by Mark | Jan 23, 2017 | Mobile, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO Tips
For a long time now Google has shown a preference to mobile devices over desktop and in November that became even more clear when Google announced plans to introduce “mobile-first” indexing on their Webmasters Blog. What is a Mobile-First Index? This is a big update and is going to be rolled out gradually, so knowing precisely the exact details are hard to do at this stage, but we can so far say this: Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) will be based on content found on your mobile website. Your choice of Mobile Technology does not matter – No matter if you have brand new AMP pages (Accelerated Mobile Pages) for your website, a responsive design or an old school standalone mobile version; they are all treated as the mobile version for indexing. Will I Be Affected? So the question is what does this really mean? Well if you find the following describes you then you might be in for a reduction in both mobile and desktop traffic… I have no mobile version of my website and my desktop version is not responsive to mobile devices (you can tell this if your website fails Googles mobile friendly test. (have link) Although Google has stated that they will still crawl your desktop version of the website in the absence of a mobile version, the trend towards mobile suggests you’re not going to be better off, if not in the short term certainly in the longer. My mobile website has compared to the desktop version: Fewer pages available for index Reduced content Different internal linking / structure What Should Your Digital...
by Mark | Feb 15, 2016 | SEO Tips
If you have noticed a decrease in your organic rankings and website traffic recently it is important to identify what the problem might be and resolve it as soon as possible. Take a read of our handy 3 part guide and see why you are dropping down the rankings or sitting on a ticking bomb that could lead to organic disaster. Have Your Rankings & Traffic Actually Dropped? First things first, you need to know for sure if you have actually suffered a drop in either your rank or traffic. Simply searching for your keyword in Google and seeing where you rank is no longer sufficient. Since late 2009 Google has been customising our search results based upon user behavior for all users, not just those of us signed into our Google accounts. What this means is that those organic rankings you are so proud of might not actually be what joe public sees….. but that is a discussion for another day. Checking Your Rankings The best way to check your rankings is to use a tool that tracks these for you. There are a number of free and paid options, as an digital agency we love to use Moz and SEM Rush, both of which offer keyword tracking as part of their online set of tools. Alternatively you can always do it the old fashioned way and Google each search term individually and scrolling through the pages until you find yourself…. just remember to go into private / incognito mode so that you don’t see personalised results. Checking Your Website Traffic This one is easy, we always recommend...
by swotdigital | Feb 11, 2015 | SEO Tips
The world of online marketing is a constantly moving one and in order to keep up to date requires time dedicated each week to read up on the latest news, trends and techniques. This sort of information is available by the truck load, blogs both personal and industry leading giving advice on how to best achieve the optimal search visibility. The problem is the most readily available articles and guides are all to do with the latest thinking and how to keep ahead of the curve in terms of seo, what is rarely discussed are the techniques of days gone by that have for some reason hung around as so called “best practice”. Digital marketing budgets are tight for most SME’s and the last thing anyone wants to do is spend budget on work that does not give the best return on investment. Unfortunately that is the case for a lot Irish businesses who are relying on their internal marketing person to keep their online marketing strategy on budget and cutting edge whilst managing their other day to day responsibilities. This is rarely possible and if you take your eye off the ball it is more than likely that you are engaging in online tactics and techniques that are out of date and potentially harmful to your business. This article is aimed at shining the light on some of the techniques that are still being touted as “the way” to rank higher in Google but are in reality far from it. Directory Submissions This first technique is probably the most harmful of them all, born back in the early...
