Google's Mobile Friendly Algorithm

Back in February, Google announced their intention to improve the “friendliness” of their mobile search results and explained that they were working on adapting their algorithms to make this possible. In the Google Webmaster blog post they explained,

‘As more people use mobile devices to access the internet, our algorithms have to adapt to these usage patterns /.../ Starting April 21st, we will be expanding our use of mobile friendliness as a ranking signal /.../ Users will find it easier to get relevant high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.’

Since these words were shared, website owners and online marketing companies across the globe have been waiting with baited breath to see how greatly this would impact mobile search results. And they have most likely spent the past couple of months trying to forecast and accommodate Google’s algorithm update.

So, yesterday the update started being rolled out and we expect website owner’s to notice a difference in their rankings in the next week or so. We imagine many of our clients will have a few concerns, for example, Google’s ethos has always been to return the most accurate results to a users query, so how can they decipher between mobile friendliness and relevant content? What if my website has better content than another’s but isn’t mobile friendly yet? And if you’ve missed the forewarning of the update altogether, you might be asking, what do Google mean when they refer to mobile-friendly websites? Don’t panic, we will help calm your nerves and make sure that you come out of this update unscathed.

Yesterday, Google explained that mobile-friendly sites would be ones,

‘Where the text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.’

They also included that this update only affects search ranking on mobile devices but it does affect search results in all languages, and it’s applied to individual pages, not entire websites.

Every person making use of the search engine will be eager to see the effect of the new algorithm. And it’ll be interesting to learn how Google will calculate whether it’s “friendlier” to rank a site page higher where the content is detailed and highly relevant to the users query, but wouldn’t be classed as entirely mobile friendly, or a site page where the content is less rich but provides a better user experience. Over the coming weeks we’ll be able to monitor how this update affects our 4000 strong client base and we will make sure to report on it and educate you further.

Google have said that they will still use a variety of signals to rank mobile search results and that the intent of the search query is still very strong. We already know that there are a multitude of factors that determine a website’s rank and there has been no suggestion that this one would gain more prominence over any of the others. So if you haven’t yet managed to make your site fit within their latest guidelines but have done so otherwise, this shouldn’t impact your mobile page rank dramatically. That saying, it is not an update to be ignored.

Google have provided a number of guides, YouTube clips and tools so that you can check whether your site is classed as mobile friendly and if it isn’t, you can discover how to make it so. Below is a link to their mobile friendly test:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?utm_source=wmc-blog&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=mobile-friendly

There are also a few factors to consider when trying to make your website mobile friendly:
Responsive web design: Around a month ago we blogged about ‘What to consider when developing your website’, in which we touched upon favouring a responsive web design. If the term responsive is entirely new, it’s one you should learn. A responsive web layout will allow your web pages to adapt to all devices, and this is Google’s recommended design configuration. This however, does not mean that your site has to be responsive to be considered mobile-friendly, but if you are developing a new website or thinking of upgrading your existing one, Responsive is definitely the way forward. It is likely to cost you more for development but it will certainly make for a sound ROI.

JavaScript Adaptive & CSS: Make sure that Googlebot can access JavaScript, CSS, and image files. If a website requires JavaScript, JavaScript Adaptive is recommended by Google. And, helpfully, the mobile friendly test will highlight any blocked resources.

Dynamic Serving: Dynamic serving is a setup where the server responds with different HTML on the same URL depending on who requests the page. Google have recommended for the server to send a hint request to their bots for smartphone, which can be implemented using the Vary HTTP header.

Avoid silly errors: Put simply, make sure:
All your resources are crawlable
You do not use robot.txt to block search engines from accessing important files on your site
All playable/ video content works
You fix or remove any faulty 301/ canonical redirects
Your pages loads quickly on mobile
More detail on the above points can be found in Google’s Mobile SEO guide, here:

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/

Many website owners have also been concerned about the length of time it will take Google to recognise any changes they make to their website now. However, Google have confirmed that once your site becomes mobile friendly, they will automatically re-crawl your URLs and index your pages. If you wish to expedite the process you can do so here:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812

* For our SEO addicts, it’s worth us mentioning that there’s no benefit in linking to sites that are mobile friendly. Unlike the Panda and Penguin updates, this one does not take into consideration link building of any kind.

To conclude; Google’s majority search market share is so dominant that it often seems as though web developers, digital marketing companies and website owners are living in fear of what update they might conduct next. There’s no denying that historically, their updates have caused uproar and frustration across the board. But ultimately, their intentions are only good. Realistically, how annoying is it having to zoom and squint at your phone screen when looking at a website online? And also, how frustrating is it when your finger selects the link to a page you didn’t mean to select? We’d say on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a definite 7. And on the flipside, when it comes to generating conversions, very few will happen on websites that don’t make the experience for a user easy and straightforward. So, overall, it is important that developers and site owners start to improve the mobile user experience and we guess Google have just given everyone a kick up the backside.

If you have any questions about the contents of this blog, or any SEO related queries, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Should we be 100% Google?

‘Google it!’ We bet that’s a phrase you’ve heard before and one that you’ve used yourself. Considering Google launched less than 20 years ago, it’s pretty impressive that they’ve embedded themselves quite so deeply into our day-to-day lives. At Click Submit, even if our mother’s or father’s don’t know the answer to a query, they might not use the search engine themselves, but they’ll ask us to ‘Google it’. In fact, it’s practically expected that nowadays you’re to search on Google to find an answer before asking the person stood next to you. So it’s no surprise that when it comes to search market share, Google dominate.

As of March 2015, the search engine market share in the UK displayed as follows:

Google: 88.12%
Bing: 7.09%
Yahoo: 3.61%
Others: 1.18%



*Whatever happened to asking Jeeves, hey?

With the above stats, there’s no wonder why advertisers, marketing professionals, and businesses across the board are so eager to use Google’s services to their advantage, and focus their efforts on gaining a top spot position in the search results for their favoured keywords. Google’s seriously intelligent algorithms and advanced ad programs like AdWords have pushed them to the forefront of all things search. But, and there is a but, should we be putting all of our eggs into one basket? I.e., what about the remaining 11.88% of the market share? It seems like a small percentage, but when you think of the amount of people who use the web world wide, there are still millions using Bing/ Yahoo/ Others.

Bing only launched in 2009 and in a short space of time they have established themselves as a rival to Google, and more importantly, they are growing. Yahoo appointed Bing as it’s exclusive natural and paid search platform in 2009, which means that both engines return the same results. So, it’s worth considering that factor when reviewing the search market shares.

So where do the Bing and Google differ?

First and foremost, the search results they provide differ. This sounds obvious, but for SEO newbies, it might not be. The search results on all engines are calculated using complex algorithms, and even though Bing and Google’s are similar, there are key variants, such as:

Google are certainly more advanced when it comes to interpreting a pages subject/ theme. Bing’s bots don’t address the whole page of a website, which most likely affects the relevancy of the results.

However, Bing’s algorithms seem more capable of recognising pictures, videos, audio and flash. Google’s algorithms focus primarily on HTML/ text based content. So without including text alongside any image or video that appears on your site, they simply won’t be recognised by Google.

It would appear as though Bing’s bots don’t focus so heavily on external backlinks and place more emphasis on social media and internal links with anchor text. We do however; think Google are starting to incorporate social media more heavily into their algorithms.

With all the above differences in mind, there are still a great deal of similarities between all search engines. For example, manipulated links will not be tolerated, duplicate content won’t be recognised but good quality content will be rewarded.

Evidently, Google are like the Jesus of the search engine world, but it’s worth making note of what appeals to it’s disciples, especially as the market share across the pond is more even than in the UK. So, if your businesses services are supplied in the US/ worldwide, or you’re aim is for them to be, this particularly applies to you. comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, released new stats on Wednesday (April 15th 2015) that shows Microsoft’s engine Bing has achieved a 20.1% share of the U.S search market, which is a seriously positive result for them and supports our view to utilize other search engines too.

http://www.comscore.com/esl/Insights/Market-Rankings/comScore-Releases-March-2015-US-Desktop-Search-Engine-Rankings

However, there’s also another network that have always suggested that they will, at some point, move into search; and that’s Facebook.

Facebook Vs. Google

Previously, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook receives around a billion queries per day, without even trying. Plus, they have over 1 billion active users worldwide. So if they were to/ when they decide to move into the search market, could they pose the biggest threat to Google of all? Check out these stats:

As of December 2014, it was logged that 890 million people log on to Facebook everyday

Five new profiles are created every second

Average time spent per Facebook visit is 20 minutes

It would be so convenient for active users to query Facebook instead of opening a new tab or leaving the mobile app to search Google. However, when they do decide to launch their own search engine, Zuckerberg will want to make sure that it is ready to compete.

Google haven’t been hugely successful in their attempts to enter the social network market. Google+ in fact, is probably their most public failure to date. So it’ll be interesting to see whether the king of social can develop algorithm’s advanced enough to return accurate results and give Google a run for their money.

Almost a year ago now, Facebook launched their Places Directory, which allows you to search for a city and see if any of your friends are checked-in there, or have visited previously. At the same time you can view information about the city, read hotel and restaurant reviews, view posts and photos. If you’re logged out of your account, you can still access the publicly available information. So, could the introduction of this local form of browsing suggest that Facebook are looking at ways of incorporating search into their social network seamlessly?

They have been triumphant in developing a PPC program that rivals AdWords with enormous reach. And one thing’s for sure, when Facebook does decide to launch their own search engine, businesses and SEO companies will be eager to learn what makes their algorithms happy.

We make sure every corner is covered

When it comes to digital marketing and attempting to satisfy the search engines, we have every corner covered for our clients. Our product offerings include:

Totally white hat, transparent SEO that follows a simple 3 step strategy

A unique social product called Like to Follow, which means all of our client’s can opt in to like and follow one another on their social platforms

A reputation management product called Positivity, which helps you gain good reviews online and allows you to assess your customer’s experience

And, we even have our own mini-search engine called Connect, which allows our clients to purchase from one another and also pursue business relationships

We also offer managed on site changes. So if we find that your site lacks any of the elements we consider the search engine’s algorithms to be looking for, we will update your site to make certain it’s relevant enough to achieve a great rank.

We hope this blog has provided an interesting read and please let us know if you have any questions. Tweet or follow me at Annabelle_CS

Have a great day!
Annabelle

The Importance of Your Online Reputation

Every so often, something or an experience totally unrelated to your subject matter can provide inspiration, and that is certainly the case for this week’s blog. The Click Submit team have been loving the BBC2 six part series, Back In Time For Dinner. Starting in 1950, the Robson family were forced to consume the food of each decade up to 2000, and take on the traditional roles of the family. In the episode that re-enacted post war Britain, it was mind blowing to see how little food we were allowed to consume, how limited our lifestyle was and what a minute amount of choice we had as a consumer in the UK. Tea time consisted of bread with dripping and the weekly meat ration would equate to one nights for a family in 2015. The general consensus of the decade was simply, to make do with what you were given. Fast forward into the 21st century and we have never had more power as a consumer, nor have businesses ever had to work harder to gain a client’s trust or seal of approval. It’s interesting to consider the factors that have contributed to this, but importantly, we want to make sure that you recognise how vital it is to protect & build your online reputation and we’re about to advise you how to do so!

Search Engines

Nowadays, the first thing a potential client is likely to do when considering using your service, is to search for you. And by search, we mean via a virtual engine like Google. What is said about your business online has become an immediate reflection of the quality and ability of your service/s. So you want to know that the results being returned are honest and above all, positive. Thus, go Google yourself! And suss out what people are saying about you online. Even if your business isn’t built online, it’s highly likely that if you type in your businesses name, there will be relevant results. It’s crucial to stay in the know when it comes to what people are saying about you in the realms of the virtual.

Monitor Social Media

If you have read our previous blogs and followed our words of wisdom, you should be pretty social savvy by now. If you’ve created your profile pages and have started publishing content/ engaging with your clients, you should also start to monitor what people are saying about you. Cue burning ears. This will give you an indication of how well you’re performing and whether your product offerings are being received well and the content you’re delivering is engaged with. If a client has raved about one of your products or your service via a tweet/ status update, respond to it. It could encourage them to write a review. Equally, if there are any signs of negative criticism, address it and deal with it (we’ll discuss negative reviews later). As your company grows and more people begin sharing feedback about it online, the more difficult and also important it will be to monitor it. It’s critical that you manage this element of your business pro-actively.

Independent Review Sites

If you’ve mastered the social portals, you need to address your presence on independent review sites, such as uk.trustpilot.com or www.reviewcentre.com. Although you’re likely to be collecting testimonials for your main site, there are a number of sceptics out there who will want further reassurance that your on-site testimonials are genuine. And if you have a good amount of off-site testimonials to add into the pot, you’ll be helping your potential client/s feel confident that utilizing your service or purchasing an item from you, is the most advantageous, reasoned choice.

Encourage online testimonials

People are always far quicker to write negative reviews online than to write positive ones. Usually, as a means to vent anger and frustration. So encouraging positive online testimonials is likely to require more effort than simply providing a great service. You can approach long term clients, for example, ones that have been using your service for over 6 months, or those who have bought from you at least 5 times previously. By contacting a client once they have had an ample amount of time to sample your offerings, you’re more likely to gain reward. Encourage them to be as specific as possible too. It’s important to note that regular online reviews will assist with your SEO (win, win) and the more recent the review, the more likely a potential client will recognise that you’re hot right now.

Tip: Think outside the box & reward longevity

This isn’t a fresh idea, it’s one used in marketing strategies globally, but rewarding your loyal clients occasionally will boost their experience, encourage returning revenue and hopefully, generate rave reviews online. Businesses are always so eager to encourage potential clients to sign up, but once they’ve stepped on the bandwagon, the offers usually end there. So, think outside the box and we’re confident by doing so, your online reputation will be 5 star.

Negative press

As painful as it can be sometimes, it’s better to maintain the mentality that the customer is always right, even when they’re wrong. The downside to the growth of the internet, is that instead of an unhappy customer relaying a negative experience to their friends or family, they can share it with the world. Although this gives a consumer more power than ever, it can mean a business might not get the opportunity to address its error before it’s out for everyone to witness. Whatever happens, don’t ignore any negative press. If you respond to it efficiently and with the intention to resolve the issue, with the customer’s best interest in mind, it can actually result in a positive outcome all round. Businesses are not machines and there will inevitably be errors along the way, but how you choose to deal with the mishaps will reflect your brand and affect how it is perceived.

Tip: Ask for feedback and don’t shy away from criticism

Whilst monitoring your online reputation, don’t hesitate to ask your customers what they like and what they feel could be improved in your business. Showing that you’re eager to please your clients and are continuously brainstorming ways of advancing your service/ products can only be received positively.

Since we don’t like to end our blogs on a negative note, we’ll mention our latest product, Positivity, which is centred around reputation management. First and foremost, this product was introduced to assist our clients with their SEO, because it appears that online reviews are now a key factor of search engine algorithms. But it was also born with the intent of helping them generate positive public reviews.

It is a really simple tool that allows our clients to verify whether their client’s happy or not, before asking them to submit a review via an online review centre. If a client is unhappy for any reason, it also gives our client the opportunity to rectify the situation.

This is another way for our clients to learn from and engage with theirs, and hopefully improve their brand/ reputation at the same time.

*This additional product is included in our existing quarterly fee and more info is available here

We hope this blog has been a useful read and please let us know if you have any questions. Contact or follow me on twitter @Annabelle_CS

Have a great day!

Business-to-Business Social Networking: Featuring LinkedIn & Connect

A couple of weeks ago we published the article ‘Help grow your business with social media, for free’ and focused our attention on Facebook and Twitter, the two giants in the social media field. In this weeks blog we’re going to discuss Business-to-Business social networking using LinkedIn and Connect as our guinea pigs.

LinkedIn

As we have mentioned time and time again, improving your social status will assist your SEO, but importantly, it’s a free way to connect with your existing/ potential clients and gain more business. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, whose free business marketing options are mainly used to interact and engage with your clientele, LinkedIn’s ethos is to encourage collaboration between professionals. With over 53 million users, it’s certainly at the forefront of business-to-business social networking, so if you’ve yet to tackle this platform, we’re about to help you head forth and conquer.

Here’s a guide to what steps you’ll need to take to do so:

Setting up a profile

Sign up: Once you’ve signed up for an account, you’ll be asked to provide some information for your profile, similar to, but more basic than what you would display on your CV e.g. work experience, qualifications, a personal statement and valuable skills. Then you can add a pretty picture of yourself too.

Shout about it: Inform your existing contacts that you’ve arrived on LinkedIn. You can do this through email or another of your social platforms.

Get recommended: You can invite existing contacts or other work colleagues to recommend you. If they do, you can display their rave review on your profile page. And these can act as testimonials and references.

Get Endorsed: You can list your skills on your LinkedIn profile and clients/ work colleagues can endorse your skills. You can list as many skills as you think you possess but perhaps stick to around 10 of the most relevant ones to begin with.

Cross-Market: You can promote your company/ website, blog and other social pages from your LinkedIn profile by providing the links in the contact section of your site. Also start to integrate LinkedIn into all your marketing.

Tips:

If you link your Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile, you can post your LinkedIn updates to Twitter, and vice versa. Peachy! It’s really simple to do:

- Scroll over your thumbnail sized profile pic, in the top right hand corner of your profile page
- Select to manage privacy and settings
- Sign into Twitter & manage Twitter settings
- Add your Twitter account
- Select whether you want this to appear on your LinkedIn account in the contact information area

Some online guidance articles for LinkedIn explain that you’re able to import your blog RSS feed but these are past their sell by date. Previously, if you wrote blogs that were relevant to a LinkedIn group you were apart of, you used to be able to import them automatically into the news section, but sadly, this is no longer possible. There are other ways to go about it:



The more you optimize your profile, the more times it will get viewed because you’ll appear in the search results more frequently. Hopefully, leading to more business contacts and potentially, new clients/ business partners. You can add a ton of information to further help you do this, for example, you can add what languages you speak, what causes you care about, projects that you’ve been apart of, and so on.

Networking on LinkedIn

Groups: Once you’ve setup your profile, you can start networking. The best way to do this would be to join relevant groups and start sharing your knowledge and contributing to conversations. The link to all groups appears beneath the interests tab at the top of your profile page. You could also create your own group. This would offer you another way to reach out and engage with potential/ existing clients.

Tip:

If you’re going to create your own group, we would suggest creating one for your industry rather than your company. Your group reach would extend past your clients and attract/ engage other businesses. You can create topical discussions, write about relevant news and send announcements. Invite your contacts, colleagues, customers and even industry pros to join and start discussions about relevant topics.

Stay regular: Whether you decide to create your own group, or simply join others, or whether you decide to only focus on your profile page, make sure your updates and contribution stays regular. Just like Twitter and Facebook, it’s best not to leave your LinkedIn page deserted.

For SEO

When creating your LinkedIn profile, there are ways you can customise your profile that will complement your SEO, such as:

Customise your public profile URL with your name. On your profile page, click ‘edit’ next to your public profile URL, and then click ‘edit’ next to where it appears on the right hand side. And then you’re done.

Add custom anchor text to your links. You can have up to 3 links on your profile leading to other websites.

Make sure to include a selection of keywords in your summary section and possibly in your work experience section too.

LinkedIn offer premium paid services and pay per click ads as well. We like to enlighten our clients on how to make the most out of all the free online marketing tools, but if there’s room in the budget to accommodate paid advertising, then it’s definitely worth considering.

Connect (our marvellous, mini search engine)

Connect is a totally unique product on the SEO market. It seems as though we’re bragging, but because we have almost 4000 clients utilizing our services (not 53 million yet, we know), all whom want to grow their businesses, we thought it would be wise to produce a way for them to interact. So, Connect was born. It’s our own mini search engine, solely for our clients, developed so that they can connect, either to pursue business relationships or shop from one another. Pretty handy, huh?

All of our clients who opt into Connect can offer other Click Submit clients a percentage discount for their services/ products. It’s really simple to create your profile and we have published a step-by-step article to assist you through the process.

So, if you are a client of ours and you’re not making use of this free tool, you really should be. And if you’re not a client of ours, I guess this product is pretty inviting.

If you have any questions, please let us know, or tweet me: @Annabelle_CS