Are Domains Still An Important Ranking Factor?

Never has there been such a variety of domains on the market. Only a year ago you were stuck with .com, .net, .co.uk, etc. Now you can have .hotel, .photographer… the list goes on!

So, how important is a domain and what things should you be considering before you make a choice?

Should Your Domain Be Descriptive?

Back in November 2012 our guys at Click Submit blogged about Google’s first EMD update. EMD or Exact Match Domains were an absolutely crucial factor in getting a head start on your ranking across all the major search engines.

So how can you take advantage of an EMD domain? Let’s take a photography company as an example who’s most important search term is “Photographers in London”, they then look and see that the domain name photographersinlondon.co.uk is available. Although this domain isn’t the name of their company does it make more sense to purchase it? In short yes. It’s still a good idea to purchase a descriptive domain over a none descriptive domain, but it’s not as important as used to be.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that although we live in a very Google focused market there are many other search engines out there that still regard EMD’s as a very important ranking factor. Yahoo would be an example of one of these.

Does The Suffix Make Any Difference?

Yes! The higher perceived prestige a domain suffix has the easier it is to obtain a high ranking on. Although we think this will be watered down over the coming months / years similarly to exact match domains.
Geographical suffixes are important too. For example if you had a .com then you would have a better chance of obtaining a better ranking than someone with a .net but if your site is only targeting the UK then you would have a better chance of obtaining a higher ranking with a .co.uk or .uk domain.

If you’re a UK business then domains in order of ranking are:

.co.uk / .uk
.com, .net, .org, etc..
.photographer, etc…

Do Forwarders Help With Ranking?

No, but they’re still very important from an intellectual property point of view. If you have 100s of domains forwarding to your website it won’t make any difference to your ranking but it will stop any potential competition on a similar domain name. Protecting your intellectual property is particularly important when using an exact match domain.

Should I use spelling replacements?

A spelling replacement is when you use a number like 4 instead of the word four or maybe you spell a word incorrectly (eg. Catz, ur, etc) instead. People do this in order to get around the correctly spelt domain not being available. We don’t recommend using them for two reasons. Firstly, it can affect the search terms that you will be ranked on but also from a more practical point of view one of the most powerful methods of free marketing for a website is word of mouth. If your domain isn’t spelt correctly it makes letting someone know the web address verbally a bit awkward.

Conclusion

Although the search engines (in an attempt to level the playing field) are watering down the emphasis on domains as part of their algorithm they are still an important factor. So, if a descriptive domain with a good suffix is available then snap it up, but if you’re in a competitive market and domain availability is low then don’t worry, the playing field is a level as it’s ever been and is only going to level out further in the future.

We will update and release further posts on the subject of domains and how they’re affecting over the coming months and years.

We hope you found this post informative and if you have any questions then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with either Cloud Next or Click Submit.

Can You Get Away With A Negative Review?

With a variety of online platforms such as TripAdvisor, TrustPilot, Feefo and Trusted Shops at our fingertips, we now live in a culture where we are instantly able to read a comprehensive list of customer reviews about near enough any product or service.

This user feedback helps many of us to decide which products to buy, which hotels to book and which restaurants to eat in, and this is often without ever feeling the need to read a single ‘expert’ opinion or review.

But for some businesses this rising phenomenon can have just as many negative effects as positive, as a crushingly bad review can damage a brand, something that is beginning to worry many businesses.

We have conducted a survey of 100 clients asking them a simple question: 'If the first page of reviews were all positive bar one, would you read the negative review first and if so would it put you off the company?'

The results were very interesting! 78% said they would read the negative one first and just over 50% said if it was negative enough it would put them off a purchase.

There was however a silver lining. We contacted a few of those surveyed and they stated that if the company responded in a dynamic way to the review then it would most likely offset the negativity considerably. We also learnt that if the review was negative, but not that negative, then it added authenticity to the product as long as the overwhelming feeling from other reviews was positive.

So, it's more important than ever to motivate your happy clients to post reviews, while at the same time making sure that channels of communication are opened with unhappy clients before they go public, but wouldn't it be nice to have an automated solution? Yep you guessed it we have one, and it's called Positivity!

Positivity is a simple system allowing you to verify whether a client is happy or not, before you suggest that they submit a review via a public website like Trust Pilot, Review Centre, Trip Advisor etc. It’s totally unique to Click Submit and is included as part of our quarterly service.
So, how does it work? During set up you will be able to create up to 5 questions, on which your clients will give you a score of between 1 and 5, via our white labelled client feedback site: www.feedingback.co.uk. You will then be able to set a positive threshold. This threshold will dictate the message that they see after they submit their feedback. So for example, you may set a threshold of 4 stars of above. This would mean that if the result averages 4 stars or above your client would be asked to submit a public review. If the result averages 3 stars or below your client would be presented with a message that you create during set up. This could be a message to ask them to contact you with their details to discuss their dissatisfaction and try to achieve a more positive outcome.

We have set up a Positivity profile for Click Submit, to show you how it looks to the end client. We would send the following link to all of our clients: feedingback.co.uk/www.clicksubmit.co.uk.

To conclude, online reviews are an increasingly crucial part of your overall online marketing strategy. It's key to get positive momentum as soon as possible, but what surprised us about the survey was the impact that a small amount of negativity can have on your business. Now is the time to take control of your online reputation!

We hope you found this article interesting and if you have any questions then please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Capitalise On Your Following With A Good News Story!

Do you have a large following on Twitter or Facebook? Maybe you have a large database of clients that you regularly e-mail?

If so, then you know the importance of engaging your follows / clients with interesting information, but wouldn’t it be nice to engage them with an exclusive deal that can help their businesses succeed while at the same time delivering you a recurring revenue stream?

Well, we have the solution!

It’s called the Promo Code Reseller Solution is perfect for anyone looking to create an instant recurring revenue stream from an existing following.

It’s simple

We give you a promotional discount code that you pass on to your followers/clients. It’s a good news story as it entitles them to an exclusive discount (up to 100%) off their first quarterly payment when they sign up to Click Submit. Your clients are then linked to you via this code for their entire life cycle and you will earn 40% of all revenue generated. It’s totally transparent! You can monitor all of your statistics via a Control Panel. You can even download your client data in order to cross reference with your database.

For example

Our largest Promo Code reseller currently has 568 active clients and we are currently paying them on average £3,786 per month, which we forecast to double to over £7,000 per month within the next year.

What to learn more?

Check out our knowledge base article

How To Choose What Keywords To Use For SEO

 
In last week’s blog we gave some tips to AdWords beginners and in the article we discussed the importance of keyword selection, but only very briefly. It got us thinking and reminded us how often new SEO clients contact us with queries about their keyword selection. So it made sense for us to put together a blog that focused solely on the keyword selection process and hopefully we can introduce you to a few tools and amazing websites that will help you pick the most suitable keywords to advertise your business on.

Short-tail Vs. Long-tail keywords

When a new client signs up to our service, one of our jobs is to vet their keyword choices. The most common mistake our clients make are to select too broad, way too competitive search terms. On the flip side we sometimes see clients using exceptionally long-tailed keywords in the hope of avoiding the competition and reaching position 1 quickly, but this often results in low traffic levels and a low amount of conversions.

As an example, one of our clients worked as a plumber in Manchester so amongst his keywords were ‘Plumber’, ‘local plumber’, ‘plumbing’, and so forth. To SEO newbies and plumbers all around, it would make sense to use the keyword ‘Plumber’ as it does best describe what he is. However, when it comes to SEO and online marketing, it’s worth enlisting some more long-tail but still relevant keywords that better reflect your service. The plumber was based in Manchester, so it would have been preferable for him to select geo-targeted search terms such as ‘plumbing services in Manchester’. This would be more relevant to his service, more relevant to his website content, it would cut out the broader competition and therefore, his site would be more likely to rank high on Google and other search engines as a result.

Key Considerations

First and foremost, there are a few questions that you should ask yourself when trying to choose your keywords:
Location - If you’re services only cover a certain radius or you’re based in a specific city/ county, make sure you add these as extensions to your core keyword (as suggested in the aforementioned example)
Price - Whether your services are free, cheap, luxury and so on; these terms could help further elaborate your service/ products
Time - Question whether you need to make reference to time in your keyword too
Purpose & Intent - Including words such as ‘buy’, ‘sell’, ‘shop’, ‘find’ could further refine your search term and will make sure that your site appears when a searcher is actively looking for your product/ service

Keyword Planner tool

Google’s Keyword Planner is a great tool to use when researching your keyword selection. It’s only available to use in Google AdWords but it’s worth opening an AdWords account just to utilize it. Although the tool isn’t always 100% accurate, and for organic keywords some columns (such as estimated CPC) won’t be relevant, it’s great for providing insightful information about keyword search volume and it’s also good for inspiring themed keywords. All you have to do is type in the search term that you are thinking of using, what locations you wish to target, and it will hit back with a ton of suitable suggestions. Because it’s designed for AdWords, it will piece together the terms in ad-groups so you will get a clear insight into keyword concepts and it will also show you how competitive the term/s you’ve chosen are.

Google Instant

Google Instant is another great way to suss out popular and appropriate keywords. You may have noticed that when you search on Google, it tries to predict what you’re going to input - this is Google Instant. This little tool can help you discover commonly used but long tail keywords. If you type in your main keyword, for example ours would be SEO, see what comes up next to it immediately; it’ll give you an indication of what are the most commonly used phrases next to your main term. You can literally go through the alphabet doing this! As an example, if we type in ‘SEO a’, it predicts that we are going to type ‘SEO agency’, ‘SEO analysis’ or ‘SEO audit’ etc. These are terms we might not have considered using as keywords without seeing their popularity through Google Instant.

Ubersuggest.org

Ubersuggest.org is a fantastic website for helping you brainstorm keywords. Although it doesn’t give you information on the terms popularity like the Keyword Planner, it is extremely helpful when you’re experiencing brain block. Again, it’s a totally free site. Just type in your main keyword and a huge amount of associated terms will be bounced back.

Google Trends

Google Trends is simply a site built by Google to display their engine’s search trends and it can also be really helpful for SEO. If you type in your chosen keyword/s it will display how often that term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. The information provided will inform you of the keyword’s popularity and it may also allow you to spot trends. For example, if some of your keywords are seasonal, such as garden furniture, it will display the time when the seasonal keywords are used and in which parts of the world.Social Media
Using social media sites can also give you an indication of the terms that are popular with your target market. Researching keywords using the hashtag tool and researching trends on social sites will also give you a better understanding of what your potential buyers like, want and search for.

Can you compete?

When we discuss keywords with our clients we always encourage them to use a mixture of short and long-tail keywords. The term ‘long-tail’ is often mistaken for meaning irrelevant, but it just means to extend your core keyword. That way you are able to compete with your largest competitors by trying to rank highly on search terms that are still popular and well used but not dominated by the biggest brands. For example, if you own a women’s clothing shop and want to advertise online, using the keyword ‘women’s clothing’ may not be wise because the top pages of Google are dominated by ASOS, New Look, Topshop, River Island and so on. So considering keywords outside of the core of your business is definitely worthwhile.

If you have made use of the sites and tools we have listed above, you should have a pretty extensive list of suitable keywords. Now it’s time to take a look at the brands/ businesses advertising on your favoured terms and assess whether you can compete. For example, does your site provide better content than those listed on page 1 & 2? Is your website of a higher quality? This is another way you can refine your keyword selection and work out how reasonable it would be for you to expect to gain page 1 rank.

In conclusion, we hope that the information we have provided will help you in your keyword selection process. One thing we have mentioned in previous blogs that have addressed SEO keywords, is that you must imagine yourself in your in your searchers shoes, which will help you establish whether your keywords are relevant. If you have any keyword concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Have a great day,
The Click Submit team

www.clicksubmit.co.uk

Google AdWords for Beginners: Simple Tips for Adwords Beginners

It was only until recently that we managed many Google Adwords accounts. For numerous reasons we decided to stop offering a management service but mainly so our team could concentrate on developing more of our own, free products for our clients. This doesn’t mean that we’ve ruled out offering AdWords management forever, or feel that it isn’t worthwhile to pursue. So we intend to construct a few educational articles to help those of you who are new to AdWords but aren’t in a position where you can afford/ are willing to pay a company to develop and manage a campaign for you.

After reviewing hundreds of Adwords accounts in our time, we have come across many that have an incredible ability to burn money but don’t generate a ROI. In this blog we shall highlight a few simple ways you can make sure that your site only receives the most relevant traffic and fulfils your campaign’s aims.

Search and Display Networks

When you start to create your first campaign, you’ll be asked to select whether you wish to advertise on the Search Network or on the Display Network. Google will automatically set the campaign ads to appear on both networks, but this isn’t something we would advise, even if you wish to advertise on both.

A Search Network campaign will allow your ads to appear next to Google’s search results and they will only appear to customers searching for your products/ services, which will be determined by the keywords you select. This is the network most appropriate for those wanting to generate conversions. First and foremost, the browsers are actively looking for the service/ products you have available. Therefore, if you match their search criteria, a conversion is likely.

A Display Network campaign is great for building awareness of your brand. Your ads will appear on websites that are relevant to the services you provide or the keywords you have selected. This is also the network where you can implement image and video ads and even select what websites your ads appear on. However, immediate conversions aren’t usually generated through advertising on this network, but it is good for targeting a broad audience and grabbing the attention of browsers who may not have come across you otherwise.

Keyword Selection & Targeting Options

In every campaign, you will want to develop an ad group for each of the products/ services you offer. Within these ad groups you should attach a handful of relevant keywords. We have often seen people stuff hundreds of keywords into their ad groups, when you should only concentrate on the most relevant terms. When it comes to deciding what keywords to select, position yourself in your client’s search; imagine what they would input and what you would want to appear for. Sometimes, more long tail keywords are the most cost effective and generate more conversions. For example, if you sell cameras, rather than using ‘cameras for sale’ as a search term, specify which brand of camera you sell and if there’s enough search volume on the term, specify what kind e.g. ‘Canon compact system cameras’ and so forth.

When you input your keywords, Google will automatically set the match type to ‘broad’. However, a broad match setting is the most common cause for why people’s budgets get drained so quickly with little to show for it. There are four keyword match types to consider:

Broad: Broad Match will allow your ads to appear even if the browser’s search includes misspellings or if it is a relevant variation e.g. if your keyword is ‘women’s hats’, your ad is likely to appear for ‘buy ladies hats’. Often though, a broad search term generates a lot of traffic, but because your ad will appear for a number of variations of your keyword, the traffic can be of low quality, resulting in few conversions. We would only advise broad match to those wishing to increase awareness of their brand or to those who have a very large marketing budget.

Modified Broad Match: If you position a + symbol in front of your keyword e.g. +seo +companies, this ensures your ads will only appear to those who specifically search with those keywords. Your ad will still appear if a user searches with other words in addition to them, but the keyword/s must appear in the user’s search phrase.

Phrase Match: When you position a “ on either side of your keyword, Google will only allow for your ads to appear if a user matches or inputs a close variation of your phrase e.g. if I were to input “SEO companies” as my keyword, it would still appear if someone were to search for ‘UK SEO companies’. It’s more restricted than modified broad match but still allows for some flexibility around the browser’s search term.

Exact Match: If you place brackets around your keyword e.g. [SEO companies] this will make sure your ads only appear to those who search with the exact phrase you have chosen. This type of keyword match often generates the highest click through rate, but does limit your ad from appearing to what could still be relevant traffic.

Keyword Bidding/ Planner

In our time, we have also seen a number of campaigns in which the keyword bids are set really, really low e.g. to £0.02. This may just about be possible on keywords where the competition is extremely high and the max ROI low, but it’s unlikely you’ll ever pay as little as £0.02 to receive quality traffic on any search term. Google have millions of people using their engine every day so to appear at the top of page 1 on the terms you most desire is unlikely to come cheaply. On top of which, their targeting methods and free analytical software are seriously advanced, so they can demand a high price point. Don’t let this dishearten you, but be aware that if you’re serious about advertising on Adwords, it will require an investment. However, if the campaign is set up properly, that investment should be returned and profit should be acquired.

Another point to make is that every keyword demands a different bid. The most expensive keywords to advertise on Google AdWords are those relating to loans, insurance and mortgages, all of which can demand CPC’s above £10. The keyword CPC’s aren’t plucked from the sky but are determined by the likelihood of a conversion post click and the potential ROI. In your Google Adwords account, under the tools tab, you’ll find the Keyword Planner. This is a great little tool that will provide you with all the important information about your potential keyword/s, including search volume and the estimated CPC. Using this tool will give you an indication of how much you’re expected to spend to rank on the terms you wish to, and will show you the level of competition surrounding that term.

Location Targeting

If you’re only able to provide your services in certain cities or areas of your country, make sure you only advertise in those locations. You can do this in two ways:

Make sure that all your keywords include the location you service. For example, if we only offered our services in Manchester, we may select for all our keywords to include ‘Manchester’ in them e.g. ‘SEO companies Manchester’.
When you opt to select where your ads are shown, input the areas you service and that will make sure your ads only display to those in your preferred radius. In this instance, you don’t have to include your location in all of your keywords.

Negative Keywords

Underneath the Keywords tab, in the bottom right hand corner, you’ll find the option to add Negative Keywords. Negative Keywords are those you do not wish to appear for. For example, if one of your keywords is ‘SEO companies’, you won’t necessarily want to appear if someone searched for ‘free SEO companies’, so you would add ‘free’ as a negative search term. Adding negative keywords is a good way of further ensuring only the most relevant traffic reaches your site.

Conversion Tracker

Although not always 100% accurate, a conversion tracker gives a really good insight into how many conversions Adwords generates for your business. This is most straightforward for ecommerce websites and less so for those where conversions aren’t immediate. However, for ecommerce sites it’s practically an essential tool, which you can use to determine what keywords generate the most conversions, which drain a lot of budget but don’t encourage sales, and so on. It’s really simple to add a conversion tracker! There’s a lot of detailed information available to view here:

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1722054?hl=en-GB

You may need a small amount of assistance from your web developer, to paste the code in the right area, but it should only take up five minutes of their time.

We hope this article has been useful. We have a ton of educational articles available for our clients in the Knowledge Base section of our website. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Have a great day,
The Click Submit team

The Most Common Misconceptions of SEO

In the ever-evolving world of SEO, there are always new myths being formed or misconceptions being construed, so we thought it would be apt to generate a blog that addresses the most common misconceptions of SEO. It’s interesting to ponder as to why there are so many lies manufactured in this industry, but we can only conclude that perhaps it’s because the industry itself isn’t exactly tangible, or possibly because many SEO companies share slightly differing views on how best to optimize your site for the search engines. However, the points we are about to share require no debate, they are simply putting fact to fiction.

 1. Guarantees

Oh, this one is a goody. Let’s just quash any debate: No SEO company on the planet can guarantee your website a rank, nor can they give you an exact time frame for when you’ll see their results. We have had a few frustrated conversations with existing clients explaining that they’ve received a call from an SEO company who have pretty much offered them the world (for nothing), and they’ve guaranteed them page 1 for all their top search terms. Thus, they don’t understand why we’re unable to offer the same. First and foremost, be wary of any SEO company that cold calls you in the hope of gaining your business. And secondly, if it were possible to make such guarantees, we wouldn’t be here writing this blog for you because we’d be drowning ourselves in our millions.

 2. Speed

When it comes to SEO, the phrase that springs to mind is always, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’. Nor, do we imagine it was an easy peasy, straightforward process to construct such an architectural dream. So, trying to understand search engine’s incredibly complex algorithms isn’t easy, nor can our work be carried out and rewarded overnight. We always say to our clients that it can take between 3 and 9 months for them to recognise the impact of our SEO, and that’s only if they’re utilizing all the services we offer and follow the instructions outlined in our reports. It can take time for the search engines to even index your site, let alone position it at the top. So, don’t give up on your SEO company after just a matter of weeks if the speediness of their results is the only aspect of the service you’re disappointed with.

 3. You only need SEO until you achieve your goals

It can be quite tricky to convince potential clients that SEO needs to be considered as an on-going factor in their marketing strategy, and it can become more difficult to get existing clients to stay with us if/ when we’ve actually helped them achieve their SEO goals. Of course, for us, the comfort of recurring revenue is great, but honestly, that isn’t why we think SEO should be carried out long term, even if you’ve made it to the position you want to be in. There are a number of reasons why:
Search engines are in a constant state of flux, so how their algorithms function alters and updates regularly. It’s crucial to work with a company that will be able to prepare you for and assist you when these updates happen to make sure that your website’s ranking/ performance isn’t affected by them.

On top of which, search engines ranking factors expand and are re-prioritised all the time, so you want be sure that your site stays appealing to them, as well as potential clients.

Finally, any links gained aren’t necessarily going to stay there forever, so new ones need to be acquired.

 4. A PPC campaign will benefit your ranking

When we used to manage Google AdWords campaigns, it was quite common for new clients to ask if it benefited their SEO in anyway. Sadly, it doesn’t, nor does any PPC campaign for any search engines/ social sites. (See What are some myths about SEO in number 5.)

 5. Search engines hate SEO

Search engines do not hate SEO, what they hate is when people try to trick their algorithms. For example, keyword stuffing, hidden text, content plagiarism and so on, are all tactics that, long term, will ultimately get you nowhere with the search engines.

Here are a few videos from head of Google’s Web Spam team, Matt Cutts on SEO:

What are some myths about SEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ9Xt5PohgU

Google on WordPress and SEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P-m2cBCJSk

Here is a link to Google’s SEO Starter Guide: htttp://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.co.uk/en/uk/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

 6. Link building falsification

It’s strange; there are two ends to the spectrum when it comes to our client’s queries about link building. Some potential clients want a thousand built in a day because they believe this will improve their rank, others think that link building has a negative impact on their ranking and it’s not even a crucial SEO element anymore.

To begin with, building huge amounts of links all at once is known as a ‘black hat’ SEO technique, where you are clearly trying to manipulate the search engine’s algorithms. Search engine bots have gotten pretty clever over the years and your site will be penalized and face suspension if it’s evident that you’re trying to cheat the system. Even if you were to build hundreds of links in a short space of time, you may notice a quick jump up the search engines, but we promise you won’t stay there and the pros of a short-term boost are not outweighed by the cons.

With regards to link building not being an integral part of SEO anymore, this is a lie. There’s a ton of evidence to support the fact that link building is still a vital element when it comes to SEO. Link authority and anchor text signals are key components in all search engine algorithms. However, as we have stressed above, building and generating links has to be done in a natural, organic way. At Click Submit, our partner web masters will only place a backlink if they feel the site has relevance, and crucially, they’re not obligated to place any link. See our knowledge base article on link exposure for more information on this.

 8. Bad links will cause your site to be penalized

Whilst we’re on the topic of backlinks, it’s worth acknowledging that you will never be penalized for a poor quality backlink, despite the rumours. If this was the case, businesses might build ‘harmful’ links to their competitors in an attempt to cause them problems, and this is something Google could never condone. If you do have any backlinks that are of particular distress, you can use Google’s disavow tool to remove them: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

 9. Google are clever enough to find us without SEO

Although there’s no doubt that the search engines algorithms are super clever, they have yet to make magic, and we wouldn’t advise you to rely on the fact that they will find your website, crawl, index it, and push you to the top pages all on their own. If it were oh so simple, there would be no need for us guys or the heaps of other SEO companies out there.

10. ?

Well, we just thought we’d add on a number 10 so the article was a little more rounded. We hope this blog has been useful to read and cleared up any of your SEO doubts. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. Our blog has a great deal of other educational articles and if you have any blog requests, let me know @Annabelle_CS

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.