Are you ready for the Google Mobile-friendly algorithm change which could be 'bigger than Panda or Penguin'?

Back in November 2014,  Google gave its first guidance about the impending algorithm changes to affect mobile SEO which were summarised in this Smart Insights alert. More recently, Google has been unusually specific and has revealed on its blog that there will be an algorithm update on the 21st April 2015, that will expand their use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.

How much difference will the mobile-friendly update make?

The indications are that this will be a major change with Google describing it as 'significant' in their alerts. Then, in this alarming quote, Google's Zineb Ait Bahajji  said at SMX Munich that the upcoming mobile-friendly algorithm update will impact more sites than their Panda or Penguin algorithms. Although this sounds alarming it is to be expected since Panda and Penguin targeted a limited set of sites using spammy tactics, while this will affect all searches on mobile - that's why Google says it's significant.

Since we're now getting close and the impact is significant, this post is another reminder to explain the changes and impact according to Google so you can check the likely impact to your site or your clients and be in a position to explain it? Let's start with the big picture.

Will the update affect all pages on a site?

Google has announced that this update will take place in ‘real-time’, meaning that if changes are made to make websites more mobile-friendly, as soon as the changes have been indexed by Google the benefits will be realised.

Google has also said that this algorithm update will impact sites on a page-by-page basis, meaning that only those pages that are not mobile-friendly will be impacted, rather than the wider domain.

This will mean that websites not deemed to be ‘mobile-friendly’ will suffer from reduced visibility within organic search results. It’s also possible that this reduction in visibility may extend to desktop as an additional incentive to webmasters to improve mobile experiences. We'll explain how you can test your pages are mobile friendly below.

Why is Google implementing these changes?

At present, Google considers that the experience of some sites featured in the mobile search results are simply not good enough for the increasing majority of people now using Google on their mobile devices.

Despite the promotion of YouTube, Android and Google+, Google is still heavily reliant on AdWords to generate the majority of their revenue. If a search does not offer value to users, then they may end up going elsewhere, representing a risk to Google’s revenue stream.

At the moment, mobile search results largely match desktop and are typically ranked based on the merits of the desktop site based on the combination of on-page and off-page ranking factors. However, it seems Google believe this isn't acceptable with the tipping point of mobile traffic outstripping desktop traffic by Q2 2015 already passed.

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Google's Gary Ill-yes says web-masters can expect a Panda refresh within the upcoming weeks.

Google’s Gary Ill-yes announced that the next Panda update will happen in the upcoming weeks. He said he expects it in the next two to four weeks.Ill-yes referred to it multiple times as a data refresh, not an algorithmic change. So sites that have been suffering from this algorithm may see a recovery in the near future. However, not all sites will see a recovery: Some may not recover, and new sites may also be hit by this data refresh. When the data refresh is updated, we will make sure to notify you right here.Ill-yes also explained that it is in Google’s best interest to keep this data fresh, so the they want to keep it updated as frequently as possible. But they do require manual updates and will currently not run by itself like some of their other algorithms.

History of updates:

Google Panda is a change to Google's search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011. The change aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites", and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results. CNET reported a surge in the rankings of news websites and social networking sites, and a drop in rankings for sites containing large amounts of advertising.This change reportedly affected the rankings of almost 12 percent of all search results. Soon after the Panda rollout, many websites, including Google's webmaster forum, became filled with complaints of scrapers/copyright infringer getting better rankings than sites with original content. At one point, Google publicly asked for data points to help detect scrapers better. Google's Panda has received several updates since the original rollout in February 2011, and the effect went global in April 2011. To help affected publishers, Google provided an advisory on its blog, thus giving some direction for self-evaluation of a website's quality. Google has provided a list of 23 bullet points on its blog answering the question of "What counts as a high-quality site?" that is supposed to help webmasters "step into Google's mindset.

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What SEO Best Practices will be HOT in 2016?

The Internet is a huge factor in how marketing is performed nowadays, and keeping up with the latest SEO trends is important to keeping your marketing edge. This is because traditional push marketing is being replaced by more cost-effective inbound marketing strategies like search engine optimization (SEO), that drives targeted audiences to you as apposed to out bound marketing where you are marketing to the masses and hoping you reach the right people. Make sure to bookmark this page as your SEO best practices checklist and don’t let up! Here are the top 8 SEO trends to watch for in 2015.

1. Content is King. Google’s latest search engine algorithms focuses more and more on content, which means there is less focus on keyword saturation and more focus on whether or not the content is actually relevant to the keywords. You should continue to generate high-quality content that uses appropriate, relevant keywords and synonyms for those keywords, but focus more on the content than the words themselves.

2. Social Signals Will Be Even More Important. Changes within the search engine algorithms have not just placed greater importance on the content, but they’ve also begun to rely more upon social signals to elevate results up the ladder in search ranking importance. Eventually, we expect to see content and social signals integrated, with content of higher quality getting more social shares and thus rising higher in the search engine results.

3. Online Security Will Become More Important in Rankings. If your website deals with online payments and sensitive customer information, you need to make sure you are using proper security measures to safeguard that information. For example, using security certificates and https instead of http will help your website grow in search engine rankings in 2015. If you want to confirm the security of your website, check out WordPress Support.

4. Mobile-Friendly SEO will grow. The mobile user experience is rumored to be another important ranking factor in Google’s search engine algorithm, since the mobile Internet has surpassed the desktop Internet and will continue to grow in 2015. Estimates say that in 2016, there will be as many as 50 billion local searches using mobile devices—wouldn’t you want to be found in those searches?

5. Increased focus on conversations instead of keywords. Semantic search became a big deal in 2013, with Google’s Hummingbird update. Search engines are now using context, meaning, and intent of the words in a search query, instead of just focusing on matching up keywords. This means long-tail, or more “conversational,” keyword phrases will grow in importance for SEO, and you should begin to tailor some of your SEO efforts towards engaging in a conversation with search engine users.

6. Link Building Will Focus on Brand Mentions. In 2016, proper link building will continue to be important. What’s changed, though, is how the search engines will interpret those backlinks coming to and from a website. The content will get more of the focus, so you need to think about relevance and social popularity. Brand mentions, relevant information the source website is discussing about your brand or website, might not require a hyperlink but will still factor into SEO.

7. There Will Be More Visual-Based SEO. High quality, original content featuring visual media elements like graphics, images, and video are becoming high performing assets for the top-ranked web pages in 2015, and this is expected to continue throughout 2016. Rich text with visual elements gets priority in SERPs over web pages with just text, and video marketing on YouTube can generate a huge amount of link and social sharing traffic for your site. 

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