From now on, call extensions will be automatically generated and will be displayed in Mobile ads.

You don’t need to manually put it in your ads, just highlight it on your landing page and Google
will do the job for you.

Google has predicted that businesses will get 19% more calls from mobile search engines as
compared to the mobile landing pages. After-all, who will not love the convenience of
contacting the business directly from the search.

However, not all business owners will be very excited about this new update because they may
like to be contacted through other mediums and some may not like to pay for the clicks from
search engines.

Business owners can simply opt out by following the below steps:

1. Go to the Ad extensions tab and select “View automated extensions report”
2. The click on the automated extension options (advanced) and then click on Edit.
3. Check the “Do not use specific automated extensions for this account” option available at
the bottom.
Keep in mind that after Feb 6, you will have to remove any automatically generated call
extensions from under the Call extensions section.

Related Article: Google Loves Mobile Websites 

Google is going to roll out the mobile first index very soon and those who haven’t opted for
responsive websites should go for it as soon as possible. Also, if this the first time you have heard about “Mobile first index” then leave everything and just click here to know the details about this major shift. There have been two shifts in preparation:

Search Console Reports

Google often does not openly discuss upcoming changes but this time they are doing whatever
they can in order to inform people about the major shift. John Muller recently said that those who are going to get impacted by the shift will receive warning and guidelines within their GoogleSearch Console accounts so that they can resolve the issues before the changes take place.
“We will inform people when we get closer when we actually have a date, so there is sufficient
time for people to kind of resolve issues that they may need to resolve. We’ll try to also inform sites where we recognize issues, so if we recognize that maybe your mobile version doesn’t have all of the same content or markup that your desktop version has then we’ll try and let you know about that through Search Console as well, so that you kind of are aware of these issues and kind of have time to resolve them.”

New TestMySite Tool

Google has also introduced a new tool using which you can check the mobile friendliness of your website: https://testmysite.withgoogle.com. This new tool replaces the old search console mobile friendly tool.

When you enter your website’s URL, it displays your websites mobile friendliness and also sends you reports to your email stating what your website is lacking. Not only that, it also provides you with ideas on how you can improve it. Make sure the maximum use of it.

8 Ways to Make Your Website Even Stickier Today

One click doesn’t suffice!

You need more clicks and forms filled out to generate as many leads as you can! It’s pull marketing here on the internet!

If you want to attract more customers, monetize your blog, or become a trusted industry leader, you’ve got to keep online visitors clicking around your site (vs. darting off to go check Facebook).

Try these tips to get website visitors to stick around:

1. Add a “Most Emailed” widget (a la The New York Times) on the homepage to arouse interest in viral stories.

2. Shorten every post with a “Read More” link. You’ll get two pageviews per article and make your homepage more inviting by cutting down on bulky text.

3. Include “Related Links” to other interesting content on your site at the bottom of every post.

4. Integrate linkable social media icons into your post template for easy sharing.

5. For the love of user experience, make sure all external links pop up in a new window so your reader stays on your site.

6. Reach out to related bloggers and offer a link exchange so both of you can boost new users and SEO (external links up your Google search rank).

7. Repeat after us: no pop-ups. Ever. A little ad revenue is just not worth the annoying interruption.

8. Always add an awesome image. A picture’s worth a thousand page views.

Try using these tactics and read more on how to make your website visitors stick around by listening to what your customers want and delivering!

Finally, Google has updated the Penguin algorithm. The fourth release is also the last of this type since Google Penguin 4.0 is now officially part of Google’s Core Algorithm.

Penguin is now operating in real-time.

Penguin was launched in 2012 to stop sites from spamming the Google’s SERP. The Penguin was able to detect the websites which were spamming the results but were going undetected by the regular spamming system.

But the catch was, the site with spammy behaviors had to wait for the Penguin to run again in order to get out of the list. Since it operated on a periodic basis, the websites had to wait for a really long time. Some sites even had to wait for

Penguin was launched in 2012 to stop sites from spamming the Google’s SERP. The Penguin was able to detect the websites which were spamming the results but were going undetected by the regular spamming system. But the catch was, the site with spammy behaviors had to wait for the Penguin to run again in order to get out of the list. Since it operated on a periodic basis, the websites had to wait for a really long time. Some sites even had to wait for

But the catch was, the site with spammy behaviors had to wait for the Penguin to run again in order to get out of the list. Since it operated on a periodic basis, the websites had to wait for a really long time. Some sites even had to wait for couple of years to get out from the dark zone.

Google last updated the Penguin on 17-Oct- 2014 and the websites that were penalized had to wait really long. To be honest it was unfair on so many levels. As the need of the hour, Google decided to play it fair and made the Penguin run in real time along with its re-crawling and re-indexing process, making it much faster and effective.

It has become more page-specific.

Google has made Penguin 4.0 “more granular”. Following is the official statement from Google:

“Penguin is now more granular. Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting the ranking of the whole site.”

Earlier, Penguin used to penalize the whole site, so does being “more granular” means that it is now page-specific?

It means it affects finer granularity than sites. It does not mean it only affects pages.

No confirmation from now on?

Google will not release any statement, informing about future Penguin refreshes because they have made the Penguin to operate in real time, which means that it will be updated promptly. It’s a constant process which leaves no room for confirmation or statement release.

Is it fully live?

Google has said that it will take a little more time as re-crawling the whole web is no joke, especially the deep links. Meanwhile, you can witness the changes as soon as Google re-crawls your site.

Our Takeaway

Right after the Penguin was official, we decided to run some numbers on our own campaigns. Our dataset of 3500+ websites and 250,000+ keywords (both local and national) makes it easy for us to get a birds-eye view of how our client campaigns are performing.

We were not surprised to find that, so far, this update didn’t have any major negative impact on our client campaigns. In fact, we have seen improvement in overall percentage of keywords ranking on page 1 of Google. We are quite confident that the new and improved 2016 SEO deliverables which we offer saved our clients. This is another example of how our strategies future-proof your business and avoid your website getting hit by such major updates.

In case you have been caught by this update, we can help you get back on track. Please contact our sales reps to assist you.

For the history buffs:

Penguin 1.0 on April 24, 2012 (impacting ~3.1% of queries)
Penguin 1.1 on May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%)
Penguin 1.2 on October 5, 2012 (impacting ~0.3% of queries)
Penguin 2.0 on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)
Penguin 2.1 on Oct. 4, 2013 (impacting around 1% of queries)
Penguin 3.0 on October 17, 2014 (impacting around 1% of queries)
Penguin 4.0 & real-time on September 23, 2016

To rank your website higher, you should keep up the pace with Google as it keeps updating its algorithm. The following tips will help you to stay updated and improve your rankings in local search.

1. Start with Extensive Keyword Research. Concentrate on your client’s needs. If you provide what your clients are specifically searching for, you can get maximum results. Do a comprehensive research about the keywords that your prospects use and optimize your site accordingly.

2. Regularly Update Your Business Listing and Use Precise NAP Keep a constant check on your business listing, especially Google My Business & ensure that it is relevant for the users. You can outsource Business Listing Management to make sure your business listing is on your client’s search results. Also, using precise Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) is essential. If you are using abbreviations make sure your abbreviations are acceptable by Google.

3. Clients’ Reviews Play a Vital Role. Having a review section on your website is a must and you need to ensure that you have a maximum number of positive and genuine reviews. Creating a system for constantly monitoring reviews will be beneficial as it will create a positive impact. If you are in need of getting positive reviews, for your business we can help. Our review widget, which we offer as a part of our SEO, helps to get positive reviews from Google, Yelp, and Facebook.

4. Design Mobile Friendly Website for Your Business It is sad that we still have to remind people about it. But just for the sake of it – “Having a mobile friendly website is an absolute must because most of the people use mobile devices to perform any search”. And if your website is not optimized as per the mobile screen, it will take longer to load and will be inconvenient for the users. Ultimately, they will simply hit the back button.

5. High-quality Content High-quality content is the king. People start their purchase journey with research and if you provide them with the information they are looking for, they will prefer you over your competitors to do business. Avoid scraping content, though, it will do more harm than good.

6. Relevant Title Tags Title Tags are one of the most important factors of search results. Use title tags which you think can be easily linked to clients’ search. Remember, your title tags and tag lines should be descriptive.

7. Location Specific Pages Make it easy for customers to find your business. If you have a multi-location business, create a separate page for each location rather than cramming all the information on one page. But don’t forget to interlink the pages to ensure proper navigation.

Following the above-mentioned tips will help you up your SEO game. However, to get better results, you will have to constantly update yourself on the latest trends. SEO is not a one-time task, it’s an ongoing process. In case you need any help, feel free to contact us. Our experts will guide you to the best of their knowledge.

Google is putting everything “Mobile First”. More than 50% of people use mobile devices to search for local businesses.

Have you looked at your website traffic recently?  While there, you may want to look at visitors specifically coming from mobile devices. In May, Google released another update to their mobile algorithm that strengthens the ranking of mobile-friendly sites, which means any websites not optimized for mobile have the potential to lose organic search traffic. 

Google is built around great User Experience. Since most people are using search engines on mobile devices than desktop computers. They want to provide their customers (search engine users) with the best results which include providing results with mobile friendly designs when searched for on a mobile device.

How do you know if you’re affected? Here’s what to do:

• Check your website traffic and mobile traffic and see if it has decreased.
• Ensure your most important pages are optimized for mobile. If they’re not, update them as soon as possible and Google will update their results in near real-time.

It’s very rare for Google to not deliver on what it promises. As expected, Google recently rolled out a booster update for businesses that already have a mobile-friendly presence. Many media reports claimed that since this is a mobile booster update it may not impact businesses as such. But contrary to the reports, there were quite a few businesses that were severely impacted because of the update. If you happened to miss out on the update completely then here’s a lowdown on the salient features of the mobile booster update.

• The update was rolled out as page-by-page and not as a site-wide ranking signal.
• The mobile booster update was rolled out globally, supporting all languages.
• This was an algorithm update, so if you’ve made any on-site modifications, they will go live when the Google bot next crawls your web pages.

In the wake of the mobile booster update, this is what Google had advised businesses without a smartphone-friendly online presence –
“Remember, the intent of the search query is still a very strong signal — so even if a page with high-quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank well if it has great, relevant content.”

Businesses that recently lost out to their competitors in search rankings need to take Google’s mobile-friendly test to check the quality of their mobile-friendly web pages and see if they are following the industry standards. Businesses who wants to upgrade to a mobile-friendly online presence, can request our FREE SEO AUDIT.

As they say, it’s never too late for even the most stubborn businesses to take the call, especially with Google releasing stats that say nearly one-third of all mobile searches have local intent! If your business thrives in the local market then upgrading your site with a responsive web design and getting a mobile-friendly tag may just do the trick for you.

This will not only better serve your purpose but also get you some mileage, especially with Google continuing to make the web world a more mobile-friendly one. A miss here may cost you in the long run. If you’re interested in getting a mobile-friendly version for your website, do contact us and we will get started ASAP.

Features of our Google Mobile-Friendly Website:

• Responsive website recognized by Google as mobile friendly.
• Click-to-Call, Click-to-Email and Click-to-Text features.
• Advanced mobile lead tracking and analytics.
• Premium User Experience

Great SEO starts with a great website.  So what makes a website great for SEO?

First and foremost, yours and your website must be optimally designed for a great user experience.

In one of our previous posts, we have discussed Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines for their human evaluators.  Humans then rate search results which serve as feedback to improve their algorithm.

This is Google’s way of ensuring search results displayed by their algorithms are what they should be – answers to what users are looking for.

Google has been aligning their machine learning and algorithms with the user experience by coming up with website performance metrics.  Here are some of the metrics they’re using, and may be using, as ranking signals:

• Site Speed
• Low Bounce Rate
• Mobile-friendliness

Site Speed

Users easily give up on slow websites. A study by Akamai revealed that:

• 52% of smartphone users
• 47% for desktop users 

…expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.

According to Aberdeen Group, a 1-second delay in page load time yields:

• 11% fewer page views
• 16% decrease in customer satisfaction
• 7% loss in conversions

Here are some techniques we use for a fast-loading website.

• Caching
• GZIP Compression
• CSS Optimization
• Minification
• WordPress Plug-ins Optimization
• Image Optimization
• …and more

Bounce Rate 

If you are performing great SEO your bounce rate should be low. Bounce rate shows a strong correlation with rankings.

So it is important to pay attention to decreasing your bounce rate — low bounce rate is an indication (but not in the strictest sense) that your website visitors are engaged by going to other pages on your site.

A high bounce rate can be caused by factors such as design and usability.

• Design and Layout
  
  Aside from bad content, bad design and layout turns off website visitors.
   
• Easy Navigation
  
  If your visitors couldn’t figure out where to go next or where they are in the context of your entire website, they’d probably just drop off.

Here is Google’s guide to improve bounce rate.

Mobile-Friendliness 

Although non-mobile-friendly websites obviously get high bounce rates from users who are on a mobile device – thereby making mobile-friendliness an element to decreasing bounce rates, it is a ranking factor in its own category.

 Google’s Mobile Friendly Update on April 21, 2015 was designed to give a ranking boost to mobile-friendly pages on Google’s search results on mobile devices. Here is a detailed post about the importance of a mobile-friendly website.

Our web designs have great navigation and themes for every niche. We are always up to date with the latest mobile-friendly guidelines and newest call to actions to create conversions!

Great SEO starts with a great website! Our Web Builds are lightweight, optimized for speed, have sound design and layout, and are mobile-friendly.

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