SEOs and marketers know that regular changes to Google’s algorithm are part of their life. Many are minor and roll out with little notice. Of course, there are those that are more significant and impact the way that we create and serve content to our target audiences. Recently, Google’s changes increasingly involve mobile. About a year after the initial announcement, Google began rolling out it’s mobile-first index in April 2018. Taking note of users shifting from desktop to mobile, Google search index is considering mobile versions of a site’s content first. In January of this year, Google announced page speed would become a ranking factor for mobile search. The update is being called the Google Speed Update and will start rolling out in July 2018.
Speed has been a ranking factor
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for desktop for a while, and Google is choosing to work this signal into the mobile algorithm. Mobile devices have accounted for more browsing traffic than desktops since October of 2016. Given the shift in user behavior, this update to the mobile search algorithm makes sense for Google to consider so heavily in their rankings.
In the Google Speed Update announcement, Google references studies showing that users care about page speed.
google speed update bounce
The studies highlight that the probability of a bounce increases dramatically for page load times over 3 seconds.
So, what does this update mean for your content ranking and traffic? Let’s take a look at the details and how to prepare for the coming changes in July.
What is the Google Speed Update?
Put simply, Google will be updating its mobile search algorithm to include page speed as a major ranking factor. Page speed has been a ranking factor on desktop search since 2010, but has not been a factor for mobile search. Google consistently updates its search algorithm to give users the best experience and now focuses that at the device level. This change continues Google’s acknowledgement of the increasing importance of mobile and commitment to providing a great user experience.
In the announcement, Google states that searcher intent is still a “very strong signal” and that slow pages with great content may still rank well. The type of technology used to build the page does not matter, the update will apply the same standard to all pages. Google is saying only pages delivering the slowest experience to users will be impacted. With that said, it’s a good idea to revisit page performance on both desktop and mobile. Improving page performance will now benefit desktop and mobile. Let’s take a look at how to prepare for this upcoming change.
How to prepare
Google recommends that “developers think broadly about how performance affects a user’s experience of their page and to consider a variety of user experience metrics.” This statement is in line with Google’s generally broad statements regarding changes to its algorithm. They are not providing any specifics or minimum performance benchmarks to work towards.
Given the lack of specifics, it is hard to be sure if your site will be negatively impacted by the Google Speed Update and to what degree. However, we are sure that speed is going to have an impactBelow we outline steps you can take to avoid losing position in mobile SERP results.
Use AMP if you are not already
Using AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, is a great way to increase page performance across your whole site. If you are not already using AMP, this is probably the right time to incorporate it into your site. More sites are using AMP, and for good reason – it improves overall page performance and improves the user experience.
AMPs redirect your standard HTML pages to a bare-bones version of the page, which greatly improves page load times. Google testing has shown that using AMP can reduce page load times anywhere from 15 to 85 percent. A project originally started by Google, AMP is receiving support from Twitter, Pintrest, WordPress, LinkedIn, and many others. Publishers such as the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and Vox are also using AMP. The SEO community widely supports the use of AMP, and it’s a great way to improve your site’s mobile experience.
Test your site
Establishing a baseline performance benchmark is super helpful. Knowing where you stand today enables you to see how changes you are making are impacting performance. It is also a good idea to check the performance of your competitors’ websites so you can see how yours compares. Once baseline performance is established, it’s very helpful to know where improvements can be made. Listed below are some tools and resources available to help you establish a performance benchmark, identify where to make changes, and assess performance improvements.
Google Search Console
This is a tool you likely already use and is a great place to start. The “Smartphone” tab under “Crawl Errors” will show you any crawl errors identified by Google. The “Mobile Usability” report will show you pages that have usability issue
Get found with better content and smart SEO writing
With 83.6 million new blog posts read by 409 million people every month on WordPress alone, content consumption continues to grow. Whether it’s via blog posts, social media, white papers, case studies or videos, marketers are focused on getting in front of target audiences. Content is the cornerstone of your online presence.
Writing well for search is
not just about search engines and organic rankings. It’s also about relevance across all marketing methods. What does that mean?
Search engines reward (with positive rankings) the most relevant content to an audience. Relevance is a factor of what consumers expect to see and how they if you see them run interact with the content once they’re there. Things like bounce rate are indicators that content isn’t meeting expectations.
If you’re relevant in search, you’re also more likely to perform well in things like email and social. That’s because you’re already creating the content that people want – and we can leverage that to make your marketing better.
The latest in SEO and content
Search is a link between you and your consumer, whether you’re actively optimizing or not. One constant with search is that it is always evolving. Last year, Google made several major updates to its search algorithm. In 2018, there have already been a few major updates with more certain to come. (The last round of major changes rolled out about a month ago.) With this in mind, we need to regularly revisit our SEO writing practices and our content strategy as a whole.
It can be difficult to stay on top of the changes, and they present an added challenge to SEO writing. The good news is most of the changes are evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. This means you don’t have to regularly make radical changes to your content development process. Periodically revisiting your process will ensure you’re creating content that performs well.
Keep on top this year with our tips for good SEO writing below.
Develop a list of topics and content calendar
Most things benefit from a solid plan. Not just any plan though, a plan that uses data and research to fuel decisions. Understanding your audience is key to creating your topic list and content calendar. We recommend a segmented approach, which provides focus for your efforts. Segments are created as part of groups, that belong to categories such as:
Campaigns
Messages
Products
Features
Benefits
Solutions
And more
For each of these groups, there are segments that can have their own calendars or sections within a principal calendar.
Here’s an example of possible categories with segments:
content categories and segments for creating a content calendar
Developing a content calendar this way not only lets you focus your topics, but also gives you a good measurement system to analyze performance.
You content calendar may focus on on several segments at once, or you may choose to do one segment per week or month. This depends on your resources, the campaigns you’re running, locations you’re targeting, and more.
Keywords (still) matter
As much as search changes over the years, some bank email list things remain consistent. One of them: Keywords matter. Developing content around carefully selected keywords is still a crucial component of SEO writing.
Once you’ve got your list of categories and segments, you can start to take your topics and conduct keyword research. We recommend choosing three to five keywords for each segment and ensuring you’re creating content that maps back to those.
Below are some important considerations for keywords.
Keyword research
Spend time researching your keywords. Picking the right keyword for each piece of content you create is essential to creating content that ranks well. There are many tools available that show you monthly search volume and provide a difficulty score.
keyword research and discovery tool
When you’re conducting keyword research, you should look at a combination of search volume, competition, and difficulty. Beyond that though, are a few additional things that you should consider:
Universal search elements on the page – Are there elements such as ads, knowledge panel, video, shopping results, local pack, etc. that are going to push down your high ranking content? Even if you rank number one for a keyword search, you may still be halfway down the page.
Type of competing content – What kind of content is already ranking? Is it videos, long form posts, image-heavy? Knowing what the audience already seems to gravitate toward helps you devise a strategy to get on top, or to avoid specific keywords in favor of others.
Building keyword authority
I advocate a strategy that builds authority from the bottom, up. Which means that you select keywords that are less difficult and more specific, or long-tail, to start. By generating content around these keywords, you make it easier to rank for the more difficult keywords later. This also allows you to build what I call.