What was the updated Google algorithm for mobile?

The mobile update was launched on April 21, 2015 by Google and targeted sites that were not mobile-friendly. Unlike most other updates, marketers and site owners had a warning several weeks in advance that the update was going to take place, giving them the opportunity to make sure their site was compliant before the update went live.

Under the new mobile update, sites that are not mobile-friendly will have their rankings penalized. This ensures that mobile users receive results that will work well with their devices, improving the user experience.

Complete Your Mobile SEO Strategy

Why was the mobile update important?

The mobile update was in response to the growing prevalence of mobile in the lives of users. The year 2015 actually also saw the number of searches on mobile pass the number of searches on desktop. Customers are also increasingly using mobile for everything from searches to shopping-- mobile is now an estimated 30 percent of all U.S. e-commerce.

How do I avoid a mobile-update penalty?

The key to avoiding a mobile-update penalty is ensuring that your site complies with Google’s guidelines for mobile sites. You can test how mobile-friendly your site is by using Google’s mobile-friendly test, which will tell you if you have a compliant design.

In general, these are the points you need to cover in a mobile website:

1. Have a mobile-friendly layout. This can be achieved with either a responsive design website, which will automatically configure itself to fit the size of the device it is on, or it can be done with designated mobile website.
2. Make sure that all of the videos on your site are compatible with mobile devices.
3. If you are using a designated mobile site, make sure that you do not have any faulty redirects and that every page on your desktop site corresponds with a mobile page.
4. Make sure your pages do not appear as 404s for users on mobile
5. Do not use interstitials or overlays that cover portions of the intended content, as they can be very challenging to get rid of on mobile devices.
6. If you use a mobile version of your website, make sure that links on the pages link to other pages of the mobile site
7. Make sure the content is readable and usable for mobile users. This means not using a small font size and making sure any touch buttons are spaced far apart and easy to use with fingers.
8. Think about the purpose of your visitor on mobile and design the page for their use. If your visitors often use mobile to look up your phone number or address, make this information easy for people to find on the front page.

Creating a mobile-friendly website is critical in the age of the mobile update, but it is a valuable part of any marketing strategy. It improves your ability to engage with users on-the-go. With an increasing number of visitors using mobile devices for search and shopping, sites that are hard to use on mobile can lose you customers regardless of the update. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly today.

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What is the Google Penguin update?

Google Penguin update was designed to reduce ‘web spam’ and encourage high-quality content for users. Since its initial release in April 2012, Google Penguin has released several updates. With each Google Penguin update, the algorithm once again scans websites for potential violations, opening up the possibility that brands might be penalized.

On January 10, 2016, Google released the latest Google Penguin update, which made Penguin run in real time. This means you can recover almost immediately once you make the corrections necessary to your page.

How does Google Penguin work?

You can generally tell if your page has been hit by a Penguin penalty by looking at Google Webmaster Tools and monitoring your traffic. Since Penguin is a page-specific update, you will notice a sharp drop for specific keywords. Google offered this traffic report as an example of a page hit by Penguin.

How do I avoid a Penguin update penalty?

The Penguin penalty largely focuses on identifying poor-quality websites based upon backlinks. Google’s algorithm works on the assumption that quality sites link to other quality sites while poor sites generally link to other poor sites. In other words, when you have websites that Google already trusts linking to you, it helps to boost your rankings. On the other hand, if you are linking to spam sites, then there is a good chance that the algorithm will not trust you either.

Google particularly wanted to penalize the sites that artificially boosted their rankings by buying links from link farms or other spam sites.

The best way to avoid a Penguin update penalty is to focus on cultivating positive backlinks. You can do this by writing content that people believe will help their users. When a site links to you, they are entrusting you with their visitors, so to get high-quality sites to provide you with backlinks, you need to be producing similar quality content.

You also want to regularly review your backlink profile. Even though there is still disagreement about the ability of spam sites to lower your quality rating by linking to your site, the possibility remains. Use Google’s disavow tool to let the search engine know that you are not interested in these links to make sure you do not incur any penalties.

To review, here is how to avoid a Google Penguin update penalty:

1. Get rid of any backlinks you have purchased or otherwise illicitly gained
2. Focus on creating high-quality content and distributing it to attract the desired backlinks
3. Regularly monitor your backlink profile to quickly find undesirable links
4. Disavow any poor-quality links to protect your site’s reputation

Although Google Penguin update can look intimidating, particularly if you get hit by the penalty and see your traffic drop drastically. Taking the necessary steps to correct the problem, however, can help you quickly recover, particularly since the update is now run in real time.

Following Google, three of the most important search engines globally are:

1. Naver
2. Baidu
3. Yandex

Marketers need to become familiar with these engines if they want to successfully market to customers in those world regions where local prefered search engines have a significant market share. 

Why do I need to understand world search engines?

As brands increasingly go overseas and enter new markets, it is important to realize that Google is not the only dominant search engine in the world. Although Google is available in most countries, there are local, preferred search engines in many regions. If brands want to successfully market to customers in these areas, they will need to become familiar with these world search engines. 

Image source: Technode.com

What is Naver?

Naver is the number one search engine in South Korea, far outpacing Google locally. Naver used to be powered by Yahoo’s Overture System, but it then built and launched its own keyword advertising system. It is now a leading search engine that has a reputation for innovation. Anyone who wants to expand into South Korea will need to be familiar with this search engine.

Naver was built around the Korean language and culture. US-based sites should develop a version of their website catering to this culture, rather than just translating their text. Naver also draws heavily from user-generated content in their Knowledge IN area as well as from the social community Cafe. Brands that want to succeed in Korea should focus on building their presence in these areas.

What is Baidu?

Baidu is the number one search engine in China and the fifth most popular site in the world. There have been some controversies with Baidu in the past, including discussions about intellectual property. Regardless, it is important for those expanding into the Chinese region to familiarize themselves with this search engine.

Baidu punishes harshly for duplicate content, even more so that other major search engines. It also has a strong preference for simplified Chinese characters over traditional characters or romanized words. Baidu also strongly ranks content based on quality, so working with a native Chinese speaker will be necessary for most brands to avoid word-usage errors.

It is also important to note that Baidu is not just a search engine. It also offers a range of services, including Baidu Encyclopedia, Baidu Government Information Search and Baidu Games.

What is Yandex?

Yandex is the largest search engine in Russia and the surrounding region. It offers many similar services as Google, but there are also some key differences. For example, Yandex does not index pages as fast, forcing brands to focus more on long-term success with this search engine, rather than immediate results.

On the other hand, like Google, Yandex has a strong emphasis on quality content, quality linking and keyword relevance.

Being familiar with the other world search engines can help brands that want to expand their offerings overseas. While Google has a firm hold on search in the United States, in some other countries native search engines take priority.

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Why is SEO important during a site redesign?

One survey found that 94 percent of subjects reported design elements when discussing reasons why they did not trust a particular website. To build trust with your customers, you need to make sure that your design communicates quality and trust to your customers.

At the same time, our own research at BrightEdge has found that 51 percent of traffic to websites arrives through organic search. That means SEO is the main tool for getting visitors on your page so that you have the opportunity to build that important trust with them.

When you are redesigning your site, you have an excellent opportunity to add SEO elements throughout your site to ensure that your new-and-improved web property is attractive to search engines and customers alike.

Does changing website design affect SEO?

Yes, and it can be very negative for your website if a redesign isn't properly handled. SEO needs to be a part of the site redesign process from the beginning. Navigation, URLs, folders and the layout of the site should all be optimized.

• Name URLs using keywords
• Make navigation, folders and layout all intuitive and common sense
• Include meta descriptions on all web pages
• Markup your pages with schema to ensure maximum visibility to the search engines

How do I build SEO for my website?

As you add content to the site, you will need to make sure that you are still placing the needs of the user first. This means using data to research topics and keywords that will guide your content. It also means including high-quality images with keyword-centric alt text. This alt text tells the search engine what the image is and the value it has to offer users.

What do I need to consider after I finish my redesign?

SEO and site redesign are living things-- they are continually growing, maturing and changing. Although you have finished this site redesign, you need to be ready to come back to the project in the future as technology and trends change the best ways to meet the needs of customers.

To see how your current site is performing, you should always be monitoring traffic and bounce rates as well as customers’ movements around the site. Compare behavior before and after the redesign to see if your efforts have improved the customer experience.

A site redesign is a great time to really incorporate SEO elements into the web property to maximize your exposure to customers. Keep these SEO concepts in mind as you begin your project and remember to always focus your efforts on making things easier and more intuitive for the customer.

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What is website optimization?

Also called SEO optimization, website optimization is a set of activities used to make a website rank well in organic search. Website optimization includes on-page and off-page optimization and other activities.

Why is website optimization important?

It is easy to put off the important task of optimizing an existing website, thinking that it will just take too much work. While optimization requires effort, the return you will get for making your website fully compliant with Google best practices cannot be underestimated. Remember that 51 percent of your site’s traffic comes from organic search, so making sure you maximize your visibility on the SERPs can have a big impact on your revenue and growth.

How do I optimize my website?

1. Start with a site SEO audit. This will help you find any technical errors or oversights that could be hindering your rankings.
2. Organize your folders and your site map. Make sure that navigation is intuitive and that your sitemap has been uploaded to Google Webmaster Tools.
3. Outline your buyer personas and align them with their buyer’s journeys.
4. Do data-led keyword research to learn about the topics and keywords that matter most to these customers at various points in their buyer's journey.
5. Map out your content to see how well you are aligned with your buyer personas and their journeys.
6. Modify and optimize content to match the topics and keywords needed to communicate with your customers. Make sure each piece of content adds value for people searching for that topic.
7. Create more content to fill in any gaps that might be left.

How long does it take for SEO to work?

Once you have optimized your site, the next logical step will be determining if your efforts were successful. The only way to know this is through metrics. Examine measurements such as:

1. Your traffic rates
2. User behavior on site
3. Bounce rates
4. Leads
5. Conversion rates

Compare these metrics to the data that you pulled from your site before you completed the optimization process. Look at areas where you have improved and see where you might still need to do some work.

Site optimization is an ongoing process that concerns itself with making your site as user-friendly and valuable as possible. It is not about conforming to an algorithm, it is about creating a user experience that people will regard as useful and leave them wanting to return to your site time and again, and thus building a relationship that leads to conversion.

Related materials

• SEO Needs Better PR: 5 Steps to Elevate SEO in Your Organization
• Latest Google SERP Layout Changes
• BrightEdge platform for ultimate website optimization

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The past two decades have seen an explosive change in the buyer’s journey. Before most people started using the Internet, customers interacted with brands largely on the company’s terms. Consumers had to wait for businesses to reach out to them in their buyer journey with information about the latest products. There were clear touchpoints that marketers and salespeople could identify to keep the customer engaged and moving forward during the modern buyer's journey.

For the modern buyer, this has all changed. Now 67 percent of the journey takes place online, where the customer is in control. They expect to receive personalized care and they want to receive the information desired on their schedule. This new journey is largely in the hands of the customers through the first few stages. It is the job of the brand to supply the information and be ready to meet the customer where they are, whether that is online or in store.

What are the stages of the buying process?

Awareness stage: The modern buyer’s journey begins with the awareness stage, when customers first begin to realize that they have a problem. They are interested in researching possible solutions to their pain points. At this stage in the buyer’s journey, they are open to many different brands and products. These customers are researching online, visiting social media pages and perhaps clicking on paid ads.

Consideration and evaluation stage: This type of buyer is still early in their buyer journey and not too confined in their decisions. They use search, social, and paid ads to learn more about the companies and products. Their queries will likely reflect their existing research, such as asking questions about products and brands.

Purchase stage: Now the customer has narrowed down their possibilities to just a brand or two. Their searches reflect their final decision making, and often these last searches include keywords comparing one brand to another. Customers might be meeting with sales people or emailing back and forth during this part of the buyer's journey.

Post-purchase stage: In this stage, the brand focuses on turning this first-time customer into a returning one. Salespeople might continue to contact the customer to see how well the product or service is working for them and to help them troubleshoot any struggles. Customer searches might focus on answers to common questions or learning how to maximize usage of the product.

How do I use the buyer’s journey in marketing?

1. Map the buyer’s journey to your customer personas to understand the path your customers take to convert to your brand.
2. Use the information to identify the types of topics, keywords and content marketing customers want to see, and create the material needed to guide them along the buyer's journey.
3. Use the buyer journey to understand the best touchpoints to reach out to the customer and what customers need to convert.

The buyer’s journey offers valuable insight about how customers respond to brands and how companies can encourage people to move towards their purchase. Understanding how the journey influences buyer behavior can help you channel your journey maps efforts more effectively.

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What is a SERP?

SERP refers to a Search Engine Results Page, or the results that you see after typing a query into a search engine. The higher your website ranks on the SERP, the more attention and clicks your content will receive. A study run in 2014 found that 71.33 percent of searches had an organic click on page one of the SERP. Pages two and three only get about 5.59 percent of the clicks.

Within the first page, the first five results get 67.60 percent of all the clicks, while the results from six to ten only get 3.73 percent.

In other words, ranking within the first five results will have a tremendous impact on how many people pay attention to your site and how many click through to visit your page. The more traffic you receive, the more you will be able to increase your brand reach, your brand authority, your number of conversions and your revenue.

How can I improve my SERP?

1. Focus on the end-user. Google has made numerous changes to their algorithm over the past few years and they have all one trait in common: reduce the impact of spam and poor-quality websites and increase the rankings of the high-quality pages that actually answer the user’s question. Taking your eyes off the main goal of user satisfaction will make it easier for you to be penalized whenever Google updates their algorithm.
2. Understand what your users are looking for, not just what you want to write. Use topic and keyword research tools, like the BrightEdge Data Cube, to understand what people are looking to find.
3. Create content that meets the needs of the searcher while paying attention to depth and quality to ensure the content adds genuine value. Google looks at factors such as traffic and bounce rates when determining rank, so neglecting the value of your content will hurt you.
4. Use images that are properly labeled with Alt tags to make your material more engaging and bring in more clicks.
5. Distribute the content every way possible, from newsletters to social media, to expose people to your thought leadership and get it in front of those most likely to be intrigued by what you have to say.
6. Track your progress in terms of traffic, engagement, backlinks and position. Also examine your competitors to see what they are doing that you neglect so you can learn how to outrank them.

Creating a strong website and ranking on the SERPs will not happen overnight. You need to have the drive to go through the steps to raise your rank, but once the project is done, you will be able to reap the benefits of online marketing.

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What are the new marketing trends?

Those in the marketing industry have likely noticed that the silos that once separated different marketing teams are now crashing down. The rise of the hybrid marketer has begun, and it will likely not slow down any time soon.

Marketing departments have begun to evolve in this direction because of the growing importance of the user experience. Customers today are largely channel agnostic. They do not depend upon a single platform to communicate with brands and learn about their offerings. They might ask questions on social media, redeem coupons through email and make purchases on mobile. Creating a quality user experience requires everyone on the marketing team to work together to provide for these customers throughout their journey. Siloed teams and employees hinder this progress.

The importance of the user experience also extends through website development. Google wants to see sites that are user-friendly, and that is quickly rising as a critical ranking factor. Sites with errors, slow load times, excessive ads and other features that make them more frustrating for users have all been penalized through the different algorithm updates. Brands need to focus always on the customer first.

How do new marketing trends impact the industry?

Organizations today need to focus on finding marketers who can stretch across borders and help build campaigns that use more than one platform. Content marketers need to understand SEO, organic search needs to understand PPC, and social media needs to understand email. You want to find employees who can answer this need when growing your organization. Existing employees need to be offered trainings and learning opportunities to expand their skills.

You also need to take your marketing team back to the basics and rebuild your strategy to focus on the user experience. Everything from keyword selection to content development to distribution needs to be focused primarily on what customers will think and experience. It is only through this reworking that you will be able to grow your website rather than risk being penalized by a future Google update.

How do I prepare for the changes in marketing trends?

1. Send out guidelines ensuring that all future marketing employees demonstrate hybrid expertise and experience.
2. Hold workshops and training sessions to bring existing employees up-to-speed.
3. Create campaigns that force teams to work together and establish common goals.
4. Redraft the marketing development process to make sure that the user experience is always the primary goal of the marketing team.
5. Measure your marketing results throughout your campaigns to see how well customers are responding.
6. Adjust when necessary to maintain your focus on the user experience.

The content marketing industry continues to change. This has led to the breakdown of the silos separating teams and a renewed focus on the user experience rather than rankings. By staying current with these latest developments, brands can position themselves strongly for the continually maturing industry.

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Content, social, and search trifecta explains how content can get more successful if used with strong social promotion and solid SEO optimization.

How do content, social media, and search work together?

The basis of any quality online marketing campaign is content. Without this material, the campaign will not have the power it needs to move forward. This content then interacts with your search and social campaigns to raise your brand.

To begin the cycle, you must first create quality content that answers your audience’s needs and provides them with value. You then promote this content across your distribution channels, including social media. Since your content offers something to the readers, they will be more inclined to share it with others. The more your content is read and shared, the more your metrics - such as backlinks and traffic - will increase. This will help raise your rankings on search. As your piece is ranked higher on search, it will become more readily available for new people to find, enjoy and share on social media, thus beginning the cycle again.

As you monitor the types of material that your social network is inclined to share, you will also gain insights into the content you should produce to amplify the impact of this cycle.

How does SEO work in digital marketing?

1. Outline your buyer personas and map them to their buyer journeys. Use this information to create content that speaks to the needs of your customers and what they want to read.
2. Create a thorough distribution plan that places the content in front of the audience most inclined to appreciate it.
3. Monitor how much your content is shared on social media platforms as well as your resulting backlink profile and traffic rates. Use this information to make adjustments to future campaigns.

How can I measure my progress?

Once your marketing campaign has begun, you need to carefully monitor your progress to understand which aspects are performing best and which ones need to be altered moving forward.

• Examine the social signals on your pieces. See how well your audience is engaging with your work and which pieces are receiving the most attention.
• Monitor your traffic and engagement rates. See how well they correlate to your social signals to understand how social media is impacting your piece’s popularity.
• Track your content’s ranking to see how much your efforts are impacting your search results.
• Use your insights about the most successful pieces to guide your content development and distribution for the next pieces.

The content, social and search trifecta can be an excellent resource for boosting your brand’s content and increasing your brand reach. Understanding how these different elements can work together will help you drive your content marketing efforts forward.

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What is changing in the content marketing industry today?

There are two main drivers pushing the content marketing industry forward: customers and technology. As the buyer’s journey continues to shift even further into the control of the customers, people have begun to expect an even higher level of personalization. They want to do business with the brands that understand their individual needs. This desire for increased personalization is forcing companies to learn more about topics such as:

• Marketing automation
• Website personalization
• Data-driven content

These customers are also pushing brands towards mobile. They are using their smart devices for everything from research to purchasing, and brands are required to have their sites ready to meet these new demands.

As the brands and customers are becoming increasingly aware of these developments, the technology is in turn rising to the challenge and making it easier for brands to meet the needs of customers. Take the BrightEdge Data Cube, for example. We developed this technology to make it simple for brands to understand what exactly their customers wanted to read so that they could provide it for them. The Data Cube makes it possible for brands to access the latest analysis of keywords, search terms, rich media and content at lightning speed, making it easier than ever to create industry-leading, competitive strategies.

What causes changes in the content marketing industry?

As these changes have become more prevalent, we are beginning to see the growing popularity of content marketing automation software that helps brands send triggered emails to customers at precise moments in the buyer’s journey.

We are also seeing a drastic increase in cross-channel campaigns which understand that the journeys of customers are not always linear, and instead might jump from channel to channel.

Industry leading companies are also finding more ways to create personalized experiences-- adjusting content for SEO depending upon past visitor behavior, location, weather and other factors.

How can I prepare for the changes in content marketing?

1. Create in-depth personas that help you understand who you are marketing to and their interests.
2. Create ample content in a variety of formats that meets the needs of these customers throughout the buyer’s journey.
3. Determine personalization factors that might influence your offerings for a particular customer. If you are a clothes retailer, for example, you promote swim suits or umbrellas depending upon the weather.
4. Optimize your mobile pages and your mobile apps to attract customers on-the-go.
5. Invest in analytics. Content marketing in the future will be defined by analytics. It will guide your content production, the content you display to customers, how you track cross-channel purchases and how you create personalized experiences.

The content marketing industry continues to change at lightning speeds as customers and technology together help to push brands forward. To stay relevant, you need to understand where marketing is going and invest your time and energy making sure you are ready to serve the modern consumer. 

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