SEO: Get Mobile Friendly or Get Demoted by Google

In 2011, Google announced the release of their Googlebot-Mobile web crawler that was designed to search for mobile-specific content. A few months after this announcement, web developers began saying that Google would likely lower page rankings for websites without mobile-friendly content. They guessed right.

In the June 11, 2013 post on Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, Yoshikiyo Kato and Pierre Far wrote, “Smartphone users are a significant and fast growing segment of Internet users, and at Google we want them to experience the full richness of the web.” They go on to say, “To improve the search experience for smartphone users and address their pain points, we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.”

Non Mobile-Friendly Websites

When a smartphone user visits a non-mobile website, they might have difficulty understanding what products or services that you offer. In addition, navigation is often confusing and frustrating. If your website is not mobile friendly, you can expect most of these visitors to exit your site and never return. And it is estimated that over 50% of web surfers will be using smartphones for searches by the beginning 2014, so it is time for business owners to pay attention to the other half of their audiences.

Google’s June 2013 announcement listed two of the most common errors seen in websites that have unsuccessfully attempted to create accessibility for smartphone users: faulty redirects and smartphone error pages.

Faulty Redirects

Websites that try to accommodate mobile phones often use different URLs for desktop and smartphone users. “A faulty redirect is when a desktop page redirects smartphone users to an irrelevant page on the smartphone-optimized website”, writes Kato and Far. For example, a site that will soon lose search engine ranking is one where all the “pages on the desktop site redirect smartphone users to the home page of the smartphone-optimized site."

This faulty redirect might confuse a smartphone user and they will likely leave your site. The solution is plain: Redirect smartphone users from a desktop page to its equivalent smartphone-optimized page. If you don’t have the content in a smartphone-friendly format, link to the desktop content rather than redirecting users to an irrelevant page.

Smartphone Error Pages

Some desktop URLs display an error page to smartphone users. There are many causes of these error pages and here are some common ones.

• Sending mobile phone users to an error page: Instead, redirect smartphone users to smartphone-optimized pages instead of a “Not Found” page (404 error page).
• Directing mobile phone users to an irrelevant page instead of the content a user is looking for: If a page on your site content is not available in a smartphone-friendly format, direct the mobile phone user to the desktop page instead.
• Embedding unplayable videos: Many websites contain videos that work well on desktops but don’t work on smartphone devices. For example, if the video requires Adobe Flash, it won’t be visible on an iPhone or Android versions 4.1 and higher.

These are just a few examples of why Google will soon be penalizing search engine rankings for sites that aren’t compatible with smartphones. An equally motivating factor for business owners to optimize their sites for smartphones is the user experience. If your user becomes frustrated, you will potentially lose a lead or sale every time a smartphone user visits your site. Smartphone internet surfers rely on convenience, speed, and accuracy. Your mobile site should be a complete version of your desktop site that loads quickly and displays properly in every mobile device.

Are you wondering how to get started? Paveya can help get your site ready for every variety of smartphone out there with development and extensive testing. Call us at 855-372-8392.

Congratulations on a Decade of Conversations, Skype!

A decade of conversation and over 1.4 trillion minutes of voice and video calls have been made using Skype technology. Today, with the evolution of technology, social media, Google Hangouts, and Apple's FaceTime, the theory of video calls and being in two places at once is no longer just something futuristic movies include. It is now a part of every day life for many, and Skype estimates that the amount of time that has been spent using their technology would stretch 2.6 million years into the future.

Skype users have made history along the way with Skype calls made atop Mount Everest, providing essential needs and support to refugee camps all the while using Skype to keep in contact with those around the world, and one of the more miraculous stories include the ability to see oranguatans using Skype technology to enjoy video calls. Technology has enabled users around the world to stay connected, and witness once-in-a-lifetime events such as soldiers witnessing the birth of their children and allowing children to go on virtual field trips to other countries. Skype is definitely a tool that it's users never cease to find countless ways to integrate into their lives.

Skype shared the infographic below to provide a visual timeline of the evolution and adoption of their product over the past decade:

Skype is allowing its users to join the celebration and is offering 30 minutes of free Skype WiFi simply for signing into a Skype account between August 29th and September 1st. Additionally, Skype is asking for a favorite Skype memory from it's users and are asking it to be shared through their Moment Makers’ Story Bank, Facebook or Twitter using #10YearsofSkype.

Congratulations, Skype and Happy 10th Birthday from the team at Paveya. We leverage Skype  on a daily basis with client and internal communications.

Mid-Week Marketing Mashup

Check out the Paveya Mid-Week Marketing Mashup for this week covering marketing topics focused on LinkedIn, TweetDeck, WordPress Version Updates, and Creating an SEO Strategy.

LinkedIn Announces LinkedIn Groups Redesign LinkedIn Groups, a popular feature of the professional networking site and social media platform, LinkedIn, has recently gone through a makeover. LinkedIn officially shared the news yesterday on their blog. Though the new features are currently only available to the English speaking members of LinkedIn, the exciting new changes are part of an overall goal at LinkedIn to continue to be an online destination for business professionals to gain important insights, ask questions, share ideas and engage with others each day. Read More.

What WordPress Users Should Know About Version Updates WordPress™, one of the world’s most popular Content Management Systems (CMS), allows users to instantly launch a new website or begin blogging without the knowledge of web coding languages. Read more.

Twitter’s Shiny New TweetDeck On Monday, Twitter announced that there will be many new features added to their TweetDeck. The features will not be released all at once—they are starting with the website and Chrome app, and then Windows and Mac apps. Read more.

Website Optimization Strategies for Redesigns If you are currently using search engine optimization techniques for your company’s website, you probably understand the importance of showing you are a reliable source and the significance of a high ranking in search engines. Website optimization includes using keywords and keyword phrases within your web page content, blogging with keywords, generating internal and external links, optimizing images, and creating the appropriate redesign for your website. Read more.

Social Media: Using LinkedIn Groups To Extend Your Brand Message

LinkedIn Groups provide an online destination for to pose questions, seek expertise and recommendations within their industry or resources to use for different aspects of their business as well as make business contacts and become known amongst their peers as industry experts.
Within LinkedIn, you can find groups to join through the suggestions that LinkedIn provides as well as using the Groups Directory to seek out specific areas of interest.

The LinkedIn Group manager controls membership, discussions, settings, subgroups, rules, and more. When you submit a request to join a group, the request goes to the LinkedIn Group manager, and they have the control over whether to allow you membership in the group or not.

As a LinkedIn Group owner or manager, you are the one who controls the appearance of the group as well. With LinkedIn’s recent changes, here are two ways to take advantage of the new changes immediately:

• Upload a hero image for brand and community messaging
  
• Prominently feature manager’s choice discussions you want members to see
  

Not sure how to upload the hero image or what the size recommendations are? Here are step by step instructions:
To update the overall look of your LinkedIn Group for consistency with your branding and marketing initiatives:

1. Go to LinkedIn and log in.
   
2. Move your cursor over Interests at the top of your homepage and select Groups.
   
3. Click the group you want to edit.
   
4. Click Manage and then select Group Information on the left.
   
5. You can now browse and upload logos from your files.
   
6. Click Save Changes.
   

Image requirements:

• Group Logo - up to 100 x 50 pixels, PNG/JPEG/GIF format, maximum size 100KB
  
• Small Logo - up to 60 x 30 pixels, PNG/JPEG/GIF format, maximum size 100KB
  
• Hero Image - minimum 646 x 200 pixels, PNG/JPEG/GIF format, maximum size 2 MB
  

Please ensure that your image fits these sizes. There are several online tools that you can use to modify your images including Shrink Pictures and Web Resizer.

To upload and save an image, you must check the box that says. "I acknowledge and agree that the logo/image I am uploading does not infringe upon any third party copyrights, trademarks, or other proprietary rights or otherwise violate the User Agreement.”

If you don't update your hero image, it will be readily apparent to most regular users on LinkedIn. The standard image for LinkedIn Groups that haven't been updated is very recognizable, and you don't want to seem as though you aren't paying attention to your group and its members. Here is an example of what your LinkedIn Group will look like without your branding:



Note: LinkedIn doesn't allow excessive changes to a group's identity because it affects member confidence in your group and in the LinkedIn Groups product. You can only make a total of 5 group identity changes, including any group name and logo updates. Changes to the group Hero image are not counted in this limit.

To modify your manager’s choice discussions that you want prominently displayed:

1. Go to LinkedIn and log in.
   
2. Move your cursor over Interests at the top of your homepage and select Groups.
   
3. Click the group you want to edit.
   
4. Click Search and then select Set Manager’s Choice Order on the left.
   
5. You will see the lists of any discussions that have been selected and you can modify the order by clicking the arrow buttons to move them or by changing the number to the left of the post.
   
6. Click Save Changes.
   

LinkedIn is one of the oldest social networking sites, having launched on May 5, 2003. It is geared towards business professionals and boasts the largest professional network with over 238 million members in over 200 countries and territories. Businesses, marketers and users leverage the professional community as part of an overall social media marketing strategy.

Social Media Marketing: Linked In Announces LinkedIn Groups Redesign

LinkedIn Groups, a popular feature of the professional networking site and social media platform, LinkedIn, has recently gone through a makeover. LinkedIn officially shared the news yesterday on their blog. Though the new features are currently only available to the English speaking members of LinkedIn, the exciting new changes are part of an overall goal at LinkedIn to continue to be an online destination for business professionals to gain important insights, ask questions, share ideas and engage with others each day.

Some interesting stats surrounding LinkedIn Groups:

• More than 2 million LinkedIn Groups currently exist
  
• More than 200 conversations happening each minute across LinkedIn Groups
  
• More than 800 groups are created each week
  
• Professionals are signing up to join LinkedIn members at a rate of more than two new members per second.
  
• There are more than 30 million students and graduates on LinkedIn, and are LinkedIn’s fastest growing demographic
  
• There are more than 3 million companies with LinkedIn Company Pages
  
• LinkedIn members performed more than 5.7 billion professionally-oriented searches in 2012.
  

LinkedIn Groups have been a key feature of LinkedIn for many years and LinkedIn supports the formation of interest groups, and extremely large groups have as many as 744,662 members. The vast majority of LinkedIn Groups are employment related, but academic and alumni groups make up more than 130,000 groups.

Groups have been created for nearly any topic imaginable including social media, technology, real estate and small business, as well as community centric groups focusing on specific metropolitan areas like the Hampton Roads Technology group, alumni groups, formal associations such as the Board of Realtors, and online networking opportunities for Chambers of Commerce. LinkedIn Groups can vary in size, depending on participation, content, and number of active members. Certain groups require approval to become a member, while others allow you to immediately join.

Groups are some of the most highly trafficked areas of LinkedIn, and where many users within the LinkedIn community flock to discuss industry news, seek resources, support and advice, and look for recommendations of businesses with whom to do business.

With the new design, LinkedIn has mirrored the newer Facebook layout changes we’ve all experienced with an overall goal to make LinkedIn easier and simpler to use. Additionally, the overall look of LinkedIn Groups has been streamlined, and with the new changes, LinkedIn has focused on providing more options and control to the LinkedIn Group managers and members when it comes to customization and visual presentations of their particular conversation space.

One great feature of LinkedIn Groups is the ability to moderate content and posts as well as approve or remove members. This is extremely beneficial when you amass a large following in your LinkedIn Group, only to have members that try to use the forum to skirt the anti-spam regulations that are so prevalent in other forms of communication. LinkedIn has implemented a few resources to alleviate
 
As part of the launch today, LinkedIn shared a neat info graphic for those new to LinkedIn Groups and who may be looking to find out more information.


LinkedIn is one of the oldest social media sites, having launched on May 5, 2003. It is geared towards business professionals and boasts the largest professional network with over 238 million members in over 200 countries and territories.

What WordPress Users Should Know About Version Updates

WordPress™, one of the world’s most popular Content Management Systems (CMS), allows users to instantly launch a new website or begin blogging without the knowledge of web coding languages.
This software is free unless you want a custom WordPress website, which means you will purchase a web address; add your brand design elements; and install "plugins" to enable special features or functionality such as slideshows, event calendars, forums, or online shopping. However, this versatile technology comes with security hazards so WordPress helps keep hackers out of your website by providing version updates. Make sure that your site is running the latest one.

What are WordPress version updates?

Like most open-source software, WordPress websites are vulnerable to security breaches. As a result, WordPress releases a new “version update” any time they want to fix a security problem.
So, to ensure the best user experience, business owners who have custom WordPress websites must perform version updates with every new release. But before you press the update link from your administrative dashboard, we recommend that you complete the following steps.

Step 1: Educate Yourself

After you receive notification that WordPress has released a new version of its software, read about:

• what security concerns the update will resolve;
• how the update will affect your site’s theme; and
• how your plugins will be affected.

Step 2: Make a Site Backup

Before you update your version, always backup your website. This means that if you have problems after the update, you can easily restore your files until you can find help. If you need instructions on how to perform a backup, click here.

Step 3: Deactivate Plugins

Turn off the plugins of your custom WordPress website. Some plugins may conflict with the upgrade process, particularly if your version is 2 or more updates old.

Step 4: Update Your Version

WordPress gives you two options for updating: automatic or manual.
Automatic Update
Current versions of WordPress feature an automatic update. For an automatic update to work, WordPress requires the following criteria (from wordpress.org):

(a) file ownership: all of your WordPress files must be owned by the user under which your web server executes. In other words, the owner of your WordPress files must match the user under which your web server executes. The web server user (named "apache", "web", "www", "nobody", or some such) is not necessarily the owner of your WordPress files. Typically, WordPress files are owned by the FTP user which uploaded the original files. If there is no match between the owner of your WordPress files and the user under which your web server executes, you will receive a dialog box asking for "connection information", and you will find that no matter what you enter in that dialog box, you won't be able to update automatically.

(b) file permissions: all of your WordPress files must be either owner writable by, or group writable by, the user under which your Apache server executes.

On shared hosts, WordPress files should specifically NOT be owned by the web server. If more than one user owns different files in the install (because of edits made by deleting and re-uploading of files via different accounts, for example), the file permissions need to be group writable (for example, 775 and 664 rather than the default 755 and 644). File permissions (in general) should be adjusted as appropriate for the server environment (the shared host RackSpace CloudSites for example recommends 700 and 600 for a single FTP user, or 770 and 660 for multiple ftp users). See the file permission section for more (some files and folders require stricter permissions).

If you meet these requirements, simply click the upgrade link in your dashboard banner or go to the “Tools” tab, then click the “Upgrade” menu.
Note: If you have customized a standard theme, such as “Twenty Twelve”, do not use the automatic upgrade as it will overwrite your changes—use a manual update instead.
Manual Update

1. Download the latest WordPress version.
2. Unpack the downloaded zip file.
3. Turn off your plugins.
4. Delete the old “wp-includes” and “wp-admin” directories on your web host.
5. Upload the new “wp-includes” and “wp-admin” directories, overwriting the old files.
6. Upload the individual files from the new “wp-content” folder to your existing “wp-content” folder, overwriting existing files. Do not delete the existing “wp-content” folder nor any files or folders in your existing “wp-content” directory.
7. Upload new loose files from the root directory of the new version to your existing WordPress root directory.

Lastly, look at the “wp-config-sample.php” file to see if any new settings are there that you might want to add to your own “wp-config.php”.

Step 5: Reactivate Your Plugins

Now your custom WordPress website is updated and ready to work for you.

Step 6: Watch for Update Notifications

Check your site regularly so that you do not fall behind with your version updates—your site might become vulnerable to hackers or you might lose customers due to poor site performance.
Note: You will update your plugins in a different way so be sure to subscribe to Paveya's blog to read this upcoming article.

If you need help updating your custom WordPress website, contact Paveya at 855.372.8392.

We look forward to helping our customers CREATE leads, CONNECT with customers, and GROW their business.

Twitter’s Shiny New TweetDeck

On Monday, Twitter announced that there will be many new features added to their TweetDeck. The features will not be released all at once—they are starting with the website and Chrome app, and then Windows and Mac apps. 

The sleek new panel can be accessed on the TweetDeck after you click on the “New Tweet” button or when you go to reply to a new tweet. This new panel allows you to choose which account you would like to submit a tweet from. When you select an account, the icon will be illuminated and have a green check mark in the bottom right corner. As for the accounts that are not selected, they will be dim and have no check mark. Underneath the “New Tweet” box there are three buttons that will enable you to add an image, schedule tweets, and write direct messages.

One of the most exciting new features that have been added to the TweetDeck is that we will be able to reply to multiple users within a tweet. Users will simply click the “reply” button and that will automatically import all the usernames in. Another exciting feature is that when you are writing a tweet and begin to type in usernames and hashtags, they will auto-generate.
These changes are being made not only for convenience purposes but to entice people to engage in tweeting more. I don’t know about you but with all these new features and simplicity of using them, I plan to be tweeting a lot more!

Paveya is your full-service inbound marketing agency. Our team of experts is ready to help you with your social media marketing. Call Paveya at 855-372-8392.

We look forward to helping our customers CREATE leads, CONECT with customers, and GROW their business.