Google’s AMP: Designed for Speeding up the Web by Changing How It Works

Google's announcement at Oct 7, 2015 about the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP), which "aims to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile website" or, alternatively, fragments the Internet by not fully supporting the very standards the web is built upon - depending on your point of view. As well as that announcement they have launched the AMP Project Website (which I discuss in more detail below). So is it a good and necessary step forward or a massively step backwards?

In August 02, 2016, Google announced Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) would be moving beyond “Top Stories” into the main organic mobile search results. Today, AMP officially rolls out broadly in mobile search.

In this article I'll explain what is google AMP, How AMP Works, it's advantages & it's impact on google search results.

So, What's Google AMP?

Publishers are cooling on Facebook Instant Articles & Apple News, they’re becoming hot and heavy with Google AMP, the search engine giant’s answer to Instant Articles.

In February, 2016, Google rolled out AMP, which stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, on mobile search results in Google News. Publishers scrambled to adopt Google’s open-source code on their pages because search still drives close to 40 percent of referral traffic overall, and they know that as their audiences shift to mobile, having fast mobile pages can only help them get surfaced by Google’s algorithm.

AMP's kind of  projects like the Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News.

So, let's talk about how this might actually show up in search results. So first of all, what we know at the moment AMP is  looking like it's mobile only. It's showing up as a carousel above the regular blue links, typically for news-related terms, because most of this is focused on obviously reading contents. The people who've rolled this out first have been mostly news & advertisement publishers Washington Post, USA Today Network, Gizmodo, WIRED, Slate Magazine, plista, Relay Media, etc. So you search for a news-related term. You can see this carousel of swipe-able images above the blue links. Click on one of those, it opens super fast, that's the whole point, and then you can swipe to another AMP page across the way.

Benefits of Accelerated Mobile Pages?

Speed Matters Most and Instant Loading is the Ideal Expectation. Research has shown higher bounce rates associated with slower-loading web pages. Using the AMP format will make it far more compelling for people to consume and engage with much more content.

AMP HTML is a way to build web pages for static content that render with reliable, fast performance. It is Google and Twitter's attempt to make really fast mobile pages. At its essence, it's basically a stripped-down form of HTML, a diet HTML if you will.

How Does AMP HTML work?

The AMP format is supported by a wide variety of platforms, including Google Search. If a web page listed in Google's search results has a valid AMP version website, Search may direct mobile users to the cached AMP.

All of Google Webmaster guidelines for making a site Google-friendly also apply to AMP. This article covers additional recommendations to help you and your website users take advantage of AMP's benefits. Here's a the summary:

Design: Create web pages according to the AMP specification.

Discovery: Make your AMP discoverable.

Validation: Test that your page is written in valid AMP HTML.

Structured data: Mark up your content with structured data.

Status: Monitor your AMP report on Search Console for errors.

But What About Advertisements?

Although JavaScript is mostly forbidden on AMP sites, there are some loopholes that allow publishers to include advertise, analytics, and other pieces of JavaScript on an AMP page.

AMP includes a special analytics tag that allows publishers and advertisers to send data to pre-screened analytics providers such as Adobe, Chartbeat, and Parse.ly. This is handled by a single JavaScript file instead of a separate script for each analytics provider. That file is loaded from Google’s own servers, which can speed things up considerably for pages that use multiple analytics providers. Ads work in a similar way.

The AMP Project vets analytics servers based on performance, security, and privacy, so some of the worst offenders may be screened out. But those who want to use analytics code or other pieces of JavaScript library that haven’t been pre-approved can also use the <amp-iframeiframe> tag.

The <amp-iframeiframe> tag, similar to the traditional HTML version of the <iframe> tag, allows publishers and advertisers to add blurbs of JavaScript hosted on their own websites, but there are some restrictions too. Code inserted into iFrames won’t have access to all the data that a script inserted directly into a traditional page does. AMP always loading the page’s core content before any <amp-iframeiframe> content in order to keep <amp-iframeiframe>s from slowing down pages. And when AMP pages are hosted on Google’s servers, the pages are pre-rendered, so that they still load quickly.

These workarounds enable more freedom for publishers and advertisers, but it also means there’s still room for them to serve invasive scripts to readers. Improved performance won’t always mean improved security, and privacy. It also means more of the web will be shaped by Giant like Google & Twitter.

AMP Supported Browsers?

In general AMP supports the 2 latest versions of major browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari and Opera. AMP support desktop, phone, tablet and the web view version of these respective browsers.

Beyond that, the core AMP library and built-in elements should aim for very wide browser support and accept fixes for all browsers with market share greater than 1 percent.

In particular, Google try to maintain "it might not be perfect but isn't broken"-support for the Android 4.0 system browser and Chrome 28+ on phones.

How AMP works in Mobile Device?

Google has published a great tutorial on how to create your first AMP page. We will go through a quick rundown on what is involved and what you need to know. It is important to know how AMP works in SERPs. In most cases, Google will only serve AMP pages to mobile devices. However, Google does not penalize users who have AMP-only pages (i.e. no additional HTML desktop version) such as the ampproject itself. Google has a preview up but you can emulate it from your desktop using Chrome DevTools.

AMP Page Specialty:

• Allows only asynchronous scripts
• All CSS must be inlined
• Styles are limited to 50KB
• External resources like images must state their size in HTML
• All Javascript must be out of critical path
• No user written Javascript is allowed, only AMP supported
• Fonts must be loaded with a link tag or a CSS @font-face rule

AMP Impact on the Google SERPs

Simply put, AMP will affect huge in search engine optimization. After all, Google is committed to pushing mobile-first index in which mobile-friendly websites received a rankings boost. The difference here, however, is that AMP is not a ranking factor; at least it isn’t one as of now. This was confirmed in a Google+ Hangout with Google Webmaster trend analyst John Mueller.

AMP will affect in Google SEO in regards to impressions, clicks, user experience, and of course, website speed. Speed is a crucial factor to ranking well on Google and the company reported last year that, “29 percent of Smartphone users will immediately switch to another site or app if it doesn’t satisfy their needs,” and that “. . .of those who switch, 70 percent do so because of lagging load times.”

Yet no matter if AMP is a current organic ranking signal or not, the chances of it becoming one are relatively high as a Google's January 20, 2016 Announcement, which delved into the ad experience on AMP stated that, “We can’t emphasize enough that this is just the start,” and that Google is, “. . .invested for the long term.” With how heavily Google underlined the importance of mobile-friendliness with Mobilegeddon, it would come as no surprise if Google one day made AMP a ranking factor as well; possibly even as soon as its mobile update this May.

Do you think Google will make AMP compliance a ranking factor? I don’t know if Google will make AMP a ranking factor or not but AMP will be a real headache for publishers, that is certain. In order to keep up and not lose positions they will be forced to learn everything about Google AMP.

SEO Your AMP Pages?

By having an AMP version of your post or page you don’t want to get dinged for duplicate content, so Google requires that you use the canonical tag when linking to pages.

Google will automatically detect AMP pages on your site as your original page is served with a header tag directing Googlebot to your AMP page.

What Can You Do To Prepare?

There's two things. Firstly, you want to be able to start building AMP pages for your site, and you want to make sure that those pages are valid, because as we said, it's like a diet version of HTML, but it's very, very strict on how you build the HTML. The tags have to be in certain orders and certain places. You can't use certain things. And if you do any of that, your AMP page is invalid and they probably won't be using it.

There are several ways available to validate an AMP document. They will all produce the exact same result, so use whichever one suits your development style the most.

Chrome Developer Console:

To validate your AMP pages, you can use a tool that's built into Chrome. So if you open the developer tools in Chrome, there's a system there — and you can look it up on the AMP project website — where you can actually go to a page and you can ask it to validate, "Is this an AMP page," and it will tell you any problems with that page.

Web Interface:

There's also a Web Interface available at validator.ampproject.org. This interface shows errors displayed inline alongside the HTML source of the page. The interface is an interactive editor: changes to the html source result in interactive revalidation.

Chrome:Browser Extension:
The AMP Validator can be accessed directly from your browser's toolbar using a browser extension. As you browse, it will automatically validate each AMP page visited and gives a visual indication of the validity of the page as a colored icon.

Summery: Want to Convert your site to Google AMP? Contact Us Today & we'll get back to you.

Things You Need To Know About Google’s ‘Mobile-First’ Indexing

Here's everything you need to know (technically worry) about the Google Mobile-First Search Index.

Why Does Google Switch To ‘Mobile-First’ Search Result?

Google's internal research found that the majority of Searches on Google are done via Mobile devices. Google's aim to deliver relevant results to the majority of their searchers. Until now, Google has indexed web pages as desktop browsers see them. With the new ‘mobile-first’ search index approach, Google indexes web pages as mobile phones see them. The rankings will be based on the mobile websites priority then desktop website.

Nutshell is the mobile version of your website will become more & more important for SEO than the desktop version.

What is Changing with the Mobile-First Search Index?

As more and more google searches happening on mobile, Google wants its index and results to represent the majority of their users — who are mobile searchers actually. Google has started to use the mobile version of the web as their primary search engine index. A search engine index is a results of pages/documents that the search engine discover, primarily through crawling the world wide web through links. Google has crawled the web from a desktop browser point of view, and now Google is changing that to crawl the web from a mobile browser view.

The most substantial change will likely be that by having a mobile index, Google can run its ranking algorithm in a different fashion across “pure” mobile content rather than the current system that extracts data from desktop content to determine rankings.

What if You Don’t have a Mobile Friendly Website?

Google said not to worry. Although Google wants you to have a mobile friendly website, it will still crawl your desktop version of your website instead. Google said,

If you only have a desktop site, we’ll continue to index your desktop site just fine, even if we’re using a mobile user agent to view your site.

If you have a mobile friendly website, then you need to make sure the website content and links on the mobile site are similar enough to the desktop version of your website, so that Google can consume the proper content and rank your site as well as it did by crawling your desktop website.

Test your website with Google's New tool.

Don't Have a Mobile Friendly Website? Contact Here

What do You Have to Do if you Have a Mobile Friendly Website?

You have to make sure that your mobile website contain enough related & high quality content to rank your pages on google search. If your mobile website have less content than your desktop pages, your pages might get lower rankings with Google’s new ‘mobile first’ search index.

My Mobile Site has less Content than my Desktop Version. Should I be Worry?

Potentially, yes you should worry about it. Google has said that it will look at the mobile version of your site. If that has less content on webpage "X" than the desktop version of webpage "X", then Google will probably just see the mobile version with less content. This is why Google recommends you go with a responsive design approach — the content is the same on a webpage-by-webpage basis from your desktop to your mobile website. You can do the same with other mobile implementations, but there is more room for error.

What is the Best Solution to Make Sure that Google can see the Content of My Webpages?

Google Recommends responsive web design. The content on responsive websites is the same on desktop computers, tablet and mobile devices. The layout changes based on the media device that is used to view the content but the content is the same. Of course, you can also create a separate website just for serve mobile.

Responsive websites will benefit the most and will be well placed for the change. However, websites which have a separate mobile site will suffer the most as a strong focus on optimization will be necessary to get them up to speed if they’ve been neglected in the past.

In general, a separate mobile website lead to more work and more errors can happen.

What About Expandable Content on Mobile Device?

With your desktop sites, Google said that content hidden in tabs, accordions, expandable boxes and other methods would not be weighted as high. But when it comes to mobile search index, Google’s Gary Illyes said content like this will be given full weight if done for user experience purposes. The idea is that expandable content makes sense on mobile device and not so much on desktop.

Will My Rankings Change a Lot?

At the moment, it’s still too early to say about it. But note it, that Google is prioritizing mobile content.

Google's Representative says that there should be minimal ranking changes around this algorithm change. Of course, most websites already have good mobile friendly or responsive sites. If you do not have a mobile friendly website yet, your rankings might change more than the rankings of a website that already is mobile friendly. Pages that are not mobile-friendly will not rank as well as pages that have been optimized for mobile devices.

I suggest a SEO audit ? Contact Here

Will Google Have Different Indexes for Mobile Search and Desktop Search Results?

We know Google has been working on creating a separate mobile index for a while now, but with mobile searches now accounting for more than 50% of all searches, it’s making more sense to priorities a more relevant and positive user experience for users on mobile devices.

Although we’ve had some pretty obvious clues that Google search is become more mobile-orientated with the advent of ‘Mobilegeddon’ The Google Mobile Friendly Update On April 21, 2015 and the introduction of AMP in February this year, it’s now clear that Google is taking his search algorithm a step further.

Currently, Google search is set to become mobile-first & has a single index for search across desktop and mobile, but last week Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed at Pubcon in Las Vegas they are going to create a separate, rapidly updated mobile search index, which will become the primary index used for search.

A secondary desktop index will be in place, but won’t be as up-to-date as the mobile index. We don’t know exactly when the changes will be rolled out, but it will likely only be a matter of time.

When Will This Fully Roll Out?

Google's Representative said they have already begun testing this mobile-first search index to some users. But it looks like we are still months away from this fully rolling out. Google won’t give us a date because they are still testing the roll-out, and if things go well, they may push it sooner. If things do not go well, they may push it back. Google did say they will push this out to more and more searchers over time as they become more confident with the mobile-first search index.

What Happens to the Links that Point to My Website?

If you have a responsive website, you do not have to worry about this because the URLs of your mobile pages and your desktop pages are the same (actually, the pages are the same, they are only displayed differently on mobile and desktop).

Is This a Mobile-Friendly Website Ranking Boost?

Google has previously said that the website content that’s not mobile-friendly will not rank high on organic search. That remains the case with this new index too. In the current index, which most people will continue to get results from, desktop content is indexed and used for showing search listings to both desktop and mobile users.

A special mobile-friendly ranking system is then used to boost website content for Google’s mobile listings. Content that’s not mobile-friendly doesn’t perform as well. In the new mobile-first index, which some people will get results from as Google rolls it out, mobile content is indexed and used for showing listings to both desktop and mobile users. Then the mobile-friendly ranking boost is applied, as with the current system, to mobile-friendly pages.

Want to Boost Your Website Ranking? Contact Here

How Can I Tell if Google Sees My Mobile Pages?

The best way is to use the Fetch and Render tool in the Google Search Console. Specify the mobile:smartphone user-agent and look at the preview after the fetch and render is complete. What Google shows you in the rendered results is likely what Google can see and index from your mobile website. If content is missing, then you should look into how to fix that and run the google tool again.

Will Links and Rankings Change Because of This?

There is a concern that mobile content tends to have fewer links than desktop content. This is a concern that is similar to the concern listed above around mobile content having less content than desktop content. Google’s search results are very dependent on links and content. So if both links and content are impacted, will the rankings be impacted? Google said they are still testing, so it isn’t 100 percent clear. Gary Illyes said,

I don’t want to say anything definite about links yet. It’s too early for that cos things are very much in motion.

Canonical URLs: Shall I Need to Change Them?

Google said the canonicals will not need to be changed, just keep your canonical tags as is, and follow their recommendations as listed on their blog post. They Said,

Sites do not have to make changes to their canonical links; we’ll continue to use these links as guides to serve the appropriate results to a user searching on desktop or mobile.

Can I See the Change and The Impact in the Search Results Now?

Google said you shouldn’t be able to see the change and impact of the mobile-first search index roll-out now. In fact, Google said it hopes there is little to no impact after it is fully rolled out. Paul Haahr Software engineer at Google said,

I would be very surprised to detect any effects of mobile-first indexing at this stage.

Will Bing Search Move To Mobile First Index Too?

Some have been wondering if Bing Search Engine would follow in Google’s footsteps and do a Mobile First Index, similar to what Google recently announced. Google will be changing their desktop index to one where they index the mobile version of a website, in order to serve mobile users – which now account for more than 50% of all searches – the most accurate search results.

Christi Olson Bing Evangelist at Microsoft says that they have no plans to do a Bing “mobile first” index. Their index will remain as a desktop index, meaning they will continue to index the desktop version of a webpage, and not the mobile version of the page. She Said,

At Bing, we maintain a single index that is optimized for both mobile and desktop to ensure our users continue to receive the most relevant, fresh and consistent results no matter where they are.

Want To Rank Higher on Bing & Yahoo Serch? Contact Here

Although Google said they have already begun testing this mobile-first index to some users, it will still take some time until it goes live for all users.

Priority to the Mobile at Google Search

Since November 2016, the main Google search index is mobile

While Google Search Result Pages has always been based on desktop version of the websites, is now the mobile version which significantly indicate Google Search Core Algorithm Changes.

Mobile, The Google First Priority

Why Does Google Priority The Mobile-First Search Results?

As Google explained in its webmaster central blog official announcement at Nov. 4, 2016, the change was necessary because of the paradox:

Today, most people are searching on Google using a mobile device. However, our ranking systems still typically look at the desktop version of a page’s content to evaluate its relevance to the user. This can cause issues when the mobile page has less content than the desktop page because our algorithms are not evaluating the actual page that is seen by a mobile searcher.

The announced change therefore makes more coherent analysis of Google:

To make our results more useful, we’ve begun experiments to make our index mobile-first. Although our search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, our algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our results. Of course, while our index will be built from mobile documents, we're going to continue to build a great search experience for all users, whether they come from mobile or desktop devices.

In the next paragraph google assured that, although this is a big algorithm changes but all user still get great user experience as always.

Accuracy: throughout this article, as in the communication of Google unless stated "mobile" means "smartphone". This does not include tablets, which are closer to the computers.

Is Google Mobile-First Index Already in Place?

No, I don't think so, Even the announcement is official made since early November 2016, Google's Mobile-first Indexing is still in a testing phase. As the impact can be major (for small businesses, blogger, solopreneur and professionals to make sure that their websites are mobile friendly, for example), Google warned in advance.

Is The World Really Happened To The Mobile?

I went to see the Global internet usage statistics provided by web analytics company StatCounter, what I found is very interesting: StatCounter Global Stats found that mobile and tablet devices accounted for 51.16 percent of worldwide internet usage in November 2015 to October 2016, compared to 48.48 percent via desktop. Indeed the trend is globally clear.

Proportion of Internet Usage WorldWide in October 2016

But when I looked closely at the comparison map, I realized that Mobile usage surpasses desktop for geographical areas like Asia and Africa where the mobile has majority share, but this is not the case of Europe, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and Even United States of America (But For How Long?).

In USA, there would be only 36.5% of digital media time represents by Mobile, while the desktop is 63.50%.

In Canada, there would be only 26.96% of mobile internet user compared to 73.04% of desktop internet user.

In United Kingdom, While an estimated of 89.90% of U.K. citizens using the internet today (Source: https://hostingfacts.com/internet-facts-stats-2016/) , there would be only 36.07% of mobile internet user.

Global Mobile Consumer Survey 2016 UK Cut: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu UK Limited conducted an SmartPhone Usage Survey, Here're the Key findings:

• Almost half of 18-24 year olds check their phone in the middle of the night.
• 27% of smartphones include a fingerprint reader, of which 76% are used.
• Connected home devices still haven’t taken off, with just 2% of adults owning smart lights and smart appliances.
• As of mid-2016, almost half of UK adults had access to at least one type of connected entertainment product.
• 4G adoption has more than doubled in the last year, from 25% to 54%.
• 31% of smartphone users make no traditional voice calls in a given week. This contrasts with a quarter in 2015, and just 4% in 2012.
• The majority of survey participants have downloaded 20 or fewer apps.
• By mid-2016, almost two-thirds of UK adults had access to a tablet, but penetration growth had slowed down.

In Australia, there would be only 37.76% of mobile internet user compared to 62.24% of desktop internet user.

In Europe there would be only 31.22% of mobile internet user.

What Difference Does It Make In Practice?

It depends on whether your website is mobile-compatible, and if so in what way (there are 3 ways).

Mobile websites via responsive design:

In this scenario, the website automatically adjusts to the available screen width (in pixels). The website URL will the same (between the mobile version and the other) and no detection of the type of media device is required. If this is your case, you have nothing else to do than to check what happens when Google visits your site. Please, test your website with Google Mobile-Friendly Testing tool.

Mobile websites via the dynamic serving:

In this case, the design automatically adjusts to the available width (in pixels). The URL is the same (between the mobile and the other version). The only difference with responsive design is that the content (source) differs depending on the type of media device (which must therefore be detected), the idea being to ease the mobile version. If this is your scenario, you have nothing else to do than to check what happens when Google accesses your site. Please, test your website with Google Mobile-Friendly Testing tool.

Mobile version of your websites via a new mobile only URL:

In this scenario, two sites (or pages) are created: one for the desktop browser & the other one for mobile user. There are quite a few things to do for Google sees this mobile-compatible, but if it is OK then it is as effective (in terms SEO) than other methods. If this is your case, take a step back and ask what is different (in terms of website content and structured data markup) between the mobile version and desktop version.

If your website's mobile version has less content than the other version, then you risk seriously to see your Google organic search traffic decrease, especially on the long tail keywords. Indeed, removing words or phrases, you reduce your chances out in the SERPs on queries that reference.

Websites that do not compatible with mobile:

In this case, it really is time to plan a new version of your website, obviously compatible with mobile! Because not only do you risk having problems in SEO (Google based on the mobile version first), but most of your website user will not be happy website your website.

Need Help Setting Up Mobile Compatible Website? Contact Us

A Mandatory Test For Everyone!

Be sure to follow these 3 essential tips:

• First, test your website with google new mobile compatibility testing tool to make sure your site is compatible according to Google guideline. You should test your website all URL individually, because Google tool only evaluates the URL we provide not all of it's inner pages.
• Then run the "Fetch as Google" tool in Google Webmaster Tools interface. Remember to configure the search robot to mobile version (it is still not selected by default ... like what Google is outdated). I advise you to enjoy it to request a display, you can render your page according to Google. It is on this version that Google will now be based to estimate the quality of your site.Suffice to say that it is imperative that everything is OK! By the way, make sure you do not block Google's access to resources necessary for rendering on mobile ( CSS , JS , images).
• Finally, test your website with google's structured data markup testing tools. And see if you inserted structured data markup correctly (like Organization, Address, etc). Reread the article in Google Webmaster Central and you'll see they speak several times about structured data markup, as it is important.

Read This Week SEO Trend.

Do You Make Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Too Complicated?

The week is coming to an end again and I'm holding you a moment off the weekend to present you the best SEO News of the last week. Do You Make Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Too Complicated? What is SEO? How does 301 Redirect affect SEO? Questions about questions and I'm OK to answer you again. Have fun while reading this article.

In search engine optimization, there are many methods can be used to increase any website search engine organic ranking. Prior to execute any strategy, goals must first be defined. A suitable strategy can then be developed from these goals. There are a few simple questions you can ask yourself:

What is the purpose of my website?: Do I want to generate leads? Do I want to sell a product? Do I want to distribute content? The purpose of a website is directly dependent on the goal to be defined first.

What will I achieve?: Is it revenue based? User based? Traffic based? The definition of what you want is crucial to the success of the strategy.

How can I measure my success?: After you know what you want to achieve, you have to know how to measure your success. If, for example, you want to generate leads, you need not only traffic on the website, the traffic must also need to convert to leads. What will bring you a thousand visitors when none of them convert?

Who are my competitors?: knowing your competitors is important. By monitoring the competition, you can easily identify and exploit gaps in their SEO strategy.

Once the goals are set, a strategy must be developed. In doing so, it is important to keep the focus on the objectives and to sort out everything that does not correspond to your goal. At this stage of the process, you should already consider the partners you need to work with. In order to operate successful SEO strategy, sometimes, you may have to rely on others at some points.

The next phase of the process is to review the results. The focus should be on everything that has a clear influence on the achievement of the goal. There are four simple questions to be asked.

• What has worked?
• What did not work?
• Why did not it work?
• What's next?

The aim of these questions is to find out if you are on the right path. At some points you can not answer all these questions. Through the questions you make sure that you does not lose the focus. One of the most important questions is the fourth one.

After all the results have been analyzed & solved the question, time adjustments have to be made. Based on the collected data, the strategy can be reoriented and improvements can be made to achieve the goal and restart the process further.

Google New Page Speed & Mobile Friendly Tool before: The new All-In-One tool from Google allows website owner or webmaster to check the Mobile friendliness, mobile speed & desktop speed in no time. As with the Google PageSpeed ​​Insights Tool, the user is given helpful tips on how to fix the issue.

301 Redirect?: A 301 redirect is the HTTP status code for when a page has been moved permanently to a new location or URL.

With a 301 redirect, the value of inbound links as well as historic/trust records for one URL will move to the other, though there’s debate as to just how much of this benefits are passed on to the new URL.

301 redirects are particularly useful in the following circumstances:

• You've moved your site to a new domain, and you want to make the transition as seamless as possible.
• People access your site through several different URLs. If, for example, your home page can be reached in multiple ways - for instance, http://example.com/home, http://home.example.com, or http://www.example.com - it's a good idea to pick one of those URLs as your preferred (canonical) destination, and use 301 redirects to send traffic from the other URLs to your preferred URL.
• You're merging two websites and want to make sure that links to outdated URLs are redirected to the correct pages.

To implement a 301 redirect properly for your websites that are hosted on servers running Apache, you'll need access to your server's .htaccess file.

New Google Accelerated Mobile Pages: Google AMP is still rising. More and more websites offering AMP versions for their mobile users.

Ads on AMP Website Study by AMP Project

Google's Project Amp prevails slowly but surely, and more and more sites offer a quick AMP version of the content, which can be loaded much faster on smartphones. Since, of course, such websites must also be financed, Google has made possible a number of advertising forms from the beginning, which are now to be expanded. Soon there will be three new forms of advertising.

• Sticky Ads
• Flying Carpet Ads
• AMP Ads for Pages

Read More From AMP Blog.

'Mobile-First Indexing ' Google’s Begins Making a big change to Organic Ranking and Appearance

As we know, Since 1997 Google has used the desktop version of websites to determine it’s search relevance and organic ranking signals in order to populate its organic search index.

Google has begun testing mobile-first indexing, using mobile content to determine it’s search relevance and organic ranking signals, which will primarily look at the mobile version of your website for its ranking signals and eventually fall back on the desktop version when there is no mobile version available for user search query.

Most of Google Searches are Mobile

Google realized that most people search on Google using mobile devices, and the company has begun experimentation with switching to a mobile-first indexing methodology last year. This will be of particular interest to webmasters, depending upon the configuration of the websites under their management.

A detailed study released by Google reveals roughly 40% of people search only on a smartphone. More people are searching Google via smartphone than ever before the company says, with the most popular categories revolving around health, parenting, and beauty.

Other top findings from Google’s study include:

• 80% of people use a smartphone
• 67% of people use a desktop computer
• 16% of people use a tablet
• 57% of people use more than one type of device
• 27% of people use a smartphone only
• 14% of people use a desktop computer only

Dissecting these findings, it’s interesting to learn that of the people who only use one type of device, twice as many are using smartphones than desktop computers.

Google acknowledged the significance of the undertaking and wrote on the Webmaster Central Blog:

Today, most people are searching on Google using a mobile device. However, our ranking systems still typically look at the desktop version of a page’s content to evaluate its relevance to the user. This can cause issues when the mobile page has less content than the desktop page because our algorithms are not evaluating the actual page that is seen by a mobile searcher.

Although mobile-friendly sites should not require any changes, Google has made several suggestions for sites that maintain separate markup for mobile and desktop devices. Otherwise, sites optimized only for desktop consumption will continue to be indexed as they are now.

Google wrote:

We understand this is an important shift in our indexing and it’s one we take seriously. We’ll continue to carefully experiment over the coming months on a small scale and we’ll ramp up this change when we’re confident that we have a great user experience.

For websites that do not currently offer a mobile-optimized experience, the news may inspire website owner and webmasters to quickly build and deploy a mobile version of their site. However, Google recommended a more careful approach and advised, as

If you are building a mobile version of your site, keep in mind that a functional desktop-oriented site can be better than a broken or incomplete mobile version of the site. It's better for you to build up your mobile site and launch it when ready.

No mobile site? Where to Start?

So you know that, Google prioritizing mobile over desktop sends a message that Website owners, webmasters and SEOs should do the same. At the very least, this means having either a mobile or responsive version of your website.

Having a mobile-optimized website is not enough for eligible top position on google organic search. In short, mobile-friendly is the bare minimum requirement, You should take care of following issue:

• Follow Google Webmaster Guidelines.
• Site Optimize for right keywords.
• Website Speed Matters.
• Have a healthy amount of google accessible text on your site.
• Site images have descriptive ALT tags and filenames.
• Make sure your site isn’t creating any duplicate content.
• Have a XML Sitemap.
• Backlinks from Authority Website.
• Social Media Presence.

The best way to optimize your site for speed is to publish content using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) technology. If you’re not yet on board with AMP, I would recommend regularly checking on your mobile PageSpeed using Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Mobile-Friendly Test.

Keep load times as low as possible. Ideally, website owners, webmasters and SEOs should have these bases covered before Google splits its search index. No exact time frame was given as to when the split will happen, but in this industry, it never hurts to be proactive.

We will keep you posted

As we see changes to the Google search results and index, we will report back to you with any issues. When this mobile-first index fully rolls out, we will let you all know.

How to use Keywords in Website Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

A keyword is a term that is used to match with the query a person enters into a search engine to find specific information. Most people enter search phrases that consist of two to five words. Such phrases may be called search phrases, keyword phrases, query phrases, or just keywords.

SEO Keywords are the phrases in your web content that make it possible for people to find your Website via Search Engines. A website that is well optimized and offer relevant content might get higher search engine organic ranking.

These days, keyword optimization, due to keyword Spamming in the past, has been reduced in importance by search engine like Google. It’s purpose is only to tell search engine that, for example, this page is about XX, and you want them to include it in their search results when people search for XX and variations of XX. Lessening the importance of keywords is very different from disregarding them altogether though.

These are the issues you should consider during your Website SEO Process:

Where To Use Keywords

Page Title: Title tags are the first places that the search engines will scan, and they are what appear as the actual link on the search engine results page. This is one of the most important places to emphasize your keywords, so make sure that the title tag on each page uses your most important keywords.

The title tag is also what your visitors will see in their web browsers, both in the title area and on tabs (if they’re using tabbed browsing). This is one of the areas where it’s tough to remember that SEO isn't just about pleasing the search engines – it’s also about pleasing your human visitors. They will use the title tag as a primary means of identification and navigation, which is why it needs to be written well-enough to please both parties – definitely not an easy feat.

Meta Description: Within your header, there are a number of hidden META tags that only the search engines will see, and the META description tag is one of these hidden tags. On the search engine results page, you can generally see the META description tag by looking at the chunk of text underneath the link.

When writing your META description tag, it’s extremely important to be as concise as possible. The search engines generally only look at the first 150 characters of the description tag, so you only have a limited window in which to get your keywords in. Some search engines only use a part of it before taking some content from elsewhere on the page, so it’s even more important that you incorporate your keywords right up front in your description.

META Keywords Tag: It’s still being debated how much weight the search engines give to the META keywords tag. In the early days of search, websites used to cram this tag full of any and all keywords or keyword combinations, in the hopes that the search engines would grasp onto something.

Most search engines learned from that and have changed how they weigh this tag in the search algorithm. Now it’s all about how the META keywords relate to the content on your page, which is why you need to use keywords that are relevant to the website in general and to the page in question specifically.

URL: It's a good idea to include keywords in your URL if they accurately describe the page contents. This is particularly important for businesses that do a lot of Blogging -- there's a huge opportunity to optimize your URLs on every post you publish, as every post lives on its own unique URL.

But beware: Search engines will penalize exact match domains that are keyword stuffed. So if you're thinking of starting up SaltLakeCityUtahBusinessName.com, think again. Keep it to BusinessName.com/SaltLakeCity-Utah, and you should be fine.

Headline & Sub-Headline Tag: One of my best tips for improving your headline and sub-headline is to put any keywords or keywords variations you’re using in them up front. Doing so not only emphasizes what comes in the content below, but is useful for people scanning through your website quickly. Just try to keep it clear, concise, and relevant when doing so.

Page Content: Your page content is reason your website’s exists in the first place, and it’s the backbone of everything else on your website. It’s also what people link to (and links are another contributing factor to SEO) and what will draw people to your website in the first place.

One big consideration when writing your content is keyword density. While your best bet is to incorporate your targeted keyword phrase into your content as often as possible, you want to be careful not to overdo it. You’re not trying to sell your product to search engines; you’re trying to sell it to people, and if your content reads horribly, it can make a bad impression and most likely decrease the chance of making a conversion.

We’ve all seen websites where the keyword density is so high that the content reads horribly. As long as you’re simply aware of the phrase you’re targeting when you’re writing the content, you should end up with an adequate keyword density, probably within the 3-5% range. It’s alright if the targeted keywords stand out when you read through your content; after all, that’s what the person was searching for, and seeing it emphasized will reinforce that they have the information they need to make their decision.

Also remember the 1-to-1 rule: 1 page of content should be optimized for 1 keyword.

Site Navigation & In-Content Link Text: One of my reasons for avoiding using “click here” in link text is that it’s not SEO-friendly. Search engines use the strength of your links in their algorithm, and one of the things that determines link strength is whether the link text using specific keywords in it.

Use specific keywords in your link text helps them estimate how relevant that link is. It also helps build the relevancy of a particular page to a particular keyword phrase.

With all of the places on your website where links are, this doesn't apply solely to links within your page content. It applies to your main navigation links, to your breadcrumbs (as I mentioned already), to your footer links, etc. It’s all about association, and you want the search engines to associate certain keywords with your website in general and with specific pages on your website in particular.

Image Tag: While these attributes were created for usability purposes, they don’t have to be used solely in those ways. They can also be used for SEO purposes in the sense that they’re another opportunity for you to incorporate additional text onto your page – text that contain the keywords you’re optimizing for.

I've written previously about using the ALT and TITLE attributes properly, but the important point is that you shouldn't write them with only the search engines in mind.

Keep them relevant to the element in question, and don’t use them to either duplicate content elsewhere on the page or to stuff them full of keywords to the point that they become completely unhelpful. Above all when it comes to them, think usability first, SEO second.

Breadcrumbs: Another common navigation tool on websites, breadcrumbs can help people pinpoint where they are on your website, as well as how to get back to where they were previously. As with any place you have words on your website, your breadcrumbs are another opportunity for you to incorporate your keywords. Just make sure that the breadcrumb links provide enough detail about what the pages are, without being overly length – 1 to 3 words at most.

Embedded File Names: What I’m referring to as embedded file names are things like web pages, images, etc. These aren't necessarily things that people will see within your actual content – they’re just ways that you can get more keywords onto your page.

How you write file names should be a no-brainer, but it’s important that you not give them a generic or vague label. People will see the file name of a web page when they hover over a link, so using a file name that contains the keywords that the page is about is useful from usability purposes. (This is one of the main reasons why you should enable your permalinks in WordPress; with HTML websites, you have an easier time controlling the file names.

When it comes to images, why name your image files something vague such as “image01.jpg” instead of actual image file name like "SEO-Audit.jpg". when you can name it something that includes a keyword instead? It’s not something that someone will see or that will really make a difference, but it’s just another spot where you can get the keyword onto the page for the search engines to see it.

How to vary keyword usage

You can Target Multiple Keywords in One Page but, unless they’re very closely related, it can be difficult to do. The best approach is to have one main target keyword for each page, and then to also target keyword variations for same page. Keyword Variations will typically be the main keyword with one or more extra words (Service, Review, Buy, Cheap, etc.) can be added.

If the only difference between keywords is the order of the words, a minor word (a, an, in, on, to, etc.) or plurality (s, ies, etc.), then you can target those keywords on the same page as multiple main keyword targets, as Google Recognizes each of those variations as being nearly the same, and will generally return pretty much the same set of search results for each of the keywords.

How often to use keywords

The Page Title is by far the Most Important Place to add your main target keyword, so make sure, at the very least, you use your main keyword at the page title. If you need to make it part of a phrase, change the order of the words, or add a divider or two, so as to make it look more professional or to target more keywords, then that’s fine it won’t prevent your website ranking #1 in Google organic listing for that keyword.

In addition to using the Main Target Keyword in the Page Title try to use it, or a Variation of it, in at least 3 Places.

• URL
• H1 Tag
• Body Content
• Site Navigation Link Text
• In-Content Link Text
• Image Tag
• Meta Description

Learn to Avoid Search Penalties

There are a couple of things you should also avoid when optimizing your Website for keywords, so be careful of the following Outdated SEO Practices some people still use.

Never Hide Keywords: This includes using the same color background as you do for the text, or hiding them off to the side using CSS tricks. While this isn't as easy to catch as other black hat tactics, today's more sophisticated search engines like Google can easily find instances of hidden keywords and it can result in serious search penalties.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing: Keyword stuffing means repeating keywords over and over again in the page or post, whether it's in titles, headings, descriptions, page content, URLs, or even at the bottom of a Website in very small text.

Basically, when it looks like keywords have been added unnecessarily onto a Website, it's probably keyword stuffed. Keyword stuffing is the oldest trick in the book when it comes to SEO and nowadays, search engines have been developed specifically to detect it. Not only does it look Spammy, but it's not approved by search engines and will result in penalties.

Don't Force Keywords: This isn't quite the same as stuffing a lot of keywords into a page or post. This is more about not forcing a keyword in even if it's just one if it doesn't belong, contextually speaking. If you can't figure out a place to put a keyword in a piece of content, it's often a sign the content isn't that well-aligned with what your personas need, anyway. Remember, SEO is not about incorporating as many keywords as possible. It’s much more about writing content topics relevant to your target audience.

Summery: It’s important to understand that keywords do still matter, and you should have some idea of the keywords you want to target. But increasingly, the way they’re interpreted by Google is organic and meaning-based, rather than simply taking the keywords you use at face value.

There are a lot of competing schools of thought when it comes to Organic SEO. What are some of your practical tips for incorporating keywords onto your website? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below!