We thought we’d start a new blog series on the Rock Solid Marketing blog and include links to some of the more interesting articles we’ve read lately in the digital marketing world.
Here’s the very first instalment of Digital Marketing Reads!
The new Search Console: a sneak peek at two experimental features
This month, Google will add two new features to its Search Console product. We’re especially eager to check out the Index Coverage report, which will help to explain why certain pages of a website may not be getting indexed by Google. The new AMP fixing flow will also map out which AMP issues are affecting your site and allow you to request certain pages to be re-indexed after you fix them.
Image credit: Google
Google is Testing a Feature No One Seems to Want
No one likes videos set to autoplay, so it’s a bit puzzling that Google would even consider autoplaying videos in search results. It seems that this is just occurring when movie titles are searched for on desktop (not on mobile). Let’s see how long this undesirable feature will last!
Google My Business lets business add quick URLs to reservations, online ordering & more
Now you can add quick links to your local results in Google for customers to place orders, reserve a table, book an appointment, and more. This option in Google My Business will allow users to take immediate action when they see a listing, which will hopefully lead to an increase in conversion.
Image credit: blumenthals.com
8 Old School SEO Practices That Are No Longer Effective
In this article, the founder of Moz dispels several so-called SEO tactics that actually don’t help your site rise in search rankings. Among them? Keyword loading in page titles and link anchor text, getting your link listed in directories or link networks (including paid links!), and using linkbait to get clicks to your website.
All of the old school SEO practices listed have to do with shady ways of getting links and clicks to your website, which Google has gotten better and better at detecting and penalising for in recent years. It’s far better to avoid these measures and hire a professional SEO agency in Melbourne to take care of your search engine optimisation the right way.
Google emails warnings to webmasters that Chrome will mark http pages with forms as ‘not secure’
Starting in October, Google Chrome will mark http pages as “not secure” if they contain forms or login fields. Google has already sent warning messages through Google Search Console to site owners with such pages.
Though this is further reason to make the switch from http to https, our SEO specialists still maintain that switching to a secure site is not necessary unless you are conducting transactions or hosting logins on your site and need that extra layer of security.