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by Peter Coish

Latest from the Blog

Overview of Quebec’s Bill 25

The implementation of Law 25 is staged, spanning from September 22, 2022, to September 22, 2024. Throughout this transitional phase, both private enterprises and public institutions engaged in Quebec’s market are mandated to adapt to new obligations and rights concerning the safeguarding of personal data.

Impact on Marketing and Advertising

Working With Influencers 101

Lesson one: no one pays in exposure.   The influencer industry is worth $21 billion dollars. That’s a lot of content generated, users engaged, and money exchanged. And yet, the space can appear daunting or dubious. But that shouldn’t stop you from working with influencers. Depending on what vertical you are in, adding influencer generated […]

The Everything App Will Amount to Nothing

Elon’s cringey press release about X as the “everything app” is a case of a billionaire smelling his own farts for too long.

The Google Ads Algorithm and the (Dreaded) Learning Period

Google Ads’ advanced algorithms learn from vast datasets to predict outcomes. Tweaking campaigns may reset this process and trigger a learning period.

How Can AI Improve Your SEO?

This article is only 35% written by ChatGPT!

Mobile friendliness has long been a factor in Google’s ranking algorithm, with sites that are optimized for mobile devices favoured over those that aren’t.  But that ranking factor has, until now, been fairly limited in its impact.  As a consequence, many brands have been asleep when it comes to adapting their websites for mobile users, despite the fact that the volume of mobile traffic globally has been skyrocketing.

But on April 21, those brands are getting a wake-up call.

Back in February Google announced that on April 21, their ranking algorithm will not only tag your site as mobile friendly, but will also use that tag as a contributing factor in ranking your site higher in the search results. Somewhat ominously, Google said this change will have a “significant impact” in mobile search results. In fact, one Google executive said the upcoming changes will be more dramatic than the two recent major updates, Penguin and Panda.

The good news is that this change will not, according to Google, affect your ranking in desktop searches. The bad news is that mobile now accounts for about half of all searches.

So What Should You Do?

Check to see if your site is “mobile friendly.” Google has released a handy online tool which allows publishers to see if their websites are just that. The test results are binary, meaning your page is either mobile friendly (or as Google calls it “awesome”) or it’s not. There’s no in-between. Google Webmaster Tools also contains a Mobile Usability Report which examines your website as Google sees it and identifies any errors it encounters.

A mobile friendly website is one that:

  • Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash (really, you’re using Flash in 2015?)
  • Uses text that is readable without zooming
  • Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
  • Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped

According to some pundits, responsive is best in terms of a design strategy to ensure your site is mobile friendly.  Websites that redirect to a mobile subdomain also appear to be okay, according to this excellent source.

That said, Google shouldn’t be your primary motivation for getting your site shipshape for mobile — it should be your customer. She’s already embraced mobile and according to Comscore now spends almost as much time on her mobile as she does on desktop PC.