Are young people addicted to digital technology? Reigate school pupils highlight dangerous habit

The issue of digital addiction among young people has been highlighted by a Reigate school

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/young-people-addicted-digital-technology-12961456

Man left with serious head injury and broken foot after 'horrifying' supermarket car park attack

Surrey Police said the victim was struck with a 'length of wood' and have released images of people who could help the investigation

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/man-left-serious-head-injury-12966932

Where in Surrey...? Some of the most searched for questions about our county on Google

We attempt to come up with answers to some of the most popular queries on the internet

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/lifestyle/fun-stuff/surrey-most-searched-questions-county-12958435

Bank holiday weekend weather: Bleak outlook as heavy rain and thundery showers forecast

A band of rain moving in from the south west is forecast to bring in some heavy rain and thundery showers over the bank holiday weekend

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/bank-holiday-weekend-weather-bleak-12963982

Chobham Common fire: Crew member says service tackling more heath fires than he's 'ever known' following latest blaze

Surrey Fire and Rescue Service crews were sent out to separate incidents Ewell and Chobham following a spate of fires this month

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/chobham-common-fire-crew-member-12963841

Great Storm's Leith Hill devastation to be recalled in 30th anniversary show

National Trust rangers are appealing for photos and other memorabilia of the aftermath of the 1987 disaster on the hill

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/great-storms-leith-hill-devastation-12961956

Teens Who Kill: Oxted murderer Steven Miles' story is 'one of the most gruesome' to feature in new documentary

A defense lawyer, reporter and forensics team will discuss the horrifying case in a new documentary

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/teens-who-kill-oxted-murderer-12963745

Hundreds of disabled children affected by Challengers charity schemes closure after council withdraws funding

Five playgroups and youth schemes across the county have been forced to close after they lost funding from Surrey County Council

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/hundreds-disabled-children-affected-challengers-12963503

Residents' 'blood boiling' after piles of rubbish left scattered on road as Surrey's fly-tipping problems continue

Residents said their 'blood was boiling' after a fly-tipper littered a road with mounds of rubbish

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/residents-blood-boiling-after-piles-12963322

Star Wars Day: See which characters candidates compare themselves to ahead of local election day

Get Surrey asked county council election candidates what Star Wars character they would be, and there were some interesting answers...

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/star-wars-day-see-characters-12962668

'I don't believe it!' Police persuades roadworks supervisor to use 'common sense' and remove traffic lights 'causing mayhem'

Dozens of people took to Facebook to thank the wise policeman after he helped remove unnecessary traffic lights on Cockshot Hill

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/i-dont-believe-it-police-12963169

Victoria Square development gains momentum as Woking shops relocate to allow £460m project to begin

Two retailers have moved to new premises in preparation of construction work starting at Victoria Square

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/victoria-square-development-gains-momentum-12963112

Locked up in Surrey: See the county's criminals jailed in April 2017

Get Surrey is this year profiling the efforts of the police and the courts to bring the county's worst offenders to justice

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/locked-up-surrey-see-countys-12942224

Willy, woo woo and tinkle all no-nos: NHS urges parents to use proper terms when referring to children's private parts

One NHS group has issued guidance over how parents should refer to their kids' private parts

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/willy-woo-woo-tinkle-no-12960483

University of Surrey Students' Union urges students to get vaccinated after meningitis outbreak

University of Surrey confirmed three cases of meningitis in the last month, including one which sadly saw the death of a student

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/university-surrey-students-union-urges-12959571

This week in Surrey you've been reading about Guildford traffic chaos, Stoke Park filming crews and serious Knaphill crash

We've compiled a quick round-up of some of the biggest stories this week in Surrey

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/week-surrey-youve-been-reading-12960934

'Overweight' policewoman discrimination tribunal told other officers may have failed bleep test but Surrey Police refuses access to files

Rebecca Tiffin is suing Surrey Police for discrimination, claiming she was forced to resign after failing the bleep test

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/overweight-policewoman-discrimination-tribunal-told-12962382

New Pets at Home store set to create new jobs for Bagshot's animal lovers

Who doesn't want to cuddle fluffy rabbits and puppies as a full-time job?

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/new-pets-home-store-set-12960144

West End Garage inquest: Health and Safety Executive says lift set-up was 'concerning to say the least'

Peter Richardson was killed in November 2015 when a car he was working on fell and crushed him.

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/west-end-garage-inquest-health-12960072

What can you do if your neighbours are smoking cannabis?

Would you know what to do if you suspected your neighbours were smoking cannabis? Here's a guide to help

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/what-can-you-your-neighbours-12958415

Vineyard devastated by 'worst frost ever' lights up hundreds of candles in spectacular yet desperate bid to warm crops

Albury Vineyard, set in the Surrey Hills, have been working overnight to help the damaged crops after an unseasonable late April frost

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/vineyard-devastated-worst-frost-ever-12957971

Homes with gorgeous gardens you can move into right now!

From extensive equestrian facilities and paddocks to riverside gardens laid out by Capability Brown - these homes have acres of land to lose yourself in

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/property-news/upper-highfield-farm-grade-ii-12959931

What do Family Guy, The Simpsons and South West Trains all have in common?

From The Simpsons to Family Guy and a dancing polar bear, their gifs are as funny as they are relatable

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/what-family-guy-simpsons-south-12961479

Pret a Manger cleared over claims staff member 'overworked and bullied almost to the point of suicide'

After a four-day trial, the high street chain was cleared of allegations of harassment, bullying and negligence

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/pret-manger-cleared-over-claims-12959275

A3 Ripley crash: Driver taken to hospital after crashing into central reservation

Traffic tailed back two miles on the northbound carriageway at the Ripley Bypass as emergency services responded

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/a3-ripley-crash-driver-taken-12960337

Upper Highfield Farm: Grade II listed farmhouse with equestrian facilities in 8.7 acres on market for £2.5m

With extensive equestrian facilities and paddocks to boot, there are around 8.7 acres to lose yourself in and wonderful walking and riding countryside

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/upper-highfield-farm-grade-ii-12959931

Surbiton Brighton Road crash: 16-year-old cyclist suffers potentially 'life-changing' injuries after collision with car

Police locked down the junction of Brighton Road, Balaclava Road and Maple Road shortly after midday on Friday

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/surbiton-brighton-road-crash-16-12960635

Harry Styles announces intimate tour including Eventim Apollo shows - how to get tickets

The singer is heading out on his first ever solo headline tour

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife-news/harry-styles-announces-intimate-tour-12959574

Meningitis: What is it, what are the symptoms, and what to do if you suspect you have the infection

As the University of Surrey offers vaccines to students, we tell you what to look out for

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/meningitis-what-it-what-symptoms-12959205

SEO for B2B and B2C – what are the differences?

Teenagers could be behind dangerous dangerous camp fires on public ground, firefighters warn

Fire officers have attended several camp fires, many of which have been abandoned by the time the fire engines arrive

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/teenagers-could-behind-dangerous-dangerous-12952908

General Election: Why has Gove not announced his candidacy yet?

The Surrey Heath Conservative Party has confirmed that the pro-Brexiter has put forward his candidacy but the decision will be made early next month

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-gove-not-announced-12957436

THREE cases of meningitis among University of Surrey students - vaccination programme launched

The vaccination launch follows the death of an undergraduate student who died from meningitis while returning from a sports trip in Italy and two other students contracting the disease

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/three-cases-meningitis-among-university-12958166

Plant centre and kennels looking to relocate after fresh planning application for 39 homes lodged with council

CALA Homes has submitted a planning application to Guildford Borough Council on land off the Old Portsmouth Road

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/plant-centre-kennels-looking-relocate-12954768

Twitter could have predicted the Brexit outcome......if anybody had bothered to check

Research by Surrey academics has revealed the strength of the Leave campaign's online campaign, while also showing how weak Stronger In was

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/twitter-could-predicted-brexit-outcomeif-12955358

United Airlines denies Simon the gigantic rabbit died on board plane from Heathrow to America

The three-foot long rabbit was alive when plane landed and did not show signs of distress, say United Airlines

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/united-airlines-denies-simon-gigantic-12956955

Pop-Ups, Overlays, Modals, Interstitials, and How They Interact with SEO - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

Have you thought about what your pop-ups might be doing to your SEO? There are plenty of considerations, from their timing and how they affect your engagement rates, all the way to Google's official guidelines on the matter. In this episode of Whiteboard Friday, Rand goes over all the reasons why you ought to carefully consider how your overlays and modals work and whether the gains are worth the sacrifice.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about pop-ups, overlays, modals, interstitials, and all things like them. They have specific kinds of interactions with SEO. In addition to Google having some guidelines around them, they also can change how people interact with your website, and that can adversely or positively affect you accomplishing your goals, SEO and otherwise.

Types

So let's walk through what these elements, these design and UX elements do, how they work, and best practices for how we should be thinking about them and how they might interfere with our SEO efforts.

Pop-ups

So, first up, let's talk specifically about what each element is. A pop-up now, okay, there are a few kinds. There are pop-ups that happen in new windows. New window pop-ups are, basically, new window, no good. Google hates those. They are fundamentally against them. Many browsers will stop them automatically. Chrome does. Firefox does. In fact, users despise these as well. There are still some spammy and sketchy sites out there that use them, but, generally speaking, bad news.

Overlays

When we're talking about a pop-up that happens in the same browser window, essentially it's just a visual element, that's often also referred to as an overlay. So, for the purposes of this Whiteboard Friday, we'll call that an overlay. An overlay is basically like this, where you have the page's content and there's some smaller element, a piece, a box, a window, a visual of some kind that comes up and that essentially says, maybe it says, "Sign up for my email newsletter," and then there's a place to enter your email, or, "Get my book now," and you click that and get the book. Those types of overlays are pretty common on the web, and they do not create quite the same problems that pop-ups do, at least from Google's perspective. However, we'll talk about those later, there are some issues around them, especially with mobile.

Modals

Modals tend to be windows of interaction, tend to be more elements of use. So lightboxes for images is a very popular modal. A modal is something where you are doing work inside that new box rather than in the content that's underneath it. So a sign-in form that overlays, that pops up over the rest of the content, but that doesn't allow you to engage with this content underneath it, that would be considered a modal. Generally, most of the time, these aren't a problem, unless they are something like spam, or advertising, or something that's taking you out of the user experience.

Interstitials

Then finally, interstitials are essentially, and many of these can also be called interstitial experiences, but a classic interstitial is something like what Forbes.com does. When you visit Forbes, an article for the first time, you get this, "Welcome. Our sponsor of the day is Brawndo. Brawndo, it has what plants need." Then you can continue after a certain number of seconds. These really piss people off, myself included. I really hate the interstitial experience. I understand that it's an advertising thing. But, yeah, Google hates them too. Not quite enough to kick Forbes out of their SERPs entirely yet, but, fingers crossed, it will happen sometime soon. They have certainly removed plenty of other folks who have gone with invasive or overly heavy interstitials over the years and made those pretty tough.

What are the factors that matter for SEO?

A) Timing

Well, it turns out timing is a big one. So when the element appears matters. Basically, if the element shows up initially upon page load, they will consider it differently than if it shows up after a few minutes. So, for example, if you have a "Sign Up Now" overlay that pops up the second you visit the page, that's going to be treated differently than something that happens when you're 80% or you've just finished scrolling through an entire blog post. That will get treated very differently. Or it may have no effect actually on how Google treats the SEO, and then it really comes down to how users do.

Then how long does it last as well. So interstitials, especially those advertising interstitials, there are some issues governing that with people like Forbes. There are also some issues around an overlay that can't be closed and how long a window can pop up, especially if it shows advertising and those types of things. Generally speaking, obviously, shorter is better, but you can get into trouble even with very short ones.

B) Interaction

Can that element easily be closed, and does it interfere with the content or readability? So Google's new mobile guidelines, I think as of just a few months ago, now state that if an overlay or a modal or something interferes with a visitor's ability to read the actual content on the page, Google may penalize those or remove their mobile-friendly tags and remove any mobile-friendly benefit. That's obviously quite concerning for SEO.

C) Content

So there's an exception or an exclusion to a lot of Google's rules around this, which is if you have an element that is essentially asking for the user's age, or asking for some form of legal consent, or giving a warning about cookies, which is very popular in the EU, of course, and the UK because of the legal requirements around saying, "Hey, this website uses cookies," and you have to agree to it, those kinds of things, that actually gets around Google's issues. So Google will not give you a hard time if you have an overlay interstitial or modal that says, "Are you of legal drinking age in your country? Enter your birth date to continue." They will not necessarily penalize those types of things.

Advertising, on the other hand, advertising could get you into more trouble, as we have discussed. If it's a call to action for the website itself, again, that could go either way. If it's part of the user experience, generally you are just fine there. Meaning something like a modal where you get to a website and then you say, "Hey, I want to leave a comment," and so there's a modal that makes you log in, that type of a modal. Or you click on an image and it shows you a larger version of that image in a modal, again, no problem. That's part of the user experience.

D) Conditions

Conditions matter as well. So if it is triggered from SERP visits versus not, meaning that if you have an exclusionary protocol in your interstitial, your overlay, your modal that says, "Hey, if someone's visiting from Google, don't show this to them," or "If someone's visiting from Bing, someone's visiting from DuckDuckGo, don't show this to them," that can change how the search engines perceive it as well.

It's also the case that this can change if you only show to cookied or logged in or logged out types of users. Now, logged out types of users means that everyone from a search engine could or will get it. But for logged in users, for example, you can imagine that if you visit a page on a social media site and there's a modal that includes or an overlay that includes some notification around activity that you've already been performing on the site, now that becomes more a part of the user experience. That's not necessarily going to harm you.

Where it can hurt is the other way around, where you get visitors from search engines, they are logged out, and you require them to log in before seeing the content. Quora had a big issue with this for a long time, and they seem to have mostly resolved that through a variety of measures, and they're fairly sophisticated about it. But you can see that Facebook still struggles with this, because a lot of their content, they demand that you log in before you can ever view or access it. That does keep some of their results out of Google, or certainly ranking lower.

E) Engagement impact

I think this is what Google's ultimately trying to measure and what they're trying to essentially say, "Hey, this is why we have these issues around this," which is if you are hurting the click-through rate or you're hurting pogo-sticking, meaning that more people are clicking onto your website from Google and then immediately clicking the Back button when one of these things appears, that is a sign to Google that you have provided a poor user experience, that people are not willing to jump through whatever hoop you've created for them to get access your content, and that suggests they don't want to get there. So this is sort of the ultimate thing that you should be measuring. Some of these can still hurt you even if these are okay, but this is the big one.

Best practices

So some best practices around using all these types of elements on your website. I would strongly urge you to avoid elements that are significantly harming UX. If you're willing to take a small sacrifice in user experience in exchange for a great deal of value because you capture people's email addresses or you get more engagement of other different kinds, okay. But this would be something I'd watch.

There are three or four metrics that I'd urge you to check out to compare whether this is doing the right thing. Those are:

• Bounce rate
• Browse rate
• Return visitor rates, meaning the percentage of people who come back to your site again and again, and
• Time on site after the element appears

So those four will help tell you whether you are truly interfering badly with user experience.

On mobile, ensure that your crucial content is not covered up, that the reading experience, the browsing experience isn't covered up by one of these elements. Please, whatever you do, make those elements easy and obvious to dismiss. This is part of Google's guidelines around it, but it's also a best practice, and it will certainly help your user experience metrics.

Only choose to keep one of these elements if you are finding that the sacrifice... and there's almost always a sacrifice cost, like you will hurt bounce rate or browse rate or return visitor rate or time on site. You will hurt it. The question is, is it a slight enough hurt in exchange for enough gain, and that's that trade-off that you need to decide whether it's worth it. I think if you are hurting visitor interaction by a few seconds on average per visit, but you are getting 5% of your visitors to give you an email address, that's probably worth it. If it's more like 30 seconds and 1%, maybe not as good.

Consider removing the elements from triggering if the visit comes from search engines. So if you're finding that this works fine and great, but you're having issues around search guidelines, you could consider potentially just removing the element from any visit that comes directly from a search engine and instead placing that in the content itself or letting it happen on a second page load, assuming that your browse rate is decently high. That's a fine way to go as well.

If you are trying to get the most effective value out of these types of elements, it tends to be the case that the less common and less well used the visual element is, the more interaction and engagement it's going to get. But the other side of that coin is that it can create a more frustrating experience. So if people are not familiar with the overlay or modal or interstitial visual layout design that you've chosen, they may engage more with it. They might not dismiss it out of hand, because they're not used to it yet, but they can also get more frustrated by it. So, again, return to looking at those metrics.

With that in mind, hopefully you will effectively, and not too harmfully to your SEO, be able to use these pop-ups, overlays, interstitials, modals, and all other forms of elements that interfere with user experience.

And we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/5749149

Bank holiday weekend weather still 'in the balance'

A mix of weather could affect plans for the bank holiday weekend

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/bank-holiday-weekend-weather-still-12954835

'Come with us, we’ll take care of you': Shooting Star Chase staff's bravery looking after stabbing victims

“I can’t express how eternally grateful I am," said stabbing victim Rani Chandi who was helped by five brave women

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/come-us-well-take-care-12956609

Fly-tipper leaves waste underneath 'no dumping of rubbish sign'

The fly-tipping comes as a debate continues over the county council's new tipping charges

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/fly-tipper-leaves-waste-underneath-12955534

General Election: Jeremy Hunt launches re-election bid and labels Labour 'insincere' over NHS policy

The Health Secretary has held the South West Surrey seat since 2005

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-jeremy-hunt-launches-12947169

Surprised? Roads in Surrey among busiest in Great Britain, government figures reveal

The Department for Transport finds car traffic at a record high, and the M25 dominating the busiest road sections

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/surprised-roads-surrey-among-busiest-12956120

Grandmother of 10's iPad and iPhone stolen from hospital bed

"It is unbelievably callous to rob a defenceless old woman from her hospital bed."

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/grandmother-10s-ipad-iphone-stolen-12937933

£10-15 million spend on 'state-of-the-art' primary school approved as councillor admits existing one is 'unfit for young children'

The area's existing school "is, in parts, unfit for the education of young children in the 21st century"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/10-15-million-spend-state-12946150

Guildford gridlock: What motorists made of 'worst traffic of last few years' in the town

Roadworks and a broken down vehicle on the A3 caused gridlock throughout Guildford during Thursday evening rush hour

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/guildford-gridlock-what-motorists-made-12956509

Bletchingley crash: Parents 'furious' they weren't told about collision involving their kids for hours

"I'm worried about Jamie as he was screaming in the night, which he never does, and kept talking about the crash"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/bletchingley-crash-parents-furious-werent-12956399

Addlestone Waitrose store due to open in summer announces job vacancies

The supermarket is looking for 30 new employees, with customer service and supermarket assistant positions available

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/addlestone-waitrose-store-due-open-12954655

It's a girl! Surrey Police call handlers help deliver baby over phone after frantic aunt-to-be rings centre

“This is not a situation we would normally have to deal with in the contact centre and it certainly put our training to the test!"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/its-girl-surrey-police-call-12955941

'Overweight' Surrey policewoman claims she was forced to resign after failing bleep test - and she's suing for discrimination

Rebecca Tiffin, known as "Blue Moon", told a tribunal that she has developed a lifelong condition but felt "over-scrutinised" by the force

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/overweight-surrey-policewoman-claims-forced-12953532

Fancy free Starbucks drinks? They've got jobs at the A3 Wisley service station with great benefits...

You could get free Starbucks drinks on shift and a free BAG of tea or coffee every week too

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/fancy-free-starbucks-drinks-theyve-12955335

Sit down and take a guess at how much these properties cost to rent per MONTH

These insanely expensive properties include two Grade II listed houses and a seven-bedroom home in Wentworth

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/property-news/sit-down-take-guess-how-12952022

Donations for family of Stockholm terror attack victim Chris Bevington reach £100,000

Mr Bevington was one of four people to be killed in the Swedish capital on April 7

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/donations-family-stockholm-terror-attack-12954232

Charlie Gard: Ministers refuse to intervene to give eight-month-old sick baby boy a chance to live

MP takes fight for eight-month-old Charlie to the House of Commons

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/charlie-gard-ministers-refuse-intervene-12946840

'Very Surrey': Dog walker finds huge cuddly toy dumped in Fortnum and Mason bag next to bin

Do you know who owns this lonely looking teddy bear that was found dumped in a park?

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/very-surrey-dog-walker-finds-12953900

Waterloo Station's food hygiene ratings revealed for all of its food outlets and cafés

Waterloo is Britain's largest and busiest station, so Get Surrey looked into the hygiene ratings at its eateries

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/waterloo-stations-food-hygiene-ratings-12954352

Victim has THREE metal plates fitted to his face after violent punch attack at busy pub

The assault happened on Easter Sunday as the victim was out enjoying a drink with his friends

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/victim-three-metal-plates-fitted-12953747

Netflix filming: Crews arrive at Guildford's Stoke Park for new series

It is thought the TV series being filmed is due to air later this year - but readers remain hopeful that Tom Hardy may be roaming Guildford

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/netflix-filming-crews-arrive-guildfords-12952937

Here's your chance to own a house with a moat AND become a Lord or Lady

The ten bedroom house is on sale for £2.25 million

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/property-news/heres-your-chance-house-moat-12952903

West End Garage inquest: Equipment was in 'good condition' when mechanic was crushed to death by falling Mercedes

An expert witness told jurors the lift from which a car fell onto Peter Richardson was only three years into an estimated 10-year service life

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/west-end-garage-inquest-equipment-12952228

Knaphill crash: Lorry driver remains in hospital with non-life threatening injuries following horrific collision

The front and cab of the lorry sustained extensive damage in the three-vehicle collision

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/knaphill-crash-lorry-driver-remains-12951827

Tapestry on show commemorating treatment of 27,000 New Zealand soldiers in Walton during First World War

"The tapestry is a beautiful work of art but, more importantly, it represents a true community endeavour"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/tapestry-show-commemorating-treatment-27000-12938153

Domino's Pizza coming to Epsom Road shops in Guildford

The borough council saw no issue around parking concerns       

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/dominos-pizza-coming-epsom-road-12952222

Meet Snow White, Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy and Sneezy!

"Anyone who owns animals is responsible for their wellbeing and to abandon eight birds in the middle of nowhere is unbelievably irresponsible"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/meet-snow-white-bashful-doc-12951793

'Use it or lose it': Shoppers told to support Shepperton High Street after second bank closure

Concerns have been raised that the closure of NatWest in October will reduce footfall in the town

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/use-lose-it-shoppers-told-12949866

Bengal cat used as 'breeding machine' in 'appalling conditions' looking for new home

The cat's previous owner was breeding in poor conditions and found guilty under the Animal Welfare Act

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/bengal-cat-used-breeding-machine-12948623

Guildford election candidates must address congestion, road safety and pollution in the town centre, lobby group says

The Guildford Vision Group is lobbying for a new river crossing to take traffic out of the town centre

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/guildford-election-candidates-must-address-12948348

Businesses and customers shocked at 'end of an era' sudden closure of 'really busy' Dorking restaurant

Two to Four in West Street served its last meal at the weekend and has gone into administration

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/businesses-customers-shocked-end-era-12946399

10 things to do in Surrey and Hampshire this bank holiday weekend, April 29-May 1

A guide to what's going on, things to do, events and family attractions this weekend

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/10-things-surrey-hampshire-weekend-10649881

Former Royal Mail delivery office could be replaced with DIY stores including Wickes and a Greggs sandwich shop

The DIY store and other building supply companies are the "intended occupiers" of the site

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/former-royal-mail-delivery-office-12940733

Guildford care home put in to special measures after being reported as 'inadequate' by industry watchdog

Inspectors rated it inadequate after finding that it was not always safe, well-led, caring, effective and responsive

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/guildford-care-home-put-special-12948834

Channel 4's Kirstie and Phil looking for partners to star in Love It or List It... could it be you?

Love It or List It is back and the property duo are looking for Surrey home owners who have a love/ hate relationship with their house

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/film-news/channel-4s-kirstie-phil-looking-12943326

Solicitor found with more than 12,000 indecent images of children struck off from profession after tribunal

Richard Pietrowski was handed a 20-month jail sentence in September 2016 and will now be struck off the roll of solicitors

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/solicitor-found-more-12000-indecent-12949488

Estate agent jailed for two years after 'systematically defrauding' clients for thousands of pounds

"He caused untold stress and worry to his victims, who were forced to rearrange their financial affairs at the same time as they were trying to move house"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/estate-agent-jailed-two-years-12950560

London Marathon: Chertsey runner helps set Guinness World Record with Scooby-Doo themed costume

Meg Walker was part of a team that made it into the record books for running the fastest marathon in a five person costume

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/london-marathon-chertsey-runner-helps-12947828

Cheryl is selling her £5m mansion after moving into One Direction Liam Payne's Surrey home

The mansion, called Brickfields, is on sale at £5m and available to rent at £4,000 a WEEK

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/cheryl-selling-5m-mansion-after-12950222

Healthy outcome from a sticky situation: Research says eating bogies is actually GOOD for kids and adults

"Eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body’s immune system"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/health/healthy-outcome-sticky-situation-research-12950246

Man jailed after masturbating in front of women and children on the London Underground

One witness of McCarthy's exposure said he touched himself on the Central Line while there were women and children on board

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/man-jailed-after-masturbating-front-12947661

Stoughton stabbing investigation remains ongoing after bleeding man staggers into petrol station

Video footage shows the emergency services at the petrol station in Worplesdon Road

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/stoughton-stabbing-investigation-remains-ongoing-12949164

Addlestone Moor collision: Motorcyclist taken to hospital with broken ribs and collarbone

An air ambulance was sent to the scene, along with police, ambulances and a fire crew

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/addlestone-moor-collision-motorcyclist-taken-12949682

Goldsworth Road armed police incident: Five released as police continue shooting investigation

Five people arrested in London and Surrey following a shooting have been released under police investigation

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/goldsworth-road-armed-police-incident-12949685

These kids posed with weapons - here’s how the internet reacted

The image shows hooded youths posing in an alleyway with weapons including a machete and hatchet

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/kids-posed-weapons-heres-how-12949309

Champion moggy ends career on a high at Leatherhead cat show

A range of exotic breeds were exhibited at Leatherhead Leisure Centre

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/champion-moggy-ends-career-high-12949438

Passer-by used cardigan to move 'hissy' python out of the road and take it home

"A few people stopped to stare but clearly thought we were bonkers!"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/passer-used-cardigan-move-hissy-12947672

General Election: Jeremy Hunt's opponents could back single candidate to oppose him in South West Surrey

The Lib Dems and Greens are keen on a united front against the Health Secretary but a Labour spokesman argued that people don't want "backroom deals"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-jeremy-hunts-opponents-12942584

Motorbike funeral procession passes through Chertsey for 'caring and loyal' husband and grandad

Members of the Berkshire Bikers MCC gathered for the funeral of motorcycle fan Trevor Lowe

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/motorbike-funeral-procession-passes-through-12946472

House prices in Surrey: One area experiences steep fall while elsewhere values top £600,000

House prices in the south east are second only to those in London

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/house-prices-surrey-one-area-12879597

Royal Surrey County Hospital finances 'much better' after cutting agency staff costs

The hospital is also benefiting from a £14m boost after joining the Surrey Heartlands Sustainability and Transformation Plan

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/royal-surrey-county-hospital-finances-12942902

John Lowe double murder: PCC says decision to return firearms to John Lowe remains 'matter of deep regret' for Surrey Police

David Munro said he will be 'personally checking' to ensure recommendations from the IPCC report are followed by Surrey Police

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/john-lowe-double-murder-pcc-12948086

Be your own boss and earn up to £75,000 with these new Surrey roles

Finch Club Recruitment offers amazing perks and incentives for all staff

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/your-boss-earn-up-75000-12938094

McDonald's delivery straight to your door coming to the UK very soon!

Ahhhh, it's not a dream! Everything you need to know about this VERY exciting announcement...

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/mcdonalds-delivery-straight-your-door-12948315

Frozen 2 release date revealed but fans have to wait a while

Idina Mensel and Kristen Bell will be back as Princesses Elsa and Anna in the sequel

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/frozen-2-release-date-revealed-12947697

International Alien Day: Diamond shaped objects? Star shaped blue lights? A look back at Surrey's UFO 'sightings'

From orange lights to egg and sausage shapes, we take a look back at extraterrestrial activity in the county

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/international-alien-day-diamond-shaped-12947257

Billy Monger fundraising campaign becomes fastest EVER Just Giving appeal

£100,000 was raised in just three hours and 26 minutes, with half a million pounds raised in 22 hours

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/billy-monger-fundraising-campaign-becomes-12946952

Image SEO: Optimizing images for search engines

Rabbit destined to be the world's largest dies on plane from Heathrow to celebrity American buyer

The 10-month-old rabbit was headed to Chicago O'Hare, where he was discovered dead

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/rabbit-destined-worlds-largest-dies-12947189

John Lowe double murder: Relative of double shooting victims plans to sue Surrey Police over handling of case

Stacey Banner says she plans to sue the force for their decision to hand back firearms to John Lowe, one of which was used to kill her mother and sister

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/john-lowe-double-murder-relative-12946349

West End Garage inquest: Lift operation practice 'not safe' before Mercedes fell and crushed mechanic

Peter Richardson, who was killed in November 2015, was the workshop manager at West End Garage

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/west-end-garage-inquest-lift-12945642

Police rush to Redhill car park after reports of a firearm in a vehicle

But when they got to the scene they found something less sinister

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/police-rush-redhill-car-park-12946097

Sentence for teenager who threatened to kill Leatherhead woman with Down's Syndrome

Joshua Hislop, 19, sent messages to a woman with Down's Syndrome threatening to kill her and her family

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/sentence-teenager-who-threatened-kill-12946072

Jewellery, designer bags and shoes worth thousands of pounds stolen from Epsom house

Police have released CCTV footage of people they would like to speak to in connection with the burglary

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/jewellery-designer-bags-shoes-worth-12944964

Billy Monger: F4 racer's manager praises 'truly awe-inspiring' teen

The F4 racer's manager has praised the 17-year-old's positive attitude and passion for racing

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/billy-monger-f4-racers-manager-12945577

Fiery Bird gig signals start of live music in Woking as town gears up for new venue

It was a momentous evening for a team of people who have been campaigning for a live music and arts venue in Woking

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/fiery-bird-gig-signals-start-12939023

General election: 'Huge opportunity' to prevent 'disastrous hard Brexit', says Guildford Liberal Democrat candidate

The Guildford Liberal Democrat candidate challenging Anne Milton in the general election on June 8 will be Zöe Franklin

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-huge-opportunity-prevent-12943211

There's No Such Thing as a Site Migration

Posted by jonoalderson

Websites, like the businesses who operate them, are often deceptively complicated machines.

They’re fragile systems, and changing or replacing any one of the parts can easily affect (or even break) the whole setup — often in ways not immediately obvious to stakeholders or developers.

Even seemingly simple sites are often powered by complex technology, like content management systems, databases, and templating engines. There’s much more going on behind the scenes — technically and organizationally — than you can easily observe by crawling a site or viewing the source code.

When you change a website and remove or add elements, it’s not uncommon to introduce new errors, flaws, or faults.

That’s why I get extremely nervous whenever I hear a client or business announce that they’re intending to undergo a "site migration."

Chances are, and experience suggests, that something’s going to go wrong.

Ouch. #ecomchat #seo pic.twitter.com/flgncLVJBT
— Mark Cook (@thetafferboy) February 26, 2017

Migrations vary wildly in scope

As an SEO consultant and practitioner, I've been involved in more "site migrations" than I can remember or count — for charities, startups, international e-commerce sites, and even global household brands. Every one has been uniquely challenging and stressful.

In each case, the businesses involved have underestimated (and in some cases, increased) the complexity, the risk, and the details involved in successfully executing their "migration."

As a result, many of these projects negatively impacted performance and potential in ways that could have been easily avoided.

This isn’t a case of the scope of the "migration" being too big, but rather, a misalignment of understanding, objectives, methods, and priorities, resulting in stakeholders working on entirely different scopes.

The migrations I’ve experienced have varied from simple domain transfers to complete overhauls of server infrastructure, content management frameworks, templates, and pages — sometimes even scaling up to include the consolidation (or fragmentation) of multiple websites and brands.

In the minds of each organization, however, these have all been "migration" projects despite their significantly varying (and poorly defined) scopes. In each case, the definition and understanding of the word "migration" has varied wildly.

We suck at definitions

As an industry, we’re used to struggling with labels. We’re still not sure if we’re SEOs, inbound marketers, digital marketers, or just… marketers. The problem is that, when we speak to each other (and those outside of our industry), these words can carry different meaning and expectations.

Even amongst ourselves, a conversation between two digital marketers, analysts, or SEOs about their fields of expertise is likely to reveal that they have surprisingly different definitions of their roles, responsibilities, and remits. To them, words like "content" or "platform" might mean different things.

In the same way, "site migrations" vary wildly, in form, function, and execution — and when we discuss them, we’re not necessarily talking about the same thing. If we don’t clarify our meanings and have shared definitions, we risk misunderstandings, errors, or even offense.

Ambiguity creates risk

Poorly managed migrations can have a number of consequences beyond just drops in rankings, traffic, and performance. There are secondary impacts, too. They can also inadvertently:

• Provide a poor user experience (e.g., old URLs now 404, or error states are confusing to users, or a user reaches a page different from what they expected).
• Break or omit tracking and/or analytics implementations, resulting in loss of business intelligence.
• Limit the size, shape, or scalability of a site, resulting in static, stagnant, or inflexible templates and content (e.g., omitting the ability to add or edit pages, content, and/or sections in a CMS), and a site which struggles to compete as a result.
• Miss opportunities to benefit from what SEOs do best: blending an understanding of consumer demand and behavior, the market and competitors, and the brand in question to create more effective strategies, functionality and content.
• Create conflict between stakeholders, when we need to "hustle" at the last minute to retrofit our requirements into an already complex project (“I know it’s about to go live, but PLEASE can we add analytics conversion tracking?”) — often at the cost of our reputation.
• Waste future resource, where mistakes require that future resource is spent recouping equity resulting from faults or omissions in the process, rather than building on and enhancing performance.

I should point out that there’s nothing wrong with hustle in this case; that, in fact, begging, borrowing, and stealing can often be a viable solution in these kinds of scenarios. There’s been more than one occasion when, late at night before a site migration, I’ve averted disaster by literally begging developers to include template review processes, to implement redirects, or to stall deployments.

But this isn’t a sensible or sustainable or reliable way of working.

Mistakes will inevitably be made. Resources, favors, and patience are finite. Too much reliance on "hustle" from individuals (or multiple individuals) may in fact further widen the gap in understanding and scope, and positions the hustler as a single point of failure.

More importantly, hustle may only fix the symptoms, not the cause of these issues. That means that we remain stuck in a role as the disruptive outsiders who constantly squeeze in extra unscoped requirements at the eleventh hour.

Where things go wrong

If we’re to begin to address some of these challenges, we need to understand when, where, and why migration projects go wrong.

The root cause of all less-than-perfect migrations can be traced to at least one of the following scenarios:

• The migration project occurs without consultation.
• Consultation is sought too late in the process, and/or after the migration.
• There is insufficient planned resource/time/budget to add requirements (or processes)/make recommended changes to the brief.
• The scope is changed mid-project, without consultation, or in a way which de-prioritizes requirements.
• Requirements and/or recommended changes are axed at the eleventh hour (due to resource/time/budget limitations, or educational/political conflicts).

There’s a common theme in each of these cases. We’re not involved early enough in the process, or our opinions and priorities don’t carry sufficient weight to impact timelines and resources.

Chances are, these mistakes are rarely the product of spite or of intentional omission; rather, they’re born of gaps in the education and experience of the stakeholders and decision-makers involved.

We can address this, to a degree, by elevating ourselves to senior stakeholders in these kinds of projects, and by being consulted much earlier in the timeline.

Let’s be more specific

I think that it’s our responsibility to help the organizations we work for to avoid these mistakes. One of the easiest opportunities to do that is to make sure that we’re talking about the same thing, as early in the process as possible.

Otherwise, migrations will continue to go wrong, and we will continue to spend far too much of our collective time fixing broken links, recommending changes or improvements to templates, and holding together bruised-and-broken websites — all at the expense of doing meaningful, impactful work.

Perhaps we can begin to answer to some of these challenges by creating better definitions and helping to clarify exactly what’s involved in a "site migration" process.

Unfortunately, I suspect that we’re stuck with the word "migration," at least for now. It’s a term which is already widely used, which people think is a correct and appropriate definition. It’s unrealistic to try to change everybody else’s language when we’re already too late to the conversation.

Our next best opportunity to reduce ambiguity and risk is to codify the types of migration. This gives us a chance to prompt further exploration and better definitions.

For example, if we can say “This sounds like it’s actually a domain migration paired with a template migration,” we can steer the conversation a little and rely on a much better shared frame of reference.

If we can raise a challenge that, e.g., the "translation project" a different part of the business is working on is actually a whole bunch of interwoven migration types, then we can raise our concerns earlier and pursue more appropriate resource, budget, and authority (e.g., “This project actually consists of a series of migrations involving templates, content, and domains. Therefore, it’s imperative that we also consider X and Y as part of the project scope.”).

By persisting in labelling this way, stakeholders may gradually come to understand that, e.g., changing the design typically also involves changing the templates, and so the SEO folks should really be involved earlier in the process. By challenging the language, we can challenge the thinking.

Let’s codify migration types

I’ve identified at least seven distinct types of migration. Next time you encounter a "migration" project, you can investigate the proposed changes, map them back to these types, and flag any gaps in understanding, expectations, and resource.

You could argue that some of these aren’t strictly "migrations" in a technical sense (i.e., changing something isn’t the same as moving it), but grouping them this way is intentional.

Remember, our goal here isn’t to neatly categorize all of the requirements for any possible type of migration. There are plenty of resources, guides, and lists which already try do that.

Instead, we’re trying to provide neat, universal labels which help us (the SEO folks) and them (the business stakeholders) to have shared definitions and to remove unknown unknowns.

They’re a set of shared definitions which we can use to trigger early warning signals, and to help us better manage stakeholder expectations.

Feel free to suggest your own, to grow, shrink, combine, or bin any of these to fit your own experience and requirements!

1. Hosting migrations

A broad bundling of infrastructure, hardware, and server considerations (while these are each broad categories in their own right, it makes sense to bundle them together in this context).

If your migration project contains any of the following changes, you’re talking about a hosting migration, and you’ll need to explore the SEO implications (and development resource requirements) to make sure that changes to the underlying platform don’t impact front-end performance or visibility.

• You’re changing hosting provider.
• You’re changing, adding, or removing server locations.
• You’re altering the specifications of your physical (or virtual) servers (e.g., RAM, CPU, storage, hardware types, etc).
• You’re changing your server technology stack (e.g., moving from Apache to Nginx).*
• You’re implementing or removing load balancing, mirroring, or extra server environments.
• You’re implementing or altering caching systems (database, static page caches, varnish, object, memcached, etc).
• You’re altering the physical or server security protocols and features.**
• You’re changing, adding or removing CDNs.***

*Might overlap into a software migration if the changes affect the configuration or behavior of any front-end components (e.g., the CMS).

**Might overlap into other migrations, depending on how this manifests (e.g., template, software, domain).

***Might overlap into a domain migration if the CDN is presented as/on a distinct hostname (e.g., AWS), rather than invisibly (e.g., Cloudflare).

2. Software migrations

Unless your website is comprised of purely static HTML files, chances are that it’s running some kind of software to serve the right pages, behaviors, and content to users.

If your migration project contains any of the following changes, you’re talking about a software migration, and you’ll need to understand (and input into) how things like managing error codes, site functionality, and back-end behavior work.

• You’re changing CMS.
• You’re adding or removing plugins/modules/add-ons in your CMS.
• You’re upgrading or downgrading the CMS, or plugins/modules/addons (by a significant degree/major release) .
• You’re changing the language used to render the website (e.g., adopting Angular2 or NodeJS).
• You’re developing new functionality on the website (forms, processes, widgets, tools).
• You’re merging platforms; e.g., a blog which operated on a separate domain and system is being integrated into a single CMS.*

*Might overlap into a domain migration if you’re absorbing software which was previously located/accessed on a different domain.

3. Domain migrations

Domain migrations can be pleasantly straightforward if executed in isolation, but this is rarely the case. Changes to domains are often paired with (or the result of) other structural and functional changes.

If your migration project alters the URL(s) by which users are able to reach your website, contains any of the following changes, then you’re talking about a domain migration, and you need to consider how redirects, protocols (e.g., HTTP/S), hostnames (e.g., www/non-www), and branding are impacted.

• You’re changing the main domain of your website.
• You’re buying/adding new domains to your ecosystem.
• You’re adding or removing subdomains (e.g., removing domain sharding following a migration to HTTP2).
• You’re moving a website, or part of a website, between domains (e.g., moving a blog on a subdomain into a subfolder, or vice-versa).
• You’re intentionally allowing an active domain to expire.
• You’re purchasing an expired/dropped domain.

4. Template migrations

Chances are that your website uses a number of HTML templates, which control the structure, layout, and peripheral content of your pages. The logic which controls how your content looks, feels, and behaves (as well as the behavior of hidden/meta elements like descriptions or canonical URLs) tends to live here.

If your migration project alters elements like your internal navigation (e.g., the header or footer), elements in your <head>, or otherwise changes the page structure around your content in the ways I’ve outlined, then you’re talking about a template migration. You’ll need to consider how users and search engines perceive and engage with your pages, how context, relevance, and authority flow through internal linking structures, and how well-structured your HTML (and JS/CSS) code is.

• You’re making changes to internal navigation.
• You’re changing the layout and structure of important pages/templates (e.g., homepage, product pages).
• You’re adding or removing template components (e.g., sidebars, interstitials).
• You’re changing elements in your <head> code, like title, canonical, or hreflang tags.
• You’re adding or removing specific templates (e.g., a template which shows all the blog posts by a specific author).
• You’re changing the URL pattern used by one or more templates.
• You’re making changes to how device-specific rendering works*

*Might involve domain, software, and/or hosting migrations, depending on implementation mechanics.

5. Content migrations

Your content is everything which attracts, engages with, and convinces users that you’re the best brand to answer their questions and meet their needs. That includes the words you use to describe your products and services, the things you talk about on your blog, and every image and video you produce or use.

If your migration project significantly changes the tone (including language, demographic targeting, etc), format, or quantity/quality of your content in the ways I’ve outlined, then you’re talking about a content migration. You’ll need to consider the needs of your market and audience, and how the words and media on your website answer to that — and how well it does so in comparison with your competitors.

• You significantly increase or reduce the number of pages on your website.
• You significantly change the tone, targeting, or focus of your content.
• You begin to produce content on/about a new topic.
• You translate and/or internationalize your content.*
• You change the categorization, tagging, or other classification system on your blog or product content.**
• You use tools like canonical tags, meta robots indexation directives, or robots.txt files to control how search engines (and other bots) access and attribute value to a content piece (individually or at scale).

*Might involve domain, software and/or hosting, and template migrations, depending on implementation mechanics.

**May overlap into a template migration if the layout and/or URL structure changes as a result.

6. Design migrations

The look and feel of your website doesn’t necessarily directly impact your performance (though user signals like engagement and trust certainly do). However, simple changes to design components can often have unintended knock-on effects and consequences.

If your migration project contains any of the following changes, you’re talking about a design migration, and you’ll need to clarify whether changes are purely cosmetic or whether they go deeper and impact other areas.

• You’re changing the look and feel of key pages (like your homepage).*
• You’re adding or removing interaction layers, e.g. conditionally hiding content based on device or state.*
• You’re making design/creative changes which change the HTML (as opposed to just images or CSS files) of specific elements.*
• You’re changing key messaging, like logos and brand slogans.
• You’re altering the look and feel to react to changing strategies or monetization models (e.g., introducing space for ads in a sidebar, or removing ads in favor of using interstitial popups/states).
• You’re changing images and media.**

*All template migrations.

**Don’t forget to 301 redirect these, unless you’re replacing like-for-like filenames (which isn’t always best practice if you wish to invalidate local or remote caches).

7. Strategy migrations

A change in organizational or marketing strategy might not directly impact the website, but a widening gap between a brand’s audience, objectives, and platform can have a significant impact on performance.

If your market or audience (or your understanding of it) changes significantly, or if your mission, your reputation, or the way in which you describe your products/services/purpose changes, then you’re talking about a strategy migration. You’ll need to consider how you structure your website, how you target your audiences, how you write content, and how you campaign (all of which might trigger a set of new migration projects!).

• You change the company mission statement.
• You change the website’s key objectives, goals, or metrics.
• You enter a new marketplace (or leave one).
• Your channel focus (and/or your audience’s) changes significantly.
• A competitor disrupts the market and/or takes a significant amount of your market share.
• Responsibility for the website/its performance/SEO/digital changes.
• You appoint a new agency or team responsible for the website’s performance.
• Senior/C-level stakeholders leave or join.
• Changes in legal frameworks (e.g. privacy compliance or new/changing content restrictions in prescriptive sectors) constrain your publishing/content capabilities.

Let’s get in earlier

Armed with better definitions, we can begin to force a more considered conversation around what a "migration" project actually involves. We can use a shared language and ensure that stakeholders understand the risks and opportunities of the changes they intend to make.

Unfortunately, however, we don’t always hear about proposed changes until they’ve already been decided and signed off.

People don’t know that they need to tell us that they’re changing domain, templates, hosting, etc. So it’s often too late when — or if — we finally get involved. Decisions have already been made before they trickle down into our awareness.

That’s still a problem.

By the time you’re aware of a project, it’s usually too late to impact it.

While our new-and-improved definitions are a great starting place to catch risks as you encounter them, avoiding those risks altogether requires us to develop a much better understanding of how, where, and when migrations are planned, managed, and start to go wrong.

Let’s identify trigger points

I’ve identified four common scenarios which lead to organizations deciding to undergo a migration project.

If you can keep your ears to the ground and spot these types of events unfolding, you have an opportunity to give yourself permission to insert yourself into the conversation, and to interrogate to find out exactly which types of migrations might be looming.

It’s worth finding ways to get added to deployment lists and notifications, internal project management tools, and other systems so that you can look for early warning signs (without creating unnecessary overhead and comms processes).

1. Mergers, acquisitions, and closures

When brands are bought, sold, or merged, this almost universally triggers changes to their websites. These requirements are often dictated from on-high, and there’s limited (or no) opportunity to impact the brief.

Migration strategies in these situations are rarely comfortable, and almost always defensive by nature (focusing on minimizing impact/cost rather than capitalizing upon opportunity).

Typically, these kinds of scenarios manifest in a small number of ways:

• The "parent" brand absorbs the website of the purchased brand into their own website; either by "bolting it on" to their existing architecture, moving it to a subdomain/folder, or by distributing salvageable content throughout their existing site and killing the old one (often triggering most, if not every type of migration).
• The purchased brand website remains where it is, but undergoes a design migration and possibly template migrations to align it with the parent brand.
• A brand website is retired and redirected (a domain migration).

2. Rebrands

All sorts of pressures and opportunities lead to rebranding activity. Pressures to remain relevant, to reposition within marketplaces, or change how the brand represents itself can trigger migration requirements — though these activities are often led by brand and creative teams who don’t necessarily understand the implications.

Often, the outcome of branding processes and initiatives creates new a or alternate understanding of markets and consumers, and/or creates new guidelines/collateral/creative which must be reflected on the website(s). Typically, this can result in:

• Changes to core/target audiences, and the content or language/phrasing used to communicate with them (strategy and content migrations -—more if this involves, for example, opening up to international audiences).
• New collateral, replacing or adding to existing media, content, and messaging (content and design migrations).
• Changes to website structure and domain names (template and domain migrations) to align to new branding requirements.

3. C-level vision

It’s not uncommon for senior stakeholders to decide that the strategy to save a struggling business, to grow into new markets, or to make their mark on an organization is to launch a brand-new, shiny website.

These kinds of decisions often involve a scorched-earth approach, tearing down the work of their predecessors or of previously under-performing strategies. And the more senior the decision-maker, the less likely they’ll understand the implications of their decisions.

In these kinds of scenarios, your best opportunity to avert disaster is to watch for warning signs and to make yourself heard before it’s too late. In particular, you can watch out for:

• Senior stakeholders with marketing, IT, or C-level responsibilities joining, leaving, or being replaced (in particular if in relation to poor performance).
• Boards of directors, investors, or similar pressuring web/digital teams for unrealistic performance goals (based on current performance/constraints).
• Gradual reduction in budget and resource for day-to-day management and improvements to the website (as a likely prelude to a big strategy migration).
• New agencies being brought on board to optimize website performance, who’re hindered by the current framework/constraints.
• The adoption of new martech and marketing automation software.*

*Integrations of solutions like SalesForce, Marketo, and similar sometimes rely on utilizing proxied subdomains, embedded forms/content, and other mechanics which will need careful consideration as part of a template migration.

4. Technical or financial necessity

The current website is in such a poor, restrictive, or cost-ineffective condition that it makes it impossible to adopt new-and-required improvements (such as compliance with new standards, an integration of new martech stacks, changes following a brand purchase/merger, etc).

Generally, like the kinds of C-level “new website” initiatives I’ve outlined above, these result in scorched earth solutions.

Particularly frustrating, these are the kinds of migration projects which you yourself may well argue and fight for, for years on end, only to then find that they’ve been scoped (and maybe even begun or completed) without your input or awareness.

Here are some danger signs to watch out for which might mean that your migration project is imminent (or, at least, definitely required):

• Licensing costs for parts or the whole platform become cost-prohibitive (e.g., enterprise CMS platforms, user seats, developer training, etc).
• The software or hardware skill set required to maintain the site becomes rarer or more expensive (e.g., outdated technologies).
• Minor-but-urgent technical changes take more than six months to implement.
• New technical implementations/integrations are agreed upon in principle, budgeted for, but not implemented.
• The technical backlog of tasks grows faster than it shrinks as it fills with breakages and fixes rather than new features, initiatives, and improvements.
• The website ecosystem doesn’t support the organization’s ways of working (e.g., the organization adopts agile methodologies, but the website only supports waterfall-style codebase releases).
• Key technology which underpins the site is being deprecated, and there’s no easy upgrade path.*

*Will likely trigger hosting or software migrations.

Let’s not count on this

While this kind of labelling undoubtedly goes some way to helping us spot and better manage migrations, it’s far from a perfect or complete system.

In fact, I suspect it may be far too ambitious, and unrealistic in its aspiration. Accessing conversations early enough — and being listened to and empowered in those conversations — relies on the goodwill and openness of companies who aren’t always completely bought into or enamored with SEO.

This will only work in an organization which is open to this kind of thinking and internal challenging — and chances are, they’re not the kinds of organizations who are routinely breaking their websites. The very people who need our help and this kind of system are fundamentally unsuited to receive it.

I suspect, then, it might be impossible in many cases to make the kinds of changes required to shift behaviors and catch these problems earlier. In most organizations, at least.

Avoiding disasters resulting from ambiguous migration projects relies heavily on broad education. Everything else aside, people tend to change companies faster than you can build deep enough tribal knowledge.

That doesn’t mean that the structure isn’t still valuable, however. The types of changes and triggers I’ve outlined can still be used as alarm bells and direction for your own use.

Let’s get real

If you can’t effectively educate stakeholders on the complexities and impact of them making changes to their website, there are more "lightweight" solutions.

At the very least, you can turn these kinds of items (and expand with your own, and in more detail) into simple lists which can be printed off, laminated, and stuck to a wall. At the very least, perhaps you'll remind somebody to pick up the phone to the SEO team when they recognize an issue.

In a more pragmatic world, stakeholders don’t necessarily have to understand the nuance or the detail if they at least understand that they’re meant to ask for help when they’re changing domain, for example, or adding new templates to their website.

Whilst this doesn’t solve the underlying problems, it does provide a mechanism through which the damage can be systematically avoided or limited. You can identify problems earlier and be part of the conversation.

If it’s still too late and things do go wrong, you'll have something you can point to and say “I told you so,” or, more constructively perhaps, “Here’s the resource you need to avoid this happening next time.”

And in your moment of self-righteous vindication, having successfully made it through this post and now armed to save your company from a botched migration project, you can migrate over to the bar. Good work, you.

---

Thanks to…

This turned into a monster of a post, and its scope meant that it almost never made it to print. Thanks to a few folks in particular for helping me to shape, form, and ship it. In particular:

• Hannah Thorpe, for help in exploring and structuring the initial concept.
• Greg Mitchell, for a heavy dose of pragmatism in the conclusion.
• Gerry White, for some insightful additions and the removal of dozens of typos.
• Sam Simpson for putting up with me spending hours rambling and ranting at her about failed site migrations.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/5736349

Conservative councillor quits party to join Liberal Democrats due to 'hard Brexit' direction

'I have been unhappy for some time with the political direction of the Conservative party,' the councillor said

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/conservative-councillor-quits-party-join-12944286

Betchworth crash: Motorcyclist taken to hospital with serious injuries following collision with car

Pebble Hill Road was closed for several hours following the incident

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/betchworth-crash-motorcyclist-taken-hospital-12944701

'Demeaning, divisive, discriminatory and unfair': Disability group speaks out against planned blue badge parking charges

Waverley Borough Council will address the concerns of a Surrey disability group in a meeting on Thursday (April 27)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/demeaning-divisive-discriminatory-unfair-disability-12943048

Woking jungle-themed park closed for three weeks for maintenance works

Find out the days and times that the play area will be closed and what the improvements will be

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/woking-jungle-themed-park-closed-12938959

John Lowe double murder: Surrey Police 'failed to assess' risk of returning guns to killer, investigator finds

An 18-month probe has already led to one dismissal for gross misconduct, while senior officers are alleged to have breached police powers

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/john-lowe-double-murder-surrey-12944025

Billy Monger: F4 racer praises 'love and generosity' of well-wishers for giving him strength to get through week

The injured 17-year-old driver reserves a special mention for his sister Bonny, who gave him the "will to keep fighting"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/billy-monger-f4-racer-praises-12944493

Member of public foils attempted theft outside Waitrose which left 76-year-old woman shaken

Surrey Police officers want to speak to a man they believe holds vital information to the investigation

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/member-public-foils-attempted-theft-12943531

Man jailed after transphobic hate crime in Caterham supermarket

After being removed, Darren McClean, 38, continued his abusive behaviour by uploading photos on Facebook

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/man-jailed-after-transphobic-hate-12943764

Knaphill Bagshot Road crash: Lorry driver airlifted to hospital with serious injuries after three-vehicle collision

Emergency services were called out to Bagshot Road in Knaphill just after midday on Tuesday (April 25)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/knaphill-bagshot-road-crash-lorry-12943594

'We'll have the last laugh!': Cops strip shop of alcohol licence after manager caught flogging nitrous oxide canisters

Police seized around 3,000 canisters from Dimons convenience store in Camberley

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/well-last-laugh-cops-strip-12942756

Stoughton councillors 'shocked' as man walks in to petrol station after being stabbed in the leg

Cllr David Quelch has lived in the area for 54 years and says he cannot remember anything like this happening before

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/stoughton-councillors-shocked-man-walks-12943168

London Marathon 2017: Watch Surrey runner's proposal moments after crossing the finish line

The Surrey runner proposed, telling his girlfriend "I only got through this because I pictured you at the end"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/london-marathon-2017-watch-surrey-12941313

Jurassic World 2 from the air as drone footage captures set of sequel

The drone footage shows the set of the next installment to the sci-fi adventure film

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/jurassic-world-2-air-drone-12941960

Oxted mum's death leaves family with questions they will 'never be able to answer'

The parents of Catherine Vickers, found hanged at her home on Mother's Day, want her son to know she was a "loving mother"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/oxted-mums-death-leaves-family-12941626

Tom Hardy catches suspected thief and five other reasons why we love the Hollywood heart-throb

From treating his wife to a curry to reading children's stories, here is why Surrey loves Tom Hardy

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/lifestyle/fun-stuff/tom-hardy-catches-suspected-thief-12941962

Freedom of the Borough parade in Woking marks honour for Pirbright Army Training Centre

Crowds gathered as a special parade in Jubilee Square took place to celebrate the occasion

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/freedom-borough-parade-woking-marks-12937262

Are you looking for a new career? Here are eight jobs you can apply for in Surrey now

We've put together a quick round-up of some of the top jobs in your area

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/you-looking-new-career-here-12936997

Disney On Ice is coming to the O2 Arena - how to get tickets

The O2 Arena will host 'Disney On Ice presents Passport to Adventure' this December for a huge 20 shows

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/disney-ice-coming-o2-arena-12940241

Bletchingley crash: Young children escape injury in school bus collision

The minibus driver was also uninjured following the crash on Tuesday morning (April 25)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/bletchingley-crash-young-children-escape-12941492

A30 Camberley crash: Driver of car airlifted to hospital after collision with lamp post

The road was closed in both directions at Frimley Road while emergency services dealt with the accident

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/a30-camberley-crash-driver-car-12940730

Falling Mercedes at West End Garage took mechanic's life, inquest hears

Peter Richardson, 31, had worked at the garage in Guildford Road since the age of 15

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/falling-mercedes-west-end-garage-12940581

Tom Hardy catches suspected thief after 'assault course' style chase

Hardy was seen making a citizen's arrest after a man crashed a stolen moped

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/tom-hardy-catches-suspected-thief-12940402

'This is what happens these days'- Petrol station staff seen cleaning up blood after stabbed man staggered into store

Police say the man refused medical treatment after staggering into the Guildford petrol station

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/this-what-happens-days-petrol-12939960

The State of Links: Yesterday's Ranking Factor?

Posted by Tom.Capper

Back in September last year, I was lucky enough to see Rand speak at MozCon. His talk was about link building and the main types of strategy that he saw as still being relevant and effective today. During his introduction, he said something that really got me thinking, about how the whole purpose of links and PageRank had been to approximate traffic.

Source

Essentially, back in the late '90s, links were a much bigger part of how we experienced the web — think of hubs like Excite, AOL, and Yahoo. Google’s big innovation was to realize that, because people navigated the web by clicking on links, they could approximate the relative popularity of pages by looking at those links.

So many links, such little time.

Rand pointed out that, given all the information at their disposal in the present day — as an Internet Service Provider, a search engine, a browser, an operating system, and so on — Google could now far more accurately model whether a link drives traffic, so you shouldn’t aim to build links that don’t drive traffic. This is a pretty big step forward from the link-building tactics of old, but it occurred to me that it it probably doesn’t go far enough.

If Google has enough data to figure out which links are genuinely driving traffic, why bother with links at all? The whole point was to figure out which sites and pages were popular, and they can now answer that question directly. (It’s worth noting that there’s a dichotomy between “popular” and “trustworthy” that I don’t want to get too stuck into, but which isn’t too big a deal here given that both can be inferred from either link-based data sources, or from non-link-based data sources — for example, SERP click-through rate might correlate well with “trustworthy,” while “search volume” might correlate well with “popular”).

However, there’s plenty of evidence out there suggesting that Google is in fact still making significant use of links as a ranking factor, so I decided to set out to challenge the data on both sides of that argument. The end result of that research is this post.

The horse's mouth

One reasonably authoritative source on matters relating to Google is Google themselves. Google has been fairly unequivocal, even in recent times, that links are still a big deal. For example:

• March 2016: Google Senior Search Quality Strategist Andrey Lipattsev confirms that content and links are the first and second greatest ranking factors. (The full quote is: “Yes; I can tell you what they [the number 1 and 2 ranking factors] are. It’s content, and links pointing to your site.”)
• April 2014: Matt Cutts confirms that Google has tested search quality without links, and found it to be inferior.
• October 2016: Gary Illyes implies that text links continue to be valuable while playing down the concept of Domain Authority.

Then, of course, there’s their continued focus on unnatural backlinks and so on — none of which would be necessary in a world where links are not a ranking factor.

However, I’d argue that this doesn’t indicate the end of our discussion before it’s even begun. Firstly, Google has a great track record of giving out dodgy SEO advice. Consider HTTPS migrations pre-2016. Will Critchlow talked at SearchLove San Diego about how Google’s algorithms are at a level of complexity and opaqueness where they’re no longer even trying to understand them themselves — and of course there are numerous stories of unintentional behaviors from machine learning algorithms out in the wild.

Third-party correlation studies

It’s not difficult to put together your own data and show a correlation between link-based metrics and rankings. Take, for example:

• Moz’s most recent study in 2015, showing strong relationships between link-based factors and rankings across the board.
• This more recent study by Stone Temple Consulting.

However, these studies fall into significant issues with correlation vs. causation.

There are three main mechanisms which could explain the relationships that they show:

1. Getting more links causes sites to rank higher (yay!)
2. Ranking higher causes sites to get more links
3. Some third factor, such as brand awareness, is related to both links and rankings, causing them to be correlated with each other despite the absence of a direct causal relationship

I’ve yet to see any correlation study that addresses these very serious shortcomings, or even particularly acknowledges them. Indeed, I’m not sure that it would even be possible to do so given the available data, but this does show that as an industry we need to apply some critical thinking to the advice that we’re consuming.

However, earlier this year I did write up some research of my own here on the Moz Blog, demonstrating that brand awareness could in fact be a more useful factor than links for predicting rankings.

Source

The problem with this study was that it showed a relationship that was concrete (i.e. extremely statistically significant), but that was surprisingly lacking in explanatory power. Indeed, I discussed in that post how I’d ended up with a correlation that was far lower than Moz’s for Domain Authority.

Fortunately, Malcolm Slade recently discussed some of his very similar research at BrightonSEO, in which he finds similar broad correlations to myself between brand factors and rankings, but far, far stronger correlations for certain types of query, and especially big, high-volume, highly competitive head terms.

So what can we conclude overall from these third-party studies? Two main things:

1. We should take with a large pinch of salt any study that does not address the possibilities of reverse causation, or a jointly-causing third factor.
2. Links can add very little explanatory power to a rankings prediction model based on branded search volume, at least at a domain level.

The real world: Why do rankings change?

At the end of the day, we’re interested in whether links are a ranking factor because we’re interested in whether we should be trying to use them to improve the rankings of our sites, or our clients’ sites.

Fluctuation

The first example I want to look at here is this graph, showing UK rankings for the keyword “flowers” from May to December last year:

The fact is that our traditional understanding of ranking changes — which breaks down into links, on-site, and algorithm changes — cannot explain this degree of rapid fluctuation. If you don’t believe me, the above data is available publicly through platforms like SEMRush and Searchmetrics, so try to dig into it yourself and see if there’s any external explanation.

This level and frequency of fluctuation is increasingly common for hotly contested terms, and it shows a tendency by Google to continuously iterate and optimize — just as marketers do when they’re optimizing a paid search advert, or a landing page, or an email campaign.

What is Google optimizing for?

Source

The above slide is from Larry Kim’s presentation at SearchLove San Diego, and it shows how the highest SERP positions are gaining click-through rate over time, despite all the changes in Google Search (such as increased non-organic results) that ought to drive the opposite.

Larry’s suggestion is that this is a symptom of Google’s procedural optimization — not of the algorithm, but by the algorithm and of results. This certainly fits in with everything we’ve seen.

Successful link building

However, at the other end of the scale, we get examples like this:

The above graph (courtesy of STAT) shows rankings for the commercial keywords for Fleximize.com during a Distilled creative campaign. This is a particularly interesting example for two reasons:

• Fleximize started off as a domain with relatively little equity, meaning that changes were measurable, and that there were fairly easy gains to be made
• Nothing happened with the first two pieces (1, 2), even though they scored high-quality coverage and were seemingly very comparable to the third (3).

It seems that links did eventually move the needle here, and massively so, but the mechanisms at work are highly opaque.

The above two examples — “Flowers” and Fleximize — are just two real-world examples of ranking changes. I’ve picked one that seems obviously link-driven but a little strange, and one that shows how volatile things are for more competitive terms. I’m sure there are countless massive folders out there full of case studies that show links moving rankings — but the point is that it can happen, yet it isn’t always as simple as it seems.

How do we explain all of this?

A lot of the evidence I’ve gone through above is contradictory. Links are correlated with rankings, and Google says they’re important, and sometimes they clearly move the needle, but on the other hand brand awareness seems to explain away most of their statistical usefulness, and Google’s operating with more subtle methods in the data-rich top end.

My favored explanation right now to explain how this fit together is this:

• There are two tiers — probably fuzzily separated.
• At the top end, user signals — and factors that Google’s algorithms associate with user signals — are everything. For competitive queries with lots of search volume, links don’t tell Google anything it couldn’t figure out anyway, and links don’t help with the final refinement of fine-grained ordering.
• However, links may still be a big part of how you qualify for that competition in the top end.

This is very much a work in progress, however, and I’d love to see other people’s thoughts, and especially their fresh research. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/5729871

Elton John caught 'potentially deadly' rare infection on tour and spent two nights in intensive care

The singer cancelled several US concerts but is due to resume performing at Twickenham in June

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/elton-john-caught-potentially-deadly-12939540

Garden centre jobs in Surrey available to apply for right now

Squires Garden Centres has a range of job opportunities at their Surrey sites

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/garden-centre-jobs-surrey-available-12937893

M3 closed for whole May weekend as Woodlands Bridge work continues

Work on the new Woodlands Bridge continues with it set to open in winter this year

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/m3-closed-whole-weekend-woodlands-12938827

Fish4Jobs handy guide on how to set up job alerts

Ensure you never miss a job opportunity by setting up email alerts

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/fish4jobs-handy-guide-how-set-12937034

World Naked Bike Ride 2017: Will it be passing through Surrey or Hampshire?

Thousands of naked cyclists will pedal through the country in a protest against car culture and oil dependency

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/world-naked-bike-ride-passing-11450748

Surrey street lights switch-off: Woking petition calls for lights to be turned back on overnight

Residents are asking Woking Borough Council to support them getting street lights back on overnight

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/surrey-street-lights-switch-off-12938891

Stoughton incident: Petrol station staff raise alarm as man suffering stab injuries tries to buy drink

Surrey Police was called out to the Shell and Little Waitrose petrol station in Stoughton at around 7.20pm on Monday evening (April 24)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/stoughton-incident-petrol-station-staff-12939304

Addlestone Moor collision: Air ambulance attends crash 'between motorbike and car'

The incident happened at Addlestone Moor roundabout at around 6pm on Monday (April 24)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/addlestone-moor-collision-air-ambulance-12938951

Billy Monger: Pass on your well-wishes to brave Charlwood teen as Just Giving campaign reaches £750,000

How you can send your well wishes to Billy Monger following the horrific crash which left him needing a double amputation

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/billy-monger-pass-your-well-12938590

St George's Day parades across Surrey: Residents gather to remember patron saint of England

Veterans and young people took part in various parades to honour St George

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/st-georges-day-parades-across-12935759

Royal Mint denies alleged 'fake' £1 coin found in Surrey shop

The Royal Mint has responded to his claim and reiterated that the new coins are "the world's most secure"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/royal-mint-denies-alleged-fake-12938209

South West Trains incident: Man hit and killed by train at Queenstown Road railway station

Emergency services were called out to Queenstown Road railway station on Monday afternoon (April 24)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/south-west-trains-incident-man-12938371

London Marathon 2017: Hear from Surrey's unsung hero who helped exhausted runner cross the line

The steward was volunteering at the London Marathon when he helped a runner who collapsed dramatically

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/london-marathon-2017-hear-surreys-12937472

A3 Painshill incident: Police re-bail two people arrested in connection with road rage reports

The pair were arrested in connection with two linked road rage incidents on the A3 and M25

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/a3-painshill-incident-police-re-12937560

Motorcyclist taken to hospital after 'falling off motorbike' outside Guildford Spectrum

The man was taken to Royal Surrey County Hospital after falling off his motorbike

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/motorcyclist-taken-hospital-after-falling-12937593

Woolworths revival on the cards after former brand manager describes 'emotional attachment'

20 stores across the county closed in 2008 but the popular retailer could return to the high street

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/business/woolworths-revival-cards-after-former-12937640

May Bank Holiday Monday fairs and other things to do in Surrey and Hampshire

A guide to what's going on, things to do, events and family attractions on Bank Holiday Monday

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/bank-holiday-monday-fairs-things-12924790

Here's how you can help save Surrey's hedgehogs

Keep an eye out for the adorable, prickly mammals - they're disappearing faster than tigers

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/heres-how-you-can-help-12937019

Godalming crash: Motorcyclist remains in critical condition after van collision

The motorcyclist is currently in hospital after the incident on Friday (April 21)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/godalming-crash-motorcyclist-remains-critical-12936331

Out of stock product – what to do with product page?

Sexual health unit a 'lifeline' for patients as campaign continues to save services

A patient has launched a petition to keep the vital unit open after a London hospital trust takeover

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/sexual-health-unit-lifeline-patients-12887563

London Marathon success for man hit by car as he completes second marathon in a month

Despite undergoing major treatment and rehabilitation, Iain Munro made it his mission to help fundraise for the hospital which helped him

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/london-marathon-success-man-hit-12935065

Passer-by gets a shock as he finds 3ft PYTHON in middle of road

A man rescued the snake and put it in the warm part of his house before calling the RSPCA

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/walker-gets-shock-finds-3ft-12935579

London Waterloo signalling problems cause rush hour chaos for commuters

Services were delayed or revised running to and from London Waterloo

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/london-waterloo-signalling-problems-cause-12935279

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announces plans to create four new bank holidays if his party wins the General Election

The Labour leader said the bank holidays would be created on the patron saint's day of each of the home nations

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/labour-leader-jeremy-corbyn-announces-12935561

Watch the moment a freezing horse is lifted from river by firefighters

Firefighters had to sedate the horse in a three-hour rescue operation

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/watch-moment-freezing-horse-lifted-12935404

Local elections: Woking candidates share their key priorities as residents prepare to go to polls

Residents are preparing to vote in the elections on May 4

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/local-elections-woking-candidates-share-12926375

Speeding motorists will receive harsher penalties from today to crackdown on the most serious offenders

“Hopefully, hitting these offenders harder in the pocket will make them think twice before doing it again in the future"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/speeding-motorists-receive-harsher-penalties-12934445

A3 Burpham rush hour crash after van leaves road and ends up in ditch

The incident closed one lane of the northbound carriageway near the A3100 Clay Lane in Burpham

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/a3-burpham-rush-hour-crash-12934370

Mixed forecast ahead as April showers battle with sunshine at the end of the month

It may not seem like it with the gloriously sunny start to the week, but there's a warning not to pack away the umbrellas or raincoats just yet

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/mixed-forecast-ahead-april-showers-12932028

Half of Page-1 Google Results Are Now HTTPS

Posted by Dr-Pete

Just over 9 months ago, I wrote that 30% of page-1 Google results in our 10,000-keyword tracking set were secure (HTTPS). As of earlier this week, that number topped 50%:

While there haven't been any big jumps recently – suggesting this change is due to steady adoption of HTTPS and not a major algorithm update – the end result of a year of small changes is dramatic. More and more Google results are secure.

MozCast is, of course, just one data set, so I asked the folks at Rank Ranger, who operate a similar (but entirely different) tracking system, if they thought I was crazy...

Could we both be crazy? Absolutely. However, we operate completely independent systems with no shared data, so I think the consistency in these numbers suggests that we're not wildly off.

What about the future?

Projecting the fairly stable trend line forward, the data suggests that HTTPS could hit about 65% of page-1 results by the end of 2017. The trend line is, of course, an educated guess at best, and many events could change the adoption rate of HTTPS pages.

I've speculated previously that, as the adoption rate increased, Google would have more freedom to bump up the algorithmic (i.e. ranking) boost for HTTPS pages. I asked Gary Illyes if such a plan was in the works, and he said "no":

As with any Google statement, some of you will take this as gospel truth and some will take it as devilish lies. While he isn't promising that Google will never boost the ranking benefits of HTTPS, I believe Gary on this one. I think Google is happy with the current adoption rate and wary of the collateral damage that an aggressive HTTPS ranking boost (or penalty) could cause. It makes sense that they would bide their time..

Who hasn't converted?

One of the reasons Google may be proceeding with caution on another HTTPS boost (or penalty) is that not all of the big players have made the switch. Here are the Top 20 subdomains in the MozCast dataset, along with the percentage of ranking URLs that use HTTPS:

(1) en.wikipedia.org — 100.0%
(2) www. amazon.com — 99.9%
(3) www. facebook.com — 100.0%
(4) www. yelp.com — 99.7%
(5) www. youtube.com — 99.6%
(6) www. pinterest.com — 100.0%
(7) www. walmart.com — 100.0%
(8) www. tripadvisor.com — 99.7%
(9) www. webmd.com — 0.2%
(10) allrecipes.com — 0.0%
(11) www. target.com — 0.0%
(12) www. foodnetwork.com — 0.0%
(13) www. ebay.com — 0.0%
(14) play.google.com — 100.0%
(15) www. bestbuy.com — 0.0%
(16) www. mayoclinic.org — 0.0%
(17) www. homedepot.com — 0.0%
(18) www. indeed.com — 0.0%
(19) www. zillow.com — 100.0%
(20) shop.nordstrom.com – 0.0%

Of the Top 20, exactly half have switched to HTTPS, although most of the Top 10 have converted. Not surprisingly, switching is, with only minor exceptions, nearly all-or-none. Most sites naturally opt for a site-wide switch, at least after initial testing.

What should you do?

Even if Google doesn't turn up the reward or penalty for HTTPS, other changes are in play, such as Chrome warning visitors about non-secure pages when those pages collect sensitive data. As the adoption rate increases, you can expect pressure to switch to increase.

For new sites, I'd recommend jumping in as soon as possible. Security certificates are inexpensive these days (some are free), and the risks are low. For existing sites, it's a lot tougher. Any site-wide change carries risks, and there have certainly been a few horror stories this past year. At minimum, make sure to secure pages that collect sensitive information or process transactions, and keep your eyes open for more changes.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/5722419