Google Mobile-friendly search results

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Google have announced today that they are changing their algorithm to detect browsers and devices to display search results relevant to the browser the user is operating.

What does this Google Mobile-friendly Change mean to non-technical people?

It means if you have a website that is not optimised for mobile devices then you will not achieve high rankings in Google search results.

When will Google Roll Out This Change

Google have said that this change will be taking place on the of 21st April 2015. This means it is now time to contact a web design company to learn what is required.

Testing to see if  your website is ready

You can test your website now using the Mobile-Friendly Test.

Finding more mobile-friendly search results

Web Design Company To Convert Your Website To Be Mobile Friendly

If you need help, please get in touch with Chameleon on 0121 663 0456 or email us to let us know your domain name. We’ll provide a quick check to see what is required, it might be a simple process to make your website mobile friendly.

Google’s Getting Started Useful Links

SituationGuidance
Find out if your website is mobile-friendlyTake Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test
3rd party software to make a website mobile-friendlyIf you have a website that uses third-party software (or if you want to create a new site), see Customize your website software for mobile users
Make a site mobile-friendly and dive into the technical detailsReview the Getting Started section on Web Fundamentals, our resource for web developersRead our Mobile SEO guide for an overview of the implementation process
Work with someone to make my site mobile-friendlyReview Google’s advice for working with a developer

Web Hosting & Coding Effects Website Speed

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We have been carrying out analysis over the last few days looking at hosting speed and code ensuring that we are using the best methods to build sites to help increase the speed of the Internet.

This analysis started life with this post “The Web Should Be Fast” which we published 4th November 2014.

We have been looking deeper into the realms of speeding up the way websites are delivered and looking for small improvements to help serve site files better.

Increase The Speed Of Your Website

There are various ways to increase the speed of your website and this starts at the hosting level. The hosting should be the correct level of hosting to serve the purpose and as an example a shared hosting costing £3.99 per month running a Magento website is going to be slow and not only will this website be slow, but probably every other website on the same hosting server.

If you require a website to be responsive and the platform is heavy such as Magento then you need to purchase hosting that is designed to cope and this will increase costs, but generally speaking the costs are small. OpenCart is a good platform that uses less resources and we have seen huge sites built on this platform be very quick on affordable hosting.

If you are using WordPress then shared hosting is fine due to WordPress being light on the resource requirements. With platforms like WordPress there are various plugins that can really help increase speed using things like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache. These both are used as WordPress Performance Optimization (WPO) frameworks that have been designed to improve page speed using Mod_Rewrite and Caching. This is the fastest method of serving pages using Apache mod_rewrite making websites load much quicker and thus improve the user experience.

W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache Benefits:

  • Users have seen 10x improvement in overall site performance when fully configured
  • Improved conversion rates
  • “Instant” subsequent page views: browser caching
  • Optimized progressive render: pages start rendering quickly
  • Reduced page load time: increased visitor time on site; visitors view more pages
  • Improved web server performance; sustain high traffic periods
  • Up to 80% bandwidth savings via minify and HTTP compression of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and feeds

Website Server Speed Testing

We carried out testing comparing Facebook, Microsoft, Adobe, Ebay, Apple & AOL and since this testing we have carried out a couple of tweaks to improve things and we have re-tested and the results are pretty amazing.

Facebook, Microsoft & Adobe Hosting Speed & Coding Test Results:-

The testing is using the following URLs www.chameleonwebservices.co.uk, www.facebook.com, www.microsoft.com & www.adobe.com.

Web Hosting Speed Testing

Web Hosting Speed Testing

The results of this latest test show we have really stood strong against the tough competition.

We still needed to compare against Ebay, Apple and AOL to see how we do this time.

Ebay, Apple & AOL Hosting Speed & Coding Test Results:-

The testing is using the following URLs www.chameleonwebservices.co.uk, www.ebay.com, www.apple.com & www.aol.com.

Web Hosting Speed Test

Web Hosting Speed Test

These test results are great for us and we can be proud of what we have achieved.

Hosting Speed & Coding Test using GT Metrix

 

Online Reputation Management for Monster Energy Drinks

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Monster EnergySEO can be used for online reputation management and a perfect example here is the problem in 2013 that Monster Energy drinks faced.

A brand can take some damage from the media but knowing how to deal with officially and correctly to help online in search engines is something that we get involved in as an SEO company.

Media Site are strong

The biggest problem a brand  faces when something goes wrong is the fact that media sites are strong and Google crawl them quickly updating the index and as a result the problem is soon in search engines. If when someone Google’s a brand name they see a predictive example with something bad it interesting and people will click on this.

Monster for example had this problem in 2013.

monster-energy-death

 

So the problem came as more people clicked on the “death” listing and this meant that it grew in popularity and Google recommended this more than the original listing due to user experience and click through rate (CTR).

monster energy drinks

 

When something like this happens it would best to build a webpage and rank this for the problem keyword. This page can explain the problems and suggest that the media is slightly wrong and have over exaggerated the truth.

This landing page is more relevant that any other page on the internet due to it being on the main domain of the problem companies website. This can be used to turn problems into growth in web traffic and even achieve more likes and shares increasing the link profile.

Using PR sites to spread articles about the problem but explaining the truth behind the problem titled something like “Monster Energy’s death explained”.

Once online reputation management is carried out the results speak for themselves and in the case for Monster Energy Drinks the results have a positive success:-

monster energy drink seo

 

Google has now in 2014 changed the recommended search listing phrases and this is a good sign that the work has been positive.

Note: We would like to point out that this information is provided as an example and we feel for the families of the people who have died as a result of problems relating to Energy Drinks. The information relating to the media exaggerating is also used as an example and we don’t have any information to suggest this is accurate.

 

 

 

 

Use Google Alerts to Monitor your website to prevent spot hacking

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Google have been really helping webmaster coming up with great way to help spot if your website has been hacked.
One great method is to use the Google Alerting system set to monitor your domain against specific keywords you do not want to be associated with. If your site starts becoming associating with unrelated queries that are popular with spammers, for example keywords related to pharmaceuticals, payday loans or fake replica goods then you need to be aware as soon as this happens.


You can set up a Google Alerts (https://www.google.com/alerts) very quickly.

An example alert [site:www.chameleonwebservices.co.uk (viagra|cialis|casino|loans)]

Google Alerts

This will check if the domain www.chameleonwebservices.co.uk appears for the keywords requested and then Google will notify the chosen email address in the alert if this search query become active.

Google have stated:-
Monitor the Web for interesting new content, Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries.

Enter a search query you wish to monitor. You will see a preview of the type of results you’ll receive. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:
•monitoring a developing news story
•keeping current on a competitor or industry
•getting the latest on a celebrity or event
•keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

These updates can be used how you wish and monitoring for things do not want is just as important as monitoring for things you are interested in.

Fix Drop Down Menu behind YouTube Videos

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We get asked a lot of times about Z index’s to fix drop down menus hiding behind a youtube video.

There is many different ways to fix this problem but it seems you are fighting against Internet Explorer each time you fix this in another browser.

To explain the problem, when you add the iframe to your code to call the YouTube video for example you will use:-

https://www.youtube.com/embed/InDMh5s0-q0

No in the browser no matter what you do you get a z-index greater then everything else which means that YouTube video will be overlayed on top of anything and this is why you bang your head against the wall fixing with CSS.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/InDMh5s0-q0?wmode=opaque

To overcome this issue you can tell the YouTube video how to behave adding the following code:-

<iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" 
width="640" height="360"
src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/InDMh5s0-q0?wmode=opaque" 
frameborder="0"></iframe>

This fix works and the drop down menu will appear over the YouTube video. But the problem is you have to remember to add this to each video you embed so here a fix you can add to the header of your website coding and it will automatically add the required fix so you can embed normally and let the coding do the hard work.

function addToQueryString(url, key, value) {
    var query = url.indexOf('?');
    var anchor = url.indexOf('#');
    if (query == url.length - 1) {
        // Strip any ? on the end of the URL
        url = url.substring(0, query);
        query = -1;
    }
    return (anchor > 0 ? url.substring(0, anchor) : url)
         + (query > 0 ? "&" + key + "=" + value : "?" + key + "=" + value)
         + (anchor > 0 ? url.substring(anchor) : "");
}