Lily Ray 😏
@lilyraynyc
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SEO by day | DJ by night
New York City
Joined April 2009
It was such a pleasure to have this little #SEO chat with @g33konaut and ask a lot of the questions about content that my clients have asked me over the years. Thanks for having me, Martin and @googlewmc!. Hope you enjoy the video 😍.
🤔 Is more content better for SEO? 🤔. @g33konaut and @lilyraynyc dive 🤿 into:.📄 new content vs updating existing content.📄 grouping & content consolidation.📄 auto-generated content. and much more. on 👻 SEO Mythbusting 👻 today!. 📺 Watch here →
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My jaw actually dropped. @wilreynolds showed 3 examples of black doctors/nurses where Google’s Vision AI rated the image as 70%+ “Street Fashion” despite them literally wearing scrubs . When he painted the nurses white, it switched to “Formal wear” . Truly unbelievable. #mozcon
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I've been using GPT-3 to write my regex commands to filter GSC page data and it's a game changer. This is just a basic example but it works with much more complex commands, too:
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Hi all,. I've reached a point where I need to turn off DMs here for a bit (outside of those I follow). My heart is beyond broken for all the site owners and businesses who have been crushed by Google in recent months. I'm literally losing sleep from all of this. I see all of.
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Wow. I think this might be one of the coolest SEO applications for ChatGPT I've found so far. Turn on the plugin Link Reader. Ask it to generate a specific type of Schema for you based just on the URL and the content on the page. And voila, it instantly works. And validates.
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- Export all GSC query and page traffic for 12 months . - Create pivot table that shows highest traffic keywords . - Add a column for how many distinct URLs are driving traffic for that query . High traffic / low URL count = often big SEO opportunities . (1/2).
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As much as I love doing SEO for medium/large brands, there's nothing quite like speaking on the phone with a small business owner who legitimately needs help. Reminds you that SEO isn't just a job; it's a skill that can greatly improve other people's lives 🙏🏽.
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The problem with everyone using the same SEO keyword research tools is that everyone ends up writing the same content.
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These are the sites with the greatest % declines in Google SEO visibility between September 4, 2023 and April 22, 2024 (@Sistrix data). Gee, notice anything totally obvious, or is it just me?. Sorry to anyone who works on any of these sites, I know a lot of you are seeing this. I
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Prediction: next Google core update is going to come with a vengeance for mass-autogenerated (*cough* AI) content.
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Forgive my attitude lately, but when you continue to get dozens of messages, daily, from people absolutely panicking about losing their livelihoods and everything they’ve built for years, it gets to you. And no, it’s not just small niche bloggers. It’s not just people who took.
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Well, after 5 consecutive years with the title "SEO Director," I'm excited to announce that I finally have a new one:. Senior Director, SEO & Head of Organic Research at @PathInteractive. 🤓🥂.
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SEOs writing articles explaining what content is considered helpful or unhelpful - before the helpful content update rolls out - is the definition of unhelpful content.
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@jodikantor @TroyEricG What a badass! My grandmother is also a Holocaust survivor who will be vaccinated in the next week or two here in NYC. It’s insane to think how much they have seen in one lifetime.
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One cool thing about SEO is that two different SEO professionals can audit the same page, find completely different things, and both be right.
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Obviously not surprised, but wouldn't it be nice if @sundarpichai mentioned a single sentence or idea related to:. - The extreme devastation (or they could frame it as 'improvements') Google search has caused thousands, if not millions of websites, with recent algorithm updates.
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Mi hermano. I prayed all day and night for 20 days but I guess it wasn’t enough. There is nothing short and sweet that I can say, because I could write entire books about you. I love you more than anything @hamletbatista. I will never forget you as long as I live.
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Probably a controversial opinion, but I think the debate over what is/is not a confirmed Google SEO ranking factor is getting old. Google clearly doesn’t publicly confirm most of its ranking factors. IMO, if it’s good for users, you should treat it like it a ranking factor.
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I consider this a really big win for SEO. I expect CTR to positions 10+ is going to increase a lot… scrolling is a lot easier than clicking a link to page 2 and waiting for a new page to load.
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Wow, huge news. Google confirms that various user engagement signals will become official ranking factors in 2021, such as:. - mobile-friendliness.- load time.- safe-browsing.- stability of content.- HTTPS.- intrusive interstitials. h/t @glenngabe.
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1 of my favorite SEO tips that I'll share with the world because I'm feeling generous 😏. Meta descriptions are not a ranking factor, but they can be leveraged for SEO in other ways:. Try adding them to category pages as article/product thumbnail snippets = instant unique content
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Google (8/1/18): this site sucks.Google (9/27/18): yeah this site really sucks.Google (3/12/19): this site rules!.Google (7/22/19): never mind this site sucks.Google (9/25/19): yep this site definitely sucks
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Imagine if SEO Twitter were an environment where people feel they could ask questions without prefacing them with “this may be a stupid question but,” or “I should already know this, but,”. No. One. Knows. Everything. About. SEO. (2/2).
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Today is a pretty big milestone of a birthday for my dad, @GlennFaden!. People always ask me how I got into tech/SEO. the real answer is it would have never happened without my dad, truly an OG tech nerd. My dad was a Silicon Valley software engineer starting in the 1980s at
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1. export HTML URLs from GSC Crawl Stats.2. run those URLs through the URL Inspection API using @screamingfrog @sitebulb or any other tool with that integration.3. check "coverage" section for URLs G is recently crawling but not indexing. ➡️ instant way to identify quality issues
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The unintended consequence of adding FAQ schema. It looks so pretty in the SERP. but where did all our traffic go? 🙄. #seo #structureddata #schema #google
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I can’t even imagine how overwhelming it must be to start learning SEO right now. 😳😳. When I started, there were only a couple of trusted resources and forums. Now it feels like the entire internet is flooded with SEO advice. And much of it is mediocre/straight up bad….
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Ladies and gentlemen, all the world’s knowledge, combined with the power of AI and one Reddit troll.
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Wow. identified an issue causing a site to not perform in Discover, developed a theory to fix it and not only is the theory working, but the site has now hit its highest Discover traffic yet. I <3 this stuff. Will likely spend a lot of 2024 speaking & writing about this topic.
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A summary of most #SEO meetings:. Client: but how long until it works? .SEO: a long time. Client: but we don’t have a long time. SEO: then it’s not going to work. (Repeat indefinitely).(…While things continue to get worse).
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Because the whole world is hiring SEOs right now, here's a quick thread with some tips about hiring the right (intermediate) SEO for your business and not getting burned:. (FWIW, hiring has been a big part of my role for 9 years now, so I think I've seen it all. good and bad😝).
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At this point yeah it’s officially out of control.
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What makes good SEO great? . The part that comes after the technical checklist has been completed, after the pages have been optimized, and the client asks, “what now?”. That’s the part that can’t always be taught - the creative & strategic side of SEO.
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I’m not one to obsess over follower count, but 100k feels like a pretty big milestone. Thanks to those of you who have been part of this journey, especially while being kind ❤️. 1/2
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Praying this isn’t actually the future of SEO.
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Feeling snarky, so I made this guide to publishing content on SEO Twitter. (PS: this is a *joke* and *constructive* criticism is healthy and necessary, etc. etc.)
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This is a brilliant, actionable list of Google Sheets formulas that will help you do your job better as an SEO. I certainly learned some new tricks! . Written by my SEO wifey @jackiecchu 😍.
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Told the client to make a Web Story to get more traffic from Discover. It was a great success!. only problem: oh, it doesn't send any traffic back to the site (and yes there are internal links). Web Stories: the amazing SEO opportunity that never was.
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Things you learn at SEO conferences that are common among SEO teams around the world:. - PPC often gets 10x the budget or more than SEO for the same client . - Clients love ordering SEO audits and not implementing much, then trying another SEO audit with someone else . 🧵.
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Serious question for you @searchliaison:. For 6+ years, and throughout the QRG, Google has shared that YMYL queries - presumably like "weight loss" - require the highest levels of E-E-A-T. For 6+ years, we've seen sites like the CDC and Harvard ranking prominently for these
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I hate to say this, but my 30+ person SEO team and I just went through several examples of sites that claim to have super helpful content and were hit unfairly by the HCU. The consensus? A lot of the content on these sites was found to be. pretty unhelpful. Sure, some of the.
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A summary of SEO in 2022:. SEOs: I have an idea, let’s buy niche domains and use AI writing tools to spin up product review content with fake authors and put affiliate links/ads everywhere and make millions!. Google: nope.
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Imagine bragging about stealing like this in any other industry . These kinds of posts are why I wish Google would take a stronger stance against purely “AI” content, because to me this feels like quintessential autogenerated content . Curious to see what happens over time.
We pulled off an SEO heist that stole 3.6M total traffic from a competitor. We got 489,509 traffic in October alone. Here's how we did it:
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My SEO hope for 2023: . I actually *want* Google to take a stronger stance against (low quality) AI content. I hope there is a major algorithm update that specifically goes after it. (Or tries to, anyway.) . 🧵.
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Here's some Friday realness. Who else has experienced this? 😏
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I believe that the future of SEO will be highly tied in with influencer marketing. Hear me out: . More and more SERP features are highlighting individual experience. Short videos. Perspectives. Knowledge graphs. Author carousels. Testing author names in Top Stories. 🧵.
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These are 5 travel blogs, and there are many, many more where this came from. These sites have tons of obvious first-hand experience, original photography of them at the places they traveled to, lots of evidence of E-E-A-T, etc. Are there many things they could still improve?
John, any chance you can comment on the fact that many HCU-affected websites - which have been making all kinds of improvements over the last 7 months - have only seen further declines with the March Core Update? . I have seen some sites lose 90% or more of their SEO visibility.
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I just listened to one of my team members explain to our interns that search engines are called "spiders" because the web is a web. Am I the only person on planet earth that did not already know this reference?. Because my mind just exploded.
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Dear SEOs: every time you post a cool idea or trick you learned from someone else, give them credit. This is not directed at anyone or anything in particular. Just a good general rule of thumb.
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The three most important SEO skills that can’t really be taught, but separate the good SEOs from the great ones (🧵). 1. Curiosity . The best SEOs are endlessly curious about how/why it all works, where it’s going, what happens if you try things differently, learning new skills….
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Yeah, pretty ironic that Google would. - recommend that travel bloggers share first-hand experience of traveling to places. - implement algo updates resulting in many examples of travel bloggers who actually did exactly that, and saw their sites obliterated by HCU and March core.
Google trained its AI on travel bloggers' content. It's currently using that AI to cull travel bloggers from the SERPs. And, next, they will replace bloggers with these results. Btw - from what I can see of the example itinerary, it's absolutely AWFUL. The Liberty Bell does not.
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Yikes. The core update ended ONE WEEK AGO?. Aside from wondering why it took 7 days to share this information, I am also dying to know why there was SO MUCH MOVEMENT this week?.
The March 2024 core update is complete, having ended on April 19. The ranking feedback form is now ready at and will remain open through May 31. We’ve also updated our Debugging drops in Google Search traffic help page here:
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The new “E” in E-E-A-T is actually one of the most exciting developments in the #SEO space, if you think about it. Both users and Google have repeatedly expressed that they’re tired of reading the same old, generic SEO-driven, boilerplate content . 🧵.
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How long until Google’s “one true answer” starts getting called biased, or a conspiracy theory, product of the Illuminati, or government propaganda?. What a huge misstep by Google to think people suddenly don’t care where their information comes from.
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When I hear people say "I don't get why some SEOs make such a big deal about core updates," I imagine they don't work on sites like this one😅
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New SEO mantra:. If you don’t have anything ‘helpful’ to say (/publish), don’t say anything at all. 😛.
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This is one of many examples I am finding but something that is a bit alarming about SGE is that it seems to directly plagiarize content. I thought generative AI almost always switched words around. I'm finding many examples where the answer is pulled from the page verbatim.
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Merry Christmas and happy holidays from my niece Claire and me. 😂👃
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Yesterday I told a client to add one sentence to the content answering a specific question, and today it's the featured snippet 😅.
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@glitterwitchx @jk_rowling It looks awesome and good for you for staying true to yourself. I also have a lot of blackwork and know that sitting through that can be brutal on the body. I also admire your graceful responses to the many asinine comments in here.
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I've been waiting to publish all my thoughts about the Helpful Content Update for while. so today is the day. I've been obsessed with this update for months and want to share what I've learned:.
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I've got some bad news for affiliate/product review sites. It is not looking good with this Google update. I just dug into several examples where The Wirecutter, arguably the best product review site (section) on the internet, has lost positions in the last 2 weeks. The drops
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Now that I’ve had some formal GA4 training, my mind is even more boggled by how un-ready everyone is for this . GA4 requires a *massive* amount of configuration to make sense of the data, and so many features seem unfinished and not intuitive . What could go wrong 😅😅.
How is it possible that Universal Analytics sunsets so soon and GA4 still doesn't even have feature parity?.
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I've started digging in to the Helpful Content Update. Some findings so far (🧵). The most heavily impacted category appears to be online tools like calculators, converters, alarms, etc. While most "tool" sites exist to make money off ads, some have much better UX than others.
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Any other SEOs use so many SEO browser extensions that Google becomes borderline unusable? 🙃.
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Cannot believe we are about to make the 25th hire on our SEO team. From 8 to 25 people in 3 years. 🤯. What a journey it has been. Love my team so, so much. You guys give me life! 🙏🏽. PS: we’re hiring 😉.
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“It costs Google 100x more to generate an SGE result than a regular result” - @BritneyMuller . YIKES.
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Not enough can be said about exporting a raw list of keywords & their search volumes from SEMRush, Ahrefs, etc. and asking ChatGPT to cluster the keywords into logical groups (while maintaining the associated search volumes). Baby SEO Lily 10 years ago would have died for this.
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How it feels to teach SEO in 2022:. "And sometimes, Google will choose to not show ANY meta description, even if you wrote a perfectly decent one, simply because. it can."
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Using all the content they took from the sites that made Google. With little to no attribution or traffic.
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If I had a dollar for every time a client said "we've received a massive SEO audit in the past, but it didn't really add any value or tell us what to do. ". The easy part of SEO is using tools to surface data. The hard part is turning that information into something actionable.
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So great to meet up with these guys at the Google office in Zurich! . Also @methode gave me a (fitting) new last name 🤣🤓
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Interesting that Google is now sending out these messages in GSC. Wonder how many people who have been saying “why am I not getting traffic from Discover” will realize this is the answer 😅. h/t @RomainDamery
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Is anyone else feeling *utterly exhausted* by the internet lately? . Outrageous, disheartening posts all over social media . Constant pressure to buy things. Endlessly feeling like you want to help other people or that you’re not doing enough. Bombarded with spam….
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While I do mostly believe that Google will sunset Universal Analytics as planned. I do have this tiny sneaking suspicion that they'll delay it or something at the last second. anyone else? 😆.
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Google updated its Search Quality Guidelines today. I spent some time analyzing what changed and sharing some thoughts on what these changes mean for #SEO and measuring #EAT. Check it out at the @PathInteractive blog:.
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My feed is half international SEOs living their best SEO lives and half Americans wondering how TF we can continue living in this hellhole.
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This is an enormous blunder. Mind boggling.
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Parasite SEO on a @Harvard subdomain. And page 1 for "best VPN". Spammers truly know no bounds. Thank you for flagging @Matic_Broz
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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.
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