Episode 57 Facebag

Theory of Content

We’re back for the second week in a row. Are you surprised? Well get ready because we have lots to talk about.

Apart from Joshua’s run in with his HOA, your hosts’ past trauma with geese, and some of their weekly recipes, Amber and Joshua have got some important advice regarding the SEO for your website.

Joshua explains how a category page can be used to showcase events without having to worry about outdated information or constantly updating the same article. He also utilizes a catchy tune, “Google’s not a person, Google can’t get confused” to dispel any worry you might be having due to COVID-19 changing your blog content.

Amber and Joshua suggest ways to use this time to diversify your posts in the case of a future event that would divert users away from your content type. As Amber says, “There’s a lot of conversation around nich-ing down to grow very quickly but this is the other side of that,” referring to unforeseeable events like the current pandemic.

As the episode concludes, Joshua and Amber explain how to categorize content on your site to build a hierarchical model of content, however, this does not mean you are placing more importance on some posts rather than others. They also advise not worrying about competing with yourself, because in some cases it is not unusual to dominate one search term. Lastly, your hosts take questions about what it means if Pinterest is one of the top search results for a given term, and whether it is risky to alter a number one post if the change will improve user experience.

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Facebag:

Pam Robinson Stultz | Housewives of Frederick County

Hi everybody! Amber & Joshua, I’m loving your podcast and look forward to having chunks of time in my car to listen to you guys! You are both a wealth of information! My twin sister and I blog at www.housewivesoffrederickcounty.com.

We are a lifestyle website but also focus a lot on hyperlocal in our awesome town of Frederick, Maryland. My question is, if I were to do a “free things to do in Frederick this weekend” blog post and update it each week, is it okay SEO-wise to update the publish date on a weekly basis?

I used to write these posts years ago and they were really popular. At that time, I would publish a brand new post each week. But then I had a ton of outdated content.

I ended up deleting all of the old posts. So I’m hoping that just updating the same post each week is a better option. Thanks so much and keep doing what you do!

Denise Zacharia Wright | My Life Cookbook

I’ve noticed this with a few older posts. In “Search Console,” when comparing my last 3 months to the previous year, my click-through rate went up, my position went up, but my impressions are down drastically. What does that mean? Any thoughts?

Kathryn Anne | Wandering Bird

Ok…. my entire blog is travel & road trips in Europe. I can either sit in bed and sob for a month (with wine, of course) OR I can try to pivot into things we’ve also done, like downsizing, budgeting, homeschooling, and things to do when you can’t travel.

HOWEVER… my concern is that I’ll confuse Google. Right now, I rank really well for several big terms and most of my traffic is from Google. If I try and pivot for a while, will that break it?

Any thoughts? I’m not sure what to do and don’t want to make it worse!!

Katie Price Webster | Healthy Seasonal Recipes

Hi Katie from Healthyseasonalrecipes.com here. I have a question about best practices for internal linking.

I know it is important to link internally to related content on my site to help Google understand the hierarchy of the content. But… does that mean I am always supposed to link reciprocally between two posts?

When I wrote this Roasted Parsnip post, I linked to this Mashed Carrots and Parsnips recipe. Should I also go back to that mashed carrots and parsnips post and add a link to the roasted parsnips? If they link to each other, how does this show a hierarchy?

When I read about it on Yoast they say, “On your site, you might have blog posts that are quite similar. If, for example, you write a lot about SEO, you could have multiple blog posts about site structure, each covering a different aspect. Consequently, Google won’t be able to tell which of these pages is the most important, so you’ll be competing with your own content for a high ranking in Google. You should let Google know which page you think is most important. You need a good internal linking and taxonomy structure to do this, so all those pages can work for you, instead of against you.”

Thanks so much! Looking forward to hearing about this and any more tidbits you can share regarding internal linking!

Seng Nickerson | Sengerson.com

Often, when I’m searching for phrases to rank for, if Quora or Pinterest shows up in the top five results, I know there’s not a lot of good content around it, so it’s a key term I’ll probably target. However, more recently, I’ve noticed key phrases that I think have really good content are also showing Pinterest as 3rd or 4th. Is Google placing more Pinterest pages as search results on the first page?

Kelli Shallal | Hungry Hobby

I have a recipe that’s going crazy. Highest traffic I’ve seen in forever. It currently sits number 1 for its search term which is being hit heavy right now. It’s a bread recipe. Right now, the video in the recipe is for the original recipe I adapted it from (a sweeter version.)

I just filmed a new video specific to this recipe. The question is, if the post is number one, should I be cautious about switching out the video or will that not matter that much? This post is driving a ton of traffic so the last thing I want to do is knock it out of the number one spot. Thoughts? Leave the “similar recipe” video or switch it out to the newly filmed actual recipe.

Right now the “close alternative recipe” is placed using the MV plugin right above the recipe card. Apparently, I did not embed the code into WP Recipe Maker like I usually do. So, it would be switching the video via the plugin and adding the embed code to WP Recipe Maker. My initial thoughts are this shouldn’t jar things, but I figured I’d ask first. Since touching number one posts is usually no Bueno.

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