. Here are the other updates at I/O:
Also, Google’s Bard is now showing website citations.
Perspectives, a new Top-Story like feature is now live
Announced via Google I/O, this is now live in search.?
Based on their?documentation, this is a part of their helpful content system where they will understand content created from a personal or expert point of view. This pulls in social media results and results form “video-sharing communities”
7 Search Categories that Don’t Trigger Generated AI
Cyrus Shepard?spotted that so far navigation, recipes, explicit, some YMYL topics, News, Quick Answers and sensitive topics don’t trigger generative AI results - the rest will.?
Adobe’s Firefly is coming to Bard
Adobe announced today that?Firefly,?its recently introduced collection of AI models for generating media content, is coming to Bard alongside Adobe’s free graphic design tool, Adobe Express.
My Recommendations:
My thoughts about Generative AI
In the new generative AI, Featured Snippets are not dead
Here’s an example that I spotted - a “Double” Featured Snippet
Eli Schwartz’s thoughts really resonates with me:
“Generative AI propels the Internet to the next level of search where there are no best practices and at present no way to even optimize for this search. There are no rules because the rules are written on the fly. Websites can’t optimize for the query because there is no query.”
This really moves marketers to interview their target audience to determine which topics make sense to optimize for, and I’m curious as to how the SEO tools will pivot to support this potentially new type of optimizations.
I do think that SEOs and website owners will need to diversify due to a decrease in search traffic. They will need to spend more effort on email, podcasts, and other subscription media. The new perspectives will force marketers to work more with their individual experts to create perspectives that could be optimized for this feature.?
Related topics filter for desktop results
The menu test is now live. There is no way to measure what “menu” your site might be listed under, or if your site is listed in these results.?More here.
Bing Announcements
Microsoft introduced Windows Copilot, which combines the power of Chat GPT (+ plugins) with Bing Search,?at its developer conference. Microsoft also launched?Image Creator,?a generative AI tool built into its Bing Chat chatbot, powered by OpenAI’s?DALL-E 2. You can also play around with?Microsoft’s Designer.
Bing rolled out “optimized answers”
Bing is providing featured snippet answers with images in AI. You click on the image to explore more information about the topic. Bing Chat also now allows you to export answers to PDF, text file, or Microsoft Word.
AI Updates
You don’t own the copyright to your AI images or copy
Heads up! You own the copyright on any content you create — unless you made it using generative AI. That's according to the U.S. Copyright Office.?That means others can lift and use your content. Here’s a?great summary of the ruling.
ChatGPT Updates
Technical SEO
Google will replace FID with INP as Core Web Vitals metric
FID: First Input Delay vs INP: Interaction to Next Paint.?More here.?Search Console will show the INP metric later this year.?
AVIF: New Image format
This is a royalty-free image format that has been gaining popularity. You can deploy this compression format using a range of Wordpress plugins.?More here.
Can you make your website accessible with an overlay?
This post explains why?you can’t, and why the technology has limitations.
Google rolls out x-default for hreflang documentation
The interesting part is that?x-default can help with URL discovery.
领英推荐
New Googlebot: Google-Inspection bot
Google has added a new user agent to the list of google crawlers and it’s called Google-Inspection bot. It’s the crawler used by search testing tools like Rich Results test and URL inspection. It has two full user agency strings - one for mobile and one for desktop. The?documentation is here.
Syndicated content should no longer use canonical tags
They now recommend that the syndicated site noindex the copy of your content.?More here. I love this last line in the post (as I agree):?“Can you force them to block the content from Google? I doubt it.”
Site’s quality & popularity affects Google indexing speed
Google reps recently informed SEOs that Google’s?indexing speed is impacted by quality.?According to Google’s John Mueller, content quality encompasses the overall website, including its layout, design, integration of images, and page speed. And Gary Illyes recommendation to get more indexing:?
“How fast a site is indexed depends on a bunch of things, but the most important one is the quality of the site, followed by its popularity on the internet. Once you ensure that your content is the highest quality you can possibly make, try to run some social media promos perhaps so you get people to start talking about your site. That will likely help.”
Content
New PR and Content Syndication Study
This?BuzzSumo research?is super useful as if you get coverage in a publication that news aggregators will syndicate, it will make a large impact on your organic traffic. Here are some tidbits from the study:
APA Style Guide -- How to Cite AI
Here’s the?format for citing ChatGPT.
WHO + Google?
Google announces a multi-year?collaboration agreement with WHO?to continue providing credible health-related information to help billions of people around the world respond to emerging and future public health issues.
Social Media
Meta releases a Twitter competitor
View the?leaked documents.
TikTok is rolling out an AI chatbot
The?chatbot is focused on user search & discovery?and is called Tako.
LinkedIn’s Collaborative Articles
I have been asked to participate in a variety of these, and these articles are now ranking in Google?(see this screenshot). Your responses are helping train AI. It’s an article written by AI and supplemented by quotes from experts. It helps build your exposure on both LinkedIn and Google. You can also earn a “Community top Voice badge” if your participation is high enough.?
SEO Measurement
How to fix your SEO if your organic traffic is slowly eroding
A?great post by Kevin Indig?that I’ve bookmarked and you should too.?
VIDEO: Developer’s Guide to BigQuery Export for GA4?
It includes instructions for using the sandbox, which allows you to play and test without providing a credit card.?Check it out.
GA4 Updates:
Soft Skills
The challenges of being an in-house SEO
This?article covers forecasting and tips?for how to communicate effectively internally to be successful.
Looking for Capacity-Building SEO Support?
For the first time in three years, we have the capacity for another enterprise client, as well as room for some coaching sessions. We work together to ensure your content can be found on Google, YouTube, and Bing.?
New Tools & Resources
Here are new (to me) tools that I discovered in May worth checking out:
And just because I thought it was cool. There’s a new AI tool that?designs mRNA vaccines?that are more potent and stable.
Feedback & Suggestions
Would you like to share a great resource? If you want to be featured, have a great resource, want to sponsor, or provide feedback for this newsletter, just reply to this email and let me know.
That's it for this month. I hope you enjoyed your 4th of July holiday!
Katherine