Our weekly digest of what’s happening/trending in the digital world provided by Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and Search Engine Roundtable.

From Search Engine Land

State of Local Marketing Report 2018
BrandMuscle’s ‘State of Local Marketing Report’ analyzes key trends that impact marketing leaders, serving as a yearly barometer of wins and opportunities in local marketing. The 2018 report: Includes insights based on 2,700+ survey responses from local business partners Analyzes 150K+ data points on local and channel marketing. Read more

Link-building tools you may not know about
The nuts and bolts of four unique link-building tools and shares how each can help analyze web pages and assist in your linking efforts. Read more

You Got The Click! Now What?
Digital ad spend keeps rising: 70 percent of marketers expect to increase their paid social budgets this year, while 65 percent plan to spend more on search, according to Marin’s most recent “The State of Digital Advertising” report. But are your conversions keeping pace? Read more

How to increase your PageSpeed in WordPress
With over 59% of websites using WordPress as a CMS, optimizing them to load quickly is a good idea. Read more

New Google Search Console adds mobile usability report, manage users & adds site features
Google brings more features from the old version of Google Search Console to the new beta version. Read more

Google Posts added to local packs for some branded queries
Google Posts normally only show up as an option within a local knowledge panel, but here it is showing up on the local 3-pack. Read more

Google launches new expandable featured snippets with more information
The new featured snippets provide aggregated access to additional sources about a search query. Read more

From Marketing Land

The science of storytelling
The importance of storytelling has become universally accepted in today’s marketing world, but why does it work so well? Read more

How to rev up your page speed for better website performance
Improving page speed isn’t some arcane and mysterious dark art. Read more

Unlocking the full potential of transactional emails
How to get the most out of their transactional emails without stepping over the line. Read more

AP: Google collects location data when ‘Location History’ is turned off
Google says it tells users exactly what it’s doing. It does, though some of the information is buried. Read more

Why you’ll benefit from fully funding your core brand terms on Amazon
You may be wondering why you’d want to buy brand keywords on Amazon since results will feature your products anyway. Read more

15 questions to ask yourself before publishing a new landing page
Building landing pages? 15 questions to help guide you in creating and evaluating new landing pages. Read more

From Search Engine Roundtable

Google: We Do Not Have A Page Partially Moved To A New Location Directive
Google’s John Mueller said they do not have a directive to tell Google part of this page or content on this page moved to a new location. Read more

Google “View Previous Posts” To Highlight Old Google Posts
Google showing âview previous posts on Googleâ for some local panels that trigger older Google Posts. Read more

Google Ads Report Editor Now Supports Chart Time Comparison Data
Google Ads Report Editor has added the ability to let you compare data in a chart or graph view. Read more

Google Analytics Signals – Cross Device Capabilities
Google is beta testing a new Google Analytics feature named Google Signals. It lets you track and report on your visitors across devices. Read more

Google Can’t Recommend SEOs To Hire; It’s A Conflict Of Interest
Google said it would be a conflict of interest for them to suggest which SEOs you should consider hiring. Read more

Don’t Flat Line After The Google Medic Update
As you know, the Google Medic update was pretty big and Google’a advice is there is no fix. But that does not mean you should sit on your hands and just wait it out. Read more

Google: When You Switch To HTTPS There Is No Rush On Indexing Or Deindexing
Gary Illyes from Google said when you migrate from HTTP to HTTPS, there is no need to rush. Read more

Google Fixes Video Carousels To Show Them Less Often
Several weeks ago, Google began showing more and more video carousels in the search results. Read more

Google Add Google Posts In Local Knowledge Panel
If you are logged into your Google My Business account and do a search for your business, you may see a call to action from Google to add Google Posts to your Google local knowledge panel. Read more

Google My Business Insights To Expand Query Pool
Google My Business insights reports should now be more comprehensive in the types of queries they use when showing these reports. Read more

Google: The Medic Update Is Global; All Categories Of Search, Not Just Health
You all know that I named the August core Google algorithm update the Medic Update because it seems highly slanted in terms of the impact it had on the health, medical and fitness niches. Read more

Beta Google Search Console Adds Verify Sites, Manage Users & Mobile Usability Report
The new beta version of the Google Search Console keeps porting over features from the old version. In this mornings announcement Google said you can now manage users and permissions, add sites and validate ownership and view the mobile usability report. Read more

Google: Manual Actions Are Not Based On A Single Bad Link
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that Google does not issue manual actions, search ranking penalties, over a single bad link. Read more

Google: Useful Content Position On A Page Doesn’t Matter
Google’s John Mueller hints that where you place your content on the page doesn’t matter. This comes after Google’s Gary Illyes kind of said the opposite. Read more

Google Doesn’t Always Show “More Results” Button, May Show “Next” Button
I was testing some searches on Google’s mobile search results this morning and for some queries I was able to bring back the “next” button at the bottom of the search results. Read more

Google Medic Update: Many Are Looking Back To Google’s Panda Advice From 2011
With the Google Medic Update from August 1st, the core broad Google algorithm update. Many are not just looking at the quality raters guidelines but also looking back at the advice former head of search Amit Singhal gave around the Google Panda update from May 2011. Read more

Google: Taking Old Content & Relabeling It As New Is A Bad SEO Hack
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter, with the disclaimer of him putting his user hat on (not Google hat), that relabeling old content as new, without any additional changes is a bad SEO hack. Read more

Google: Avoid Change URLs Unless You Really Have To
For years and years, Google has been telling people to not change URLs unless they have to. Read more