Southern Fail: New musical parodying strike action premiering at comedy festival

The comedy musical tells a commuter love story amid Southern Rail chaos

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/southern-fail-new-musical-parodying-13115005

Child sex offences on the rise in Surrey with NSPCC warning of internet exploitation

The NSPCC is calling for an independent regulator to hold social media website to account

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/child-sex-offences-rise-surrey-13120347

Flying Scotsman fans catch glimpse of iconic steam train as it speeds through county

The iconic steam train was spotted at Coxes Lock in Addlestone and in Deepcut

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/flying-scotsman-fans-catch-glimpse-13120528

Take a sneak peek inside The Ivy Cobham Brasserie ahead of public opening

VIPs were invited to a stylish launch event ahead of the official opening of The Ivy Cobham Brasserie

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/take-sneak-peek-inside-ivy-13119778

Is this the worst parking in Surrey? Take a look back at some shocking examples from across the county

Here are some of the worst examples of parking in the county

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/worst-parked-cars-in-surrey-11911072

As Google Street View marks 10th birthday, see views of how Surrey has changed over the years

Can you believe that Google Street View is 10 years old?

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/google-street-view-marks-10th-13120492

Cranleigh police incident: Man released under investigation after firearm recovered following 18-hour stand-off

The man was arrested after armed police officers staked out a property in Elmbridge Road on Wednesday May 24

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/cranleigh-police-incident-man-released-13120338

In pictures: May sees warmer than average temperatures with spring one of the warmest for over a century

The Met Office has confirmed that this May has been warmer than average

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/pictures-sees-warmer-average-temperatures-13118552

Arcade Fire, a sinking bus, and the criminals locked up in May top Get Surrey's most read on Wednesday

A gig announcement, a round-up of the county's criminals and the latest development of Guildford's night scene were among the most read

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/arcade-fire-sinking-bus-criminals-13120020

Guildford company to launch constellation of satellites which could film cars from space

Watch footage the new satellites are capable of to see just how much detail Earth-i's cameras can capture

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/guildford-company-launch-constellation-satellites-13119249

Highs of 26°C forecast as we say hello to the beginning of meteorological summer

According to the meteorological calendar, summer runs from June to August

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/highs-26c-forecast-say-hello-13118946

General Election: Spelthorne's candidates outline policies as borough prepares to have its say on June 8

The NHS, flood prevention and Brexit are all on the agenda for the Spelthorne candidates        

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-spelthornes-candidates-outline-13118165

Rate your politicians

With Jeremy Corbyn's surprise announcement that he will be taking part in the BBC's leaders debate, just hours before it airs Trinity Mirror has created a tool so you can rate each politician's performance.

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/rate-your-politicians-13119825

British Airways planes at Heathrow breached night-time curfew to make up for chaos caused by IT failure

The airline was given special permission to fly beyond the 11pm curfew to help deal with widespread cancellations

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/british-airways-planes-heathrow-breached-13118252

Freedom Leisure music: Licensing company says 87% of gym members prefer songs by original artist

Freedom Leisure has announced it plans not to renew its PPL license to play popular chart music in fitness classes

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/freedom-leisure-music-licensing-company-13116481

Shocking hottest day of the year photos show why sun cream is vital

A 23-year-old was left with such bad sunburn he was unable to move - sparking a warning the nation needs to adhere to

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/shocking-hottest-day-year-photos-13117701

General Election: Meet the South West Surrey candidates

Labour, Lib Dem, UKIP and National Health Action will be competing against Conservative candidate Jeremy Hunt

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-meet-south-west-13037738

Watch as Woking High Street link road work gets under way

Highway works in Woking town centre are progressing towards the deadline date

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/watch-woking-high-street-link-13118064

Smishing: How to avoid being victim of new text message scam that steals money and identity

Those involved in the scam encourage victims to provide personal and banking information

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/smishing-how-avoid-being-victim-13117963

YOUR chance to tell us what life is like in Surrey - take The Great Surrey Survey

What's it like to live in Surrey? Take our survey and give us your thoughts on issues ranging from health to education and transport

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/your-chance-tell-what-life-13060507

'Show off' drug dealer who posed with fake wads of cash jailed as part of Operation Viking

“This just goes to show that drug dealing is not a glamorous lifestyle even when criminals are trying to make you believe that it is – and no one likes a show off"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/show-off-drug-dealer-who-13117755

Flying Scotsman tour 2017: Why do we love steam trains?

Join former Get Surrey reporter David Stubbings on his journey to explain both his own, and the nation's, affection for steam locomotion as the Flying Scotsman tours Surrey and Hampshire

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/why-we-love-flying-scotsman-11376904

Flats linked to 'persistent' antisocial behaviour and drug use closed for up to two months

A local policing team worked in conjunction with members from housing association in obtaining a closure order

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/flats-linked-persistent-antisocial-behaviour-13101842

How to start writing a blog post?

REVEALED: The Surrey primary schools which require improvement or are inadequate, according to Ofsted ratings

According to the latest published reports from Ofsted, three schools in the county are "inadequate" and 15 "require improvement"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/revealed-surrey-primary-schools-require-13097846

General Election: 'More money is needed on frontline care' - South West Surrey candidates have their say on NHS privatisation

The NHS was a hot topic at a hustings in Haslemere, but who thought what?

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-more-money-needed-13087443

General Election: South West Surrey candidates have their say on fracking during Haslemere hustings

There have been growing concerns about fracking with the Surrey Hills becoming a key location for oil and gas businesses

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-south-west-surrey-13077924

Disruption warning: Here are the major ongoing roadwork projects on Surrey's road

We have compiled a list of the major projects affecting Surrey's roads which could cause disruption to your journeys

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/disruption-warning-here-major-ongoing-13116920

Ex-Chelsea keeper Asmir Begovic donates £3k to Chertsey school's swimming pool fund

The money will go towards the school's ongoing Big Splash swimming pool fund set up after the pool was closed due to leaks

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/ex-chelsea-keeper-asmir-begovic-13093658

Epsom Derby: Manchester terror attack will mean 'tightened security measures', police confirm

Firearms officers will be seen in and around Epsom Downs Racecourse during the Derby horse racing festival

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/epsom-derby-terrorism-police-security-13087425

General Election 2017: Esher and Walton candidates set out policies ahead of June 8 vote

Find out who is standing in the Esher and Walton constituency and learn more about their key policies

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-2017-esher-walton-13113135

General Election: Runnymede and Weybridge's candidates speak as constituency prepares to have its say on June 8

Who will get your vote when the polls open for 2017 General Election?

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-runnymede-weybridges-candidates-13117254

At least one deer is killed every week on Surrey roads

At least one animal a week is killed on Surrey's main roads, and one particular species suffers fatalities far more often than others

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/least-one-deer-killed-every-13115606

Aldershot Town Football Club player pleads not guilty to robbery charge

Liam Bellamy, 25, is alleged to have been involved in an incident which took place in Greenhithe, Kent, in November 2015

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/aldershot-town-football-clubplayer-pleads-13116881

Five people including children treated for suspected carbon monoxide poisoning at Guildford home

Emergency services were called to an address in Hillspur Road on Tuesday (May 30)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/five-people-including-children-treated-13117094

See horrific damage to car after driver 'failed to stop' for police and smashed into bollard

Police said the driver had to be cut free from the Honda Civic following the collision on Tuesday night (May 30)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/see-horrific-damage-car-after-13116766

Fancy pouring your own pint? Reigate craft beer shop opens where you can do just that

Four Hops in West Street has been described as an instant success since it opened

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/fancy-pouring-your-pint-reigate-13115989

'Exciting opportunity not to be missed!': Work for Wetherspoons at Gatwick and Stansted Airports

Bonuses, free car parking at the airports, 70% off food while you're working and free shares are among the perks

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/exciting-opportunity-not-missed-work-13116224

Casino nightclub reopening: A brief history of the Guildford venue

Signs have gone up in the venue's windows saying it is to reopen under new ownership

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/casino-nightclub-reopening-brief-history-13116090

General Election 2017: Candidates speak up about Dunsfold and other Cranleigh housing developments

Candidates expressed concern for the proposed housing developments in the village of Cranleigh

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-2017-candidates-speak-13085487

Abellio loses out to other bus operators as Surrey County Council chooses not to renew tender

The bus operator said there would not be any job losses after rivals were awarded tenders in Surrey

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/abellio-loses-out-bus-operators-13116074

General Election: UK should be kept safe 'without weapons of any kind or the military' says Guildford candidate

John Morris, of the Peace Party, is standing to represent Guildford in the June 8 General Election

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/general-election-uk-should-kept-13084908

General Election: Guildford Labour candidate pledges better maintained, more frequent and safer buses if he wins vote

Howard Smith has now advertised his election campaign on three number four and five buses running from the centre of Guildford

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-guildford-labour-candidate-13078936

General Election: Lack of democracy 'biggest single issue' says Guildford Independent candidate

Independent Semi Essessi is standing to represent Guildford in June's upcoming election

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-lack-democracy-biggest-13077977

General Election: Guildford Green Party candidate to protect the University of Surrey and Royal Surrey County Hospital post-Brexit if elected

Mark Bray–Parry will stand to represent the area in Parliament in June's election

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-guildford-green-party-12955628

Surrey street lights switch-off: Borough and district councils can now pay to be excluded from controversial scheme

One cabinet member said SCC must "make sure all the costs are handed on" to other councils

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/surrey-street-lights-switch-off-13115934

Woking town centre roadworks to continue in Victoria Way this summer

The council hopes the highway works will be completed by August

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/woking-town-centre-roadworks-continue-13115675

General Election: Woking College students quiz borough's parliamentary candidates at debate

Students put forward a variety of questions to the borough's candidates

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-woking-college-students-13097724

Woking town centre is getting a new link road to the High Street as part of huge roadworks scheme

The council believes the new High Street link road will improve public transport in Woking

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/woking-town-centre-getting-new-13115637

Ferris wheel and petting farm at church provide plenty of half-term fun in Woking

If you are looking for something to keep the kids and adults amused, here's your answer

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/ferris-wheel-petting-farm-church-13115258

Guildford Borough Council to discuss with Freedom Leisure plans to drop licensed music in classes

Woking Borough Council has "nothing to add" on operational decision of leisure centre management

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/guildford-borough-council-discuss-freedom-13113435

Engaged couples wanted for new BBC TV show with big name host

The chance to win a luxurious honeymoon thanks to a new Saturday night TV show

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/engaged-couples-wanted-new-bbc-13115458

Things to do in June in and around Surrey and Hampshire

From village fairs and horse racing to car shows and carnivals, here's our jam-packed guide to what's going on in June

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/things-june-around-surrey-hampshire-13091680

Build your own ice cream sundaes at this awesome new dessert parlour in Surrey

With 60 flavours of gelato, and toppings from Belgian waffles to Matlesers, the combinations are endless

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/build-your-ice-cream-sundaes-13113472

Flying Scotsman 2017 tour: How to get tickets for iconic steam locomotive experience

Everything you need to know about getting tickets for the Flying Scotsman 2017 tour

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/flying-scotsman-2017-tour-how-13115010

Optimizing AngularJS Single-Page Applications for Googlebot Crawlers

Posted by jrridley

It’s almost certain that you’ve encountered AngularJS on the web somewhere, even if you weren’t aware of it at the time. Here’s a list of just a few sites using Angular:

• Upwork.com
• Freelancer.com
• Udemy.com
• Youtube.com

Any of those look familiar? If so, it’s because AngularJS is taking over the Internet. There’s a good reason for that: Angular- and other React-style frameworks make for a better user and developer experience on a site. For background, AngularJS and ReactJS are part of a web design movement called single-page applications, or SPAs. While a traditional website loads each individual page as the user navigates the site, including calls to the server and cache, loading resources, and rendering the page, SPAs cut out much of the back-end activity by loading the entire site when a user first lands on a page. Instead of loading a new page each time you click on a link, the site dynamically updates a single HTML page as the user interacts with the site.

Image c/o Microsoft

Why is this movement taking over the Internet? With SPAs, users are treated to a screaming fast site through which they can navigate almost instantaneously, while developers have a template that allows them to customize, test, and optimize pages seamlessly and efficiently. AngularJS and ReactJS use advanced Javascript templates to render the site, which means the HTML/CSS page speed overhead is almost nothing. All site activity runs behind the scenes, out of view of the user.

Unfortunately, anyone who’s tried performing SEO on an Angular or React site knows that the site activity is hidden from more than just site visitors: it’s also hidden from web crawlers. Crawlers like Googlebot rely heavily on HTML/CSS data to render and interpret the content on a site. When that HTML content is hidden behind website scripts, crawlers have no website content to index and serve in search results.

Of course, Google claims they can crawl Javascript (and SEOs have tested and supported this claim), but even if that is true, Googlebot still struggles to crawl sites built on a SPA framework. One of the first issues we encountered when a client first approached us with an Angular site was that nothing beyond the homepage was appearing in the SERPs. ScreamingFrog crawls uncovered the homepage and a handful of other Javascript resources, and that was it.

Another common issue is recording Google Analytics data. Think about it: Analytics data is tracked by recording pageviews every time a user navigates to a page. How can you track site analytics when there’s no HTML response to trigger a pageview?

After working with several clients on their SPA websites, we’ve developed a process for performing SEO on those sites. By using this process, we’ve not only enabled SPA sites to be indexed by search engines, but even to rank on the first page for keywords.

5-step solution to SEO for AngularJS

1. Make a list of all pages on the site
2. Install Prerender
3. “Fetch as Google”
4. Configure Analytics
5. Recrawl the site

1) Make a list of all pages on your site

If this sounds like a long and tedious process, that’s because it definitely can be. For some sites, this will be as easy as exporting the XML sitemap for the site. For other sites, especially those with hundreds or thousands of pages, creating a comprehensive list of all the pages on the site can take hours or days. However, I cannot emphasize enough how helpful this step has been for us. Having an index of all pages on the site gives you a guide to reference and consult as you work on getting your site indexed. It’s almost impossible to predict every issue that you’re going to encounter with an SPA, and if you don’t have an all-inclusive list of content to reference throughout your SEO optimization, it’s highly likely you’ll leave some part of the site un-indexed by search engines inadvertently.

One solution that might enable you to streamline this process is to divide content into directories instead of individual pages. For example, if you know that you have a list of storeroom pages, include your /storeroom/ directory and make a note of how many pages that includes. Or if you have an e-commerce site, make a note of how many products you have in each shopping category and compile your list that way (though if you have an e-commerce site, I hope for your own sake you have a master list of products somewhere). Regardless of what you do to make this step less time-consuming, make sure you have a full list before continuing to step 2.

2) Install Prerender

Prerender is going to be your best friend when performing SEO for SPAs. Prerender is a service that will render your website in a virtual browser, then serve the static HTML content to web crawlers. From an SEO standpoint, this is as good of a solution as you can hope for: users still get the fast, dynamic SPA experience while search engine crawlers can identify indexable content for search results.

Prerender’s pricing varies based on the size of your site and the freshness of the cache served to Google. Smaller sites (up to 250 pages) can use Prerender for free, while larger sites (or sites that update constantly) may need to pay as much as $200+/month. However, having an indexable version of your site that enables you to attract customers through organic search is invaluable. This is where that list you compiled in step 1 comes into play: if you can prioritize what sections of your site need to be served to search engines, or with what frequency, you may be able to save a little bit of money each month while still achieving SEO progress.

3) "Fetch as Google"

Within Google Search Console is an incredibly useful feature called “Fetch as Google.” “Fetch as Google” allows you to enter a URL from your site and fetch it as Googlebot would during a crawl. “Fetch” returns the HTTP response from the page, which includes a full download of the page source code as Googlebot sees it. “Fetch and Render” will return the HTTP response and will also provide a screenshot of the page as Googlebot saw it and as a site visitor would see it.

This has powerful applications for AngularJS sites. Even with Prerender installed, you may find that Google is still only partially displaying your website, or it may be omitting key features of your site that are helpful to users. Plugging the URL into “Fetch as Google” will let you review how your site appears to search engines and what further steps you may need to take to optimize your keyword rankings. Additionally, after requesting a “Fetch” or “Fetch and Render,” you have the option to “Request Indexing” for that page, which can be handy catalyst for getting your site to appear in search results.

4) Configure Google Analytics (or Google Tag Manager)

As I mentioned above, SPAs can have serious trouble with recording Google Analytics data since they don’t track pageviews the way a standard website does. Instead of the traditional Google Analytics tracking code, you’ll need to install Analytics through some kind of alternative method.

One method that works well is to use the Angulartics plugin. Angulartics replaces standard pageview events with virtual pageview tracking, which tracks the entire user navigation across your application. Since SPAs dynamically load HTML content, these virtual pageviews are recorded based on user interactions with the site, which ultimately tracks the same user behavior as you would through traditional Analytics. Other people have found success using Google Tag Manager “History Change” triggers or other innovative methods, which are perfectly acceptable implementations. As long as your Google Analytics tracking records user interactions instead of conventional pageviews, your Analytics configuration should suffice.

5) Recrawl the site

After working through steps 1–4, you’re going to want to crawl the site yourself to find those errors that not even Googlebot was anticipating. One issue we discovered early with a client was that after installing Prerender, our crawlers were still running into a spider trap:

As you can probably tell, there were not actually 150,000 pages on that particular site. Our crawlers just found a recursive loop that kept generating longer and longer URL strings for the site content. This is something we would not have found in Google Search Console or Analytics. SPAs are notorious for causing tedious, inexplicable issues that you’ll only uncover by crawling the site yourself. Even if you follow the steps above and take as many precautions as possible, I can still almost guarantee you will come across a unique issue that can only be diagnosed through a crawl.

If you’ve come across any of these unique issues, let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear what other issues people have encountered with SPAs.

Results

As I mentioned earlier in the article, the process outlined above has enabled us to not only get client sites indexed, but even to get those sites ranking on first page for various keywords. Here’s an example of the keyword progress we made for one client with an AngularJS site:

Also, the organic traffic growth for that client over the course of seven months:

All of this goes to show that although SEO for SPAs can be tedious, laborious, and troublesome, it is not impossible. Follow the steps above, and you can have SEO success with your single-page app website.

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/9375/5940259

In a dispute with a neighbour? Here is what you can legally do about it

Solicitor Hannah Parson provided her pearls of wisdom on what we can do over plants, overgrown trees and property deeds

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/dispute-neighbour-here-what-you-13112580

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

GetSurrey is 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-13114033

Decision to end chart music at leisure centre fitness classes not 'been taken lightly'

The company has cited an increase in the cost of the licence as being behind its decision to no longer play popular chart music in exercise classes

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/freedom-leisure-decision-not-renew-13113848

REVEALED: Violence and sexual offences top the list of reported crimes in Guildford

Antisocial behaviour, violence and sexual offences and shoplifting accounted for a majority of crimes over a 12 month period

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/revealed-violence-sexual-offences-top-13114612

Plane crash victims killed returning from fundraiser, fire causes wedding drama and Godalming car crash top Get Surrey's most read on Tuesday

Here are the stories that you were most interested in on Tuesday (May 30)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/plane-crash-victims-killed-returning-13114341

Sinking feeling for bus after hole opens up in ground outside railway station

The vehicle started sinking soon after its passengers had disembarked

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/sinking-feeling-bus-after-hole-13114907

Back to work after Bank Holiday, but hate your job? These vacancies in Surrey could be for you

Fed up of your job? These nine vacancies in Surrey could be for you

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/back-work-after-bank-holiday-13113680

Police end enhanced armed patrols across Surrey following Manchester attack

Armed patrols are ending but police have pledged "high visibility" at events taking place in Surrey

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/police-end-enhanced-armed-patrols-13114671

See inside Heathrow Airport hotel following multi-million pound refurbishment

The hotel has a new restaurant alongside 349 refurbished rooms and 11 new meeting and event spaces

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/see-inside-heathrow-airport-hotel-13113703

Petition launched calling on leisure centres to keep popular chart music in fitness classes

Customers have been upset by the company's decision not to renew its licence to play chart music in fitness classes

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/petition-launched-calling-leisure-centres-13114092

Dramatic footage shows man 'seconds away from drowning' as national water safety campaign launched

The video was captured during a rescue on the River Thames

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/dramatic-footage-shows-man-seconds-13113894

Met Office predicts fresher and overcast weather in Surrey after last week's heat wave

After last week's heat wave, people can expect lower temperatures and clouds throughout most of this week

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/met-office-predicts-fresher-overcast-13113979

All you need to know about the safety of popular holiday destinations following the Manchester terror attack

Some of the most popular holiday hotspots including Spain, Portugal and Turkey face the risk of terror attacks

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/lifestyle/travel/you-need-know-safety-popular-13112621

Scotland plane crash: Shooting Star Chase pays tribute to two men who died after taking part in Ben Nevis fundraiser

Anthony Woodward, one of the men who died, had recently visited the hospice to find out more about the charity's work

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/scotland-plane-crash-shooting-star-13113187

General Election: Guildford primary school pupils share how much they know about politics

We asked six-year-olds from Sandfield Primary School how much they knew about the prime minister

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-guildford-primary-school-13110168

MP Dominic Raab criticised for 'stupid and deeply offensive' comments on reasons for foodbank use

"The typical user of a foodbank is not someone that is languishing in poverty, it is someone who has a cash flow problem episodically," Mr Raab said

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/mp-dominic-raab-criticised-stupid-13111978

Army support to be reduced after terror threat lowered from 'critical' to 'severe'

The Metropolitan Police said troops will be reduced from key locations in London following the lowering of the terror threat

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/army-support-reduced-after-terror-13113043

Chertsey Aldi: First 30 shoppers at supermarket opening to receive special prize

The supermarket is giving out a free shopping bag of goodies to those at the front of the queue when the shop opens

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/chertsey-aldi-first-30-shoppers-13112505

M3 Bank Holiday Monday nightmare due to stranded deer, three-car collision and five-vehicle pile-up

The three incidents, including deer "stuck in the central reservation", happened within space of two hours and along the same stretch of road

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/m3-bank-holiday-monday-nightmare-13112036

Chertsey Aldi: Team GB rugby sevens player to open new supermarket

The store, based in Gogmore Lane, is gearing up to open on the site of the former Chertsey Business Centre

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/chertsey-aldi-team-gb-rugby-13111751

Casino reopening date set with new operators to run town centre nightclub

The signs have appeared outside Casino saying it will reopen on Saturday (June 3)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/casino-reopening-date-set-new-13112101

Husband cleared of wife's murder during row over her affair and divorce at Earlswood home

The judge concluded proceedings by saying "irrespective of the verdict this has been a great tragedy for all"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/husband-cleared-wifes-murder-during-13111942

Ash Manor Sports Centre customers also affected by Freedom Leisure plans to drop licensed music in classes

One customer has said it is the "final straw in a very long list of appalling service provision from Freedom Leisure"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/ash-manor-sports-centre-customers-13111222

Wickes, Wilkos and Currys last minute DIY deals - but be quick, offers end tomorrow

A number of stores are holding summer preview sales for a short time only

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/wickes-wilkos-currys-last-minute-13111984

Surrey Police catches 58 drivers using phones behind the wheel in month after tougher punishments introduced

The figures, obtained by the Press Association, revealed that thousands of motorists throughout Britain were fined in just one month

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/surrey-police-catches-58-drivers-13111405

Five annoying contact page mistakes

Victim punched in head in 'unprovoked attack' on train to London Victoria

The victim was left with swelling to the side of his face and a cut lip following the incident on April 7

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/victim-punched-head-unprovoked-attack-13110802

British Airways IT failure: How to claim compensation for cancelled flights

If you tried to fly out of Heathrow or Gatwick and faced delays, you could be entitled to compensation

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/british-airways-failure-how-claim-13110331

Scotland plane crash: Tributes to 'popular and well known' pilot who died after completing Ben Nevis walk for Shooting Star Chase

Air First Ltd, based at Blackbushe Airport where Anthony Woodward learnt to fly, said he leaves a "huge gap in the world of aviation"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/scotland-plane-crash-tributes-popular-13110854

Love Island 2017 will star Guildford model who says her sense of humour and love for romance will prove a hit with the boys

Olivia Attwood, 26, is hoping to be matched with "the one"         

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/love-island-2017-star-guildford-13110563

General Election: Surrey Heath Labour candidate vows to 'hold government to account' and 'fight' for NHS patient rights

"I want people to vote for me because I don't take the vote for granted, and will hold government to account as appropriate"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-surrey-heath-labour-13018475

General Election: Green Party candidate announces 'it is time to change Surrey Heath'

"We live in a time of great upheaval and I believe this is an exiting opportunity to advocate for change"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-green-party-candidate-13021074

General Election: Someone in Guildford could win £60,000 if Labour wins the most seats

A £10,000 bet was made at the William Hill branch in Guildford High Street over the bank holiday weekend - the biggest the bookmaker has had on Labour so far

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-someone-guildford-could-13110557

Air crash victims killed while returning from Ben Nevis fundraiser for Shooting Star Chase

A fundraising page set up ahead of the charity walk has now raised more than £4,000 for the children's hospice

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/air-crash-victims-killed-returning-13110275

General Election: How 18-24 year olds in Surrey plan to vote

Find out what we discovered about young voters in the Great Surrey Survey

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-how-18-24-13077147

General Election: Surrey youth voters have their say on national issues and Theresa May

Find out what we discovered about young voters in the Great Surrey Survey

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-surrey-youth-voters-13081175

Britain's Got Talent: 'Hot Bobby' PC Dancing Dan fails to make final despite 'great job' in semi

"You're amazing, such a charismatic guy, did a great job, you own the stage," said Alesha Dixon, but her praise didn't prove enough for PC Dan

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/britains-talent-hot-bobby-pc-13109901

Ash Vale pensioner defies cancer to finish building replica 'wild west' stagecoach for reenactors

Les Green was determined to finish an 18-month labour of love, even though he was having regular chemotherapy sessions

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/ash-vale-pensioner-defies-cancer-13105893

No, Paid Search Audiences Won’t Replace Keywords

Posted by PPCKirk

I have been chewing on a keyword vs. audience targeting post for roughly two years now. In that time we have seen audience targeting grow in popularity (as expected) and depth.

“Popularity” is somewhat of an understatement here. I would go so far as to say that I've heard it lauded in messianic-like “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” reverential awe by some paid search marketers. as if paid search were lacking a heartbeat before the life-giving audience targeting had arrived and 1-2-3-clear’ed it into relevance.

However, I would argue that despite audience targeting’s popularity (and understandable success), we have also seen the revelation of some weaknesses as well. It turns out it’s not quite the heroic, rescue-the-captives targeting method paid searchers had hoped it would be.

The purpose of this post is to argue against the notion that audience targeting can replace the keyword in paid search.

Now, before we get into the throes of keyword philosophy, I’d like to reduce the number of angry comments this post receives by acknowledging a crucial point.

It is not my intention in any way to set up a false dichotomy. Yes, I believe the keyword is still the most valuable form of targeting for a paid search marketer, but I also believe that audience targeting can play a valuable complementary role in search bidding.

In fact, as I think about it, I would argue that I am writing this post in response to what I have heard become a false dichotomy. That is, that audience targeting is better than keyword targeting and will eventually replace it.

I disagree with this idea vehemently, as I will demonstrate in the rest of this article.

One seasoned (age, not steak) traditional marketer’s point of view

The best illustration I've heard on the core weakness of audience targeting was from an older traditional marketer who has probably never accessed the Keyword Planner in his life.

“I have two teenage daughters.” He revealed, with no small amount of pride.

“They are within 18 months of each other, so in age demographic targeting they are the same person.”

“They are both young women, so in gender demographic targeting they are the same person.”

“They are both my daughters in my care, so in income demographic targeting they are the same person.”

“They are both living in my house, so in geographical targeting they are the same person.”

“They share the same friends, so in social targeting they are the same person.”

“However, in terms of personality, they couldn’t be more different. One is artistic and enjoys heels and dresses and makeup. The other loves the outdoors and sports, and spends her time in blue jeans and sneakers.”

If an audience-targeting marketer selling spring dresses saw them in his marketing list, he would (1) see two older high school girls with the same income in the same geographical area, (2) assume they are both interested in what he has to sell, and (3) only make one sale.

The problem isn’t with his targeting, the problem is that not all those forced into an audience persona box will fit.

In September of 2015, Aaron Levy (a brilliant marketing mind; go follow him) wrote a fabulously under-shared post revealing these weaknesses in another way: What You Think You Know About Your Customers’ Persona is Wrong

In this article, Aaron first bravely broaches the subject of audience targeting by describing how it is far from the exact science we all have hoped it to be. He noted a few ways that audience targeting can be erroneous, and even *gasp* used data to formulate his conclusions.

It’s OK to question audience targeting — really!

Let me be clear: I believe audience targeting is popular because there genuinely is value in it (it's amazing data to have… when it's accurate!). The insights we can get about personas, which we can then use to power our ads, are quite amazing and powerful.

So, why the heck am I droning on about audience targeting weaknesses? Well, I’m trying to set you up for something. I’m trying to get us to admit that audience targeting itself has some weaknesses, and isn’t the savior of all digital marketing that some make it out to be, and that there is a tried-and-true solution that fits well with demographic targeting, but is not replaced by it. It is a targeting that we paid searchers have used joyfully and successfully for years now.

It is the keyword.

Whereas audience targeting chafes under the law of averages (i.e., “at some point, someone in my demographic targeted list has to actually be interested in what I am selling”), keyword targeting shines in individual-revealing user intent.

Keyword targeting does something an audience can never, ever, ever do...

Keywords: Personal intent powerhouses

A keyword is still my favorite form of targeting in paid search because it reveals individual, personal, and temporal intent. Those aren’t just three buzzwords I pulled out of the air because I needed to stretch this already obesely-long post out further. They are intentional, and worth exploring.

Individual

A keyword is such a powerful targeting method because it is written (or spoken!) by a single person. I mean, let’s be honest, it’s rare to have more than one person huddled around the computer shouting at it. Keywords are generally from the mind of one individual, and because of that they have frightening potential.

Remember, audience targeting is based off of assumptions. That is, you're taking a group of people who “probably” think the same way in a certain area, but does that mean they cannot have unique tastes? For instance, one person preferring to buy sneakers with another preferring to buy heels?

Keyword targeting is demographic-blind.

It doesn’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you did, as long as you love me… err, I mean, it doesn’t care about your demographic, just about what you're individually interested in.

Personal

The next aspect of keywords powering their targeting awesomeness is that they reveal personal intent. Whereas the “individual” aspect of keyword targeting narrows our targeting from a group of people to a single person, the “personal” aspect of keyword targeting goes into the very mind of that individual.

Don’t you wish there was a way to market to people in which you could truly discern the intentions of their hearts? Wouldn’t that be a powerful method of targeting? Well, yes — and that is keyword targeting!

Think about it: a keyword is a form of communication. It is a person typing or telling you what is on their mind. For a split second, in their search, you and they are as connected through communication as Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson on the first phone call. That person is revealing to you what's on her mind, and that's a power which cannot be underestimated.

When a person tells Google they want to know “how does someone earn a black belt,” that is telling your client — the Jumping Judo Janes of Jordan — this person genuinely wants to learn more about their services and they can display an ad that matches that intent (Ready for that Black Belt? It’s Not Hard, Let Us Help!). Paid search keywords officiate the wedding of personal intent with advertising in a way that previous marketers could only dream of. We aren’t finding random people we think might be interested based upon where they live. We are responding to a person telling us they are interested.

Temporal

The final note of keyword targeting that cannot be underestimated, is the temporal aspect. Anyone worth their salt in marketing can tell you “timing is everything”. With keyword targeting, the timing is inseparable from the intent. When is this person interested in learning about your Judo classes? At the time they are searching, NOW!

You are not blasting your ads into your users lives, interrupting them as they go about their business or family time hoping to jumpstart their interest by distracting them from their activities. You are responding to their query, at the very time they are interested in learning more.

Timing. Is. Everything.

The situation settles into stickiness

Thus, to summarize: a “search” is done when an individual reveals his/her personal intent with communication (keywords/queries) at a specific time. Because of that, I maintain that keyword targeting trumps audience targeting in paid search.

Paid search is an evolving industry, but it is still “search,” which requires communication, which requires words (until that time when the emoji takes over the English language, but that’s okay because the rioting in the streets will have gotten us first).

Of course, we would be remiss in ignoring some legitimate questions which inevitably arise. As ideal as the outline I've laid out before you sounds, you're probably beginning to formulate something like the following four questions.

• What about low search volume keywords?
• What if the search engines kill keyword targeting?
• What if IoT monsters kill search engines?
• What about social ads?

We’ll close by discussing each of these four questions.

Low search volume terms (LSVs)

Low search volume keywords stink like poo (excuse the rather strong language there). I’m not sure if there is any data on this out there (if so, please share it below), but I have run into low search volume terms far more in the past year than when I first started managing PPC campaigns in 2010.

I don’t know all the reasons for this; perhaps it’s worth another blog post, but the reality is it’s getting harder to be creative and target high-value long-tail keywords when so many are getting shut off due to low search volume.

This seems like a fairly smooth way being paved for Google/Bing to eventually “take over” (i.e., “automate for our good”) keyword targeting, at the very least for SMBs (small-medium businesses) where LSVs can be a significant problem. In this instance, the keyword would still be around, it just wouldn’t be managed by us PPCers directly. Boo.

Search engine decrees

I’ve already addressed the power search engines have here, but I will be the first to admit that, as much as I like keyword targeting and as much as I have hopefully proven how valuable it is, it still would be a fairly easy thing for Google or Bing to kill off completely. Major boo.

Since paid search relies on keywords and queries and language to work, I imagine this would look more like an automated solution (think DSAs and shopping), in which they make keyword targeting into a dynamic system that works in conjunction with audience targeting.

While this was about a year and a half ago, it is worth noting that at Hero Conference in London, Bing Ads’ ebullient Tor Crockett did make the public statement that Bing at the time had no plans to sunset the keyword as a bidding option. We can only hope this sentiment remains, and transfers over to Google as well.

But Internet of Things (IoT) Frankenstein devices!

Finally, it could be that search engines won’t be around forever. Perhaps this will look like IoT devices such as Alexa that incorporate some level of search into them, but pull traffic away from using Google/Bing search bars. As an example of this in real life, you don’t need to ask Google where to find (queries, keywords, communication, search) the best price on laundry detergent if you can just push the Dash button, or your smart washing machine can just order you more without a search effort.

Image source

On the other hand, I still believe we're a long way off from this in the same way that the freak-out over mobile devices killing personal computers has slowed down. That is, we still utilize our computers for education & work (even if personal usage revolves around tablets and mobile devices and IoT freaks-of-nature… smart toasters anyone?) and our mobile devices for queries on the go. Computers are still a primary source of search in terms of work and education as well as more intensive personal activities (vacation planning, for instance), and thus computers still rely heavily on search. Mobile devices are still heavily query-centered for various tasks, especially as voice search (still query-centered!) kicks in harder.

The social effect

Social is its own animal in a way, and why I believe it is already and will continue to have an effect on search and keywords (though not in a terribly worrisome way). Social definitely pulls a level of traffic from search, specifically in product queries. “Who has used this dishwasher before, any other recommendations?” Social ads are exploding in popularity as well, and in large part because they are working. People are purchasing more than they ever have from social ads and marketers are rushing to be there for them.

The flip side of this: a social and paid search comparison is apples-to-oranges. There are different motivations and purposes for using search engines and querying your friends.

Audience targeting works great in a social setting since that social network has phenomenally accurate and specific targeting for individuals, but it is the rare individual curious about the ideal condom to purchase who queries his family and friends on Facebook. There will always be elements of social and search that are unique and valuable in their own way, and audience targeting for social and keyword targeting for search complement those unique elements of each.

Idealism incarnate

Thus, it is my belief that as long as we have search, we will still have keywords and keyword targeting will be the best way to target — as long as costs remain low enough to be realistic for budgets and the search engines don’t kill keyword bidding for an automated solution.

Don’t give up, the keyword is not dead. Stay focused, and carry on with your match types!

I want to close by re-acknowledging the crucial point I opened with.

It has not been my intention in any way to set up a false dichotomy. In fact, as I think about it, I would argue that I am writing this in response to what I have heard become a false dichotomy. That is, that audience targeting is better than keyword targeting and will eventually replace it…

I believe the keyword is still the most valuable form of targeting for a paid search marketer, but I also believe that audience demographics can play a valuable complementary role in bidding.

A prime example that we already use is remarketing lists for search ads, in which we can layer on remarketing audiences in both Google and Bing into our search queries. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could someday do this with massive amounts of audience data? I've said this before, but were Bing Ads to use its LinkedIn acquisition to allow us to layer on LinkedIn audiences into our current keyword framework, the B2B angels would surely rejoice over us (Bing has responded, by the way, that something is in the works!).

Either way, I hope I've demonstrated that far from being on its deathbed, the keyword is still the most essential tool in the paid search marketer’s toolbox.

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Guildford Spectrum car meet well attended before Hindhead Tunnel run

Motoring enthusiasts admired modified cars, classic cars and high end vehicles worth up to £100,000 at the event

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/guildford-spectrum-car-meet-well-13109807

British Airways customers still without luggage as airline aims to run 'full schedule' after major IT failure

BA still has "work to do" to reunite suitcases with customers, but Gatwick is running a full schedule while Heathrow has around 10% of short-haul flights affected

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/british-airways-customers-still-without-13109831

Surrey Union Hunt investigation dropped by police over 'insufficient evidence'

An alleged verbal altercation and assault took place at the hunt back in February

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/surrey-union-hunt-investigation-dropped-13096850

Franco Manca pizzeria moves into Richmond's Old Police Station

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/franco-manca-pizzeria-moves-richmonds-13070469

Jamie Oliver Diner to open at Gatwick Airport - and you could work there

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/jamie-oliver-diner-open-gatwick-13072823

Cobham Services loses bid to extend site and create 79 additional HGV spaces on green belt land

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/cobham-services-loses-bid-extend-13093110

University project highlights 'Broken Britain' ahead of general election

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/farnham-uni-project-highlights-broken-13073229

What do a giant dinosaur, missing vulture, duck racing, pulled pork and pink flamingos have in common?

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/what-giant-dinosaur-missing-vulture-13108818

Surrey County Show 2017: Take a look around the activities, entertainment and stalls

Whether you visited the event or not, you can see some of the best bits from the Surrey County Show with our video highlights and picture gallery

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/surrey-county-show-2017-take-13108371

See timelapse of Surrey County Show visitors... and the traffic queue outside

Lots of people attending the Surrey County Show inevitably meant some congestion on the roads around Stoke Park!

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/see-timelapse-surrey-county-show-13108347

Godalming crash photo shows car on its side after mum and two kids escaped through the boot

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from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/godalming-crash-photo-shows-car-13108234

Surrey County Show disappointment as Red Devils parachute display cancelled

The Red Devils parachute team were unable to perform due to poor weather conditions over Stoke Park in Guildford

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/surrey-county-show-disappointment-red-13108056

Britain's Got Talent semi-final looms for Kingston police officer 'Dancing Dan'

The police officer spoke to Get Surrey about going from "walking the streets arresting people to now having my hair and make-up done - wow!"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/film-news/britains-talent-semi-final-looms-13107727

Bin store fire raged near wedding venue at Mickleham hotel

Firefighters were called to a blaze in a bin store at the Mercure Box Hill Burford Bridge Hotel

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/bin-store-fire-raged-near-13107096

M25 crash: Man left with serious injuries after 'car hit street light and central reservation barrier'

One person had to be cut free from the car by firefighters

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/m25-crash-man-left-serious-13107374

Planning your website like your holiday

Surrey County Show: See the food on offer at this year's event

Feeling peckish? Here's where you can get a snack or lunch at Stoke Park in Guildford during the Surrey County Show

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/surrey-county-show-see-food-13106857

Weather forecast for Bank Holiday Monday: Yellow warning downgraded but still some risk of further rain and thundery showers

There remains a "low risk of odd, heavy thundery showers developing" during Bank Holiday Monday

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/weather-forecast-bank-holiday-monday-13106883

British Airways IT systems failure: 'Good progress' on restoring flights at Heathrow and Gatwick

A "major IT systems failure severely affected operations worldwide" for British Airways at the weekend

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/british-airways-systems-failure-good-13106805

Reigate man wanted for not attending court is found and arrested

Shane Setterfield, 27, had been the subject of a police appeal to track him down

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/reigate-man-wanted-not-attending-13106510

Storms and heavy rain lead to M25 central reservation crash and tree on railway line

A thunderstorm moved up across southern England overnight from Sunday into Monday

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/storms-heavy-rain-lead-m25-13106372

Evidence of the Surprising State of JavaScript Indexing

Posted by willcritchlow

Back when I started in this industry, it was standard advice to tell our clients that the search engines couldn’t execute JavaScript (JS), and anything that relied on JS would be effectively invisible and never appear in the index. Over the years, that has changed gradually, from early work-arounds (such as the horrible escaped fragment approach my colleague Rob wrote about back in 2010) to the actual execution of JS in the indexing pipeline that we see today, at least at Google.

In this article, I want to explore some things we've seen about JS indexing behavior in the wild and in controlled tests and share some tentative conclusions I've drawn about how it must be working.

A brief introduction to JS indexing

At its most basic, the idea behind JavaScript-enabled indexing is to get closer to the search engine seeing the page as the user sees it. Most users browse with JavaScript enabled, and many sites either fail without it or are severely limited. While traditional indexing considers just the raw HTML source received from the server, users typically see a page rendered based on the DOM (Document Object Model) which can be modified by JavaScript running in their web browser. JS-enabled indexing considers all content in the rendered DOM, not just that which appears in the raw HTML.

There are some complexities even in this basic definition (answers in brackets as I understand them):

• What about JavaScript that requests additional content from the server? (This will generally be included, subject to timeout limits)
• What about JavaScript that executes some time after the page loads? (This will generally only be indexed up to some time limit, possibly in the region of 5 seconds)
• What about JavaScript that executes on some user interaction such as scrolling or clicking? (This will generally not be included)
• What about JavaScript in external files rather than in-line? (This will generally be included, as long as those external files are not blocked from the robot — though see the caveat in experiments below)

For more on the technical details, I recommend my ex-colleague Justin’s writing on the subject.

A high-level overview of my view of JavaScript best practices

Despite the incredible work-arounds of the past (which always seemed like more effort than graceful degradation to me) the “right” answer has existed since at least 2012, with the introduction of PushState. Rob wrote about this one, too. Back then, however, it was pretty clunky and manual and it required a concerted effort to ensure both that the URL was updated in the user’s browser for each view that should be considered a “page,” that the server could return full HTML for those pages in response to new requests for each URL, and that the back button was handled correctly by your JavaScript.

Along the way, in my opinion, too many sites got distracted by a separate prerendering step. This is an approach that does the equivalent of running a headless browser to generate static HTML pages that include any changes made by JavaScript on page load, then serving those snapshots instead of the JS-reliant page in response to requests from bots. It typically treats bots differently, in a way that Google tolerates, as long as the snapshots do represent the user experience. In my opinion, this approach is a poor compromise that's too susceptible to silent failures and falling out of date. We've seen a bunch of sites suffer traffic drops due to serving Googlebot broken experiences that were not immediately detected because no regular users saw the prerendered pages.

These days, if you need or want JS-enhanced functionality, more of the top frameworks have the ability to work the way Rob described in 2012, which is now called isomorphic (roughly meaning “the same”).

Isomorphic JavaScript serves HTML that corresponds to the rendered DOM for each URL, and updates the URL for each “view” that should exist as a separate page as the content is updated via JS. With this implementation, there is actually no need to render the page to index basic content, as it's served in response to any fresh request.

I was fascinated by this piece of research published recently — you should go and read the whole study. In particular, you should watch this video (recommended in the post) in which the speaker — who is an Angular developer and evangelist — emphasizes the need for an isomorphic approach:

Resources for auditing JavaScript

If you work in SEO, you will increasingly find yourself called upon to figure out whether a particular implementation is correct (hopefully on a staging/development server before it’s deployed live, but who are we kidding? You’ll be doing this live, too).

To do that, here are some resources I’ve found useful:

• Justin again, describing the difference between working with the DOM and viewing source
• The developer tools built into Chrome are excellent, and some of the documentation is actually really good:
  • The console is where you can see errors and interact with the state of the page
  • As soon as you get past debugging the most basic JavaScript, you will want to start setting breakpoints, which allow you to step through the code from specified points
• This post from Google’s John Mueller has a decent checklist of best practices
• Although it’s about a broader set of technical skills, anyone who hasn’t already read it should definitely check out Mike’s post on the technical SEO renaissance.

Some surprising/interesting results

There are likely to be timeouts on JavaScript execution

I already linked above to the ScreamingFrog post that mentions experiments they have done to measure the timeout Google uses to determine when to stop executing JavaScript (they found a limit of around 5 seconds).

It may be more complicated than that, however. This segment of a thread is interesting. It's from a Hacker News user who goes by the username KMag and who claims to have worked at Google on the JS execution part of the indexing pipeline from 2006–2010. It’s in relation to another user speculating that Google would not care about content loaded “async” (i.e. asynchronously — in other words, loaded as part of new HTTP requests that are triggered in the background while assets continue to download):

“Actually, we did care about this content. I'm not at liberty to explain the details, but we did execute setTimeouts up to some time limit.

If they're smart, they actually make the exact timeout a function of a HMAC of the loaded source, to make it very difficult to experiment around, find the exact limits, and fool the indexing system. Back in 2010, it was still a fixed time limit.”

What that means is that although it was initially a fixed timeout, he’s speculating (or possibly sharing without directly doing so) that timeouts are programmatically determined (presumably based on page importance and JavaScript reliance) and that they may be tied to the exact source code (the reference to “HMAC” is to do with a technical mechanism for spotting if the page has changed).

It matters how your JS is executed

I referenced this recent study earlier. In it, the author found:

Inline vs. External vs. Bundled JavaScript makes a huge difference for Googlebot

The charts at the end show the extent to which popular JavaScript frameworks perform differently depending on how they're called, with a range of performance from passing every test to failing almost every test. For example here’s the chart for Angular:

It’s definitely worth reading the whole thing and reviewing the performance of the different frameworks. There's more evidence of Google saving computing resources in some areas, as well as surprising results between different frameworks.

CRO tests are getting indexed

When we first started seeing JavaScript-based split-testing platforms designed for testing changes aimed at improving conversion rate (CRO = conversion rate optimization), their inline changes to individual pages were invisible to the search engines. As Google in particular has moved up the JavaScript competency ladder through executing simple inline JS to more complex JS in external files, we are now seeing some CRO-platform-created changes being indexed. A simplified version of what’s happening is:

• For users:
  • CRO platforms typically take a visitor to a page, check for the existence of a cookie, and if there isn’t one, randomly assign the visitor to group A or group B
  • Based on either the cookie value or the new assignment, the user is either served the page unchanged, or sees a version that is modified in their browser by JavaScript loaded from the CRO platform’s CDN (content delivery network)
  • A cookie is then set to make sure that the user sees the same version if they revisit that page later
• For Googlebot:
  • The reliance on external JavaScript used to prevent both the bucketing and the inline changes from being indexed
  • With external JavaScript now being loaded, and with many of these inline changes being made using standard libraries (such as JQuery), Google is able to index the variant and hence we see CRO experiments sometimes being indexed

I might have expected the platforms to block their JS with robots.txt, but at least the main platforms I’ve looked at don't do that. With Google being sympathetic towards testing, however, this shouldn’t be a major problem — just something to be aware of as you build out your user-facing CRO tests. All the more reason for your UX and SEO teams to work closely together and communicate well.

Split tests show SEO improvements from removing a reliance on JS

Although we would like to do a lot more to test the actual real-world impact of relying on JavaScript, we do have some early results. At the end of last week I published a post outlining the uplift we saw from removing a site’s reliance on JS to display content and links on category pages.

A simple test that removed the need for JavaScript on 50% of pages showed a >6% uplift in organic traffic — worth thousands of extra sessions a month. While we haven’t proven that JavaScript is always bad, nor understood the exact mechanism at work here, we have opened up a new avenue for exploration, and at least shown that it’s not a settled matter. To my mind, it highlights the importance of testing. It’s obviously our belief in the importance of SEO split-testing that led to us investing so much in the development of the ODN platform over the last 18 months or so.

Conclusion: How JavaScript indexing might work from a systems perspective

Based on all of the information we can piece together from the external behavior of the search results, public comments from Googlers, tests and experiments, and first principles, here’s how I think JavaScript indexing is working at Google at the moment: I think there is a separate queue for JS-enabled rendering, because the computational cost of trying to run JavaScript over the entire web is unnecessary given the lack of a need for it on many, many pages. In detail, I think:

• Googlebot crawls and caches HTML and core resources regularly
• Heuristics (and probably machine learning) are used to prioritize JavaScript rendering for each page:
  • Some pages are indexed with no JS execution. There are many pages that can probably be easily identified as not needing rendering, and others which are such a low priority that it isn’t worth the computing resources.
  • Some pages get immediate rendering – or possibly immediate basic/regular indexing, along with high-priority rendering. This would enable the immediate indexation of pages in news results or other QDF results, but also allow pages that rely heavily on JS to get updated indexation when the rendering completes.
  • Many pages are rendered async in a separate process/queue from both crawling and regular indexing, thereby adding the page to the index for new words and phrases found only in the JS-rendered version when rendering completes, in addition to the words and phrases found in the unrendered version indexed initially.
• The JS rendering also, in addition to adding pages to the index:
  • May make modifications to the link graph
  • May add new URLs to the discovery/crawling queue for Googlebot

The idea of JavaScript rendering as a distinct and separate part of the indexing pipeline is backed up by this quote from KMag, who I mentioned previously for his contributions to this HN thread (direct link) [emphasis mine]:

“I was working on the lightweight high-performance JavaScript interpretation system that sandboxed pretty much just a JS engine and a DOM implementation that we could run on every web page on the index. Most of my work was trying to improve the fidelity of the system. My code analyzed every web page in the index.

Towards the end of my time there, there was someone in Mountain View working on a heavier, higher-fidelity system that sandboxed much more of a browser, and they were trying to improve performance so they could use it on a higher percentage of the index.”

This was the situation in 2010. It seems likely that they have moved a long way towards the headless browser in all cases, but I’m skeptical about whether it would be worth their while to render every page they crawl with JavaScript given the expense of doing so and the fact that a large percentage of pages do not change substantially when you do.

My best guess is that they're using a combination of trying to figure out the need for JavaScript execution on a given page, coupled with trust/authority metrics to decide whether (and with what priority) to render a page with JS.

Run a test, get publicity

I have a hypothesis that I would love to see someone test: That it’s possible to get a page indexed and ranking for a nonsense word contained in the served HTML, but not initially ranking for a different nonsense word added via JavaScript; then, to see the JS get indexed some period of time later and rank for both nonsense words. If you want to run that test, let me know the results — I’d be happy to publicize them.

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/9375/5924129

Royal Ascot 2017: How to get tickets and how much they cost for each day

Here's all you need to know about buying tickets for each enclosure at the races

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/royal-ascot-tickets-2017-enclosure-13095327

No Fairoaks New Town group step up campaign over proposals to close airport and build 1,500 homes

Almost 2,900 people have signed a petition to keep the airport in the green belt

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/no-fairoaks-new-town-group-13095791

Simon Cowell helps children from Surrey hospices 'feel like celebrities' at star-studded event

Youngsters and their families supported by Shooting Star Chase were invited to meet celebrities at The Dorchester in London

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/simon-cowell-helps-children-surrey-13104831

This week's most read stories: Cranleigh police incident, airline bomb threats and shocking dashcam footage dominate the headlines

Two dashcam stories also made the top five most read stories in Surrey this week

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/weeks-most-read-stories-cranleigh-13105142

Shocking footage shows moment motorcyclist hit by car as Surrey Police issue warning for Drive Smart campaign

'You're more invisible than invincible' - motorbike and scooter drivers make up around 20% of road fatalities

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/shocking-footage-shows-moment-motorcyclist-13104770

Oxted cinema could show 15 or 18 rated films in 'parent and baby' screenings

Tandridge District Council can now lower ratings on request for parents bored of watching children's films with their newborns

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/oxted-cinema-could-show-15-13104629

Nutfield suspicious incident: Man heard shouting from van claiming 'he had been attacked' and was 'in the back'

Witnesses described the man as sounding 'panicky and desperate' as the van drove past the Inn on the Pond along Nutfield Marsh Road

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/nutfield-suspicious-incident-man-heard-13104651

M25 collision: Up to 300 litres of petrol leaked onto carriageway after multi vehicle crash

Emergency services were called to the scene on Saturday (May 27)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/m25-collision-up-300-litres-13104539

Yellow warning of rain issued by Met Office with thunderstorms, flooding and power cuts predicted

Met Office issues 'yellow warning' over the south east for the last two days of the May bank holiday

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/yellow-warning-rain-issued-met-13104332

Gamers celebrate retro classics at ultimate hands-on bank holiday free event in Woking

The three-day 'Thumbs Up' event is taking place at the Peacocks food court in Woking

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/gamers-celebrate-retro-classics-ultimate-13103942

General Election: Guildford conservative candidate says she will be strong voice for business and local charities if elected

Anne Milton has been MP for Guildford since first being elected in 2005

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-guildford-conservative-candidate-13087260

Woking Leisure Centre user ending membership after dance class music licences dropped

Nadia Sempels claimed exercise class instructors were 'very upset' over Freedom Leisure's decision to cut costs by using unlicensed music

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/woking-leisure-centre-user-ending-13102622

Britain's Got Talent: Surrey's favourite policeman Dancing Dan thanks fans as he makes semi-finals

The dancing policeman has been named a semi-finalist after impressing judges and the British public with his moves

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/britains-talent-surreys-favourite-policeman-13103742

Criminal network jailed for a combined total of more than 40 years for catalogue of crimes

The men were jailed for numerous crimes, including supplying Class A drugs, firearms offences and armed robberies

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/criminal-network-jailed-combined-total-13101445

British Airways cancellations: 'Knock-on' disruption to continue as global IT system failure begins to 'return to normal'

The airline has confirmed while some of the IT systems have returned, 'knock-on' disruption will continue into Sunday (May 28)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/british-airways-cancellations-knock-on-13103641

Hotels near Ascot - where to stay during Royal Ascot

Take a look at some of the best spots nearby to the racecourse

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/hotels-near-ascot-stay-during-13092324

'They have given me the rest of my life': Emotional reunion with paramedics for man after supermarket collapse

The 89-year-old became ill while shopping before suffering a cardiac arrest on the way to hospital

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/they-given-rest-life-emotional-13100017

Saturday's most read stories (May 27): Secret beaches and grounded flights dominate headlines as bank holiday begins

There was chaos at Heathrow and Gatwick airports on Saturday as a 'major IT system failure' grounded all British Airways flights

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/saturdays-most-read-stories-may-13103025

British Airways cancel all flights leaving from Gatwick and Heathrow for REST OF TODAY due to major IT failure

The airline has announced it will be cancelling all outbound Heathrow and Gatwick flights for the rest of the day after a "major IT failure"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/british-airways-cancel-flights-leaving-13102678

General Election: Woking's candidates speak as borough prepares to have its say on June 8

Have you decided who will be getting your vote in the General Election?

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-wokings-candidates-speak-13099961

British Airways flight cancellations: What to do if your flight has been disrupted by global IT failure

Thousands of holiday makers have been delayed due to the company's major IT shutdown

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/british-airways-flight-cancellations-what-13102013

Terror threat level reduced to 'severe' amid fresh Manchester bombing arrests

Following the attack at the Manchester Arena earlier this week, the threat level was taken to its highest point of 'critical'

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/terror-threat-level-reduced-severe-13101742

'This isn't memorabilia, this is history': Alvin Stardust's rock and roll signed guitar valued at £400,000 on Channel 4's Posh Pawn

The precious guitar bears the names of music legends such as the Rolling Stones, The Beatles and The Who

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/this-isnt-memorabilia-history-alvin-13101160

Three injured after car 'lost control and rolled over several times' on M25 slip road

The three occupants were taken to hospital with minor injuries, police said

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/three-injured-after-car-lost-13101282

British Airways delays: Holidaymakers face disruption due to computer outage

A spokesman for the airline has said it is working as quickly as possible to fix the problem

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/british-airways-delays-holidaymakers-face-13101244

M3 set for 'severe' overnight delays due to planned roadworks this late May bank holiday weekend

Highways England has issued a list of its planned roadworks including the M3 M25 junction

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/m3-set-severe-overnight-delays-13100148

May bank holiday weather to bring record high temperatures despite threat of thunderstorms

If predictions are right, Monday, May 30 will be the warmest bank holiday in a 10 years

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/bank-holiday-weather-bring-record-13100989

Sir Cliff Richard awarded substantial damages from police after 'humiliating' coverage of raid at his home

The High Court heard Yorkshire Police had agreed to pay "substantial damages" to compensate for "unlawful" conduct

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/sir-cliff-richard-awarded-substantial-13100617

We ate our way around the secret menus in KFC, Starbucks and Burger King in Surrey

This is what happened when we ordered secret menu items from McDonald’s, Nandos and Subway in Guildford

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/ate-way-around-secret-menus-13093785

Mobile phone providers: Survey reveals worst for customer satisfaction

Consumer group Which? conduced an annual customer satisfaction survey, based on thousands of customers' experiences

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/mobile-phone-providers-survey-reveals-13097553

Water and Nerf Festival returns this May bank holiday weekend

Everything you need to know about Water and Nerf Festival 2017 including tickets and opening times

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/water-nerf-festival-returns-bank-13091053

Assaulted police officer rushed to emergency surgery following 'sickening' attack while other had shoe mark imprinted on his head

See full interview with both officers as they return to work following the horrific attack

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/assaulted-police-officer-rushed-emergency-13100456

'I am going to cut your throat': Man jailed after slashing wife across face with Stanley knife and threatening to kill her

The attack took place in front of their "extremely distressed" children, who dialled 999

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/i-am-going-cut-your-13100475

‘I will f***ing end you’: Vicious thug sentenced to life in prison after violently attacking two police officers, repeatedly stamping on their heads

Both police officers were knocked unconscious during the "horrific attack" by 41-year-old Simon Priest

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/i-fing-end-you-vicious-13100293

Manchester terror attack: Muslim schoolchildren to walk a mile for victims of suicide bombing

Hundreds of Surrey and Hampshire children will walk the mile at sites across London and the home counties

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/manchester-terror-attack-muslim-schoolchildren-13099800

Aldershot Manor Park: Midwife and police issue video appeals for mother of Baby M a week after body's discovery

Police are hoping for a vital clue from someone who used the High Street pavement outside the park, where "pools of blood" were seen

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/aldershot-manor-park-midwife-police-13097447

Clean up your bad backlinks

Bank holiday: Rail services set for disruption as engineering works take place

Major engineering work is taking place over the bank holiday weekend which is affecting some services across Surrey

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/bank-holiday-rail-services-set-13099968

Appeal launched to locate Reigate man wanted for string of offences, including skipping court

Shane Setterfield is wanted for road traffic offences, failing to attend court and for breaching a court order

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/appeal-launched-locate-reigate-man-13100038

Friday's most read stories (May 26): 'Horrendous' M25 dascham footage of car with no front wheel and fire at Wimbledon Tennis Club are among most popular stories

We've put together a quick list of the most read stories on Friday (May 26)

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/fridays-most-read-stories-may-13099572

More armed police patrols deployed across Surrey over bank holiday weekend

Surrey Police has advised people "not to be alarmed" by the extra visibility or police, who may be carrying guns

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/more-armed-police-patrols-deployed-13099678

18 beaches in easy reach of Surrey and Hampshire

Rally up the kids, pack the sun cream and hop in the car to one of these gorgeous beaches dotted along the south east coast

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/nearest-sandy-beaches-to-surrey-9833696

Madness frontman Graham 'Suggs' McPherson helped dig up World War II tank in Dorking

The tank was dug up from beneath Denbies Vineyard as part of a new series commissioned by the History Channel

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/madness-frontman-graham-suggs-mcpherson-13099593

Investigation underway after Effingham development opposition posters and boards vandalised

The posters opposed plans for 295 homes and a large expansion of a school

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/investigation-underway-after-effingham-development-13099430

10 water parks in Surrey and Hampshire for splashing around

Head down to one of these family-friendly aqua parks when the weather is good

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/aqua-parks-pool-surrey-hampshire-11670143

22 swimming pools and lidos in Surrey and Hampshire

What better way to cool off when the sun is out than with a dip in a refreshing pool?

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/swimming-pools-lidos-surrey-hampshire-9005909

What you should do if you need to stop on a smart motorway and there is no hard shoulder

Highways England has issued guidance about how to use smart motorways after dashcam footage showed a driver struggling along the M25 after losing a front wheel

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/what-you-should-you-need-13098368

First time house buyers in Surrey now have to pay almost £40,000 up front

To secure a first home in March, when the county average price was £329,498, the deposit and stamp duty alone totalled a hefty £39,424

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/property-news/first-time-house-buyers-surrey-13098527

Manchester terror attack: Dozens 'stand together' at Guildford town centre vigil to pay respects to bombing victims

The vigil was organised by 21-year-old Academy of Contemporary Music student Harry Garbutt

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/manchester-terror-attack-dozens-stand-13099058

M25 and M3 roadworks lifted in Surrey ahead of late May bank holiday weekend

Highways England names the roadworks that have been completed on the Surrey sections of the M25 and M3 ahead of the bank holiday weekend

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/m25-m3-roadworks-lifted-surrey-13098775

'Devastated' University for the Creative Arts student had to redo year's work in one month after laptop and memory stick stolen

The laptop contained a dissertation and final year project and the student's purse was also stolen

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/devastated-university-creative-arts-student-13098885

How to help your little ones get a good night's sleep during the heatwave

We've rounded up 14 top tips to keep your little ones cool and able to doze off safely

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/how-help-your-little-ones-13098313

General Election: University of Surrey on board with #MyVote campaign to encourage young voters to have their say

The students shared why they think young voters should have a say in the election

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-university-surrey-board-13087451

Man's body discovered after blaze at Farnborough home, fire service confirms

Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service is investigating after a 52-year-old man was found dead

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/mans-body-discovered-after-blaze-13097950

Wimbledon fire: Huge fire tackled at All England Tennis Club weeks before famous championships begin

It took London Fire Brigade around an hour to control the blaze, but there was damage to the practice court area

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/wimbledon-fire-huge-fire-tackled-13097657

UK Cat Killer: 'Hideous loss' for Frimley Green family as beloved pet found dead believed to be the latest victim

Animal charity South Norwood Animal Rescue has said the death is being investigated under Operation Takahe

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/uk-cat-killer-hideous-loss-13096704

Loose labrador struck by vehicle on A31 rescued by Surrey's Road Policing Unit

Marley was rescued by officers and rushed to an emergency vets in Guildford before being united with his owners

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/loose-labrador-struck-vehicle-a31-13096926

Meet the Haslemere Hogs loved by Amanda Holden, Graham Norton and Julie Walters

These three celebrities signed their own hog and there is even a GruffaHOG

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/meet-haslemere-hogs-loved-amanda-13096545

Weather forecast: Bank holiday weekend washout on the cards as heavy rain expected - and even thunderstorms

The Met Office has issued a yellow weather warning for rain and storms on Sunday into Monday with heavy downpours and thunder expected

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/weather-forecast-bank-holiday-weekend-13096320

16 summery things to do in Surrey when the sun is out

Here is your ultimate guide to making the most of Surrey's glorious sunshine

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/16-summery-things-surrey-sun-13095363

General Election: Guildford candidates go head-to-head in Get Surrey and University of Surrey hustings debate

Candidates discussed a broad range of subjects including housing, education, Brexit and more on Thursday night

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/general-election-guildford-candidates-go-13096612

Wildlife Aid needs YOU - volunteer or intern for the Leatherhead animal charity

Based in Surrey, you may have seen volunteers on TV's Wildlife SOS - so why not apply?

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/wildlife-aid-needs-you-volunteer-13096066

Where's a Plummer when you need one? Relive Guildford Debenhams' unique history with our archive images

With Debenhams in the news at the moment, we decided to hunt out the history of our town's huge department store...

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/nostalgia/wheres-plummer-you-need-one-13093544

Ramadan 2017: Everything you need to know about the Muslim holy month

Here is the timetable for Ramadan this year, as well as decorations and special offers which may come in useful

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/ramadan-2017-everything-you-need-13095420

Here's what you should do if you need to call the police but it's too dangerous to phone

We hope you never need this advice, but one day it could just save your life

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/what-you-need-call-police-12514610

Esher Green police incident: Investigation launched after allegation of night-time sexual assault

A bench and a tree was cordoned off on the green on Friday morning following an alleged attack at around 1.25am

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/esher-green-police-incident-investigation-13095652

Bank holiday getaway: Surrey and Hampshire drivers face busiest late-May bank holiday escape in four years

More than 16 million cars will be on the road over the long weekend - up one million on last year and nearly 2.5 million more than in 2015 says the RAC

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/bank-holiday-getaway-surrey-hampshire-13095364

Sir Roger Moore death: Actor 'haunted by ghost' at Guildford's Angel Hotel in 1973

The former James Bond actor said in an interview that he was visited on two consecutive nights by the "ghostly figure"

from getsurrey - News http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/sir-roger-moore-death-actor-13093745

Gatwick Airport delays: Bag system fault plunges airport into chaos as passengers told to fly without luggage

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Should SEOs Care About Internal Links? - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

Internal links are one of those essential SEO items you have to get right to avoid getting them really wrong. Rand shares 18 tips to help inform your strategy, going into detail about their attributes, internal vs. external links, ideal link structures, and much, much more in this edition of Whiteboard Friday.

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Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat a little bit about internal links and internal link structures. Now, it is not the most exciting thing in the SEO world, but it's something that you have to get right and getting it wrong can actually cause lots of problems.

Attributes of internal links

So let's start by talking about some of the things that are true about internal links. Internal links, when I say that phrase, what I mean is a link that exists on a website, let's say ABC.com here, that is linking to a page on the same website, so over here, linking to another page on ABC.com. We'll do /A and /B. This is actually my shipping routes page. So you can see I'm linking from A to B with the anchor text "shipping routes."

The idea of an internal link is really initially to drive visitors from one place to another, to show them where they need to go to navigate from one spot on your site to another spot. They're different from internal links only in that, in the HTML code, you're pointing to the same fundamental root domain. In the initial early versions of the internet, that didn't matter all that much, but for SEO, it matters quite a bit because external links are treated very differently from internal links. That is not to say, however, that internal links have no power or no ability to change rankings, to change crawling patterns and to change how a search engine views your site. That's what we need to chat about.

1. Anchor text is something that can be considered. The search engines have generally minimized its importance, but it's certainly something that's in there for internal links.

2. The location on the page actually matters quite a bit, just as it does with external links. Internal links, it's almost more so in that navigation and footers specifically have attributes around internal links that can be problematic.

Those are essentially when Google in particular sees manipulation in the internal link structure, specifically things like you've stuffed anchor text into all of the internal links trying to get this shipping routes page ranking by putting a little link down here in the footer of every single page and then pointing over here trying to game and manipulate us, they hate that. In fact, there is an algorithmic penalty for that kind of stuff, and we can see it very directly.

We've actually run tests where we've observed that jamming this type of anchor text-rich links into footers or into navigation and then removing it gets a site indexed, well let's not say indexed, let's say ranking well and then ranking poorly when you do it. Google reverses that penalty pretty quickly too, which is nice. So if you are not ranking well and you're like, "Oh no, Rand, I've been doing a lot of that," maybe take it away. Your rankings might come right back. That's great.

3. The link target matters obviously from one place to another.

4. The importance of the linking page, this is actually a big one with internal links. So it is generally the case that if a page on your website has lots of external links pointing to it, it gains authority and it has more ability to sort of generate a little bit, not nearly as much as external links, but a little bit of ranking power and influence by linking to other pages. So if you have very well-linked two pages on your site, you should make sure to link out from those to pages on your site that a) need it and b) are actually useful for your users. That's another signal we'll talk about.

5. The relevance of the link, so pointing to my shipping routes page from a page about other types of shipping information, totally great. Pointing to it from my dog food page, well, it doesn't make great sense. Unless I'm talking about shipping routes of dog food specifically, it seems like it's lacking some of that context, and search engines can pick up on that as well.

6. The first link on the page. So this matters mostly in terms of the anchor text, just as it does for external links. Basically, if you are linking in a bunch of different places to this page from this one, Google will usually, at least in all of our experiments so far, count the first anchor text only. So if I have six different links to this and the first link says "Click here," "Click here" is the anchor text that Google is going to apply, not "Click here" and "shipping routes" and "shipping." Those subsequent links won't matter as much.

7. Then the type of link matters too. Obviously, I would recommend that you keep it in the HTML link format rather than trying to do something fancy with JavaScript. Even though Google can technically follow those, it looks to us like they're not treated with quite the same authority and ranking influence. Text is slightly, slightly better than images in our testing, although that testing is a few years old at this point. So maybe image links are treated exactly the same. Either way, do make sure you have that. If you're doing image links, by the way, remember that the alt attribute of that image is what becomes the anchor text of that link.

Internal versus external links

A. External links usually give more authority and ranking ability.

That shouldn't be surprising. An external link is like a vote from an independent, hopefully independent, hopefully editorially given website to your website saying, "This is a good place for you to go for this type of information." On your own site, it's like a vote for yourself, so engines don't treat it the same.

B. Anchor text of internal links generally have less influence.

So, as we mentioned, me pointing to my page with the phrase that I want to rank for isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I shouldn't do it in a manipulative way. I shouldn't do it in a way that's going to look spammy or sketchy to visitors, because if visitors stop clicking around my site or engaging with it or they bounce more, I will definitely lose ranking influence much faster than if I simply make those links credible and usable and useful to visitors. Besides, the anchor text of internal links is not as powerful anyway.

C. A lack of internal links can seriously hamper a page's ability to get crawled + ranked.

It is, however, the case that a lack of internal links, like an orphan page that doesn't have many internal or any internal links from the rest of its website, that can really hamper a page's ability to rank. Sometimes it will happen. External links will point to a page. You'll see that page in your analytics or in a report about your links from Moz or Ahrefs or Majestic, and then you go, "Oh my gosh, I'm not linking to that page at all from anywhere else on my site." That's a bad idea. Don't do that. That is definitely problematic.

D. It's still the case, by the way, that, broadly speaking, pages with more links on them will send less link value per link.

So, essentially, you remember the original PageRank formula from Google. It said basically like, "Oh, well, if there are five links, send one-fifth of the PageRank power to each of those, and if there are four links, send one-fourth." Obviously, one-fourth is bigger than one-fifth. So taking away that fifth link could mean that each of the four pages that you've linked to get a little bit more ranking authority and influence in the original PageRank algorithm.

Look, PageRank is old, very, very old at this point, but at least the theories behind it are not completely gone. So it is the case that if you have a page with tons and tons of links on it, that tends to send out less authority and influence than a page with few links on it, which is why it can definitely pay to do some spring cleaning on your website and clear out any rubbish pages or rubbish links, ones that visitors don't want, that search engines don't want, that you don't care about. Clearing that up can actually have a positive influence. We've seen that on a number of websites where they've cleaned up their information architecture, whittled down their links to just the stuff that matters the most and the pages that matter the most, and then seen increased rankings across the board from all sorts of signals, positive signals, user engagement signals, link signals, context signals that help the engine them rank better.

E. Internal link flow (aka PR sculpting) is rarely effective, and usually has only mild effects... BUT a little of the right internal linking can go a long way.

Then finally, I do want to point out that what was previous called — you probably have heard of it in the SEO world — PageRank sculpting. This was a practice that I'd say from maybe 2003, 2002 to about 2008, 2009, had this life where there would be panel discussions about PageRank sculpting and all these examples of how to do it and software that would crawl your site and show you the ideal PageRank sculpting system to use and which pages to link to and not.

When PageRank was the dominant algorithm inside of Google's ranking system, yeah, it was the case that PageRank sculpting could have some real effect. These days, that is dramatically reduced. It's not entirely gone because of some of these other principles that we've talked about, just having lots of links on a page for no particularly good reason is generally bad and can have harmful effects and having few carefully chosen ones has good effects. But most of the time, internal linking, optimizing internal linking beyond a certain point is not very valuable, not a great value add.

But a little of what I'm calling the right internal linking, that's what we're going to talk about, can go a long way. For example, if you have those orphan pages or pages that are clearly the next step in a process or that users want and they cannot find them or engines can't find them through the link structure, it's bad. Fixing that can have a positive impact.

Ideal internal link structures

So ideally, in an internal linking structure system, you want something kind of like this. This is a very rough illustration here. But the homepage, which has maybe 100 links on it to internal pages. One hop away from that, you've got your 100 different pages of whatever it is, subcategories or category pages, places that can get folks deeper into your website. Then from there, each of those have maybe a maximum of 100 unique links, and they get you 2 hops away from a homepage, which takes you to 10,000 pages who do the same thing.

I. No page should be more than 3 link "hops" away from another (on most small-->medium sites).

Now, the idea behind this is that basically in one, two, three hops, three links away from the homepage and three links away from any page on the site, I can get to up to a million pages. So when you talk about, "How many clicks do I have to get? How far away is this in terms of link distance from any other page on the site?" a great internal linking structure should be able to get you there in three or fewer link hops. If it's a lot more, you might have an internal linking structure that's really creating sort of these long pathways of forcing you to click before you can ever reach something, and that is not ideal, which is why it can make very good sense to build smart categories and subcategories to help people get in there.

I'll give you the most basic example in the world, a traditional blog. In order to reach any post that was published two years ago, I've got to click Next, Next, Next, Next, Next, Next through all this pagination until I finally get there. Or if I've done a really good job with my categories and my subcategories, I can click on the category of that blog post and I can find it very quickly in a list of the last 50 blog posts in that particular category, great, or by author or by tag, however you're doing your navigation.

II. Pages should contain links that visitors will find relevant and useful.

If no one ever clicks on a link, that is a bad signal for your site, and it is a bad signal for Google as well. I don't just mean no one ever. Very, very few people ever and many of them who do click it click the back button because it wasn't what they wanted. That's also a bad sign.

III. Just as no two pages should be targeting the same keyword or searcher intent, likewise no two links should be using the same anchor text to point to different pages. Canonicalize!

For example, if over here I had a shipping routes link that pointed to this page and then another shipping routes link, same anchor text pointing to a separate page, page C, why am I doing that? Why am I creating competition between my own two pages? Why am I having two things that serve the same function or at least to visitors would appear to serve the same function and search engines too? I should canonicalize those. Canonicalize those links, canonicalize those pages. If a page is serving the same intent and keywords, keep it together.

IV. Limit use of the rel="nofollow" to UGC or specific untrusted external links. It won't help your internal link flow efforts for SEO.

Rel="nofollow" was sort of the classic way that people had been doing PageRank sculpting that we talked about earlier here. I would strongly recommend against using it for that purpose. Google said that they've put in some preventative measures so that rel="nofollow" links sort of do this leaking PageRank thing, as they call it. I wouldn't stress too much about that, but I certainly wouldn't use rel="nofollow."

What I would do is if I'm trying to do internal link sculpting, I would just do careful curation of the links and pages that I've got. That is the best way to help your internal link flow. That's things like...

V. Removing low-value content, low-engagement content and creating internal links that people actually do want. That is going to give you the best results.

VI. Don't orphan! Make sure pages that matter have links to (and from) them. Last, but not least, there should never be an orphan. There should never be a page with no links to it, and certainly there should never be a page that is well linked to that isn't linking back out to portions of your site that are of interest or value to visitors and to Google.

So following these practices, I think you can do some awesome internal link analysis, internal link optimization and help your SEO efforts and the value visitors get from your site. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

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