This week at SEOPartner, we’re sharing: SEO updates that can deliver significant impact to your results, exciting changes in the marketplace to watch out for, good-to-know studies and information, and tips to try based on recent findings on search, online marketing and more.
Google Shares Tips on How to Prepare for Mobile-First Indexing
As reported earlier, Google is testing a separate, primary mobile index. Last Friday, Google confirmed that they are taking an important, serious shift toward a more mobile-focused index.
“Our algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our results,” says Google in a blog post. “We understand this is an important shift in our indexing and it’s one we take seriously.”
As Google starts to make small changes (which are expected to ramp up) in the coming months, website owners are advised to consider the following steps to prepare:
– Invest in a responsive or dynamic-serving site with primary content and markup equally available across mobile and desktop. (If you have this, you shouldn’t need to change anything.)
– Make the necessary changes to your site configuration if your primary content and markup are different across mobile and desktop.
– Add and verify your site’s mobile version in Search Console if only its desktop version has been verified.
– Google will continue to index desktop sites as usual, although they will be using a mobile user agent to view those sites.
– Launch your mobile site only when it’s complete and ready.
Source: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/
Facebook Daily Users Reach 1.18 Billion, Video-Only Feed Coming Soon
The number of people actively using Facebook daily is now 1.18 billion, showing an increase of 17 percent from last year, the social media company’s third quarter financial report revealed. Among these daily active users, 1.09 billion of them are on mobile, which is 22 percent higher than last year’s figures.
Other highlights from the report and conference call with Mark Zuckerberg:
– Monthly active users: 1.79 billion (up by 16%)
– Mobile active users: 1.66 billion (up by 20%)
– Mobile ad revenue: represented 84% of advertising revenue
– Video-only newsfeed to be launched widely “soon.”
Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebook-results-for-marketers/177768/?ver=177768X3
More Than 50% of Chrome Browsing Now Via HTTPS
The number of HTTPS usages is seeing a dramatic increase particularly on the Chrome browser across Windows, Mac, Chrome OS and Linux, a Google report shows.
“More than half of pages loaded and two-thirds of total time spent by Chrome desktop users occur via HTTPS,” the reports says.
The Google security team sees a strong upward trajectory for the use of HTTPS, with “secure browsing becoming standard for users of Chrome” now happening.
Last month, Google has announced that Chrome will start marking websites with password or credit card fields as non-secure if they still use HTPP connections by 2017.
Source: https://security.googleblog.com/2016/11/heres-to-more-https-on-web.html
YouTube Rolls Out New Comment Features
YouTube is introducing new comment tools to make conversations easier and help users clean up their comments section.
The six new comment features will allow you to:
1. Pin comments.
2. Give hearts to comments you like.
3. Highlight your username whenever you respond to comments within your channel.
4. Choose moderators (launched in June).
5. Blacklist selected words and phrases.
6. Opt-in to YouTube’s algorithm that will let you hold potentially inappropriate comments for review before publishing.
Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/youtube-comments-section/177846/
Image via: https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2016/11/new-tools-to-shape-conversations-in.html
Twitter Adds New Customer Service Tools
Get faster and easier help from businesses. Try it now with @EvernoteHelps and @PizzaHut. #CarpeDM pic.twitter.com/T8vHnLESEM
— Marketing (@Marketing) November 1, 2016
Twitter introduced another round of features that can help businesses provide speedier responses and better service to their customers. These new tools mainly focus on improving the Direct Messages feature.
1. Welcome messages – to greet people and set the tone and expectations of future conversations.
2. Quick replies – provides customers to reply to your questions by choosing from a list of options.
Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/twitter-welcome-messages-quick-replies/177547/?ver=177547X2
Image via: https://blog.twitter.com/2016/speed-up-customer-service-with-quick-replies-welcome-messages-in-direct-messages
SUMMING IT ALL UP
Here are the top headlines in this week’s SEO news roundup:
Google Shares Advice on How to Prepare for Mobile-First Indexing. Google says they are taking an important, serious step toward mobile indexing – and provides website owners advice on how to prepare for the related changes coming ahead.
Facebook Daily Users Reach 1.18 Billion, Video-Only Feed Coming Soon. Facebook’s Q3 report says there are now 1.18 billion daily active users on their platform, with 1.09 billion of them using a mobile device.
More Than 50% of Chrome Browsing Now Via HTTPS. Google’s study states that the significant increase in the use of HTTPS in Chrome shows the secure browsing will soon become the standard.
YouTube Rolls Out New Comment Features. The new tools can make branding easier and help clean up the comments section.
Twitter Adds New Customer Service Tools. These two new features allow businesses to have better conversations with customers and deliver speedier responses.