Tag Archives: search engine optimization

Announced earlier this year, Google's "Speed Update" is officially beginning its rollout. This means that loading times on mobile will now affect search rankings, especially for the slowest sites.

Many webmasters are likely already trying to increase their site's speed on mobile if for no other reason than to improve user experience. If you're in this position, you may be ahead of the game - a new report from Searchmetrics indicates that load speed has already been affecting Google rankings. However, your pages may need to load even faster than previously thought to see any SEO benefit after this update.

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Mobile usability has been a Google ranking factor for years, but the algorithm was primarily focused on desktop versions of sites when indexing. Now, however, the mobile-first index is officially rolling out following a promise by Google in 2016.

Put simply, this means that Google's algorithm will now view the mobile version of your site before anything else when making indexing and ranking choices. For sites that (wisely) use responsive design instead of a separate mobile version, Google will view your site through the lens of a mobile device, at least initially. Here's what you need to know:

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There are many factors that are well-known to contribute to decent Google rankings: quality content, optimized meta information, keywords, content freshness, content authority, backlinks - just to name a few. When doing the work to optimize your site, though, the actual strategies for improving some of these factors can be unclear - not to mention how tough it can be to measure your strategies' actual effect on rankings.

Luckily, there's at least one ranking factor that's relatively easy to measure and improve: site speed. And with a recent announcement from Google, it's now time to analyze your mobile site speed and make it as fast as possible.

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When trying to market a website, app, or any other internet entity, marketers' go-to strategies most often involve using 3rd party platforms to try getting more traffic. This is with good reason, as search, social and email strategies (including paid and organic options for each) are some of the most effective channels for driving traffic back to your own site.

But this leads to marketers potentially overlooking what is arguably the single most powerful and important traffic segment: direct visits. With SEMRush recently naming direct website traffic the single most important ranking factor, it becomes clear that direct visits simply should not be ignored.

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Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), launched just over a year ago, has already become an extremely popular mobile SEO tool. It's being used by over 2 billion pages across 900,000 different domains, and it's likely that these numbers will continue to grow throughout this year.

The reason why is simple: AMP is an open-source publishing format that uses a special type of HTML, allowing pages clicked on in Google's search results to load rapidly on mobile devices. According to a new study from web analytics firm Chartbeat, this increase in speed also leads to an increase in content engagement.

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