This Week’s SEO Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff
Top Stories
Examining HTTPS URLs Ranking Benefit
Weeks after Google’s announcement that secure sites using HTTPS would receive a ranking benefit, SearchMetrics performed a study to evaluate the impact. What they found was that there was currently no data that proves a benefit from securing your site. Sites still considering migrating from HTTP to HTTPS should not that it won’t harm rankings and ranking benefits could still be forthcoming.
Source: Search Engine Land
Search Within A Search Coming To Google
A new search box is being tested by Google on the search results page. The new search box will be located below the first search result. The first version of the search box allowed users to search within the website contained in the first result. Now users can continue searching this way or they can do a full Google search.
Source: Search Engine Land
Recent Report States Orgainc Search Drives Over Half Of Website Traffic
In a recent report from SEO platform provider BrightEdge, organic search proved to be the largest source of traffic on the majority of websites. The report claims organic was responsible for 51% of traffic, paid search 10%, social 5%, and the 34% combined from other areas. When broken down by industry, business services benefited the most from organic search while retail benefited the most from paid search.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Additional SEO Headlines
Baidu Building Computer Cluster Larger Than Google
Yelp Dodges Extortion Case In California
Google Blog Search Merges With Google News
Users Report Seeing Older Google Search Page
Notable Commentary
Advice For Dealing With Pigeon
Google’s local algorithm update has everybody scratching their heads a bit lately. Have no fear. Moz has gathered advice from six SEOs at the fore front of local sear. The overarching theme? Hang tight, Pigeon is a work in progress Google is still trying to figure out.
Analysis by: Miriam Ellis, Moz
Industries Impacted By Pigeon
In more local search analysis, Jim Yu of Search Engine Watch sheds more light on just what happened when Pigeon rolled out on July 24th. Yu examines which industries and their related keywords benefitted from the update and which industries took a hit. Hospitality, food and education saw nice upticks in places results. Jobs, real estate and movies took big hits.
Analysis by: Jim Yu, Search Engine Watch
Link Building For Referral Traffic
Many SEOs are predicting that links will gradually lose some of their value in Google’s algorithm in an effort to combat and ignore spammy linking tactics. That means link building isn’t all about looking good in the eyes of Google’s algorithm anymore. The right link can also generate legitimate referral traffic. Elisa Gabbert of Search Engine Journal shares three places to look for links that will actually bring visitors to your site.
Analysis by: Elisa Gabbert, Search Engine Journal
