” Every aspect of marketing is entirely useless unless it produces conversions.” –       Jeremy Smith 

How can a business keep its daily updates without knowing its incoming website’s visitors?

• The initial number of visitors, visiting your site each day.
• The relevant clicks they are making.
• Their interests & dislikes about your business!

Conversion rate optimization tools are structured design in the process of making a website more and even user-friendly for its target audience helping with the analysis. However, in the present world of competition, investing in the right conversion rate optimization tool in 2019 is equivalent just to make a huge business decision. It does not fundamentally involve whether you are an in-house business, start-up, enterprise, or conversion optimization agency. Google often recommends a lot of advised tools from the experts whether a tool is good or bad, downright or upset until now or then.

To understand the tools you can filter out which tool you want based on the rating, and the size of the company it works on the best, Whether the tools help you eventually in things of applying it, it will not necessarily compare the premium accounts if it wants to be successful.

Conversion Optimization Rate Tool in 2019:

Calculating conversion rate formula: 1 sale + 20 visitors x 100%= 5% Conversion Rate

Did You Know: UBISOFT used the A/B testing to increase its conversion by a 12%

Down below are the Conversion rate optimization tools in 2019 that you could eventually use to increase the percentage of website visitors to your site by understanding how users move further through your site, their actions, and what is so complicated about them competing for your goals.

1. Google Analytics 360 Suite

This advanced tool helps you to get a much better understanding of your consumer’s behaviour with much-advanced analysis. Conversion optimization form is all about data aiming to help marketers to get an overview of your online marketing efforts.

Google Analytics 360 Suite intends to help marketers to connect across different marketers, such as PPC, mobiles, and offline marketing channels. As per your convenience, not everyone who has access can see the Admin tab. Suppose if you can see it, it means you are an administrator. However, you may not have access to all the menus still being an admin.

2.  VWO

If you are alternatively looking for a conversion rate optimization tool in 2019, that runs an optimization program that continuously improves your visitors’ experiences, then VWO should be given a try. This holds a reliable structure that can handle billions of events per hour making A/B tests without reducing the actual basic performance.

The A/B testing is more or less methodical fashioned. On-page surveys alone will not help you identify that your users find confusing. All the functionalities of this tool will take care of all your conversion rates. This tool will help you easily gather all your metrics under one roof monitoring. The major advantage of this software is that if you find any new element on your website, it can help you with the best, whilst not going deeper.

3. CrazyEgg

A heat map is a software simply a data visualisation tool. To find out which tabs, links, etc are being clicked on and the part which is being ignored by your customers. CrazyEgg will get to know where your visitors click on!

Apart from these activities, you will get a chart that will show your user behaviour on your website. This helps with interaction in real-time & in recording user experience. Since users are very authentic and objective a recording at their view is important. Find out the user behaviour on how your email and ad campaigns are being visited. Understand eventually how people investigate from a buyer’s point of view!

4. Mixpanel

In this fortunate world of Google, Google Analytics helps you to know what is currently happening on your website, Mixpanel, this software allows you to easily understand who did what? Mixpanel also helps you to encounter your second data helping you to compare it against Google data.

This is an analytic platform for the web and mobile aiding your business to instantly analyze your consumer behaviour, tracking down people’s actions rather than page views by helping your business to learn and deeply understand the behaviour of the consumer. This software helps you to learn desperately from your convenient data. This encourages the increment of sales, by making a huge increment to your visitors on your website, navigating the best relevant results of people visiting your site. Furthermore, helping you with tweaking your site.

5. A/B Tasty:

A/B Tasty is a software-based in the origin of France which aids in providing A/B testing, also with the process of content optimisation. Designed for the masses, along with enlarged factorial common user experience. Evolving with great GUI (graphical user interface), great content with an affordable pricing structure.

This software will help you to measure your visitors’ preferable actions to measure transactions, subscriptions, leads and a large volume of visits to have analyzed the relevant figures needed. Perhaps, imposing the winning variations will significantly improve the rate and return on investment. The dashboard when the software installed will consist of a plain list of tests on a white background. Where each test will have 2 main options an ”Edit & Report.” Holding a separate page for both. Simple!
Moreover, for a clear result, the company that uses AB Tasty must have absolute diversity and should be well organised to fully take advantage of it.

6. User Testing:

Engaging with your customers plays a major key role in almost every business. User Testing is another tool that helps to see, hear & talk to your customers as they engage with your website. Putting your customers at the center of your business is so very important.

This tool will help you to gather your audience’s data’s by engaging with them helping you to identify their likes & dislikes. This tool allows you to prepare your customers a set of convenient questions, whereas they will have to complete the task that is asked. This will let you know the problem areas of your business in your conversion rate optimization tools in 2019!

7. Marketo:

Driving in more quality of traffic to your website and landing page is a vital part of a business’s basic activity. Marketo compares your keyword rankings to your competitors and getting recommendations for higher ranking web pages. Discovering inbound links by targeting keywords and competitors link is also equally important.

This tool helps you to get to know your conversion rate, also get help with getting personalized messages and on customers are. Their problems, interests, what annoys them & encourages them. Methodically, marketers & webmasters can combine the what application interface program, from your marketing automation tool using the social platform, with any number of platforms similar to a ” Social login.”

8. Adobe Analytics:

Adobe Analytics is common knowledge in the digital world that the success of a business relies upon a strong basement of data. The collection of the whole bunch of data allows you to benchmark your business’s success, set goals, all this will serve your business at your best.

With the help of the Top 20 Analytics Tools, huge data gets organised where you will get powerful easy to read visuals of your website. The number of visitors your website gets. This acts as a connector making it important to envision needed tools to further bring in your visitors. This software will help you to focus on r searching your data and find more detailed insights about your customers.

9. Adobe target

Adobe target to start your business with the analytics to advertising and commerce to perfect content creations. This tool will help you with identifying an amazing customer experience.

If you are looking for your visitors to change into your customers, then you have to start using tools that will help you reach your fundamental increase in your SEO optimization. This tool eventually will help you with targeted content. This tool helps with automated behavioral with the acquired data using the IP address, the URL, and brand affinity.

10. Webpagetest

Webpagetest is one of a kind tool that will help you with the SEO tool, however, this tool will also help you to keep up with the conversion rate optimization tools in 2019.

Which means a two in one luck! This tool will help you with testing your website’s speed. A video will be gathered by gathering all data together, to see the results of all the pages together, comparing the overall speed and effect. If your business needs a competitive advantage then this tool is necessary. The demand for your website particularly relies on the speed, run a test from several locations and connect everything, the number of visitors you get, and move on.

Final Note:

There are hundreds of Conversion rate optimization tools in 2019 you could use from the internet, some of them are free whereas some of them are premium tools that can be quite expensive in dollars. All of the conversion rate optimization tools 2019 listed above certainly have the potential to help you increase your website’s conversion rate. I support you to try at least a few of them to see which one works best for your business, test, and keep testing until you get the desired results. Nothing is proven unless you have tested it all by yourself!

I’m so much interested to know your feedback if you have been using any of the newest conversion rate optimization tools in 2019 I have mentioned above. Come back here and do not hesitate to leave your feedback in the comment section below. I hope you would have something to say!

Assume nothing. Test everything. Optimize constantly. 

”Marathons are more than just a single run, digital marketing are more than just a single activity.”

The future of every single business is being transformed into technology! Keeping this in mind, Here’s a quick elegant question possibly you could think of at times in digital marketing trends.

”What is the biggest obstacle for your company’s growth?”

While thinking about the answers to the above question, how does a business with the latest technology conquering the world function without the help of digital marketing? Can you remember seeing artificial intelligence and visual searches in movies? For example, I Robot movie ( could you go back to those memories?) Leaving at in your good old memories these technologies have been coming into reality for businesses in the present. Brands and businesses do need to use digital marketing trends to succeed in their efforts because what worked for you in the past years might not work for you in the upcoming years. Social media, SEO, content marketing and a lot more are experiencing a dramatic shift in 2019.

This article will help you give a quick insight into the latest trends of digital marketing that you can not simply ignore. And to stay ahead of the competition you might want to invest in these insanely futuristic technologies down below.

Did you know: Canada has the most active Facebook users compared to the rest of the countries.

 1)  Artificial intelligence taking over the digital marketing trends in 2019

AI will take over the world and currently is!

Well, what does AI do?

Putting this in simple terms, Artificial intelligent can easily study consumer behaviour by using the data that is available on the internet or social media by the user. This simply helps all your businesses using AI to increase the optimization of your business activity efficiently. AI has made jobs much simpler. For example, email service providers like Gmail, Yahoo have customized smart email categorization. Many government organizations are using AI for security purposes.

Did you know: Some of the tech leaders are worried about AI

Elon Musk- CEO of Tesla– is no stranger to you. Has made a confession that artificial intelligence could eventually be dangerous to the entire human race. He wants people to follow certain regulations and ban on any type of autonomous weapons, to save humanity. Keeping this aside, governments are already working on hidden projects on AI-controlled weapons.

Another example is companies like Uber and Microsoft- you can try using robots in parking lots that could read license plates and report suspicious activities to prevent crime. They do this by collecting data and reporting it to their owners. This technology has been in use which seems to be less expensive compared to hiring a human security guard!

2) Voice search: The dictators!

In the current world, for example, you will find it easier to ask Siri about the distance of your top travel destination in Sri Lanka rather than manually typing in the query. With this keeping in mind, further, it is estimated that by the next upcoming year’s a higher percentage of web browsing will be done without tapping the screen. This is because of Alexa and Siri’s engagement with the human-level smartness becoming incomparable. However, the disadvantage of voice search is that it is quite different from the typical text search.

 For example, when you Google a question you will get hundreds of result pages. But if you ask the same thing to your voice assistant, it will only give you certain results (a few) more than that you will only get one result!

3)  Video marketing 

You might question yourself whether using videos for promoting your business would worth it? The answer simply is: Yes, not because every business is using it but moreover, it is a very profitable tool for digital marketing trends in 2019. To deeply get connected with your target audience, video marketing can be the best way as they are dominating photos and infographics compared to other ordinary advertisements.

Since videos are more appealing and easier to share than large content. With inexpensive methods, such as quality smartphones, and film equipment. Companies all over the world are using personalized videos to create ”real authentic publicity.” Do not just think that YouTube plays here. To get more engagement using your video marketing, you can go live on Instagram, Facebook, or Linkedin.

4)  Chatbots:

You might have definitely experienced online purchasing. And you might have noticed yourself being answered for your queries in a few seconds or minutes by a chatbot, that will have instantly answered your questions. This will bring a closer connection to you towards your customers. Many customers prefer communicating with chatbots since they are quickly responsive. Giving instant answers to what you are exactly looking for modestly and responding to you without losing its patience. These virtual assistants aid in customer expectations, customer service and performing accurate tasks, which means you can literally focus on your other important tasks.

Many businesses have already started using chatbots which include, for instance, Uber helping customers to communicate and making it easier for them to hire Ubers easily. Other brands such as Facebook Messenger, Google Maps, and Slack have started using Chatbots & digital marketing making it efficient. Chatbots have completely changed the way digital marketing looks at its services. Giving companies a better perspective of market sustainability.

5)  Social media stories:

Brand awareness can be easily be promoted and engaged by making good use of live videos. Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube stories have been coming alive for the last half-decade. First came Snapchat with the concept of ”My Story,” followed by Instagram, Facebook while Youtube unrevealed their story format.

Through social media stories, businesses can directly market themselves to their audience by reviewing their product, showing them ” behind the scenes,” of the products, or about the employees who have been apart? With these effective methods, you can easily target your desired audiences effectively almost anywhere and everywhere!

6)  Social Messaging apps:

You and I every one of us are into messaging with each other. The recent trend is social messaging apps whereas people are spending more time texting each other, it makes total sense that marketing your products and services here is the right place for you to engage with your potential customers.

These apps can be very beneficial in sending messages to your customers directly, whether it is an instant sales reply or feedback! Furthermore, people expect businesses to be present in messaging apps so that they could directly deal and interact with you. Also, 70% of the world’s population are willing to shop at companies that interact with enough social messaging apps.

7) Virtual Reality & Augmented reality:

Virtual reality aims at creating a computer-generated experience for customers using specialized technologies and software. You can use VR to make your products/services advertisements 10x more appealing to your customers than an ordinary advertisement. Augmented reality for digital marketing trends in 2019 has made businesses in recent times to reach out customers effectively in different technologized ways. If you are not sure whether to use this tech or not, you should probably clearly understand the benefits and what it offers to you in real tech life.

For example, an international brand in India IKEA is where it allows and helps place their furniture accordingly to your customers’ expectations. Here, customers can enjoy every bit of looking at their furniture placements.

8) Geo – location-targeted advertisements will become popular.

 What is the significant thing in any digital marketing strategy? Location!

Location is the main key role whether it is advertising or marketing your product. Showing your product/service at the right time in the right place is an important digital marketing trend in 2019.

Other than that, appearing in the right location is equally important. If you want to make your brand withstand the most compared to the rest of your competitors then you will have to start communicating brand messages in the user’s native language, which will make a difference.

On the other hand, also demonstrating geo contents to your users will help you get into business more easily. For successful branding, you may also implement local content marketing strategies for your campaign leading it to a trend. Therefore, partnering with local influencers will help you get easily handle local advertisements around!

Final Wrap:

The era of digital marketing has absolutely no ending for the upcoming decades in trends changing, until dusk till dawn!

Being said this, meantime I hope the above given ” Digital marketing trends in 2019,” might have brought in some ideas on how the newest trends that already exist looks like, also helping you with foreseeing the upcoming trends for the next decades.

Have you started following them, yet for your business? On the downside topic, I have given you the top 08 digital marketing trends currently conquering the 21st century. Take a deep look at every trend and know how it is or would work for your business and customer relationship. Further side, it would be great if you could come back here and tell me about your most beneficial trend that would help your businesses’ enhancement. I bet you will have something to say!

“There Is Nothing In This World To Fear, But Change.”

WRONG!

Change is necessary. Change is beneficial.

CHANGE IS THE FUTURE.

Why do we say all this? We live in a world that undergoes drastic transitions with each ticking second.

In business, you need to stay updated and in line with the latest trends. To stay on top, you need to embrace change ahead of your competition. We know, to stay on top you need to stay updated. Why?

SEO’S have changed the digital marketing strategies ever since renowned search engines like YAHOO, Google, Bing, etc. changed their algorithms to favour a much more AI perspective.

Google’s announcement of the use of Rank Brain, as their artificial intelligence system aids in finding pages that don’t have the exact keywords mentioned in the search query.

In short, multiple factors now determine SERP, which makes the conventional ones such as keyword density, linking, and various other norms outdated.

CHANGE, get it? They did, so why can’t you?

Yet, not everyone stays updated and some prefer relying on age-old SEO tactics that were once or sometimes never a success. Hence, they falter from what was once a successful venture during one time, to an abysmal debacle.

The reputed British Broadcast Corporation, BBC was slapped with a penalty in the year 2013 for having unnatural links pointing towards a particular webpage.

In February 2011, Forbes.com was caught in the act of selling links on its own website, without a second thought of adding ‘no follow’ attribute.

You certainly don’t want that, do you?

Wrong SEO strategies prove to be a bane than a boon, and rightly so, they need to be avoided at all costs.

So which ones are outdated; how do you know which ones to stay away from and if there’s a diamond in the haystack, should you embrace them? Will it actually helpful?

 1. Plagiarism:

There’s this huge misnomer in everyone’s mind that replicating the traits of successful companies or anything for that matter, guarantees success.

Nope.

While it’s good to owe inspiration from either the structure of the page or even the contextual combinations, blatant plagiarism is a huge demeanour.

No one wants to see the same thing twice.

Visitors who notice them jump to the conclusion that the webpage (propagating it to the business itself) isn’t inventive enough, and lacks knowledge, and prone to neglect.

 2. 3^rd party “Paid” Links

What are you actually paying for?

Matt Cutts says “The vast majority of the time things are incredibly clear: people are paying money outright for links.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s abundantly clear that these are links that are being bought and paid and sold and all that sort of stuff.”

Not only is it like taking the easiest route, these links may possess a stagnant structure that may have been replicated countless times.

Google and various other search engines have always been on the lookout for such stagnancy and they remove quite a few of them too.

Google banned Google Japan from buying paid links.

Now isn’t that enough to stop you?

3. Keyword Stuffing :

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the box still underuse. Not for anything good, at least.

So obviously, for your content to be recognized by the search engine the keywords need to stand out. Everyone knows that.

But stuffing a hundred keywords or so into it?

Not only is it unnatural, but it also hinders a certain level of user-friendliness, making it a     viable technique to actually lose customers than anything more. Search Engines don’t like it either and you even stand the chance of being penalized and possibly banned.

It might’ve worked in the past when things were very simple but now, both the search engine algorithm and the visitor’s mindset are different.

How different?

Enough to not fall prey to gimmickry.

4. Bots, Spam, Ads, and ClickBaits :

A deadly dozen, to say the least.

Gone were the days when all the content on the web were tailor-made to the needs of the business or the website, and a writer painstakingly sits and writes each and every portion of the text.

With automation and artificial bots come not only the luxuries of having loads of contents prepared by the minute, but also a multitude of problems associated with it.

Why?  Even they go crazy sometimes.

If a certain word repeats all over the content or maybe a similar structure elsewhere was already there, something could smell fishy.

Even if people may miss that, Search Engines do not and it may incur penalties or even less traffic than expected.

Clickbaits take use of flashy yet misleading headlines that would seem to be inviting to the visitor’s eye, particularly to gain traffic through visiting the links and even unknowingly sharing them.

There’s nothing much to say about ads and spam either. Who loves them? Want to make extra money? Improve the content and not resort to stuff like these.

5. Cloaking:

Cloaking is merely “sophisticated hiding”.

It’s like presenting a rigged version of the actual webpage such that it satisfies the algorithm of the search engine and hence can be called upon when the visitor searches for the particular keyword.

Doorway pages, there are called which are specially optimized for specific keywords. The page altogether may be entirely different, and may even serve another purpose probably with even questionable content.

Google has banned Cloaking of any form, need I say more?

British Motor Works (BMW) was penalized for cloaking in 2006.

6. Article Spinners :

Similar to spam, they were created to produce variants of the same keyword, to establish an alternate version of the same page.

This in turn gave rise to numerous low-quality articles and Search Engine algorithms like Google Hummingbird got updated to further filter out unnecessary variants.

7. Spam Comments

Most of the blogs and websites have a dedicated comments section that allows users to post their views on the corresponding content.

However, this was prone to misuse since a lot of bloggers put website links as well, along with the comments – a genuinely false move to induce traffic.

More or less- SPAM.

8. Automated Link Building:

Marketers took use of generic software that built links that were embedded in blogs, comments sections, forums etc. They would mostly be redirected to numerous articles that were generally very poorly written.

An ultimate time waster, especially since they might seem to contain information we think we might actually need but often end up as a huge disappointment.

Rap Genius, the famous lyrics-based site fell prey to Automated link building; they faced consequences from Google for allowing users to post links alongside lyrics content resulting in an unnatural hike in traffic.

9. Interlinking Websites :

The wrong thing here would be striking the perfect balance between what’s useful and what’s abuse.

Many websites require interlinking them with others for a steady flow of information and even to redirect the user according to their wish.

The problem lies in its misuse. In most cases, arrays of unwanted websites are interlinked of which none might be relevant.

The Google AI has the skill to notice patterns within interlinking spam for its use and it efficiently curbs the rise in low content irrelevant links.

10. Short /Thin form Content:

Most of the websites used to get away with this technique where a short word pertaining to nothing specific other than the use of the same word 2-3 times would allow search traffic for their site.

The content may be unrelated to the topic and may not even have other words at all.

11. Link and Article Directories :

The Panda Update for Google’s AI bought to a close, the misuse of these directories which basically allowed websites to be categorized based on the needs of the user.

However, misuse crept in especially due to the simplicity of installing the software which powers them, allowing them to create multiple irrelevant links.

Article Directories were even worse.  They were rewritten and became bloated with low-quality content.

12. Exact Match Domains :

Matching the domain with the exact keyword phrase allowed microsites such as these to rank up higher than the actual domain for multiple days.

13. Paid/ Spammy Guest Blogging

This went out of hand mainly due to its uncontrollable nature.

While guest articles were featured on multiple websites, these “guests” took shape of marketers who posted links of completely unrelated subjects along with the content.

A wide flurry of such tactics furthered the need to retrospectively control the content before posting it on the website, and with AI alterations they were taken to their traditional grassroots, favoring the actual content developers.

 14. Online Press Releases :

Wannabe website services mimic real journalists by shooting out online press releases with the desire to be scraped up by other websites to induce traffic for their own venture.

Not only is it a genuine time waster, but these releases would also be sold out by sub-standard websites with less visibility that doesn’t offer anything to the client sites which buy them as well.

It’s a known fact that Google loathes to confirm any kind of its search engine updates, so it’s always a guess-and-play strategy until there’s an official announcement.

While dealing with SEO marketing, there are some things about which Google has been constant throughout all of its updates, like, spammy links, low-quality content, keyword stuffing, over-optimized anchor text, etc.

Although page content quality is a necessity to remain on the web now, that’s not going to give you page rankings unless you build quality links.

Google’s webmaster guideline is getting strict day by day and this why you need to change your game-plan if you want to stay longer in the game.

Google’s search engine updates have now even started to look after things like the mobile-friendliness of your site, and the fact that improving UX will also increase your page rankings says a lot about how

Google is making it hard for SEO to work on. You need to put in efforts to get in page rankings through other ways too.

As we’re witnessing revolutionizing changes in the mobile industry day by day, mobile phones are proving sufficient in all forms when the user is away from his desk.

The web is now rapidly being optimized for the mobile view, and you should do it too before you start losing mobile users. Just by keeping few factors in mind you can increase your customer to a wide extent, increase your page speed, fix mobile-friendly errors present on your site.

Figure 1:

However, the Google updates have never stopped the search engine marketers from developing ways to rank up their pages. Link building is coming up as the most important skill in SEO and that’s why you need to master it now. In this post, I’ll be going in brief through all the possible link-building strategies one should know by now.

What are the most effective link-building strategies of 2017?

1. Create Linkable Assets

Content Marketing is the new Link Building!

This is one of the oldest techniques being used even before SEO came into being. No content is perfect and you can always approach your audience with better, fresh, and updated content.

Come up with content that would appeal to your audience so that you could generate links.

Pretend you’re an online seller of body-building supplements, for example. For your business, a typical linkable asset could be something like a blog post about 10 side effects to be aware of while taking supplements.

Clearly, it offers valuable insight to your readers and displays your concern towards them without getting too self-promoting. You might as well catch the attention of other websites when they come across your post and if your content is great, that they will gladly post it on their website.

Resource guides, infographics, tutorials, visual content, etc. can serve as linkable assets that fetch you the quality links you want for building a great link profile.

2. “Ask the Experts”, Panels, Interviews

Whatever industry you belong to, you can always create these types of posts. Frankly speaking, experts love to be featured on the web because even they need to create an audience for themselves and set up a reputation. With these, you are helping them as much as you’re benefitting yourself.

The first task in the line would be to structure a list of experts in your field of business.

According to their level of comfort-ability, you can outline a panel discussion, interviews, “ask the experts, or an expert round-up on any particular issue.

Sketch ideas for content, and then put together the group of experts suitable to answer the topics in your content.

The primary benefit from these posts is that you’re getting multiple links instantly because all the experts will share your post on their websites, which will again give you immediate access to their audience.

Once you are ready with your content, always make a clear plan about how to promote your post later. Remember these are busy people you will be dealing with, so keep in mind that you might have to remind them a few times before they take action on your content.

3. Unlinked Brand Mentions

There must’ve been times where you’d forgotten to give a link back while mentioning a particular product/service in your posts.

And chances are that if you have been online for some time, there could be many other websites that might have mentioned you in a post or article and forgotten to give a link, there’s simply no reason why you shouldn’t have a link back.

You can always use tools like Google Alerts, Mention.com, and Moz to keep a track of such unaccredited mentions. You can reach out to the website or individual whenever you get an alert for your mentions and turn those mentions into links. If you keep doing this for a good period of time, these mentions can cumulate into a massive boost to your page.

4. Broken Link Building

There must be pages on your website which you’d have taken down or have shifted to a different URL. While you’re aware of this, it could be possible that there must be sites that’d be still linking to your older links; which are now 404 probably, if I’m not mistaken.

Since users are getting a 404 now, you’re losing them within clicks.  Use tools like Ahrefs, Moz to find those broken links on your website and, send the updated link to the webmasters.

Another technique you could also do is, find broken links of your competitors by scanning their websites in Ahrefs. Since those pages are long dead, you could probably rebuild similar pages on your website and reach out to people who are still linking to those old dead pages, with your fresh and updated pages on similar content.

You will be surprised to notice, how many people will happy to replace those old links with yours, and thank you for it.

5. Snatch Links from Lower Quality Content

This is one of the steps from the Skyscraper Technique, which I’ll tell you about later in the post. When you’re out there searching for ways to build links, it’s often right under the nose.

If you’re aware of the competitors in your field, go through the posts where they’ve been mentioned on the internet. When you go through the content, try to spot instances where you think you’ve got a better content on your blog/website.

Let’s say you’re browsing blog posts about how to make soap at home, and you end up on a super boring 400-word blog post about the soap industry and whatnot. If you already have a crazy insane post on this exact topic, ping the webmaster and pitch your content.

Since you have a better and thorough resource they’ll definitely link to your post, because they have clearly demonstrated a liking for such posts in the past, and you are only offering them something better.

6. Create Educational Resources

Backlinks from .edu domains are a serious ranking boost, right? Well, it’s not that hard to get them as it sounds.

Educational resources result in high-quality links all the time. Tutorials, extensive how-to guides, manuals or other contents that teach students something valuable instead of promoting your brand are very well appreciated and prove valuable to the users at the same time.

These days most universities have resource pages, with links to different sites, for their students and faculties.

Pretend you’re an event planner, for example. You could structure an insightful guide explaining the dos and don’ts while organizing a small-scale event/fest in the University.

Then pitch your content to the universities and spread the guide among students. If the university lists it in their resources, there you have earned yourself an .edu link, and most importantly you’ll end up getting tons of new audience and potential clients for your business – Thanks to your newfound glory!

7. Scholarship Opportunities

It must be clear by now how important Edu links are in terms of boosting your page rankings. Although it might not be clear how to get it, it is easier than the normal convention. If you can create something to which universities might like to link, you’re golden.

Here’s how it works: Build a page on your website describing the scholarship (like this one), with necessary information like where to apply, etc. When you’re ready with the scholarship page, it’s time to find the Universities that usually Link to Scholarships.

You can manually search or use inurl:.edu “scholarships” as well. When you come across a scholarship page that seems like a good fit, approach them with your requirement list for the scholarship. Do not forget to give them an estimate of the # of scholarships you have.

8. Visual Assets

Visual assets like images, diagrams, infographics, charts, and other visual-oriented pieces of content are proven ways to gain attention from your users. Mostly it is because visual content is easier to grasp as they produce quick info on the topic.

Visuals assets are really easy to link to. For example, when you publish a graph on your site, you get a link anytime someone shares that graph on their site. This powerful “share my infographic and link to me when you do” relationship simply doesn’t go well for text-based content.

9. List Posts

List posts, or listicals, are a numbered list of techniques, tips, reasons, myths…or just anything on a particular topic. Again, list posts are liked by users as well as bloggers.

List posts have come across as on the most valuable assets now. In fact, after analyzing 1 million articles, it was discovered that list posts generated more backlinks than any other content formats, and even outperformed quizzes, videos, and infographics.

10. In-Depth Ultimate Guides

These in-depth ultimate guides are comprehensive resources that cover everything one should know on a given topic and a little bit extra around it. Ultimate guides have an insane amount of information in one place. This is why it is loved by the readers who are out there in search of answers.

11. Email Outreach

Link building has now moved from the comments section to personal inbox now and this is why it’s getting easier and convenient day by day. The sooner you grasp that link building is not limited to just the internet anymore, the better for you.

The first step of any email outreach is targeting the right people. And for that, you need to use tools available on Ahrefs and Buzzstream, and other websites built for SEOs. Use hunter.io or anymailfinder.com for getting the emails of your webmasters from their posts/pages.

Find the people who’d probably like to link to your post and then comes the important task. If you don’t want to end up in the trash of your target webmasters, personalize your email as much as possible, but don’t forget to lose the corporate touch. Most importantly, build scripts for email but again, don’t forget to personalize.

12. Resource Page Link Building

Resource pages are like yellow pages on the internet. They exist solely for the purpose of putting all the web pages on one topic in a single place. This is why they make the perfect spots for link building.

One simple way to search for resource pages would be: “Keyword” + inurl:links

The audience you gain on resource pages are genuine, primarily because this is the audience that is trying really hard to grasp the topic, and secondary there is no “buy now” button on the resource pages which makes them completely trustworthy.

13. The Skyscraper Technique

The Skyscraper Technique is the most awesome of all the techniques devised ever. In this technique, you can steal audience from right under the nose of your competitors. How?

Step 1: Find the outdated pages on your competitor’s website.

Step 2: Create updated and extensive content on these topics and outreach to the webmasters who’ve linked to the outdated posts from your competitor’s website.

Eventually, it’s content that matters, and if you’ve managed to create something better, people will link to it.

14. Give Testimonials

Everyone providing any kind of product/service on the web loves to display testimonials. So, if you happen to use a service/ product that you love, try sending the owners a testimonial.

Just add subtly that if they want to display the testimonial on their posts, they can do that as well. Most people would take the offer and probably boast about their new review to their Social Following as well, letting you leverage some of their followers who see your brand.

15. Blogger Reviews

If you’re someone dealing in a software product, consulting service, information product, or anything for that matter, you have a golden opportunity to turn that into high-quality backlinks.

There’s a simple trick here, offer your product to bloggers and in return ask them for reviews. If you’re charging a particular fee for the product, waive it off for the blogger and they’ll happily to the rest.

Keep a mild tone and talk about getting mentions on their blog, the rest is self-explanatory. Now, don’t ask them upfront about giving a link/review, which will then violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

16. HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

There are a million reporters looking out for sources every day and by registering on HARO. When you register yourself as a source, wait until you receive queries from your field of expertise, I’m sure there must be developments in news from your industry often.

All you need to do is, sign up as a source at Helpareporter and thereafter follow the guidelines accordingly. Once your register, you will start receiving emails from HARO with requirements from reports who are actively looking for news sources.

While providing your response to reporters, you have the choice of staying anonymous but obviously, that’s not why you’re there. You will get mentions for your website once the news is published online.

It is one of the best ways to get rich backlinks from authority news sites.

17. Submit Your Site to Website Feedback Sites

This is totally off the board, but a source for getting links anyway. There are a lot of sites that are designed to give you feedback on everything that is there on your website.

The thing to note here is that most of these sites will give a link back to your site.

All you need to do now is send your site with a brief description of how you intend to improve it.

18. The Moving Man Method

As there is a number of websites growing every day on the web, there are also many websites shutting down every day. The moving man method is all about utilizing the opportunity created thereafter.

You can use Google to find out the shutdown websites by using keywords like these:

your niche + shut down

your niche + closed

your niche + not working

The next step would be to find the webmasters linking to these broken/closed links. Personally, I’d suggest you go for the webmasters with higher authority sites first.

When you outreach to the webmasters with an updated and possibly better replacement from your website, they should be glad about it. However, make sure that your content is really good.
Watch it in action in the video below  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVMaSvTVmGI

19. Guest Posting Gigs on Twitter

On Twitter, there are sites sharing guest posts on a daily basis. That’s your cue, you can reach out to them through tweets/DM and do a guest post.

Although it is a time taking process, then it is a new source of the untapped audience for you actually. If you succeed at getting few guest-post gigs, you can work around and there’s no end to possibilities.

You can always rely on Twitter to get a constant flow of such new gigs. Few examples for your Twitter hunt could be:

 “your niche” + guest post

“your niche” + guest article

“your niche” + write for us

“your niche” + guest author

20. Transcribe Videos

Video transcription is a very new source of building links as the video boom is still new on the web. Hence, this can be used as a flexible link building strategy. In every industry, there are experts who have established a major audience base with their video channels. On the internet today, you’ll find a good number of videos uploaded daily, varying from Webinars, Presentations, Tutorials, Q&A’s,Hangouts or Vlogs (video blogs). You can always associate with these video-makers and generate new traffic and audience for yourself.

Video transcription is another way to make link-worthy content because you are getting original content directly from experts in your field. You can also aquiret links by associating with them as they always provide transcription with their video.

Here’s how to do it: First, search on YouTube for key experts/bloggers, and find videos without transcriptions and ping them that you’d like to make transcriptions. Send them when you’ve it done.

It also helps you stand out from the rest of your competitors as you’re helping the influencers. Whatever relationships you build this way will last longer and give you a permanent audience. You get a targeted audience on your page when influencers share your transcripts.

21. Hacking Quora

In recent years, Quora has emerged as a last-end solution platform for everyone on the web. There is major traffic on Quora of people looking for answers to every sort of thing and this is the untapped audience you have right there in front of you.

Here’s how to get referral traffic from Quora:

Look for the threads getting maximum traffic on Quora, using Ahrefs. Put in keywords of your niche and find out relevant threads with good traffic and high rankings. Publish answers to these threads with traffic. You’ll find high-traffic questions with low-quality answers or even without any answers.

The most important factor here is that Quora lets you reference sources in the answers and hence it’s easier to link back to relevant websites. However, keep in mind that you do not go over the top and appear too self-promotional. There’s always the chance of getting blocked/banned from Quora if they ever suspect you constantly promoting any particular thing.

22. Build links with blog comments

In this technique, it’s all about utilizing the blog comments on your own blog and outline a list of prospective links.

In most of the blogging mainframes, you’ll find the name, website (if they’ve one) and email address of the commenters. Once these people have commented on your blog, it clearly indicates their liking for your stuff. So, now all you’ve to do is make a list of those commenters who own a blog themselves in the same field as you do.

Run a scrapper to collect the websites of all such prospects and check if you could find any content on their website that could relate to you. If so, start an outreach campaign to build links with their website/blog.

The key thing to keep in mind while outreaching is to personalize your outreach emails. Because always keep in mind, there is a human on the other end of your email.

23. “Ranking for Links” Technique

There are millions of blog posts getting published daily on the internet. Bloggers need to put references from different sources to back up their points.

How do they get these sources? On Google, right?

So there is a huge probability that your blog/website could be one of those reference pieces. All you need to do now is rank up your pages containing these pieces, “reference” terms.

Note down a list of topics/keywords from your industry with a high probability of getting cited.

You must probably have content built already on these keywords/topics. In general, these kinds of keywords/topics are usually queries or informational terms. So, first of all, make a list of such queries for your niche.

Next, run these keywords through SEO tools and find the terms with low Keyword Difficulty and high search volumes. Now, all you need to do is, just put together contents around these topics and rank up for them.

If you succeed in ranking for these kinds of “reference” terms, there are chances that you’ll get backlinks on a consistent basis from these bloggers seeking references for their own content.

Summing up!

The methods which I’ve mentioned above are tried and tested and are backed up with various case studies. However, in the field of SEO, keep in mind that there are a lot of factors contributing to your page rankings. Even while link building, it is important to have a positive approach and keep attempting unless you reach the top.

Link Building is getting personalized day by day, and I cannot stress more on this. Never lose hope, if you have confidence in your page content, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t outreach to even the top players in your field. As a cautionary step, be wary of spammy links and avoid links from sites with low-trust authority lest you could get reprimanded and lose ranking.

Great! Now you’re ready to hunt. All the best!

If you’ve any doubts or suggestions, feel free to mention those in the comments.

Mondays have an extremely sad correlation with the life of us SEOs. Not because they are simply ‘Mondays,’ but because they denote the start of a new week. The onset of new Action Plans like the legendary plans for Work, the seven-day Social Action Plans for clients and blablah blah and yeah! Action plan for the family too. It’s more like a script that we live by today (a protocol that cannot stop and cannot be overridden) – and even with all this routine and discipline in our lives, every weekends with a fear of a Google Apocalypse or maybe some screw ups here and some accomplishments there (talk about being modest).

Now why am I talking about Monday? Because it was Monday (4^th May) last week, that I got the idea for this blog post. I had just woken up from sleep, and I opened my email (out of routine), trying to see what was in store for the week ahead. There were 27 unread emails, of which most of them had such peculiar Subjects.

Screencap Courtesy: To 4 of my awesome clients who gave me permission to share this screen without finding it offensive.

Every day there is a rise of a new fraternity on the Internet, which claims that SEO is dead, Every single day there are new “Guru” SEO firms claiming even faster rankings than pre-penguin times and EVERY SINGLE DAY there are new ‘Professional Copywriters’ who claim to do something called ‘SEO Writing.’ (What is that again?)

With all this useless hype and bullcrap sprayed on the webwork, it’s hard to understand the right from wrong. Especially in the case of webmasters (like my clients’ above) who have been victims in the past of self-proclaimed ‘SEO Gurus.’ That is when I came to a conclusion – “The fault is not in the system we live by, but in the mentality of the people that keep their hopes on it.”

I have yet to come across a webmaster that would channel dark magic (read black hat techniques) on his websites and throw a party when his website got penalty driven.  But every week there are a few people who come to me in search for immediate results. What sort of immediate results?

1. Can you rank my newly furnished website in a month?
2. Can you do SEO writing for my blog and increase my traffic?
3. Local restaurants wanting to increase their footfall.

And other such questions. I am not saying that SEO is impossible or something, but what I want to say is SEO has to be understood. It might be that you have been under the wings of wrong SEO Firms, which gives you false positive ideologies like the ones I mentioned above.

Or

You might have bought a book on SEO from a very legit author 3 years back, which was trending back then and may have cost you a thousand dollars, but in truth – that book holds no significant value today. You can sell it for scrap much like your yearly newspaper deposits. The rules of the game has changed yet again, and we must adapt and welcome them, instead of being stuck with prehistoric notions that get us nothing but misfortune.

Take a look at this small experiment that I did:

I used Moz-SEO Bar Plugin for Firefox – It’s pretty neat.

Take a look at what I searched for and the results. Do you find any correlation between the search results to the common SEO assumptions that are prevalent?

1. Rankings are directly proportional to Authority – Now I won’t say that is completely untrue, but these statements are only as true as this screenshot. Clickminded is ranking above SEW and Hobo-web in spite of having a lower authority than them. Also, Moz is in the 11^th position for this keyword in spite of having DA – 92 / PA – 77.
2. More Content Than Competitors Equals Better Rankings – Again this is not true at all. Especially in this case you will notice that the 1^st and 2^nd Websites have comparatively lot less content than the 3^rd and 4^th Also in terms of Content and Authority, SEW and Hobo should have a better chance for top place rankings according to the books, not to forget MOZ which has exceptional authority and content, but in the 11^th position. 

3. SEO Content is important to Rank In SERPs – We are not living in 2013, and there is nothing called SEO Content writing in 2015. It is a thing of the past where keyword density played a crucial role in ranking for keywords. Back in 2010, the more the keywords on your page, the better were your chances to rank, but that’s now how things work nowadays. Google has this amazing system in place that scans a document for word references, synonyms, related terms and other important factors to decipher whether an article is relevant to a particular keyword or not. How do I reach this conclusion? – My search query is ‘SEO Guide in 2015,’ but you can see Rank 1 and Rank 2 don’t even have the word Guide in the Titles, however Rank 3 does have and neither of these websites have used “SEO Guide in 2015” anywhere in their 2000+ words body.

Why do you think all this doesn’t match with the current assumptions related to the SEOsphere and all the bull crap coating on it? Simple, because there are no rules in SEO.

Welcome to “We are a Professional SEO Firm” BS!

I will have 10 Seo firms pitch to you and 8 out of 10 times this is how the firms will pitch to you –

Hello and Welcome to XYZ Company. We are a Professional SEO Firm based in …… blah blah blah.

But, it is easy to fall for the big claims of the former SEO types and mistake them for professionals.

One of the best way to test the caliber of an SEO firm is by looking at their past case studies. I know case studies can sometimes be conjured to entice clients, but it will give you a fair idea of their understanding of the SEO field. ANOTHER important thing to look for when talking to a potential SEO firm is to look for guarantees. Throw in questions like –

“Can you guarantee my 1^st-page rankings within a month?”

“What kind of Guarantee do you give?”

If these SEOs know what they are doing and understand this field, there is no way they can give you a biased guarantee – that too without conducting a thorough SEO audit of your website.

They might guarantee you organic and strong rank improvements for life, but to say that they can take you to the top of the pole and stick you to the moon – Now that’s where the alarm bells in your head should start ringing.

Things to Ask Yourself Before You Hire Your Next SEO

1. Is the company willing to school you and involve you in their SEO process? If you show interest in learning what is happening behind the scenes are they eagerly accepting your inquiries or dodging it with SC-fi statements that make little or no sense to you?
2. Will they conduct a thorough SEO Audit of your website before running your online marketing campaign? Will they provide you with an SEO report before they start the work? Avoid companies that jump directly into link-building even without auditing your current link profile and Website on-page structure.
3. Do they promise high rankings and rank retention for a long period? Avoid such ‘Idiots’ at all costs.
4. Do they understand that your sole purpose for ranking is to drive more business to your website? They can rank you for meaningless keywords that make no sense to your business or such keywords which hardly get searched for.
5. What will you get after they have run your campaign? Will they give you a detailed report of their work along with action plans for your company to carry on the task after they have handed over the profile? If they aren’t giving you detailed reports and action plans, they are as clueless as you are about SEO.
6. Are they bent on signing you into a long term contract? While this is not a clear signal and can sometimes trigger false positive thoughts, but you should look out for all the above traits first. Companies that want to sign long term contracts like six months or 1-year contracts are not completely wrong, but there are two sides to a coin always.
7. Don’t look for short term or speedy rankings. Think like this – there are other companies in your industry. And imagine if all are paying different SEO companies to rank for the same keywords as you. Short term rankings will only give you a short-lived sense of pride while ranking in the long term in the right way will give your business the stronghold it needs to be established online.
8. Don’t opt for Link sellers or SEOs, while claim to have their own high-value domains – these are BIG FAT RED SIGNALS you should stay away from.
9. There is nothing called SEO Writing, at least it does not exist in 2015 and will never come in fashion in future. Today, Google Guidelines have become more ‘quality-content’ centric. So no more keyword stuffing and keyword density checking – all this doesn’t exist anymore. If they are offering you SEO Writing Services for your blog – this is a clear signal of their inability to follow current trends.
10. There are no hidden secrets in SERPs, and there are no magic recipes. Yes there are powerful backlinks and weak or spammy backlinks, but if a company tells you that:

“We have insiders at Google and can rake you to the top like putting up a star on the Christmas tree” – then by all means turn around and (you know what to do).

“We have some secret strategies that are guaranteed to boost your sales and rankings.” No no no, if they had all that – then they wouldn’t be talking to you in the first place.

So What Should You Do?

‘Hire us! Because we are a professional SEO firm. (Shameless self-promotion spotted).

Noo!!?! Do what you think is best for your business and choose the SEO company that you think solves all your queries before starting your project.

I hope this post was helpful in some way or the other, and I also hope that other amateur SEO firms learn a lesson from this as well. I had no intentions of blowing your mind up or making you think wrong of the current SEO firm.

All the information in this thread is not pointed at anyone and is purely for educational purpose. Additionally it would be a wise decision to understand the basic tricks of the trade so that you can be aware of certain things that are important for being a part of the SEO game in 2015.

SEO is adaptive, and it will change tomorrow. Sometimes to such an extent that what you read today may be completely irrelevant tomorrow so be focused and be aware of the Google Quality Guidelines.

Here is some more food for your brain to chew on:

1.    Mobilegeddon – The Webmasters Guide To Survival On The Internet

2.    How Regular Link Removal Is Better Than Investing 1000$ On SEO

3.    8 Point Checklist For SEO in 2015 – Revisiting The 2014 Updates

Connect with us on Facebook! or leave us a feedback in the comments section below.

The Webmasters Guide To Survival On The Internet Post #Mobilegeddon Era (21st April 2015)

If your business heavily relies on Mobile Traffic, it would be wise to act fast! The Clock is ticking.

———————————————————————STOP PROCRASTINATING!—————————-——————————————

If you are reading this blog right now, then chances are that you have a website(s) or you are responsible for the online presence of your company/client’s websites. Back in February, Google announced an upcoming update that will take the Internet by storm. This update will target websites that are not fit for mobile viewing – So if your website is not mobile-friendly (now is the time to take action). Here is all the information and resources that you might need to make your website “Google Quality Compliant,” when the clock ticks into 21^st April 2015. Make it or you will break it! No puns intended.

 Contents:

1. What is Mobilegeddon?

2. Scope of the Update

3. Why did Google Take This Move? (Trend Analysis)

4. Estimating Your Present Mobile Traffic with GA

5. How to Avoid Getting Bitten By Google Mice?

6. Detailed Checklist of Things to do

7. Print-ready Checklist

8. Comprehensive List of Resources for Mobile-fixing

9. Verdict

#1 What Is Mobilegeddon?

The trend of mobile surfing has seen such an upward slope since the past few years that come 2016 – 60% of people who will surf the internet, will do so from their mobile phones and other portable devices. If you are not aware of what I am talking about, then you can check your Google Analytics to see how much mobile traffic your website is experiencing. Even without looking at it, I can state that any website today will at least be getting 30% of its user base from people surfing through portable devices. And it is safe to conclude that if your website is not user-friendly, you may be losing out on tons of cashing opportunities.

Mobilegeddon – is an informal term coined by SearchEngineLand in March 2015, to spread awareness about the impending Google epidemic that’s going to hit the web in April. Through this update, Google is going to give more importance to websites that are mobile-friendly, which means better rankings for responsive and user-friendly websites.

NO-MATTER HOW CLEAN YOUR BACKLINK PROFILE IS AND NO MATTER WHAT THE QUALITY OF THE CONTENT ON YOUR WEBSITE – IF YOU HAVE NOT TAKEN ANY MEASURES TO MAKE YOUR WEBSITE MOBILE-FRIENDLY – THIS ONE IS GOING TO HURT YOUR BUSINESS, IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

On 21^st April, Google will unleash the Algorithm which is going to scan each and every website on the web, and drop those websites from mobile SERPs if they are not “mobile-friendly.”

So what does mobile friendly actually mean?

In technical terms, “mobile friendly” demand websites to size their content to the viewport of a user and encompasses everything even remotely related to responsive designing. Speaking in layman’s terms – it basically means that if a user has to scale your website down to viewable size on mobile-devices (apparently because the desktop version of your website is opening on their mobile). Then your website is not “mobile friendly” or “mobile ready.”

Keeping up so far? Don’t be morose if you are not prepared for it. There are still a few days to go and you can work a solution these days!

#2 Scope of Mobilegeddon

This update is going to be Larger than PANDA!

THIS UPDATE IS GOING TO BE LARGER THAN PENGUIN!

ZinebAitBahajji – a renowned member of Google’s Webmaster Trends Team quoted at SMX Munich that this upcoming mobile-friendly update from Google is going to impact the search engine ranking of even more websites than what the Penguin and Panda have done in the past.

Ziteb’s Tweet on her official Twitter profile!

Let me give you a clear view of this scene – if you are still confused.

[blockquote photo=”” author=”” company=”(Panda 4.0) SearchEngineJournal 21^st May 2014″ link=”http://www.searchenginejournal.com/hit-hardest-panda-4-0-answer-may-surprise/106461/” target=”_blank”]The past 24 hours have been a wild time for those who either work in, or follow the field of SEO. Google confirmed the rollout of two major updates, one of which was Panda 4.0, an update projected to impact roughly 7.5% of english search queries.[/blockquote]

[blockquote photo=”” author=”” company=”(Penguin 3.0) SearchEngineLand 11^th Dec 2014″ link=”http://searchengineland.com/google-algorithm-changes-210285″ target=”_blank”]“I believe that the indisputable truth about Google’s updates belongs to Google only, and for all that we know, Penguin 3.0 impacted less than 1% of the English language queries. However, as with anything related to SEO, we can only take what we have and work ourselves out of the dark.” [/blockquote]

–

As you may be aware off, Google has its very inconspicuous ways of shedding light on its upcoming Algorithms. But, from whatever information it has given out on the Webmaster’s blog, the Internet is brimming with speculations as to how the update will impact websites and what measures can be taken to avoid it.

We are still unclear about what other factors would Google be looking out for during this update, and it is impossible to claim how drastically these factors will be able to change the website’s search visibility. From what Zineb commented at SMX, we can safely conclude that most of the non-optimized websites will be taking a blow from the ‘Google Mice’ a.k.a Armageddon … oops Mobilegeddon.

#3 Why Did Google Make This Move? Trend Analysis. 

Statistics show that more than 60% of the searches performed on Google are now executed on mobile devices – so this only helps emphasize Google’s motive to take advantage of this traffic to ensure the best user experience for web surfers.

Let me explain the scenario better with the help of a few graphs. (Courtesy to ComScore.com for aggregating this data based on U.S. Demographics). This information is priceless.

Compared to digital time spent in 2010 – Look at the growth in mobile usage for Web surfing in just 4 years. Do you think this is going to ever seize?

The Smartphone Penetration Of Mobile Phone Market – Beautiful upward curve that needs no explanation!

In addition to the upcoming algo, Google has already started rolling out some ranking changes that are based on information collected from indexed applications of Signed-in users. Though this appears to be a small change, it will have a large impact on the way search results are displayed on Google. Businesses that are really catering well to their mobile users will have the best benefits from Google this time.

Gary Illyes

ICE BREAKER

There was a short Q&A round with Gary Illyes (Google Webmaster), in which he revealed quite some information to break the ice, on what we can expect from Mobilegeddon.

1. Responsive websites will not experience any major benefits in ranking.
2. Googlebot must be able to crawl CSS and Java in order to pass the upcoming mobile-friendly test.
3. Tablets and larger devices will not be affected by this update. Only mobiles and feature phones will.
4. Google is presently working on making a dedicated mobile index – Crazy isn’t it?

#4 How to estimate your present mobile traffic? Google Analytics.

Screenshot of traffic distribution from Google Analytics

In order to understand how much traffic you could possibly lose from Mobilegeddon, it is important to understand how much organic mobile traffic are you actually getting?

If you do not know how to check your present Mobile traffic from Google, it’s fairly simple. All you have to do is log into your Google Analytics account:

1. Click on Reporting on the Top Bar.
2. Select Mobile under Audience in the Sidebar.
3. Click on Overview.

Tada, you have all the mobile traffic information that you could possibly want.

So, once you are inside your Google Analytics, you can scrutinize the number of visitors that you are getting from mobile phones every month. Observe the image below, the upward shift in organic mobile visits is a clear signal of the increased use of mobile phones for surfing the web.

—

I am dealing with hundreds of websites every month, and 90% of this kind of upward slope is common for all these websites. This trend is so obvious, that I call in on some of my careless and lazy clients to observe their mobile trends and act accordingly in order to stay ahead of the competition all the time.

Why should you only optimize for mobile because of the oncoming Google update? Isn’t the whole idea already beneficial without having to take #mobilegeddon as a catalyst to fuel your interest?

So by studying the number of visitors your website is experiencing day after day, month after month – you can clearly estimate the number of visitors you may end up losing if your website is not effectively and timely optimized.

Here is a neat Case Study – Search Engine Land conducted on Moz.com to explain the process of estimating Mobile Traffic for a website that you do not own.

Say hello to “Mobile-friendly” Tags

If you haven’t noticed this before, take out your smartphones and type any keyword into Google. You will notice that most of the first page entries have a “Mobile-Friendly” tag attached to them.

Just for the fun of it, I performed a quick search on Google with my Mi4 (Awesome Phone – !@$%Missing affiliate link). The keyword I selected is “Music Quotes” and here is a partial print-screen of the results.

Now you may notice that the first 2 results have a Mobile-friendly Tag, but the 3^rd and 4^th results don’t have a “Mobile-friendly tag.” Come 21^st April, 2015 – I can say that these websites are going to be in trouble because they have not been optimized for mobile usability. (You can also keep it as a test and check on these websites when the day comes)

Write down the keyword – “music quotes”

Website No1 in trouble – quotegarden.com

Website No2 in trouble – musicmasterclass.com

Or do this experiment with a number of websites selecting a keyword from your industry.

Now, I am not saying that the first 2 websites are completely safe and prepared to face the upcoming update. But they may as well be in trouble for their other pages – You never know.

What you can do is, perform a few Google searches which your website is already ranking for and check if your website is getting the “Mobile Friendly Tag.”

Don’t just check your homepage, search “keywords” that display your Inner pages in the SERPs and see if you are still getting the “Mobile Friendly Tag.”

Perform the same check for your competitors and see if their pages are getting the “Mobile Friendly Tag.”

If they are and you are not, then you better buckle up your seat belts as they will get a massive advantage over you after 21^st April, which they will enjoy for quite a long period of time. And if it’s the case vice versa, then Congratulations! You are prepared for the post #mobilemadness days.

Don’t just stop after you see the “Mobile Friendly Tag” for your website in the Google SERPs.  This detailed guide will give you a clear view edge over your competition for many more days to come. There is lots of work to be done and there are only a few days – so keep reading!

#5 How Can You Avoid Getting Bitten By Google Mice This Time?

Before we jump into the Checklist of how to make your website mobile friendly, it is wise to brush along the sides of the subject (just the way Google like’s it).

1. Allow Googlebot to access the JavaScript, CSS and Images files of your website.
2. Don’t use any kind of unplayable content – Especially Flash.
3. Avoid Faulty Re-directs. This can happen when you inappropriately redirect your desktop URLs to Mobile URLs.
4. Don’t harass users by blocking them from viewing content with too many intrusive download links and messages or advertisements.
5. Avoid cross-linking blunders. This can happen if you have multiple versions of the website and you redirect users to the wrong mirror page.
6. Enhance your mobile site speed with Google PageSpeed Insights.

 This is just the way Google likes it. Now head over to my all encompassing Checklist of To-Do things to dodge the April 21^st Update and prepare your online business for the future.

 #6 Checklist for Mobile Friendly Website (~Avoid Google Nerf)

With Mobilegeddon on the loop, and not many days for it set the Internet crazy – Here is my detailed checklist of things that you must take into consideration if you are a website owner or are responsible for the good health of your organization’s website.

Look at the image above, this is a screenshot from the Google Analytics of Prime One Global. You can clearly see that we receive a steady inflow of footfalls through organic mobile search. Now, if we were to ignore this figure and not bother about mobile optimization before the 21^st of April – you could call us sheer foolish (but, thankfully it is not the case as we are already up and ready, and we help others optimize their websites too).

You can be a designer, developer or another SEO company, or even someone managing a website, and this detailed checklist will help you with making your website mobile friendly. So even if you are in the website development phase or are planning to design one in the future – you can use this checklist to make your website Mobilegeddon safe.

1. GOOGLE QUALITY COMPLIANCE CHECK

With all the #mobilemadness #mobilegeddon hype on the web, it is easy to get swayed and puzzled about what you should do to make your mobile, website friendly, err… website – mobile friendly before the 21^st of April. Before you even jump into the nitty-gritty of mobile optimization it would be wise to check if your website is already “As mobile friendly as Google wants it to be.”

Check the individual pages of your website with Google’s Mobile Friendly Test Tool, which will help you with detailed information regarding optimizing your website. And if most of the pages of your website are passing the test without a twitch, you can be rest assured that nothing too dramatic is going to happen to your online presence after the onset of 21^st April 2015.

With this said and done, you can also read what the search giant has to say about mobile optimization in their Webmaster’s blog. There is another useful read which Google published back in November last year about helping users find Mobile friendly websites.

2. Determining your INVESTMENTS AND RETURNS

If you are reading this checklist, then most probably you did not pass the Google Mobile Friendly Test or you are just hunting for more information. Planning to optimize your website for mobile can call in for an enormous investment, especially because the algorithm in question is going to do a full-site scan and not just a site-wide scan. Even if you are ready to go all-in on mobile optimization it is crucial to determine the amount of investment you need to make – both in terms of money and resources. Don’t rush to a conclusion – Plan your moves and execute them one by one, to reap the best benefits in the long run.

It’s important to understand how much organic traffic you are presently experiencing from search engines. If you haven’t done this yet, now would be the ideal time to log into your Google Analytics (I hope you have integrated your website(s) with GA) and determine whether there has been an upward shift in the amount of traffic you have been receiving in the past few months. If you notice that your business is receiving less than 10% traffic through mobile devices, it could mean one of the following things:

1. Your website has poor SEO, which is resulting in poor organic traffic.

or

     2. Your website has poor Mobile Optimization and that is why it’s receiving less traffic.

or

     3. your business model doesn’t call for mobile viewers (9  out of 10 times this will not be the case)

Now if you are already experiencing very little traffic from mobile, I would suggest taking the slower route for this process as you may have more time than you really think.

But.

Let’s say, 30-50% of your organic traffic is from mobile phones, it calls for a faster and effective mobile strategy implementation.

How do you determine what amount of money and resources to invest?

The safest bet would be to allocate the same amount of money and resources that are available to you, to equal the share of mobile to desktop traffic that your website has been experiencing over the past few months.

3. BUILDING A MOBILE APP TO ENHANCE USER EXPERIENCE

Even though Google introduced the App indexing feature to display applications in search results back in October 2013, it’s still a powerful way of enhancing the overall user experience of your brand.

It is not rocket science, we know that Google is driving these updates with a strict motive to give users the best search experience possible – Thus, if your business model can support an App for the users, it would be one of the best times to plan this out.

You may be wondering how on earth will you plan and execute an App development campaign before the 21^st of April. Well, you don’t need to hurry about this; you can take your time and scale this into one of your marketing projects for the future.

Obviously, everything boils down to your capacity to invest/allocate (money and resources) at the moment, but again – you can keep this in mind for the future.

4. RESPONSIVE / DYNAMIC / PARALLEL

There are rumors that Google loves Responsive designs more than Dynamic URL Segmentation or Parallel URLs, but this is completely untrue. I have run quite a few tests in the past weeks, especially after Google’s  Feb 4^th Update, and I can assure you that if your website is mobile-friendly there is nothing to worry about.

If you are unaware of which configuration option you should select for your website, then here is a description for a clear view:

1. Responsive Design: This configuration serves the same content to desktop, mobile, and tablets by using CSS3 elements. So, the contents of your website will automatically resize for perfect display according to the device it is being viewed on. This configuration is the best because there is no duplication of content and there is no need to handle multiple mirrors of the same content. You just have to manage one single website. The only disadvantage of this configuration is that you cannot segregate Mobile only content nor have different content for different platforms.
2. Dynamic / Adaptive Design: This option is almost the same as responsive design as you will be working on a single URL but, different HTML and CSS codes will be presented to users depending on the device they are viewing your website from. The only con of this configuration is that you will have to re-write the code of your website every time a new mobile device is released.
3. Parallel URL Websites: Even though this is one of the most strenuous of all the options available, it still has its perks for those websites which need to laser focus on the mobile experience of their visitors. Opting for a Parallel URL website is like having a separate subdomain for example (m.yourwebsite.com or mobile.yourwebsite.com). Its cons include having to manage the mirror image of your website and dealing with duplicate content etc. Every time your website is updated, the changes have to be reflected in the other domain as well.

5. USING USER INTENT FOR ENHANCED VISIBILITY

It is not an unknown fact that most of the searches that are performed on the move are done via mobile phones and other hybrid devices. According to research, more than 80% of the searches performed on mobile are with local intent.

This means that people are most often looking for local addresses, telephone numbers, stock availability, and other business-related information via mobile phone. With this in mind, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Do customers come to my shop or office?
2. Do I have a helpline to deal with customer inquiries?
3. Do I sell goods and services that have the tendency to out-stock?

The answer to all these questions will mostly be a yes, and thus it may be a crucial business booster if you can place your Contact and Stock Information like (Map, Address, Contact Numbers, Email Id, etc) before the other information on your website, it will greatly boost conversions of your mobile site.

6. CREATE A MOCKUP FOR YOUR MOBILE WEBSITE

Before you jumpstart your mobile optimizing or website development journey, it is crucial to have a simple mockup of what you would like your website to look like in the end. You can use different mockup creation tools like Adobe In-design, Photoshop, etc., but just don’t trade the comfort of your users for elements that make your website too heavy to load or don’t appear properly on all devices.

Also take into consideration that some of the aspects of your desktop website will be difficult to convert to a mobile version, for example, the navigation menus or mouse hover menu reveals. These features never adapt to mobile websites, so you must look for better alternatives. Now let’s take a detailed look at the creation of your mobile website wire-frame.

i. Development: Remember to put the meta viewport tag on top of all your pages. If you took time out with the Google Mobile-Friendly Test Tool, then you must have already fixed this up.

ii. Readable Fonts: Is your content legible for mobile viewing? If viewers have to constantly pinch the screen to change the size of your font, this does come as an obstruction in fluid visibility. Google recommends 16 CSS pixels and a line height of 1.2em.

iii. Distance Between Touch Elements: Ensure that all touch elements of your website have a considerable gap between them, or users may end up clicking the wrong button. This is the primary cause of increased bounce rates, low sales, and possible frustration or agitation among mobile surfers. Make sure that your Call-to-action button is clearly visible and accessible on all devices. You can also check if Google has picked any element of your website for being inaccessible in the Mobile Usability section of GWT.

7. AVOID HORIZONTAL SCROLLING IN MOBILE SITE

Even though this one is obvious, it wouldn’t hurt to have it in the checklist. Mobile surfers are used to vertical scrolling to view hidden aspects of a website, but if users have to scroll horizontally to read between the different sections of your website, then it may cause problems in user experience as they will mostly have to pinch the screen to resize it for a complete view.

This problem is also easily traceable through the Google Webmasters Tool.

NOTE: You can avoid getting this error in GWT by using relative width and position values in the CSS and also making sure your images are scaled properly.

8. OPTIMIZE FOR FASTER PAGE LOADING ON MOBILE

Again, this is a no-brainer.  The user’s type of device and data connectivity also plays an important part in the mobile surfing experience. Even though the world is blessed with 4G connectivity, more than 60% of people who are surfing the internet, do so through 3G connections. You wouldn’t want to properly optimize your website in all aspects and then lose out on precious leads or sales because your website was not able to load completely on slower devices, would you? There are variable controls that can be tweaked to achieve the best results but the first thing you should do is to head over to Google Page Speed Insights Tool to see what Google says about your website load time.

NOTE: You can do things like compressing images, minifying codes, and leveraging browser codes to enhance the load speed of your website(s).

9. AVOID FLASH AND DON’T BLOCK CSS, JAVASCRIPT, AND IMAGES FROM GOOGLEBOT

If you are using any flash elements on your website, now would be the time to get them removed. HTML5 is one of the best alternatives to flash elements on a website. We say that flash is not good for the mobile experience because Flash is not readily available on all mobile devices. Due to this, it may cause an erroneous mobile viewing experience for your users.

And the first thing that Googlebot will check when it crawls your website is for blocked CSS, JavaScript, or images. If it finds that any of these elements are blocked from crawling, then it will mark your website as “not-mobile-friendly.”

10. DISPLAY RELEVANT KEYPAD FOR FORM FIELDS

This is one of the most overlooked factors when it comes to mobile optimization and I have personally seen a 30% growth in opt-ins and leads from mobile visitors, when websites optimized their forms do display the right keypads. Check out your existing forms and see what the users will have to fill in separate fields. Check if the respective fields are displaying a relevant keypad. Having a ‘number keypad’ displayed in the contact number field and an ‘email-keypad’ displayed in the email form field will greatly enhance the mobile experience or your viewers and is worth tweaking.

11. CONTACT NUMBERS TO OPEN IN DIALER APP

My dad is not aware of how to copy and paste things on mobile phones and so are the majority of the people in this world. You must take this into consideration when optimizing your website for mobile because having to copy the number and paste it in the dialer or even write it down on a piece of paper makes the whole process cumbersome and messy. Sometimes, it may even result in people leaving your website without contacting you. Ensuring that clicking on your contact number opens the dialer app will get you those visitors who might be stuck on the fence just because they are unable to call you without leaving the screen or memorizing your number just to forget the last few digits when they are frantically typing into the dialer pad. Think about it.

12. HAVE YOUR WEBSITE TESTED INHOUSE OR HIRE PEOPLE

During the development phase of your website, it might be a good idea to constantly see how well it is performing on variable devices. This can be done through various emulators available online or you can manually do it on various devices (Borrow from your colleagues or family members).

Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, both have this nice ‘Inspect Element’ feature that lets you view your devices as seen by other devices – This is a very handy feature that I sometimes overuse.

Alternatively, you can also hire a bunch of testers or even organize an in-house event where the members are asked to surf your website in various mobile devices and give their inputs after 10-15 minutes of wading through your pages.

After the demo run, you can the testers to pen their individual feedback and collate them later on to pick up bits and pieces that need enhancing. Sometimes, it is just better to have someone else analyze your website because they will only think from a user’s perspective and tell you very obvious things that you may overlook, just because your brain is clustered with lots of plans and ideas.

Ending Note 

This is my all-encompassing checklist of website mobile optimization. I have helped a lot of my clients cope up with their mobile optimization needs, so if you need any help you can always ask for assistance on the Facebook Page or even in the comment section below. If you have any questions or want me to add something to this checklist, again, the comment section is a few blocks away.

 #7 Print Ready Extreme Checklist for Mobilegeddon

Here is the download link to the print-ready version of this checklist for your convenience. Don’t forget to pin this checklist if you found it useful.

#8 List Of Useful Links And Resources Related To Mobilegeddon!

1. Google Algorithm Database – List of all Algorithms updated will date.
2. Google App Indexing Service – Want to get your app featured in SERPS? This is the door.
3. Google Mobile Friendly Website Guidelines – Self Explanatory
4. Google Mobile Friendly Test Tool – Check if your individual pages are mobile friendly.
5. Google Mobile Usability Report – Get instant reports on mobile usability issues.
6. Google Webmaster’s Help Forum – Ask Google for help!

Here is a list of Big G’s Guidelines for optimizing various leading CMS or similar platforms:

1. WordPress
2. Joomla!
3. Drupal
4. Blogger
5. vBulletin
6. Tumblr
7. DataLife Engine
8. Magento
9. Prestashop
10. Bitrix
11. Google Sites

Here is a list of guides that can be used to change your not-so-responsive website into a “Responsive website.”

1. Design a Skeleton Website
2. Bootstrap Website Downloads : CSS/Java/Fonts + Source Code Rails/Compass/Sass
3. Responsive Grid System Website Toolkit
4. Advanced Responsive Website Designing Tutorial – Advanced HTML and CSS.

Extra Resources:

1. List of different options for mobile navigation menus.
2. Mashable’s list of top online wireframing tools.

In the end, it depends on what your website is focused on and what business models you are following. There are a few things however that need no excuse not to be followed and doing the basic mobile optimization checks is one of them – After all, who doesn’t like an extra influx of visitors from mobile phones.

Unless you are from the underworld, in which case you will be using the .htaccess file – a few people will get what I mean and #5MinutesOfSilence for the people who don’t. Haha.

My apologies for such a lengthy post, but again I love to keep all the information in a single file so that you don’t have to run around from blog to blog, hunting for more information. If you like what I write or if you have any suggestions or need help regarding Mobile Website Optimization, you can also shoot a comment below or contact me at our official Facebook page and I will get back to you at the earliest. Hope you found this Guide helpful. Have a Good day!