Imagine that it’s 1984 and you have just earned your business degree. Your father, Mick, owns a tavern and has always instilled in you the importance of hard work. Unfortunately, his tavern is on the verge of bankruptcy and you realize that maybe, just maybe, you can help!

Your first job, prior to college, was at a local pizza restaurant and you got pretty good at making a superior-quality pizza. So, you swallow your pride and sell your most-prized possession. A gorgeous 1971 Z28 Camaro for $2,800.00.

You use the money to buy used restaurant equipment and turn the broom closet at the back of the tavern into the perfect spot to make your pizza.

Fast-forward one year. Your pizzas are delicious; the locals love them: you are able to open your own space (close to the tavern, of course).

Do you know whose story I’m telling yet?

Fast-forward 15 more years to 2001, and now you are the first pizza chain to offer national online ordering. Fast-forward a further 7 years to 2008, and you have topped $1 billion in e-commerce sales and $1 million in mobile web orders.

Does “Better Ingredients. Better Pizza.” Ring a bell? If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am telling the story of John Schnatter, the founder of Papa John’s.

Why Is an Online Marketing Company Telling This Story?

Why is an online marketing company telling stories about a pizza chain?

Well, thank you for asking!

Tomorrow, Google will be joining us as we host an interactive digital marketing seminar in Louisville, KY. Before this event, we wanted to point out some of the online marketing wins of one of the major employers in the area. And who doesn’t LOVE pizza?

Headquartered in Jeffersontown (a suburb of Louisville), Papa John’s continues to be on the top of its game when it comes to technology and its website’s search engine optimization (SEO).

Local SEO Tips For Better Search Optimization

What Do Papa John’s Best Local SEO Tips Teach Us?

There are a number of key factors that should be considered when optimizing your website’s franchise location pages for local search engine optimization.

For the sake of this post, let’s take a look at the Papa John’s franchise located at 5709 Bardstown Rd., Louisville, KY 40291.

1. Search Engine Friendly URLs

The first thing that Papa John’s did right for local search engine optimization was creating a dedicated page for each franchise location. In such a situation, the URLs should include the country, state, town, zip code, and street address.

https://www.papajohns.com/locations/usa/ky/louisville/40291-1913/5709-bardstown-road/10

While this may be a bit long for some types of franchises to duplicate, it certainly helps your customers and search engines determine where each franchise is located. Keep in mind that when your customers do a search for your products or services, Google usually knows where they are located and will serve results that it believes to be most relevant to that user. Including location information in the URL can boost your local SEO efforts.

2. Meta Titles for Local SEO

While meta titles cannot be seen on your site itself, they are one of the first things that visitors will see in search engine results. Meta titles are the bold headings above each search result. Below, you can see the meta title for the page that we are reviewing.

The title includes the street address, brand name, city, state, and zip code. When optimizing for local SEO, keep in mind that you want to use the most relevant keywords for each page. You should also keep your title between 50 and 60 characters (although Google has been displaying up to 70 characters in the recent months). The more relevant your meta title is, the less likely Google will re-write it and the more likely it is to catch your customer’s attention!

3. Meta Descriptions for Local SEO

Like meta titles, meta descriptions are not visible on your site, but rather in the search engine results. You want to think of this as being the place to describe what the page is about while including relevant keywords ranging from 150 to 160 characters. Google will bold the words that match those in the user’s query.

We can see in the image above that Papa John’s included their top keyword “pizza” as well as the street address, city, and state in their meta description. They also let the searcher know that this page will give hours and contact information for the exact location being searched.

4. On-page Local Search Optimization

Let’s now take a look at some of the tactics that Papa John’s has used for on-page local search engine optimization.

Each page on your website should have one heading or H1 tag that contains your top keywords and one that tells your visitors what the page is about. Since this is a franchise location page, it makes absolute sense to include the brand name (Papa John’s Pizza) and the city and state (Louisville, KY). Directly beneath that, the street address (5709 Bardstown Road) is tagged as an H2, as well as the second mention of the address beneath that.

Mobile searches are popular. So it’s a great idea to have the phone number prominently displayed and coded so that a user can click on it and instantly be connected with the store to place an order.

5. Local Citation Link Building Best Practices

As an agency that offers local SEO services, we can assure you that local citation link building must be one of your first off-site tactics. Once you have your location pages optimized, you’ll want to then ensure that you list your NAP (name, address & phone number) consistently across all areas of the local search ecosystem.

In general, the top citation sites are the same; however, Moz has published a super helpful list of citations by city that links to each directory in the order of importance for that area. If nothing more, you would want to ensure a proper listing in each of these sites.

If you need to check the status of your local listings, Moz Local will show you where your listings are complete, incomplete, and inconsistent, as well as if you have any duplicate listings.

Using these resources as a guide will help ensure that you have a good basis for local link building by displaying exactly what is missing to ensure a complete profile on each site.

A Great Story Always Ends “Happily Ever After!”

Just like John Schatter’s “happily ever after” of having the world’s third largest take-out and pizza delivery chain AND getting his 1971 Z28 Camaro back in 2009 . . .

. . . we hope that these local SEO tips from Papa John’s will help you optimize your company’s location pages and have a “happily ever after” of your own.

PS – this post from our friends at DesignRush have even more helpful trends to take advantage of as part of your efforts to improve SEO for franchises.

The post 5 Local SEO Tips for Your “Happily Ever After” appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

You are at risk of losing any of your historical performance data in 2023 if you don’t set up and properly configure Google Analytics 4. Learn how the two platforms compare to each other in this blog post – Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics.

If you have been using Google Analytics or any web analytics tool for any length of time, you’ve probably come to experience that your data isn’t always 100% reliable.

There are countless variables which can impact the quality of your data, and sometimes, it can be challenging to gauge what is skewing your data or why it isn’t there at all.

The reason why you want to diagnose and resolve any issues with your Google Analytics data is because there is no telling if it’s a temporary concern or if it’s causing a blind spot. Traffic data is vital to judging performance on any website, so it’s best to try and figure out what’s happening.

From time to time, our team makes some unusual discoveries. Recently, we uncovered an issue with LinkedIn referral traffic that is probably more widespread across the web than most folks realize.

If you have a suspicion that you’re missing referral traffic data from LinkedIn, there’s a good chance that you might be right.

What’s Happening – Huge Spikes in Direct Traffic

Imagine this — let’s say that you just launched a new website promoting your brand new B2B focused business blog. After only a few months, you’ve built a small but devoted audience and grown your social following.

Because your blog’s content is geared towards B2B businesses, your readers tend to spend a lot of time connecting with other professionals and consuming content on LinkedIn. After experimenting with LinkedIn’s publishing platform, you began to notice a highly positive response to your LinkedIn posts.

Despite a shift to content creation directly in LinkedIn and receiving lots of views, you begin to observe that LinkedIn isn’t getting you very much traffic.

After a while, traffic starts to pick up at a pretty consistent pace across all channels, except one in particular — direct traffic. You may get a nice ego boost at first, but the truth is that such a huge difference in traffic totals doesn’t quite add up.

As we found out for ourselves, this is happening to a ton of different websites, and we wanted to get to the bottom of it.

What We Were Noticing

The issue that we were running into was pretty consistent. Companies who are very active on social media were experiencing considerable increases in direct traffic according to Google Analytics.

At first, we thought it was just the latest round of referral spam — meaning it was just spammy bot traffic.

We then noticed a few other typical pieces of data:

• A bulk of the direct traffic was either to blog posts or home pages
• When we added “network domain” as a secondary dimension we were seeing unknow.unknown (first sign that this could be bot traffic)
• When we added service provider as a secondary dimension we were seeing Microsoft as the highest provider (the second sign that it may be bot traffic)

As our team sat down and began to dig in to the matter, we had realized that Google Analytics wasn’t reporting as much traffic from LinkedIn as we thought it would. Coupled with the fact that Microsoft owns LinkedIn, we started to wonder if there was some connection.

We analyzed every possible angle until eventually, we had an idea for a test. In real-time, we opened a LinkedIn post with links to a website we manage and Google Analytics side-by-side.

And at that moment, we had our proof. Nearly every link click was reported as a direct visit.

Why was this happening?

As it turns out, we also noticed that every link click being reported as a direct visit was pointing to an unsecured (non-HTTPS) URL. After that, it all started to make sense as we soon realized that this had something to do with encrypted URLs.

HTTPS Refresher

For those of you who don’t know or need a refresher on the subject, HTTPS is a particular web encryption which protects the privacy of websites and visitors so malicious third-parties can’t have access to potentially sensitive data. HTTPS is becoming widely adopted across the web and has been available to websites for many years, but this wasn’t always the case.

Many years ago, global Internet speeds were not what they are today, meaning that websites with an HTTPS encryption had extremely long load times. Along with the extra cost of obtaining an SSL certificate, the HTTP — minus the “secure” bit — was the standard for a very long time.

As user data privacy becomes a growing concern and Google has said it favors HTTPS over HTTP in search, and for Google Chrome users, more and more websites are making a move to HTTPS.

This is where LinkedIn comes in and how traffic data is getting misreported

Sharing Links on LinkedIn

As users share links on social media, it’s important to understand how HTTPS plays a role.

If someone posts a link from an HTTPS secure website like LinkedIn to a non-HTTPS site, all data from the session is removed to prevent a hacker from reading the data intended to be protected.

However, if a link from secure site links out to another HTTPS site, then the encryption is never broken. Since the encryption is never broken, the referral data of where the session came from is kept intact.

Most social media networks configure their server redirects in a way that always keeps referral data intact regardless of SSL encryption. But for some reason, this is not the case with LinkedIn. Throughout their platform, we noticed that links within profile bios, profile summaries (which open in a lightbox), or LinkedIn articles were showing up as direct visits if the link was non-HTTPS. Interestingly enough, we also noticed that URL shorteners such as Bit.ly don’t keep referral data intact either, isolated to just LinkedIn.

In most cases, websites will have a domain-wide redirect which guides users from non-secure versions of URLs to the HTTPS versions. The issue may persist for websites without an SSL encryption— but we have a few solutions.

How to Fix LinkedIn Referral Traffic Data

No one likes an incomplete picture, and there’s no reason why you should settle for insufficient data. Here a couple ways you can go about correcting this issue with LinkedIn referral traffic to give your data a bit more reliability.

For HTTPS Site Owners

For websites with an HTTPS configuration, your solution is simple — remember always to share the right versions of your links.

Going beyond LinkedIn, it’s a general SEO best practice to be consistent when posting your links anywhere on the web. If your URLs have an HTTPS configuration, make sure all external backlinks have the ‘s’ part of it. So if you’re sharing on LinkedIn, never forget to share links with HTTPS in the full URL.

This —>  https://example.com

Not —> http://example.com

For Non-Secure Site Owners

For websites without an SSL encryption, there are two options, but we highly recommend you take the first:

1)      Make the jump to HTTPS: It may be costly and feel time-consuming, but it will be worth it. Not only will you do your part to ensure visitors to your site don’t have their privacy compromised by fraudsters, but you are also sending an important signal to search engines for SEO purposes. HTTPS is becoming the standard and prolonging the inevitable will never help you in the long-run.

2)      Add UTM parameters: This is a bit more complicated than simply making the switch to HTTPS, but this is an option as well. UTM parameters will help your Google Analytics track visits from LinkedIn more accurately when sharing tagged links with ‘source=linkedin.’ Just remember to be consistent with title casing in your UTM tagging. Otherwise, this will change how the data is reported.

Conclusion

No matter how you use social media, you always want to have the most accurate, reliable set of data possible. To ensure its accuracy, it’s critical that you always ask questions and be proactive in finding explanations for unusual changes in Google Analytics or any other analytics tools.

In the case of LinkedIn referral traffic becoming distorted, the best thing you can do for both your website’s SEO and traffic data is to consider making a move to HTTPS. But before you take the dive, keep in mind that going secure isn’t a simple process and requires a bit of strategy before implementation.

If you’re interested in learning how you can drive better results with search engine marketing, schedule a digital marketing consultation. Or, to get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as Google Partners before you reach out.

The post Why LinkedIn Is Messing Up Your Analytics Traffic Data (and How to Fix It) [Updated 2020] appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

What percentage of consumers find local goods and services on the web?

1. 1. A. 75%
   2. B. 97%
   3. C. 66%

I’ll give you a moment . . .
Take your best guess!

What percentage of business owners have claimed their local business listing on a search engine?

1. 1. A. 53%
   2. B. 45%
   3. C. 37%

Do you think you know the answers?

If you attended our Let’s Put Wheeling on the Map workshop, you already know the answers!

Previously we introduced you to Google’s GYBO program when we hit the road and helped Frederick, MD and Charleston, WV businesses get on the map. This time we took the program to our own backyard!

We love our hometown of Wheeling, WV and were eager to hold a Wheeling GYBO (Get Your Business on the Map) workshop to assist our local small business owners in getting on Google Maps.

We weren’t the only ones excited about bringing this program home. Several local organizations helped us spread the word and make this event happen! A huge thank you and shout out to:

• West Virginia Northern Community College
• Weelunk
• WTRF
• Wheeling CVB
• Wheeling Area Chamber of Commerce

Check out the rest of our photos from the event.

At the workshop, we shared some mind-blowing statistics!

97% of consumers find local goods and services on the web, while only a mere 37% of business owners have ever claimed their local listing on a search engine.

I’m not referring to just any search engine either; I’m talking about the big one! You’ve probably heard of Google once or twice before, haven’t you?

Direct Online Marketing is a certified Google Partner in their Managed Agency Program. We were thrilled to once again partner with them for this awesome program. With help from the above organizations, we reached several businesses and helped them claim and optimize their Google listing.

Some of the awesome non-profit organizations and local businesses included:

• The Vagabond Kitchen
• Wheeling CVB
• The Children’s Museum of the Ohio Valley
• Sandscrest Conference & Retreat Center
• Easter Seals
• Wheeling Country Day School
• Mmm…Popcorn
• King’s Daughter Child Care Center
• Comcast Spotlight
• Gabriel Project of West Virginia
• Engineered Foundation Solutions

Look them up!

The event began with our president, Justin Seibert, giving an overview of how search engine marketing can help small businesses grow. I then had the pleasure of speaking to the group specifically about Google My Business.

Moving forward, we plan on holding more of these events, not only in Wheeling but in surrounding areas as well. We also plan to hold open office hours in the near future where business owners will be able to stop in to our office to have our digital marketing experts assist with their listing.

Be sure to stop by often and follow us on social media to keep up with all of our upcoming events!

If you are local, please join us on Monday, October 12th for the Wheeling Area Chamber of Commerce Lunch & Learn. We will be presenting and exploring search engine marketing further.

Hope to see you there!

The post We Helped Put Wheeling on the Map! appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

This time, we are excited to announce that we will be attending the Google-hosted, Let’s Put Charleston, WV on the Map this Wednesday, September 2nd at the Clay Center.

We certainly are not the only ones that see the importance of this to West Virginia business owners, as Senator Shelley Moore Capito has partnered with Google.

The event will open to the public at 9 a.m. and conclude about 12 p.m. There will be 3 sessions:

• Get Found on Google Search & Maps (30 mins)
• Grow Your Business Online (1 hr)
• Build Your Free Website (1.5 hrs)

Register and find further details on the Charleston GYBO Event page.

What is GYBO?

Simply put, GYBO is Google’s initiative to get every business (large or small) online, and to make doing so fast, free, and easy. The program rolled out back in 2011, and Google has since traveled to all 50 states and helped thousands of businesses claim their local listings and establish a web presence.

What if my business doesn’t have a website?

To address small local businesses that don’t have a website, Google partnered with StartLogic to provide one along with a domain name and hosting for one year. Once you have signed up and chosen a template, it’s as simple as a drop and a drag to set up; most websites are online in less than an hour.

We’ll see you in Charleston!

We will be present during the presentations to assist with any questions. We will have a table set up, so please make sure to stop by and say hello! If you are unable to attend but know of some businesses in Charleston, WV that would benefit from this awesome event, please be sure to pass this on!

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as Google Partners before you reach out.

The post Hey Charleston, WV…It’s Your Turn to GYBO! appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

I’m talking about GYBO!

Still confused?

Well, let me introduce you to Google’s Get Your Business Online team (otherwise known as GYBO). This team was formed in 2011 with a single mission: to get every business (big or small) online.

The team has traveled to all 50 states and helped thousands of businesses. However, there is much more help to be had, as only 37% of businesses have claimed a local business listing on a search engine.

Did you know that 4 out of 5 people use search engines to find local information, such as business hours, directions, and reviews?

How often are you out and about and simply whip out your phone to check the hours of your favorite local establishment? Or possibly for directions to that great new restaurant you heard about?

We were shocked at the small percentage of claimed listings!

As DOM’s local optimization guru, I committed to partnering with the GYBO team to help spread the word and get your businesses “on the map!” Since DOM is already a certified Google Partner in the Managed Agency Program, we were eager to join hands with Google once again to help businesses grow.

Has Your Business Been Googled?

When was the last time that you Googled a business online?

Have you ever Googled your own business?

What do you see?

You would probably be amazed to learn that much of what is shown in search results is information pulled directly from your Google My Business (GMB) listing.

Here is an example of branded local search results for Direct Online Marketing. I have highlighted all the information that is pulled in from our GMB listing.

That’s some pretty important information. And we absolutely want it to be correct!

Is yours?

Can your customers find your information?

Here is an example of generic local search results for “online marketing companies west virginia.” Once again, I’ve highlighted the information that is pulled in directly from GMB.

It is imperative that you ensure your information is correct and optimized for local search.

Google actually bases its local search results on relevance, distance, and prominence. Businesses can’t pay or request for a better ranking because Google Maps and Google My Business are both free services. Storefronts and service area businesses can appear on Google Maps by setting up a free Google My Business account.

Where to Begin?

What if you have no idea how to do that?

What if you have a GMB page but it’s not optimized?

No worries, you are in luck! During our Grow with Google event in Frederick MD, you will have the opportunity to sit with me or one of my awesome teammates to ensure that your listing is claimed and up to date!

The really great part about this, we have a communication line directly into Google My Business. We can help get your listing verified within 24–48 hours, rather than the 2 weeks that it can take otherwise.

“Swag,” You Say?

As GYBO partners, Google has armed us with some awesome swag specific to each city!

We’re talking t-shirts, tote bags, note pads, pens, and much more! So not only will we be offering free expert assistance and advice, we’re going to give you free stuff to show some love for Frederick, MD!

Oh, and breakfast is included too!

Why would we do this?

Because we are passionate about helping companies grow their businesses online and we actually enjoy it!

The post Let’s Put Frederick on the Map! …Another reason to attend Grow with Google! appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Well, you are correct. They simply have re-branded the tool with a new name: Google Search Console.

No worries, if you already have a GWT account, you need not do a thing. Simply log in and you will notice the name change in the upper left hand corner. If you don’t have a free GWT, I mean Google Search Console account, what are you waiting for? GO GET ONE!

The reason behind this update is because Google knows that the tool is used by a wide variety of people and not just “webmasters”. I’m not a webmaster, however I love the tool and I use it every day as an SEO professional. GWT was launched initially with the purpose of simply being somewhere that webmasters could submit sitemaps; since then it has come a long way, including the recent overhaul which updated the Search Queries Report to Search Analytics.

In the end, the name change is not a big deal but knowing how Google works (or at least thinking that I do) I can’t help but think this is just the beginning of many changes to come! Change is good and I am excited to see what happens next.

Stay tuned for the next Get to Know Google and I promise to keep you updated on all things Google!

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Partner Agency before you reach out.

The post Get To Know Google: Say Goodbye to Google Webmaster Tools! appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Now in beta, Google has rolled out the new report to everyone. They made some changes through the alpha stage, one of which includes re-naming the report to Search Analytics. A very appropriate name as the new features absolutely resemble Google Analytics. The new report will allow you to see how your search traffic changes, where it comes from, and what queries that are being searched that will most likely display your site.

A Choice of Metrics

Having the ability to choose which metrics to measure is always a bonus! The Search Analytics report allows you to aggregate results by site or page. You can group, filter, and compare the following metrics:

• Clicks: how many times people click on a link to your site in search results
• Impressions: how many times your site appears in search results
• Click Through Rate (CTR): click count divided by impression
• Position: average page position of the results from your site

A Change for the Better

In the new report, Google is actually calculating the data differently resulting in much more accurate data. Some of the biggest changes include:

• Individual page impression counts merged
  All links to the same site are counted as a single impression

• Search properties & devices separated
  Get unique metrics for web, image, mobile, and video

• Coverage and partial counts differ
  Data coverage might not be the same and values can be different between the 2 reports

• Image click count reduced
  Only expanded images will count as a click

• Data consolidated by full domain
  The new report assigns all click, impression & search data host name

For a detailed guide on the changes and a step by step guide on how to get the most from this awesome new report, check out the GWT Help Section.

Google will give you the option to “Go back to the old Search Queries report” for 3 months before they remove it for good. While it can be difficult to teach an old dog new tricks, this is one where we highly suggest you get to know Google and use; it’s a great tool!

The post Get To Know Google: Search Analytics Report appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Along with April comes spring, a feeling of freshness and a new start. April also has one of the most historically dreaded days of the year… Tax Day! Those who wait until the last minute run around all day from the accountant’s office to the post office and everywhere in-between.

Well, thanks to Google, this year the most dreaded day will no longer be the 15th! It will be TODAY: Tuesday April 21, 2015

…the day of

M O B I L E G E D D O N

Google’s Mobile Friendly Update!

What is Mobilegeddon? Are you ready? Did you wait until the last minute? What do you need to know? What do you need to do?

No worries, take a deep breath and allow us to guide you!

What is Mobilegeddon?

Simply put, Mobilegeddon is the day that Google will begin to give a boost in rankings to pages that have earned their mobile-friendly label in mobile SERPs.

Therefore, if you ranked highly for a specific keyword and have not made your site mobile-friendly, there is the potential that you will lose those rankings.

Unlike many other Google updates, Google has been more than fair with this update. They officially announced the update back on February 26th which is the same day that they launched the oh-so helpful, Mobile-Friendly Test. Playfully, the SEM Community has dubbed the day as “Mobilegeddon.”  In the world of SEO this update has occupied a majority of the chatter and shaken up the focus for search engine optimization.

Top Facts to know about Mobilegeddon:

1. 1. The mobile algorithm update will be on a page by page basis. Rather than classifying your entire site mobile-friendly, it is actually possible to have some pages labeled as mobile-friendly while other pages are not. If time is an issue for you, check Google Analytics for your top mobile content and prioritize which pages to update first.
   2. The mobile update is in real-time. This means that as soon as you update your site and then Google crawls it, it will immediately be labeled as mobile-friendly and immediately benefit from the update. We tested this on a client in-house and can verify that this is true! (hint: fetch as Google in GWT use the mobile: smartphone option to submit the updated URLS)
   3. The update will only affect the mobile SERPS. Desktop and mobile SERPs are not the same. Today’s update will only have an effect on your mobile SERPs, therefore you can rank one page for desktop SERPs while ranking on a different page for mobile SERPs.
   4. Google has announced that they will no longer show URLs in mobile search results. Google has begun to replace mobile URLs with the site’s name and breadcrumb path. These changes will roll out gradually and will only affect the mobile search results.
   5. Responsive sites DO NOT equal mobile friendly! It’s very common for business owners to assume that just because they have a responsive site in place that they will naturally gain the mobile friendly tag. While responsive design will re-size the content of your site, you will want to be sure to avoid many common mistakes, including blocked JavaScript, CSS, and image files. (Have you checked your robots.txt file lately?) Allow Googlebot to see exactly what your users see!

Avoiding the Wrath of Mobilegeddon:

Do you want to ensure that your site doesn’t experience the wrath of Mobilegeddon? I sure hope so! Let’s take a look at a few things that you can do rather painlessly and fairly quickly without understanding web development.

Begin by checking your site on Google Webmaster Tools (GWT). If you do not have an account, you should! It’s free, it houses a ton of information about your site, and as I said, it’s FREE! Sign up HERE!

Once you have created or logged in to your GWT account, locate the Dashboard on the left side of the page and click the arrow for Search Traffic. The last item in this category is the Mobile Usability section which will show you not only which pages have mobile usability issues, but also provide links to guides on how to fix these issues. (Tools to prepare for an algorithm update? Again, demonstrating that Google was more than fair with this update!)

As you can see in our example, there are a total of 281 pages on this site with mobile usability issues. Below that you will see a timeline that will give you a quick snapshot of when there was a spike or decline in mobile usability issues. Google then breaks that down even further and will list which pages have which issues. (Please note that one page can appear in multiple categories.) When you click on each individual issue, you will see a list of URLs that are affected by that issue.

Once you have clicked on a URL, you will get a screen that will give you several options for testing or fixing the issues on that specific page.

The 4 Main Components to Determining Mobile Usability (and a layman’s definition):

1. Touch elements too close
   • Buttons, links, or form fields are too small or too close together to be used easily on a touchscreen.
2. Content not sized to viewport
   • Users have to scroll horizontally or zoom out to see the whole page
3. Viewport not configured
   • Code that gives the browser instructions for the page’s dimensions based on device
4. Small font size
   • Page copy is too small for users to read when not on a desktop

You can also check random pages on your site by going directly to the Google Mobile-Friendly Tool. This tool is available to the public and also free to use. Be sure to check several pages before assuming that your site is ready; as I stated earlier in this post, the update is on a page by page basis.

Should you fear Mobilegeddon?

As an agency, we have seen an array of issues and obstacles involving mobile usability issues; however, most have had an easy solution once the developers were involved. For the ones that haven’t, we dove in and conducted further research to find a fix.

Really, Mobilegeddon is just a play on words and should not be feared. While the amount of traffic that comes to your site varies greatly by niche, mobile use has surpassed desktop already and is forecasted to continue to grow. So, wouldn’t you want your users to have a good experience no matter what device they were on? Use Google’s mobile-friendly tags to your advantage (while you can) and complete your mobile site’s “spring cleaning.”

If you are still losing sleep over Mobilegeddon, I’d suggest you call us now!

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post Mobilegeddon: Or Why You’re about to Lose a Ton of Traffic appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

The Search Impact Report allows you to break down your site’s:

• Clicks
• Impressions
• Click through rate (CTR)
• Average position

Using different dimensions, including:

• Date
• Countries
• Devices
• Search Type (web, image, video)

The best part is you can actually combine and compare several dimensions to get more granular data. (Who doesn’t Love MORE data?)

Let’s take a look at a few screen shots:

In this first shot we are looking at search queries from the last 7 days compared the previous 7 days. We have chosen to look at clicks and average position. The ability to compare data on one screen is a huge improvement to GWT!

As always with Google Webmaster Tools, you can zero in on any of the results for a detailed chart. Below, you will see that we clicked on ‘fashion marketing’.

Next, we’ll take a look at a new feature that allows you to compare metrics by devices. Here, we are taking a look at total clicks for 28 days on a desktop computer compared to mobile devices.

The report also allows you to filter by several different factors which will come in handy for content creators and SEOs as it makes it easy to narrow in on specific topics within your site. In the next screenshot we have chosen to look at clicks and impressions from the last 90 days for only URLs that contain ‘fashion’.

You can drill down even further too! We added filters to the same report as above to get more detailed information. We now have the clicks and impressions for URLs containing ‘fashion’ narrowed to mobile traffic from the United States! Are you as excited as we are?

Our initial opinion of this report is that it’s a really great upgrade for Google Webmaster Tools, probably one of the best we’ve seen thus far. We’ve only just started to experiment with it, but feel the biggest benefit seems to be the fact that we can get granular data faster without having to cross compare with Analytics. We also believe that in the future, the mobile portion will most likely be the most valuable as there is a lot of talk in the SEO world about upcoming mobile algorithm updates.
In the end, we are super excited to learn more about it and provide Google with our feedback. We promise to keep you updated…Stay Tuned!

The post Get to Know Google: New Search Impact Report appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

She works for a big international company and uses the computer all day, however, didn’t know how to utilize Google for anything more than a quick search. She was amazed at all of the things that Google could do and the different ways to search. She stayed interested and continued to ask questions while at the same time inspiring my newest blog topics: Get to Know Google.

Since beginning my career with Direct Online Marketing, I have learned so many things about Google that I never knew existed and now I want to share them with you. Going forward when I post to our digital marketing blog, I will share some of the great features of Google Search, Google Webmaster Tools, and Google Analytics.

Google Search & Search Operators

Let’s start with Google Search, the most common of Google functions. Here in 2015, most people already know how to conduct an average search to locate a website they are looking for. However, Google actually has several different types of search operators (modifiers) that can help you pin point exactly what you are looking for. Below I will explain and show you a few examples of what I mean.

Site Search (site:example.com)

As an SEO the most basic and most commonly used search operator is the site: operator which allows us to see the total number of pages that Google has indexed for a website.

Keyword + Site Search

While that may only excite my fellow SEO’s, let me show you some ways to use these search operators in your everyday life. You can use a site: operator to actually locate specific content within a website. Simply enter the keyword followed by site:example.com.

The very first organic result will take you directly to the topic within the site that you are looking for. This is not only a time saver, it can also eliminate a bulk of your bookmarks.

Name + Site Search

This awesome feature also works with names, enabling you to locate content within the site either about or by a specific person. This can help you quickly find an employee biography or maybe your favorite blogger within an organization.

So, did you know Google was so smart? You can actually let you imagination run wild with this search function. Think how quickly you could locate things on large sites, an iPhone on Amazon or hard to find collectibles on EBay…The possibilities are endless!

Image/Video + Site Search

Are you more of a visual person? Do you prefer to shop or locate information by scanning through pictures or even video rather than a bunch of search results? Well, you’re in luck! You can conduct any of the searches that I just listed and then click on the images tab or the video tab to get all pictures and videos on that site and relevant to your keyword. Go ahead, I know you’re dying to try it, I’ll wait.

In the meantime I’ll show you an example of looking for National Geographic Articles about Africa. When you have located an image of interest, simply click on it and it will give you the option to visit the page, in just 2 clicks you have found your article of interest. The videos tab will do the same thing, except it will simply pull all the videos within the site about Africa.

That’s all, for now, I hope that you learned a thing or two about search operators and how to use them in your everyday life. I’m excited to hear about any searches or combination of searches that you conduct, so feel free to share in the comments.

See you on the next edition of Get to Know Google!

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

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