FYI: Google update April 21st. Big deal for mobile.

[discxpress]

Hello,

 

There has been speculation and also expectation that Google will focus even more on the mobile friendliness of websites. Well I ran across this information on a blog that I've been reading the past few days and thought that I'd share this information with the community. That blog posting led me to the Google Webmaster Central blog.

 

If search rankings mean anything to you, then getting your sites mobile friendly is now more of an urgency than ever.  Here's the post from Google Webmaster Central blog: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html

 

Pass this post along to others.

 

Your thought are welcomed.

[discxpress]

Although the posting is from Feb. 26th, it still serves as a huge reminder. April 21st is quickly approaching.

[burt]

Nice one @@discxpress

It's very important that all shopowners realise that the days of having a website that is good for 1 device (usually laptop or desktop) is dead and buried. It is ultra important for all shopowners (well, all shopowners who think Google is important) to take steps to make their site device friendly. There is a testing page for seeing if your site is device friendly at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

If after testing your site, the results page looks like this:

 

 

then you are stuffed, and need to do something today to correct it.

 

If your site looks like this:

 

 

then you are coooolllllllllllllllllllll

 

A lot of forward looking shopowners have been coooolllllllllllllllllllll for over a year ...

 

--

 

Shopowners need to understand that todays shoppers want to see a site in a number of devices, typical examples;

• smartphone (multiple sizes of screen)
• 7" tablet such as samsung note & kindle
• 10" tablet such as iPad
• notebook computer
• laptop (multiple sizes of screen)
• desktop (multiple sizes of screen)

With so many different displays it is ultra important to make your site suitable for all.

 

Next up shopowners need to understand the difference between ADAPTIVE and RESPONSIVE.

 

Adaptive

 

Usually means running separate sites for "mobile" and "normal".  Sites usually look totally different.  How confusing is that for the Joe Average shopper ?  They visit your site in a mobile and see "X".  They get home and visit your site on their laptop and see "Y". 

 

Responsive

 

Usually means having one site which flows and changes "shape" differently depending on the device.  For shoppers this means that what they see on their phone complements what they see on their laptop.  Same design, same logo, same products.  Same everything.

[♥altoid]

Since going bootstrap in one of my shops, site impressions and clicks have increased.  More sales too.

[discxpress]

@@burt

 

Your breakdown coincides much with that the author of the blog I was reading. It's basically what you've been preaching about in the forums. Take a look at what he has to say here. 

 

He gives a detailed breakdown of what site owners should do NOW and he also directs you to other blog posts to support that post. Someone will get caught with their pants down, as the title of the blog post implies. LOL

[discxpress]

@@altoid

 

Yes, I've experienced the same. According to Google Analytics, I get few thousand more impressions and an improved CTR. I'm glad I went responsive.

 

Anxious to see what the results will be post April 21st.

[burt]

@@discxpress that blog post also good.  In the community responsive build we concentrated on two main areas;

• Going Responsive.  
• Speed.

and

• Getting it done in time for shopowners to adopt it before Google make changes

It was rather obvious that Google had plans to complement their search results with the "device friendly" flag...now it's here and shopowners have two weeks to do something before their search results are trashed...

 

You guys who saw the "good" side of what we were doing, will reap the benefits after April 21 - as those sites who have done nothing and are above you in Goog, will hopefully plummet!

[discxpress]

That blog post also suggested using a CDN or cloud service. From my understanding, a CDN not only provides a layer of security but also alleviates the site of some speed deficiencies. 

 

Speed will be a key part to rankings because of the lack of 4G networks.

[MrPhil]

Adaptive

 

Usually means running separate sites for "mobile" and "normal".  Sites usually look totally different.  How confusing is that for the Joe Average shopper ?  They visit your site in a mobile and see "X".  They get home and visit your site on their laptop and see "Y".

I have to somewhat disagree with this. While the sites will necessarily look different, it's a matter of sloppy work on your part if the content is seriously different. Responsive sites will of course look and feel different on different devices, too. The advantage of Responsive over Adaptive is that you have common code, rather than writing each from scratch. You may also be able to fit different mobile devices better than "one size fits all" fixed code for a mobile site.

[burt]

@@MrPhil - ok.

I assume and presume that you have never looked at the iOsc addon.  If you had you would see that my words reflect reality.

[Mort-lemur]

My understanding of this is that the Mobile search results will be affected, but not desktop search results, as from:

Quote
This change will affect mobile searches

so, non responsives sites will suffer in searches from mobile devices.

[MrPhil]

@@burt,

 

You know the old saying: "Never assume... you'll make an ASS out of U and ME!". I did read the description of iOSC, thank you very much, although I did not download the entire package and read through it. I stand by my assertion that there is no inherent reason that "adaptive" needs to produce a vastly different experience than "responsive". There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but done right, they can produce very similar experiences for a given device.

[clustersolutions]

Adaptive - two code bases to maintain?

 

Responsive - one???

[burt]

@@burt,

 

You know the old saying: "Never assume... you'll make an ASS out of U and ME!". I did read the description of iOSC, thank you very much, although I did not download the entire package and read through it. I stand by my assertion that there is no inherent reason that "adaptive" needs to produce a vastly different experience than "responsive". There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but done right, they can produce very similar experiences for a given device.

Reality of "adaptive oscommerce" is such that it is two different and different looking sites.  If you are going to talk about something at least install it and test it to destruction.  If you think that the reality is that a shopowner will take iOsc and make it look like their "usual" site, then you are 100% mistaken.

 

Lets ALL talk about reality in terms of what's real in osCommerce at this very moment.   Let's talk practical, not theory.

[burt]

Adaptive - two code bases to maintain?

 

Responsive - one???

 

Correct.  

[♥toyicebear]

Also IOSC gives double sets of url's , pc vs mobile version url

[clustersolutions]

For those who are running IOSC, do the two urls share ranking or doing they rank separately on Google, kinda like www and non-www? I imagine it's the later and that would be more SEO to work on?

[greasemonkey]

For those who are running IOSC, do the two urls share ranking or doing they rank separately on Google, kinda like www and non-www? I imagine it's the later and that would be more SEO to work on?

As long as you set your canonical tags correctly (there are iosc addons available for header tags seo and other header tag addons)

 

That said... I'm moving to BS

[burt]

Using the iosc system is better than doing nothing.  Doing nothing is not an option, IF you are concerned to stay in Goog's "good book".

[♥Biancoblu]

I personally have a different view on this matter: my shop has been online for 9 years and there used to be a time when I used to bend over backwards to conform to Google's every whim, wish, regulation, update and change of algorithm, only to find out that, regardless of my efforts, my site started plummeting a long long time ago for reasons that I have yet to understand. I tried to contact Google, waste of time as it's easier to talk to Obama than it is to them, I tried posting on their forums, even bigger waste of time.

This mobile update is just their latest whim but I guarantee there will be others sooner rather than later.

 

Naturally, when online it's better to be in the most powerful's good books rather than not, not fair but this is how the world goes.

I will eventually go responsive therefore conform to the latest regulations if/when my serious personal issues permit, but that will certainly not happen today nor before April 21st. The ones here close enough to me know what I'm talking about.

 

So my site will plummet even more, and as someone said in a very old movie a long time ago: "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn".

 

What I'm trying to say is don't get your knickers in a twist over Google, of course they can't be ignored, but sales don't happen exclusively through Google searches, sales are also made through word of mouth, through advertising, through social networks, through having an Ebay, Etsy, Amazon or such extra shop (and they are mobile friendly) and, even though it's often been debated, through good linking. Example: try getting your link added to a VIP's site, if you manage that you'll see your visitors and possibly your sales dramatically increase. Better still, try getting your products endorsed by a celebrity.

 

Regardless, the most important thing I learned since being online is this: a visitor doesn't necessarily hit the buy button. ;)

[discxpress]

@@Biancoblu

 

You have a remarkable site. Besides being in a niche category, you've been online for 9 years. So your presence is set in stone. I agree with all those things you've said about Google. Most of us do try to get in special place with Google and bend over backwards to please them. However, those of us who haven't been online very long, has to do more catering. My site, for example, is not quite 2 years old so SEO is a top priority in my case. I truly believe your uniqueness alone will keep you close to the top. You're in good shape no matter what happens.  :thumbsup:

 

Hopefully soon I can shift my focus to other aspects of SEO such as a sound social media campaign.

 

Thanks to everyone for your comments.

[burt]

2 weeks left to do something about it, if you dance to Googles tune.

[discxpress]

Those of us with newer websites, like myself, will be affected the most. I haven't focused much on building quality backlinks. Instead, my focus has been more on-page SEO. Better yet ensuring that I have as much content as possible available to the customer.

 

I had a major scare last week. Google or customers wasn't able to view my site for about 8 to 12 hours. As a result, I didn't receive any organic traffic the following day my site was back online. The traffic trickled in. Now almost a week later the organic traffic is a little more abundant than before. It was suggested that Google may have paused or temporarily de-ranked my urls until Googlebot was able to recrawl my site. I guess that theory holds some weight. 

 

That was a wake up call for me. Going forward I'll focus more on social media and quality backlinks. The last free shopping comparison site to my knowledge has been bought by Facebook. Which has forced me to have an advertising budget.  :-

 

So I'm soliciting any comments or advice, not just for me, but to be shared with the community. Maybe a thread with just SEO testimonials should be created. The SEO discussion has went to sleep here. 

 

Your thoughts are welcomed.

[Hotclutch]

SEO is not rocket science. As an osCommerce store owner you don't need to be a coder to have your store optimised or to be in a good position SEO wise. There are a lot of myths out there including on this forum wrt to SEO. Since you are trying to optimise your site for search engines, it would be wise to follow the direction and guidance given by the search engine themselves. Here's Google's guide to SEO:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

 

Study the fundamentals first, and then use that information when selecting add-ons for SEO. You're wasting your time hunting for backlinks if they are not relevant to your content. Your focus should be on On page SEO.  IMO it is a lot harder to optimise a store with 1000+ products.

[discxpress]

@@Hotclutch

 

As I stated, my focus has been on page SEO. My optimization goals are more for the end user along with the search engines. Achieving the balance to satisfy both is the challenge. When it comes to hunting for backlinks, I've procrastinated in that area. However my site is responsive and much of my category and product pages are ranking in the top 10 for some long tailed keywords. And yes it has been a task to optimize my huge site. 

 

I would like to add that my site isn't 2 years old until June 2015, so there's plenty of room for growth. I'm trying to get it ready for the mobile update on April 21st. Along with on page SEO and the site being responsive, I've also implemented a CDN to handle extra security and faster page delivery.

 

I would like to thank you for your comments which make a lot of sense and the guide to SEO that I didn't know existed.