Here are the search-related news and developments we think mattered most for enterprise SEO this past week, with our point-of-view on why they matter and what action to take (if any). Look for the POV tag after a news item.

Google: Site Quality and Crawl Budget Linked

Google's John Mueller said on Mastodon that how much and how often Google crawls a site is not so much driven by new content as it is by Google's perception of the overall quality of the site. 

POV: It's interesting that Mueller uses the word "significant" in reference to the perceived quality of a site. Would your audience consider your site to be a "significant" source for their interests? What makes it so?

Input Metrics for SEO

Tom Critchlow says it's as important to think about input metrics as it is output metrics for SEO. We all know what output metrics are--things like visits, conversions, ROI, etc.--but what are input metrics?

Put simply, input metrics are your selection of the things you can control on your end that you think might actually influence your output metric goals. For example, in SEO typical input metrics might be 

  • Amount of content published
  • Number of pages updated or optimized
  • Number of links acquired

POV: Input metrics matter because if you don't consider them carefully you might end up spending time on things that don't actually move the needle for your stated performance goals.

Study: 31% of International Sites Have Hreflang Errors

According to a study published on Search Engine Land, 31% of sites using multiple languages have conflicting hreflang directives. The study also lists other common hreflang errors many of these sites have.

POV: Fixing these errors is important both for correct indexing by Google and for user experience. If you're an seoClarity client, run a Site Audit with the Hreflang crawl box checked in Advanced Settings. 

That's a wrap!

Watch next Friday for another edition of Search This Week and stay up to date on the search news that matters for enterprise SEO!