Google Featured Snippets Showing “According To” Above Some Results
If you search Google for [top online marketers] Google will show you a featured snippet that is a bit different than any other featured snippet layout that I think I’ve ever seen.
First, it shows the source…
Google My Business Adds Videos For Some Businesses
Colan Nielsen reports via Local Search Forums that some businesses are now seeing the option to add videos to their Google My Business listings in the photos section…
Unite your team at SMX West! Save big on SEO & SEM training with group rates!
SMX West will be here before you know it! The largest gathering of search marketers on the West Coast is happening March 13-15 in San Jose, California. You’ll get three days of unparalleled SEO & SEM training — more than 60 thoughtfully sequenced, expert-led sessions and keynotes across…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
How to reverse-engineer your online advertising strategy
In PPC, we often talk about eye-catching ad copy — but columnist Jacob Baadsgaard suggests that, rather than focusing on different ways to catch your customer’s eye, advertisers should start by looking at what customers are already responding to.
The…
Serious CPU Vulnerabilities Named Meltdown and Spectre affecting PCs, mobile devices, and in the cloud
A password theft bug that was originally reported to affect Intel processors appears to have a wider reach.
read more
Serious CPU Vulnerabilities Named Meltdown and Spectre affecting PCs, mobile devices, and in the cloud
A password theft bug that was originally reported to affect Intel processors appears to have a wider reach.
read more
Holiday Retail Search Strategies 2017: What worked, what didn’t
Join our experts as we explore how search marketing strategies fared in the 2017 holiday season. We’ll share results of a year-end survey that reveals how marketers adjusted their search strategies in 2017 and take a look at overall results of the shopping season to see if those efforts paid off….
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Holiday shoppers increasingly turned to Google Maps in the countdown to Christmas Day
Columnist Andy Taylor from Merkle shares data on how consumers engaged with Maps and Local Inventory Ads over the holiday shopping period.
The post Holiday shoppers increasingly turned to Google Maps in the countdown to Christmas Day appeared first on…
Google Adds Insult to Injury as They Enter the Google Hall of Shame in 2018
In late October I reported of widespread name abuse in the jewelry industry near Toronto. I even flagged it on Google thinking that it was so very obvious that even with their collective spam fighting head stuck so deeply into a dark, posterior orifice they would be able to correctly identify it and remove it. … Continue reading Google Adds Insult to Injury as They Enter the Google Hall of Shame in 2018 →
Search marketing to enjoy ‘late-stage renaissance,’ according to analyst firm
Privacy, brand safety and other factors will make paid search even more attractive to marketers going forward, according to Forrester Research.
The post Search marketing to enjoy ‘late-stage renaissance,’ according to analyst firm appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Which is the best search engine for finding images?
Finding the perfect image can be crucial to grabbing the audience’s attention, livening up a page, or illustrating a point. To do that, you of course need a good search engine. The web has plenty of different options for image search, from general search engines with an image search function to dedicated search engines for browsing and indexing images. But which offer the best experience?
Seven quick steps to prepare for Google’s mobile-first index
As more and more searches are coming from mobile devices, Google is following suit to represent this shift and is creating a separate mobile index that will become the primary source for all search query results.
When will the mobile-first index roll out?
This is a difficult one. When asked back in March, Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, hinted at an early 2018 release, however, we have already had confirmation that a number of sites have been tested on the mobile index in the wild for a number of weeks dating back to October 2017.
More recently, Google’s John Mueller gave a signal of an impending wider rollout when he offered up clear instructions on how to discover if a site has moved to the mobile-first index.
The mobile-first index appears to be a controlled iterative switch for most sites so it would be wise to follow the advice and inspect your log files regularly.
What will change with Google’s mobile-first index?
Currently Google has indexed your website based on a desktop user’s experience, taking into account only the desktop version of a website and the content within. With a mobile-first index, Google will switch this around to index and rank your website based on the content and information architecture of your mobile site as a primary view.
While Google’s Gary Illyes stated at the SMX West conference in March, that they would fully launch the mobile-first index when results are “quality neutral”, some sites with substantially different mobile experiences to their desktop sites may inevitably find issues with rankings.
How can you prepare?
If your website is designed responsively (or with a dynamic serving setup) and your primary content and mark-up is the same across mobile and desktop devices, you are already in good shape but if you fall outside of those parameters, you should consider making some changes to your site.
Google has given some specific recommendations to webmasters looking to prepare for the change in their official announcement, but there are some basic steps you can take to get your website ready:
1. Make sure your site is mobile friendly
With more than half of all web traffic coming from a mobile device, you should already have this covered. You can check how Google rates your mobile site with their Mobile Friendliness testing tool.
2. Check your log files
In most instances, GoogleBot’s crawling is 75-80% desktop crawler and 20-25% mobile crawler. When a website moves over to the mobile first index, you would see that flip to about 75-80% GoogleBot mobile.
3. If you have a separate mobile website…
…make sure you claim the mobile version in Google Search Console to continue to get accurate data.
4. Ensure as much primary content is delivered to all users…
…regardless of device type
5. Verify that your mobile version is accessible to GoogleBot
You can do this with the robots.txt testing tool.
6. Look into mobile-first tech like AMP
With Google making its new mobile index its primary focus, expect to see an even greater emphasis on Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project to become even more important in the near future.
7. Make sure to serve structured mark-up for both the desktop and mobile version
If in doubt, you are able to verify your structured mark-up across desktop and mobile testing both versions with the Structured Data Testing Tool.
Econsultancy subscribers can download our SEO Best Practice Guide.
Seven quick steps to prepare for Google’s mobile-first index
As more and more searches are coming from mobile devices, Google is following suit to represent this shift and is creating a separate mobile index that will become the primary source for all search query results.
When will the mobile-first index roll out?
This is a difficult one. When asked back in March, Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, hinted at an early 2018 release, however, we have already had confirmation that a number of sites have been tested on the mobile index in the wild for a number of weeks dating back to October 2017.
More recently, Google’s John Mueller gave a signal of an impending wider rollout when he offered up clear instructions on how to discover if a site has moved to the mobile-first index.
The mobile-first index appears to be a controlled iterative switch for most sites so it would be wise to follow the advice and inspect your log files regularly.
What will change with Google’s mobile-first index?
Currently Google has indexed your website based on a desktop user’s experience, taking into account only the desktop version of a website and the content within. With a mobile-first index, Google will switch this around to index and rank your website based on the content and information architecture of your mobile site as a primary view.
While Google’s Gary Illyes stated at the SMX West conference in March, that they would fully launch the mobile-first index when results are “quality neutral”, some sites with substantially different mobile experiences to their desktop sites may inevitably find issues with rankings.
How can you prepare?
If your website is designed responsively (or with a dynamic serving setup) and your primary content and mark-up is the same across mobile and desktop devices, you are already in good shape but if you fall outside of those parameters, you should consider making some changes to your site.
Google has given some specific recommendations to webmasters looking to prepare for the change in their official announcement, but there are some basic steps you can take to get your website ready:
1. Make sure your site is mobile friendly
With more than half of all web traffic coming from a mobile device, you should already have this covered. You can check how Google rates your mobile site with their Mobile Friendliness testing tool.
2. Check your log files
In most instances, GoogleBot’s crawling is 75-80% desktop crawler and 20-25% mobile crawler. When a website moves over to the mobile first index, you would see that flip to about 75-80% GoogleBot mobile.
3. If you have a separate mobile website…
…make sure you claim the mobile version in Google Search Console to continue to get accurate data.
4. Ensure as much primary content is delivered to all users…
…regardless of device type
5. Verify that your mobile version is accessible to GoogleBot
You can do this with the robots.txt testing tool.
6. Look into mobile-first tech like AMP
With Google making its new mobile index its primary focus, expect to see an even greater emphasis on Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project to become even more important in the near future.
7. Make sure to serve structured mark-up for both the desktop and mobile version
If in doubt, you are able to verify your structured mark-up across desktop and mobile testing both versions with the Structured Data Testing Tool.
Econsultancy subscribers can download our SEO Best Practice Guide.
Google My Business dashboard showing video upload section for some business owners
Some business owners can now upload videos to their local listings in their Google My Business photos section.
The post Google My Business dashboard showing video upload section for some business owners appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please vi…
Don’t make your focus keywords too long
It can be a great strategy to focus on long tail keywords. But don’t go overboard there. Trying to rank for very long keyphrases usually makes your text a terrible read. Why is that? And what should be your strategy for those long keywords? Let me tell you all about long focus keywords in this […]
The post Don’t make your focus keywords too long appeared first on Yoast.
Free Backlinks for SEO and Traffic [2018 Edition]
Building high quality links involves grueling efforts most of the time, may it be through search and mainly in building it. The most effective ones are usually content based (tedious) and sometimes need approval from the owner of the site you’re trying…
Report: Google exploring sale of Zagat reviews
Might there be an Act 3 for the venerable restaurant guide?
The post Report: Google exploring sale of Zagat reviews appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
SearchCap: Privacy & local search
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
The post SearchCap: Privacy & local search appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Pamela Lund – The Search Community Honors You
This is part of the say something nice about an SEO/SEM series – feel free to nominate someone over here.
Pamela Lund is 38 years old and lives in Orange County, California with her boyfriend for 9 years, CK Chung…
Google: GoogleBot Doesn’t Make Up URLs To Crawl & Index
There is this long run theory in the SEO world that Google will sometimes make up URLs with the attempt to try and discover, crawl and index pages they can’t find otherwise. If you think of that theory, it kind of seems inefficient and un-Google like …