Want to know how to increase the Ahrefs DR (Domain Rating) and how they calculate it? Does using stock photos affect the ranking in the image search? Can you build…
August 2020 News Roundup๐ฐ: Whatโs New In SEO & Affiliate Marketing
What happened on August 10 with Google search? ๐ฒ How to make the switch away from Amazon Affiliate successful? How to disable a particular non-disableable feature in WP 5.5? ๐ค
You can learn answers to all these questions and more from my August news roundup!
Ok, in this news roundup, I could not help but mention a Google update ๐ Itโs just this update was hard not to notice ๐
So, in this news issue, we will talk about:
- A bug in one of the latest Google updates ๐
- Switching from Amazon Affiliate (yep again! ๐)
- Two case studies ๐ป
- How to disable lazy loading in WordPress 5.5 ๐
- How knowing how the image search works in theory benefits you ๐ผ
- An upcoming change in Google Chrome ๐
Letโs dive in ๐
Google: An Indexing System Failure Caused The Search Results Glitch
๐๐๐ www.seroundtable.com/google-indexing-system-failure-29934.html
On August 10, something went very wrong during a regular Google updateโฆ ๐ฌ SEO masters across the entire globe ๐ saw wild changes in the rankings of their websites โโโโโ ๐ต
It turned out that a failure in the Google indexing system got a bug or a glitch ๐ฑ

I bet quite a few SEO masters got some gray hair from it ๐ฌ but also, quite a few were pretty happy ๐
I am mentioning it because itโs most likely that you guys did see the effect of the glitch in your Search consoles. On my side, only the ๐ฆ Website (the one I bought in April) was affected by 6 websites. And in a very nice way ๐ค๐

So if in your Google Search Console, you see an abnormal jump or dip in your clicks/impressions on August 10, it means you got affected by The Glitch โก
Ok, enough about Google updates! Letโs switch to our other โfavoriteโ topic: Amazon Affiliate ๐๐
Switch From Amazon to High Paying Affiliate Programs [Step by Step Plan]
๐๐๐ watch the video below
Sooo howโs your switching away from Amazon Affiliate going on? ๐
As Gael Breton from Authority Hacker puts it:
[โฆ] many affiliate marketers started the year with โF*ck Amazon โ weโre gone!โ after their recent drop in commission rates.And how few of them actually went through with thatโฆ4 months later.
…myself included ๐
But in my defense, I did try to add other affiliate linksโฆ but they just donโt convert ๐ฌ๐ซ๐ซ๐ซ
And itโs a real problem ๐
But the AuthorityHacker guys found a seemingly excellent way to solve this problem ๐คฉ I have not tried it myself but I am sooo putting it in my high priority task queue! ๐โโ๏ธ
Apart from that, the video show the whole process of finding and testing affiliate programs ๐
Watch it now:
Another plus on non-Amazon affiliate programs is that they allow you (most likely) to use the affiliate links directly in emails. It means that you can run promos directly in your newsletters without bringing your subscribers first to a landing page.
But it only works if you do have email subscribers. So our next topic is about a case study showing how to grow an email list ๐ง
Case Study: How We Built A Funnel And Achieved 54.3% List Growth In 3 months
๐๐๐ onfolio.co/case-study-email-funnel
From this case study, you will learn the exact steps about how to grow an email fast. What was the exact setup, the failure happened along the way, what was done to fix that failure – all that makes a good, interesting, and useful story is there. Dive in!
Now, letโs switch to yet another case study; this time itโs about link building! ๐๐๐
Link Building Case Study: How We Built Backlinks With a โStatsโ Page (And Ranked #1)
๐๐๐ ahrefs.com/blog/link-building-case-study/
AhRefs posts often appear in my news roundups (for example, the previous news post talked about how to increase DR). And itโs no wonder since they are very informative and actionable.
This one about link building with a Statistics page is no exception.
But you might be wondering: there are tons of posts out there that are about building links with โskyscraperโ content… Why am I talking about yet another one? ๐ค
Well the thing is that each domain is different and depending on the domain, different skyscraper posts perform well. The Statistics content may go well in your domain – or may not. But itโs worth trying anyway. So check it out!
Now, letโs talk about the latest WordPress 5.5 update and a particular feature thatโs now included by default ๐
How to Disable Lazy Loading in WordPress (And Why You Should Do This)
๐๐๐ blogpioneer.com/disable-lazy-loading-wordpress
WordPress 5.5 was released on August 11, 2020.
It got many features and one of them is lazy loading. Lazy loading is a technical term for โimages wait to load until theyโre just about to scroll into view.โ
Unfortunately, the feature is included by default and cannot be disabled.
While I do think it should be optional and disableable, I am kinda happy itโs now a part of the standard WordPress ๐ ๐
This forces plugin creators to make their code compatible with lazy loading by default. I have had quite a few cases when lazy loading broke some of plugins and I had to either disable plugin features or to find a workaround ๐
But still, if you need to disable it or if you are just curious why you may need to do it, head over to AJ’s post. The method is a bit for nerds ๐ค since it requires knowledge of coding.
Aaaand the next topic is yet another post for nerds ๐ค ๐
Textual Image Queries and Classification of Images at Google
๐๐๐ gofishdigital.com/textual-image-queries/
If you are into knowing details about how image processing and categorization is implemented (in theory ๐ฌ๐), this lengthy article is for you.
If you just want to know the takeaways, scroll to the very bottom of it ๐๐
Here is my main takeaway: Google can recognize and understand the text on the images very well. It seems to be very beneficial for ranking if your posts include images with text that contain the post keywords.
For example, If you want to rank for Toyota cars, you may want to add to your post images of cars with Toyota written on them or next to them (and, of course, images with the Toyota logo.) ๐โข
The last section is about a new change that’s coming to Google Chrome in the future.
Google Resumes Its Attack On The Url Bar, Hides Full Addresses On Chrome 86
๐๐๐ androidpolice.com/2020/08/13/google-resumes-its-senseless-attack-on-the-url-bar-hides-full-addresses-on-chrome-canary
Pretty soon, Google Chrome will be hiding the full URL in the address bar ๐คฏ Instead, it will show the root domain of the URL ๐คฏ
The feature is currently available only in the Canary or Dev releases and is planned to be released in October.
Hereโs how it will look like:
As mentioned in the comments to the post, one of the reasons for the change might be:
this is probably to prevent fake URLs. when “normal” people glance at the address bar to check if a site is fake or not.
So how may it affect you?
First of all, it affects you as a user of the desktop Chrome browser. Itโs a pretty big change in the UI and I personally plan to disable it right away ๐ I work in the browser, like, 99% of the time and I just need to see the full URLs for my work ๐คทโโ๏ธ
As a website owner, I think the change may scare the site visitors at the beginning so the bounce rate may increase for a while. And at the same time, I do think itโs a good feature to have because it may reduce successful phishing attacks and should help with fighting copycats who mimic your website in terms of the UI.
Hereโs a good discussion on HackerNews if you want to read more about the change.
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