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Why Remarketing? – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by Add3.com

No matter what type of product you’re offering, how your sales cycle flows, or what the industry you’re in looks like, there are a many different ways that you can leverage remarketing to target your audience.

In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Brian Rauschenbach and Nora Park share their tips and tactics for remarketing success so that you can turn those visits into conversions!

Have you had remarketing success? Leave your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!

Video Transcription

Brian: Hello, I’m Brian Rauschenbach and this is Nora Park. We’re with Add3. We’re a search and display network and agency located here in Seattle. We’re here today to talk about remarketing and Google AdWords. We’ve got a couple of examples of some brands that are probably using remarketing and how they’re going after sort of the same user and some of the advanced tactics, and some ideas and suggestions that we have that have worked with some of our clients and to share them with you.

So, why remarketing, Nora? Why is it so important for brands to be remarketing today?

Nora: So there are a lot of reasons why all brands should really be doing a lot of remarketing. Depending on what type of product you’re offering, your sales cycle, the type of industry you’re in, there are a few different ways that you can really leverage remarketing to target your audience.

Kind of the first one, really, the core, basic reason to do it is to get back in front of customers who visited your site and didn’t take the desired action. They didn’t sign up for your free trial or make a purchase on your site.

So that sort of also links into, if you have more of a type of ecommerce site, the really great way to do it is to reengage those customers who actually spent a lot of time on your site, put things in their shopping cart, maybe even got to the payment page, and didn’t hit the Submit button and actually make a completed purchase. You can get back in front of those users with remarketing, and even use some dynamic product feed remarketing and show them specific products that they looked at.

Brian: Yeah. So I’ve seen that with some sites like Levi’s, where I might put a pair of jeans in a shopping cart, and then I abandon the shopping cart and don’t do the purchase, and then come back, like the next day, and I’m just surfing the web, and then I’ll see that pair of jeans still in there inside of a banner.

Nora: Exactly.

Brian: So that’s a dynamic product feed. But it’s a remarketing of that piece.

Nora: Yeah, exactly. It’s going to be really effective.

Another good scenario is to target your existing customers and upsell or cross sell them. So for example, if you’re a software company and you have people who you know have purchased a certain product, based on the way you’ve cookied them and set up your lists, you can show them ads that promote other similar products that somebody who purchased the other product will be likely to buy in tandem, or might also need down the road.

Brian: Okay. These remarketing lists, how is the time piece sensitive? If you have a remarketing list, and you’re like, “I know this person is coming to purchase a product,” and what’s the learning that you can gather from setting up your custom lists with time segments in them?

Nora: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a really great question. A good thing that you should do some testing around is to kind of find out when it’s most effective after that initial purchase, whether it’s 10 days, 20 days, 30 days later, that you can effectively reach that customer. Right away they might say, “You know, I already just gave you some money. I don’t need to make another big software purchase.” But in 30 days, “Well, great, I really like this product. I like this company.” They might be more likely to do that.

Brian: Oh, so it might be like a brand, like a Brenthaven, like I really like their bags. They have a lifetime warranty. I might have just purchased a backpack, but I might be back next month buying an iPad case or whatever.

Nora: Yeah, exactly. So it’s like, great, that kind of leads us into our last one, which is that when you have a really strong brand with really loyal customers, is knowing who those existing customers are, who have made purchases in the past, and being able to reach out to them with other products that you have they might be interested in.

Brian: Okay. So for any of you that might not be using remarketing yet today with your product or brand that you represent, let’s talk a little bit about just setting up campaigns. Where do you find it in the Google AdWords interface, and then what’s your best practices for setting these campaigns up from scratch?

Nora: Yeah, absolutely. It’s pretty simple. Kind of the core is setting up your custom combination lists. So you can go in the AdWords interface to the Audiences section, and that’s where you’ll be able to find the pixels you need to place on your site and then be able to create these lists to segment people based on what pages they’ve visited. So you can add lists based on different products, so if they’ve visited any page related to this certain product, and then you can show them an ad that is aligned with that.

Brian: So the page could be just a URL that’s like the shopping cart URL or the success confirmation page or the thank you confirmation page, if it’s just a sign-up that someone’s looking for.

Nora: Exactly. That’s where you can get really kind of creative and advanced in terms of how you set up the combinations of the list, is to be able to include and exclude people based on how far they got in the cycle. If they did put something in their shopping cart and didn’t reach the confirmation page, you might want to target them separately than somebody who didn’t even put anything in their shopping cart yet.

Brian: So if you have like a subscription-based model for your company and the person has already upgraded, like they’ve upgraded to a Moz Professional account, you don’t want to be following them around and remarketing back to them. So you put them in an exclusion list?

Nora: Exactly.

Brian: Okay.

Nora: That’s another great example. When you have a subscription service, to be able to use those exclusion lists to take out people from the remarketing pool that are already subscribed, based on a visit to, for example, a login page using that URL.

Brian: Okay. Great. Then talk to us a little about user segmentation and the duration thing again, why that’s so important.

Nora: Yeah. That one’s important too. You may have some insight already into the sales cycle for your product. So basically, if somebody visits your site, it might take a consideration time of one week up to a month, depending on what it is, before they are actually ready to make a purchase. So you can kind of start and use that as how long you want to set the duration of your cookie pool.

Brian: So these would be good for clients or brands that have, basically, a free trial maybe, and then to upgrade the free trial to a paid trial.

Nora: Exactly.

Brian: Okay.

Nora: At the end of that 30 days, or whatever it is. But another great way to do it is just to set up a test and kind of do increments of 10 days, where you give those people, you treat them differently, so you can just see how they act if you target them within 10 days after they first visited your site, within 20 days, and within 30 days.

Brian: Okay. So these are the actual user list pools that you’re doing these time segments?

Nora: Exactly.

Brian: Your total cookie pool might be 30,000 users. So after 10 days, you’re cutting off remarketing to those people, and then you go into a 10 to 20-day window and then a 20 to 30.

Nora: Exactly.

Brian: Then you’re looking at those as three different lists and their effective CPA that they might be achieving.

Nora: Yeah.

Brian: Okay.

Nora: Exactly. So you kind of get those learnings, and then you can start to use some custom messaging. Instead of just saying, the people after 10 days didn’t convert as well, we’ll give them a different message and see if you can get them to convert as well, whether you’re using a promotion code with an expiration date that you put directly in the ad, or offering a higher discount. Or a third example would be . . .

Brian: Well, we’ve got a couple of examples up here. So the discounted example is if you’re booking a flight. This example that we’ve drawn out here is some guys that are planning a mancation to Alaska. So they come in. Someone’s been to Alaska Airlines, and they’re going to pick up a cookie there. Then, a day later, they might be getting a leader board banner that’s targeted to them for a cheaper flight up to Alaska. Then that person’s also looking to get some outdoor gear for that trip, and REI might hit them a couple of days later with a marketing message around free shipping. So it’s basically a promo, one that’s a little bit more time delayed.

Then Airbnb might have a call to action that’s like, “Are you still looking for a cabin to rent?” I think a lot of those, if you make those messages custom, and don’t repurpose what you’re running in your existing AdWords campaigns, but understand the audience that you’re actually remarketing back to these people. They’ve been to your website. So you don’t need to really talk about the brand too much. But give them a promo or a time-sensitive call to action or something that’s like a question.

Nora: Exactly.

Brian: Going back to the user segmentation duration thing. I found that, when you ask this to a client a lot of times, like, “What’s sort of your sweet spot of when your person converts,” this is also a way that, if your brand doesn’t really know what that is, you could get the learnings from this.

Nora: Yeah, exactly. It will definitely give you a good idea of where that sweet spot is. Another thing, too, is how many times those people see those ads. So you can set frequency caps, as well as set up the duration settings to see how effective it is to show them 10 ads a day versus 10 ads a month.

Brian: Oh, so there’s a good segue there. After you’ve had your remarketing campaign up and everything is just chugging away, what are some tactics that you’ve sort of used to enhance the remarketing strategy with all this learning that you’re gaining, from setting up custom combination lists to time-delayed market segmentation? What have you been doing to sort of keep the meter going? Because it seems like the remarketing comes out really strong after you’re learning, and then it sort of has a little tail.

Nora: Yeah. With any AdWords campaign, it’s always important to kind of keep up with the marketplace. So optimizing your bids is sort of standard. But something else, the really great thing Google provides, is looking at the managed placement, so the actual list of the sites that your ad showed up on and the performance by each of those sites, so you can find that maybe there are 20 sites . . .

Brian: Maybe some pockets.

Nora: Yeah. Either a category of sites or just specific sites that you can bid higher on that will allow your ad to show in more prominent positions, potentially more above the fold, and just more frequently.

Brian: Then, on sort of the bid management side of things, I’ve seen some different market or duration list segments where I see if you’ve run 10, 20, 30, 40 day segments, sometimes they’ll pause out, like the 30 or 40, and then really focus in on the ones that are very optimal. Then you mentioned frequency caps. What’s a good generic setting for frequency caps, given that some of these ads might appear below the fold, and so even if you’re winning in this auction against three different brands, what should you have your frequency cap set to?

Nora: Generally, let some of the initial data kind of show you where that drop-off is. You actually can see in Google, after how many impressions in a given week, where your click-through rate starts to drop off or your conversion rate starts to drop off. I’ve typically seen that it’s around eight a week.

Brian: Eight a week. Okay. That’s good to know. So we talked a little bit about some Google beta programs that are out there. There are a couple other ones that we’re testing with different clients that are in different verticals, so it makes sense for them. Can you talk about any of those?

Nora: Yeah. The one I think I’m most excited about that we’ve started to test and see some great success with is the search companion beta. What that does is it enables you to remarket to people who haven’t necessarily been to your site. So you choose keywords that you want to retarget. So anybody who’s searched for those keywords on Google, then when they are on sites that are part of the Google Display Network and accept AdSense ads, then you can get in front of them that way.

Brian: So if you were brand like REI and someone did a search for hiking shoes, and then they visited the REI website, can then one of their competitors, like an outdoor emporium or, something like that, go after that user even though they didn’t even visit the site?

Nora: Yeah, absolutely.

Brian: Okay.

Nora: So they would just say anybody who searches for hiking shoes, we want to be able to remarket to them.

Brian: Okay. So that’s a pretty powerful beta that’s out. How about anything in YouTube? Have you done any work with their network?

Nora: Yeah. That’s another great opportunity, that Google allows you to kind of repurpose your remarketing list and show YouTube ads, in-stream ads. It’s within the same log-in account, and they kind of talk to each other. You can set up a campaign and use that same list of people.

Brian: So this is the same custom combination list, but just in YouTube.

Nora: Exactly. Exactly.

Brian: So you don’t have to just throw impressions away, basically.

Nora: Yeah. So it makes it really targeted.

Brian: Well, cool. Well, we’ve been doing a lot of discovery with remarketing here this last year and paying close attention to it, because all these new beta programs are coming out. Do you think that there’s going to be an end to this?

Nora: Probably not.

Brian: This is our industry crack we have right now. What do you think is going to be on the horizon with Google?

Nora: I’m sure more like this. With traditional remarketing, you’re sort of capped in terms of how much you can grow just based on the visits you’re getting to the site in a given month. Something like the search companion beta really opens that up to a much larger population of available impressions. It just makes the marketplace that much bigger. So I’m sure that they’ll come up with more things along the same lines.

Brian: We forgot to mention that, in order to sort of participate in this universe, you do need to have content running, right?

Nora: Yeah, absolutely. That’s what the campaign setting is.

Brian: So this used to be one of those check boxes that you used to leave unchecked, but now it’s like the Google Content Network or the Google Display network, it’s pretty big now, right? Quality’s really gone up on it.

Nora: Yeah, absolutely. There are so many different ways you can target the Google Network. Remarketing is just one of them. But it’s sort of part of the same thing, where you can target on the Google Display Network by keyword content, categories, and interests as well.

Brian: Then if you didn’t have the resources to get banner creative, this stuff can also just be contextual only, right?

Nora: Yeah. You can use text ads. Actually, Google has a really cool thing called the Google Display Ad Builder, and they will just kind of take images from your site and put banners together themselves. I’ve actually used that, and they look really great. It’s a free and effective way for some clients that might not have the resources to get their ads out there.

Brian: I was going to say that kind of sounds a little scary, if they’re just grabbing images from your site.

Nora: Well, you get to see them. You have a lot of choices in terms of the layout and the language, and they actually look great. I don’t know how they pick the right images, but from what I’ve seen, they do a really good job.

Brian: Okay, cool. Well, I think that sort of wraps up our segment on remarketing. We’ll be online listening and replying back to any commentary or any questions that you might have. Thanks.

Nora:  Thank you.”

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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Announcing #MozCon 2013

Posted by Erica McGillivray

You may have heard the rumor that MozCon 2013 tickets are on sale! I’m pleased to announce that this year’s MozCon Command Crew is busy planning the best MozCon yet.

Launch your inbound marketing skills into outer space by attending this year’s MozCon, July 8th-10th at the WA State Convention Center! This year, we have 400 early bird tickets, which are flying out the door faster than you can say “Roger Mozbot.” Snag yours now!

Early Bird $999 $799 for SEOmoz PRO members
Early Bird $1499 $1299 for SEOmoz non-PRO members

Bonus! This year your ticket price includes MozCon 2013 videos.

For three days, we bring you amazing, future-thinking content from industry leaders, deep diving into SEO, social media, marketing analytics, content strategy, data science, and so much more. See who’s coming to speak and share their expertise with you. You’re sure to come back home with a universe’s worth of actionable knowledge to start implementing. Get a sample of MozCon caliber speakers by watching Wil Reynolds’ talk on #RCS from MozCon 2012

Jenny Lam at MozCon 2012

You’ll rub elbows with the brightest minds in the industry. (Hint: you’re one of them!) Whether you’re posing with Roger for photos; eating bacon while chatting with a speaker; meeting other community members from all over the world; or chilling with the Mozzers who make the magic happen, you’ll have an out-of-the-world time.

For those of you who’ve attended MozCons in the past, you might’ve noticed that we’ve changed venue to the WA State Convention Center in downtown Seattle. That’s right — we outgrew our last venue with 850 attendees in 2012. We’re expecting up to 1,200 community members, plus around 150 Mozzers and various crew, for MozCon 2013!

Yes, we’re already working with our new venue to get Wi-Fi that actually works. Leave your MiFis at home!

How likely are you to recommend MozCon? Very likely.

We only expect MozCon to become even more amazing!

For 2013, we’ve secured MozCon attendees deals in two fabulous hotels within blocks of the WA State Convention Center.

Hotels:

Grand Hyatt Seattle
721 Pine Street
Seattle, Washington 98101

Hyatt at Olive 8
1635 8th Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98101

Hotels come with complimentary wifi, and for those of you driving in, we’ve gotten parking deals to save you some money.

Book Your Hotel Now

You’ll be able to easily walk from your hotel to MozCon and back again in this relatively safe neighborhood. Not to mention, there’s tons of food and shopping, and it’s also within walking distance of the MozPlex and Pike Place Market. (Stay tuned for more information about office tours.) Plus, everything’s right by Seattle’s light rail, which gives you easy access to and from the airport. No need for a rental car or an expensive taxi!

Mozzers love Roger!

If you aren’t already dreaming of Seattle, browse Rand’s killer list of restaurants and bars and even more restaurant, sightseeing, and shopping recommendations. Did you know there’s a cupcake shop across the street from the MozPlex? And pay attention to the 15 things you should know about Seattle. We’ve got a haunted underground, the weird park featured in 10 Things I Hate About You, a Dalek inside a Frank Garrity building, and 1,030,000 search results for “hipster bar Seattle.”

Our community rocks. We can’t wait to meet you face-to-face. See you in July!

Rand points the way to MozCon

Buy Your Ticket!


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Continue reading →

Announcing MozCon 2013

Posted by Erica McGillivray

You may have heard the rumor that MozCon 2013 tickets are on sale! I’m pleased to announce that this year’s MozCon Command Crew is busy planning the best MozCon yet.

Launch your inbound marketing skills into outer space by attending this year’s MozCon, July 8th-10th at the WA State Convention Center! This year, we have 400 early bird tickets, which are flying out the door faster than you can say “Roger Mozbot.” Snag yours now!

Early Bird $999 $799 for SEOmoz PRO members
Early Bird $1499 $1299 for SEOmoz non-PRO members

Bonus! This year your ticket price includes MozCon 2013 videos.

For three days, we bring you amazing, future-thinking content from industry leaders, deep diving into SEO, social media, marketing analytics, content strategy, data science, and so much more. See who’s coming to speak and share their expertise with you. You’re sure to come back home with a universe’s worth of actionable knowledge to start implementing. Get a sample of MozCon caliber speakers by watching Wil Reynolds’ talk on #RCS from MozCon 2012

Jenny Lam at MozCon 2012

You’ll rub elbows with the brightest minds in the industry. (Hint: you’re one of them!) Whether you’re posing with Roger for photos; eating bacon while chatting with a speaker; meeting other community members from all over the world; or chilling with the Mozzers who make the magic happen, you’ll have an out-of-the-world time.

For those of you who’ve attended MozCons in the past, you might’ve noticed that we’ve changed venue to the WA State Convention Center in downtown Seattle. That’s right — we outgrew our last venue with 850 attendees in 2012. We’re expecting up to 1,200 community members, plus around 150 Mozzers and various crew, for MozCon 2013!

Yes, we’re already working with our new venue to get Wi-Fi that actually works. Leave your MiFis at home!

How likely are you to recommend MozCon? Very likely.

We only expect MozCon to become even more amazing!

For 2013, we’ve secured MozCon attendees deals in two fabulous hotels within blocks of the WA State Convention Center.

Hotels:

Grand Hyatt Seattle
721 Pine Street
Seattle, Washington 98101

Hyatt at Olive 8
1635 8th Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98101

Hotels come with complimentary wifi, and for those of you driving in, we’ve gotten parking deals to save you some money.

Book Your Hotel Now

You’ll be able to easily walk from your hotel to MozCon and back again in this relatively safe neighborhood. Not to mention, there’s tons of food and shopping, and it’s also within walking distance of the MozPlex and Pike Place Market. (Stay tuned for more information about office tours.) Plus, everything’s right by Seattle’s light rail, which gives you easy access to and from the airport. No need for a rental car or an expensive taxi!

Mozzers love Roger!

If you aren’t already dreaming of Seattle, browse Rand’s killer list of restaurants and bars and even more restaurant, sightseeing, and shopping recommendations. Did you know there’s a cupcake shop across the street from the MozPlex? And pay attention to the 15 things you should know about Seattle. We’ve got a haunted underground, the weird park featured in 10 Things I Hate About You, a Dalek inside a Frank Garrity building, and 1,030,000 search results for “hipster bar Seattle.”

Our community rocks. We can’t wait to meet you face-to-face. See you in July!

Rand points the way to MozCon

Buy Your Ticket!


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Continue reading →

How Low Can #1 Go? (A Ranking Study)

Posted by Dr. Pete

In the days of 10 blue links, getting a #1 ranking on Google was the ultimate goal. As advertising becomes more prominent, local and vertical results become more complex, and Knowledge Graph and other rich SERP features become more prevalent, though, a #1 ranking isn’t always what it used to be. We’ve seen a lot of anecdotes over the past year or two, but I thought it was time to ask the question – where, on average, does a #1 Google ranking appear on the page?

Visualizing 10,000 #1 Rankings

I’ll dig into the methodology in a minute, but let’s cut right to the chase – we measured the vertical (Y) position of the #1 organic ranking across 10,000 keywords during business hours (roughly 10am-5pm ET) on Wednesday, February 12th. The following visualization shows what we found:

How Low Can #1 Go? (visualization of 10,000 #1 rankings)

Embed this image:

I’ll spell out a few stats, for the sake of accessibility and because not all of them fit neatly in the visualization:

  • Y=157 – Top position without Google Plus Bar
  • Y=221 – Average position of SERPs with no ads
  • Y=358 – Average position of SERPs with 1 ad
  • Y=375 – Average position across all 10,000 queries
  • Y=482 – Average position of SERPs with 2 ads
  • Y=493 – Average position of SERPs with 3 ads
  • Y=976 – Lowest position in our data set (see below)

Vertical position was well correlated with the number of ads that appeared at the top of the page (r=0.80), not surprisingly, but that doesn’t paint the whole picture. Rich SERP features are occupying more and more of the real estate.

The Big “Winners”

I thought it might be interesting to look at a couple of specific examples, so here are three “winners” – the queries with the lowest vertical positions for the #1 organic spot:

2nd Runner-Up: “Myrtle Beach Weather” (Y=869)

Here’s an example of the latest weather forecast widget – add in just one ad, and the #1 organic listing on this page is almost nowhere to be seen. Note: all of these screenshots have been cropped horizontally but are displayed in their actual vertical size.

SERP for "myrtle beach weather"

1st Runner-Up: “Family Portraits” (Y=876)

This SERP combines two ads, both with links/extensions, plus a mega-block of images:

SERP for "family portraits"

2013’s Winner:  “Disney Stock” (Y=976)

Our winner pushed the #1 organic position down to nearly 1,000 pixels, well below the fold on many screens. This was a perfect storm of ads plus an enhanced stock ticker plus News results:

SERP for "disney stock"

The Basic Methodology

I want to briefly explain how the data was collected, for transparency’s sake. The 10,000 keywords were taken from Google AdWords keyword research tools, split evenly across 20 categories. Naturally, these keywords are probably more commercial than the “average” keyword, but they do represent a wide range of volume, competition, query length, etc.

We did not count News results or Places blocks (local results that specifically say “Places for…&rdquo as “organic”, but we did count video results (these are integrated now), and blended or “Pack” local results. The problem is that pack results are, at least within the DOM, very difficult to distinguish from organic – Google seems to count some as blended and some as “pure” local. This also gave Google the benefit of the doubt, which seemed only fair.

The actual technology was a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster. Queries were crawled from a variety of IPs (and, presumably, data centers) with personalization off, and rendered automatically in a Chrome browser. The #1 organic ranking was detected programmatically and a new DIV ID was injected. This ID’s vertical position was measured via jQuery’s offset() function and was passed via AJAX to the proper database. We spot-checked measurements against screenshots – the approach was crude but effective.

How Much Is #1 Worth?

To be fair to Google, most of the #1 rankings we measured that were really pushed down were in the bottom 20th percentile. Many #1 rankings still have reasonably good on-screen real-estate. The trick is knowing where your own rankings fall. This is a very dynamic situation, and non-standard SERP features are becoming more common and more diverse. If you only see what your rank tracking tool tells you and celebrate staying in the “top” spot, but the top spot is below 3 ads, a stock ticker, 3 news links, and a Places block, you probably don’t have much to celebrate. This is why it’s critically important to actually look at your SERPs in the wild, and to keep an eye on “downstream” metrics, like your organic traffic.


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Mobilize Your SEO: Making the Most Out of the Mobile Search Opportunity

Posted by aleyda

Last week, I had the opportunity to give a Mozinar on the different steps and activities involved in a Mobile SEO process, from the initial research, analysis, and decision making, to the development, optimization, and measurement. I outlined the following phases:

Mobile SEO LifeCycle

The Mozinar covers the different phases of the Mobile SEO process, along with the different aspects and criteria to consider to make the best decision according to your own online characteristics and capacity, from a business, audience, content, and technical perspective. If you didn’t attend, you can watch the recorded Mozinar or take a look at the slides below.

Audience Q&A

As a supplement to the Mozinar, I tried to answer as many audience questions as possible. Enjoy!

1. Does ranking well on desktop SEO translate or help with ranking well on mobile SEO?

Yes, if the desktop site also takes the most important aspects that you need to prioritize in mobile search into consideration. For example, a site that’s already featuring a responsive web design approach, not necessarily because of mobile reasons and without an “active” mobile SEO process.

Nonetheless, you might also have a situation where a highly authoritative desktop site doesn’t feature the specific keywords that are used by its mobile search audience. For example, the site might end up not ranking so well and losing the opportunity to maximize its mobile search presence, traffic, and conversions.

2. How does one optimize mobile search keywords with multiple locations on a mobile site?

You will need to enable an internal mobile site architecture that specifically targets these type of keywords, with internal pages that would be the ones to be optimized to rank for them. 

3. Do you still need link building for a parallel mobile site?

For a parallel mobile site approach, Google specifies the following when describing the importance of rel=alternate/canonical attributes

“When you use different URLs to serve the same content in different formats, the annotation tells Google’s algorithms that those two URLs have equivalent content and should be treated as one entity instead of two entities. If they are treated separately, both desktop and mobile URLs are shown in desktop search results, and their positions may be lower than they would otherwise be.”

This means that you won’t “need” to build links additionally to the specific mobile URLs since they will be considered as one entity along their desktop versions. Nonetheless, since you might also have mobile URLs that don’t refer to desktop ones, you might also want to “promote” them to earn popularity by their own. 

4. Can a mobile emulator be used to see HTTP redirects?

You can use a web sniffer using the desired user agent to verify HTTP redirects.  

5. Why you shouldn’t block CSS and JS in a Responsive Web Design Approach?

Google needs to crawl pages assets (CSS, Javascript, images) as specified here to be able to identify that a site is using responsive web design approach.  

6. If I’ve implemented redirects to keep mobile users out of my desktop-ready site, but then I offer mobile users a link to view my full site, how can I keep them from being redirected back to the mobile version?

You need to use cookies when you link to the alternative URL version. For example, link to your desktop version from a mobile URL by adding a cookie informing that the desktop is the preferred version for that user. 

7. Common practices with responsive web design involve hiding page elements or changing them depending on screen resolution using CSS/JS. What is the prevailing consensus on doing that with respect to SEO? 

As Google explains here, they’re able to detect if a responsive web design approach is followed by a site and the reason behind hiding some elements from users. Responsive web design is, in fact, Google’s recommended configuration for smartphone-optimized websites.  

8. How does Google feel about serving different content based on user agent? 

As long as you correctly detect user agents and serve the same content to both devices and Googlebot (for example, the same content to both mobile users and Googlebot mobile), it shouldn’t be a problem as it’s specified by Google here and here. The issue comes when you don’t correctly detect and might end up doing cloaking, showing different content to users and search bots.  

9. Is there a character limit to mobile titles? 

The limit before titles are truncated in mobile search results are around 45 characters. Nonetheless, it’s best to verify directly how your own specific website titles are shown, as described from slides 50 to 53 in the presentation. 

10. Is it necessary to use “m” subdomain for a mobile site? What are advantages of using “m”?

Is not “necessary,” but from my experience, it is the “cleanest” approach from a URL structure perspective. It keeps it short, user-friendly, and easier to refer to desktop URLs versions, and you can easily track the specific mobile site activity by filtering the subdomain traffic. This can be trickier with an /m/ subdirectory, besides the fact that you’re adding an unnecessary extra level of depth to the URL.   

11. How do you incorporate your app into your SEO mobile strategy? When someone arrives to your landing page, should you pop up to use app instead?

It’s not recommended to implement “App Interstitials” as John Mueller explains here, since you might likely also be blocking Googlebot. A relevant and also non-intrusive approach is to “suggest” users to download or open their app, as Airbnb and Yelp do: 

Mobile App Links

12. What is the best tool to use for using mobile searches on desktop for reviewing and testing? 

For Firefox, I recommend the User Agent Switcher add-on, and the Ultimate User Agent Switcher extension for Chrome. 

13. If your mobile site use a separate URL versions do you need to have a separate Google Analytics tracking code installed on the mobile version?

You can still using your present Google Analytics code but configure it to show the full hostname (as described in slides 159 and 160) and create a specific profile for the Mobile subdomain to follow-up more easily.  


The Question Guide to My Mobile SEO Presentation

As a guide to the presentation, I’ve outlined a list of all the audience questions I received, organized by topic. Hopefully this allows you to get the most out of the Mozinar possible, and answers your questions about the mobile SEO process!

A Mobile Search Industry Overview  

  1. Why is mobile search Important? Slides 2-3
  2. How Google targets mobile search? Slides 4-5 
  3. Why is mobile optimization needed? Slides 6-8
  4. Which are the Google recommendations to develop mobile optimized websites? Slides 9-10
  5. Why you need mobile SEO recommendations? Slide 11

Mobile Research and Analysis 

  1. What’s your current mobile traffic and conversions volume and trend? Slides 20-22
  2. What’s the volume and trend of your mobile traffic and conversions compared to your mobile organic, desktop, and desktop organic traffic and conversions? Slide 23
  3. Which mobile devices are used by your visitors? Slides 24-25
  4. What’s the volume and trend of the mobile devices used by your mobile visitors compared to your mobile organic, desktop, and desktop organic visitors? Slide 26
  5. Which are the keywords and pages used by your organic mobile visitors? Slides 27-28 
  6. How do your mobile keywords and pages perform compared to those used by your organic desktop visitors? Slide 29
  7. How is your site displayed in mobile devices? Slides 31-34
  8. Which are the queries and pages giving mobile search visibility to your present site? Slides 36-39 
  9. How do your mobile search queries and pages perform compared to your desktop ones? Slide 40
  10. Is Google having issues to crawl your site for mobile? Slides 41-42
  11. How does Googlebot mobile fetch your pages? Slides 43-44
  12. How does Googlebot mobile crawls your site? Slides 45-49
  13. How are your pages shown in mobile and tablet search results? Slides 50-52
  14. How do your pages titles, descriptions, URLs, and competitors in mobile and tablet search results, compared to your pages in desktop search results? Slide 53
  15. What are the authority and links of your mobile ranking pages? Slides 54-56
  16. How are your domain and page authority and links compared to your mobile ranking competitors? Slides 57-61
  17. Which are volumes and trends of the keywords used by your organic mobile search audience? Slides 65-68
  18. What’s the mobile organic search volume potential of the keywords used by your present mobile visitors? Slide 69
  19. What’s the mobile organic search volume potential for your site? Slides 71-74

Develop your Mobile Web 

  1. Which are the different mobile architecture alternatives? Slide 78
  2. Which is the most suitable mobile architecture in your situation? Slides 79-80

General Mobile SEO Recommendations

  1. How can you optimize your mobile website speed? Slides 83-85
  2. Why is speed important for your mobile site? Slide 86
  3. Which are the Google recommendations for mobile speed optimization? Slides 87-88
  4. How should you optimize your mobile content? Slides 89-90
  5. Which are the structural elements of your Mobile site you need to optimize? Slides 91-93
  6. Which elements should I validate in the mobile search results? Slide 94
  7. How can you increase your mobile search visibility with rich snippets? Slides 95-96
  8. How can you increase your mobile search visibility if you’re a local business? Slides 97-98
  9. Which aspects you need to take into consideration to optimize your mobile Interface? Slides 99-100

Mobile SEO with Responsive Web Design  

  1. What’s responsive web design? Slides 103-105
  2. How to verify if a site is responsive? Slide 106
  3. How Google recommends responsive web design for smartphone optimized sites? Slide 108
  4. Which are the recommendations that Google gives for responsive web design? Slides 109-110
  5. Which are the responsive web design pros and cons towards mobile SEO? Slide 111 
  6. In which situation responsive web design is recommended for your mobile site? Slide 112
  7. How can you more easily implement responsive web design? Slides 113-116
  8. Which elements you should not block so Google can identify a web is responsive? Slide 118
  9. How Google recommends to use Javascript for responsive web design? Slides 119-120
  10. Why is speed and visualization additionally important for responsive mobile sites? Slides 121-122
  11. Which websites are using responsive web design for a mobile approach? Slides 123-124

Mobile SEO with Dynamic Serving

  1. What’s dynamic serving? Slides 127-129
  2. How to verify if a site is dynamically serving its content? Slides 129-130
  3. Which are the dynamic serving pros and cons towards mobile SEO? Slide 131
  4. In which situation responsive dynamic serving is recommended for your mobile site? Slide 132
  5. How should you do user agent detection for dynamic serving? Slides 133-134
  6. How do you avoid doing cloaking in a dynamic serving environment? Slides 135-136
  7. Which websites are using dynamic serving for a mobile approach? Slides 137-138

Mobile SEO with Parallel Mobile Sites

  1. What’s a parallel mobile site? Slides 141-143
  2. How to verify if a site is effectively implementing a parallel mobile approach? Slides 144-146
  3. Which are the parallel mobile sites pros and cons towards mobile SEO? Slide 147
  4. In which situation parallel mobile sites are recommended? Slide 148
  5. How should you structure the URLs of your parallel mobile site? Slides 149-151
  6. How do you implement redirects in a parallel mobile site? Slides 152-153
  7. Which annotations should you include to refer a parallel mobile pages to their desktop version and vice versa? Slides 154-155
  8. Which annotations should you include in your desktop sitemap to refer to its parallel mobile version? Slides 156-157 
  9. How do you allow your users to browse between the mobile and desktop versions? Slide 158
  10. How do you effectively track the analytics activity of your parallel mobile site? Slides 159-160
  11. Which websites are using a parallel mobile site? Slides 161-162

Measure and Evolve Your Mobile SEO Process

  1. How can you reclaim your lost iOS 6 Safari search traffic mobile ? Slides 165-166 
  2. Which metrics should you follow up from your mobile SEO traffic? Slide 167
  3. How to identify if your mobile SEO process is successful? Slide 168
  4. When is the time to go for a mobile app? Slides 169-174

If you’re interested in following up with more mobile SEO news, you can also follow MobileMoxie in Twitter, read Bryson Meunier’s Mobile column in Search Engine Land, and join the Google+ Mobile SEO community

Is there any other mobile SEO related question that’s not targeted here? Let me know in the comments! 


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