Wednesday, 7 June 2017

10 of the Best SEO Tips for Google Mobile-First Indexing 2017

Approximately 80 percent of Internet users own a smartphone. It’s no wonder why mobile users surpassed desktop computers for bandwidth used online. Instead of heading home and getting on the computer to look something up or to chat on Facebook, people can do it while at the grocery store.
Because mobile technology is so prevalent in today’s society, a new way to develop websites has been formulated. Thus enters in the idea of a mobile-first index.
What this means is that your website will be judged based on its capacity to work in a mobile environment. For instance, Google’s indexing algorithms will pit your layout and the site’s overall functionality against how it would perform on a smartphone.

Why is the Mobile-First Index So Important?

Mobile devices play a crucial role in how sites are designed today. Not only will people abandon a website if it looks poorly on a smartphone display, but as many as 57 percent of users state they will not recommend that site.
In the smartphone and tablet era, design needs to incorporate a variety of elements and layouts for smaller displays. Things like small fonts and difficult-to-operate navigation can easily decrease visitor engagement.
The loss of interaction can lead to decreased sales, visitor interaction and hits to a brand’s reputation. By putting more effort into mobile-first index SEO, you can avoid most of these issues.
Here are 10 of the best optimization tips I can find for improving your site for Google mobile indexing.

1. Scan Your Site for Flaws

Mobile Friendly Test
The first step you should take is to scan your site for flaws when it comes to mobile search engine optimization. Using tools such as Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test can be instrumental when developing design strategies.
The test just takes a moment of time but will demonstrate how well your design performs in a hand-held environment. It will display any errors the site may have while being indexed by Google’s site crawler. This test will also show elements that are blocking Googlebot by design, such as advertiser links.
Easy Mobile Use
It will also be beneficial to take a look in your Webmasters Tools Search Console. Google has added a “Mobile Usability” report under the Search Traffic heading that will show issues regarding the site. This is because of the January 22nd, 2017 infrastructure update which analyzes various elements of your site for mobile interactivity.
For example, elements that are too close together or wider than the screen on a mobile device will cause errors. These pages with issues should be addressed immediately if you want to continue scoring well in SEO.
Mobile Usability Report

2. Transition to Responsive Design

According to Google, responsive design is more appealing than a separate mobile version of a website. This is because it eliminates a wide range of issues people are now having trying to maintain both desktop and mobile aspects.
Responsive design is a method used that will automatically adjust the layout of a website depending on the screen resolution of the visitor. It makes it easier for people to share content, is less demanding of time for development and most importantly saves resources when Googlebot crawls your pages.
Instead of having two completely separate URLs for content, you only use one. One of the biggest problems this eliminates is making sure both desktop and mobile sites have the same content available.
Implementing responsive design also helps avoid some of the most common mistakes in development. For instance, you will be less likely to have faulty redirects or irrelevant cross links between desktop and mobile versions of content.
One other aspect some people don’t consider is the amount of work that goes into setting up a mobile site as opposed to responsive design. For one, the mobile site requires a separate domain or subdomain if you want to do it correctly. Responsive can be done from a single URL and file structure.

3. Optimize Your Content for Mobile Users

You probably already know that a wall of text plays poorly for mobile users. This is when someone is faced with a seemingly long block of content without paragraphs or headings.
It’s all about keeping your target audience engaged. If they come across an ultra-long piece of content, it often turns people off. This is because text on a mobile screen can be quite difficult to read for some.
Keeping paragraphs short and highlighted with headings and sub-headings makes the content easier to absorb. This is true for both humans and search engine bots alike.
When you look at a screen on your smartphone that has completely filled the display with text, do you get excited to read it? I am willing to bet that most of you actually feel the same dread I do when I see a long block of words crammed together in the palm of my hand.

4. Consider Your Link-Building Strategy

The way you build links may also reflect the website’s performance in the mobile arena. Don’t forget, Google likes relevant and quality connections between content. This means you’ll need to pay closer attention to what material you link out to.
For the most part, link building should remain relatively unchanged with one major exception: making sure a mobile link connects to a mobile site. I’ve experienced a few websites on my smartphone where the developer linked to a source that was not mobile ready. As a result, I couldn’t read the text very well and it was a pain to manage.
Needless to say, I left the site in search of similar content. And that’s where the truth lies. If someone cannot manage your site, they will look elsewhere.
You want to avoid linking a mobile site with a desktop version. Sometimes this happens in development on mobile-only versions where the content creator accidentally creates an “internal” link to the desktop version.
Yet, another reason to use responsive design instead.

5. Optimize Headings and Titles

Title optimization has been a concern for many over the years. At one point, users were allowed up to 65 characters before the infamous ellipses, or ““, would show. Now experts attest this number can go as high as 70.
In reality, Google shows results according to a length governed in pixels. For instance, one title can show 53 characters before being truncated while another can show more than 60. It all depends on what can be shown in a specific space on the search engine.
For instance, I just counted characters in a Google search result page from my smartphone and found one to be truncated at 55 while another was at 65.
Does this mean that titles don’t matter? Not exactly. It’s still advisable to keep them at a length that can be easily seen in search. Just bear in mind that Google only scans about 600 pixels worth of characters for those results.
Proper use of headers is also vital for page indexing. Even from a mobile perspective, achieving the top as a Google featured snippet is ideal to attract attention to the website. More often than not, smartphone users will click on the top result. Since a snippet is ahead of all results except paid ads, this is prime search engine real estate.

6. Make Elements “Touchable”

It’s one thing to create a link for someone to click, but it’s another when you have too many clustered together. How often have you come across a site where you had to pinch to zoom so you could click a link or a button?
In fact, making elements touchable is such an important aspect that it’s an error counted on your website when you view the Google Search Console. This is because a site needs to be easy to use. Users unable to click the correct link because it’s too close to another is viewed poorly in the mobile-first index.
So, what can you do to avoid link clusters?
  • Use larger and easier to tap buttons instead of links.
  • Keep linked materials away from each other in content.
  • Use mobile-optimized menus instead of link navigation.
If you’re worried about using image buttons instead of links for SEO, don’t fret. That’s what the “ALT” tag is for. Adding alt text to images essentially tells Google what the graphic represents so it can be correctly indexed.

7. Eliminate Flash

No Flash For SEO
Rest in peace, Flash. In its day, Flash was an amazing concept for animation and video use on the Internet. Unfortunately, it’s now an archaic form of content delivery that has long been superseded by HTML5 and JavaScript.
Flash is not supported by every mobile browser. As a result, these elements will break making it a poor experience for the user. This, in turn, reduces the ranking of your site in Google.
Using HTML5 and JavaScript is a far better plan of action, and not just because it’s beneficial to mobile users. These two technologies are easier to render and have significant performance improvements over Flash.
A good example of this transition is when you look at YouTube. Once a prominent user of Flash video files, YouTube has changed its format. This resulted in far better security as well as vastly increasing performance in streaming video content.
And this isn’t just for mobile devices either. Desktop computers run HTML5 and JavaScript far better than Flash as well.

8. Keep the Site Fast

PageSpeed Tools
Website speed is important whether people are using smartphones or older desktop computers. The faster your site, the better it performs in Google.
Because speed plays such a vital role in search engine results, Google offers a free tool to test your pages. PageSpeed Tools not only analyzes your website for performance, but it will also tell you how to improve.
Google isn’t the only site that offers valuable insights into site speed performance, either. Another is the Pingdom speed test. By scrutinizing the various elements of your site, you can get a picture of just what is slowing you down.
As mobile devices are driven by convenience, most users want sites to load up quickly. In fact, approximately 53 percent of mobile users will leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load up.
Images, coding, responsive elements, ad serve networks and more all contribute to how long it takes for a page to render in a browser. Any millisecond you can shave off improves your chances of not losing the audience.

9. Continue to Optimize for Desktop Systems

The most important aspect to your SEO strategy is to not give up optimizing for desktop computers. This is because of two very important reasons:
  1. Desktop and laptop computers still contribute to more than 58 percent of Internet activity in the United States.
  2. Not all search engines use the same algorithms as Google.
Although Google remains one of the top search engines on the Internet, it’s not the only one in action. Bing, Yahoo and even DuckDuckGo are all viable methods for many people.
In many ways, the same SEO techniques for desktops can be used for mobile engagement. Things like speed, links, quality content and more are all relevant to a site regardless of the technology.
While mobile optimization is a valid concern, it should be more of an added strategy and not a replacement.

10. Optimizing for Local Users

For businesses that focus marketing on local buzz, optimizing the site for mobile users is also important. This is because more people are turning to Google search to find local businesses than the traditional phone book.
This optimization includes adding your city and state to things like the title tag, H1 headings, alt tags, meta descriptions and URLs. Since people often trust a business that displays contact information, making sure this is prevalent on the mobile site is also important.
Approximately 50 percent of smartphone users and 34 percent of tablet users visit a store they research online the same day. Without optimizing for mobile technology, the business could be losing out to nearby competitors.

How Does Your Site Stack Up?

As more people browse the Internet from their smartphones, the need for optimizing for the mobile-first index in Google grows apparent. Each passing second your site sits without making these adjustments is another potential customer giving money to the competition. An optimized web hosting service can only do so much. It’s up to you to make certain improvements to the website itself for mobile indexing in Google.Special Offer:
Win Piriform CCleaner Professional Giveaway (10 x Full Licenses) support by Group Buy SEO Tools http://www.bestseotools.cc https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner Mention this giveaway part on your blog, and send us link at doogeetop@gmail.com, you can a chance get free Piriform CCleaner Professional V5.30 license.

17 Actionable SEO Tips To Help Skyrocket Your Rankings 2017

So, you’ve built an amazing website. Now what?
If you want traffic to come to your website, you have to understand the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) – it’s just that simple.
While there are many SEO tips, tricks, and promises out there, we thought we’d narrow our list down to 16 actionable SEO Tips and Tricks that you can actually use – and that seriously work.
Don’t be bogged down by all the promise-makers (aka – the shady SEO firms!) that guarantee top ranking in Google! We promise you that nobody can make that promise!
Instead, what we believe is that you can use SEO strategies that work, build traffic, and get your content ahead of your competition. Just a few key tweaks here and there and you’ll be off to the races!
I promise you, SEO doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing thing either. So, let’s dive into this topic again.

A Little About the Benefits of SEO

SEO, when done well, can give you great results.
The cost? If you do it yourself, the cost is time. It does wonders for both your brand’s credibility and traffic.
You also get to benefit from user intent. This means that if someone wants to buy something, and your site ranks for buyer keywords, there are high chances they’ll buy from you (or using your affiliate link) because their primary intent was to buy.
That’s quality traffic, especially if you have an e-commerce site, or affiliate marketing site both of which depend on this kind of “user intent” traffic to drive numbers.
Remember, it’s not just about the number of people who visit your site, it’s about the number of people who convert – or buy something! That’s the kind of traffic we all want, right?
However, it is not easy to rank a website.
In fact, search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing only have 10 slots each on the first search engine result page (SERP). Not everyone can fit into one of those coveted top 10 spaces.
There are also so many myths and outdated SEO tips all over the internet. Some SEO myths include the fact that SEO is dead, link building is dead or that hiring an SEO agency can make you rank top instantly.
Outdated tips include keyword stuffing, content spamming, exact match domains and use of SEO directories.
So, what are the legitimate and actionable SEO tips that will shoot up your rankings?

1. Learn How to Use Keywords the Right Way

Yes – this still matters.
This is one of the basics of SEO. You need to ensure each page is properly keyword optimized.
Make sure you have your keywords in your:
  • Title tag: This shows search engines the topic of your page. If you have an SEO plugin, such as Yoast SEO for WordPress, it’s easy to optimize your SEO title to increase ranking and clickthrough rates (CTRs).
  • Meta description: This is important for CTR. It does not impact your search ranking but may help a searcher decide whether or not to click on your page.
  • URL: Your URL should be short, readable and contain your target keyword.
  • Headings: This will affect your search ranking. Make sure you have a keyword in at least one of your headings.
  • Image title and ALT text: Including keywords here will show search engines and screen readers what your image is about.
  • Your content: Your website visitors are more likely to stay on a page that has their search terms used a couple of times. This is also a ranking factor, but only if you don’t overdo it.
To find out which keywords you should use, you can use Google’s Keyword Planner or my personal favourite, Keyword Tool.
Both of these tools will give you a great list of keywords and information that will help form your decisions.

2. Create Dedicated Long-Form Content

Yes, sometimes bigger can be better.
Google does not disclose how exactly it determines which pages go to page 1 for specific search terms. But experts usually test and experiment to gain credible insights on what tends to rank better.
Moz conducted a ranking factor study back in 2015, but lots of the information is still relevant. You can check that out here.
SerpIQ once conducted a study that showed that the average length for the first result in SERPs had 2,416 words.
Google’s take on this was that they were rolling out features to make it easier to find in-depth and relevant articles.
In this article, Neil Patel features six different studies that prove that long-form content gets better search rankings.
Here are some clear SEO benefits of long-form content:
  • They get more backlinks
  • It’s easier to naturally use more keywords, LSIs and image ALT tags
  • They get more social shares
And that’s just three benefits of writing longer blog content. Writing blog filler just isn’t worth it. You need to provide value to your website’s visitors every time.

3. Change Your URL Structure

Most blog posts display the date they were published. Users love this since they can easily get more updated info.
Sadly, even if you update a 5-year old blog today, it will still show as if the post was published 5 years ago.
Yes, you can do a content relaunch and edit the date of your post. But if you’ve edited so many posts in a day, it may look spammy if you relaunch them all.
The better option is to change your URL date structure to show last updated date instead of the published date. This will get picked up by Google really quick and will improve your organic search traffic.
Google (and web visitors) love updated content. So, make sure you update your old posts at least once a year.
One issue with this is that if people have linked to your blog posts, when you update them, the URL will change, causing the link to break.
You have two options:
  1. Use a redirect plugin to redirect your old post URL to the new one
  2. Use a link structure that doesn’t include the date at all
At Canny, we use the second option. That way we’re free to update our blog posts whenever we like, without breaking links to our website!

4. Use Modifiers. Google and Everyone Else Loves Them!

Which one sounds better between these two?
  • Running shoes
  • Best running shoes
The second one, right?
The word “best” there acts as a modifier to the keyword “running shoes”. If used in a title tag, it will increase your chances of getting ranked for the long tail search term, “best running shoes”.
Some common modifiers that you can use include:
  • Best
  • Current year
  • Review
  • Guide
  • Cheap
  • Buy
Using modifiers gives you a better chance of ranking for your chosen keywords. Essentially you’re taking short tail keywords and making them long tail.
And it’s always easier to rank for the long tail!

5. Create Amazing Infographics

Infographics make it easier for people to visually process data.
When done well, they can help you get lots of backlinks and social shares. This is great for SEO. Brian Dean from Backlinko has a great infographic and backlink strategy.
However, Google can’t read infographics. Therefore, make sure you also add text before and/or after the infographics as well to increase your chances of getting ranked.
If you’re not a designer, how can you create an infographic?
If you’re working with a tiny budgetr, you could always try using Canva or Design Pickle. But people want to see something exciting that they’ve never seen before.
But the best option is to choose a graphic design agency or freelance designer to help you!

6. Vary Your Anchor Text

Google zoomed in on anchor texts in the Penguin algorithm update.
Too many inbound links containing the same anchor text are considered spammy and will hurt your rankings. Vary your anchor text to avoid this.
Since you don’t have much control over how other people link to you, this is very important to the way you link to other posts within your own website.
Below are the forms of anchor text variations that you can use:
  • Exact match: This matches the keyword of the page being linked to. For example, “tennis shoes” linking to a tennis shoes page.
  • Partial match: This is a variation of the keyword e.g. “best tennis shoes”.
  • Branded: Use of your brand name e.g. “Apple” or “Canny Creative”.
  • Naked link: Here a URL is used e.g. example.com – these don’t look great and I’ve rarely seen them used well!
  • Generic: A generic word or phrase such as “click here”, “study”, “blog post” etc.
  • Author: The name of the author who wrote the blog post.
  • Page title: This matches the exact page or post title as anchor text.
  • Image links: Here the alt text is viewed by search engines as the anchor text.

7. Reduce Site Load Speed

Site load speed affects your rankings, according to Google.
Slow pages will not only hurt your SEO, they’ll also hurt your time on page, bounce rate and conversions.
Essentially if your website’s visitors find your site to be slow, they’ll leave in a heartbeat.
So:
Analyze your site load speed and if you find that it’s too slow, take measures to increase it.
Of course, we’ve already given you our top tips in our blog post How to Speed Up Your Website. Yes, there are things you can do to get a faster load speed and that will most certainly help your SEO.

8. Write Awesome and Actionable Content That People Love

You should first write for people before you write for search engines.
Great content solves the needs of your target audience – whether they came to learn or just to be entertained. If you are giving them tips, they should be useful, relevant, timely and actionable.
This will help you in SEO in many ways since great content is easier to promote, get backlinks and social shares. It will also remain evergreen, meaning it stays relevant, and be less likely to get hurt by search engine algorithm updates.
No matter what connections you have, you can’t really go far with boring, old, rehashed, and regurgitated content. To rank number 1 for your keyword, create content that deserves that spot.
Creating great content takes time and effort, but it’s worth every bit of time that you invest into it!
At Canny, the only active marketing that we do is content creation. And it’s been the constant driving force behind the growth of our business.

9. Reclaim Brand Name Mentions with No Links

As your brand grows, you’re likely to get multiple mentions all over the internet. But some people will just mention your brand without linking to you.
You can reclaim these mentions by reaching out and asking for a link.
Most will agree to do it since they had already mentioned you anyway. This can be a time consuming task, much like reaching out to get backlinks (see below) but it can payoff.

10. Reach out For Backlinks via Email

This is how many great relationships are made online. This simply involves emailing people who can help you in your online marketing and SEO campaigns.
It is a skill that when well understood can help you boost your SEO efforts.
You can use email outreach to:
  • Get link building opportunities by asking other bloggers to link to your content
  • Build relationships with other bloggers so that you can co-create content such as infographics and case studies
  • Ask influencers to share your post on social media
There are many more things that you can do with email outreach, so invest some time to learn how to do it effectively.
Neil Patel has a great guide called The Advanced Guide to Link Building. But it’s not for advanced users only! Check it out, it’s great for beginners and link building wizards alike.

11. Internal Linking Amongst Your Own Content

On the subject of link building, it’s important to build links within your own website.
Search engines crawl the web to find content. They then use different factors to rank the best pages on specific topics.
For these bots to properly crawl your website, you need to link each post to another post on your blog. This will make the process faster.
So remember to link old blog posts to new blog posts, and vice versa.
If you’ve not done internal linking on some posts, this may negatively affect your SEO. Go back and look for old posts and pages, update them and link them to other relevant posts on your blog.
As a rule of thumb, we try to incorporate one or two links per 1000 words we write. Give it a try.

12. Use ‘H’ Tags

H tags (heading tags) show search engines your important headings. It’s advisable to use a keyword in your heading tags – especially in your H1 tag and at least once or twice in your H2 tags.
Remember headlines are great ways for you to show Google and readers exactly what this content is about. I happen to love a good headline, or two, or three in a blog. It helps users navigate through your content quickly so they can decide if you are covering all the bases on any particular topic. This is also where smart, useful keyword research comes into play.

13. Use LSI Keywords

In case you feel like your page is over-optimized, use LSI keywords (latent semantic indexing). So, if your keyword is “link building strategies”, you can use “how to build backlinks” as one of your H tags.
LSI keywords are easy to find, because Google does most of the work for you.
For example:
If you’re targeting the keyword “Car Finance” – then you’re in a difficult space to win at SEO. However, you can utilise LSI keywords to open up gaps.
First of all type “Car Finance” into Google, and then scroll to the bottom of the browser.
This is what you’ll find:
From this image alone, you can identify several new keywords and opportunities.
If you’re writing high quality content, try and sprinkle some of your LSI keywords into it. It’ll help Google identify what your content is about and give you a better chance of finding success in the search engines.

14. Make Sure Your Site is Mobile Friendly

Google rolled out its mobile friendly boost in May 2016. This was an expected change since mobile had already overtaken desktop as the device used most to access websites.
Google was also getting more searches from mobile than any other type of device.
Use this tool to confirm whether Google considers your site mobile friendly. If it’s not, make the necessary changes and you’ll see a significant increase in rankings.
We’ve talked about this already here at the Canny blog, but we’ll keep mentioning it. If you haven’t made your site mobile friendly – or responsive, now is the time to do so!

15. Build Your Social Signals and Online Brand

Case studies show that social signals actually impact search engine rankings in the short and long-term. For example, a Google+ from a reputable account can bring about a significant SEO boost. Facebook likes/shares and retweets can help boost rankings for low competition keywords too.
Social signals also give your site an indirect SEO boost as follows:
  • You may get more organic links as people get to know and love your brand
  • It may improve some important on-site metrics such as lower bounce rate and increased time on site.
If you are not sure how much clout or social signals you have online, you can always evaluate your Klout score here: Check My Klout Score. Klout is an online app that evaluates your use of social media, your influence, etc. This can be a great starting point.
Building your brand online using social media may not directly help your SEO, but it can help your business.
You should ideally be building both things – SEO and Social Media – at the same time. It really shouldn’t be one or the other.

16. Follow Updates on Those Tricky Google Algorithms

Generally, a site with brilliant and engaging content should be awesome in Google’s eyes, right? That’s not always the case.
As we’ve seen above, you may have an incredible site but if it’s not mobile optimized, your rankings will go down. There are many things that can change where you rank in the SERPs.
To maintain and increase your rankings, you need to constantly know what Google wants and optimize for it. Always make sure you don’t over-optimize or do anything spammy.
Some of the famous Google updates include:
  • Hummingbird
  • Panda
  • Penguin
Learn more about these updates before you start your SEO campaign so that you don’t build something that you or Google will have to destroy.

17. Optimize for RankBrain

RankBrain is Google’s machine learning program that was announced in 2015. It brought about the aspect of artificial intelligence (AI) in SEO. Google stated that it is their third most important ranking factor, next to content and links.
RankBrain interprets search queries to find relevant pages that may still be useful, but not containing the exact query entered. It is therefore more focused on giving people results based on search intent.
We’ve already mentioned here how you can optimize for content and links. But how do you optimize for RankBrain?
  • Think of the user who’s getting to your content and try to answer all the questions they may have. This will make you focus on tackling a specific topic instead of just ranking for a keyword.
  • Create in-depth content whose purpose or intent can be easily interpreted by search engines.
  • Update your existing content to ensure that all your pages are properly optimized for RankBrain.
  • Optimize for CTR (Clickthrough rate). If your page ranks number one but doesn’t get as many clicks as the other nine posts on the same page, it may indicate that your page doesn’t deserve the number one ranking.
  • Use multimedia in your pages to increase time on page
  • Reduce the focus on trying to game Google’s system, but rather focus more on what’s important for your site’s visitors.
  • Increase engagement on your site.
  • Keep updating and posting fresh content.
  • Check out websites that rank and see what you can learn from them.

Conclusion

Search engines are getting smarter every day.
They want to ensure that they only display top-notch, relevant results. They also want to push out spammy content that adds no value to users.
Therefore, you should only follow SEO tips that work, and avoid wasting time with outdated myths.
Implement the tips above and you’ll be glad to see the SEO boost that you very well deserve. If you’ve been using our tips, on SEO, Branding, website creation – we’d love to hear from you! What’s working? What isn’t? Let us know!Special Offer:
Win Piriform CCleaner Professional Giveaway (10 x Full Licenses) support by Group Buy SEO Tools http://www.bestseotools.cc https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner Mention this giveaway part on your blog, and send us link at doogeetop@gmail.com, you can a chance get free Piriform CCleaner Professional V5.30 license.

How to Delete iMessage History on Mac or iPhone/iPad 2019 Guide? [Solved]

How to Delete iMessage History on Mac? Deleting iMessage history on Mac is quite easy. There are two common methods: Disable "Save hist...