Andre Prudhomme

M Posted 10 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

Survey of over 20,000 URLs shows presence of Non-Mobile-Friendly on first 3 pages of Google US SERPs fading fast. Mobile algorithm change is the most wide-reaching since Secure Search.

In preparation for the April 21 mobile friendly algorithm update, BrightEdge’s data science team designed a number of experiments to assess the impact of Google’s algorithm change.

The first changes took place on the 21st and are continuing to roll out. Although it's impossible to determine when the rollout is complete, BrightEdge research shows that the updates have already significantly impacted the composition of mobile friendly search results pages. This algorithm change can affect 100% of websites.

Methodology

BrightEdge's Data Science team created a representative sample of 750 keywords and utilized BrightEdge's industry-leading mobile and daily- search tracking capabilities to monitor those keywords and their associated SERPs for changes. The 20,000+ URLs represented were then tested for mobile-friendliness using Google's Mobile-Friendliness tool to classify each URL as mobile friendly or not-mobile friendly. These two data sets were analyzed together with rank to assess the impact of the update.

How did this change impact the makeup of the first 3 pages of SERPs?

Our researchers determined that as of April 27 there was a 21% decrease in the number of non-mobile-friendly URLs on the first 3 pages of the SERPs compared to before the update. Versus the decrease seen on page 1 of 17.3%, a more pronounced impact was seen on the 2nd and 3rd SERP pages, which saw a 20.7% and 25.2% decrease, respectively, in non-mobile-friendly URLs. We hypothesize that because other ranking factors are weaker on the second and third pages of search results that the mobile-friendliness of a URL had a bigger impact on rank than it did on the first page.

How was the change rolled out in the SERPs?

Based on the daily tracking of the 20,000+ URL set, BrightEdge determined that the updates rolled out to "above-the-fold" results first and then to lower results positions later on. In other words, Non-Mobile-Friendly URLs in positions 1-5 moved more in the first two days and positions 6-30 moved more after that. A proportionately smaller amount of changes were seen on pages 2 and 3 on April 22 and 23 with greater changes occurring between April 23 and 27.

How does the Google Mobile-Friendly tag relate to the mobile user interface score from the PageSpeed insights tool?

You may be interested in how the Google Mobile-Friendly checking tool relates to the API-based Mobile Page Speed Insights tool mobile User Experience score.

BrightEdge plotted the 20,000 URLs’ unique Mobile User Experience score against their Friendly/Non-Friendly tag and found that a score of 80 made the result Friendly. In other words, keep working on your mobile optimizations until you achieve at least a score of 80 on this test, which will allow you to achieve the Mobile-Friendly tag.

BrightEdge customers were ready for the Google mobile algorithm update

Knowing how to optimize your site for mobile requires a deep understanding of the experience your site is creating today in order to make improvements for tomorrow.

Many brands are concerned about the impact of Google’s mobile friendly algorithm update.

Meanwhile, BrightEdge customers have had technology in place for two years to help them understand their rank and the competitive landscape across 605 local, global and mobile friendly search engines – equipping them to win in the competitive mobile battleground.

BrightEdge takes mobile friendly search solutions beyond the webmaster and to the marketer with a comprehensive offering that helps brands understand their organic search and content performance by device.

The BrightEdge Mobile solution allows users to track and measure mobile device performance by:

1. Tracking and reporting on keyword trends and rankings across device type (desktop, mobile, and tablet).
2. Measuring actual rank by device in Universal Search with Blended Rank (image, video, social, quick answers, and local 3-pack).
3. Providing visibility into local organic performance by keywords and keyword groups across cities.
4. Understanding mobile readiness by providing marketers with a complete Mobile Site Audit.
5. Optimizing and understand actual mobile performance based on a deep integration between BrightEdge and mobile analytics.
6. Understanding the competitive organic landscape and Share of Voice for a brand across mobile devices.

The entire BrightEdge platform is mobile aware. Whether you are looking at actual business performance, rank, or competitive performance – mobile is integrated throughout the BrightEdge platform.  

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 10 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

The value of social media stretches far beyond driving traffic towards a company website. Social media sites, such as LinkedIn and SlideShare, can help boost brand visibility for professionals and companies.

Although LinkedIn and SlideShare have always worked well together, in 2012 LinkedIn acquired the presentation site and has taken steps to make it even easier to move from one site to the other. SlideShare presentations easily integrate with LinkedIn profiles, making it simple for professionals to showcase their research, experience, and expertise. When you link the two accounts, you can add your SlideShare presentation to the summary portion of your LinkedIn profile with a single click.

The close relationship between LinkedIn and SlideShare means that they also have a significant impact on each other’s SEO. A well-constructed and optimized SlideShare presentation can increase visibility for the brand while also improving the SlideShare SEO for a connected LinkedIn profile and vice versa.

SlideShare SEO

SlideShare is one of the most popular sites in the world, with as many as 60 million unique monthly visitors. There are also more than 15 million uploads on the website. This has helped establish it as an authoritative site in the eyes of Google, and thus it regularly ranks highly on SERPs.

Google indexes the notes and transcripts on SlideShare, setting professionals up for success when they upload a presentation. The transcriptions and notes give you ample opportunity to include important keywords that can help draw people to your presentation and boost your visibility in two ways:

• SlideShare has an internal search function that people use to find presentations on the topics they are interested in researching -- increasing visibility for those already on the platform
• Google indexes the pages, using the keywords to display presentations for relevant queries -- increasing visibility for those researching a topic through the search engine

When you build a visually pleasing presentation that also uses well-placed keywords, you drastically boost the SlideShare SEO of your presentation and make it easy for people to find. It is also important to take advantage of SlideShare’s SEO-friendly options, such as employing tags and entering keyword centric titles and meta descriptions.

All of these features should follow keyword best practices of:

• using keywords that the intended audience is actually likely to search for
• avoiding using keywords excessively
• ensuring keywords flow naturally within the text

SEO on LinkedIn

SEO on LinkedIn makes it easier for people to find you based upon your experience and areas of expertise. As the largest professional networking site, LinkedIn has more than 300 million members and is used by B2B and B2B companies to do everything from finding jobs to finding new clients.

On LinkedIn, the key to SEO is ensuring that the entire profile has been completely filled out with an emphasis on keywords that are frequently used in your industry. You want to have a profile that is easy to understand and allows visitors to immediately see the qualities you bring to your industry. Professional, personal photos can also show both the LinkedIn algorithms and profile visitors that this person has invested time into the profile.

Embedded SlideShare presentations are excellent for boosting that confidence as well.

For tips on the best way to add SlideShare to a LinkedIn profile.

How SlideShare SEO and LinkedIn Work Together

SlideShare not only makes it simple for presentations to be embedded into LinkedIn profiles, they also encourage people to place live links within their presentations. Users can therefore link to their LinkedIn profiles, which helps to establish credible backlinks. As SlideShare presentations increase visibility thanks to the SEO efforts described above, the traffic to the LinkedIn profile will also increase.

SlideShare’s ability to drive traffic to LinkedIn can help improve the performance of the profile internally. LinkedIn has its own algorithms that decide the order to display search results and names. As a profile gains more traffic and expands its network, it can therefore increase its ranking within LinkedIn. This will then help SlideShare SEO efforts further.

When the presentation is embedded in a LinkedIn profile, it can also help the SlideShare site increase the number of followers. Viewers can engage with your presentation right on the LinkedIn profile, or they can follow the link back to your SlideShare page, where they can interact with your presentation and with your brand.

LinkedIn and SlideShare have both built themselves impressive reputations as services for professionals. While both platforms offer numerous benefits individually, when the two are combined, the SEO impact can be incredible. Those interested in taking advantage of this opportunity should focus on optimizing both their presentation and their profiles and then bringing them together to witness power of the bond.  

Ian Harris

M Posted 10 years 11 months ago

t 9 min read

At Search Laboratory our specialty is international search SEO, so we are exposed to many clients, large and small, at different stages of the process to improve their online presence in foreign markets. This invariably involves translating their website and their search marketing campaigns. Unless you have done this a few times before, you are unlikely to avoid the common SEO mistakes that litter your way. Get any of the key components of successful internationalization wrong and the consequences can be devastating. At best you may get limited or no search rankings; at worst you can waste money and damage your reputation.

1. Translating Keywords

These are still the biggest and most common SEO mistakes we see in international SEO and more often in global PPC campaigns. Translators are excellent at translating sentences faithfully. They study to Masters level to do this efficiently using electronic glossaries and memory tools. However, faithful translation does not make for an exhaustive and targeted keyword set. This article explains the problems in full but in summary:

• Translators tend to translate one keyword to the best keyword in their language. This means nuances of the same word in English will translate to the same word in their language, duplicating keywords.
• Keywords in the translator’s language that do not have an English equivalent will never be generated. These could be big-money keywords and you will never find them.
• PPC Ad Groups will contain a mix of head terms as translators attempt to introduce variety into their translations. This means ads are not tightly bound to keywords, quality score suffers and therefore the site struggles to compete.

Keyword research should be performed by native search marketing professionals. Speaking the language is not a qualification to be able to perform effective keyword research in a given language. You would never randomly select a person to perform your English keyword research who had no knowledge of search marketing just because they had a good command of English, so don’t do it for foreign languages. Foreign markets are as competitive as English now, so treat them the same.

2. Search Before Translation

If an SEO plan is integrated into the website translation process, a lot of time and money can be saved. Not doing this can leave a confusing mess, with SEO recommendations repeatedly being ‘undone’ by the translation process. An understanding of the translation workflow is essential. This changes from one translation vendor to another, but every quality translation company uses electronic glossaries and translation memory software (check that yours does – if not you will be paying too much and getting lower-quality results!).

Glossaries mean that you can inform the translators, in advance of the translation process, certain words that you would like translated in the same way every time. They were invented to help companies that want consistent use of certain marketing terminology. McDonald's, for example, wants ‘I’m lovin’ it’ to be translated in exactly the same way in every language. If that phrase appears anywhere in any of their literature or on any page online, they do not want a translator to make their own decision as to the best way to translate it. The phrase is built in to the McDonalds electronic translation glossary and every translator who translates for McDonald's will use this glossary to ensure consistency.

The great news is that SEO keyword pairs can also be pre-loaded into glossaries. Through mother-tongue keyword research, we can determine that the best term for ‘car rental’ in France is ‘location de voiture’ (and in British English is ‘car hire’!). These term pairs can be loaded into the glossary, so that when the web pages are translated the translators use the pre-determined terminology and the translated pages are automatically SEO’d. The mistake people make is to only consider SEO once the translation process is already complete.

3. Repeatedly Deleting SEO Recommendations

This is an incredibly common mistake:

1. The SEO company makes some recommendations on the French page to make it more search-engine friendly, changing the terminology slightly in the titles and descriptions, plus copy on the page to tie in with keyword research. These changes are implemented on the French version of the site.
2. The English version of that same page is changed due to a normal update.
3. A translation process kicks off and undoes all of the SEO recommendations in step 1 above.

The reason the SEO changes get undone is due to the way modern translation companies translate files using translation memory software. A bit like the glossaries, this software is excellent as it ensures consistency and saves time and money by electronically recognizing what has been translated before and highlighting new areas of text to the translators. However, ignoring the part this software plays in the translation workflow spells disaster for the SEO campaign. The solution is generally fairly straightforward but depends on the software and workflow in place. The SEO changes made must be reflected in the translation memory database or else the site will see a constant reversal of the optimizations.

4. Translation of Content Marketing

Content marketing forms the backbone of any SEO campaign. The process that we use in English here at Search Laboratory goes like this:

1. Come up with an idea g. Insightful piece on interior design for a client that sells rugs.
2. Plan and Research Interview some interior designers and prominent bloggers for specialist content.
3. Create Write the piece in an engaging way, including imagery.
4. Launch Put the piece online, informing the contributors and influencers as it happens.
5. Promote Follow up with social and other outreach and online activity to ensure the piece gets traction.

The process above gives the content the maximum chance of success in terms of views, engagement, sales, orders, bounce rate, and links. However just because it was a good idea in the UK or another market, does not mean a translated version hosted on your French site will be as well received.

Foreign markets are competitive, so the same level of care and the same processes need to be put in place to perform content marketing in these markets. To do so requires natives of that country to cover the processes above, including research, outreach, and ensuring the idea is transferable to that culture. It is a specialist job, so don’t do the hard work creating great content, only to let it then fail through poor execution.

5. Malformed Code

This should be the easiest part to get right, but do make sure your Hreflang tag is properly formed. It should look something like:

<link rel="alternate" href="www.mypage.com" hreflang="es-es" />

The code works by informing Google and other search bots specifically about the language of the page, and which page it should serve to which language in the query. This article describes the use of the tag in some detail and shows how to implement it.