This can have a significant impact to any online business whether you are an Internet Retailer or focused on lead generation in the B2B space. If you are not yet convinced that creating a mobile-friendly site is important, consider the following:

• More Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.¹
• In March, for the first time, the number of mobile-only adult internet users exceeded the number of desktop-only internet users, in part due to declining desktop usage (see chart below).²
• Search is the most common starting point for mobile research.  48% start on search engines.³

• 27% of consumers will leave a site if it is not mobile-optimised. ⁴
• For online retailers in Q2 20155:
• Smartphone visits grew by 269 percent over Q1 2014
• Smartphone orders were up 104 percent, and reached 13 percent of all transactions
• Overall mobile devices (including tablets) represented 41 percent of traffic in Q1 2015
• Cumbersome checkout processes and high abandoned shopping carts remain a significant issue for mobile eTail sites

Google has been very vocal on its stance about mobile in the past year, so this algorithm update is not surprising.
Let’s recap several recent mobile moves by Google:

• November 2014: Google adds the “Mobile-Friendly” label in mobile search results, which looks like this:

• January 2015: Google begins to warn webmasters (via Webmaster Tools) of mobile issues on their websites. In fact, these were all labeled as warnings and webmasters were able to view each issue (or warning) in detail and take steps to correct it. This was the telltale sign an algorithm update was coming.
• Late February: Google officially announced this algorithm change on its Webmaster Central Blog:

“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”

• April 21, 2015:  The Google mobile algorithm is released (dubbed “Mobilegeddon”, effectively unleashing panic and chaos to business owners across the globe.
• End of April 2015: Breadcrumbs begin to display in mobile search results (U.S. only). Thus, it is important to have clearly labeled, keyword friendly directory structures. If you do not like what Google is showing as your breadcrumbs, you can add schema markup language to your pages that define exactly what you want the breadcrumb to be (see schema.org). They look like this:

Take the Test

Not sure if your website is mobile friendly? Test it here:  
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

If you passed, congratulations! You are good to go and can stop reading this article right now, if you so choose.

Failed the test? Well, you have some options. You can:

• Do nothing (probably not the best choice)
• Build a mobile app (probably not necessary, costly and cumbersome)
• Build a mobile version of your website (why do this when you can go responsive?)
• Go responsive (this is Google’s preferred method, read on for more)

Why Responsive?

• Webmasters and marketers like it. It’s one website for all screens. One set of code, one set of SEO, one place to update your website.
• Users like it. One URL, no redirects. It’s the same content so no matter what screens a visitor views your site on it’s the same experience.
• Google LOVES it. Enough said. But really, it’s because Google is all about the user experience and responsive sites are better in this regard. Plus, it means Googlebot only has to crawl one site, getting through the content and indexing it much more efficiently.

Points to be Made

There are few things to keep in mind about this mobile algorithm update.

• This was pretty big. It’s still big. Ignore at your peril.
• It runs in real-time. So if you don’t have a mobile site yet, but launch one next week Google will start to index and show your site on mobile searches the next time it re-crawls your site. In contrast, previous algorithm updates like Google Penguin and Panda were triggered to run on certain dates, not in real-time.
• Analysis is done on a page-by-page basis. Meaning that if you have a few pages that are not mobile friendly Google will simply penalize and not show those pages, not your entire site.  You may also see several pages show in results at one, all will be marked as mobile-friendly, if they in fact are.

The Fallout

When it comes to Google, we all have a penchant for drama. There are a few things we learned in weeks immediately following “mobilegeddon”.

• The sky didn’t fall.

• The algorithm itself took weeks to fully make its way across the web and remove or “boost” sites accordingly. In fact, even by the time this article is published you may see fluctuations.

• After a mobile-friendly site goes live, Google can re-include it in mobile search results in as little as 24 hours. We have seen eCommerce sites take longer, since they are generally larger, and the algorithm crawls sites page-by-page.

• We have seen non-mobile friendly sites still rank in mobile results. This is especially true for brand searches. For example, if you search for “Coca-Cola” you are still going to see www.coca-cola.com first in results (whether it’s mobile-friendly or not), as it is the most relevant site to show you. After all, Google is all about relevancy.
• We have gathered the following statistics for our clients since 4/21 (average range, across multiple industries):
• 10-25% drop in traffic from mobile devices for non-mobile friendly sites
• 15-30% increase in mobile traffic for mobile-friendly websites

Final Thoughts

There are probably still some of you out there who think that you don’t really need a mobile site or it may not be a good investment at this time. We hear this a lot, especially from our B2B clients who think that their audience or customers do not visit their site from mobile devices. Here’s some food for thought…

Stop thinking in terms of B2B and B2C. Mobile usage is growing. People search and visit sites on their mobile devices all the time, regardless of personal or professional intentions. They expect a seamless and optimized experience every time they do, no matter what device they are using.

Take a look at your analytics data. Fuel your case for a mobile site (or not) by looking at how many people visit your site from a mobile device or tablet. How many actually stay? Is your bounce rate high, is your conversion rate low? If so, it may be time to go mobile. You could essentially be “leaving money on the table” and not even realize it.

For more information on Google’s mobile algorithm update, and others, we recommend visiting the Webmaster Central Blog frequently.

Resources

1. Google internal data, courtesy of http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/05/building-for-next-moment.html
2. Data courtesy of http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/Number-of-Mobile-Only-Internet-Users-Now-Exceeds-Desktop-Only-in-the-U.S?
3. Data courtesy of https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/research-studies/mobile-path-to-purchase-5-key-findings.html
4. ExactTarget, 2014 Mobile Behavior Report
5. Data courtesy of Q1 2015 study from http://www.marketlive.com/.

This algorithm update, which will be larger than previous updates such as Google Panda (targeting content) and Google Penguin (targeting links), will essentially remove websites from mobile search results that are not mobile-friendly. Thus, rewarding those that are.

Google has been very vocal on its stance about mobile recently, so this announcement is not surprising.

Let’s recap several recent mobile moves by Google:

• November 2014: Google adds the “Mobile-Friendly” label in mobile search results, which looks like this:

• January 2015: Google begins to warn webmasters (via Webmaster Tools) of mobile issues on their websites. In fact, these were all labeled as warnings and webmasters were able to view each issue (or warning) in detail and take steps to correct it. This was the telltale sign an algorithm update was coming, bringing us to February 2015.
• Late February: Google officially announced this algorithm change on its Webmaster Central Blog:

  “Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”

Take the Test

Not sure if your website is mobile friendly? Test it here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

If you passed, congratulations! You are good to go and can stop reading this article right now, if you so choose.

Failed the test? Well, you have some options. You can:

• Do nothing (probably not the best choice)
• Build a mobile app (probably not necessary, costly and cumbersome)
• Build a mobile version of your website (why do this when you can go responsive?)
• Go responsive (this is Google’s preferred method, read on for more)

Why Responsive?

• Webmasters and marketers like it. It’s one website for all screens. One set of code, one set of SEO, one place to update your website.
• Users like it. One URL, no redirects. It’s the same content so no matter what screens a visitor views your site on it’s the same experience.
• Google LOVES it. Enough said. But really, it’s because Google is all about the user experience and responsive sites are better in this regard. Plus, it means Googlebot only has to crawl one site, getting through the content and indexing it much more efficiently.

Points to be Made

There are few things to keep in mind about this mobile algorithm update.

• It’s big. Really big. Ignore at your peril.
• It runs in real-time. So if you don’t have a mobile site yet, but launch one next week Google will start to index and show your site on mobile searches the next time it re-crawls your site. In contrast, previous algorithm updates like Google Penguin and Panda were triggered to run on certain dates, not in real-time.
• Analysis is done on a page-by-page basis. Meaning that if you have a few pages that are not mobile friendly Google will simply penalize and not show those pages, not your entire site.

There are probably still some of you out there who think that you don’t really need a mobile site or it may not be a good investment at this time. We hear this a lot, especially from our B2B clients who think that their audience or customers do not visit their site from mobile devices. Here’s some food for thought…

Stop thinking in terms of B2B and B2C. Mobile usage is growing. People search and visit sites on their mobile devices all the time, regardless of personal or professional intentions. They expect a seamless and optimized experience every time they do, no matter what device they are using.

Take a look at your analytics data. Fuel your case for a mobile site (or not) by looking at how many people visit your site from a mobile device or tablet. How many actually stay? Is your bounce rate high, is your conversion rate low? If so, it may be time to go mobile. You could essentially be “leaving money on the table” and not even realize it.

For more information on Google’s mobile algorithm update, and others, we recommend visiting the Webmaster Central Blog frequently.

Website reporting can be a daunting task to begin with, so when you’re also battling skewed data from bogus referral sites it can make your life that much more gloomy.

Rest assured, there is a way to remove unwanted referral sources from your CUSTOM reports that I have found to be useful and actually effective.

Note that this method is solely cosmetic on custom reports as the data is still visible in Google Analytics.  Think of it as you having the ability to see your sites referral sources with the garbage you don’t want, but also being able to see your sites referral data WITHOUT that same garbage.  Everyone loves options.

Removing referral sources from your custom reports:

• Go to your traffic sources custom report
• Click ‘Edit’ near the top left
• Under the ‘Filters’ section select “add filter”
• In the text box type “Full Referrer”
• Change the “Include” drop down to “Exclude”
• Type in the desired referral source you wish to filter out of your reports
• Ex. Podio.com, “development sites”
• For additional filters repeat steps 1 thru 6

One of the downsides to this feature though, is that you have only a limited number of filters that you can apply at one time (up to 5).  If you are to utilize this method, check in from time to time to see if the referral no longer hits your site and you can use it on another referral source if needed.

Twitter began rolling ­out a new experience for users with its release of Twitter Cards in the summer of 2012. Since its inception, Twitter Cards have become a vital marketing tool for social media marketers, developers, and the like.

Twitter Cards are designed to make a splash in a sea of text. The end user is presented with media-rich tweets that provoke visual interest through the use of images, video, product information, and more.

There are seven different Card types:

• Summary card
• Summary card with image
• Photo card (featuring a single image)
• Gallery card (featuring multiple images)
• App card
• Player card (to showcase video)
• Product card

By simply adding seven short lines of HTML code to your webpage, users who share your content or links to your site will have one of these Cards added to their Tweet. These Cards are set apart from the rest of the Twitter stream and ultimately increase the likelihood for web clicks and retweets.

Example of a Summary Card

Picture Source: Social Media Examiner

Lets face it – our society is pretty lazy! If users are presented with text and a link, they have to take that extra step to click on the link to actually see what the Tweet is about. Although this process takes only a few seconds, it’s more convenient for the end user to have an image, video, or product information presented to them right then and there as opposed to having to click on a link to see if it’s even worth their time or interest.

Example of a Product Card

Picture Source: Social Media Examiner

Twitter Cards (product cards in particular) also cater to impulse buys. Product Cards often include an image, price, and information about the product. When all of this information is presented in the newsfeed, a consumer is more likely to act on it. This is saving them time from having to decide whether or not to click on the link and then having that extra time as the product page loads to rethink their buying decision.

So go ahead, get started! Stop drowning in a sea of text on your Twitter feed! Make a splash and stand out with Twitter Cards.

Title Tags

A previous standard SEO practice was to use up to 70 characters as a guide for title tags. However, due to the recent change in search results design, it is now recommended to use 50 to 60 characters. The design changes and larger fonts on Google have altered how search results appear, ultimately cutting off title tags earlier than it had in the past.

Source: 360i

There is not an exact number of characters that can be provided as an SEO best practice for title tags at this point. We do know, however, that Google can only display as many characters as it can fit into its 512-pixel width that does not exceed one line of text.

Other tips to consider:

• Avoid keyword stuffing your title.
• Rank/optimize for a keyword phrase(s) over specific keywords.
• Feature keywords or phrases as early as possible in the title tag.
• Craft titles that are user friendly first, then for the search engine.
• Be sure to make each title tag on a page unique to all other pages on your site to avoid getting hit by Google Panda.

Meta Description

Meta descriptions have a big impact on search ranking. In fact, Search Engine Land argues that the meta description is the most important feature for improving click through rate from search result pages. To ensure your meta description is optimized for search engines, consider the following strategies and tips.

First and foremost, follow the recommended character limit.

The standard meta description length is 156 characters long. However, it’s not the end of the world if you go over the limit, just be sure to say the most important information within the first 156 characters. We tend to go over this limit at times and have seen engines pull information via rich snippets.

Use the correct words.

Utilize keywords in your meta description. In order to be compelled to click, the user needs to see words applicable to their search.

Write compelling copy.

Your meta description should be three things: descriptive, persuasive, and inspire curiosity. It is important to introduce the user to what the page is about so they are sure that the result is related to what they are searching for. When a user is done reading your description, they should be curious about finding out more. Provide information that explains the purpose of your page, but will not ruin the curiosity factor for the user. Also, when possible, include a call to action.

Don’t use quotation marks. 

Any time a quotation mark is used in a meta description Google will cut off the description. However, if quotation marks are essential to your meta description, consider using single quotation marks in its place.

1. The bounce rate of the site increases which in turn can hurt SEO since Bounce Rate is an algorithm ranking factor just as is click-through-rate.
2. Referral traffic numbers are not real visits huge spike in spam referral visits can show an overall increase in referral traffic which can be good, but looking at a traffic source report, spam websites can overtake your top referral traffic sources and skew data.

How do we get rid of this “fake” referral traffic data in our reports.

1. Universal Analytics supposedly supports referral source blocks within its admin section of the analytics dashboard. Any web property that has upgraded to the new universal analytics code can easily define the referral source/website and block this as part of the websites referral exclusion list.
• THIS DOES NOT WORK – In theory these spam websites are still visiting your website, but by adding them to the referral exclusion list, your reports are supposedly not to reports any data come from the excluded domains. We have implemented this feature across many accounts, web property and referral domains and we have yet to see any referral traffic from these specified sources to be excluded. So what do you do?
2. Block the spam referral domain in your .htaccess file. This method takes care of both issues above. The spam website can no longer send “fake” visits to your site as the site .htaccess server file is not allowing them to access the server. The fake visits stop as do the visits reported in analytics.
   • A few Tips:
     • Please note that editing an .htaccess file on a website should be done by the webmaster or someone coding and server experience. This file controls the entire website.
     • If editing a wordpress .htaccess file in the dashboard it is recommended that you also have FTP access to the server to update an errors or mistakes if the dashboard is no longer accessible after .htaccess edits
     • Always backup a copy of the original .htaccess file before you begin work
     • Make sure there are no extra spaces or line breaks in .htaccess code, could cause 500 server error on site.

Implementing Spam Block in .htaccess

1. Populate list of all spam websites you wish to block
2. Use the below code and replace domain.com with the spam website domain
3. Code should be right before the closing tag in .htaccess file
   • WordPress sites (# END WordPress)

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer domain.com spammer=yes

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer domain2.com spammer=yes

1. News Feed update – organic reach continues to drop with a focus on promotional posts.

Facebook often asks its user what they want, and what they DON’T want are constant promotions in their face. As of this month, Facebook has started showing users less promotional posts organically. They of course want you to step up your Facebook Advertising game and recommend deploying your promotions in the form of paid posts.

You can of course still go ahead and promote a few promotional type posts, just don’t expect them to get the visibility they’ve been getting.

2. Facebook Targeting rolls out to more business pages.

The capability to target posts by interests, age, location, and more, was first mentioned in 2012 and we’ve gradually seen it roll out to our clients. It’s pretty awesome in that more so than ever, you can get the right messages in front of the right audiences. As marketers, you need to pay extra close attention to this. Getting the right messages in front of the right audiences can help maximize your social media marketing efforts and this right here can help you accomplish that goal. Let’s say I’m promoting a blog post on New Jersey to a brand’s page that has followers across the U.S., I would use my targeting to have the post be seen by people who reside in New Jersey only.

3. Goodbye, Like Gate.

Facebook defines like gating as “when you force a Facebook user who has not already liked your Page to like it before they can see content on a particular custom tab.” As noted by Facebook, Like Gating would have been implemented by adding Static FBML Facebook application or by using a Facebook Marketing application tool. In November, Facebook announced that this would be no more. Why not? They want to make sure people are liking a page because they want to connect with that brand, not because they want to get a special offer out of it.

4. Trending reaches mobile.

Trending stories on Facebook have been around for over a year. I’m sure you’ve seen them on the right hand column of your personal Facebook page. This past December Facebook introduced trending to mobile. Trending helps people discover timely and relevant conversations about the news they care about. With trending now being on mobile, it’s easy for Facebook users to explore stories on-the-go. There are five parts to trending stories, as noted by Facebook:

1. Articles shows you how news organizations are covering the story.
2. In the Story shows you posts from people who are part of the story.
3. Friends and Groups shows you what people in your network are saying.
4. Near the Scene shows you posts from people near where the story is unfolding.
5. Live Feed shows you a real-time stream of reactions from people around the world

Photo Source: Facebook

As marketers, you’ll want to pay attention to trending sources to seek out opportunities where you can add a few posts to capitalize on news. When done right, you can increase your page’s engagment.

5. To hashtag or not to hashtag.

While we have not seen Facebook release any documentation on this, it’s something I’ve noticed over the past few months – hashtag or no hashtag, you still get the same results in the Facebook Search Box. At one point we could search and deploy hashtags on Facebook and we would see a list of topics around that category. Now, when we enter the same word or phrase, we are getting the same results. Could it be that hashtags no longer play a huge role on Facebook? We are currently still using them from time to time but this is something we are keeping our eyes on. Since hashtags on Facebook did not catch on like they did on Twitter or Instagram, my prediction is Facebook search will only continue to improve and it won’t matter much whether we use a hashtag or not. I want to hear what your prediction is. Let’s connect on Twitter.

However when you share a link or URL from your website on Facebook it does not always appear like this:

Have you ever experienced the below?

Why does this happen? The answer: Not utilizing Open Graph tags when sharing a URL from your site on Facebook.

According to Facebook, Open Graph tags are included in your page’s HTML and allow the Facebook Crawler to generate previews when your content is shared on Facebook. By using these specific tags (such as og:image, og:description, og:type and more) you can customize exactly how your link will appear when shared.

When URLs are shared, Facebook crawls the website to read the code and pulls information and images for a preview. When Open Graph tags are not used, Facebook will either not pull images at all, or in some cases, will pull images completely unrelated to the article or landing page being shared (as shown below).

When images are not used (or when the wrong image is displayed) when sharing a URL on Facebook web traffic can be affected. In fact, analytics expert, Neil Patel noted that the Facebook traffic to his website increased by 174 percent after implementing Open Graph tags simply because there was a relevant image associated with his status updates.

Word Press offers an Open Graph protocol plugin that works with Google Plus and Linkedin in addition to Facebook. This plugin optimizes content specifically for social sharing and displays large images to improve impressions on social news feeds.

For more information about how to add Facebook Open Graph Meta Data into your Word Press theme, visit WPBeginner.

We know we have to write top quality content for the reader. However, if our blog or website page can’t be found then our complete content is essentially decreed useless. Therefore, we need to look how we can write content for users as well as for search engines. Here are some tips for making our content writing as effective as possible.

• First of all, as I said, we need to write quality content which means original and relatable.
• Add headings when applicable – search engines may look for larger text there headings/subheadings are bolded/larger size with one keyword.
• If we are writing attempting to write for users, therefore we know that people love images. Content with images receive 94 percent more clicks than content without. Don’t forget about alt tags (alternative text) and image tags (words that pop up when one rolls over an image.)
• Keyword stuffing is a huge no-no. When figuring out how many keywords to use, unfortunately there is no finite answer. Use your brain. Think, which word you, would specifically like to be found for and use them naturally on your page.

According to a survey, in 2014 the focus of search was high quality, relevant content. You can identify this quality content by things such as a well-written copy, comprehensive wording, higher work-count and images/videos. SEO is still valuable but trends are showing moves away from single keywords and towards entire topics. The basis of achieving top ranking is having top technical aspects such as strong site architecture, great internal links and all Meta tags (Title/Description.)

Google builds their data on relevance of a search, which seems to be moving towards a Semantic Search. Semantic Search is a search/question automatically produces pertinent results even if the best match has no keywords in it. This doesn’t mean that SEO is dead; it means it’s evolving. For Semantic SEO, Google will break into the relationship between the words that you put in, how they work together and see what the word really means. Search engines are looking at both related keyword terms in places like subtitle tag, content, title, and Meta as well as supporting terms like synonyms and modifiers. For keywords, you not only have to use these keywords correctly but you have to know what these words really mean. When doing keyword search you have to focus on what the meaning of what a user is really searching for in the keywords is.  Basically words are concepts and search engines have changed into learning machines.

Basically, Google looks for help from search entitles to make sure they give the best results. This “is a process by which searches performed by users establish a set relationship that help identity the important of the various documents and therefore, influence the information displayed.”1

Here are some tools to help with semantic search:

• Schema.org
• Google Structured Data Testing Tool
• Structured Data Linter
• Schema Creator
• AlchemyAPI
• Text Razor
• Semaphore

Source 1: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101-semantic-search-care/119760/

Why should we link our YouTube video to an external website? Simple, it is a great way to provide the creator of the video a way to link to their other related websites directly from their videos. Do you want to redirect visitors from your YouTube video to an external website? Of course, if you don’t want to lose viewers after they have finished watching, then why bother creating a video? Why have your video go to waste when your viewers can view other websites that pertain to the videos you just watched? All you need to do is add “associated website annotations” to your video. These are links that you can add to any YouTube video you’ve uploaded. Here are the steps to get started…

1. First make sure that you have YouTube partner* status.
   1. Login into your YouTube account
   2. Go to video manager
   3. Channel settings; this is where you will see if you’re a YouTube partner. (This is where you see if you have been verified.)

*YouTube partner status helps the video stream seamlessly and to grow with the collective YouTube audience; this a simple process. Please see below for directions.

1. Now to verify your account
   1.  Switched to a different account which hasn’t been verified and click verify
   2. Check “call me with an automated voice message”
   3. Enter your phone number
   4. Click “submit”
2. Add your website as an associate website in webmaster tools. (This confirms that you own the site before you link to it in your YouTube account).
   1. Login to webmaster tools
   2. Click “add a site” then put in your URL
   3. Click continue then follow the steps that’s shown on the page
3. Go to advanced settings and scroll down to associated website and enter the URL that you added to webmaster tools. After you’ve done that you’ll see the success sign.
4. If this is the first time you’re using external annotations, at the top of the menu there will be a banner that says “Enable your account for external annotation links.”
   1. Click the Enable button and accept the Terms and Conditions.
   2. Add external website annotations to your video
5. Go to your video manager
   1. Select one of the videos you want to put annotations
   2. Click drop down box select annotations (click “add annotation” in this case we’ll do a note then add your text “click here for more info”)
6. The annotation (text) is now shown. You may have to stretch the text box out then click the link.
7. Add a video or any on the list provided, but select “associated website”.  Add the website URL that is to be linked to.
8. Click “publish”
9. Make sure that this works, by going back to your video manager
   1. Click on the video
   2. Video should go directly to your particular blog post (external website).

Can you tell me if it’s possible to create more than one verified website? YouTube only allows one website per channel, however watch this video to redirect viewers to other pages on your website 

How to Verify YouTube Channel

1. Login to your YouTube account
   1. Go to YouTube setting, (Located top right)
2. Go to Channel Settings
   1. Click on Features
   2. Under account status, locate “Verify tab”
3. Click verify
   1. You will now be redirected to account verification step 1
   2. Choose verification method (i.e. voice call or sms) and add your phone number
   3. Click submit
4. Click verify once you receive code

Once you are verified, you are now a YouTube partner. You are now able to upload unlimited length YouTube videos.

Resources:
YouTube External Links In Annotations

Creator Benefits

How to Verify your Youtube Account