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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As search engines continue to evolve, marketers must improve their skills to keep up. According toreports 70 percent of the links search users click are from SEO. Also, inbound leads (i.e. SEO) cost 61 percent less than outbound leads (i.e. cold calling).

SEO has a better return on investment (ROI) as well. "SEO leads have a 14.6 percent close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7 percent close rate," according to the same report.

Now that you know SEO is the way to go, here are 11 SEO tactics that you need to know in 2015:

1. Creating Incredible Content That Earns Links

Even after all of the changes with the search engine algorithms, inbound SEO links are still the biggest influence for search engines. This is unlikely to change. On the other hand, other methods of link acquisition have changed. Earning a link from a high-quality, relevant website will not only help with your SEO but also with referral traffic, which can lead to more sales and brand exposure. Creating incredible content that people will want to share is still the best way to earn links.

2. Co-Citation Links

Every time a search engine finds your website next to your competitors, it tells them that your company is in a related niche. To get co-citation links, do a search for "best" or "top 10" items in your niche.

Example: top 10 blue widgets

If you do this search and don’t find your business in the results, get in touch with the publisher and ask that your company be added to the list. Be prepared to justify why your company should be included and where appropriate, give them a summary to go along with a link.

3. Editorial Links

Editorial links can be some of the most powerful for SEO because they come from other publications in your niche mentioning your company. They can also come from thought leadership guest posts that you write and get published on third-party sites.

The easiest way to get editorial links is to create outstanding content that people will want to share with their readers. Another way is to guest post on a high-quality site that is in your niche. Be prepared to create incredible content that may be heavily scrutinized before publishing.

Interviews are another way to get editorial links.

As part of the interview, you should be allowed to cite your work in your responses. This can lead to even more backlinks and traffic.

4. The Broken Link-Building Method

Here’s another white-hat link-building strategy that can be quite effective. In this case, you’re actually helping publishers fix broken links, which can be helpful to their readers. However, this only works if your content is good enough to replace the lost content.

To do the broken link-building method, you must find broken links on a site that is relevant to your niche. You then contact the webmaster with the broken link and recommend your site as an alternative to the broken link. To find out more, you can read the broken link-building Bible at the Moz blog.

5. Link Reclamation

Link reclamation can help you get fresh links by finding broken links to your site and having the publisher fix them.

Examples:

Find brand mentions about your site and ask the publisher to add a link

Find places where your content has been used without attribution (places where people have used your post or infographics without giving you credit) and request a link from the person

According to Kristi Hines with kristihines.com, "A lot of people think of link reclamation as just 301'ing pages they have moved that still have a lot of great backlinks. But I like to think of reclamation as more than that. I like to think of it as not just reclaiming, but claiming links you deserve."

In order to make this automated, you can set up a Google Alert to email you whenever your company’s brand is mentioned. You can then check that page to find out if they link to your site.

6. Link Outreach

Link outreach is a bit "old school" but can still be quite powerful. To do this, find a website that is relevant to yours and get their contact information from the site. Send them an email or call and politely ask them for link. This works better if the site has a slightly different business than yours but may share a common audience.

7. Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is nothing new, and companies have been researching their competitor’s links for years. However, by looking at the competitor’s backlinks and manually reviewing which links are worth having, you can then perform a link outreach and try to get a link from the same referring site.

8. Focus on ROI Instead of Keyword Rankings

While we all enjoy seeing the keywords rank well in the search engines, this doesn’t necessarily mean your SEO campaign is successful. It’s possible to rank number one for many keywords that have no real ROI. Instead, you should focus on metrics that bring conversions.

9. Create an SEO Strategy That Maps to an Audience

Over the past few years, we’ve lost most of the keyword data in Google Analytics and other tools. This has required marketers to change from traditional methods of SEO to create new ways of segmenting their audiences.

In order to do this we must find new keywords to focus on, new ways to approach neighboring markets, and determine where our competition is succeeding with SEO and how you can do it better.

The days of stuffing keywords into bad content and having it rank are long gone. Now your content needs to focus on your target persona and your keywords need to flow within the content. This is why it’s so important that content and SEO be tied closely together.

10. Optimize for Yahoo, Bing, and Others

Search engines like Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo may slowly take a bigger piece of Google’s pie in 2015. Yahoo is now the default search engine for Firefox. Safari had a deal with Google, which is supposed to end in 2015, and Yahoo and Bing are both trying to become the default search engine for the browser.

As other search engines become the default Web browsers instead of Google, it makes sense to optimize for those search engines as well.

11. Mobile SEO

Mobile is becoming more popular every year. Every website should have a mobile marketing strategy for 2015 and beyond.

"May [2014] turned out to be a banner month for mobile as it delivered on some huge milestones which underscored just how impressive the medium’s ascendance has been in the past few years. Mobile platforms – smartphones and tablets – combined to account for 60 percent of total digital media time spent, up from 50 percent a year ago," says comScore.

Mobile should be a core part of any SEO plan in 2015. However, you must be cautious as configuration errors caused a 68 percent loss of traffic, according to BrightEdge.

Conclusion

Creating an SEO strategy can give your company and brand a boost in the search engines. Why not improve your ROI today?

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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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