You thought Google was done with mobile and had moved on? No way!
This week, our communities are all talking about some news that came out of Pubcon: a mobile index is coming and it’s going to be Google’s primary index going forward.
So if you were willing to take a few hits on the chin and ignore mobile optimization, you could see yourself in a whole heap of trouble in the future. How soon will the mobile index be here? What will the consequences be?
Check out some of our discussion threads below to learn more!
Cre8asiteforums members are talking about the future and mobile optimization in this thread. As Kim says, it was one of the most popular and compelling themes to come out of Pubcon this year.
“The future was a theme in various ways…to my surprise [it included] an emphasis on smarter development and marketing tactics related to user experience, targeting users’ needs and a clear overlap between SEO and UX, the likes of which I’ve never seen before.”
Sounds like the SEO world is swinging hard towards user experience. That’s probably just where Google wants it to go. Forums member iamlost writes that it’s a bit of a late realization, though.
“This is October 2016. I started seriously thinking and hypothesizing and testing ‘for mobile’ from Wednesday, March 19, 2008. That was the day that Reuters published ‘Google sees surge in Web use on mobile phones.’”
Late or not, give this thread a read to catch up on the news.
Google Has a New AMP Testing Tool
Just before Mobilegeddon rolled out, Google put up a mobile friendly testing tool. Now they have a similar tool for AMP pages. If you put in your exact AMP page URL, the tool will tell you if the page is working properly. AMP pages seem to be a key part of Google’s vision for the future of the web.
But they aren’t yet well understood or trusted by webmasters. As iamlost wrote in the previous Cre8asiteforums thread, there’s a lot of talk about how to take advantage of these new tools…but not much talk about whether we even should.
WebmasterWorld’s Brett Tabke Wins Lifetime Achievement Award
Raise a glass and give a hearty congratulations to WebmasterWorld’s founder, Brett Tabke! Tabke is also Pubcon’s CEO, and has been working in the computer industry for three plus decades. As WebmasterWorld’s admin, engine, writes Tabke
“founded a specialty software business producing a line of software for Commodore computers in the ’80s and ’90s.”
He’s the author of several early and authoritative books about website design and microprocessor programming, too. We know him as a long-time ace networker and community builder! He coined some popular SEO terms like “link farm,” “SEO themes,” and even “SERP”! As WebmasterWorld user not2easy writes, “A well deserved award there.” Congratulations, Mr. Tabke!
Separate Mobile Index Coming Within “Months,” To Be Treated as Primary Google Index
According to Gary Illyes, who spoke at Pubcon, Google’s mobile index is just months away. Threadwatch writer Adam W says that
“This sounds like it will match up close to the date when intrusive interstitials are devalued in mobile results.”
As it currently stands, Google uses the desktop index to determine mobile rankings… but soon, the mobile index will replace the desktop index as top dog.
We aren’t sure what the full consequences of this change will be. Will pages that aren’t mobile friendly be pushed out of mobile rankings completely? Will content take a back seat to design?
New and Less Common Technologies: What Are We Missing?
All this talk about the cutting edge and mobile design has stirred the hearts and souls of WebmasterWorld users. Forum member graeme_p has started this thread to talk about the new and less common technologies that people need to know about.
“I mean anything that is not often talked about. Programming languages, databases, frameworks, web servers…whatever.”
What follows is my favorite type of thread – the one where our scientists and experimenters share the fruits of their labor! You can find tips and thoughts about all kinds of new tech in this thread, like Haskell, Cherrypy, Hiawatha web servers, Elasticsearch, Soir, MongoDB…and more! Give it a read!
SEO Chat member deadpebbley has the same problem that many of you might have as well. On a client’s site, a massive number of visitors are coming from spammy websites and bouncing immediately.
Whether they’re bots or people who have somehow gotten lost in a spam-hole, they’re really skewing deadpebbley’s bounce rate.
Since this traffic is useless and worth ignoring, a simple solution is to filter it out of your metrics. How do you do that? Well, read on and find out!
The post Mobile Optimization Is Even More Essential: Weekly Forum Update appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.
