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Small Businesses Adapt.

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This week I heard something from a few business owners I know that surprised me.

I’d mentioned Google’s new use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor in search engine results, which is going to begin on April 21. The response was basically:

“I don’t see why I should be forced to pay to update my website just because Google says so.”

It surprised me because this isn’t about Google. It’s about customers. Google is acknowledging the rising tide of what customers have already been doing for quite some time – paying more visits to websites on smartphones or tablets than desktop computers.

When it comes down to it, it’s about choosing to make things hard or easy for your visitors to accomplish their goals on your site.

You make it hard when you serve up a website that, in a smartphone, has unreadable text and you force visitors to zoom in to see content. You make it hard when they have to scroll right and left to see what’s on your page. You make it hard when the links are so close together it’s impossible to click just one with a finger or thumb.

A lot of people don’t put up with this anymore. I know I usually don’t – I say “usually ” because if I really want to see the content on a certain site, I’ll still zoom. But most of the time, I just bounce right off that page and go look at another search result – often that turns out to be a competitor.

You make it easy when you serve up a mobile version of your site to phone users. It’s easy to read, easy to get around. It has big buttons to push and menu items that are big enough to hit one at a time. If it’s responsive, it may contain every bit of content that’s on the desktop-sized version of your website. In short, it’s a much better experience for the user all around. The website’s design doesn’t get in the visitor’s way.

Adapt, or get left behind.

The people who made the comments I mentioned above are smart business people, but they seem to be forgetting one of the superpowers of the small business: the ability to adapt quickly to a changing marketplace.

Smartphones and tablets aren’t fads. They aren’t going anywhere. Your customers and readers are going to be using them more and more. Refusing to make things as easy as possible for them to buy or use whatever you’re offering makes no sense. None at all.

You’re putting a brick wall in front of them. It’s like saying, “I don’t care about you.  It doesn’t matter to me if you take your business elsewhere.”

Making the switch to a responsive or mobile website is not that difficult. It can take as little as a few hours of work for some sites. If you’re still putting roadblocks in front of your potential customers, consider doing them a favor instead. Show them some love. Make it easier on them, and in turn, you may start seeing some of those sales or signups that had been going to your competitors coming your way again.

 

Google Begins Using Mobile-friendliness as a Ranking Factor on April 21. Is Your Site Ready?

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Is your website mobile-friendly? If not, this news might make you reconsider that.

On April 21, Google will start using mobile-friendliness (or responsiveness) as one of its ranking factors in search results. This is a natural addition given that the number of users using mobile surpassed desktop users in early 2014.

Mobile-friendly or not?
Is your site mobile-friendly?

How might this change in ranking factors affect you as the owner of a site that isn’t mobile-friendly? It depends on your industry, according to this recent post by Moz.

If you’re in an industry where mobile-friendly content is prevalent, and your site doesn’t offer it, you could experience moderate to significant loss in your search engine ranking positions. If on the other hand, desktop browsing is the norm for customers looking for content in your industry, there may be little to no impact on your search rankings at this time.

However, this doesn’t mean that making your website mobile-friendly isn’t a worthwhile change.  The number of users accessing the Internet with a phone or tablet continues to increase. If you wait long enough, you could begin experiencing some loss of ranking position as others in your industry replace their sites with mobile-friendly versions.

Red Kite recommends that all business sites we build be responsive to work nicely in phones and tablets. Penalizing your customers by forcing them to zoom in to see content on your site is something that is going to make them leave and go to your competitors’ websites, more and more.

Mobile Vs. Responsive

These are really two different approaches to the same goal.

‘Mobile’ often refers to a separate website, maybe in a subdomain (m.yoursite.com) or created with a mobile plugin or app. It can look and operate much differently than the main desktop-friendly website.

‘Responsive’ is what we do most often at Red Kite. This means your site’s content resizes to match the browser, whether desktop, tablet or phone. It means you have only one site to keep up, with a consistent look and feel across the user experience.

The Next Step

Take this opportunity to take a good hard look at your site in your phone or tablet. If it’s at all difficult to read or get around, this is a great time to remedy that problem. Contact Red Kite and let’s discuss making your site mobile-friendly today.

SEO Myths: Keyword Stuffing

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This post is about keyword stuffing. If you don’t know what keyword stuffing is all about, keep reading and soon you’ll understand everything there is to know about keyword stuffing, including the basic concepts of keyword stuffing and how to use keyword stuffing to enhance your blog posts.

(Just kidding about that last one. Don’t do this).

Wasn’t that incredibly irritating?

If I read something like that on someone’s website or blog, it’s totally clear to me that that writer has no interest in me as a reader; the only thing they’re concerned about is search engines.

Keyword stuffing is a persistent SEO myth that is all about what you read up there at the top: picking a keyword phrase as the topic of your post and jamming as many instances of it as you can in your writing. Google’s definition is: “the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results.”

It looks like spam. People don’t want to read it, and other blogs won’t link to yours if you do it.

The myth is that keyword density – the number of times a keyword phrase appears in a page – is one of the ranking factors used by search engines.

This is not the case. Check out the Search Engine Ranking Factors compiled by MOZ, and notice that ‘keyword density’ doesn’t show up on the list. We can drill down to just the factors related to page keyword usage, including things like:

  • Keyword usage in the title tag/H1
  • Keyword usage in the body text
  • Keyword usage in the meta description

Yes, it is important to use your keyword phrase in your post or page – but use it wisely. Write naturally. Don’t overuse keywords and you won’t come across as a search engine spammer.

SEO – Getting the Right Perspective

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I wanted to cheer when I read this wonderful quote from SEO guru Jill Whalen the other day – maybe this will help you reframe your thinking about SEO too?

“Most people don’t understand SEO because they’re coming at it from the wrong perspective. They’re solely focused on how they can make specific keyword phrases rank better in Google, when instead they should be focusing on how they can create a great website that Google will have to show highly because to omit it from their listings would be a great disservice to their searchers.”