🐹 Hamsterdam Part 76: Weekly SEO & AI News Recap (11/17 to 11/23, 2024)
By Ethan Lazuk
Last updated:
A weekly look-back at SEO & AI news, tips, and other content shared on social media & beyond.
Opening notes, thoughts, and musings:
- Welcome to another new week of Hamsterdam! 🐹
- I appreciate you being here, and look forward to sharing the week’s news! 🙌
- I’m in the process of migrating from X to BlueSky, so bear with me as we get a mix of content types this week.
- My wife, Dania, and I took a trip to Mount Dora today. Pretty fun little town if you ever visit Central Florida.
If you’re in a rush, hop down to the news portion. 📰
Or continue reading for two vocabulary lessons, this month in SEO history, plus an introduction.
And we’re off …
🎣 Marketing word of the week: “Lead”
A lead is a potential customer who has demonstrated interest in your product or service by engaging with your marketing efforts.
Imagine your marketing efforts are like fishing in the ocean of all potential customers. A lead is more than a nibble at the line, such as a website visit, but when someone shows genuine interest, such as filling out a form or downloading a guide.
In most instances, a lead qualifies as someone who has given you a way to contact them back, maybe by giving you their email via a newsletter or chatbot or from attending a webinar. This allows you to nurture the relationship to someone becoming a customer or client.
Since leads are highly motivated and engaged users, they are considered important for translating marketing efforts to business goals. By focusing on leads, businesses can convert interested customers, driving growth.
🤏 AI word of the week: “Loss function”
For “L” words this week, we could have gone with large language model (LLM), but I’d like to go with something a little more foundational to machine learning: loss function.
A loss function, also known as a cost function, is a mathematical way to measure how well an ML model is doing its job by quantifying the difference between the model’s predictions and the actual values.
In short, a loss function measures the error the model makes in its predictions. During training, the model adjusts its parameters to minimize loss, leading to more accurate predictions.
There are different types of loss functions, and selecting one depends on the specific task at hand.
Loss functions are important to machine learning, like in neural networks, because they guide the learning process and help measure how well a model is performing.
This month in SEO history: Google purchases YouTube
In November of 2006, Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion.
Given today’s trends in multimodal search and AI models, YouTube has become a more pivotal part of SEO strategies.
YouTube was started by three former employees of PayPal. The first video was uploaded in April of 2005.
Optimizing for YouTube is similar to creating website content. It can start with keyword research to understand what your target audience is looking for. Video elements like titles, descriptions, and tags can also be optimized, but it really comes down to the value of the content itself.
YouTube Shorts is a particularly effective medium, given the growing adoption of TikTok and short-form video consumption in general.
While I post on YouTube occasionally, I enjoy consuming music there, as well as watching video game walkthroughs.
☺️ Introduction to week 76: Satisfying content
Last week’s recap included this tweet:
As someone who went all in on using “helpful content” terminology, I believe the term “satisfying” is far better.
If we think about the goals of SEO content, it’s to answer a user’s search intent.
Maybe that content is based on a keyword, but that keyword isn’t the basis for creating the content — the user’s goal when searching the keyword is what matters.
When we think in terms of what’s satisfying vs. helpful, our mindset starts to shift.
Helpful is a long article that covers everything under the sun about a topic — the go-to pillar page.
Satisfying is a short and entertaining piece of content, likely with multimodal elements.
If we’re truly trying to create helpful content for users first, thinking about what’s satisfying is a, well, helpful way to do that.
It’s even translated into how I think about my own content, where I’ve started going much shorter.
Satisfied? 😉
Thank you for supporting Hamsterdam and the cause of SEO & AI learning. 🙏
Enjoy the vibes:
Missed last week? Don’t worry, I got you! Read Part 75 to catch up.
🌟 Other great sources of weekly SEO news:
- The SEO Weekly – Garret Sussman, iPullRank
- SEOFOMO – Aleyda Solis
- Weekly Video Recaps – Barry Schwartz, SER
- Weekly SEO News YouTube channel – Olga Zarr, Seosly
- Niche Surfer – Yoyao Hsueh
Time for our weekly review of SEO social posts, articles, & more …
⏩ Jump to a section:
- News, Google updates, & SERP tests
- SEO tips & tidbits
- Fundamentals & resources
- Articles, videos & case studies
- Local SEO
- Technical SEO
- Content marketing
- Local SEO
- Data analysis & reporting
- AI, LLMS, & machine learning
- Miscellaneous & general posts
- Older stuff that’s good!
Or keep scrolling to see it all. ⏬
Now, let’s step inside the white flags of Hamsterdam …
📰 SEO news, Google updates, SERP tests & notable posts
Notable updates or news related to Google Search or related SEO topics.
Google testing labels and icons on sitelinks in Google Search http://www.seroundtable.com/google-sitel… #google #googleuserinterface
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick.com) November 21, 2024 at 7:21 AM
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Google "People Also Search in Images" takes you from web tab to the image tab http://www.seroundtable.com/google-peopl… #google #googleuserinterface #googleimages
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick.com) November 22, 2024 at 7:32 AM
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My first time seeing an in-line link in AIO! And it points to our agency site… pretty cool. (Tbh I thought Google should have implemented this like a year ago but hey, baby steps I guess)
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyray.nyc) November 22, 2024 at 9:49 PM
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🍟 SEO tips & tidbits
Actionable tips, cool tidbits, and other snackable findings and observations that can be teaching moments.
The impact based on the manual actions for 'Site reputation abuse' is very clear now visibility-wise based on the directories getting deindexed. This was NOT just large publishers btw. There are plenty of smaller to medium-sized publishers that also had their sections nuked. #google #seo
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe.bsky.social) November 21, 2024 at 9:12 AM
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Now that Forbes appears to have been tanked by Google, will be interesting to see if this filters down to the ai bots
— Andrew Shotland (@localseoguide.com) November 21, 2024 at 10:45 AM
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🦕 SEO (and AI) fundamentals & resources
Essential information, concepts, or resources to learn about SEO or AI.
Longer-form content pieces shared on social, in newsletters, and elsewhere.
Using AI to write your content? @andy-chadwick.com wrote this actionable guide. You’ve probably read thousands of such articles about this topic but I can promise you this is the best guide you will read. http://www.keywordinsights.ai/blog/using-a…
— Suganthan Mohanadasan (@suganthan.com) November 21, 2024 at 3:22 AM
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SEO for brand visibility in LLMs by the awesome Crystal Carter, going through: * Manage the crawl * Prioritize search-augmented LLMs first * Manage your brand entities * Much more! Read: http://www.wix.com/seo/learn/re…
— Aleyda Solis (@aleyda.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 8:23 AM
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🧑💻 Technical SEO
Everything from basics to advanced moves (and also tools).
Missed my #brightonSEO talk and the slides don't make sense on their own? You're in luck! Check out a recording here youtu.be/4iNODZpPkNI?…
— Danielle Rohe (@digital-danielle.com) November 20, 2024 at 9:53 AM
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✍️ Content marketing
From what is helpful content to user journeys and beyond.
📍 Local SEO
From Google Business Profiles or reviews and more!
Today in my column at Whitespark, a guide to improving your Google Business Profile to increase engagement: whitespark.ca/blog/how-to-…
— Miriam Ellis (@miriamellis.bsky.social) November 21, 2024 at 12:17 PM
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📊 Data analysis & reporting
Showing that what you’re doing is helping.
🤖 AI, machine learning, & LLMs
News related to models, papers, and companies.
🤔 General marketing & miscellaneous
This is for great content that isn’t necessarily SEO or marketing-specific. PPC, PR, dev, design, and social friends, check it out!
💎 Older stuff that’s good!
Not everything I find worth sharing is new as of this week, so these are gems I came across published in the past.
Great job making it to the end. You rock! 🪨
🤝 Want help with your SEO strategy?
I’m an independent SEO consultant focusing on custom audits and holistic strategies for brands. Don’t hesitate to reach out, or visit my about page for more information.
Let’s connect!
Hit me up anytime via text or call at 813-557-9745 or on social or email:
Cheers! ✌️
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