Is Chasing Google Updates Good SEO?

Should we chase the latest Google update or keep everything the same and hold the line. 

We all know Google never rests. Google is constantly evolving and adapting to present the best information possible for its customers (searchers). These changes are a byproduct of analyzing mountains of data and user behavior. 

Now the question becomes, Google just rolled out a new update, will this affect my ranking positively, negatively or not at all?

Chris Bonney & Zach Wilson take a deep Google-dive to help you determine whether or not you should or should not react to changes that affect the signals and algorithm.

Opinions on Google's new SERP UI changes. Our take, Google isn't as altruistic as they once were. The UI changes will likely produce some significant upticks in CTR for Paid media, however, once users adapt their eyes and behaviors, things will normalize.

Transcript

Chris Bonney: 0:09

Hey everybody, and welcome to episode three of web marketing insights here at Gulo Solutions. I'm Chris Bonney here with one of the founders of Gullo, Zach Wilson, uh, doing our podcast thing. Again, today's podcast is about Google and the changes that they make and should we chase them down and try to remedy everything we see wrong once an update comes or do we keep things, you know, the same and, and hold the line. So that's what we want to talk about today. Um, Zach, I think this is a great topic. A couple of things that are going on right now. Uh, just sort of on the side is that we know Google never rests and they are, uh, just recently made a change to the, um, results page to emulate a little more what the mobile experience looks like, uh, with their icons, favicons and all those kinds of things. Do you have anything before we jump into the main topic today? Do you have anything you want to say about that or do you have any thoughts about that or what should we as marketers be concerned about? Because this is happening? Anything in particular or is it just cosmetic?

Zach Wilson: 1:14

Yeah, I think they're, uh, I think sadly, uh, I think they're trying to, uh, blend the overarching goal is the trying to blend paid section a little bit better, uh, with organic. I think that's on unfortunately the, um, the underlying evilness of this. But, uh, and I've, I've tried to bend. I've, I've been trying to process it visually and reading people's responses. And it's interesting because, uh, generally speaking, I would say generally speaking, people like it. I like it visually. However, um, I think from, because it's a drastic change, there's, there, there is some, uh, visual processing that Google customers searchers are going to have to go through before they're, before they can like process, Oh, I'm looking at an ad, you know, versus like the little ad icon versus you know, something organic and just, and that, that's going to take a little bit of time. That's for users and, and I am, my theory is that Google is probably gonna be a bit of a spike and I'm in there just paid a click throughs because of this change. And over time that will probably flatten out and stabilize. But yeah, I mean I, I like it. I I like I said, I, I I'm, there was a, I don't know if you remember this or not, but there was a trend, uh, Google in Chrome and it's sort of still there but there and an Apple, they are trying to like abstract away from URLs, you know, making everything, you know, just showing your, your primary domain and I don't know, as a sort of truest and technology person, I was just thought this is generally a terrible idea, terrible movement altogether. So them bringing, uh, keeping the, the URL in the syrup, number one and, and even more importantly, which is interesting, it's, it's now above the title, right? So it used to be title URL and the title or the URL was, was pretty secondary. And even for me, I didn't always look at the URL, but now they've, now they've brought it up and, and I, I'm noticing myself, look at that, actually read this from top down in the URL. It's probably, I was thinking about the other end, it's like favicon, URL, title, um, which I'm not sure what the thinking is behind that, but for me, I, I like it. That's good. What about you? Yeah,

Chris Bonney: 4:02

yeah. No, I, I agree with you. I think it's always just interesting to see. I mean, they're, they don't do anything without thinking it through or having research to back it. And sometimes people love things, sometimes they don't or they have their own reasons for it. Um, but, um, yeah, I'm with you. I will see where it goes from here. I'm sure it's not the last thing they'll ever change. Um, but I think it's just interesting as a, it just in general, it's just becoming more and more about mobile, right. Where they seem to be leading things through on mobile and then seeing how that relates to desktop. So they really do seem to have a mobile first, um, you know, with amp and everything else. I mean, it's very much a mobile first mentality there, which I think is, and again, probably pretty smart. So that's sort of my, my 2 cents on it. Um, but

Zach Wilson: 4:47

yeah, I was just going to say, so just segwaying, how does this relate to not, not making changes? Yeah. Like change or the matter whether you like it. What are we not going to chase after in and in light of this? Uh, yeah, probably not much, but I would say sure. Uh, from a SERP perspective, make sure, uh, the, the front end programmers are, are, uh, fave icons are, are, are represented and brand and aligned with the brand. And that's a, that's a big, uh, that could be a big fo Paul right now, that's for sure.

Chris Bonney: 5:26

And they don't say a D on them. Um,

Zach Wilson: 5:29

so if your company's name is a D something, be careful. Maybe that was, yeah. Yeah. That's funny. That's a good one. I like that.

Chris Bonney: 5:43

Um, so yeah, I mean, I, you know what some of the, the impetus and some of the inspiration for today's podcast came from, we recently spoke at the American marketing association and did and talk to over the course of the night. What do we talk to? Maybe 50, 60, 70, probably. And we've talked specifically about, um, uh, SEO and CRO, but mostly SEO. And I thought a couple interesting takeaways. There were one, we were talking to a lot of marketers, that's who everybody there was. And when you ask them to raise their hand to say, ah, who is actively participating on their website and, and, and cognizant of and modifying for search engine optimization, uh, you would think every hand in the house would go up, but it didn't. So I mean, I think that tells us something about still in 2020, um, the state of marketing. Now, they weren't all digital marketers in the room in fairness to them, but it just feels like as a marketer in general, SEO just should be, it's something that you're always thinking about or talking about or raising your hand for a, again, anecdotal information. But I did find that sort of interesting. Um,[inaudible] you know, for what that's worth, but regardless of who raised their hand or didn't, they were all very intrigued by some of the things that we've talked about. And I think the one thing that makes people a little uneasy about SEO is that it is always changing. They don't know what's in this black box. They don't know how to address it. They don't really maybe know all the things they need to know to, to, to kind of get in the game or speak confidently about it. Maybe they didn't want to raise their hand cause they thought they'd have to speak about it and didn't know. But one of the things is, and that's what we want to talk about today, is we always hear about these Google updates and what as SEOs should we be doing to our content when that happens. So, um, we have a couple thoughts about that. Um, but you want to just give sort of the overview that you gave at AMA about this that said, um, when this happens, here's kind of our philosophy, at least at Google. At Google.

Zach Wilson: 7:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Well, I think the overarching ideas and philosophies that we have are, uh, our just insured is, don't you know, don't chase, don't chase Google. Don't chase takes an algorithm, algorithm updates. Um, and what does that, what does that mean? One, uh, which connects to a, another, a podcast we had about the search engine, land periodic table of elements and, and follow, follow your core best practices, right? Number one, not so, so that's, that's, that's always going to be number one best practices. Don't try and scheme and don't try and game a and number two, uh, goals, right? Like what are your, what are your, what are your industry goals? What are your directives from, um, the board or your leadership or whoever, uh, you have, what are those goals and what are you trying to achieve? And make sure that your, uh, your, your organic search and your on-page are aligned with those goals. Um, so that, that's, that's, that's number two. And um, I think the also is, is the idea of, of, of if you are, if you are trying to respond, respond to certain things. For example, we just talked about the UI, uh, the UI update, right? Like there's a UI update. Everybody saw it, came out, saw come out, um, slow where you were in the queue. Uh, sure. But I think like, you know, what, what, what does it mean to respond to an update? Like the example that we both gave about the fave icon. Oh, you know, my, my agency or my department where our fav icon is missing or wrong or using the default or whatever default WordPress theme or whatever your default theme, whatever. Right? Like that's there. That, that's, that's, that's not responding. That's not, that's, that's not chasing, that's responding. Right. So yeah, that's, that's something that like as these, and another great one was like, uh, H SSL, HTTPS. You know, there was, this was a couple of years ago. This is, uh, they may, they PO, they made a, uh, there was a lot of theories about the changes and the priority of that. And again, it was like, you know, a lot, we had a lot of people that hadn't actually flipped over to having their site default to HTTPS or, um, you know, they had any, uh, HTTP and HTTPS. Again, this is like a response, not a chase. So what's, um, what would be, what would be an example of, uh, of, of, uh, of, of a chasing? Uh, I'm trying to think of actually an, uh, an example of chasing something that's happened recently. Um, maybe it was, uh, I, I guess, well, one more good example. I actually just read, which came out yesterday, which was another example of, um, I guess this would be chasing or responding, but like, um, versus responding, which was around structured data, there was, um, there was the thread that someone said they got an alert from Google that said, um, you know, if you don't include, uh, it was a food blog. If you don't include, uh, ingredients and calorie information in turn in your structured data, you risk not being index. So the idea was the idea was, Oh my gosh, you know, as a, it's how important is structured data? And people were theorizing that, you know, uh, structured data is, is actually not even, uh, not even a, a signal or a factor in ranking. And so, so the idea is the idea is now that, okay, there's all this stuff in the ecosystem floating around. Again, tests versus theories, verse actual practices, but some people are like, well, I'm not going to, I'm not going to add structured data. Terrible idea, terrible idea. That's the, you know, Google uses like, and would we just stop including structured data for our clients and for people as a core SEO best practice? Absolutely not. Because even if it's not a signal, um, or it doesn't increase your ranking, it helps. It helps you have accurate data in terms of, uh, in terms of your syrup and how that data is represented and knowledge panels and ratings and locations,[inaudible], GMB and, um, product ranking, uh, product reviews and product counts and all of this, all of this stuff that goes into the, uh, into the underlying structure data. So, um, so yeah, so that's an a, I would say that's another, uh, that's, that's just another little anecdotal, um, nugget in terms of, uh, in terms of chasing versus,

Chris Bonney: 12:58

yeah, bonding. Well is it, is it fair to say too that, I mean there's two aspects of what we're reacting to here, right? One is to say, Oh my gosh, what did Google just do? Where did my ranking go? What can I do to replace it? It's not to invalidate the fact that sometimes Google makes a change and it does affect your ranking pretty significantly, right? People are going out of business for this, right? So it's not to say it's not a valid thing to consider when it happens to you, especially in a bad way, but it probably is more of a signal that what you were doing before that was something that Google probably frowned upon in some way. And the update, what suppressed you a little bit. Now if you do bubble back up, then it means that you are on the right track all any way and you just had to ride and ride the storm out. But talk a little bit about, so the Google update happens. We don't want to panic. That's what we're saying. Just just see where things go and give it a little bit of time. But when do we want to make a change? Because if we're not responding to the Google updates, then we're tracking our analytics and we're tracking our rankings over time. And can you just talk a little bit about that? Like what, uh, okay. Let's not chase that. Let's not make a change because of the algorithm change, but how do we know when we get to our rankings and look at where we're at? How do we know that we've stalled out? What if it starts going down a little bit and it had nothing to do with, with an update, you know, can you just talk a little bit about that? If we're just setting aside the updates, when should somebody think about making a change twice a year, three times a year, once every five years. Just anecdotally. What's just a[inaudible]?

Zach Wilson: 14:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great, that's a great question. And typical SEO response is a totally depends. Um, but that, that being said, I would say you've got to, uh, you've got to look at a large swath of time, a large snapshot time. You know, what is depending on the volatility of your industry, that could be three months. It could be a year. Um, uh, I, you know, for example, we did, you did a, uh, a voice, uh, search, uh, blog post and, uh, a bunch of work on that. I would say that's, that's probably something in that we should keep an eye on in a shorter time span because that's, that's an emerging, that's an emerging topic. It's pretty new. It's trending upward. Whereas, you know, if we're talking about, um, some something, uh, I don't know, like, uh, something in the medical medical research. Sure, sure. Uh, you know, some sort of virus or a best practice for medical, something that's, that's, that's got some like flu or something, right? Like it's something that's been been been in, in the ecosystem since the advent of time. Right? Like that you've got to look at a VAR, a larger, much larger swath of time to make, uh, an assessment and the assessment, what's the assessment based on? To answer your question, it's overall trend. You know, if you're looking at something and it's, it's like this, but it's, it's the, the trend is, is, is either flat or, you know, just a little bit up or a little bit down. Do we play with that? I probably wouldn't, you know, if you're, if you're trending, if you're, if you're looking at, you know, a year or two years and you've got a pretty, uh, obvious downward trend, um, it's time to, it's time to either, you know, apply a rewrite, um, do some, uh, reapply your keyword research, um, something, something like that. So, uh, that's, that's how I would look at it. Okay.

Chris Bonney: 16:44

Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. And, uh, what, uh, what are the last is, is we think about wrapping up here, just quickly, what are the last, what are the tenants that were saying about not chasing? Do we have, you know, the top three things to consider here, um, that people can take away so they feel confident and comfortable knowing that they don't need to, don't need to chase.

Zach Wilson: 17:07

Okay. Yeah.

Chris Bonney: 17:12

I think we talked about, um, making sure, number one, we understand our goals. Uh, what you're trying to achieve, correct. Number two, um, Google can be wrong, right? So we don't want to, uh, overcompensate and give them, you know, just continue to chase, chase that, um, and just, you know, make sure we're following the best SEO best practices from the beginning. Like you said. Um, it can be difficult to, uh, understand why, why things, uh, based on an update. But, uh, if we're following the tried and true best practices of SEO, then, um, you know, then we should be in pretty good shape. So, uh, with that. Okay. All right. So is there anything else you want to add to that or what do you think?

Zach Wilson: 18:06

No, I, I think, uh, in the, in the Google can be wrong vein. Um, just so we do that justice, uh, from a, uh, a topic perspective, I think the, the, the takeaway there is, uh, is, is, we always talk about this is there's, Google is constantly running tests constantly, right? And so if you see, you know, these big jumps or you see from a ranking perspective from 99 to one or your appearance and, um, local or knowledge panel or featured snippets or whatever, this is why, like this is why we don't want to chase. You've got to, you've got to look just similar to your earlier question. It's like you've got to look at the staying power of those things. And you know, if you, if you appeared in the knowledge panel for just a couple of days and you're like, well, you know, why, why did I get out? And you try and do some response. You're not going to, there were some, there were some tests that the knowledge panel team was running that you were part of and you popped in, they did some AB testing and you popped out and things have normalized. That test may come back if it's a good test. Um, and Google might've been right or, you know, there was a hypothesis underlying hypothesis that they were testing and it was wrong. Right. So, uh, so again, just, you know, going back to best practices, uh, stay on track with their, you know, stay true to your goals and whatever you're trying to accomplish. And, um, and just, and, and overall you are who your agency or your internal team. You know, you do have to pay attention to this stuff. You do have to stop on. Uh, you do have to stay on top of it. And, um, and don't chase Google updates.

Chris Bonney: 20:03

Yeah. Perfect. Okay, great. Well, we always enjoy talking with everybody about SEO. This is our third episode in our series though, will be more coming soon. Look forward to that. We're going to have a group podcast coming up very soon. We're going to be talking about digital marketing. We'll talk about CRO, SRO, all the things that are part of our digital marketing toolkit and our toolbox. So, uh, look forward to, uh, having you guys join us again real soon. Um, I'm Chris Bonney with Zach Wilson from Gullo and this is our web marketing insights. Odcast. Thanks for joining us. Hi everybody. Thanks for checking out the podcast today. Uh, go to gulosolutions.com to learn more about us. Subscribe to our newsletter. Uh, also, if you can hit subscribe on our channel here on YouTube, uh, that would be great as well.