Google Clarifies The Mobile-Friendly Algorithm

Google Clarifies The Mobile-Friendly Algorithm Will Roll Out Over A Week, Be A ... - Search Engine Land

Google’s mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that is launching on April 21st will be on a page-by-page and real-time basis but how long will it take to roll out and how do you know if your page qualifies to benefit from it?
Since we know this algorithm will be significantly larger in impact compared to the Panda and Penguin algorithms, webmasters are kind of anxious about the release.
Yesterday, Google answered a series of questions in a Google+ hangout on the topic of this new mobile-friendly ranking algorithm. The three things we learned were:
(1) The algorithm will start rolling out on April 21st and will take a few days to a week to completely and globally.
(2) You are either mobile-friendly or not, there are no degrees of mobile-friendliness in this algorithm.
(3) The fastest way to see if your web pages are mobile-friendly is to see if you have the mobile-friendly label in the live mobile search results now. If not, check the mobile-friendly testing tool, which should match the live Google search results, whereas the mobile usability reports in Google Webmaster Tools can be delayed based on crawl time.

Roll Out Will Be A Few Days To A Week

I transcribed Google’s Mary response on this where she said:

We are expecting it (the mobile friendly algorithm) to roll out on April 21st, we don’t have a set time period because it is going to take a couple of days to roll out. Maybe even a week or so.

Your Page Is Mobile-Friendly Or Not

The mobile-friendly algorithm is an on or off algorithm, on a page-by-page basis, but it is not about how mobile-friendly your pages are, it is simply are you mobile-friendly or not. I transcribed this one also:

As we mentioned in this particular change, you either have a mobile friendly page or not. It is based on the criteria we mentioned earlier, which are small font sizes, your tap targets/links to your buttons are too close together, readable content and your viewpoint. So if you have all of those and your site is mobile friendly then you benefit from the ranking change.
But as we mentioned earlier, there are over 200 different factors that determine ranking so we can’t just give you a yes or no answer with this. It depends on all the other attributes of your site, weather it is providing a great user experience or not. That is the same with desktop search, not isolated with mobile search.

How Do You Know You Are Mobile-Friendly

How do you know if your web pages will be mobile-friendly or not? There are a few ways, but Google said the easiest way is to see if your current pages have the mobile-friendly label in the live mobile search results now. If so, the mobile-friendly testing tool should also confirm this. Keep in mind, the a href=”http://searchengineland.com/mobile-usability-reports-come-google-webmaster-tools-206885″>mobile usability reports in Webmaster Tools can be delayed by crawl time and general webmaster tools reporting delays.
I transcribed the three times Google answered this but I’ll share one here:

Take out your phone, look up your web site. See if there is a gray mobile friendly label in your description snippet. If it is in the search results, if you see it, that means that Google understands that your site is mobile friendly and if you don’t see it then we don’t see that your site is mobile friendly or your is not mobile friendly.

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Little Fanfare as Yahoo Leaves China

Yahoo's decision to close its last remaining operations in China – a research and development center in Beijing – will have little impact on the country's digital industry, experts say, as the company has been largely dormant in the region for the past several years.
Yahoo China has had limited operations in China since it was acquired by Alibaba as part of a strategic partnership with Yahoo Inc. in 2005. In 2013, the www.yahoo.cn Web portal was closed and users were given the option to transfer their existing Yahoo China mail accounts to other Yahoo sites or to Alibaba's Alimail platform.
Foreign technology and social media companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, have all faced a hostile regulatory and operating environment in China, as well as competition from local tech giants Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and Weibo, but experts say Yahoo's decision to pull out of China has just as much to do with cutting costs.
"If they are closing the office, it's because they no longer have user interest and the business is falling off," says one insider, who requested to remain anonymous.

"It's no big deal because nobody cares about Yahoo in China," says another anonymous source. "It's a facility for research and development only, with no actual visibility. The Yahoo brand has been dumped in China since the operation was taken over by Alibaba many years ago."
But from a search industry history point of view, Yahoo's China departure is significant, says Motoko Hunt, president and search marketing consultant at AJPR.
"Yahoo was one of the first well-organized portal sites with a search function for people to get to know the World Wide Web until Baidu and other locally grown search engines and portal sites came out," says Hunt.
"While the operation may have been passed onto Alibaba, the office closure symbolizes the end of an era, and shows how difficult it is for Western businesses to be successful in the Chinese market."
Hunt adds the closure emphasizes the difficulties for foreign companies, especially Western companies, to understand, localize, and adapt to Chinese and other Asian regional markets.
"I give credit to Yahoo that it tried to do that over the years, but it shows how difficult it is for a local team to be heard within a huge corporation to get what they need to grow market share."
In a statement, Yahoo said it was constantly making changes to align resources, and to foster better collaboration, and innovation across its business.
"We currently do not offer local product experiences in Beijing but the office has served as a research and development center. We will be consolidating certain functions into fewer offices, including to our headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, U.S," the statement said.
The Beijing office closure, which will see its estimated 200 to 300 employees laid off, forms part of a number of cost-cutting redundancies across Yahoo's global network over the past six months.

Google’s New Program Aims to Get Local Businesses Online

Google is trying to get local businesses in 30,000 cities worldwide online via a new program called "Let's Put Our Cities on the Map."
The initiative was designed to encourage small businesses, consumers, and local organizations to help complete a local business listing on Google. According to Google's own research, consumers are 38 percent more likely to visit and 29 percent more likely to consider purchasing from businesses with complete listings. However, not enough companies have set up a local business listing on a search engine, Google says.
The program provides each city with a custom website where local businesses can find how they appear on Google Maps and in search results. Take, New York City for example, where the owner of Ost Cafe can see what listing information they have missed on Maps.


Google will also provide local business owners with a step-by-step guide for getting online with Google My Business, and a free website and domain name for one year with Google's partner Startlogic.
Consumers can participate in the program by creating postcards to support their favorite local businesses, and further sharing the postcards on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. However, such sharing will not help local businesses rank higher in Google search results.
"Sharing the postcards won't make businesses appear higher in search, but will hopefully spur them to verify and start managing their business listing," a Google spokesperson tells Search Engine Watch.
The search giant has also partnered with local organizations like chambers of commerce and small business development centers to offer Google My Business workshops, where local businesses can learn to how to control the information listed about them on Google Search and Maps.
Are you ready to get your favorite local businesses online?
Homepage image via Shutterstock.

Facebook Launches App Analytics

Facebook Launches App Analytics At F8 Developers Conference

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 18:38:13 +0000

One of the many announcements coming out of Facebook’s F8 conference for developers today is Facebook Analytics for Apps, a free service that Facebook says can help developers in several ways.
The analytics tool is available today for apps that are logging App Events, which Facebook says is 87 percent of the top-grossing apps in the U.S. Developers that aren’t doing that but want to start can head over to Facebook’s developer documentation to get started.
From Facebook’s announcement, here’s an overview of what Analytics for Apps offers:

Cross-Device
People now use multiple devices to interact with businesses across apps and websites, and Facebook Analytics for Apps can help developers and marketers understand their traffic across these devices, which in turn can help them improve performance.
Segments
You can look at segments, or groups of people who have certain characteristics, like women or people using Android phones. You can then look at metrics for these groups to see how they use your app differently than the overall population.
Cohorts
You can now also look at cohorts, or groups of people who took a set of actions in your app. Then you can review specific metrics for that group, like what percentage of them launched your app, completed a registration, or made a purchase.
Funnels
Creating funnels lets you look at how people move through a series of steps in your app, like a purchase flow. This can help you see where people drop off, which can help you figure out where to devote resources to improving performance.
Improving your advertising
Facebook Analytics for Apps can help developers understand and improve the ads they’re already running, and figure out how to run better ads in the future. Analytics helps you measure the lifetime value of your Facebook ads, and re-engage people who have dropped off using re-marketing.

Facebook Analytics for Apps is accessible at facebook.com/analytics, a dashboard with access to all of a developers’ apps.
For more news from today’s F8 keynote, see our live blog coverage. And we’ll be sharing more news today and tomorrow on our F8 conference topic page.

Vodka Brand Creates Mobile App To Program Personalized LED Messages On Bottles

Last week, a chocolate bar brand launched a QR code-based mobile app that allows people to add personalized messages of love on their candy bars. This week, a vodka brand is upping the game with LED and Bluetooth technology.
Medea Vodka, which has had manually programmable LED strips on its bottles since 2010, has introduced a mobile app that uses Bluetooth to assign personalized messages to LED strips on vodka bottles. The company will showcase this technology at the upcoming Nightclub & Bar Convention & Trade Show in Las Vegas later this month and introduce the bottles in June.
Here’s a look at the original, non-Bluetooth LED bottles in action:
The new LED bottles will use Apple’s iBeacon technology and an app to enable a smartphone to wirelessly set and display scrolling messages. The Medea App, not yet available in either the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, will be able to determine what bottles are in the area without having to connect or find every Bluetooth-enabled device. The app will keep tabs on which bottles are around and available to be registered.
Once a person registers a particular bottle using the app, that bottle — and the ability to post messages to the bottle — can be accessed by anyone who the initial registrant chooses to invite. Anyone with access to a bottle can also share their messages to Facebook, Twitter and email. Since users reportedly must register to program their bottle’s message, the app may be a source of useful customer data for Medea.
The bottles are pre-programmed with six phrases including, “Happy Birthday,” “Congratulations” and “Thank you,” which scroll across the LED label.
Medea is promoting the new bottles and app on Facebook and Twitter:

Yes, it’s true. We’ll be rolling out a #bluetooth #app that enables #mobile users to program customized messages to…
Posted by Medea Vodka on Monday, March 23, 2015

Did you see our #bluetooth #app news on @CNBC? http://t.co/yIe7oSNM7G. This will be unveiled at #ncbshow2015 @NightclubBar next week!
— MedeaVodka (@MedeaVodka) March 23, 2015

Build Your Brand Authority

How Copywriting Can Build Your Brand Authority

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 14:00:00 +0000
When you're recognized as a brand authority, you become the go-to business for products or services in your industry; you can be more selective with clients, and you can charge higher rates that reflect your expertise.
When we hear "brand authority," we usually think about PR, online and offline marketing, public speaking, writing books, being interviewed... In all that, giving thought to what you say is undoubtedly important, but it's often how you say it that establishes your true credibility as a brand authority.
By following these four steps, you'll discover just how effective your copywriting can be in building your brand authority.
1. Be consistent in your tone of voice
All companies have a certain tone of voice. You hear it in their marketing materials, blog posts, YouTube videos, and social media posts. The way a company "talks" can determine whether anyone wants to do business with it, and that's why businesses must get tone of voice right—and keep it consistent.

Consistency in tone of voice breeds familiarity, which in turn creates trust and, finally, brand authority. Here are three tips to ensure you keep your brand's tone of voice consistent:

1. Define it. How do you want to portray your voice to your audience? Are you a serious blue chip company laser-focused on delivering results? Or are you a fresh new startup looking to shake up your industry?
2. Own it. Once you know how you want your brand to sound, take ownership of it by using that tone in all of your marketing materials.
3. Encourage it. Create a style guide and distribute it to all your writers and editors so that everyone follows the same guidelines. Also provide it to agencies doing work for you and anyone who wants to guest-post on your blog.

2. Make it emotional
Most people think they decide with whom to do business based on reason and logic. Although rational thought does have bearing on our decisions, our emotions ultimately get their way.
Our emotional responses to a piece of writing have more influence on our decisions than the actual content of the writing itself, research suggests. In fact, in print advertising, we're twice as likely to buy from a brand that appeals to our emotions than one that doesn't at all.
The following three steps can help ensure you make the most of emotion in your copywriting to establish your brand authority:

1. Use emotional triggers. Tug at your customers' heart strings by appealing to their strongest emotions and tapping into their needs and desires. Some of our strongest emotions are value, trust, fear, guilt, competition, belonging, and pleasure.
2. Use intriguing headlines. Every successful advert, article, blog post, and email begins with a strong headline. Think about what words will encourage your audience to read on and into the body of your copy.
3. Include a call to action. Having built up all that emotion, you'll want to direct your customers to fulfill a specific action you want them to take, whether that's making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter.

3. Keep it conversational
Building your brand authority involves a certain professionalism, but that doesn't mean your copy needs to be full of longwinded sentences and obscure words. If you want to stand out from the crowd, your copy needs to speak to people in a way they can relate to.
When crafting your copy, write as you would talk to a friend—directly—and focused on the main points of your message. You can keep your copywriting conversational by following these three tips:

1. Read your copy out loud. Hearing your voice speaking your copy can help you recognize any shortcomings, including incorrect tone of voice or confusing structure.
2. Use short sentences. The shorter the sentence, the more readable the copy. If you can say it in one sentence, why use three?
3. One idea at a time. Keeping each point you want to make within one paragraph helps deliver your messages more clearly and makes your copy more digestible.

4. Make it look easy
Think about how the most successful brands portray themselves to the public. Do they make a point of constantly telling you how hard they work at becoming a trusted company?
The most successful brands make it look effortless. Undoubtedly a lot of effort goes in behind the scenes, but the audience sees only the finished product, presented in a seemingly effortless way.
If your branding comes across as forced, too sales-like, or overcomplicated, you'll find it difficult to attract the kind of customer loyalty that authority brands have. The following three actions can help you make your copywriting look easy:

1. Use bullet points and numbered lists. Breaking down your copy into small, digestible chunks is a surefire way to simplify your brand message. People are automatically drawn to copy that stands out on a page.
2. Start with a strong opening line. Use the first line in your copy to make a bold statement that shows your readers you know what you're talking about.
3. End with a summary. Gathering the most important pieces of information at the end of your copy can help strengthen your content. It also gives people an opportunity to reflect on what they've just read.

* * *
Although following all these copywriting tips will certainly improve your brand authority, bear in mind that sounding unique often what sets a brand apart from the competition. And if that means breaking some of these copywriting "rules," then so be it.

A Marketer's View: An 11-Step Plan for Launching Your Startup

Disclaimer: the headline on this article promises you 11 steps to launch a startup. It does not promise you 11 easy steps or 11 simple steps or 11 anyone-could-do-it-before-breakfast-without-breaking-a-sweat steps.
Launching a startup is difficult—there's no way around that.
In the best of markets, 75% of venture-backed firms fail to deliver returns on their investments, according to 2012 research from Harvard Senior Lecturer Shikhar Ghosh.
Today, VC firms are debating whether that grim statistic might be exacerbated by a forthcoming tech bubble. Nevertheless, many entrepreneurs decide to launch companies every year.
If you're determined to join their ranks, here's what you need to know about how to launch your business so it lasts.
1. Make sure the service, product, or business you're launching is something you're passionate about and you're in it to win, no matter what. Don't start a business that you don't know much about and for which you aren't willing to learn more. It will never grow.
2. Partner up. Launching a company is a long journey (if things go well) that takes multiple skill sets. Few people can claim expertise in product development, operations, marketing, sales, and every other function you'll need in the early days of your business. That's why so many successful startups are founded by partners or teams. Just make sure you have defined roles and mutual respect from the beginning.
3. Articulate the vision and test-drive messages. Even if you plan to stay in stealth mode for a while, to boost your profile and set the stage for your eventual coming-out party you'll need to craft some messages and positions on industry trends. As you near launch, you'll also need to test-drive your value proposition and overall messaging with beta customers and industry analysts. If those messages aren't resonating with those audiences, you're not ready.
4. Build a strong team. Recruit the A players who can help you grow and ultimately launch. Identify speaking opportunities at local events or at conferences with high awareness, where you can talk about industry trends and catch the attention of attendees. Alternatively, get involved with a recruiter who knows your space and the prime candidates in it.
5. Set clear goals. Is the initial goal of your company launch to hire great talent to build your product? Is it to build up a customer base? Or are you most interested in getting venture capital? Figure it out, because the answer or answers will determine what you should do next.
6. Get all Goldilocks about your market timing. Too late is no good. Too early can be just as bad. If you enter the market before your prospects are ready, your company will flame out, and your future competitors will build their successes on the foundation of your failures. Make sure your market timing is just right, and keep an eye on where the competition is in its development.
7. Get your website ready for close scrutiny. It should be optimized for analytics, easy to navigate, and responsive to multiple devices. If your initial goal for the site is to build awareness rather than drive leads, you can feature minimal calls to action and keep things simple at the start.
8. Build up your content and marketing library. As you add content to your website, include basic information—such as product specs, sales contacts, and calls to action—as well as deep content to support lead conversion when that becomes a priority, including case studies (as soon as they're available), e-books, SlideShares, a healthy blog, and other assets.
9. Be sociable. Pick the three most relevant social media channels for your market, and craft a strategy for building your following on each. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other outlets can help you engage with influencers and prospects, amplify your content, and establish yourself as a reliable source of industry knowledge.
10. Craft a pitch. The value-driven message that explains why your company exists should be clear enough that your kids can understand it, and compelling enough that your VC contacts will want to hear more. Make sure you can explain your customers' greatest need and how you're going to solve it. Be ready to identify your competitors and explain why you'll have an edge over them. Finally, practice your pitch and perfect your presentation skills.
11. Build media, analyst, and customer relationships for third-party validation. Blasting out the news of your launch won't get you very far. Concentrate your resources on building relationships with early customers (who can vouch for you), analysts (who can explain how you'll fit into the market), and journalists (who can convey your story and viewpoints to target audiences.)
Launch day is the end of a long road and the beginning of another. To make sure your startup can thrive during the journey, you'll need to walk through those 11 steps first, and find the right resources to help you navigate the difficult terrain.
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