Hamsterdam Part 25: SEO News Recap (9/25-10/1, 2023)
By Ethan Lazuk
Last updated:
A weekly look-back at SEO news, tips, and other content shared on social media & beyond.
Quote source: Google Search Central (YouTube Short)
Opening notes:
West Coast edition!
This week’s Hamsterdam is brought to you from sunny (or actually partly cloudy) San Diego! My wife got a last minute request to come here for work, so we hopped aboard a plane from Orlando on Thursday morning and will be here for the next few days. As much as I love Florida, being in California has been very enjoyable as well. 🙂 I look forward to coming back here for BrightonSEO in November!
Also a special 25th edition of Hamsterdam!
I started creating these weekly recap articles for selfish reasons lol. I spend a bit of time each week scrolling SEO Twitter (as I nostalgically call it), and have much gratitude for all the SEO professionals and others who share their informational content there, on LinkedIn, and elsewhere. I often found myself referencing content I found on Twitter, whether to solve an SEO problem, confirm a piece of information, or support a recommendation given to a client or colleague. But I’d often have to go back and dig to find something, or forget about it completely. So about 25 weeks ago, I started compiling my liked tweets into articles called The Twitter Files. These became The X Files in week 15, and since week 23, when I started including other sources, it’s been called Hamsterdam.
It’s a little unfair to rank contributors to Hamsterdam, because the content included here is just what I happen to see in my feeds when scrolling for fun and decide to include. There are many great SEO posts, articles, or videos every week that I don’t see, and many smart SEOs sharing work who I might not know about or follow.
That said, I just want to give a general shoutout to the SEO community for the ongoing knowledge sharing. Personally, I’ve noticed the more I put my thoughts out there, the more comes back, both positive and critical. It’s not easy, and those who do it consistently with high levels of dedication, integrity, and quality deserve recognition, so thank you!
*Feel free to jump down to the recap, or keep reading for an introduction and summary of the week’s news!
Introduction to week 25: “Do Whatcha Wanna”
The September 2023 Helpful Content Update completed its rollout this week early on the morning of September 28th.
I know someone personally whose niche website lost over 60% of its organic traffic from Google Search. I can confirm their content was original and written by knowledgeable authors. So this isn’t to suggest that a site that got hit by the latest HCU was doing something “wrong,” per se. But it does signal a bit of a paradigm shift for what “SEO content” means, not just in the standards for quality or demonstrating E-E-A-T, but likely in the fundamental approach to how that content, and even more fundamentally its audience, is thought about.
There’s a notable post from Marie Haynes (also included below) that touches on this topic. That post has been reposted with insightful comments by several folks, some of which are also included below. (I included the post in an opinion article I’m currently working on as well about 11x content (a reimagining of 10x content for SEO).)
I call these weekly recap sections of my website’s blog Hamsterdam in homage to The Wire, my favorite show. And I like to relate each week’s news to an episode as an analogy, and include a video clip. But this week, seeing the aftermath of the HCU, the first thought I had was a scene from another HBO series that David Simon contributed to, Treme.
Do Whatcha Wanna is the season finale of season 2 of Treme. It’s a bit hard to summarize this particular episode, because the series has a lot of intersecting storylines. However, there’s one small scene that, for whatever reason, kind of encapsulated to me what we’re seeing play out on the internet today with so-called “search engine-first content,” particularly the proliferation of content using generative AI, and quality controls, such as Google’s helpful content system.
I had to dig for this clip, as it’s a bit obscure, but hopefully you enjoy it. 🙂
“People do what they want. Take what they want. And then they move on.”
– Linh’s Dad, Treme Season 2, Episode 11
Buckle up for a full week’s recap.
Just this morning, I was reading a post on X by an SEO analyzing a niche site that lost traffic. Much of the content was duplicated from other sources, with only moderate changes.
I personally never got into niche site building, so I can’t speak to the motivations. My wife and I did start a vegan site to play with a while back, but it’s not monetized or anything, and to be honest, I mostly created it because I wanted to experiment with the SEO settings in Wix lol.
I’ve always been an agency-side SEO, where my responsibility was helping websites achieve conversions for their businesses. In many cases, that involves content creation of some kind. Now, even though my direct responsibility is to the business’s website performance, the business still cares about the wellbeing of their customers and the reputation of their brand. That means, even if my work is judged partly based on search performance metrics like clicks or rankings, the motivation is still to create high-quality people-first content, because it’s by satisfying the end user, and building a sustainable model to do so in Google Search, that a business ultimately benefits the most.
But as the importance of demonstrating real expertise and experience in content only grows, so too does the motivation for SEOs and stakeholders to collaborate. In my opinion, the days of marketing teams creating content in isolation are over. Success now requires real effort and involvement from all parties. And if proof of this was ever needed for buy-in, just check the post-HCU analysis. 🙂
Summary of the week’s SEO news and content
- As mentioned above, the third update of the helpful content system completed rolling out on September 28th, which means it’s time to dig into Google Search Console! But there’s already been lots of great analysis from manual site reviews as well, some of which are mentioned below.
- Google Bard had a snafu where shareable answers were indexed, and perhaps another snafu with trying to noindex those results — I assumed it’d be a noindex and temporary removal combo, but then Glenn Gabe noticed robots.txt applied as well, and Gary Illyes commented about that general issue on LinkedIn; both included below.
- Other news in the AI sphere came from updates to SGE, the return of Browse with Bing to ChatGPT, and a couple of notable partnerships between big tech players.
But don’t just take my word for it! All of this info and more is contained below in the weekly recap.
Notes:
- If the article times out on mobile, my apologies. Please try viewing on a desktop or WiFi.
- I’ve cut back on the amount of info I include; if you’d like to see more, scrolling through my likes on X or following the people in this recap is probably the best place to start. 😉
Missed last week’s recap? Don’t worry, I got you! Read Part 24 to catch up.
Okay, time for (home)work.
Jump to a section of this week’s recap
- Top posts
- News, Google updates, & SERP tests
- SEO tips & tidbits
- Fundamentals & resources
- Articles, videos & case studies
- Local SEO
- Technical SEO
- Content marketing
- SEO tools, AI & reporting
- Humor section
- Miscellaneous & general posts
Enjoy the recap below! And please support content you find valuable with a like or follow. 🙂
Top posts
These are key news items, tips, or other content I felt were relevant to highlight for the week, particularly if you just want a quick glance.
SEO news, Google updates, & SERP tests
These are newsworthy events in the SEO world from the last week or SERP tests to be aware of.
SEJ Article (9/29): Google Rolls Out Updates To The Search Generative Experience Including Algorithm Improvements
SEO tips & tidbits
This section has actionable tips, cool tidbits, or other findings and observations that can be teaching moments.
SEO fundamentals & resources
If you’re new to SEO, this section includes essential information, concepts, or resources to learn more about.
History of Google Algorithm Updates – SEJ
Articles, videos, case studies & more
These are longer-form content shared on social.
Article by Sara Moccand-Sayegh, Kalicube: Evaluating E-E-A-T: Signals and Factors
Debugging drops in Google Search traffic – Google Search Central
Local SEO
If you’re into local Search, this section is for you!
Technical SEO
Yep, it still matters. 😉
Content marketing
What’d SEO be without content?
Tools, AI & reporting
Here’s a recap of updates to tools, and new tools, along with tips for reporting on data.
Humor
Humor is subjective; hopefully, you find these funny as well!
General Marketing & Miscellaneous
This is for great content that isn’t necessarily SEO (i.e., PPC, PR, dev, and social friends check it out!) or even marketing-specific.
TikTok Video: Lets talk turkey about client PTSD (brandbosshq)
Great job making it to the end. You rock!
Show your support for creators: If you liked any of the content shared above, please support that person by liking their post or following them. 🙂
Hungry for more? Check out the past weeks of Hamsterdam.
Or sign up for the newsletter! (Until I get the form back up and running, feel free to shoot me an email to get added to the list.)
Want to work together on your brand’s SEO?
I’m currently taking clients for SEO and content audits and strategy consulting, and soon training. You can learn more about me on my about page.
Get in touch: hit me up on social at @EthanLazuk, by text or call at 813-557-9745, or via email at ethan.lazuk@gmail.com.
Cheers!
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