Month: February 2015

Google to Begin Favouring Mobile Friendly Results in SERPs

Posted on by Craig Broadbent

Google tablet

Google have announced that they will be “expanding the use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal” from April 21st and the change will “will have a significant impact in search results”.

This is big news, as it’s rare that Google give so much advance notice about an algorithm change that they say will have a dramatic impact on search results.

I think you can assume that if a website doesn’t get the “mobile friendly” snippet in mobile results, that site will see their mobile visibility reduce drastically, and this will be the point in time where mobile results will change dramatically from desktop.

You can use the following link to get advice from Google as to why a site isn’t mobile friendly:

https://www.google.co.uk/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

The same post also announced that Google may start to display relevant mobile app information in search results for users that are logged in and have the relevant app installed. This update is already in place, therefore organisations that have a mobile app as well as a website may want to consider Google’s guide to getting app content indexed

Facebook Rolls Out Call To Action Buttons In The UK

Posted on by Helen Hargreave

Call to action blog

Back in December Facebook announced a function that would enable admins to include a call to action button in Facebook cover photos. Much to the excitement of businesses all around the world, this simple addition to Facebook business pages was to be initially rolled out in the US with other countries following suit at a later date. It now appears that this function is available in the UK.
Here’s what it looks like in action:

Why is this a good thing?
Having a clear call to action at the top of the page helps businesses on Facebook to deliver their marketing messaging to their Facebook fans without being too pushy. By having an easy and clear to see call to action, it also provides flexibility for admins and businesses to test which call to action button is not only resonating with their audience but also have the opportunity to monitor the results as well as testing landing pages.
Choice at this stage is limited with call to actions geared towards businesses operating on a local scale or e-commerce businesses. Businesses therefore wanting to use the call to action to drive traffic back to the website to find out more might struggle to find an appropriate button with the options only currently including: Book Now, Contact Us, Use App, Play Game, Shop Now, Sign Up, Watch Video.

call to action button

Whilst the downsides to this new function are few and far between – the only small issue is that the call to action button isn’t currently available on mobile – however, it wouldn’t be surprising if this was rolled out at a later date.