Fun statistics for you: during the second quarter of 2023, Internet users worldwide spent 57% of their time browsing the Internet via mobile phones.

Why do we need mobile SEO with laptops and PCs still around? Simple. Just like laptops and PCs, phones aren’t going anywhere. Pretty much everyone has a phone these days, which is how mobile devices drive over a half of global Internet traffic. No site owner worth their salt can ignore that.

Because traffic means sales.

That’s why optimization for mobile devices is a must. The question is, how to be good at it?

Mobile SEO (and SEO in general) lives or dies by the user experience. There’s only one real secret to it: make your site easy to use on mobile devices, which makes mobile SEO mostly technical in nature. That’s not to say the rest of SEO like keywords, backlinks and competitor analysis aren’t part of it; we’ll just focus on what makes SEO for mobile devices special.

Let’s begin.

1. No separate URL

Have you ever seen URLs like this?

That small m. in front of a website’s URL address. They usually appear only when you are surfing the Web from mobile. This m. subdomain is separate from the primary domain and (in most cases) is made specifically for mobile users. By splitting themselves in two, websites aim to provide optimal user experience for both types of audiences – desktop and mobile.

Does it really improve the user experience?

Possibly, yes.

Is it good for SEO?

Definitely not.

There are way too many SEO-related problems when you create a separate m. subdomain. You need to set up redirects between the two versions so the users would always arrive at the correct versions, and it’s easy to mess up with redirects. You end up splitting traffic and authority between your desktop and mobile sites, which helps neither. And there are all the potential duplicate content issues, too…

Long story short, m. subdomains are very SEO-unfriendly.

So what should you do instead?

Simple: don’t create one. Focus on making your primary domain mobile-friendly. It’s entirely possible to give both desktop and mobile users good user experience on the same domain, and in fact, it’s much easier than setting up a separate mobile subdomain.

And here’s how you do it.

2. Give your site a responsive design

A responsively designed web page will adapt itself to a screen of any size. Automatically. See how much more preferable it is to manually designing a mobile version of your site?

If you are curious what it looks like, behold and be in awe:

Of course, while a responsive design does its job without being told to, you still have to set it up with your own hands. Which, fortunately, is not that hard.

A responsive design includes:

• Viewport. Make it responsive with this line of code: <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0″>.
• Images. Make them scale to the screen’s size with the max-width property. For example: <img src=”img.jpg” style=”max-width:100%;”>
• Text. It’s is made responsive by setting its vw units, where 1 vw is equal to 1% of viewport width (hence the name). For example: <p style=”font-size:12vw;”>Text</p>.

Once you are done with them, don’t forget to check if it worked. There are resources like Responsive Website Design Tester which can test your site for being responsive on various devices: phones, PCs and tablets alike.

(Interestingly, Google doesn’t categorize tablets as mobile devices. I wonder if we are going to need tablet-friendly SEO?)

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3. Maximize loading speed

How important is page load time? Where to start…

• It affects the user experience;
• It influences users to stay on your site or bounce off;
• It decides if users can use your site at all;
• It’s a Google ranking factor.

That’s pretty important. Certainly not something you want to sleep on. Especially since mobile users are even less willing to wait for web pages to load than desktop users, bouncing off after a mere 3 seconds.

The goal is clear, then: make your site load fast! Follow these steps:

• Optimize your images.
• Optimize your page code.
• Use compression.
• Use browser caching.
• Host your site on a powerful server or a CDN.
• Implement AMP. (Oddly enough, it stopped meaning Accelerated Mobile Pages. Now it’s just AMP.)

Find out what slows you down with WebCEO’s Speed Optimization tool. Your loading speed is vital to mobile SEO and your rankings, so you should check it at least once every week. Set the tool to scan your site automatically.

4. Leave gaps between elements

Compare these two web pages as seen from a smartphone screen:

Which one of them looks better? 95% of the readers will choose B 100% of the time. That clearly demonstrates what users prefer to work with.

But users’ preferences aren’t the only reason why this option is superior.  The other reason is the defining feature of smartphones that PCs don’t have: touch screens.

Instead of a mouse and a keyboard, you use your fingers to directly control what’s on the screen. And that’s when you run into a problem. Poking the screen with your finger is easy and fun, but poking it with accuracy? If you don’t have slim fingers, you are going to need a lot of skill to master that.

Unless the webmaster solves this problem for the users. In our case, you are the webmaster. This task is entirely on you!

All you need to do is leave some space between the interactive elements. Just a little room to breathe, and users won’t press anything they didn’t want to by mistake. In fact, they’ll even be more motivated to use your site. A comfortable design makes users feel safe and relaxed, unlike cluttered designs.

Users are people, and people work in simple ways. If you are mindful of their needs, they will make themselves at home on your site.

5. Fix technical errors

Websites are mechanisms. They do everything mechanisms do: run on their own with minimal input, perform tasks they were made for, and break from time to time. When that happens, there’s not much to do but tend to the problem.

Fortunately, not everything that can break on a website can cause you to go out of business. Some issues can be pretty minor:

• Broken links
• Broken images
• Broken redirects
• Indexation issues
• Server shutdown

Okay, that went somewhere bad really fast. Bottom line: don’t ignore these issues. What if you let them pile up, and then something serious happens? You just won’t find it in the long list of errors. Don’t let that happen to you.

Scan your site for errors with WebCEO’s Technical Audit tool…

And then fix what you’ve found. When your site works smoothly and your users are happy, you can sleep easier.

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6. Say no to Flash, say yes to HTML5

Adobe Flash Player is a rich source of fun. It’s a bit outdated now, but it’s still good at what it does. You’ll rarely run into any trouble with it on PC. I’ve lost count of how many Flash games I’ve played. Those were good times…

But in the present, Flash’s relationship with phones is less than cordial. What’s the problem? Simple: most phones can’t even support it. Some can, but what are the odds your users will be among those lucky owners?

So in order to make your site mobile-friendly, it’s best to avoid using Flash on it altogether. If you need special effects, HTML5 is a great alternative.

7. Use pop-ups wisely

How would you like it if a pop-up suddenly appeared while you were reading this post?

I doubt you’d enjoy it. Nobody wants their fun on the Internet to be interrupted by pop-up ads.

Yes, sites have to pay for their hosting somehow and all that jazz… Users don’t care. They are interested in what you can give them, not in what they can give to you.

So all you can do is make your pop-ups less intrusive. It’s especially important for mobile devices: their small screens have too little space for content as they are.

Your options are:

a) Stop using pop-ups altogether. Not recommended if you have calls-to-action you want to show. In that case, instead…

b) Make your pop-ups smaller. Then you can put them somewhere they won’t get in the way and obstruct too much content. For example, like this:

Certain types of pop-ups get a free pass to cover the screen due to their importance, such as:

• Age verification
• Content warning
• Use of cookies

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8. Make all your important content visible

This is where you raise your eyebrows and say, “Come on Brian, this is too obvious. It doesn’t need to be said.” But you’d be surprised how easy it is to screw up this part, and how many site owners do.

First, let’s define important content: it’s content you really don’t want your users to miss. It’s everything you want them to see, otherwise they might as well not visit your site.

There are two principles to follow:

1. Make your content easy to see;

2. Don’t hide your content.

The first one is easy. All you need to do is make sure your content can be clearly seen on a mobile screen without having to zoom in. That means large, easily readable text and large images where you can clearly see every detail.

Now, onto the second part: hiding content. Why hide it at all? Some webmasters do it to selectively display only certain parts of content to their users depending on the device they use.

Here are a few ways to hide content. Don’t do these:

• Hide it behind a button like “Read more” or “Expand”
• Make it available only with certain browser settings (e.g. JavaScript enabled)
• Use types of content unsupported by mobile devices (such as Flash)
• Use CSS to hide content from specific devices
• Simply make it the same color as the background

At best, hiding content hurts the user experience. In the worst-case scenario, Google may think you are cloaking your content and issue a manual action. Neither is good for your rankings.

9. Stay within character limits

Would you click on a search result you couldn’t read?

I bet you wouldn’t. And your users wouldn’t, either. But wouldn’t that be a problem for you?

Everyone wants to get clicks from Google, and I’m sure you share the sentiment. So if you plan to show your site in search results, avoid having your URLs, titles and descriptions cropped at all costs!

It’s true for desktops and even more so for phones. That’s because character limits are tied to the type of device that displays them. For example, in the case with meta descriptions, their desktop length is up to 158 characters, while their max limit on mobile devices is 120 characters.

But making do with less is one of the most useful skills you can have in SEO.

If your site runs on WordPress, you can use various plugins to help yourself stay within character limits, such as Yoast SEO. Alternatively, there are online tools like Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool by Blackhatlinks and Google SERP Simulator by TechnicalSEO.

10. Integrate social media on your site

Social media’s effect on SEO is not as strong as many believe. However, it’s not zero either. You absolutely want to use it for promoting your site, and there are plenty of big reasons why:

• User experience. Mobile users love social media. For example, in 2022, a whopping 98.5% of Facebook users accessed their accounts from a mobile device.
• Longer dwell times and lower bounce rates. Easy enough to see how it works: give users an easy way to keep themselves busy on your site, and they will stay around longer to explore it.
• Exposure. If you post in social media about what’s new on your site and encourage your users to do the same, they’ll spread the word for you and make your job easier.
• Trust from users. Social media is communication. You make yourself more trustworthy if you don’t isolate yourself from it.

Do these benefits sound good? Of course they do. If they have convinced you to integrate social media on your site, let’s continue.

In order to turn social media into your ally, you will make a few adjustments to your site. The easiest way to do it is to install a few WordPress plugins that can do these things:

• Add “Share” buttons on your article pages.
• Add a “shared” count. Users are more eager to share things when they see the number of other people who’ve already done the same.
• Enable signing in and commenting with social media accounts.
• Add icons leading to your social media pages. They often go in the footer, but it’s all right to put them somewhere they will be more easily found.

11. Optimize your website for local search

People often use their phones to find cafes, restaurants, and other local establishments. If your website isn’t ready to welcome mobile users, you risk losing a significant amount of potential customers. This makes having a mobile-friendly website a must for local businesses.

This includes not only making a responsive design, but also several other elements that will need a bit of upgrading:

• Your address, phone number and working hours should be outlined in the first scroll. Users shouldn’t have to look for the most important information about you for hours.
• Provide quick answers. Mobile search is best suited for displaying small amounts of information. It’s therefore a good idea to optimize your texts so they’d answer the users’ questions in a short and clear form.
• Place CTAs to show users what actions they can perform (make a call, send a message, pre-order, get directions etc.). Clicking and getting instant results – what could be better?

The same goes for ecommerce websites. The process of purchasing any goods or services can be optimized with simple payment forms, an easy and fast way of exploring products, and ways to quickly contact the support team.

12. Provide the greatest video experience

Video is one of the most popular formats of content. Videos are literally everywhere! But if you want to implement them on your website, do it wisely. Rather than upload a video directly on your site, use a platform specifically designed for the job: YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Twitch or any other. Then you will simply need to embed those videos on your site.

You can upload your own videos or use somebody else’s. Just remember about attributing their original creator.

What are the advantages of embedding videos?

1. Your website will load faster since the video’s host is elsewhere.
2. Users can easily open a video in a browser or a stand-alone app (like YouTube), watch it comfortably and then go back to your website without any inconvenience.
3. You will be involving several platforms at once, thus attracting a larger audience.

Afterword

What do you think? It’s actually pretty easy to make your site mobile-friendly, isn’t it? Once you follow the steps above, you’ll just need to make sure it stays that way.

Make it a habit to regularly scan your site for mobile SEO-related issues. You can easily do it with WebCEO’s Mobile Optimization tool.

Then it’s only a matter of maintaining your site’s mobile-friendliness at top level.

And that’s what mobile SEO is made of. We’ve been told that it’s going to get especially huge in the coming new decade so many times, even folks without online access have heard it. The only way this prognosis can fail is if another revolutionary technology appears and changes the Internet as we know it.

Can Elon Musk make it happen? It’s fun to imagine, that’s for sure. But right now, mobile SEO is the most certain bet you and I can take.

The post Mobile SEO in 12 Steps: Get Optimized for 2024 appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

What is technical SEO?

The term “technical SEO” is usually used to describe any SEO work aside from the content. It is the optimal way to deal with the rules and limitations search engines provide. Technical SEO covers a broad range of subjects helping your site to be better crawled and indexed by search engine bots.

I’ve talked to my fellow SEOers and distilled a technical SEO checklist that will be especially important when you work on a new site.

1. Protect your site from negative SEO

Sometimes competitors play dirty and do not shun any means to outrank you. I hope your site will never be attacked, but it is always better to be prepared. Negative SEO can result in lost organic search visibility and revenue. Regular backlink monitoring may save your site. If you suddenly see a huge spike or drop and you haven’t been working on link building, immediately investigate what happened.

Tools to use: The WebCEO Backlink Quality Check tool

With the help of the WebCEO Backlink Quality Check you can monitor how many backlinks your site has. If you see a spike or drop on “Total Backlinks” widget in the tool summary, dig into your backlinks to understand what the reason was.

I recommend that you check backlinks weekly to be sure you never miss a negative SEO attack.

2. Check your semantic structure

Semantic structure relates to the way HTML tags are displayed on a given web page. The idea is that your HTML markup should convey the underlying meaning of your content, not its appearance. Correct semantic structure makes it easier for search engines, screen readers, and other machines to identify the different parts of your website.

Search engines are happy when you use H1-H6 tags the right way and add ALT attributes to you images.

Tools to use: The WebCEO On-Site Issues Overview tool

The WebCEO On-Site Issues Overview tool will inspect every page of your site and tell you if there are pages with any semantic HTML issues. You will be notified if H1 headings, Title tags or ALT attributes are missing, or if there is more than one H1 tag, etc.

3. Optimize for mobile

Google has officially said that a majority of its searches are now mobile-driven and that they have migrated toward a mobile-first index. When doing a technical SEO audit, it is now critical to not only review how the desktop Googlebot accesses your site content but also how Google’s mobile crawler does.

Tools to use: The WebCEO Mobile Optimization tool

The WebCEO Mobile Optimization tool detects mobile SEO issues that may influence your landing page rankings in mobile search. It provides you with easy-to-follow advice and recommendations on how to fix the issues.

4. Optimize page load speed

I keep on saying that page load speed matters both for your visitors and search engines. Impatient visitors don’t like waiting, and Google says they are using your mobile page speed for ranking. Check your page speed and do your best to improve the page load speed.

Tools to use: The WebCEO Page Speed tool

The Page Speed test will detect the issues that make your page load time longer; it will also give you practical tips on how to fix each issue and increase page speed.

5. Remove broken links

Broken links are not only bad for user experience but can also be harmful to your site’s SEO. If there are dead links on your website, it can stop search engine spiders from crawling your site and, thus, indexing it. Google clearly wants to send its searchers to high-quality websites, and broken links are like red flags that yell: “This site is neglected, go away!”

It’s crucial to detect and fix broken links as soon as possible.

Tools to use: The WebCEO Technical Audit tool

Use the WebCEO Technical Audit Tool to check your site for broken links and anchors, slow pages and server issues, missing images and inaccessible pages. To react lighten-fast you should set up email alerts. With email alerts set, you will get instant notifications about any site problems.

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The post Technical SEO Checklist for New Websites. Best Practices Only appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Ok Google, why is voice search so popular on the Web? It’s all about the laziness of people. They don’t always want to search the Web using a traditional keyboard search. Most of the searchers want to get the right answer right away without having to explore multiple blue links and digging deep into search results pages. With the explosion of semantic search, long-tailed keywords and conversational phrases have become the primary search queries. More and more people now use mobile devices and inbuilt personal search assistants to get information quickly without typing.

The Death of Traditional Keyword Typed Search

According to Google, 20% of searches on mobile devices are now voice searches and by 2020, 50% of all searches will be committed via voice commands. It’s become a primary search strategy for specific personal assistant-type search needs, such as:

• Fun & entertainment (21%)
• Search for local content and businesses information (22%)
• Personal voice assistance (27%)
• Search for general information (30%)

People interact with voice search mostly on the go, when they are short of time and need accurate info ASAP. Among the most popular means of interacting with voice search are personal virtual assistants: the inbuilt voice recognition tools like Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant which help with everyday tasks, set reminders and answer questions promptly. With this hype of voice search use popularity, it’s about time to change your SEO strategy in order to target all those people who use voice search on their devices. Listen to the following SEO recommendations which will help you make bold steps towards making your website voice-search friendly.

3 Best SEO Practices that Will Help Make Your Website Voice-Search Friendly

1. Optimize your content for conversational search queries instead of standalone keyword phrases

After the release of the Google Hummingbird Update that uses LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) technology, search technology moved us closer to semantic search with the improved natural language processing and a better understanding of a searcher’s intent.  When writing new blog posts or creating new website pages, think of the context behind the search terms you take from your Google’s Search Console search query reports, or keyword research tools like the WebCEO Keyword Research Tool. Here are some tips that will help you properly optimize your content for voice search.

• Size really matters.

I mean the size of your target long-tail keyword phrases. People can speak 150 words per minute vs type 40 words per minute. Long-tail voice search queries are less competitive and are more likely to convert. The longer and more natural your long-tail keywords the more chances your content will appear in top results for relevant voice search queries. Try to imitate as many conversational “keywords” people may speak out via voice search as possible. Start by adding to your keyword list the search queries which already bring you some traffic. Go to the WebCEO Marketing Analytics Metrics tool and dig into the Google Search Console Top Queries report. Make them more complex by adding some descriptive characteristics or geo location landmarks specific to your business.

• Enhance your content with answers to customers’ questions

According to Google, question queries have seen a 61% growth in recent years. First thing you should do is to understand what kind of question-like queries are applied to your niche and your brand and stick to those that apply to your website content. Expand your keyword map by adding 5W (What, Who, Why, When, Where) and How questions which help:

– Find your business

– Understand your business

– Identify the value of your business and benefits for prospects.

Use the Answer the Public tool and Q&A platforms like Quora to generate question phrases from your long tail keywords. Use this list of question phrases to build a FAQ page or write blog posts on specific topics. Such places are perfect venues to host long tail question keywords on your site.

• Provide answers to searchers from within featured snippets.

Well-optimized microdata can be a powerful way to convert your potential customers right from search results. How? According to Jennifer Slegg, an expert in search engine marketing, 43.3 % of featured snippets are used to answer voice search queries. People expect to receive a direct tit-for-tat response to I-want-to-know, I-want-to-buy, I-want-to-do search queries and you can give it to them with the help of optimized structured data markup. Be it directions, business hours, phone numbers or other general info, schema.org and Google Structured Data Markup Helper will help you with any kind of microdata optimization.

2. Make your local business vocal

As being mentioned above, 22% of voice search commands have local intent. So, if you have a physical business location, make it easy to be found when people search for places near you. Here are some quick local SEO tips which will help you make your local business near and dear every time people use their inbuilt voice search assistants for local intent searches.

• Make sure your business citations (Name, Address, Phone aka NAP) are consistently listed on local directories. There are some useful tools like Yext, Placesscout or WhiteSpark to run NAP audits and manage your local citation optimization.
• Earn as many online reviews as possible on Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor etc. Thanks to the Google Pigeon Update, those businesses which have more positive reviews, have higher rankings in local search.
• Spy on your competitors’ local rankings in order to learn where your business misses out. Use the WebCEO local Rank Tracking tool to get detailed insight into the local positions of your competitors.
• Enhance your local business attributes with the help of the Google Business Center.

 3. Go Mobile

As the lion’s share of voice search commands happen on mobile devices (20% of mobile queries are voice), it’s a must to make your website mobile-friendly, if you want it to be voice-search friendly. Another push for you to make your website mobile-friendly is that Google is rolling out a mobile-first index. Make sure your website passes the Google Mobile-Friendly Test and has good Page Speed performance.

The post “Ok Google”: How Do I Make My Website Voice-Search Friendly? appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

The following SEO Guide is not a Bible, but rather a list of recommendations and SEO trends listed in our actionable Semantic SEO Strategy guide. You can download this for FREE and use it alongside the 14+ free SEO tools which you will need for your website optimization and promotion in 2017.

What you’ll learn from this step-by-step handbook:

In the free 19 page handbook we’ve collected some up-to-date practical advice and how-to’s backed by 14+ free SEO tools hand-picked by our editors which will help you understand and implement the latest Google search optimization trends:

Chapter I. How contextual (semantic) search will change the way you manage your Content SEO Audits, and what tools will help you create user- and SEO-friendly website copy.

RankBrain forever changed the way we optimize website content for search engines. If, in 2015, RankBrain was used to interpret 15-20% of search queries, Google now uses RankBrain as a part of its core algorithm. Moreover, it applies its AI system for re-ranking search results. RankBrain doesn’t punish websites, but rather elevates or demotes them by relevance. How can you optimize for RankBrain? Ideally, you will need to learn how to read your targeted audience’s minds. But in real life, you will need to optimize your website for LSI keywords and contextual clues instead of standalone keywords.

In this chapter you’ll learn how to:

• Improve your website user experience by fixing on-page technical and content SEO issues.
• Contextualize Your Keyword Research and Optimization
• Improve visitors’ engagement and your content search visibility with a proper Internal Links structure
• Improve your website SERP clickability by optimizing your structured data with relevant and descriptive copy.

Chapter II. Step Up Your Mobile-First Search Index Game

Given the fact that Google, in 2017, is planning to launch a separate mobile search index which will eventually become the primary one, you should give mobile SEO your best shot…

Chapter III. Help Tools to Improve & Measure Your SEO Performance

When you plan something for tomorrow, you should play upon your previous experience, taking into account what worked best of all and what didn’t bring any benefits. You want to measure; we have the tools…

Sign up for a 14-days Free Trial and get exclusive access to a full guide and 14 professional SEO tools to help you apply our recommendations to your SEO strategy.

Words of Cheer

You never know what you can do til you try. You have a website and, if you work hard on it, you will be rewarded by Google. Our SEO strategy is a little leg-up for you to get this reward in 2017.

The post Semantic SEO Strategy: How to Do SEO in 2017 appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

“Anything less than instant represents a decline in engagement”

 Richard Gingras, Head of News at Google

Today it’s crucial for your brand to go mobile. If your website is mobile, chances are you will be found in the right place at the right time. In this mobile optimization chase, time and speed are the key advantages. Delivering content in the most accessible and user-friendly way is the number one priority for content publishers who don’t want to lose impatient mobile searchers. Industry giants like Facebook and Apple have already jumped on the bandwagon by providing solutions for mobile-friendly content delivery platforms like Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News.

Google has catered to the trend by providing the alternative to Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News which is the AMP project. “Accelerated Mobile Pages” is an open-source framework initiative designed to reduce burdensome dynamic JS elements of web pages in order to speed up their loading time in mobile search. Unlike Instant Articles and Apple News which technically are closed RSS feed aggregators available only to the platforms’ in-app users, the Google AMP Pages is an open web streamline framework designed for creating instant mobile pages. Put it simply, the Google AMP pages are alternative versions of desktop pages which have separate URLs. The project is now live and works for newsworthy posts which are displayed in the Google News carousel in the prime real estate of mobile SERPs. You can have a quick view of how AMP pages look like on your mobile device by browsing at g.co/amp or emulate the mobile device mode from your desktop using Chrome Developer Tools.

How Do I AMPlify My Website Content?

The Google AMP project’s goal is to simplify and minimize the requests your browser has to make for loading website pages. When you create an AMP page it contains only the specific AMP HTML file which restricts author-written scripts and other third-party slow JavaScript libraries used in ads, subscription forms and call-to-action buttons.

If we break down the boilerplate, we’ll see that an AMP page is wrapped up into 3 layer components:

• AMP HTML is the markup language based on an HTML framework that includes custom tags and a subset of restrictions for reliable and fast performance.
• AMP JavaScript library helps with the fast and reliable rendering of HTML page components and tags
• AMP Content Delivery Network (Cache) fetches the AMP pages, caches them in the cloud and improves their performance automatically via the Google hosted Content Delivery Network (or your own cache).

Here are some learning resources, setup guides, CMS plugins, check-and-fix tools which make AMP optimization a piece of cake.

How AMP Works:

The primer guide How AMP Works highlights the key points of what AMP is, why it is needed and how it works.

The AMP Project Official Blog will keep you updated about the latest news and updates of the Google AMP project.

Setup Guides:

The guide Get Started with Google AMP  will help you get through all the stages, from creating your first AMP HTML page and its validation to its publication and distribution

The Github Repository will provide hands-on information on AMP HTML source code, samples and documentation for webmasters.

Automatic CMS Plugins:

WordPress AMP plugin provided by Automattic enables AMP content on your blog, which makes it a powerful tool for WordPress SEO.

Drupal AMP Module provided by Acquia will help you convert your Drupal pages into pages that comply with the AMP standard.

Check-and-Fix Tools and Recommendations:

AMP Test is Google’s AMP tool which tests the validity of the AMP markup and structured data on the page related to AMP in real time.

The AMP Validator is an AMP tester and editor that comes bundled with the AMP JS library and is available on every AMPed page.

Google Search Console AMP Error Report will point to the most common issues in your site’s AMP page implementation.

What Are the Effects of Content Optimization for AMP Pages?

Google assures that, after wrapping your content into AMP pages, they will be loaded four times faster and render with eight times less encoded data than average mobile pages. According to Google, it reduced the AMP page load time by 85%. Not bad! But taking into account that AMP is a pilot project and there are still a lot of unexplored facets, consider both positive and negative effects of AMP project:

Advantages:

+ Lower bounce rate and higher Time on Site and Pageview rate.

+ Content is displayed in an above-the-fold area of mobile SERPs.

+ Increased click-through rate to the above-the-fold mobile AMP carousel results.

+ Improved user experience.

+ Competitors who do not use AMP will suffer a decrease in impressions and clicks as their entries in the SERPs are pushed below the fold.

Disadvantages:

– The AMP version of a regular page can cause duplicate content issues. It is recommended to declare an AMP version as canonical vis a vis a regular HTML page, by putting a canonical tag <link rel=”amphtml” href=”_AMP_URL_”>.

– Content monetization is hard to execute in AMP content. There are 5 ad platforms allowed on the Google AMP pages which are Google AdSense and DoubleClick, OpenX, AOL Advertising and Outbrain.

What About Other News Unworthy Pages of Your Website?

Before the AMP era becomes a new mobile search reality and AMP is designated an official ranking factor, traditional mobile search optimization techniques will still be in place. Google doesn’t punish pages for not being AMPtimized, but they will still punish you for being mobile-unfriendly.  Thes AMP project is aimed at article content which means that regular landing pages of your site are on the sidelines for this.

If you haven’t heard yet, Google announced another “Mobile May” Update that will boost the effects of the mobile-friendly algorithm that was rolled out last year on April 21st.

This means that if your pages are still non-mobile friendly to users and to Google, your competitors are probably outranking you and this won’t change until you get with the program and qualify your pages as mobile-friendly. Now answer a gut check question: “Is your website mobile-friendly?”  Check it now by following the recommendations generated in the WebCEO Mobile Optimization tool report that will guide you through the issues of your website’s mobile SEO.  The Mobile Issues Checklist will give you detailed info on what Google considers a non-mobile-friendly design and content accompanied by Google-proof recommendations.

Just a Matter of Time…

At the moment the Google AMP project works only with breaking news publishers like BuzzFeed, the Washington Post, The Verge, etc. Google has persuaded us, however, that the project is aimed at:

“…all published content, from news stories to videos and from blogs to photographs and GIFs, which should work using Accelerated Mobile Pages.”

Let’s see how fast the AMP project expands to more types of content providers and websites. We will keep you updated once the Google AMP project provides more opportunities for regular publishers on its AMP dedicated blog.

The post Amp It Up: Is Your Site In Need for Google AMP Pages? appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Digital marketing is a field where things are constantly changing and evolving. From one year to the next, countless trends emerge and fade. As marketers, our job is to stay on top of these shifts and place ourselves ahead of the curve. How do we achieve that? By looking ahead and making those changes right now.

Today we’re looking at five major changes coming down the pipeline for digital marketers. These changes have already begun, and while some of them will require work, they shouldn’t be ignored.

5 Digital Marketing Changes Happening Right Now

Now that 2016 is in full swing, Digital Marketing is undergoing changes that will change everything we think we know about the industry. It happens every year, and this one is no different. Let’s dive in and see how you can stay ahead.

It’s Time to Go Responsive

Responsive web design is nothing new, but many digital marketers have been hesitant to implement it because of the potential work and effort that is required to make it work. In short, a responsive design allows a website to change its width and resolution to match the user’s preferred devices.

That means the site will change its layout to accommodate computers, mobile devices, laptops, Kindles, iPads, and everything in between. A few years ago, this wouldn’t have been a priority, but now it is imperative if you want to rank well on Google and reach your audience.

Take a look at this graph that illustrates mobile vs desktop usage over the last several years:

By the end of 2015, people were accessing the internet more on mobile devices than they did on desktops. Then of course, we have to consider whether or not responsive design is a ranking factor for Google. While there are arguments to be made in either direction there, it’s clear that Google prefers responsive design over the alternatives like adaptive design or a separate mobile site.

What all of this boils down to is the user experience. Place yourself in the shoes of a user browsing your site on their smartphone. They want the same quality experience and ease of use on their phone that they have on their computer.

Here are some of the ways you can make your website responsive today:

• Choose a responsive WordPress theme
• Modify your media queries (CSS3) files to display elements of your site at certain dimensions.
• Hire a programmer through a place like Upwork to do the designs for you.
• Use WebCEO’s Website Audit to check if your site is optimized for mobile devices.

The Evolution From SEO to Content Marketing

There was a time when search engine optimization (SEO) was all about trying to work the system. People purchased backlinks, stuffed keywords in, and generally provided content that wasn’t useful to users. Instead, they were appealing to the spiders that crawled their pages so the search engines would put them higher in the SERPs.

That didn’t last long. As time went on, SEO became a science that guided us to cover the right topics and provide the right information on a particular topic based on what people searched for online. As we move into 2016, there are plenty of WordPress SEO tips you’ll need to know, but the general trend that needs to be addressed is the rise of content marketing.

Content Marketing is the next step in the SEO evolution for digital marketers. The concept here is to bring your audience content that is both useful and valuable. Timeless SEO tactics like keyword research play into this by guiding your hand and steering you in the direction of content that your audience will like.

Here are two major ways you can start implement content marketing strategies into your routine:

1. Blogging

This is what most people will associate content marketing with. A blog is perfect for any business as it offers a means to produce useful articles and information. It also supports growth of the brand and connects customers to the company. With WebCEO’s Keyword Research Tool, you can discover the ideal keywords for your niche, allowing you to create articles that are both valuable for your audience and optimized for search engines.

2. Infographics

Have you ever visited a website and see an awesome image that is packed with information? You have to scroll to see all of it, but everything in there is useful. This is the marriage of information and graphics, hence the name infographic. You can design these yourself with tools like Canva, or you can hire a designer to do it for you.

Once you have one put together, you can share it to other websites and on social media. These are eye-catching and people are often inclined to share them if they’re useful.

Videos Take Center Stage

YouTube has become a massive platform since it was first introduced. Today you’ll find plenty of shocking statistics that show just how big it truly is:

• 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute!
• Every day, 5 billion videos are watched
• 80% of views are outside the United States
• The average number of daily mobile views is 1,000,000,000

With these kinds of numbers, it’s apparent video content is here to stay. More and more businesses and marketers are turning to platforms like this to create new types of content, and you should too.

Video content engages your users in a unique way and studies have shown that they can increase site visits by as much as two minutes! There’s no science to video content either. You can even use the camera on your phone to film quick little video posts.

Video blogs or vlogs are quickly gaining popularity for this exact reason. If you don’t have a writer handy, a simple video covering the same topic can do the trick.

Design and Speed Take Priority

As time goes on, the average attention span of online users is declining. According to studies, our attention span online is now eight seconds, which is less than the attention span of a goldfish. This knowledge sends ripples through all of digital marketing. Now we have a time limit.

Our websites have to load incredibly fast and present eye-catching designs that grab that attention and hold it. Let’s start with speed. How fast do users expect your website to load? Over 47% expect it to be loaded within two seconds.

So, the real question now is how do I speed up my website? Here are some quick tips:

• Try optimizing your images so they have a smaller file size. A tool like Optimizilla is totally free and does the trick!
• Use a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache for WordPress to better load your pages.
• Utilize a Content Delivery Network to deliver content based on a user’s location.
• Utilize Google AMP project which will help your content load faster in mobile searches.

Next up is your website design. This involves everything from pictures, to the layout, to the colors and flow. Recent developments in rich text and ad placement research have shown that the famed F-shaped reading patterns are no more. Instead, people are now focusing their attention at the top of the search results and on the rich text to the right:

As you can see, the shape doesn’t resemble any letter I’ve ever seen, certainly not an “F.” This confirms that the top results will continue to see the most traffic, but what does it say about our websites?

This information tells us that the first two paragraphs are the most important, while subsections should always start with strong words to keep the user’s attention. You could also consider adding your own rich text with products to the right of the opening paragraphs to mirror the SERPs structure. Using things like bullet points and Italics are also beneficial.

As for the other elements of your design, always remember that you want to promote a positive user experience. Place yourself in the user’s shoes and follow the path you have set for them. Look for pitfalls or frustrations that you can remove and clear the way for your users to reach your end goals.

Content is Becoming More Interactive

We’ve all heard of Buzzfeed and while some of us hate it for the clickbait headlines, there’s no denying that it’s successful. So, should you start writing headlines with ridiculous amounts of capitalization? Thankfully, no.

It’s the quizzes. Buzzfeed has brought a variety quizzes into the light that users can interact with. While you may not be interested in presenting a quiz on what type of fruit your users are, you should start considering interactive content like this to engage your users.

This will help with the aforementioned attention spans as well. Perhaps you can help solve a problem for someone by asking them to answer a few questions and present a solution/link to one of your articles? This kind of interaction is the way of the future.

Another example is 360-degree video which is really neat in action. Anything that allows the user to interact directly with the content is the way of the future.

Final Thoughts

All of these digital marketing trends point to a future where the user experience is placed at the center of everything. Start thinking about how you can engage and excite your users in 2016 and beyond. You’ll find that these trends help place you in that mindset.

What ways are you changing your digital marketing in 2016? Let us know in the comments below!

The post 5 Digital Marketing Trends You Shouldn’t Ignore appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

It’s almost time for summer vacation and all you can think about are beaches, forested mountains and cold beverages. But, there are also events in the digital marketing world you’ll want to think about before you hit the trails.

What’s new in SEO?

The search space has been lately engaged in an algorithm updates race.

On April 21^st Google hit mobile search with its long-awaited Google Mobile-Friendly Update and only the mice in the fields remain ignorant of this. The experts from Google pointed that Mobilegeddon was even larger than Penguin or Panda: twice as many non-mobile friendly pages lost rankings as gained after the Mobile Update. If you have not yet re-optimized your website to meet mobile-friendly guidelines, you’d better start working on it before you take that vacation.

Here is the Mobile SEO Issues Checklist you will need to check your website pages for in order to gain the rankings you may perhaps have lost.

But this is not the last Mobile-Friendly Update that comes into our view. At SMX Sydney, Garry Illyes (Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google) just said there will be another update called Platypus targeting slow page speed and app download interstitials usage.

In addition to all this noise, Google has confirmed that it is now official that there are more searches on mobile devices than on desktops. This is big news and, if you want to dominate on Google search, then the mobile search optimization strategy is in your first-rate priority do-to list.

On May 6^th, Google officially updated and renamed the Search Queries report in its Webmaster Tools. Now, in your Webmaster Tools you can find the Search Analytics report with more accurate data and filtering options.

On May 20^th, Google Webmaster Tools was rebranded into Google Search Console. Google decided to changes the ten year old name of the tool to a more universal because it is used not only by webmasters but also by website owners, SEO experts, marketing specialists, designers, web developers etc.

At the beginning of June, the Google team announced that they are going to rework the Penguin algorithm so it runs on a permanent basis. It means that there won’t be any manual actions toward ranking changes because the data will be refreshed all the time. It doesn’t mean that you can sit and relax because individual websites can still be hit with huge overnight ranking losses. This means that you will need to work towards keeping your backlink profile ever clean and genuine in the eyes of Google.

According to Search Engine Land this year the SEO Success Factors Table has been immensely updated and complemented by new factors such as the availability of Vertical Search, HTTPS and Direct Answers results. Greater Importance has been given to Mobile Friendliness and Structured Data etc.

To keeping up with Google’s updates, use WebCEO’s Online SEO tools to analyze your site’s SEO performance and ensure it aligns with the latest Google algorithms.

What is new in Social Media?

The fact that Social and Search have become more integrated and interlinked is proven by the latest Google-Twitter deal. Starting on May 19, users in the U.S. can see relevant and real-time tweets in their search results when using the Google search app on iOS and Android. That’s good news for search giants, users and for brands. Twitter promises to bring its real-time content on to desktop search and to more countries in the upcoming months.

Unlike with Twitter, Facebook doesn’t want to rely on Google and decided to build its own in-app search engine. Thanks to its own search team, Facebook is already testing the ability to crawl and return content for users without the need for them to search Google directly.

At the beginning of June, Instagram announced plans to launch InstaAds which will be labeled as “Sponsored.”

We wish you a happy summer and be sure to enjoy nature and the little extras summer brings.

The post The SEO News Recap You Should Read Before Your Vacation appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Do you want to have an ear to the ground in the world of SEO, PPC, Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing? Then you should visit SMX, one of the top Search Marketing Events and SEO conferences attended by the high and mighties (the gurus) of the SEO world who will share their experiences, speculations, conduct workshops and divine upcoming trends in digital marketing.

This year, SMX was hosted in Sydney May 12-13. The expo was full of interesting takeaways pitched by such gurus as Garry Illyes (Webmaster Trends Analyst – Google Webmaster Tools), Behshad Behzadi (Director of Conversational Search – Google Switzerland) and other experts.

In a nutshell the highlights of SMX 2015 in Sidney were:

• According to Woj Kwasi (founder of KwasiStudios), Google will roll out another Google mobile search algo update dubbed “Platypus” (carrying on Google’s “P” animal tradition). This time Google will say a big no-go to websites that are too slow (page loading should take no longer than 2-5 sec.) and those who abuse app download interstitials. App interstitials are a kind of invisible app ad that can show up in Google search results behind the link to a website it was coded into. After clicking on specific search results, mobile users are often taken to an app interstitial or an app store where they are forced to download the app and this is really frustrating for a lot of people. A page’s slow speed can also be frustrating if users are forced to wait too long to see the whole of a page’s content. Platypus will deal with both of the above issues.
• According to Garry Illyes, User Experience (UX) is predominantly a mobile search algorithm signal and it is not yet considered when it comes to the Google desktop search results rankings. Garry explains that user experience is crucial for mobile searchers when they view and read your content on their devices while, with desktop users, the UX elements are often less relevant. It was pointed out that Google has different ranking algo systems for desktop and mobile but one index for both.
• According to Ian McAnerin (CEO of McAnerin International Inc.), Quick Answers in Google search will sooner or later be returned by Google in most cases. Only those websites that host actual data and facts and keep them well structured (with the help of Schema.org) will be embedded (mentioned) in Google’s Knowledge Graph and Knowledge Vault.

Please, let me know in the comment section if I missed anything from SMX in Sydney.

The post Platypus Unveiled at SMX Sydney 2015 as the Next Big Google Algorithm appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

It’s been a week since the Google Mobile-Friendly Algorithm Update rolled out. It is a long-running update and it continues to affect websites that are compliant or non-compliant with the Google mobile search guidelines.  Most webmasters claim the update seems to be insignificant and only a few major websites like Reddit suffered from being hit by Google Mobilegeddon. However the list of losers and winners is not final. Google reports that the update may take weeks to roll out.

If you noticed that your website saw a significant mobile traffic drop you are likely to make it into the Google Mobile-friendly post-apocalyptic zone. It should be no big deal, because Google updates its mobile-friendly data on a regular basis.

The good news is that you can regain your lost visibility score and earn Google’s mobile–friendly label reward. In our Mobile SEO Issues Checklist you will learn about the 10 Horsemen of the Google Mobile Apocalypse and the ways to sweep them away.

Remember to check how well your website is optimized for mobiles with WebCEO’s Website Audit Tool.

The post Taming the 10 Horses of the Mobile Apocalypse appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Are you the one who wants to change or the one who wants to fall behind?

It’s time for our quarterly SEO news recap.  WebCEO has carefully picked for you the hottest news and updates that happened in the fields of SEO, PPC and Social Media.

What’s new in SEO and PPC?

Starting from January 23rd, Google made it easier for advertisers to compare the cost of Google Adwords data with other data in Google Analytics with the help of automatic currency conversion.

The Bing Ads platform continues to improve its competitive ad analysis. On February 18^th, Bing Ads released the Competitive Bid Opportunities feature in its ad optimization toolbox for U.S. advertisers. With this new feature, Bing marketers will be able to see the number of keywords that their ads could show up more often for in comparison to their competitors’ ads.

On March 11^th, Google announced a new report in the Google Webmaster tools called the Blocked Resources report. Now, every webmaster can see the list of CSS, image or JavaScript resources that are not accessible for GoogleBots because of being blocked. Besides, now, when you use the Google Fetch and Render tool you are provided two side-by-side screenshots of how your page is seen by Googlebots and by a typical user.

At the beginning of March an SEO rumor started to run that Google is working on a new ranking algorithm based on a site’s truth score instead of its popularity score. This means that in the near future websites that host contradictory or “false” information will be ranked lower than those that have established trust with Google.

On March 16^th, Google announced the release of a new ranking adjustment aimed at better handling of doorway pages in search results. It is considered to be a red flag for website owners and webmasters to build multiple doorway pages in order to maximize their search footprint.

During the last three months, Google has been strongly advising webmasters and website owners to make their sites mobile-friendly for the sake of a better mobile user experience. They have pointed to an upcoming Google Mobile-Friendly Algorithm release. To make mobile optimization easier for us, the Google team keeps on developing its Mobile-Friendly Testing tool, Mobile Usability report and step-by-step webmaster guides. Before it is too late, jump to the WebCEO Mobile Optimization reporting tool and fix all the mobile usability issues you have in order to get your website ready for a mobile-friendly ranking boost.

What’s new in Social Media?  

Facebook is considered to be the most powerful social media platform for communication and business promotion. It continues to walk the talk by adding new features and tools for a better user experience from both personal and business page owners.

One of the latest updates (January 7th) on Facebook, for marketers and business owners, was the incorporation of additional call-to-action buttons at the bottom of business page covers. At the moment, 7 call-to-action options are available:

On January 27^th, Facebook updated its advertising platform by adding conversion lift. Conversion lift works as a kind of A/B testing and helps to measure the impact of Facebook ads on the bottom line of your business. Then, in the middle of February, the ad relevance score and product ads were added to the Facebook Ads.

On March 13^th Facebook informed us about acquiring the top shopping search engine, the Find. Facebook explained that the goal of the acquisition was to improve the quality and relevance of ads for users.

On March 17^th it was announced that those who use Facebook for communication or freelance soon will be able to send or receive money via Facebook Messenger in an easy, no-cost and secure way. Speculations are that the payment system within Facebook won’t become popular among users because of a potential lack of trust of users in the social network. Learn about how marketers can use some of the newly added features on Facebook.

On March 2, Google declared the official death of Google+, sorry, its reorganization (LOL).  Google+ will never be the same again. It will roll into Google’s Photos and Streams product.

Another major event in the social media world is the announcement about a Google-Twitter partnership. On March 20^th, it became known that Google and Twitter reached an agreement about providing the search engine giant with access to Twitter’s stream, Firehose. This means that Google will now be able to index the huge number of tweets (9,000) per second in order to provide users with timely global information. In the past (2009), Google and Twitter used to work together and started the so-called Real-Time search on Google, but the partnership ended in 2011. Let’s see how long their partnership will last this time.

These are the biggest updates of the first quarter of 2015. Remeber, the best way to improve your marketing strategy is to keep up with the changes digital marketing brings.

The post Digital Marketing News Recap: What Is New in SEO, PPC and Social Media? appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.