Google’s new algorithm targetting non-responsive websites

In Google’s own words:
“…we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices”

Note the use of the word expanding – if you didn’t know already Google have been recommending the use of responsive websites since 2012 (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/recommendations-for-building-smartphone.html) and so have already been using mobile usability as a ranking score  for some time. This change seems simply designed to place more emphasis on mobile usability in line with increasing patterns of mobile device use.

Responsive sites are built in such a way that they can determine the size and orientation of a screen and the type of device, then automatically display the website in the most appropriate way for that device so if it’s a phone any phone numbers displayed will be callable via a simple click . More relevantly only the most important parts of any page are  displayed and in a configuration that suits the screen size. This is not the same as a separate mobile website; there is only one version of the code in a responsive site and it can adapt to any size device, unlike specific mobile versions which are built for screens of a certain size.

So the need for a responsive site should have been on everyone’s radar already. Certainly the majority of the websites I work with are responsive already.

But if you don’t already have a responsive website (or don’t know what type it is) what should you do? In a nutshell:

1. Check your site for any potential mobile usability problems via webmaster tools.
2. Check the current proportion of your visitors who access your website via mobile reports in Google Analytics – low percentages might suggest few visitors searching via mobile but could also be an indication that your rankings are much lower from mobile devices so also check your mobile rankings.
3. Check you mobile rankings today and monitor them closely over the coming weeks.
4. If you haven’t already, make a plan to convert your site to a responsive design, but take the time to get it right and have it well designed rather than rushing it with a knee jerk reaction.

The result of this change will  be that searches performed from a mobile device will rank those sites that will provide a better mobile experience higher, but remember this is only one of 200+ ranking factors so it is not the only factor affecting  your position in the rankings. Nevertheless, it is an important factor and set to become more so.

Don’t assume you know what mobile visitors will want to do on your site – whilst mobile visitors might once have just browsed and researched while out and about, the growth of easy access to good Internet connections in hotspots and free wifi networks, not to mention the increasing habit to surf from the sofa, means visitors are making buying decisions, and buying, from mobile devices in increasing numbers.

Whatever type of business you have and whatever type of website, whether it is just a shop window or a fully fledged e-commerce site, mobile searches are here to stay. Even if you receive no visits via mobile devices now you cannot assume potential customers will not want a mobile friendly site, and soon, because mobile Internet access s already significant and increasing all the time.

Note that in February Google also begin using information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking (for signed-in users who have the app installed).

But persuading existing customers to leave a review is not easy. How many times have you bought something online, been very happy with the purchase but just not bothered to leave a review even when asked kindly by the company from whom you bought?

And have you noticed how even well-known high street shops (Marks & Spencer and Boots for example) are also getting in on the act – giving you an extra slip with your till receipt with the chance to win £250 (or whatever) if you leave an online review. And have you?

So don’t expect a huge uptake on your request for online reviews but, nevertheless, even just a few good reviews can make a difference.

“As few as 6 reviews on Google+, for example, can result in a star rating being shown as part of your search listing.”

So what can you do to persuade customers or clients to leave a Google+ review?

1. Add a direct link to the review page in your email
2. Be honest about why you are asking for a review
3. Offer a small incentive

For example, for a service company you could write:

Remember that just a few reviews could make you company stand out from the competition in the search listings.

A survey by Dimensional Research suggests 90% of buyers are influenced by positive online reviews and 86% by negative reviews.

But the issue for potential customers is knowing which reviews to trust.

For that reason many large companies have been using independent review systems such as:

• Trust Pilot
• Reevoo
• Feefo
• Reviews.co.uk

These systems contact genuine customers who can then leave reviews via their independent review system; that way companies cannot filter out bad reviews. The chink in this armour is that the company being reviewed is supplying the customer email addresses so there is the possibility of companies simply not supplying the email addresses for any customers who have had a bad experience.

Independent review systems enable your business to set up an automated system that contacts customers a certain number of days after delivery of a product seeking a review. The particular parameters you use are within the control of your business and you can reply to reviews through the same system, but because the reviews are posted to the review system’s website they are seen as more trustworthy by potential customers. The reviews can, of course, also be displayed on your own business website.

If you run an Adwords campaign you can use the star ratings given on these review systems in the advert. A potential customer can click on the rating link and read the reviews before making a purchasing decision. So there are plenty of advantages to using an independent review system.

However, there are also a number of reasons why an independent review system might not be right for your business:

1. You don’t run an Adwords campaign so can’t benefit from the displayed star ratings in an advert.
2. Independent review sites are not currently widely used for some industry sectors so your star ratings shown on their website may not appear near the top of search listings so will not be visible to online searchers to influence their decision.
3. Your business is a service business such as an accountants or lawyers where you provide an ongoing service so there is no obvious point at which to seek a review from a client, thus negating the benefit of an automated system that sends emails a certain number of days after a product purchase.
4. Small businesses may find it hard to justify the regular monthly costs of an independent review system.

If any of these apply to your business what are the alternatives that provide the trust that potential customers are looking for online?

Well, there are a number of places, not specifically designed as review sites, where anyone can enter a review of a business, provided they have registered. A few of these sites are commonly found near the top of search listings with business star ratings shown and are trusted by the online community. Google+ actually shows star ratings as part of a normal search listing given the right circumstances. (Note that this does, of course, depend on the search terms being used).

The places to look out for are:

• Google+ (naturally)
• Yelp
• Yell

Google+ Business Reviews

Most small businesses will by now have a Google+ page, (and if you haven’t you should have), on which customers can leave a review of your business and a rating between 1 and 5 stars.

Verified businesses with a Google+ business page linked to their website will show in the search listings an additional couple of links beneath your webpage description, linking to your Google+ business page and another link saying “Be the first to review”, if you have no Google+ reviews yet or “xx reviews” if you do. When you have approximately 6 or more reviews there will also be a star rating shown alongside:

Local (map) results in Google will also display this information in a slightly different format:

But just how can you persuade customers to leave a review?

Firstly, by making it easy for them.

You can do this by inserting a direct link to your Google+ review page in the email you send out asking for feedback. The direct link is easy to formulate for any Google+ page whether it has a vanity URL or not by simply adding “?h1=en&review=1″ to any of your Google+ pages. For example:

https://plus.google.com/117932084920949332025/posts?hl=en&review=1

If your customer or client already has a Google account (more on this in a moment) and they are already logged in, they will then be taken straight to your review box, which looks like this:

Many people have a Google account without really being aware that they have. Did you know that Gmail, Android, Blogger and YouTube accounts are all Google accounts and now one account covers all Google services?

If someone is not logged into a Google account or does not have one they will be taken to the following screen where they can either login or very quickly and easily create an account.

And once you have made it easy for customers to leave a review of your business tempt them into doing so by offering a small gift such as chocolates or wine, and don’t forget a reminder a week later. Customer reviews are a powerful tool in your online marketing efforts so are worth the effort to obtain them.

And a final note about bad reviews – no company is perfect and provided you respond to the review online and rectify any problems this will show an honest approach to customer reviews.

So what are you waiting for send out those emails and start building up a list of customer reviews and start seeing your star rating appear in search listings.

The aim of the Knowledge Graph, not surprisingly, is to provide more relevant search results: removing ambiguity in the searches we make, better understanding our queries and showing us connections or related facts that we might not know about but are looking to discover.

The Knowledge Graph collects information about words, for example, people, buildings, animals all have particular attributes that are relevant. We might expect to be able to easily find the Date of Birth for a person, whether they are married or have children and perhaps their education; the location and date built for a famous building, or the natural habitat, weight and speed of a certain animal.

A new panel will be displayed next to the search results showing those basic facts related to your search term and also connections to relevant objects such as books, films etc.

Google has used information that other searchers have found useful in the past to help build up the database behind the Knowledge Graph. It will serve up key facts that we might need for a fuller understanding of the main topic of our search.

I am looking forward to the Knowledge Graph being rolled out in the UK so I can take a look myself – if you’ve seen it yet why not leave a comment on your experience with it?

By Michelle Symonds

As always Google has looked at ways to penalise websites that are engaging in un-ethical (or “black-hat”) ways of manipulating the search engine rankings because, sadly, some such sites are still benefiting from these techniques, which include over-optimising and building massive quantities of links from non-reputable sites. The update, conversely, will reward sites that use ethical (or “white-hat”) techniques to promote their site to a high-ranking position.

One of the key factors in this latest update (dubbed “Penguin”) is the pattern of links that have been created. Anyone involved in SEO will be aware that Google have for some time been advocating a natural pattern of link building, which is why reputable SEO experts manually build links from a range of high-quality websites.

What the Penguin update appears to do is analyse various factors of the links in order to categorise them on how natural they appear to be. These factors are:

1. main keyword use in link anchor-text –over-use of the main keywords would indicate an unnatural pattern of link building
2. proportion of links coming from unrelated sites – a high proportion from unrelated sites could indicate a lack of relevancy
3. percentage of URL based links – too few could seem inappropriate since links generated naturally would certainly include a fair percentage of URLs

Of course a website has no control over links generated truly organically and cannot control where all links come from so every site is likely to have some undesirable links and the new algorithm would seem to recognise this fact by using a spectrum of acceptable linking patterns. How close a website is to the ethical end of this spectrum would, of course, be preferable but whether the ranking position can be directly correlated with a website’s position along the acceptable spectrum of linking patterns remains to be seen. I wonder is anyone can actually come up with that data?

But, it is clear that the aim of every website and business who value their online reputation will be seeking to be as close as possible to the ethical end of the range.

This implies that link-building campaigns will not go away but will merely be focussed on building up real relationships with other relevant sites (avoiding competitors, of course) in order to get real recommendations, which is what Google started out trying to measure in the first place.

None of our clients have been adversely affected by the Penguin update but if you have why not share your experience with us…

More to come on how to re-focus your link building strategy next time…

By Michelle Symonds

Infographic by SEO Book

By Michelle Symonds

Maybe 2012 will be the year when Google finally do penalise sites with masses of poor-quality links but I’m not holding my breath…

Instead I’m just doing what I always do – steadily and consistently building high-quality links for my clients – putting in the effort to write really good and useful content and seeking out opportunities for guest writing. I firmly believe that this is the best long-term strategy and with some additional focus this year on a variety of content type: videos, podcasts and more images (of course, with their alt tags properly optimised) and focussing on partial keyword matches in my anchor text I expect to continue the great ranking improvements we have all seen over the past year.

I even plan to start doing some of my own videos and getting my own website up to scratch, but don’t hold your breath for that…

By Michelle Symonds

So you start your SEO campaign with a list of the keywords most important to you – if you (or someone else) has done their keyword research thoroughly this will be a group of keywords ranging from low to high traffic terms. Unfortunately I have seen the results of previous SEO campaigns that have targeted all low traffic keywords – they may be easy to rank well for but what’s the point of being on Page 1 of Google if you only get 100 visitors a week and far less conversions. Believe me I have seen examples like that.

But assuming you have a decent starting list and a decent amount of SEO knowledge, then you will, eventually rank well for your keywords providing you are not working in a super-competitive field like gambling or diet products.

And once you are ranking well you will start to see visitor numbers rising – you might then focus for a while on maintaining those rankings and improving your bounce rate and conversion rate. Bounce rate is simply the percentage of visitors who leave your website without looking any further than the first page they landed on. Once you are used to a certain level of visitors, sales and profit  you may want to grow your business even more. So then you have to go back to the drawing board with keyword research and start the process again. It is always recommended that keyword research and analysis is carried out right at the start of an SEO campaign but that just gets you to the first level of success. If you want your business to continue to thrive it really is an ongoing process.

By Michelle Symonds

As an aside, understanding original content is easy for most of us humans (although for a machine some of those shady spun articles still seem to pass the “originality” contest) but just in case there’s any confusion – good quality content is not about any great literary talent but more about useful information – not a sales pitch – and some “value” to the reader, either by giving a different perspective on a topic, providing advice, a review of a product etc. And of course, it goes without saying (but I will anyway) that it will be written in good English, not be stuffed full of keywords and definitely no adverts impeding the smooth flow of content.

But back to the new algorithm…

It has been designed to assess the layout of the content on the page and make an opinion on how much the searcher will see immediately they land on the page i.e. without having to scroll down. We’ve all seen those pages where it is genuinely hard to pick out the content from the adverts – personally I immediately go elsewhere so I can’t imagine those sites get very good conversion rates but then maybe they are not worried because they are making a profit from the unsuspecting advertisers and don’t need anyone to view their content. Well they should be worried now because these are exactly the sorts of sites Google is targeting so this change can only make the web a better place for all of us.

But how will Google’s new algorithm affect my site? You’re probably wondering the same as me. Well I can make an educated guess at this stage and only time will tell what the results will be as the change starts to take effect.

In essence your landing pages will now be judged on the quality AND quantity of content “above-the-fold” in an attempt to reduce the rankings of sites full of ads in the top half of their pages. But there are many good sites that have images, calls-to-action etc. in the top half to entice the reader to look further and the detailed content is further down. It will be interesting to see how they are affected and whether the Google algorithm can distinguish between ads and genuine images and links relevant to the site’s business.
Google has estimated that in only 1% of global search results will the position of a site be affected by this change so that gives me confidence that they can distinguish an excess of ads from genuine images, buttons etc. But if you are affected you will need to get more content “above-the-fold”, and quickly.
The “above-the-fold” definition may seem a bit woolly but there are plenty of screen resolution simulators that will help you view your website at the appropriate resolution for a smartphone, laptop or tablet.

But don’t get too hung up on changing your site just yet – this is only one of hundreds of changes Google are likely to make to their algorithm in the coming year.

By Michelle Symonds