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Juicy SEO Monthly Report for April 2015

In the world of SEO for April it has all been about the new mobile algorithm update which was expected to have the biggest impact in Google’s search results for many years, more on that below.

If you have not read one of our monthly SEO reports before they are designed to be short and to the point so you can be informed with the most important changes made by the search engines so you can help your website perform better. So we hope you enjoy and don’t forget to read our previous monthly reports as they are still relevant in our Search Engine News section.

 

General SEO News:

  • Google have rolled out a new algorithm to tackle websites that use doorway pages, these are webpages which target keywords and then send the visitor to a different webpage (one reasons for their use). There are several sneaky options people can use Doorways but none of them should be used! One reason they are used is to funnel visitors to other areas of the website whilst actually looking for something completely different. This new algorithm is targeting  these websites and which will hopefully put an end to people using them.
    If you would like to know more about Doorway pages here is a good resource.

 

  • Google have also said that it is important that your web server responds within 2 seconds of the initial request from Google when it is crawling your site. If your server is taking longer than 2 seconds to respond, Google might think the website is no longer available and not include it in their index.

Here is the page explaining this from Google: Server Response Times

Here is a tool to check your server response time: Google Insights

 

  • Google is now starting to highlight the answers to questions INSTEAD of the question asked, in their search results. We don’t normally include any design/cosmetic changes by the search engines in our report as we prefer to focus on the actual SEO. However this is quite interesting as this can be used in your keyword research and landing page optimisation.

 

Google highlights the answer to the search query

Panda News:

The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in Google’s search results.

  • Another month goes by without a Panda update, Google have confirmed the last Panda update was in October 2014. This is delaying websites that have improved their content to help their site rank better. Quite frustrating!

Penguin News (including link building):

Google has an algorithm called Penguin which analyses links to web pages and identifies which ones are valuable or spam links. An example of a spam link would be a paid link to your site.

  • Google have also confirmed that the Penguin update is still not running regularly (it should be running at least monthly). If you have however cleaned up any bad links to your site and informed Google via Webmaster Tools then this will update straight away and will not need to wait for an algorithm update.

Pigeon News:

Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.

No news for the Pigeon algorithm for this month.

Mobile SEO:

  • Google has fully rolled out its highly anticipated Mobile Friendly algorithm update. The impact doesn’t look to be a big as it was expected, this is partly due to the amount of websites that became mobile friendly. However we are still monitoring many websites which are currently not mobile friendly and we are not seeing much of a change in their ranking results. Google have said that although the algorithm has rolled out some websites might not yet be re-indexed. We will continue to monitor.

 

This Months SEO Tip:

As mentioned above Google is now showing the answers to questions and highlighting the answer instead of the question (as per before). So there isn’t any reason to not target the answers to the questions too. The highlighted word catches the eye, if someone has asked a question it’s the answer they are interested in not the question. 😉

Think of questions people might ask in your industry and use Google Adwords tools to find the ones with some traffic, then answer the question!

 

If you missed last months SEO report head over to the Juicy SEO monthly report for March 2015 page.

 

Mobilegeddon is here! Save the World!

Mobliegeddon, it’s a great word isn’t it?
It sounds like the world is going to end for mobiles or something, very dramatic!

However this is not going to happen so you can relax in the knowledge you will still be able to play Candy Crush on your tablet.
In fact ‘Mobilegeddon’ has been used to name the launch of a new algorithm from Google which ranks websites which are designed for mobile devices better than websites which are not. This will only affect searches using Google’s mobile search facility (ie: using Google from a mobile device).
The new algorithm was launched on 21st April 2015 and Google have said it will take a week to completely roll it out.

This isn’t something they have sprung on us, they gave us a ‘heads up’ on this a couple of months ago.

If you would like to know more about this algorithm update from Google read our blog post on Googles Mobile Algorithm or What is a Mobile Website?

I’m writing this post on the 26th April so 5 days into the roll out. Juicy SEO test new algorithm updates all year round and this one is no exception. To test this new update we have deliberately left sites out there which are absolutely shocking to use on a mobile device purely to watch the results of this change. We are also monitoring many other websites which are not mobile friendly to gather as much information as possible.

Mobilegeddon

So far after monitoring 1000s of keywords every day for many websites we have yet to see any real ranking differences between the standard search results and the mobile results. There have only been a few keywords with a very minimal difference (1 position difference for 4 keywords) which we do not think is related to this update.

This isn’t to say all these ranking positions won’t all change tomorrow as there are still few days left to go. Additionally we are monitoring UK based websites and the change just might not have filtered over the pond just yet. Google are rolling out the update Data-centre by Data-centre and it will take a week to do.
Additionally from what we have read from other SEOs based in the states it doesn’t sound like much has happened over there either.

 

Is there really an update coming?

Now the sceptic in me is thinking that if I ran a search engine and wanted to produce good search results for mobile devices, saying to all webmasters if you don’t make your website mobile friendly it will not rank well is a pretty good way to do it. After all users of Google whilst on mobile devices want search results which work well on their device, if the user is happy they will keep using Google.

In a recent survey it was reported that it is now a near 50/50 split of people using the internet on a mobile device compared with a desktop computer. This is clearly going to sway towards the mobile device very soon and Google know this, so providing a good search results for mobile devices will be very important for them. Other search engines are slowly catching Google up in terms of monthly users so they can’t sit on their laurels.

So all this end of the world style Mobilegeddon might just be a way to help Google get what they want?

This wouldn’t be the first time Google have done something like this, it wasn’t that long ago Google said that if you move your website to a secure server (SSL cert, using HTTPS) the website will receive a boost in their search results, even if only a little. From our test results it was a VERY little boost indeed!
However it did push some reluctant webmasters to secure their website, and we all want a secure internet so it wasn’t a bad result really was it?

Even if nothing comes of this it is still a win for website owners who have made their website mobile friendly as your visitors will appreciate it!

As said above we still have a few days to go and the ‘Mobile Friendly’ tag is being seen in mobile search results so who knows!

If you agree, disagree we would love to hear from you on our Facebook page or on Twitter.

Honda’s Interactive Video Advert

Every now and again a new bit of technology is used to put a different spin on performing a task. It could be new type of cork screw for example, the original one did a good job but the new version is MUCH better!

Cork Screw to Future Crock Screw

The same thing happens in online marketing and online adverts, it could be some animation on a website or some kind of funky popup to encourage you to sign up to the newsletter.

For videos however not a lot has happened over the years, you press the PLAY button and watch the video. We have of course seen some very good video adverts which not only make you want keep watching the video but also buy the product in it. Which is the main idea for most video adverts.

Honda (with a lot of help from their online marketing agency) have produced a new interactive video for one of their new cars. This is the first time we have seen this technology and we are sure we will see similar ones very soon. In the video below there are two versions with different stories playing at the same time, whilst the video is playing if you press the R key on your keyboard you can swap between the two stories. Go on give it ago!

This is very clever (being the first) as it makes you want to watch the complete video, it also highlights their product and keeps you looking at the cars for a long time, and at the end of the video the good old Call to Action button is ready for you.

Have ago and don’t forget to press R!

 

How many websites will Google’s Mobile Algorithm affect?

In case you have not heard but Google will be launching their Mobile Friendly Algorithm update on the 21st April. This is a big deal if you own or run a website. If you don’t then I suspect you don’t really care, if that’s you then get your skis out and hit the slopes, here is a cool Ski holiday website.

If however you are interested how much the up and coming Mobile algorithm update from Google will affect websites here are the stats!

Googles Mobile Algorithm Update

 

If you combine the two previous biggest algorithms launched by Google it would not add up to the conservative estimate figure of how many websites will be affected. So this is a BIG deal!

Google’s Panda Algorithm update affected 14% of all websites

Google’s Penguin Algorithm update affected 3% of all websites (which is a lot by the way!)

Google’s Mobile Algorithm update is estimated to affect between 20 – 30% of all websites!! (yes double exclamation marks needed there!)

Don’t hang around and get your website mobile friendly. If you are not sure if your website is mobile friendly or not heard over to our ‘What is a Mobile Website‘ page and you can test yours!

Juicy SEO Monthly Report for March 2015

It has been another busy month in the world of SEO and online marketing for March 2015, here is your 5 minute run down of what has happened over the past month:

General SEO News:

  • We start off with one for the website designers out there who are still adding a link, generally in the footer of clients websites advertising that they created the site. About 3-4 years ago adding links to footers would have helped the web designers site rank better by generating a link to their site.
    However the world and Google have changed a lot since then and this month Google have STRONGLY suggested adding a rel=”nofollow” tag to these links. This will of course not pass on any link Juice to your site but it will also not provide you with any penalties.
  • WordPress websites using the popular Yoast SEO plugin were vulnerable to a possible hack this month. Yoast discovered this very quickly and sent out an update to fix, if you have not updated your website plugin to the latest version you should do this now. This just highlights that it is very important to make sure your WordPress Plugins and Themes are running on the latest versions.

Panda News:

The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in the Google search results.

  • The last time the Panda algorithm update was run was around the start of November 2014, if you were hit with a Panda penalty you are sadly still being penalised. It just goes to show how long it can be between updates.

Penguin News (including link building):

Google has an algorithm called Penguin which analyses links to web pages and identifies which ones are valuable or spam links. An example of a spam link would be a paid link to your site.

  • The Penguin algorithm was planned to run every month and for a while it did, however an update now has not happened since December 2014. We do not know when the next update is due, but it’s due.

Pigeon News:

Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.

No news for the Pigeon algorithm for this month.

Mobile SEO:

  • You may remember we have mentioned previously that on the 21st April Google will be making a update in their algorithm relating to Mobile friendly websites (see our What is a Mobile Website post for more on this). Recently Google have added some more information about this update by stating that if you update your webpage to become mobile friendly AFTER this date Google will almost immediately update the mobile value of that page in its mobile search results. Therefore if on the 21st April you do not have a mobile website and then on the 30th April you make your website mobile friendly, when Google next crawls your website it will update it’s mobile search results with your new website. No need to wait for an algorithm update here!
  • The Mobile algorithm update will affect more websites than the Panda and Penguin updates when introduced, this means more than 20% (probably nearer 30%) of all websites will be affected.

Googles Mobile Algorithm Update

This Months SEO Tip:

Google have also said that it will decide if your website pages are mobile friendly rather than the whole website. Therefore if you can’t make the whole of your site mobile friendly at first then start off with the most important pages first. This will help non-CMS websites.

 

If you missed last months report head over to the Juicy SEO monthly report for February 2015.

 

Facebook Event Alerts

A new feature that is currently being rolled out by Facebook is the option to be alerted by the pages you follow for events they are holding.

For some reason this new feature hasn’t had the fanfare launch of other new functions so you might not know about it.

Still, this could be a nice new marketing tool especially for local businesses.

facebook_logo

The idea is to be alerted of events that you have ‘subscribed’ to that are currently near by. Obviously this function is aimed at the mobile use market, but today that is almost all Facebook users.
When you are close by to the event at the time of the event it will alert you to this so you can attend.

To set this up you will need to create an event on your business Facebook page.
Then encourage your followers to ‘subscribe’ to this event. They can do this by navigating to the events page and pressing ‘subscribe’ which has a little RSS logo on it.

Continue your normal build up to the event so it isn’t a shock when it happens.

Because this it optional you will never be bombarded with events you are not interested in, this means you will notify people who are actually interested in the event.

This is ideal if you are a musician playing a gig however it can be used for parties, launches or even conferences to name a few.

What is a Mobile Website?

Recently there has been a lot of talk about mobile websites, Google have announced that they are making a change to their algorithm for mobile search results that will affect all non-mobile websites.

But what is considered a mobile website and what do I need to do so my website is not affected by this algorithm?

 

There are essentially 4 types of websites relating to mobile devices:

  1. The old style website which doesn’t care about mobile devices, it doesn’t fit on ‎smaller screens and you have to pinch and zoom out to see the pages. The text is very small and the buttons are just a small.
  2. Next are sites that have had some coding put in place so the website fits on your mobile phone or tablet. You still need to pinch for somethings and the buttons are often too small for fat fingers. They look like the desktop version but on a smaller screen. This is often seen as a suitable fix for a mobile responsive website.

 

Juicy SEO Social Media Management

 

  1. The next one is a mobile designed website, when your website is viewed on a phone the buttons are thumb sized, the menu options are easy to navigate on a small screen (often using the hamburger icon) and images are smaller so it is quicker to load the page. Remember Google likes fast loading pages and it is now thought to be part of their main search algorithm.
  2. Finally the website that has be tailored for their mobile visitors. Identifying the details they are looking for and having these details near the top of the page. If having your website shared on social media is important then make sure you have the ‘share this page’ buttons easy to get to. If you are a shop or restaurant for example, somewhere people can actually visit then your location, address, click-able phone number, map and maybe Sat Nav functions might be important. Real thought on what mobile users need from your website.

 

Ok so now you know what needs to be done, who should you call? One word….

Ghostbusters!

…sorry couldn’t resist.

The obvious person is your website developer (or company), anyone who makes websites worth their salt will know what to do. Ask them for examples of their work to make sure and test on your own mobile device (or several if you have). If they haven’t got one to show then it’s time to find someone new as they are very behind the times!

…the biggest search engine ranking shake-up for several years…

The next question you might ask yourself is…

Is my current website already mobile friendly?

There are many tools and simulators out there which test websites for this however there is really only one you need to satisfy, and that is Google’s!

This is a link to their test, enter in your website to find out.

Google Mobile Website Test Page

If this tools says your site is not mobile ready then you need to makes some changes.

 

On 21st April 2015 Google will be rolling out an algorithm update which will take about a week to complete, it will affect websites that are not designed for mobile devices.

It is looking like it could be the biggest search engine ranking shake-up for several years, so expect your traffic figures to change either up or down. Of course if your website is already ready for this update your competitors might not be, you could do one of two things here:

  1. Let your competitors know they are just about to lose a lot visitors to their website and they should make their website mobile ready.
  2. Or you could just let them figure it out for themselves and you can have all their customers. It would teach them for not following Juicy SEO would it!

 

The algorithm update will N‎OT affect your website in normal desktop search results, however it is now nearly 50/50 users of the internet use mobile devices to surf, wouldn’t you be silly to ignore?!
‎

Want to know what else is happening in the world of SEO? Head over to our latest Monthly Search Engine Optimisation 2min update!

Juicy SEO monthly report for February 2015

It has been a busy month in the world of SEO and online marketing for February 2015, here is your 5min run down of what happened:

General SEO News

  • The first week of February we saw a lot of movement in sites ranking positions for brand keywords, Google had refreshed their algorithm which we think affected this.
  • There have been reports that users of Google’s search engine in the UK are being diverted to Google.com when using Chrome. We have not seen this ourselves but might affect some traffic figures.
  • Google has increased its knowledge graph to include medical keyword phrases, this might affect traffic to any medial websites.
  • Google analytics showed 0 visitors on 9th February for many accounts, if your account has 0 (zero) visitors for that day don’t worry.
  • If your website is included into Google News it has been advised to keep your Title tag and H1 tag content consistent or ideally the same. This will help Google index your content.
  • Google has said that it will start to include if your website is mobile friendly as a factor in its ranking results from 21st April 2015. This gives you about 5 weeks to make sure your website is mobile friendly. If you are not sure here is a good tester: www.responsinator.com

Panda News:

The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in the Google search results.

  • Google have said that duplicate Title and Description tags are not considered in the Panda algorithm and the site will not be penalised if there are duplicates. However we recommend that you do not have duplicate tags for other SEO reasons.

Penguin News (including link building):

Google has an algorithm called Penguin which analyses links to web pages and identifies which ones are valuable or spam links. An example of a spam link would be a paid link to your site.

  • Google have said that the safest way to make sure you will not be penalised by Google for generating links to your site is to not link build. That said to help your website perform better in results you will need links. Be careful where and how you generate links, you have been warned!

Pigeon News:

Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.

No news for the Pigeon algorithm for this month.

This months SEO Tip:

In February Google started including Twitter tweets to their search results. We haven’t seen too many of these so far in the UK version of Google but they are there. With this new development Twitter is not just about Social Media and online marketing but is also part of SEO. If you are not using Twitter and you think your business would benefit from using it then now is the time to start!

If you missed last months report head over to the Juicy SEO monthly report for January 2015.

Juicy SEO monthly report for January 2015

Welcome to another edition of our monthly SEO report where we quickly run through what has happened in the world of SEO and online marketing. If you missed our first post here it is: Juicy SEO Monthly Search Engine Report for December 2014

Mobile SEO:

Over the last couple of weeks Google has sent out a mass email/notification informing webmasters of sites which currently do not have a mobile friendly websites. Knowing Google as we do they tend not to do this type of thing unless something is planned for the future. Take this notification seriously, if your site is not currently mobile friendly we recommend discussing with your web designers to make the changes needed to make it mobile friendly.

Adsense:

If you are a user of Googles Adsense you may have been approached by ‘agents’ offering to pay you a set amount each month similar to what you currently earn from Adsense and in return they will take the income from the advert. Basically they want to buy your advert space.
We recommend not agreeing to these offers as although you don’t lose control of anything you don’t know what they are doing to increase their sales, this could include sending bad links to your site which will affect your organic ranking results.

 

…and finally:

We haven’t had a major Google algorithm update since December 2014 and there is currently a lot of talk that one is on its way. We think it has just about started so the next week or so ranking positions will most likely be quite volatile.

 

This month’s SEO tip:

You may or may not have thought about this but many people use the image search results instead of the main Google web search results to find what they are looking for. If your website is image friendly this is an area which you can get some easy wins. To help with these rankings we suggest the following:

Add detail to the name of the image. IE not: wow-what-a-car.jpg but instead: Ferrari-250-GT.jpg

If you have time also include these details in the META of the images if you have the copyright. Also don’t forget to use the ALT and TITLE tags on your site when displaying the images.

Juicy SEO monthly report for December 2014

Each month we provide useful information about the world of SEO to our clients, this information is normally sent directly to them.

We got thinking and thought “Why not let read our monthly reports!”

So here we are, each month we will share all the major important things that have happened in the world of SEO and online marketing that might affect your own website. We will not be going into too much detail but more of a bite sized run down. If you do want more info then just ask via Twitter or Facebook and we will do our best to answer.

So onto this months report.

 

Mobile SEO

Google has said that having a mobile friendly website will help your site perform better (SEO wise) in their search results. From this month you will now see Mobile-Friendly written just under the Title and URL in search results. How this will affect people clicking on your site on a mobile device we will find out.

 

Google

Google are testing the user experience of websites, we expect in 2015 websites with a good user experience (as decided by Google) will get a little help in the rankings. Our tip: ask someone who has never been on your site to perform a couple of tasks set by you, how many clicks did it take and did they enjoy the experience?

 

Website Design

A popular way to present content to readers on websites is to use Tabs and only show the text on the page when the person clicks on the tab. This is also a good way to include more text on a page but not clutter the page up. However it looks like Google doesn’t like this any more and will only value (SEO wise) the displayed content on page load. Our Tip: Make sure your most important keyword terms are on the displayed tab.

 

Algorithm’s

Google are still rolling out changes to some of their algorithms, it is taking a lot longer than we all expected which makes the SEO community think there is a lot going on behind the scenes! More on this soon!

Google Panda update for March 2013

Google have performed another update to their algorithm last weekend and looks like it is a Panda update. We have seen some of our clients competitors rankings drop as well as some big sites like the BBC.
Google have said they will most likely not have Panda (and possibly Penguin) updates from now on but include it into the continuous adjustment to their algorithm. This will be harder for SEOs and webmasters to understand why their rankings have changed.
The majority of the SEO experts feel this is a good move and should give the ranking figures more stability, we feel the same.

If your website has been hit by this update we recommend doing the following:

  • Check the links to your site and remove any that look or are spammy.

 

  • Make sure your website isn’t over optimised.

 

  • Do you have any spammy links on your site? If so remove.

If you would like help recovering your website or would just like to chat about SEO we look forward to hear from you.

How can I get my website on the first page of Google?

In every industry there are certain questions that always get asked more than others, for SEO this has to be the MOST popular question:

 

How can I get my website on the first page of Google?

 

So for all those people out there wanting to know the answer to this question and the people who ask me every day here is the answer…

 

The first thing I tell people is not to worry about where your website ranks for certain keywords, isn’t having more visitors more important? Especially the visitors that are looking for your product or service. Ok you may have to rank well for some keywords to get these visitors but don’t focus completely on the ranking positions.

With that said the question still stands.

As I write this there are a few major signals you can optimise to help your website rank well. So if you do nothing else I suggest doing these few tasks:

 

Title tag:

Each page can have a title tag written in HTML (some people are using more than one title tag but we do NOT recommend this). If you are using a CMS like WordPress or Joomla this is very easy to update. So make sure you use this tag, try and have the keyword you are targeting near the start of the tag as this has a small advantage to having it further down the sentence.

Don’t list a load of keywords one after another, that looks spammy and the powers that be in Google will not like it. Plus remember this single line is most likely the first thing a new customer reads about your site, so make it count!

 

Content:

There is no point in having a keyword in the title tag if it doesn’t relate to the content on the page, firstly the visitor will just bounce off your site and probably never return, and secondly Google will think you are trying to fool them (they don’t like that either).

 

Links:

You don’t need millions of links from other websites to get your website to rank well, so please do NOT sign up to those services that give you 10,000 links for £10.

By using social media or other means contact related websites to yours and see if they would provide you with a link, unless it is the BBC or CNN try not provide a reciprocal link back as it weakens the signal to Google a little.

 

Something to bare in mind, if your website has great content why wouldn’t Google want to rank it well for the subject you have on your webpage, Google wants good quality search results so just help them out and they will help you out!

 

 

Juicy SEO Limited is a search engine optimisation and conversion rate optimisation company based in Cheltenham, Bristol and Farnham. If you would like help with your SEO campaign please get in contact.