EPISODE #11

Surviving Google Updates with Marie Haynes

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Thanks for joining us for the 11th installment of the Marketing Microscope Podcast!

In this episode, Taral and Manish join me to chat about Google updates and E-A-T Score with Dr. Marie Haynes, SEO specialist and Google recovery expert.

Marie HaynesOriginally a veterinarian, Marie’s passion for SEO started as a hobby. She would periodically analyze the results of Google algorithm updates to put the pieces together. Fast forward to the present day and she now owns her own SEO agency, Marie Haynes Consulting Inc.

In what was a HUGE career accomplishment, Marie had a post on E-A-T and core updates published by Google – something the search engine giant rarely does! You can read the full post here.

To kick off the show, I ask Marie what business owners and SEO specialists can do if they wake up to find a massive drop in search rankings. Spoiler: It’s probably not as bad as you think!

We then discuss some key strategies for adapting around Google updates, the symptoms to look for, as well as when (and when not) to be concerned.

As I pass the ball off to Taral, we get some good insights on Google Penalties and Filters, as well as the key differences between them. The conversation shifts to disavowing links and some best practices/tools for doing so.

To wrap up the first segment, we ask Marie about issues with duplicate content in the e-commerce space: it’s much more prevalent than you might assume!

Marie gives us an interesting tidbit about duplicate content being more or less inevitable in e-commerce, especially if many vendors sell the same product. From here, she outlines some of the ways e-commerce businesses can get their pages to stand above the rest (and get ranked accordingly!

After the intermission, we dive right into the thick of E-A-T score and get Marie’s take on the complicated (and ambiguous) matter.

We get into the weeds on how Marie believes Google takes E-A-T into account when ranking author profiles, business pages, and transactional pages, as well as how to abide by the rules!

To segue into Google’s official Core Algorithm Update Guidance, written by Danny Sullivan, I ask Marie to help us expand on the 4 question areas to assess content quality:

  • Content and quality questions
  • Expertise questions
  • Presentation and production questions
  • Comparative questions

From here, we talk about how to factor these concepts into building pages and what elements should be included.

As the show comes to a close, we touch on trending SEO topics like Google update rollbacks, how young SEOs can master link building, and rules to live by in the career field.

For parting words, Marie gives us some fantastic advice on what to do in the face of a big Google update (to avoid a panic attack).

This Marketing Microscope episode is definitely one of the longer ones we’ve produced and is jam packed full of killer insight!

Trust us, you don’t want to miss it!

For reference on Google’s Quality Raters’ Guidelines, click the link for this awesome resource put together by Marie and her team!

For more episodes of The Marketing Microscope, be sure to check out our website, as well as our profiles on Stitcher!