So I’ve been working my backside off trying to implement Google’s Accelerated Pages , with limited amounts of success and bucket-loads of frustration and I’ve come to the point now where I have to ask… is it all really worth it?
Technical SEO is vitally important for your website, and provides the foundations for an effective search strategy. I was prompted to write this article having read a Search Engine Land guest post on the subject this week, written by Clayburn Griffin . The author of that article doesn’t seem to value technical SEO so much. He says that “ Technical SEO is easy, breezy, beautiful, but it’s no game-changer .” For me, this falls a long way from explaining what technical SEO actually is, and how important it is for your website.
It’s Friday, and time for our weekly round-up of the week’s news in search marketing. Today we have the most expensive AdWords keywords, a new site testing tool from Google, and a look at whether Google factors in anchor text in internal links. Google’s next mobile update will factor in page speed Mobile page speed isn’t currently used as a ranking factor by Google, but that will change with the next mobile friendly update . Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed this at a recent Search Marketing Summit in Sydney
Announced on the Google Small Business blog yesterday is a new tool to test how your site works across different devices. It seems to be a combination of the mobile friendly and page speed tools, though it is useful to have these tests in one place. According to Google: On average, people check their phones more than 150 times a day, and more searches occur on mobile phones than computers
The speed of mobile pages isn’t currently used as a ranking factor by Google, but that will change with the next mobile friendly update . At the Search Marketing Summit in Sydney today, and reported by Jennifer Slegg , Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes confirmed that page speed would be a factor in the next mobile update. Illyes wouldn’t be pinned down to a date, but it seems we’re looking at a matter of months. Google has only recently updated its mobile algorithm, but there’s more to come
Even incredibly patient people can’t stand waiting in lines – whether that’s at the bank, airport, or pizzeria. We either get bored or angry that it’s taking longer than expected
It’s important to get clear the value of changes in terms of SEO impact before allocating in-demand tech time to work on fixes. To throw up just one example: if your page returns in less than one second what impact will fixing render-blocking CSS have on absolute page load times
Google announced via their Webmaster Central blog today that they have recently updated PageSpeed Insights with mobile-specific recommendations to help site owners make their page more mobile-friendly. The announcement states: Poor usability can diminish the benefits of a fast page load. We know the average mobile page takes more than 7 seconds to load, and by using the PageSpeed Insights tool and following its speed recommendations, you can make your page load much faster
2014 will offer a new killer SEO technique or two, it’s my bet that leading the charge will be changes to the mobile SEO algorithm in Google.
Whether you mark it by Labor Day or the Autumnal (Fall) Equinox, summer is coming to an end — which makes this a great time to give your website an SEO cleanse and recharge the old batteries. Here are 8 things you can do to strengthen quality. 1. Fix Errors Listed In Webmaster Tools Both…