Google New Page Speed and Mobile Friendly Update

The speed of mobile pages isn’t currently used as a ranking factor by Google, but that will change with the next mobile friendly update. 

At the Search Marketing Summit in Sydney today, and reported by Jennifer Slegg, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes confirmed that page speed would be a factor in the next mobile update.

Illyes wouldn’t be pinned down to a date, but it seems we’re looking at a matter of months. Google has only recently updated its mobile algorithm, but there’s more to come.

It also fits with the pattern of Google focusing on the user experience in its mobile updates. It has focused on factors such as small text, links too close together, and intrusive app download ads.

This is no massive surprise, as Google’s introduction of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) shows its concern about page speed on mobile.

Slow sites reduce conversions and traffic, faster sites increase them, as these stats on page speedshow.

(image taken from Tom Bennet’s Brighton SEO presentation)

So how will it rank sites according to page speed? Well, the Page Speed Insights tool seems the obvious answer. Looks like we may have some work to do ;)

The lesson is clear though: its not enough merely to have a mobile friendly site, but businesses need to work hard to ensure that it performs as well as it can across a range of factors.

10 LAWS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Leveraging the power of content and social media marketing can help elevate your audience and customer base in a dramatic way. But getting started without any previous experience or insight could be challenging.

It's vital that you understand social media marketing fundamentals. From maximizing quality to increasing your online entry points, abiding by these 10 laws will help build a foundation that will serve your customers, your brand and perhaps most importantly your bottom line.

1. The Law of Listening

Success with social media and content marketing requires more listening and less talking. Read your target audience’s online content and join discussions to learn what’s important to them. Only then can you create content and spark conversations that add value rather than clutter to their lives.

2. The Law of Focus

It’s better to specialize than to be a jack-of-all-trades. A highly-focused social media and content marketing strategy intended to build a strong brand has a better chance for success than a broad strategy that attempts to be all things to all people.

3. The Law of Quality

Quality trumps quantity. It’s better to have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about your content with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with you the first time.

4. The Law of Patience

Social media and content marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. While it’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle, it’s far more likely that you’ll need to commit to the long haul to achieve results.

5. The Law of Compounding

If you publish amazing, quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.

This sharing and discussing of your content opens new entry points for search engines like Google to find it in keyword searches. Those entry points could grow to hundreds or thousands of more potential ways for people to find you online.

6. The Law of Influence

Spend time finding the online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services and business. Connect with those people and work to build relationships with them.

If you get on their radar as an authoritative, interesting source of useful information, they might share your content with their own followers, which could put you and your business in front of a huge new audience.

7. The Law of Value

If you spend all your time on the social Web directly promoting your products and services, people will stop listening. You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversions and more on creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers. In time, those people will become a powerful catalyst for word-of-mouth marketing for your business.

8. The Law of Acknowledgment

You wouldn’t ignore someone who reaches out to you in person so don’t ignore them online. Building relationships is one of the most important parts of social media marketing success, so always acknowledge every person who reaches out to you.

9. The Law of Accessibility

Don’t publish your content and then disappear. Be available to your audience. That means you need to consistently publish content and participate in conversations. Followers online can be fickle and they won’t hesitate to replace you if you disappear for weeks or months.

10. The Law of Reciprocity

You can’t expect others to share your content and talk about you if you don’t do the same for them. So, a portion of the time you spend on social media should be focused on sharing and talking about content published by others.

SEO 101: EIGHT SIMPLE WAYS TO OPTIMISE YOUR BLOG POSTS FOR SEARCH

You don’t have to be an SEO expert to optimise your content in just a few steps and improve your page’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).

SEO might sound complicated for beginners, but in fact, everyone can start applying a few basic tips that will affect a post’s performance and eventually its ranking.

1. Wordpress

Wordpress can be very helpful for easy SEO optimisation, as it allows everyone to perform a series of quick steps to help search engines find your content. There are many plugins that can guide you with the optimisation of your content, while they can also measure your post’s performance in terms of SEO success.

• How often do you use your focus keywords?
• Does your content pass the readability test?
• Should you use more headings?

‘All in One SEO pack’, ‘SEO by SQUIRRLY’, and ‘Yoast SEO’ are among the most popular SEO plugins, but you can find numerous others to suit your needs and simplify the process of optimisation.

From page analysis to a sitemap generator, Wordpress plugins can help you understand how SEO works, which may eventually help you improve your content to make it more appealing, both for your audience, but also for search engines.

2. Headline and title tags

A post’s headline is the user’s first impression on your content and this will affect whether the exposure will lead to an actual click, or not.

The title tag should be an accurate description of your content aiming to capture the audience’s attention, while helping search engines discover your content with the right optimisation.

Title tag was always an important part of on-page SEO optimisation, but Google’s semantic search has changed the rules of the game, encouraging people to think more of their audience and less of the keywords.

It’s not necessary anymore to use a specific keyword in your title tag, although it may be useful if you manage to use it in context, helping users understand more of the topic you’ll be covering.

According to a research by Backlinko, keyword-optimised title tags may still be associated with better ranking, but not in the same way that it mattered in the past.

Thus, it is important that every title is:

• Concise (not more than 60 characters)
• Relevant (inform the readers on what the post is about)
• Enhancing readability (Is your title appealing to readers? What will make them click?)
• Having an emotional impact ( The best titles manage to build emotional triggers, favouring their virality. It’s the emotional impact that is instantly built in the reader’s mind, making the click easier, mostly triggered by the provoked emotion)
• Keyword-optimised (providing that it’s used in context)

A compelling title manages to attract both the readers and the search engines in less than 60 characters, which is more challenging than it seems, but it may also lead to an increased traffic.


If you want to improve the craft of coming up with great headlines, then CoSchedule may help with its Headline Analyzer, which allows you to understand what makes an effective headline both for humans and search engines, ranking your titles and measuring it depending on its length and the type of words that you used.

3. Formatting
Good formatting is appreciated both by humans and search engines, as it makes the content more appealing.

Headings

Headings help the text’s readability by dividing it into smaller blocks, with <h1> serving as the part that needs to be highlighted more than the rest and <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6> creating an additional layer of importance compared to the normal paragraph text.

Each heading has a different size, in order to be easily distinguished, creating a hierarchical structure that increases the chances of users spending more time reading (and skipping to relevant) content.

Headings should follow the guidelines of the titles, be appealing and descriptive, and separate long blocks of content by creating a visual appeal.

In terms of SEO optimisation, headings help search engines spot the most important parts of your content and discover the topic that you’re writing about.

In fact, according to Searchmetrics, pages tend to use more H1 tags since 2014, while the presence of H1 and H2 tags also aid the user experience.

URL

URLs should be simple and clear both for humans and search engines. Although search engines are able to crawl even the most complex URL, it is still preferable to keep the URL simple, useful and relevant.

How URL length affects ranking position

As the URL is displayed in the SERPs along with the title and the meta description, it needs to convey the necessary information for your content, while its length may encourage the sharing of the content.

There are many options in Wordpress on how to create an automatic URL, but once again, simplicity is preferred, as a shorter URL may help readers (and search engines) discover your post’s actual content.

Meta description

Meta descriptions provide a summary of the page’s content to search engines and should provide a concise and relevant description of your post, serving as a preview for readers, helping them decide whether they are going to visit the page or not.

According to Survey Monkey, 43.2% of people click on a result based on its meta description, which means that you need to use wisely the 160 characters maximum length.

A meta description should follow the rules of your actual content, be descriptive and well written, without overusing keywords for the sake of search engine optimisation. Even if you include your targeted keyword, make sure it is provided in context, always thinking of your audience first.

How often is keyword used in description?

Semantic search has affected the impact of keywords in the description, but this doesn’t mean that they are still not used. It was back in 2009 when Google announced that meta descriptions and meta keywords don’t contribute to its ranking algorithms for search, but we still need to remember their importance as part of the preview snippet in SERPS, which is another case of putting the audience first when optimising.

4. Linking

Links were always important for SEO optimisation, but this led to many manipulative techniques in the past. Search engines have moved to the age of semantic context, which means that links may still be significant, but in a more relevant and useful way.

Internal links can enhance the user experience, as they help the audience navigate through your own site, in order to read further relevant posts. Any well-written link that is useful aims to allow a reader to continue its navigation through the site, boosting the content’s authority by linking a series of quality posts.

This also affects the crawlability of your content, as search engines perceive your posts as informative and relevant.

External linking was used cautiously in many occasions, out of fear that such a link only favours the linked source and not your own content, but this is not the case.

By adding links to external sources that are relevant to your content you are boosting your own authority, helping search engines understand your niche topic and reward you for your linking that aims to add value to your own post.

You don’t have to link to many external sites, rather the most important ones that are considered to be:

• popular
• trustworthy
• relevant

External linking helps search engines learn more about your content, improving your credibility and even your ranking.

Backlinks were always an integral part of SEO optimisation, as they serve as the proof that your content is appreciated by others, improving your authority to a particular field.

Although Google is not keen on “unnatural” linking that serves no particular purpose, a backlink of high quality is always welcome, as it contributes both to your site’s ranking factors, but also to your content’s authority.Backlinks with keyword in anchor text saw a drop in usage recently

During the past year we’ve seen a decrease of backlinks using a keyword to the anchor text and this is related once again to Google’s attempt to combat any kind of manipulative link with no context.

Any backlink from a highly trusted source may eventually lead to an increase of traffic and a boost in the search ranking factors and the best way to achieve it is to keep producing quality and informative content that will offer a unique perspective in its relevant field.

5. Images

Images do not just enhance the reading experience for your audience, but they are also important in your SEO optimisation.

As users can find your images directly through Google’s Image Search, it’s important to pay attention to their naming, in order to increase the chances of bringing traffic back to your site or boost your site’s ranking.

Image optimisation for SEO is simple, but it’s sometimes overlooked as a boring task. However, it’s great when a user discovers your content through image search, associating an image with your content and that’s why you should tart spending a few minutes to optimise your images from now on.

As well as the filename, which serves as the image’s title, it is also crucial to add “alt” text, which is essentially the description of your image. This section is about providing alternative text for your image, which will be displayed to a user’s browser if there is a problem with the actual image.

A Wodpress window showcasing the fields that enhance image optimization

As search engines can only read and not ‘see’ an image, the alt text should be indicative of your file, trying to describe it in the best possible way.

Your description should be clear and concise and if you still need help with finding the right text to describe your image, keep in mind that alt text is used by screen reader software to describe an image to people with visual impairments.

6. How metrics affect SEO

It’s always useful to analyse the performance of your posts, with metrics and conversions helping you understand your content at a deeper level.

However, there is an indication that metrics such as the bounce rate and the SERP click-through-rate affect ranking, which makes their analysis even more important.

SEO optimisation can be improved with the analysis of your data

According to Backlinko, websites with low average bounce rate are ranking higher on the search results and despite the uncertainty regarding the direct correlation between these two, it still reminds us that engaging content offers numerous benefits for a site.

It’s the time spent on site along with the bounce rate that can lead to very interesting insights for your content, in order to discover what your audience likes and what needs to be improved.

Furthermore, the click-through rate has an even closer relationship with SEO, as it affects the content’s ranking position on SERPs, using the number of clicks as an indication of a content’s popularity, as this validation comes directly from your readers.

7. Readability over keyword-stuffing

Keywords may be among the most commonly used words along with SEO, but in 2016, it’s more important to focus on the quality of the content rather than the target keyword.

It’s the readability that will affect your search rankings more than the right use of a keyword, as the first one may improve the user experience, the level of engagement and the time spent on the site, while the use of keywords without a content of high quality simply looks like an automatic text, without taking into consideration the human factor.

Search engines value the human factor and thus, the level of readability can be improved with:

• Easy-to-read text
• Short sentences
• Short paragraphs
• Organised structure
• In-depth knowledge of the topic
• Focus on humans, not search engines

You can measure the readability of your content with Wordpress plugins such as Yoast SEO and FD Word Statistics, while there are also many online tools, including Readability-Score and the Readability Test Tool.

Except for the goal of readability, you still need to add relevant keywords to your text, as they are still affecting the search ranking factors, provided that they are added naturally as part of your text, adding value and context to it.

8. Search engines love new content

Everyone loves fresh content, including search engines. By regularly creating new content you are increasing the chances to become an authority in your field, which may favour your ranking and boost your traffic.

You don’t have to create new content daily, but consistency and relevance will be highly appreciated, both by your audience and the search engines.

As you keep adding more valuable content, visitors will keep coming back, increasing the engagement while building your credibility.

Never sacrifice quality over quantity though, as this won’t be appreciated neither by readers, nor by search engines. 

A CHECKLIST FOR HOW DO I MAKE SURE MY SITE IS MOBILE FRIENDLY?

As we reported in our SEM news round-up on Friday, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller confirmed that the latest wave of changes to Google’s mobile-friendly ranking signal has now finished rolling out.

Ever since the initial ‘Mobilegeddon’ update which debuted on 21st April 2015, mobile-friendliness has been a significant ranking factor in Google search results. In its blog post foreshadowing the algorithm changes two months before, Google said it wanted users to “find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimised for their [mobile] devices”.

Google has affirmed and re-affirmed its commitment to mobile-friendliness over the years, implementing a ‘mobile friendly’ label to distinguish websites that are adapted for mobile, making changes to the mobile search results page including user-friendly URLs and expanded sitelinks, and launching Accelerated Mobile Pages to provide an ultra-fast mobile experience.

Now, with this latest update, Google has strengthened its mobile-friendly ranking signal even further, making it all the more important for webmasters to have a site which meets Google’s standards.

With that in mind, how can you make sure that your site comes up to scratch? We’ve put together a handy checklist of things you should do (or not do) in order to get the cleanest bill of mobile health possible from Google.

Don’t use Flash

Most mobile browsers can’t render Flash content, so one clear-cut rule of thumb in creating a mobile-friendly site is: don’t use Flash. Google’s mobile usability reportsassily recommends that you use “modern web technologies” to display your page content, animations and navigation instead. Ouch!

Make sure your viewport is set properly

A viewport is a type of meta tag that gives the browser instructions on how to adjust the page dimensions and scaling to different device widths. This should appear in the head of your webpage.

If there is no viewport tag, mobile browsers will default to rendering the page at the width of a desktop screen. Google has a tutorial on how to set the viewport for your page and make sure it’s accessible.

What not to do: set your viewport to a fixed width. Some developers will define the viewport to a fixed pixel width to suit common mobile screen sizes, but this still won’t be suitable for every kind of device, and so Google doesn’t judge it to be mobile-friendly.

If you follow the instructions in Google’s tutorial and use the viewport value width=device-width, this will allow your page to match the width of whatever device your visitors are using.

Adding the attribute initial-scale=1 will also allow your page to fill the screen whether the device is portrait or landscape, and so take advantage of the full width of the screen.

Finally, make sure that your content is sized to the viewport. If you set absolute CSS widths for page elements like images and videos, this can cause a problem for devices that are narrower than the width you’ve specified. You can get around this by using relative width values, such as width: 100%, in your CSS.

Use large font

If you’ve configured your viewport properly, font sizes will be scaled according to the user’s device, but Google makes some additional recommendations for font on top of that.

It recommends using a base font size of 16 pixels, with any other font sizes (such as small and large) defined relative to that baseline. The vertical space between lines should be set at 1.2em.

Try to also avoid using too many different fonts and font sizes, which leads to messy and complicated page layouts.

Space out links and buttons

Links and buttons, also called “tap targets” by Google, are harder to press on a mobile device than on a desktop browser, because fingers are wider and generally less accurate than a mouse cursor.

Google will penalise any pages where the tap targets are too small and close together to press accurately.

The average adult finger pad is about 10mm wide, so Google recommends a minimum tap target size of about 7mm, or 48 pixels wide – at least for the most important tap targets, like frequently used buttons, navigational links, search bars and form fields.

Less frequently used targets can be smaller, but should still be spaced far enough apart that a user trying to press one won’t accidentally hit another target instead. The recommended space around smaller tap targets is at least 5mm.

Don’t use full-screen pop-ups

Large or full-screen pop-ups and overlays, also called “interstitials”, such as a mailing list sign-up form or app promotion, can be extra disruptive on a mobile device.

While a big, attention-grabbing pop-up might seem like a good idea from a business’ point of view, Google recognises that these interfere with the experience of browsing a site on mobile and will penalise sites that use them.

Instead of a full-screen pop-up, Google recommends using a banner, or implementing app indexing, which will allow content from within your app to appear in search results, making it a very effective method of promotion.

Run a check with Google’s tools

The easiest way to double-check whether your site is hitting all of the right targets for mobile-friendliness is to use the tools Google has provided to run a check.

Google’s Search Console, formerly known as Webmaster Tools, has a ‘mobile usability’ section that will diagnose any lingering issues with your site, usually one of the errors listed above.

You can also check the mobile health of individual webpages by pasting the URL into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. And Google Developers has a section listing common mistakes made when designing for mobile, which has some additional detail on things like unplayable content, faulty redirects and 404s and how to fix them.

The need for speed

In its recommendations for working with a developer to build a mobile-friendly site (if you aren’t able to make the necessary changes to their website yourself), Google suggests asking your developer to “make a commitment to speed”.

While Google doesn’t include a slow loading speed as one of its ‘must correct’ mobile friendliness issues, we know that speed is a ranking factor, and statistics show that slow loading speed can frequently cause users to abandon web pages.

So if you want to provide the best user experience and also give your mobile-friendly site the best chance of a higher ranking, consider speeding it up as much as possible.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights has a ‘mobile’ tab which will give your page a mobile speed rating out of 100, with advice on how to fix the elements that might be slowing it down.

It will also give your mobile page a user experience ranking out of 100, and flag up any mobile-friendliness issues in the same way as Google’s other tools.

There’s also Accelerated Mobile Pages, Google’s ultra-fast mobile web pages which run on a reinvented version of HTML. Building an AMP version of your site for mobile is another way to be sure it’s fast and mobile-friendly, though many SEOs are still holding back on implementing AMP for a number of reasons. It’s an option, but not a necessity for having a fast and Google-friendly mobile site.

DISCOVER HOW UX CAN BLEND WITH SEO TO IMPROVE A SITE'S PERFORMANCE

For many years there has been a debate on whether UX and SEO can really go hand in hand, but this is not the case anymore. Today we’re examining how UX and SEO can make the perfect match.

There’s no need to question nowadays the need to blend UX with SEO when building a website, as none of these two can stand on its own.

User Experience (UX) focuses on target groups of people and usually bases decisions on their design preferences, as well as the industry’s trends, while SEO tends to focus more on the actual site and its data, in order to increase the content’s visibility in search engines.

However, there is a spot that these two meet…

Google made it very clear in its Webmaster Guidelines that even in SEO optimisation, users should be the centre of attention:

Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.

And this is only a reminder on why SEO cannot work in isolation from other factors that affect a site’s performance, especially when the focus of the old days on keyword-stuffed topics is long gone.

Here are five points that remind us how UX can blend with SEO to improve a site’s performance:

1. Creating content for the user

Both UX and SEO should focus on the user and despite the older perception that SEO’s effectiveness depends on keyword and page optimisation, Google keeps reminding us to also think of the users when creating content.

It’s the human element that both users and search engines appreciate, as it indicates that the main goal is to satisfy the user, rather than the engine, although the latter will also favour the specific page in the ranking.

Whether it’s design or optimisation, the emphasis on the users’ needs help a page improve its performance and the audience will reward this effort with an increased time spent on the site.

2. Readability

Content should aim at relevance, quality and engagement, in order to become appealing and thus, convince the users to spend more time on it.

UX can enhance the appeal and the readability of a page and this may boost SEO, as the quality of the content is favouring a site’s crawlability from search engines.

Readability in SEO is the optimisation of the content in order to be clear, relevant, and informative, covering a topic as much as possible, in order to increase the page’s authority for search engines.

What’s more, keywords and on-page optimisation (even with the simplest steps) favour a post’s readability, providing that they are properly applied to enhance the browsing (and crawling) experience.

There’s no need to focus on target keywords anymore to increase the page’s ranking on SERPs, especially if it affects the quality of the content and its readability, as neither search engines, nor users will appreciate it.

Readability for UX is all about pleasing the users that access a page, ensuring that their first impressions will be positive.

A clear structure and a functional page, which works for all devices and browsers, contribute to an improved user experience and increase the chances of creating an engaged audience.

It’s the concise, legible, functional and properly formatted content that defines readability both for SEO and UX, with the combination of the two making a great match that users will enjoy.

3. Visual appeal

Visual content may contribute to the appeal of a page and both UX and SEO focus on its optimisation.

As human beings process visual elements faster than written information, images, videos and any other types of visual content are becoming important to the user experience.

In terms of SEO, visual content can be optimised to help search engines discover it and provide another way of leading traffic to your page through the rise of visual search engines.

User experience understands the importance of including visual content to a page, in order to increase its effectiveness, although it is very important to maintain the right balance, as visual content should not replace the actual text.

Moreover, both SEO and UX advocates agree that large images may affect the browsing experience, as they may disrupt the layout of a page and increase its load time.

Thus, always optimise your visual content, while keeping in mind the different devices, favouring both the desktop and the mobile experience.

4. Usability

It’s not just the design, but also the functionality of a page that affects the user experience.

An easy navigation allows users to further explore a page and and a proper menu functionality, internal link structure and clear navigation labels contribute to the time the users spend on a page and most importantly, they affect whether they will find what they’re looking for, which was the reason they initially clicked on the page.

What’s more, sitemaps are useful both for users and search engines, as they help the indexing, the navigation and the crawling of a site, which both SEO and UX want.

SEO and UX also agree on the importance of maintaining the right page speed, ensuring that heavy images, ads and faulty functionality won’t affect the time it takes to load a page. As users are becoming impatient with the loading speed of a site, it is critical to measure and improve the page speed, in order to keep the bounce rate as low as possible.

It is also important to test a page’s performance in all the browsers and the devices, aiming for a seamless experience for each user, with an additional focus on mobile users that keep increasing.

Furthermore, accessibility is also significant, both for SEO and UX, and it can be enhanced by ensuring that all pages are useful for readers with visual impairments, for example, who use screen readers to navigate a page.

Is your content descriptive? Is the navigation checked? Are your images captioned?

5. Retain users

UX aims to provide the site experience that helps users browse and find relevant and informative content and the right navigation pattern can guide them to the next steps in an easy and simple way that seems effortless to them.

Navigation and user paths may ensure that you retain users on your site, and by the time this is achieved, it’s time to think about conversion.

Both SEO and UX should have the idea of conversion in mind, either by turning visitors into loyal users, by encouraging them to subscribe to an email newsletter, or by turning them into clients.

Don’t be afraid to create calls to action that will help the users know what you expect from them. After all, users prefer to have clear guidance, rather than being exposed to multiple options that may paralyse them.

You don’t have to create content by simply having the idea of conversion in mind, but still, it’s the ultimate goal to understand what your audience wants and blend a great browsing experience with your business goals.

How UX and SEO optimisation may enhance a site’s performance

It’s not necessarily complicated to blend SEO and UX to improve a site’s performance, and it’s even more important to understand why these two cannot work independently anymore, at least not with the same effectiveness.

It’s SEO that may lead traffic to the site and help it reach a higher position on SERPs, but it’s UX that will determine whether the traffic can be maintained and converted into the set goals.

Thus, every site trying to improve its performance through UX and SEO should offer:

• Quality, informative, and relevant content
• Easy to use structure and simple and effective navigation
• Optimisation of text and images to please both users and search engines
• Appealing design that focuses on accessibility
• Clear call-to-action, both around the users’ next clicks, but also around the desired conversion