Google’s Matt Cutts: Don’t Worry About An SEO Down Side To Responsive Design, There Is None
In a video released today by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, he said you don’t have to worry about there being a down side, related to SEO, when using a responsive design approach for mobile web sites. The question posed to him was: Is there an SEO disadvantage to using…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
The “Mobilification” Of Consuming Content
The future of all content will have to comply with mobile standards. As a business, it’s time to start making the transition before it’s too late.
Post from Stephanie Frasco on State of Digital
The “Mobilification” Of Consuming Content
Google Hotel Finder Goes Mobile
Google’s Hotel Finder, which launched in June 2011, is now available on mobile devices. Google said all you need to do is go to www.google.com/hotels directly on your smart phone and search for your destination. Listings will come up almost immediately, giving you the ability to filter the…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Indexing apps just like websites
Webmaster Level: Advanced
Searchers on smartphones experience many speed bumps that can slow them down. For example, any time they need to change context from a web page to an app, or vice versa, users are likely to encounter redirects, pop-up dialogs, and extra swipes and taps. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could give your users the choice of viewing your content either on the website or via your app, both straight from Google’s search results?
Today, we’re happy to announce a new capability of Google Search, called app indexing, that uses the expertise of webmasters to help create a seamless user experience across websites and mobile apps.
Just like it crawls and indexes websites, Googlebot can now index content in your Android app. Webmasters will be able to indicate which app content you’d like Google to index in the same way you do for webpages today — through your existing Sitemap file and through Webmaster Tools. If both the webpage and the app contents are successfully indexed, Google will then try to show deep links to your app straight in our search results when we think they’re relevant for the user’s query and if the user has the app installed. When users tap on these deep links, your app will launch and take them directly to the content they need. Here’s an example of a search for home listings in Mountain View:
We’re currently testing app indexing with an initial group of developers. Deep links for these applications will start to appear in Google search results for signed-in users on Android in the US in a few weeks. If you are interested in enabling indexing for your Android app, it’s easy to get started:
- Let us know that you’re interested. We’re working hard to bring this functionality to more websites and apps in the near future.
- Enable deep linking within your app.
- Provide information about alternate app URIs, either in the Sitemaps file or in a link element in pages of your site.
For more details on implementation and for information on how to sign up, visit our developer site. As always, if you have any questions, please ask in the mobile section of our webmaster forum.
Posted by Lawrence Chang, Product Manager
Apple Takes Siri Out Of Beta
9to5mac.com reports Apple has quietly taken the beta label off of their voice search feature, Siri. If you look at the iOS 7 Siri, the page makes no mention of beta anymore. The old iOS 6 version had the beta label on it, but iOS 7 Siri has removed that label. Here is the iOS […]
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Mobile Strategy for Small Businesses by Bridget Randolph
Having a mobile strategy is hugely important for any small business. Bridget Randolph presents some do’s and don’ts.
Post from Paddy Moogan on State of Digital
Mobile Strategy for Small Businesses by Bridget Randolph
Mobile Strategy for Small Businesses by Bridget Randolph – #BrightonSEO
Welcome to our coverage of #BrightonSEO! Next up we have Bridget Randolph who is an SEO Consultant at Distilled. I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside Bridget for the last few months and her knowledge of mobile is fantastic so I’ve been looking forward to seeing her speak. Bridget starts off by saying that mobile read more »
Post from Paddy Moogan on State of Search
Mobile Strategy for Small Businesses by Bridget Randolph – #BrightonSEO
Midweek Motivation: 16 Brands Getting Creative With Mobile
It’s Wednesday. And all the high hopes and excitement that marked the start of a new week (and in the UK, the August Bank Holiday) have begun to die down as we realize that we’ve still got a ways to Continue reading »
Optimizing Your Local Presence for Mobile Search (and vice versa!)
When you optimize your website for localized search terms, it’s described as Local SEO. While Local SEO can seem like a somewhat niche topic, it impacts a surprisingly high number of searches. Google data tells us that around 1 out Continue reading »
Making smartphone sites load fast
Webmaster level: Intermediate
Users tell us they use smartphones to search online because it’s quick and convenient, but today’s average mobile page typically takes more than 7 seconds to load. Wouldn’t it be great if mobile pages loaded in under one second? Today we’re announcing new guidelines and an updated PageSpeed Insights tool to help webmasters optimize their mobile pages for best rendering performance.
Prioritizing above-the-fold content
Research shows that users’ flow is interrupted if pages take longer than one second to load. To deliver the best experience and keep the visitor engaged, our guidelines focus on rendering some content, known as the above-the-fold content, to users in one second (or less!) while the rest of the page continues to load and render in the background. The above-the-fold HTML, CSS, and JS is known as the critical rendering path.
We can achieve sub-second rendering of the above-the-fold content on mobile networks by applying the following best practices:
- Server must render the response (< 200 ms)
- Number of redirects should be minimized
- Number of roundtrips to first render should be minimized
- Avoid external blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
- Reserve time for browser layout and rendering (200 ms)
- Optimize JavaScript execution and rendering time
These are explained in more details in the mobile-specific help pages, and, when you’re ready, you can test your pages and the improvements you make using the PageSpeed Insights
tool.
As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please post in our discussion group.
Posted by Bryan McQuade, Software Engineer, and Pierre Far, Webmaster Trends Analyst
B2B Mobile Marketing (Infographic)
Mobile is here to stay. But one thing which is hard for companies: how does mobile fit into b2b-marketing? This infographic looks at just that.
Post from Bas van den Beld on State of Search
B2B Mobile Marketing (Infographic)
Neil Walker’s Data Download July 2013
What happens if you download the data from a whole bunch of Analytics Accounts? You get a snippet of the data Google has, but still some good direction.
Post from Neil Walker on State of Search
Neil Walker’s Data Download July 2013
How to use Google+ to Dominate a Generic Mobile Search Result
Dominating a generic query in a mobile search is not impossible, and can drive lots of mobile traffic. Cindy Krum explains how you can use Google+ for that.
Post from Cindy Krum on State of Search
How to use Google+ to Dominate a Generic Mobile Search Result
Variations in Branded Mobile Search Results in 2013
Branded searches are a big deal for any SEO, but they are more important for mobile SEO because they make up such a high portion of mobile queries.
Post from Cindy Krum on State of Search
Variations in Branded Mobile Search Results in 2013
Structured Data and How It can Improve Mobile Search Results
Anything to improve the ‘look’ of mobile results will make it much more appealing to a mobile searcher, and drive up the CTR.
Post from Cindy Krum on State of Search
Structured Data and How It can Improve Mobile Search Results
10 Things NOT To Do With Your Mobile Visitors
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of mobile best practice tips with Bridget! …After my last couple posts (here and here), which were quite technical-heavy, I thought we’d mix things up a bit with a list of my top Continue reading »
Google’s Mobile “Quick View” Trial Appears To Be Over
Google appears to have quietly put an end to a long-running trial that added a “quick view” option next to mobile (smartphone only) search results from select websites. The feature offered searchers a fast way to see a lightweight version of a web page without having to fully click…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Changes in rankings of smartphone search results
Webmaster level: IntermediateSmartphone users are a significant and fast growing segment of Internet users, and at Google we want them to experience the full richness of the web. As part of our efforts to improve the mobile web, we published our recomm…
Google Tests Larger Video Thumbnails In Tablet Search Results
Google Operating System blog has screen shots of Google showing larger thumbnail images for videos that come up in the search results. The larger video thumbnails show up for the first video result on tablet devices. I personally tried to replicate thi…
Dealing with content beyond the webpage, DistilledLive discussion
By now, most of us are aware of the idea of responsive design and the sorts of tools you can use to make your website’s layout more mobile friendly. But how do we deal with content in this multi-screen world? Continue reading »