Google announced yesterday that after a year and a half of testing it was beginning a wider rollout of its mobile-first indexing and had started migrating sites that follow the best practices for mobile-first indexing.
Google started to move a small number of sites over late last year, but this is the first announcement of what seems to be a larger scale move.
Sites which are migrating will be notified via a message in Search Console:
migration
Google said site owners would see significantly increased crawl rate from the Smartphone Googlebot and that Google would show the mobile version of pages in search results and Google cached pages. It said that for sites which have AMP and non-AMP pages, Google would favor the mobile version of the non-AMP page.
Google moved to reassure site owners who are not included in this rollout that rankings would not be affected and that sites which only have desktop content would still be indexed.
“Sites that are not in this initial wave don’t need to panic. Mobile-first indexing is about how we gather content, not about how content is ranked. Content gathered by mobile-first indexing has no ranking advantage over mobile content that’s not yet gathered this way or desktop content. Moreover, if you only have desktop content, you will continue to be represented in our index.”
However, the push towards mobile friendly sites continues with Google noting that mobile friendly content can perform better, and that slow loading content will be a ranking factor for mobile searches from July.
You can find more information about best practices for mobile-first indexing in Google’s developer documentation.
Google says it will continue to have one single index and there won’t be a mobile-first index separate from the main index. Historically it was the desktop version that was indexed but increasingly Google will now be using the mobile version of content, responding to the growth in use of mobile devices.
See Google’s blog post for full details.
ABCO Technology teaches a comprehensive course for mobile web site development. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. You can reach us at:
(310) 216-3067.
Email all questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for federal funding.
When you think local SEO, you think Google. But another big name has been making some moves lately to enter the conversation, and that’s Facebook.
In the past few years, Facebook’s made a lot of strides to become a real player in local search, improving their search results to the extent that they rival Google’s. Meanwhile, Google has made investments in Google My Business to justify business owners devoting time to it instead of treating it like a defunct social media listing.
Both of these trends bode well for the impact of search on social, and of social on search.
Let’s review some of the most recent changes in local SEO from Google and Facebook.
Prioritizing local news for community engagement
At the end of January 2018, shortly following Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Facebook would be demoting content from of brands and publishers in favor of those from family, friends, and groups, the social media giant announced that they were tweaking their algorithm to also highlight local news in the News Feed.
Facebook
The focus on aggregating and finding local news indicates Facebook plans to double down on local search. The more they can pick up on local search signals, the better they can provide hyper-localized, relevant content for their users. Consumers increasingly expect more personalization, and assuming (like Facebook does) that there is a correlation between personalization and hyper-localized content, this change will make their platform a more valuable source of information for their users. The more valuable the information on the platform, the likelier that user base is to stick on it, using it as both a local search engine as well as a place for updates on friends and family. Let the advertising dollars roll in.
In his announcement, Zuckerberg said,
“People constantly tell us they want to see more local news on Facebook.”
Apparently Facebook wasn’t the only one listening, as earlier that same week, Google launched its own local news app.
Currently only available in two cities, the free Google Bulletin app lets users post news updates and upload photos and video about events and happenings in their area. The app essentially combines the social community features of Nextdoor with the You Report It feature many local news sites rely on to crowdsource content.
You reported
With Bulletin, Google may well be hoping to encourage users to visit it first as the source of immediate information, instead of turning to Facebook as people so often do during an emergency or to find a local event.
Google Bulletin and Facebook’s prioritization of local news are also a strong response to the pressure both companies received for disseminating fake news during the 2016 U.S. election. Both are making the same assumption – that hyperlocal necessarily means more relevant and, since it’s coming from news sources, more trustworthy.
However, both initiatives are in their early days and their assumptions don’t seem fully fool-proof. Facebook’s algorithm currently determines something is local news by noting the domain, and then seeing whether users from a concentrated geographical area engage with the content – a setup which should be fairly easy to game. Meanwhile, there’s currently no vetting process on Google Bulletin that would prevent users from uploading inaccurate information.
Crowdsourcing content to inform business listings
Besides news sources, both Facebook and Google are relying on crowdsourced information to complete, categorize, and rank the business listings in their database. On either platform, users can add places, update address information and hours, write reviews, and answer questions about the business. Then, the platform uses this information to determine the most relevant result based on a searcher’s query, their location, and even local time.
Both Google and Facebook provide robust results that display helpful attributes sourced by user reviews, ratings, and busy times.
Google crowdsourcing
Facebook also includes additional filters based on whether your friends have also visited a place – bringing the social into search.
Facebook crowdsourcing
Facebook’s City Guides do the same at a macro-level, providing trip planning for various large cities around the world, and showing the top places your friends as well as locals have explored.
Facebook city guide
Launched in November 2017, the Facebook Local tab incorporates local event results along with the business listings and displays which of your friends are attending. This hyper social aspect, as opposed to hyperlocal, is a unique differentiator that gives Facebook real value as a local search engine.
To its credit, Google has been working on ways to make its own search results more social. One of the biggest changes they introduced to Google My Business in 2017 was the Q&A feature. Users can click a button to ask questions about a business, which are then available to be answered by anyone, including the business itself, as well as local guides, regular Google users, and even competitors.
Q and A
The fact that anyone can answer leads to misinformation, or less than helpful information as in the last example shown above (“Depends what you order”). Google’s attempt to introduce social discussion to their local business listings shows a singular lack of foresight similar to their failure to include a vetting process with Bulletin. In their defense, Google may be dealing with information overload. Each month, 700,000 new places are added to Google Maps. They’ve turned to users to help, but they’ve needed to incentivize users to get the information they need, rather than crowdsourcing it as Facebook has successfully done with Facebook Local. The more users answer questions on Google, upload photos, and edit business information, they earn points that designate them as a Local Guide – which they can exchange for early access to Google initiatives, exclusive events, and real monetary benefits like free storage on Google Drive.
Helping businesses convert users from their listings
We’ve been a bit hard on Google in the previous sections, but that’s about to change. Last year, Google also introduced Posts for Google My Business. Google Posts for Google My Business, as opposed to regular posts on a Google+ page, allowing businesses to update their listing with info that appears in the SERP along with their Knowledge Panel.
wellness
Posts offer business owners to promote new products, upcoming events, or simply useful information such as special holiday hours. Early studies indicate that engaging with Google Posts on a frequent basis can positively impact rankings – which may be an indication that Google is using a social feature as a search ranking factor.
Both Google and Facebook have also introduced CTA buttons businesses can add to their profiles, easing conversion from the SERP or social platform. Google users can book appointments with fitness and wellness-focused businesses directly from the SERP. Again, Facebook has outpaced Google here, since they offer seven CTA options which serve a variety of business needs: Book Now, Contact Us, Use App, Play Game, Shop Now, Sign Up, or Watch Video.
The convergence of local search and social
When you think about it, Facebook is the only business who could feasibly take on Google in the world of search. Its 2+ billion monthly users are a formidable force for Google’s 95% market share of mobile search users. While Google has access to email, Facebook has access to social profiles. Both companies have access to an incredible amount of demographic information on their users.
Which will reign supreme in the realm of local search is yet to be decided, although Facebook is giving Google a real run for their money thus far. Facebook’s local search results have become smarter, while Google’s attempts to incorporate social into search seem clumsy at best.
Likely, what we’ll ultimately see is a merging of local search and social as the two platforms meet somewhere in the middle.
If you are interested in using local search and social media as a powerful marketing set of strategies for your webpages, contact ABCO Technology. You can reach our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. Call today at: (310) 216-3067.
Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588 Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
As a certified Internet web developer, your role will invariably lead you to interactions with people in a wide variety of roles including business owners, marketing managers, content creators, link builders, PR agencies, and developers.
That last one – developers – is a catch-all term that can encompass software engineers, coders, programmers, front- and back-end developers, and IT professionals of various types. These are the folks who write the code and/or generally manage the underlying various web technologies that comprise and power websites.
In your role as a web developer, it may or may not be practicable for you to completely master programming languages such as C++ and Java, or scripting languages such as PHP and JavaScript, or markup languages such as HTML, XML, or the stylesheet language CSS.
And, there are many more programming, scripting, and markup languages out there – it would be a Herculean task to be a master of every kind of language, even if your role is full-time programmer and not a web developer.
But, it is essential for you, as a certified web developer professional, to understand the various languages and technologies and technology stacks out there that comprise the web. When you’re making website recommendations, which developers will most likely be executing, you need to understand their mindset, their pain points, what their job is like – and you need to be able to speak their language.
You don’t have to know everything developers know, but you should have a good grasp of what developers do so that you can ask better questions and provide SEO recommendations in a way that resonates with them, and those recommendations are more likely to be executed as a result.
When you speak their language, and understand what their world is like, you’re contributing to a collaborative environment where everyone’s pulling on the same side of the rope for the same positive outcomes.
And of course, aside from building collaborative relationships, being a professional web developer involves a lot of technical detective work and problem detection and prevention, so understanding various aspects of web technology is not optional; it’s mandatory.
Web tech can be complex and intimidating, but hopefully this guide will help make things a little easier for you and fill in some blanks in your understanding.
Let’s jump right in!
The internet vs. the World Wide Web
Most people use these terms interchangeably, but technically the two terms do not mean the same thing, although they are related.
The Internet began as a decentralized network of independent interconnected computers.
The US Department of Defense was involved over time and awarded contracts, including for the development of the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) project, which was an early packet switching network and first to use TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol).
The ARPANET project led to “internetworking” where various networks of computers could be joined into a larger “network of networks”.
The development of the World Wide Web is credited to British computer scientist Sir Tim Beners-Lee in the 1980s; he developed linking hypertext documents, which resulted in an information-sharing model built “on top” of the Internet.
Documents (web pages) were specified to be formatted in a markup language called “HTML” (Hypertext Markup Language), and could be linked to each other using “hyperlinks” that users could click to navigate to other web pages.
Further reading:
◾History of the Internet
◾History of the World Wide Web
◾ARPANET
Web hosting
Web hosting, or hosting for short, are services that allow people and businesses to put a web page or a website on the internet. Hosting companies have banks of computers called “servers” that are not entirely dissimilar in nature to computers you’re already familiar with, but of course there are differences.
There are various types of web hosting companies that offer a range of services in addition to web hosting; such services may include domain name registration, website builders, email addresses, website security services, and more.
In short, a host is where websites are published.
Further reading:
◾Web Hosting Service
Web servers
A web server is a computer that stores web documents and resources. Web servers receive requests from clients (browsers) for web pages, images, etc. When you visit a web page, your browser requests all the resources/files needed to render that web page in your browser. It goes something like this:
Client (browser) to server: “Hey, I want this web page, please provide all the text, images and other stuff you have for that page.”
Server to client: “Okay, here it is.”
Various factors impact how quickly the web page will display (render) including the speed of the server and the size(s) of the various files being requested.
There are three server types you’ll most often encounter:
1.Apache is open-source, free software compatible with many operating systems such as Linux. An often-used acronym is “LAMP stack” referring to a bundling of Linux, Apache, MySQL (relational database) and PHP (a server-side scripting language).
2.IIS stands for “Internet Information Services” and is proprietary software made by Microsoft. An IIS server is often referred to as a “Windows Server” because it runs on Windows NT operating systems.
3.NGINX – pronounced “Engine X”, is billed as a high-performance server able to also handle load balancing, used as a reverse proxy, and more. Their stated goals and reason for being include outperforming other types of servers.
Further reading:
◾Apache
◾IIS
◾NGINX
Server log files
Often shortened to “log files”, these are records of server activity in response to requests made for web pages and associated resources such as images. Some servers may already be configured to record this activity, others will need to be configured to do so.
Log files are the “reality” of what’s happening with a website and will include information such as the page or file requested, date and time stamp of the request, the user agent making the request, the response type (found, error, redirected, etc.), the referrer, and a few other items such as bytes served and client IP address.
Web developers should get familiar with parsing log files. To go into this topic in more detail, read JafSoft’s explanation of a web server log file sample.
FTP
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and it’s how you upload resource files such as webpages, images, XML Sitemaps, robots.txt files, and PDF files to your web hosting account to make these resource files available and viewable on the Web via browsers. There are free FTP software programs you can use for this purpose.
The interface is a familiar file-folder tree structure where you’ll see your local machine’s files on the left, and the remote server’s files on the right. You can drag and drop local files to the server to upload. Voila, you’ve put files onto the internet! For more detail, Wired has an excellent guide on FTP for beginners.
Domain name
A domain name is a string of (usually) text and is used in a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Keeping this simple, for the URL https://www.website.com, “website” is the domain name. For more detail, check out the Wikipedia article on domain names.
Root domain & subdomain
A root domain is what we commonly think of as a domain name such as “website” in the URL https://www.website.com. A subdomain is the www. part of the URL. Other examples of subdomains would be news.website.com, products.website.com, support.website.com and so on.
For more information on the difference between a domain and a subdomain, check out this video from HowTech. URL vs. URI
URL stands for “Universal Resource Locator” (such as https://www.website.com/this-is-a-page) and URI stands for “Uniform Resource Identifier” and is a subset of a full URL (such as /this-is-a-page.html). More info here.
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
I’ve grouped together HTML, CSS, and JavaScript here not because each don’t deserve their own section here, but because it’s good for web developers to understand that those three languages are what comprise much of how modern web pages are coded (with many exceptions of course, and some of those will be noted elsewhere here).
HTML stands for “Hypertext Markup Language”, and it’s the original and foundational language of web pages on the World Wide Web.
CSS stands for “Cascading Style Sheets” and is a style sheet language used to style and position HTML elements on a web page, enabling separation of presentation and content.
JavaScript (not to be confused with the programming language “Java”) is a client-side scripting language to create interactive features on web pages.
Further reading:
◾HTML intro
◾CSS intro
◾JavaScript intro
AJAX & XML
AJAX stands for “Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. Asynchronous means the client/browser and the server can work and communicate independently allowing the user to continue interaction with the web page independent of what’s happening on the server. JavaScript is used to make the asynchronous server requests and when the server responds JavaScript modifies the page content displayed to the user. Data sent asynchronously from the server to the client is packaged in an XML format, so it can be easily processed by JavaScript. This reduces the traffic between the client and the server which increases response time and speed.
XML stands for “Extensible Markup Language” and is similar to HTML using tags, elements, and attributes and was designed to both store and transport data, whereas HTML is used to display data. For the purposes of SEO, the most common usage of XML is in XML Sitemap files.
Structured data (AKA, Schema.org)
Structured data is markup you can add to the HTML of a page to help search engines better understand the content of the page, or at least certain elements of that page. By using the approved standard formats, you provide additional information that makes it easier for search engines to parse the pertinent data on the page.
Common uses of structured data are to markup certain aspects of recipes, literary works, products, places, events of various types, and much more.
Schema.org was launched on June 2, 2011, as a collaborative effort by Google, Bing and Yahoo (soon after joined by Yandex) to create a common set of agreed-upon and standardized set of schemas for structured data markup on web pages. Since then, the term “Schema.org” has become synonymous with the term “structured data”, and Schema.org structured data types are continually evolving with new types being added with relative frequency.
One of the main takeaways about structured data is that it helps disambiguate data for search engines so they can more easily understand information and data, and that certain marked-up elements may result in additional information being displayed in Search Engines Results Pages (SERPs), such as review stars, recipe cooking times, and so on. Note that adding structured data is not a guarantee of such SERP features.
There are a number of structured data vocabularies that exist, but JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) has emerged as Google’s preferred and recommended method of doing structured data markup per the Schema.org guidelines, but other formats are also supported such as microdata and RDFa.
JSON-LD is easier to add to pages, easier to maintain and change, and less prone to errors than microdata which must be wrapped around existing HML elements, whereas JSON-LD can be added as a single block in the HTML head section of a web page.
Here is the Schema.org FAQ page for further investigation – and to get started using microdata, RDFa and JSON-LD, check out our complete beginner’s guide to Schema.org markup.
Front-end vs. back-end, client-side vs. server-side
You may have talked to a developer who said, “I’m a front-end developer” and wondered what that meant. Of corse you may have heard someone say “oh, that’s a back-end functionality”. It can seem confusing what all this means, but it’s easily clarified.
“Front-end” and “client-side” both mean the same thing: it happens (executes) in the browser. For example, JavaScript was originally developed as something that executed on a web page in the browser, and that means without having to make a call to the server.
“Back-end” and “server-side” both mean the same thing: it happens (executes) on a server. For example, PHP is a server-side scripting language that executes on the server, not in the browser. Some Content Management Systems (CMS for short) like WordPress use PHP-based templates for web pages, and the content is called from the server to display in the browser.
Programming vs. scripting languages
Engineers and developers do have differing explanations and definitions of terms. Some will say ultimately there’s no differences or that the lines are blurry, but the generally accepted difference between a programming language (like C or Pascal) vs. a scripting language (like JavaScript or PHP) is that a programming language requires an explicit compiling step, whereas human-created, human-readable code is turned into a specific set of machine-language instructions understandable by a computer.
Content Management System (CMS)
A CMS is a software application or a set of related programs used to create and manage websites (or we can use the fancy term “digital content”). At the core, you can use a CMS to create, edit, publish, and archive web pages, blog posts, and articles and will typically have various built-in features.
Using a CMS to create a website means that there is no need to create any code from scratch, which is one of the main reasons CMS’ have broad appeal.
Another common aspect of CMS’ are plugins, which can be integrated with the core CMS to extend functionalities which are not part of the core CMS feature list.
Common CMS’ include WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, ExpressionEngine, Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify, Squarespace, and there are many, many others.
Read more here about Content Management Systems.
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Sometimes called a “Content Distribution Network”, CDNs are large networks of servers which are geographically dispersed with the goal of serving web content from a server location closer to the client making the request in order to reduce latency (transfer delay).
CDNs cache copies of your web content across these servers, and then servers nearest to the website visitor serve the requested web content. CDNs are used to provide high availability along with high performance. More info here.
HTTPS, SSL, and TLS
Web data is passed between computers via data packets of code. Clients (web browsers) serve as the user interface when we request a web page from a server. HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) is the communication method a browser uses to “talk to” a server and make requests. HTTPS is the secure version of this (hypertext transfer protocol secure).
Website owners can switch their website to HTTPS to make the connection with users more secure and less prone to “man in the middle attacks” where a third party intercepts or possibly alters the communication.
SSL refers to “secure sockets layer” and is a standard security protocol to establish communication encryption between the server and the browser. TLS, Transport Layer Security, is a more-recent version of SSL
◾More info on HTTPS, SSL, & TLS
HTTP/1.1 & HTTP/2
When Tim Berners-Lee invented the HTTP protocol in 1989, the computer he used did not have the processing power and memory of today’s computers. A client (browser) connecting to a server using HTTP/1.1 receives information in a sequence of network request-response transactions, which are often referred to as “round trips” to the server, sometimes called “handshakes”.
Each round trip takes time, and HTTPS is an HTTP connection with SSL/TSL layered in which requires yet-another handshake with the server. All of this takes time, causing latency. What was fast enough then is not necessarily fast enough now.
HTTP/2 is the first new version of HTTP since 1.1. Simply put, HTTP/2 allows the server to deliver more resources to the client/browser faster than HTTP/1.1 by utilizing multiplexing, compression, request prioritization, and server push which allows the server to send resources to the client that have not yet been requested.
Further reading:
◾HTTP/2 FAQ
◾What is HTTP/2 and how does it benefit SEO?
Application Programming Interface (API)
Application is a general term that, simply put, refers to a type of software that can perform specific tasks. Applications include software, web browsers, and databases.
An API is an interface with an application, typically a database. The API is like a messenger that takes requests, tells the system what you want, and returns the response back to you.
If you’re in a restaurant and want the kitchen to make you a certain dish, the waiter who takes your order is the messenger that communicates between you and the kitchen, which is analogous to using an API to request and retrieve information from a database. For more info, check out Wikipedia’s Application programming interface page.
AMP, PWA, and SPA
If you want to build a website today, you have many choices.
You can build it from scratch using HTML for content delivery along with CSS for look and feel and JavaScript for interactive elements.
Or you could use a CMS (content management system) like WordPress, Magento, or Drupal.
Or you could build it with AMP, PWA, or SPA.
AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages and is an open source Google initiative which is a specified set of HTML tags and various functionality components which are ever-evolving. The upside to AMP is lightning-fast loading web pages when coded according to AMP specifications, the downside is some desired features may not be currently supported, and issues with proper analytics tracking.
Further reading:
◾What will Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages mean for marketers?
◾Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) one year on: stats and infographic
◾Accelerated Mobile Pages vs Facebook Instant Articles: Is Google winning the mobile war?
PWA stands for Progressive Web App, and it blends the best of both worlds between traditional websites and mobile phone apps. PWAs deliver a native app-like experience to users such as push notifications, the ability to work offline, and create a start icon on your mobile phone.
By using “service workers” to communicate between the client and server, PWAs combines fast-loading web pages with the ability to act like a native mobile phone app at the same time. However, because PWAs are JavaScript frameworks, you may encounter a number of technical challenges.
Further reading:
◾Progressive Web Apps versus Android Instant Apps: Which is better for marketers?
◾Google I/O: What’s going on with Progressive Web Apps?
SPAs – Single Page Applications – are different from traditional web pages which load each page a user requests in a session via repeated communications with the server. SPAs, by contrast, run inside the browser and new pages viewed in a user session don’t require page reloading via server requests.
The primary advantages of SPAs include streamlined and simplified development, and a very fast user experience. The primary disadvantages include potential problems with SEO, due to search engines’ inconsistent ability to parse content served by JavaScript. Debugging issues can also be more difficult and take up more developer time.
It’s worth noting that future success of each of these web technologies ultimately depends on developer adoption.
Conclusion
Obviously, it would require a very long book to cover each and every bit of web technology, and in sufficient detail, but this guide should provide you, the professional web developer, with helpful info to fill in some of the blanks in your understanding of various key aspects of web technology.
I’ve provided many links in this article that serve as jumping off points for any topics you would like to explore further. There’s no doubt that there are many more topics web developers need to be conversant with, such as robots.txt files, meta robots tags, rel canonical tags, XML Sitemaps, server response codes, and much more.
In closing, here’s a nice article on the Stanford website titled “How Does The Internet Work?” that you might find interesting reading; you can find that here.
ABCO Technology teaches a comprehensive program for web development. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday at: (310) 216-3067
Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who can qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at: 11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588 Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
As marketers in the ever-changing world of digital, success depends on knowing what consumers want and expect from us. After all, it’s the only way we can deliver.
So, it’s interesting to see that a recent data release from Google tells us that personalized search is becoming more and more prominent among internet users.
No longer are they turning to friends and family for personal advice and recommendations, but search engines too.
Of course, we already knew that… that’s why we work so hard at getting to know our audience and understanding their micro-moments and pain points, delivering the right content at the right time, in the right way.
But what Google is telling us is that rather than searching, “How often should you wash your hair?”, we are now searching “How often should I wash my hair?”. Changing those two little words is making the way that we use search engines far more personal than ever before.
And the data suggests that consumers now truly trust that their most specific needs can be answered by content on the web. In fact, in the last two years Google has reported that mobile searches using “…for me” has grown by a huge 60% over the last two years.
On top of this, they have also seen an 80% increase in mobile searches including “…should I?”. As a result, we really are treating search as one of our best, most trusted friends.
And that’s great news for content marketers.
For those of us working in motor, beauty, finance, fitness and pet care, it seems that this new insight is especially relevant – these are the industries in which users are most frequently turning to Google to solve their personal pain points.
How can we prepare and optimize our content for these types of search?
Tools
Creating calculators and tools is a brilliant way of targeting personal search terms and providing our users with the personalized response they are looking for. Let’s use a fitness example to demonstrate this:
This recent data circulation from Google suggests that users are starting to search for something like, “how much water should I drink each day?” in higher volumes than something like, “how much water should you drink per day?”.
Now, most of us know that the answer to this question will depend on a number of different factors including gender, body composition, activity level and so on.
What our audience is expecting from this search is a personalized answer that takes all of these things into consideration and tells them exactly how much water they should personally be drinking each day.
A water consumption calculator would do this well, and if the user wants the specificity of an individual result, they will be willing to fill in the necessary personal details to retrieve it. A blog post that simply states the average recommended fluid intake for a man or a woman as recommended by the NHS is no longer user focused enough.
Case studies and testimonials
Providing personalized content will not always be easy, and at times users may need encouragement to spend a little longer on a page to find the personalized answer they are looking for. In this instance, case studies and testimonials are a great way to push users further through their journey in the right direction.
For example, “How much money do I need to retire?” is a more complex question than our fitness example. There are so many variants that could alter the accurate and personalized response to this question, so it’s difficult to answer it quickly in a personalized way.
However, if we provide users with a testimonial or case study at the right stage in their journey – one that was created after a lot of persona research and uses someone or a situation that will resonate with them – they are likely to engage with the content.
Creating engagement via a case study will increase the likelihood that they’ll enquire with your brand for a more personalized answer, continuing their journey on their way to the personalized answer they are looking for.
Hygiene content
Informational content (something we refer to here in ABCO Technology’s search engine class as ‘hygiene content’) is absolutely essential in light of this evolution of search.
It’s critical that all the informational content and resources on your website are up to date, and as specific to the different types of users you’re expecting to visit your site as possible. Not only this, but ensuring that on-page content is optimized for long tail search (tying back to your personas) is a must.
Moreover, having a clear call to action that points the user in the direction of personalized answers to their questions is also important. It isn’t always possible to answer their query in an individualized way using written content, but pointing the user towards a ‘contact us here’ call to action could make all the difference in their user journey, and ultimately, whether they end up with you or your competitor.
Thought leadership and expert content
Finally, with consumers turning to search like a trusted friend or family member more than ever before, you need to ensure that the content you’re putting out there is seen as being the most reliable. Therefore, it’s never been more important to be viewed as a thought leader within your field.
Expert content will naturally help to strengthen the consumer-brand relationship. It also means that when you are appearing in SERPs, your expert reputation will stand you in good stead when it comes to users choosing which ‘friend’ they want to seek advice from.
We can’t wait to see how the evolution of search changes the way that Google is rewarding and penalizing brands’ content. The above is just a start, but we are certain we will be kept on our toes as time goes on!
ABCO Technology teaches a comprehensive program for web development, which includes search engine optimization and social media strategies. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday at: (310) 216-3067.
Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at: 11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588 Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
Chances are you’d not have waited for this page to load had it taken a second or two longer.
That’s the best known fact on the Internet today. users expect web pages to load very fast as soon as they click on a hyperlink.
Slow loading web pages can become the leading cause of high bounce rates, low user engagement, lost traffic opportunities, and abandoned sales journeys. Here are some numbers to put things in perspective.
◾47% of users expect a web page to load in less than 2 seconds.
◾40% of online shoppers abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
◾A 1 second delay in page loading can lead to a 16% dip in customer satisfaction, a 7% dip in conversions, and a 11% dip in page views.
What’s more, ecommerce websites associate fast loading with increased revenue, and the reverse is also true.
The calling is clear: your websites need to load super quickly to sustain and nurture audience attention, avoid high bounce rate, and prevent abandoned sales.
If you have a WordPress site, there are a number of easy and effective methods you can begin using today that will significantly increase your site’s loading speed.
Use grids and floats instead of nested tables
It’s surprising how many websites still continue to use nested tables, in spite of the negative impact they have on page loading speeds. Here’s what a nested table code looks like:
………
Such coding adds additional burden on the browser, delaying complete loading of the content. Instead, use non-nested table structure as follows:
……
More importantly, use floats and grids to enhance loading speed. Here is a basic float example:
Basic float example
Sample text
Sample text
Reduce the number of HTTP requests
A web page consists of several components – style sheets, Flash components, images, scripts, and more. To deliver content rich experiences, you need to opt for entire Page Speed Insights Optimization process.
More the number of elements per page, more the number of HTTP requests made for each of these, resulting in longer page loading time durations, which could hurt your conversions. Yahoo estimates that almost 80% of page loading time is accounted for the time spent in downloading the different elements of the page.
Use the HTTP requests checker tool to find out how many requests your page makes.
Luckily, you can reduce HTTP requests without ruining your web design. Here’s how:
◾Combine files: Use scripts and external style sheets (but don’t have more than one script and CSS file each.
◾Image maps: Use contiguous images instead of several image blocks, to reduce the number of HTTP requests.
◾CSS Sprites: Combine multiple images to a sprite, and call the sprite instead of each image. When the sprite contains images from internal pages also, the internal page load times improve, because the content is already downloaded before the user reaches there.
◾Make smaller Javascript blocks inline.
◾Convert images to Base64 coding using an encoder; because it transforms an image into code, the HTTP request is prevented.
Break comments into pages
Your most popular content posts could also be the ones loading the slowest, because of the hundreds of comments on the page. You can’t block comments, because they are conversation starters and link builders for you.
How do you manage, then? WordPress offers a very smart solution – break the comment stream into pages.
In the Dashboard, go to Settings. Under the section Other comment settings, you can tweak the settings for how many comments appear on a page, and which page is displayed beneath the article.
Upgrade to the latest PHP version
Upgrading your website every time a new PHP version is launched can be a bit of a headache. But it’s worth your time and effort. The same scripts could run almost 25-30% faster on newer PHP versions; imagine the kind of website loading time improvements it can bring for you.
PHP Classes published an extensive experimental study, which highlighted that scripts ran significantly faster on PHP 7.1 as compared to previous versions.
Gzip compression
If you use Google’s Page Speed Insights tool for a quick analysis of your web pages, it’s likely you will find advice to use Gzip compression. This compression enables web servers to compress heavy website content elements.
The compression is so effective that it could reduce your page size to 30-40% of its initial size. Dolloped speeds, because of this, could increase to three or four times their previous speed.
For many webmasters, installing a Gzip compression plugin continues to be the best option. W3 Total Cache plugin, apart from all its amazing features, also offers HTTP compression.
Other options are:
◾Ask your web host if it offers Gzip compression.
◾Manually enable Gzip compression via .htaccess (this guide by Kinsta explains how to do so)
Don’t let ad scripts and pop-ups spoil user experience
Chances are you run at least some form of pop-up to optimize conversions. As beneficial as these might be for your website’s monetization strategies, they may also be causing significant damage in terms of higher page loading times.
To take control and strike the perfect balance, you need to know the third-party scripts running on your website, their source, and their impact.
I recommend Pingdom’s Website Speed Test for a thorough analysis of each file and script from a webpage. The tool will tell you which script takes the most time to load.
Gauge the effectiveness of your pop-ups; do away with non-performing pop-up plugins, as they’re only slowing down your page. OptinMonster is one of the most reliable pop-up plugins, helping you optimize conversions without killing speed.
Install a caching plugin
Caching plugins can be a blessing for your website; these plugins create static copies of your webpage content, and instead of making to and fro queries to the database, use the static versions to immediately showcase the web content to users. Since you ordinarily won’t update your web pages daily, caching proves to be very useful for almost all web pages, always.
Among the many caching plugins you can use, WOT Cache Plugin enjoys a lot of trust and popularity. Among its many features are:
◾Combines CSS and Javascript files
◾Leverages the power of page caching and browser caching
◾Utilizes lazy load to massively improve the page load time
◾Helps with database optimization and removes query strings from CSS/Javascript files
◾Saves a lot of bandwidth by reducing the file size of the webpages.
Bonus tip: Seek help from your web hosting service provider
It makes sense to move to a dedicated hosting plan, so that your website gets all the resources it needs to load in a jiffy, always. Ask your web host as to what help it can provide you to improve your website speed.
Most web hosts are willing to offer their technical expertise to help you pluck the low hanging fruits in terms of your website’s speed issues. This, in turn, benefits them, as the load on their servers reduces.
Particularly, ask for their advice on optimizing mobile website speed, because the impact of slow loading is much severe on mobile devices.
Concluding remarks
Every few milliseconds of improvement in your web page’s loading speed could bring tens of percentage points of improvements in its traffic and conversion rates.
Start with these easy and practical tips, most of which will result in almost immediate improvements in page loading speed for your website.
ABCO Technology teaches a comprehensive program for web development. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday at: (310) 216-3067.
Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu
Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.
ABCO Technology is located at: 11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588 Los Angeles, Ca. 90304
