Published on 18 Jun 2014 at 10:16 pm.
Comments Off on How Google Views Your Site.
Filed under Google,Mobile,Search Engine Optimization.
Have you ever wondered how Google views your site? Google now lets you see how they index your pages.
The Fetch as Google feature in Google Webmaster Tools just got a major upgrade. In the past you use the Fetch as Google feature to force Google to crawl a page and return the exact raw HTML. This is very helpful after you have made a major change to your site. Changes like if you move to a new web hosting provider. While that is helpful, it doesn’t tell you anything about what Google actually does with the page. We knew that Google ran basic JavaScript. We didn’t know how far it took things.
The Fetch as Google feature is as smart as it is powerful. The Fetch as Google feature has a toggle that lets you specify the device type. This means that you can see how Google views your site on a desktop and a mobile device.
Help! Google Views My Site Differently!
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Published on 4 Jun 2014 at 10:29 pm.
Comments Off on Instagram Can Grow Brands.
Filed under Marketing,Mobile,Search Engine Optimization,Social Media.
Instagram is more than just a social network. It’s a way you can grow your brand and improve local SEO.
Instagram for Social Connections
An Instagram photo of Android resting on Firefox OS in front of Windows.
Instagram is a social network built around the mobile user. 97% of users are coming from a mobile device. That makes it one of the most intimate social networks around. This intimacy has helped fuel its growth. Instagram saw its numbers grow by 10% to 28% of all social users according to Social Media Examiner’s 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. (more…)
Published on 3 Jun 2014 at 7:38 pm.
Comments Off on Apple WWDC 2014.
Filed under Mobile.
Apple’s WWDC 2014 has kicked off with coming changes to iOS and OS X. Here is what to expect this year.
WWDC 2014: OS X Yosemite
OS X version 10.10 is named Yosemite. The new version features updated icons and menus with better transparency. The new icons are 2D, except for the trashcan. Apple spent a lot of time to create a beautiful 3D trashcan. Menus now have a dark mode.
Apple then introduced an upgraded version of Spotlight. Spotlight is trying to copy Google Now as a native Apple application.
iCloud Drive is now coming to Windows.
Airdrop works between iOS and Mac.
Apple then boasted about how fast JavaScript runs in Safari. Their own benchmarks claim that it is faster than Chrome or Firefox. Speaking of fast, they announced that SPDY is finally coming to Safari. Safari is also getting WebGL support, and hardware accelerated 3D graphics. I know Apple would hate me saying this, but this is them making Safari catch-up to modern IE.
Apple has introduced something they call Continuity. Continuity allows you to share things between all of your Apple devices. A phone call coming in on your iPhone will now display the caller ID information on your Yosemite laptop.
WWDC 2014: iOS 8
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Published on 1 Jun 2014 at 9:21 pm.
Comments Off on Mobile Industry Numbers 2014.
Filed under Informative,Mobile.
We’ve all heard that the mobile industry is growing. Here are the numbers where things stand in 2014.
Mobile Industry: Devices and Users
We have now reached the point where there is an active mobile subscription for every person on the planet. Not just adults but every single person. There are presently 7.1 billion living people on the planet and for every one of them there is an active mobile subscription. To put things in context if you add up every desktop, laptop, notebook, and TV you only get 2 billion. The mobile industry is 3.5 times bigger than all of them.
You might wonder just how this is possible? Surely no one has an account for their two-year old. So how did this number get so large? (more…)
Published on 21 May 2014 at 10:58 pm.
Comments Off on Local Reviews for your Business.
Filed under Google,Search Engine Optimization.
Local reviews influence your business’ placement in search. Want to know how you can make improvements?
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Published on 14 May 2014 at 9:31 pm.
Comments Off on Mobile App Linking.
Filed under Mobile.
Mobile app linking is complex in its current form. A new initiative has emerged to simplify things.
Mobile users like to spend time in apps. Many apps link to websites that may too have apps. In an ideal world the app the second app would load to show users the linked content instead of the website. Potentially even make the user install the app to view the content if the content creator likes.
But we don’t live in an ideal world. Many apps today do not allow you to link to content within the app. For those that do support this they still need the linking app to detect if the user has installed your app before directing users to the content in your app. It requires a coordinated effort between both players. This is complex and adds bloat to the install size of any app that links to content. This is the problem the new App Links standard is trying to simplify.
App Links is a standard making it simple for supporting apps/sites to link to content inside of apps for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. Support for other mobile operating systems like BlackBerry and Firefox OS will come in the future. Facebook recently announced that they support App Links in their app today. Right now they only support opening your mobile app and do not yet include App Links in their own site making it easy for your app to open content within the Facebook app. Also, from my testing they do not support App Linking from their own Windows Phone app.
So what do you need to support App Links? Glad you asked. (more…)
Published on 7 May 2014 at 7:43 pm.
Comments Off on Schema Markup in 1/3 of Google Results.
Filed under Google,Informative,Search Engine Optimization.
Why do 0.3% of sites use schema markup when some form of schema is in 36% of Google search results?
What is Schema Markup?
A few years back Google, Bing, and Yahoo realized that they could produce better search results if websites were more clear about the content on the page. They formed the site schema.org to list schemas that defines the structured data needed by search engines. This data has proven itself useful and other search engines like Russia’s popular Yandex search engine has joined the initiative.
Why Should I use Schema Markup?
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Published on 30 Apr 2014 at 9:42 pm.
Comments Off on Business Info Displayed in Google Search Results.
Filed under Google,Informative,Marketing,Mobile,Search Engine Optimization.
Want to add your business info like phone numbers and hours of operation to Google Search Results?
Business Info: Business Phone Numbers
Recently Google revealed a simple process to add your business phone numbers to Google’s Knowledge Panel. The Knowledge Panel is the panel in Google search that sometimes displays business info about a company. On desktops Google displays this business info off to the right. On mobile Google condenses this to the most useful info for a particular search.
For larger companies Google now lets you use structured markup to add more phone numbers. You can add phone numbers for the following situations: (more…)
Published on 28 Apr 2014 at 9:43 pm.
Comments Off on Mobile Search Growth.
Filed under Google,Mobile,Search Engine Optimization,Web Design.
Google recently said that mobile search could pass desktop before 2015. How does your mobile site rank?
Let me be clear that Google is talking about mobile searches across the globe. They are not limiting themselves to North America where desktop use is still higher than mobile. While it will take a little longer for mobile search to pass desktop there, it is still an eventuality.
How do you Improve Mobile Search Results?
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Published on 13 Apr 2014 at 7:48 pm.
Comments Off on Heartbleed Critical SSL Vulnerability.
Filed under Google,Informative.
The critical SSL vulnerability called Heartbleed is in the news. Here we explain how it affects you.
What is Heartbleed?
Heartbleed is the name of a critical bug recently found in OpenSSL. OpenSSL is the most popular cryptology software in the world. This means that two-thirds of the web was vulnerable. Even worse is that they were vulnerable for about two years.
Yes, this issue hit major sites. Google, Amazon, and Facebook were vulnerable. (more…)
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