Welcome to the latest Relevance round-up of Moz’s Top 10 SEO discussions of the moment. This edition covers everything from Google algorithm changes to the importance of refreshing old content to attract traffic. As in its most recent top tens, Moz continues its focus on local digital marketing ideas in the last three entries.
The latest SEO discussions
1. Could Google Kill the URL?
In a bid to make it more difficult for hackers and scammers to use URLs for nefarious means, Google Chrome has suggested killing off URLs as we know them. While no imminent Google algorithm changes are taking place, it’s an important development to pay attention to. This Wired article goes into the suggested changes in greater depth.
2. How Redirects Could Make or Break Your Site Migration
Are you currently migrating your website? This edition of Moz’s Whiteboard Friday outlines the most common pitfalls that marketers make when migrating URLs and content. Blunders such as unclear ownership, inexperienced SEO staff handling the migration and tight deadlines make website migration a bumpy process. Watch the video to find out how prioritising SEO-valuable URLs, creating one-to-one redirects and testing can make the process plain sailing.
3. Lessen the Impact of Youtube Video Embed Changes
Have you ever wondered how to stop Youtube from poaching your audience via related videos at the end of your embedded content? Unfortunately, you can’t stop it, but you can ensure only videos from your channel appear after the end of the video. Since Youtube makes its money from advertising, it’s in its interests to drive traffic to its own site. Youtube does have SEO benefits, but it is important to remain strategic when embedding videos on your site.
4. Evaluating Google’s Shrinking Click-Through Opportunities
Google dominates Europe’s search engine scene to an overwhelming extent. Rand Fishkin uses impressive graphs to show just how strong Google’s hold over Europe is and compares statistics in various countries. Google uses its monopoly to gain advantages in areas it controls like video results, maps, local results and shopping results. CTR opportunities continue to diminish as Google siphons away large amounts of traffic and answers questions in the SERPs.
5. How Old Content Could Be Your Route to Higher Traffic
Digital content decays for various reasons including increased competition, content quality and technical issues. Refreshing your old content can work miracles for your organic SEO. This tutorial is highly actionable and backed up by data. It covers the five stages of blog post growth and helps you stay in the vital plateau phase before the content begins to decay.
6. Avoid Unnatural Links or Face a Lower Ranking
John Mueller explores how Google’s algorithms interpret unsavoury links and clarifies disavowal best practice. If you have a history of creating links for SEO, you should clean up and audit bad links by disavowing them. Check out this Search News episode to see how Google algorithm changes and unnatural links affect a site’s ranking.
7. How to Keep your Robots.txt Error-Free
Robots.txt is a vital tool for establishing rules that instruct crawlers and robots about which sections of a site should be crawled. However, editing a robots.txt file is fraught with danger when even the tiniest mistake could de-index your website. This comprehensive list from DeepCrawl will keep you error-free while the bots crawl all the right pages.
Local digital marketing ideas to consider
8. How to Capitalise on B2B Local Search Marketing
What SEO opportunities are there for local businesses targeting B2B? Moz’s Miriam Ellis delivers local digital marketing ideas for strategy and outreach marketing, applicable if your business has a physical address and interacts face-to-face with its customers (Google’s conditions for defining local business).
9. Mrs. G Perfect Example of a Flourishing Local Business
Mrs. G TV & Appliances is the perfect case study of a successful local business. Familiarise your team and clients with the story of this American family-run business and how it has weathered challenges, given back to the community, utilised local digital marketing ideas and emphasised the importance of a visible owner.
10. Did Google Help to Cultivate our Fake Review Economy?
Yet more recognition of how Google’s first priority is Google. The lack of significant barriers to fake reviews – despite ongoing Google algorithm changes – and ad profits from its marketplace is evidence enough. Not only are legitimate local businesses suffering because of this practice, but customers are also being deceived on a global scale. Mike Blumenthal takes a deep dive into how the search engine giant continues to profit from fake reviews.
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