Welcome to the latest Relevance countdown of Moz’s Top 10. For agencies who want to make more money (that’s all of us, right?) this latest SEO countdown is an absolute must-read. Whether you want to grow a brand to thousands of locations, make products the highest ranked for Amazon searches or learn about anything in between, this edition of the Moz Top 10 will show you how to bring home the bacon.
1 Be prepared: Google is Increasing its Monopoly by Creating Articles from Your Content
Google has published details of its new combination of algorithms that can take a variety of competitor web pages and generate “coherent” articles. This means that your website will have to be working harder than ever as there’s now even less reason for users to click through, following on from the extractive summary algorithm used for Google Featured Snippets. Read the full article on Search Engine Journal to understand more about how it works and prepare yourself.
2 Follow Moz’s Four Great Money-Making Tactics for Agencies
In a constantly-changing digital marketing industry, in which there’s almost no certification and best-practice differs from day to day, it can be difficult to explain to customers the value of what you are doing. In this edition of Moz’s Whiteboard Friday, Principal Search Scientist Russ Jones breaks down four really important rules that no agency can afford to ignore.
3 Use Google Tag Manager to Set Up a GDPR Cookie Consent Form
With GDPR already in full force, most agencies will have already taken some steps to adhere to the regulations. However, if you are still struggling to comply, this quick-fix tutorial on creating a cookie consent form using Google Task Manager can help. Let the digital marketing experts at Portent talk you through it, and get compliant!
4 Grow Your Brand to Thousands of Locations Using Digital
American restaurant Panera grew from a single 400-square-foot store to 2,200 locations nationwide and has digital to thank for it. By evaluating what their patrons really want out of the store and devising clever technological solutions to suit them, they nurtured existing loyal customers whilst growing many new fans. Take cues and inspiration from this successful brand.
5 Teach Yourself About Machine Learning the Easy Way
A good knowledge of machine learning can support our understanding of the challenges and solutions Google’s engineers are facing, while also opening our minds to ML’s broader implications. The issue is, for many of us, just hearing the phrase is enough to switch off. This informative post offers clear, simple education, accessible even for complete beginners.
6 Rank Highly for Amazon Searches
Failure to do Amazon SEO right, just like with regular SEO, will result in less traffic and fewer sales for your business. So how do you optimise for Amazon’s A9 algorithm? Don’t be fooled into thinking that the same old hacks for Google will help you; luckily this handy guide is here to help you get the best out of this commerce giant. Ready, steady, sell!
7 Get Ready for Google Chrome to Drop the Secure Label for All HTTPS Sites
September is the month in which Google Chrome will start marking all non-https: pages as “not secure”, treating https: as the default. Then, in October it will go one step further, showing the red “not secure” warning when users enter data on HTTP pages. Read up on it now, and mark those dates on your calendar.
8 Learn from the Mistakes Behind Giphy’s 95% Visibility Drop
Giphy has had a real-life SEO nightmare of late, losing 95% of its Google organic visibility within the last 5 months – that’s a loss of 27 million users a month. Whilst some think it’s a conspiracy based on the fact that their rankings dropped on the same day an article was published celebrating their successful search results, Google can’t be all to blame. This investigation highlights Giphy’s key mistakes to help you avoid your very own visibility crisis.
9 Understand Yelp’s Take on Google Search Bias
Yelp’s ongoing campaign to see tighter regulation of Google’s business practices could finally be starting to have an impact. The reviews and recommendations site calls on Google to reindex content from its own businesses, meaning websites such as Google Flights would have to compete on a level playing field. And with companies like Tripadvisor and Consumer Watchdog joining the fight, it’s starting to heat up. Learn all about the latest battle strategies in this restaurant business blog.
10 Write Effective Meta Descriptions in a Constantly Changing World
The end of last year brought the exciting news that Google had increased search snippets to over 300 characters, almost doubling the amount of text (and page presence) we were given to describe our web pages. However, just as Google gives, it also takes away. Last month it was reported that we might be back to our old 156-character limit – cue widespread tragedy. Moz’s Dr Pete explains all and helps you write amazing metas through the madness.