Gemma Lawrence

Travel Blogger | Solo Traveler for 10 years | British Expat living in Canada I Content Creator | Award Winning @iabcbc President

[Gemma Lawrence @ThisBritsLife]

Let’s be friends!

Blog: https://t.co/DAKD9vvcgB
IG: https://t.co/CzZaZ5Y7Sr
FB: https://t.co/DkuvyDr9k1 and https://t.co/3Alak6Dsuy
Twitter: @ThisBritsLife @Gemstars81
Pinterest: https://t.co/CXfeAlfoLH
Join my list: https://t.co/VlmivX0NKD

[Matt Diggity @mattdiggityseo]

SEO should now be IGNORED as a traffic channel. 

Google’s algorithm says if you’re not:

1️⃣ A mega-authoritative website (DR90+)
2️⃣ Reddit or other partner with a back office deal
3️⃣ A paid advertiser 

… you’re not allowed in the search results. 

It doesn’t matter if you’ve traveled the world and wrote years of first-hand experience on your travel blog.  Travel advice belongs to AI and SGE.  

Travel bloggers and other such little people were not surprised when the Google leak revealed their own special ranking factor for being a “small website”. 

Similarly, it doesn’t matter if you’ve bought and tested 100s of air purifiers for your review website. That’s now Forbes' job to recommend subpar products. 

The Google leak also showed the importance of domain authority, something that was always denied by Google reps.

That said, despite all this, I still have hope.  I actually feel for Google right now.

They’ve never seen such a barrage of concurrent threats:

🔥 The anti-trust cases
🔥 The search algorithm leak
🔥 Social media taking market share
🔥 LLMs taking market share 
🔥 And a general agreement that Google results are getting worse.

All of this gives me hope that Google will fix the current state of the algorithm.

Not because they feel it's the right thing.

But because they’ll be forced to.  Else they’ll lose even more market share.

[Nina Clapperton (She Knows SEO) @NinaClapperton]

10 Key Takeaways from the Google Algo Leak:
1. Create For Users, Not For Google
2. User Experience is King
3. Get the Right Type of Links
4. SEOs Got it Wrong
5. Testing Matters Most
6. Track Your Content Like Google Does
👇

[Alek Asaduryan @Ldnbox]

I spent most of yesterday reading about the leaked Google Search API documents.

Wow!

Here are the top 14 findings for me 👇

[Charles Floate 📈 @Charles_SEO]

Quotes directly from Google engineers (John Mueller & Gary Illyes) that the recent Google leaks completely contradict:
- "Customer Reviews Not A Signal For Web Search" - John
- "We don't really have "overall domain authority"." - Gary
- "There is no sandbox" - John
- "Using clicks directly in ranking would be a mistake" - Gary
- "If you weren't buying links, don't disavow" - John
- "No ranking factor compensates missing relevance, or missing user interest." - John
- "user engagement is not a Search Ranking Factor." - John
- "I think people overestimate the importance of links. I don’t agree it’s in the top three. It hasn’t been for some time.” - Gary
- "Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search." - John

[Niche Site Lady @NicheSiteLady]

Yikes!

[Hridoy Reh @hridoyreh]

Google Search algorithm leaked today.

It outlines 2,596 modules with 14,014 ranking features related to various Google services.

Here's what (13 things) we found:

[Gael Breton @GaelBreton]

2023:

Google -> The place where I go for reliable info
TikTok -> The place where I go for entertainment

2024:

Google -> The place where I go for entertainment
TikTok ->The place where I go for "reliable" info

🤷‍♂️

[Casie Gillette @Casieg]

I'm bummed I've missed these games!

[Mic King @VeryWellVersed]

Not only are AI Overviews bad, but they are actively eroding trust in Google. 🤷🏾‍♂️

https://t.co/16Dezcfxrj

[Brodie Clark @brodieseo]

Google is now running a test that allows forums such as Reddit to take up much more space in search results. The test extends upon the sitelink treatment, allowing upvotes/comments to appear alongside answers from users. More variations of this test: https://t.co/8Cm8sE0hsO

[Lily Ray 😏 @lilyraynyc]

Throwback Thursday.

I think about this article a lot.

https://t.co/LuW6BvzFJD

[Lily Ray 😏 @lilyraynyc]

So it’s become very popular lately for everyone to blame SEO for all the problems on the internet.

The main problem I have with this is that I think many of these people don’t even know what SEO is or what we do… and so many people are conflating SEO with spam.

They don’t realize there is an entire industry of professionals whose job it is to actually improve the overall experience on the internet.

The things Google & Bing advise site owners to do to for their businesses to be discoverable are not just things that happen automatically. They require a lot of hard work.

Here are some things SEOs work on daily:

➕ we help make websites faster and easier to use

➕ we deal with the fact that 60% of the pages Google crawls are technically duplicates (2022 statistic) and try to consolidate accordingly

➕we are constantly cleaning up and removing low quality, spammy, outdated, useless content from search results

➕ we connect consumers with the actual products and services they’re looking for (believe me, this wouldn’t just miraculously happen on its own. You should hear the things some companies want to name their products 😂)

➕ when a company changes domain names, we make that transition as seamless as possible so searchers can easily find that company’s content

➕ we make images, videos, products, and jobs actually discoverable in search results

➕ we maintain businesses in Maps results, like ensuring hours of operation, phone numbers, addresses etc. are up to date

➕ we help prevent companies from accidentally removing stuff from search results (happens literally all the time)

➕we help companies put their best foot forward, digitally

This stuff doesn’t just happen on its own.

SEO and spam are two different things.

And yeah, SEO is most certainly not dead. Companies need to keep appearing in search results. The internet would fall apart without SEO.

[Team Blogger @_TeamBlogger]

Welcome to today’s blog share! Drop your links below for a RT and remember to like, comment and share other blogs #TeamBlogger #WritingCommunity #Writerslift

[Team Blogger @_TeamBlogger]

Welcome to today’s blog share! Drop your links below for a RT and remember to swap likes, comments and shares #TeamBlogger #WritingCommunity #Writerslift

[Gizory @GizoryHQ]

5 Best Strategies to Rank Your Blog in Local Searches #Blogging #SEO #Business
https://t.co/EXzl6on4XO

[Nina Clapperton (She Knows SEO) @NinaClapperton]

Let's remember Feb isn't the only month to support black creators. Just like June isn't the only time to support queer creators.
Hire, recommend, and support diverse creators 365 (or 366!) days a year <3

[Nina Clapperton (She Knows SEO) @NinaClapperton]

1. Arielle Phoenix - Programmatic SEO
2. Nadalie Bardo - Pinterest
3. Chris Myles - SEO
4. Danielle Desir Corbett - Podcasting
5. Ciara Johnson - Solo travel blog
6. Dani (danicaSnelson) - Travel and finance blog

[Nina Clapperton (She Knows SEO) @NinaClapperton]

It's Black History Month <3
Let's hype some of the amazing black people in the SEO/blogging/travel space. Feel free to add more to this list! It's by no means exhaustive:

[Avni Barman @avnibarman_]

Every day before I get out of bed, I cold message two new people that I admire. It never takes me more than 5 minutes. I've been doing this every morning for years, and it has gotten me:

- 4 internships
- my first full time PM job
- my first investor in my business
- a self-made female billionaire to fly me out to her office for a private meeting
- 3 new best friends
- an invitation to an exclusive founder retreat sponsored by Nike
- and my first five-figure brand deal!

Curious to see what a cold message like this looks like? DM me and I’ll send it to you!

[Team Blogger @_TeamBlogger]

Welcome to today’s blog share! Drop your links below for a RT and don’t forget to like, comment and share other blogs #TeamBlogger #WritingCommunity #Writerslift