How to Prepare for Google’s Mobile-First Index Change

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If you follow the SEO industry, you’ve likely heard that Google has begun testing its Mobile-First Index.  If not, the short-version is Google currently indexes both the Desktop and Mobile versions of your website based on the Desktop version.  Google now plans to flip that and begin indexing your Desktop & Mobile versions based on the Mobile version of your website.

“Awesome.  So what?”

Well, for those of you with a standard Responsive or Dynamic Serving website, there isn’t much to worry about as quoted by the Google Webmaster Blog:

If you have a responsive site or a dynamic serving site where the primary content and markup is equivalent across mobile and desktop, you shouldn’t have to change anything.

Seems you can sit back and relax.

But I don’t have a responsive website though…

For those of you with a website that serves different markup to mobile and desktop and feel that your organic search results are important, the Mobile-First Index is another signal that Google is looking to push website owners further towards a responsive standard for the web. At this point, if you run a website, you’ve likely had to field the “Why aren’t we responsive yet?”question. And if you haven’t, the Mobile First Index test is a great conversation starter for a move to Responsive. With that in mind, I’ve put together the below list of guides that can get you on the right path towards avoiding penalties when Google pushes the Mobile First Index live in 2017.

  • http://searchengineland.com/5-steps-optimizing-site-googles-mobile-first-index-262716
  • http://searchengineland.com/faq-google-mobile-first-index-262751

What The 2016 Election Taught Us About User Research

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The 2016 presidential election has come and gone. We won’t get into politics here, but I think we can all agree it was a shock that Donald Trump was able to overcome what seemed to be a large gap. But the question many have been asking is, did the gap really ever exist? Did anyone bother to ask rural America how they might be voting? This is a huge issue within many businesses as well. When was the last time you ‘polled’ your audience? When was the last time you asked your customers what they wanted? This user research is paramount to a an optimized marketing and website experience.

Customer Surveys

Conducting a survey is one of the easiest types of user research around. It’s easy to use a survey tool, such as Survey Monkey, to ask your customers what they may want to see out of your business offerings or website experience. We’ve seen the most success when surveys are short, maybe 3-5 questions, but try to never go above 10 unless you are providing some kind of offer.

Old Fashioned Talking

It’s ok to reach out to customers every once in a while to get a sense of how they feel about your brand. This one-on-one user research method can be focus groups or a simply phone call. The act of holding the conversation goes a long way with customer and audience trust. The most important thing that comes from it is that customers feel a part of your business, galvanizing their support for your brand!

Usability Testing

You’ve probably heard of AB Testing, but its cousin is Usability Testing and a really great way to use user research to get real time feedback of abandonment points on your website. Usability testing is where a moderator will walk audiences through processes or site sections to see how easy it is to perform actions on your website or compare them to a newly proposed alternative. After about 5 participants the answers start to repeat so you could do this exercise in as little as 10 total work hours.

These are all just a few ways you can connect with your audience for very little investment. If you’re interested in understanding your audience in more detail and optimizing your website accordingly contact us by filling out the form on the right hand side of this page (or below on mobile!).

Pay Per Click Strategy vs Management

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In the last week we’ve had two separate clients remark to us about their displeasure with the way they pay for Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising and the lack of PPC Strategy. Side note, we do not handle their PPC (yet). Below is an outline of what came from our discussions.

PPC Management

When these clients described the way they were sold the management of their PPC campaigns it was all the same. “We’ll ‘manage’ your PPC account for X% of your spend” was the common synopsis. The problem here is that it really only includes the “management” part and little to no “strategy”. Both clients were frustrated because all they received was a report showing the numbers. Impressions, Clicks, Quality Scores and Conversions are all well and good, but how are you optimizing the account?

PPC Strategy

A number of our clients have moved to a more strategic model and away from simply “Management”. Management is the easy part, which is why most agencies have a junior-level resource watching over your account. It’s a margin game! So break free of the game and start making strategic optimizations to your PPC account on your own. It all begins by developing your initial PPC Strategy, by evaluating opportunity keywords, developing relevant ad copy, and selecting the most relevant and conversion-focused landing page. This is where a company like Bluefin Strategy comes in. We have provided strategies for many of our clients who then can easily manage their own accounts day-to-day or we work with them to get a management platform in place. Again, the management part is easy, it’s more about what strategic changes have to take place in order to take the account to the next level!

Don’t settle for simple “PPC Management”. If you’re still paying a percentage of your PPC spend and getting nothing out of it then it’s time to shift your campaigns into full gear with a sound PPC Strategy & Optimization plan. Start targeting your search audience at the right time with the right message today and see more conversions tomorrow!