Comparing Approach, Response & Risk With Data By Jim Yu

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What Advanced SEOs Should Be Doing About Mobile Comparing Approach, Response & Risk With Data Jim Yu, CEO, BrightEdge SMX East | Sept 30 th – Oct 2 nd 2014

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From the SMX East 2014 Conference in New York City, NY. SESSION: What SEOs Should Be Doing With Mobile . PRESENTATION: Comparing Approach, Response & Risk With Data - Given by Jim Yu, @JimYu, CEO - BrightEdge. #SMX #21C

Transcript of Comparing Approach, Response & Risk With Data By Jim Yu

Page 1: Comparing Approach, Response & Risk With Data By Jim Yu

What Advanced SEOs Should Be Doing About Mobile

Comparing Approach, Response & Risk With Data

Jim Yu, CEO, BrightEdge SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd 2014

Page 2: Comparing Approach, Response & Risk With Data By Jim Yu

SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

Mobile Is Outpacing Desktop X10

Source: BrightEdge Data Cube 2014

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Smartphone share of Organic Searches

Source: BrightEdge Data Cube May 2014

As of April 2014, Smartphone share of organic searches is

23% and growing over

50% a year

Smartphone Share Of Organic Searches is 23%

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

85% of marketers said measuring rank across mobile devices such as tablets as smartphones would be more or much more important in 2014

Ranking Variables Are Becoming More Complex

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

There is a BIG Difference in Smartphone V Desktop Rank

62%    of keywords have different ranks

Source:  BrightEdge  Data  Cube  May  2014  

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

1.  Default: Do Nothing. Smartphone = Desktop

- OR -

The Different Smartphone Approaches

Advanced Mobile SEO Matrix Same URL Different URL

Same HTML 4. “Responsive” Duplicate Content

Different HTML 3. “Dynamic Serving” 2. “Separate”

Page 7: Comparing Approach, Response & Risk With Data By Jim Yu

SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

Example of Responsive Approach

•  Desktop Site “becomes” the Smartphone Site as browser width is shrunk

•  Both sites are the same HTML & URL

Shrinks  to  

www.starbucks.com   www.starbucks.com  

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

HTML  ≠  

www.zillow.com/columbia-sc/ www.zillow.com/columbia-sc/

Example of Dynamic Approach

Page 9: Comparing Approach, Response & Risk With Data By Jim Yu

SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

www.1800flowers.com/valen8nesday   m.www.1800flowers.com/valen8nesday  ≠

Example of Separate Approach

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

Responsive is slightly better at -.51 (less of a rank drop) It is not statistically significant

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Responsive Dynamic Separate

Average difference between desktop and mobile ranks

There Is a Slight Difference in Performance

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

So… We Dug Deeper Into The Data Cube “We harnessed

the power of the BrightEdge Data Cube, with billions of content and keyword records, to research the performance of different mobile strategies.”

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

Different Error Rates by Approach

Approach % with Errors

Separate 72%

Dynamic 30%

Responsive negligible

We noticed that most of the errors appeared for those with separate mobile websites.

Source: BrightEdge Data Cube May 2014

Page 13: Comparing Approach, Response & Risk With Data By Jim Yu

SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

The Most Common Errors

Error Dynamic Separate

No HTTP Vary 82% 41%

Wrong Canonical 35%

No Canonical 35%

Wrong alternate 2%

No alternate 61%

Disallow Robots on Mobile subdomain robots.txt 16%

Redirecting all pages to mobile home page 12%

Source: BrightEdge Data Cube May 2014

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

Without signaling to the search engines that the content varies by “User Agent”, in addition To “Accept-Encoding”, search engines may think a number of possibilities, with the worst case being that there is a cloaking attempt. From m.[redacted-domain].com

Example of No HTTP Vary Usage

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

Example of incorrect rel=canonical

From m.[redacted-domain].com/page the canonical pointed back to the mobile website. From www.[redacted-domain].com/page the desktop page pointed back to itself. Both canonicals should point back to the same page, regardless of whether it is the mobile or desktop version.

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

Example of missing rel=alternate

From the same desktop page as the previous slide, a search for “alternate” in the page source, finds no rel=alternate tags

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

Example of incorrect robots.txt

This is very bad. From m.[redacted-domain].com

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

BrightEdge Data Shows non-compliant sites result in a lower rank by almost

2 positions

As Expected, Non-Compliant Sites do not Rank Well

Source: BrightEdge Data Cube May 2014

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

This Results in Loss of Mobile Traffic

   

     

   68%    lost Smartphone opportunity

Source: BrightEdge Data Cube May 2014

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

What Really Impacts Your Mobile SEO Approach

Enterprises need to evaluate the risks of: 1.  Misimplementation – Smartphone is only

becoming more important. Can you risk losing smartphone share?

2.  Ongoing Maintenance – You’ve configured everything correctly but with each website release, the configuration needs to be checked.

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

The Pros & Cons of Each Mobile Approach

Responsive Dynamic Separate

Speed (-) Unneeded or large assets

+ (-) Redirects

Content Maintenance + (-) Multiple sets (-) Multiple sets

Compliance + (-) HTTP Vary (-) Vary &

rel canonical /alternate

Link Dilution + + If not compliant

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

Takeaways  

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

For the Responsive approach, BrightEdge recommends…

Making sure to implement conditional loading correctly for fast page load times.

Smartphone Desktop

1.  Reduce the number of asset files to download 2.  Reduce the file size of large image or video asset files

Page 24: Comparing Approach, Response & Risk With Data By Jim Yu

SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

For the Dynamic approach, BrightEdge recommends the following

1.  Ensure your site is not perceived to be cloaking. The proper way to signal different content for different user agents is to use “User Agent” in the HTTP Vary header.

2.  Remember to optimize your mobile content for on page Factors, just as you did for Desktop SEO.

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

For the Separate approach, BrightEdge recommends the following checklist

1.  Ensure your site is compliant with HTTP Vary because search

engines will wonder why you are taking smartphone users to a different URL

2.  Let the search engines know how to combine link equity.

1.  Ensure that rel=canonical is used correctly: full subdomain and domain on the canonical URL. The canonical URL shouldn’t redirect.

2.  Ensure that rel=alternate is used correctly and for each known variation of the canonical page.

3.  Allow search engines to crawl the alternate pages in robots.txt

Page 26: Comparing Approach, Response & Risk With Data By Jim Yu

SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

Summary

•  Smartphone Share Of Voice is 23% and growing by 50% a year

•  Mobile is outpacing desktop X10 •  62% of keywords have different rank •  Ranking variables are becoming more complex •  There is a slight difference in Rank via Mobile

approach •  Risk and compliance are the big factors that

impact mobile approach •  Incorrect configuration can result in up 68% lost

Smartphone opportunity

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SMX East | Sept 30th – Oct 2nd, 2014 #SMXEast

Thank You!

8,500 brands, 1000+ customers

150+ years SEO experience

The Trusted Leader in Enterprise SEO

Offices in CA, NYC, Chicago, London

Jim Yu, CEO BrightEdge | Email: [email protected] |Twitter @brightedge

http://www.brightedge.com/

“Download Your Free Copy Of The 2014 Mobile Share Report Below”

http://www.brightedge.com/resources/2014-mobile-share-

report