Google Digital Breakfast: Micro-Moments

This morning was an early start to head to Google Canada and attend a Digital Breakfast event hosted by the behemoth of search. Beautiful offices. Catered sausage, bacon and egg breakfast too. Nice start.

A member of the Google Partners marketing team talked about Micro-Moments which was very interesting and gave some insight into how Google views these fleeting interactions with its user base.

These days we're all in a massive rush it seems, and impatient for information. You're on the road and in the mood for some food. Most people won't search for "McDonald's near me" but "food near me" and then scroll through the results, giving brands a chance to move in and capitalize on that uncertainty and decision-making process.

People are not as loyal to brands as in the past and will jump around depending on what service they receive, how fast it is and how convenient to them.

To paraphrase an example: you want to buy a new smartphone. You go online, do your research, read the reviews and decide on a brand and model. You Google the carriers that provide that smartphone, and check the nearest location to you.

In your lunch break you head there, pick up the phone, put down your cash and you're out of there in 10 minutes. The brand thinks it has a great sales force to close the deal in 10 minutes ... but not really. The customer has done all the work leading up to it.

Brands can give the human browsers what they want, when they want it. Position your services as a convenient option, get that lead and take it from there.  Keep that new client with stellar customer service and never rest on your laurels.

It's a fickle consumer that knows they have choices.

John.

Facebook just got a lot stickier

Facebook launched Instant Articles last week as a way for publishers (nine invited guests so far*) to create fast, interactive articles on their platform.

*The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild.

This seems like an obvious way to keep users on the app longer. Make it more "sticky" as they say. But let's not forget that Facebook is first and foremost a business, and most businesses are in the business of making money. (The three mentions of "business" in that sentence is in no way a ploy for SEO purposes.)

"We designed Instant Articles to give publishers control over their stories, brand experience and monetization opportunities," explains Michael Reckhow, Product Manager, Facebook. "Publishers can sell ads in their articles and keep the revenue, or they can choose to use Facebook's Audience Network to monetize unsold inventory."

Google had already announced something similar with the Digital News Initiative, a partnership with European publishers (eight invited guests so far*) to, "support high quality journalism through technology and innovation."

*The Financial Times, Les Echos, NRC Media, El Pais, La Stampa, Faz, Die Zeit, The Guardian.

What's the future of journalism and publishing as more media outlets jump on the bandwagon for the ride?

Herb Communications has no idea. Only time will tell as more media pundits weigh in on the developments. I'll be watching closely and weighing opinions to help clients get a handle on what it may mean for their brand.

John.

Bad content is still the same on mobile or desktop

Google gave a lot of notice back in November 2014 that they were going to be changing their search algorithms to put more emphasis on the mobile side of things. They even provided a quick little tool to check how mobile friendly your website is.

In February 2015 they stated, "Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices."

[Quick update: And, by pure coincidence, just hours after this blog post, Bing announced they too now have their own mobile-friendly algorithm change.]

So, that begs the obvious question: does your site look great on a mobile device? Smartphone ... laptop (come on, it's portable) ... tablet ... phablet (hate that name!)

Do your website users have to squint to read the content, or pinch the screen in a clumsy way to zoom in and out? If so, you're making them work for it.

Optimize your website, and then ... run a content audit.

Most people have a short attention span. If they don't find the information they want very quickly, they're either taking another step of using your search function (not bad, at least they're still a potential customer) or heading off to a competitor's site (worst case scenario).

Check the new and improved mobile version of your website and be tough. Do you really need all that content now? Is it a little bloated?

In the "good old days" most journalists and writers only had so much space to play with on a printed page. They had to be very tight on their word count, or make the Copy Editor their best friend. (It usually takes a third party objective set of eyes to chop lovingly crafted copy. I know, been there, done that. It hurts!)

Pretend there's no scroll bar on your web page. Or, two screen lengths, top. Make your content fit that size, and it will also be a reasonable length on a mobile view.

Get your call to action in there, make it easy and clear what the navigation leads to and help your website user out.

Herb Communications is optimized for mobile. Resize your browser window and try it out. We can help enhance your content if need be. Just give us a shout.

John.

Google seems to love blogs

Herb Communications launched its website yesterday, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it on the first page of Google already ... albeit position #9. I'll take that!

What's interesting from an SEO standpoint is that it's not the Welcome (home page) that's featured, but the Blog page. I'm reasoning that it's easier and more flexible to pepper blog posts on a more regular basis with keywords, rather than the other main navigation pages that are "set" or don't change very often.

As I write more blog posts on issues of interest over the coming weeks, I'll be experimenting with keywords to see if they affect the rankings and tweak as necessary. I'll also be keeping an eye on the analytics.

I built three separate analytics tools into this website for the purpose of cross-referencing the stats to look for common patterns. Every analytics tool has its own nuances, and because there's always (roughly) a +/- 10% margin of error, I want to ensure they're as accurate as possible.

In my experience of doing this, it's not an overnight success ... but there are ways to speed things along and I'll be implementing those. My aim is to reach the coveted #1 spot on Google's first page of results.

Stay tuned!

John.