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As mobile-first indexing nears, the need to optimize for mobile has never felt so pressing. Even in its current iteration, mobile search is incredibly important for advertisers and businesses of all sizes. Consider these statistics: A majority of Google searches occur on a smartphone or tablet. 50 percent of local mobile searches are for local business contact information, says Hubspot: According to BrightEdge, 69 percent of mobile searchers stated they were more likely to buy from a brand with a mobile site that addressed their concerns. Now, with mobile web design, speed takes precedence over almost any other ranking factor. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if half of the web is seriously optimized for mobile search. According to Think with Google, 70 percent of mobile web pages take 7 seconds to load visual content above and below the fold. Common mobile site errors include: Blocked JavaScript and cascading style sheets (CSS) files. Failed redirects. Poor graphical int...

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: First batch of Google mobile-first indexing notifications goes out today Apr 30, 2018 by Barry Schwartz Achievement unlocked! Google has begun sending out mobile-first indexing notifications to webmasters. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauß Google doodle honors mathematician known as the ‘Prince of Mathematicians’ Apr 30, 2018 by Amy Gesenhues The celebrated mathematician made contributions across several mathematical fields. How to use a podcast to create smart and usable content Apr 30, 2018 by Sherry Bonelli In the last of this three-part series, Contributor Sherry Bonelli says a podcast might be an audio file, but you can create unique written content from it to help with your branding and SEO efforts. Here’s how. Google announces new job posting guidelines & requirements Apr 27, 2018 by Barry Schwartz Google has officially updated its ...

SMX Advanced is unique in so many ways. It’s the premier experts-only conference programmed by the team at Search Engine Land, the publication of record for search marketers. It attracts the biggest group of the world’s most sophisticated marketers for three days of learning and sharing. And it celebrates search marketers with the largest and most prestigious search marketing awards program in the world. Won’t you join us June 11-13 in Seattle? Register here . Need to know more? Buckle up! Here’s my 10,000+ word description of everything SMX Advanced has to offer. Then, register before all of the tickets are sold, as they have every year since SMX Advanced redefined the search marketing conference experience in 2007. 2018: Emerging opportunities and new challenges Change is constant in search marketing. Opportunities emerge quickly — sometimes quicker than they can be absorbed. New channels. New technologies like machine learning. New ad options and formats. Even veterans strugg...

For the first time since Google announced the rollout of the mobile-first indexing process just over a month ago, SEOs and webmasters are now getting notifications via Google Search Console of their sites being “enabled” for mobile-first indexing. The notification reads “mobile-first indexing enabled for” and specifies the domain name of the site it was enabled for. Ari Finkelstein shared a screen shot of the notification with us. It reads: This means that you may see more traffic in your logs from Googlebot Smartphone. You may also see that snippets in Google Search results are now generated from the mobile version of your content. Background: Mobile-first indexing means that Googlebot will now use the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking, to better help our (primarily mobile) users find what they’re looking for. Google’s crawling, indexing, and ranking systems have historically used the desktop version of your site’s content, which can cause issues for mobile...

“ OK Google , tell me where I can go to lunch today.” And just so I don’t offend the Apple aficionados: ‘Hey Siri, is it going to rain today?” What do these have in common? They’re classic examples of the rising tide of voice search, and they signal a change in the SEO landscape  that you can’t afford to ignore. And if you take a moment to look, you’ll find that the voices telling you how to optimize for voice search are many and varied . But what actually works? Is there actually a way you can take steps in the right direction to help optimize people who rely on voice searches? I believe there are, and I want to share them with you. Before we get started improving your SEO though, I want to show you some overwhelming evidence that voice search is taking over. What is voice search, and why bother? The practical applications of voice search are still relatively new, but the feature itself has taken the world by storm. These days, all you have to do is tell your device w...

Today’s Google doodle marks the 241st birthday of Johann Carl Friedrich Gauß, the German mathematician often credited as the “Prince of Mathematicians” or the “Greatest mathematician since antiquity.” Born on this date in Braunschweig, Germany, Gauß (translated as Gauss) was a child prodigy, making complex mathematical calculations as early as 8 years old. At 21, he wrote “Disquisitiones Arithmeticae,” a number theory textbook defined by Yale Press University as the “… source of ideas from which number theory was developed.” The celebrated mathematician is noted for a number of contributions across multiple fields of study, including number theory, algebra, statistics, geometry, geophysics, magnetic fields and astronomy. Among his many discoveries was the construction of the heptadecagon and proof of the quadratic reciprocity law. According to Leonard Bruno and Lawrence Baker’s “Math and Mathematicians: The History of Math Discoveries Around the World,” Gauß determined the orbit of ...

This is Part 3 of a three-part series. Here are Part 1 and Part 2 . The more podcast interviews you do, the more credibility and authority will be built around your brand. This, in turn, provides more opportunity to use that authority in your search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing efforts. Using reviews Show notes, reviews and links from the podcast sites typically include your name. That means when people search for your name, your pages should appear in search result pages. This gives you higher authority and reinforces your personal branding ,  which helps when you’re trying to rank higher in the search engines. It also helps you become a successful marketer and leader in your niche. Reach an audience quickly Being a guest on the podcast is one of the fastest ways to reach an engaged audience interested in your topic. In fact, podcasts will promote your name, company name, social presence and other links, all of which promote you to audiences as an ex...