Hi there! 👋

In this week's issue, I am sharing a note on what is paywall markup and how you can implement it.

Also, from 18th February, Google started showing fewer featured snippets in the search results, as shown by Moz, RankRanger, and SEMrush sensor. The decline was around 4.5% to 7.5%.

While RankRanger is now showing a small bounce back, still there's no official news on this if this is a Google Bug or something else?

Also, Google announced a new feature this week named "associations", — which will let you connect your Search console account with other Google accounts. Find out more info on this below...

Hope you enjoy this letter. 💥

Today I am sharing a tip on SEO for paywalled content.

Paywall content is getting popular, and many news sites and publishers are now keeping highly valuable content behind paywalls.

While it's a great way to monetize content that takes many resources to produce, it's hard to rank the same in Google.

You can now use schema to indicate paywalled content on your site. Note that this is applicable only if your paywalled content is available for Google to crawl and index.

Paywall schema will help Google understand what parts of a page are visible to users and exactly what content is behind a paywall.

Only JSON-LD and microdata formats are accepted for paywalled content structured data and .class selectors for cssSelector property.

To learn more about the schema format, you can refer to Google guidelines on this. You can also read this post to learn about the transition of Google from its FCF (First Click Free) policy in 2008 to Flexible Sampling policy in 2017.

Lastly, some examples of publishers using paywall content: The Information, TechCrunch, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Medium, Dream of Italy, The Athletic, and Fairygodboss.

• Now it's possible to associate your Search Console property with other Google services accounts like an association between a Search Console and Google Analytics account, a YouTube channel or a Google Ads account.
• This will unlock more data between the accounts, such as organic search queries in Analytics, paid and organic report in Google Ads, App indexing, and more!
• A search console account can be linked with multiple other accounts, but an Analytics property can only be linked with one Search Console property at a time.

• Google’s John Mueller advises site owners not to expect every web story they publish to get displayed in Discover.
• Google Discover has its own web stories carousel, which was added last October, but only select content makes its way in.
• Mueller said that Google is “extra careful” about Discover because users are not looking for anything specific. The idea is to recommend the most appropriate content for each user based on what their interests are at that time.

• This amazing resource is put together by Aleyda Solis for anyone looking to learn SEO with excellent and free resources.
• In this SEO roadmap, you'll find free guides, checklists, and courses on everything from basic SEO to advanced SEO, SEO process execution, SEO automation, and SEO news.

• SEO automation is the process of using software to optimize a website’s performance programmatically.
• Some areas where you can use SEO automation are technical analysis of websites, title tag, meta descriptions, and headings optimizations with AI/deep learning and use machine learning for traffic patterns analysis, A/B testing, and future trends predictions.
• While for now, it isn't possible to automate entire SEO workflows, SEO automation tools can give good results for some areas like AI-driven content outlines, producing conversion-focused SEO titles, and the creation of FAQ content on the scale.

• In this post, Rand Fishkin shares how only certain content types earn reach, amplification, and success.
• By adding a few more steps in a content marketing process, we can substantially improve the output.
• Like you can first find and follow the sources of influence in the industry that you're targeting, then analyse which content resonates, earn amplification, and how/why.
• So before crafting any type of content, you can be far more effective if you know your audience's distribution, who follows whom for what, who shares what and why, and how you can appeal to the amplifiers while serving your audience.

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Until next week! :)

Saksham

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