There was nothing out of the ordinary that I noticed this week for my own website rankings. I know that some website owners and administrators are still reeling from the medic update that occurred about a month ago. I would expect that Google wouldn’t roll out any more major changes for at least another month or so. They seem to be focused on cosmetic changes at the moment.
I’ve been fortunate to never have received a manual action penalty for any of my websites. Because of this, it makes me believe that you have to be extremely negligent or deceptive to get one. Although, it’s nice to have Google Search Console report such actions to make them easier to diagnose and resolve just in case.
From the 5 Dino Tactics that Moz listed in their article, the first one I feel is the biggest no-no. The statistics given for the results returned in Google’s Keyword Planner don’t necessarily translate over to organic search. You’re also not given important data associated with those results such as difficulty and the number of results listed for any given search term.
It’s definitely a nice bonus when you start seeing keyword rankings rise in the SERPS when running a Google Ads campaign. While some people might cry foul and think that Google is rewarding them for using their paid ads, I truly believe it is user engagement that causes this increase. However, I don’t necessarily agree that traffic of any kind can cause your keywords to perform better in Google.
This is news to me. Before coming across this article I had never heard of HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security). Now that I have an understanding of the purpose and benefits it provides, there really isn’t a reason not to implement it. Unless of course, for some strange reason you plan on removing HTTPS and your SSL certificate from your website.
Lazy loading is one way to speed up loading by only rendering assets within view. There are several plugins available for free on WordPress to accomplish this. It’s not just images that can be targeted. Other assets such as iframes can be delayed in rendering which could have quite an impact if you have many youtube embeds. It’s also not uncommon to see premium themes these days incorporate lazy loading directly.
When it comes to ranking a website for targeted keywords, I don’t judge others how they achieve that goal. After all, it’s not about breaking the law. Rather, it has to do with trying to fool Google. Is it worth the risk of getting your website blacklisted or penalized? That’s the main question that needs to be asked.
Posted by Tom.Capper
Does it make sense for you to create local-specific pages on your website? Regardless of whether you own or market a local business, it may make sense to compete for space in the organic SERPs using local pages. Please give a warm welcome to our friend Tom Capper as he shares a 4-point process for determining whether local pages are something you should explore in this week's Whiteboard Friday!
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video TranscriptionHello, Moz fans. Welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. I'm Tom Capper. I'm a consultant at Distilled, and today I'm going to be talking to you about whether you need local pages. Just to be clear right off the bat what I'm talking about, I'm not talking about local rankings as we normally think of them, the local map pack results that you see in search results, the Google Maps rankings, that kind of thing.
A 4-step process to deciding whether..
To their credit, Moz does go very in-depth with the 3 tests that concluded their keyword research tool is the best. The goal of these tests is to determine each tool’s effectiveness at gauging their own organic keyword difficulty rating with actual keyword rankings. 50 blog posts with 50 targeted keywords were used for sample data.
It happens several times a year. Google tweaks their algorithm and SEOs freak out (or celebrate) the impact it has on their client’s website rankings. The broadcore update which began August 1st, has been described as a tweak to Google’s main ranking factors. For the most part, websites with good content should largely be unaffected. However, there has been some interesting data reported that shows increases and decreases for certain niches in organic traffic and keyword rankings.
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