What is a Progressive Web App?

It’s an all-in-one solution for web developers to create a single version website/app that can be delivered across all devices and works like an app but without the hassle of distribution through an app store.

A progressive web app, or PWA, combines the best of a website and the best of a native application. It’s a type of hybrid app. If a user comes to your PWA-run site, then they’ll get the mobile version of your site, but faster.

With a traditional hybrid app, like the Amazon app, the user’s interactions with it are built into the phone as an app, but the data collected is from the web. Here’s where a PWA is different. A PWA launches a browser to do the same thing. With the introduction of service workers (the scripts running in the background of your browser) and other technological advancements, browsers are more sophisticated than ever. They can do things on your phone that previously could only be done through a native app. This means you don’t have to publish the app in the app store. The barrier to entry of downloading an app is no longer an issue for your users.

As a developer, you no longer have to program different apps for different devices, nor deal with special screen sizes. You can invest your time and resources into designing a PWA. If you have to make a mobile website, you might as well just use a PWA. It’s well worth it.

Talking PWAs with Cindy Krum

My longtime friend Cindy Krum, the CEO and founder of MobileMoxie, is a PWA guru. I wanted to get her take on how far in the future the mass adoption of PWAs looks to be. Here’s what she had to say:

Lots of big companies are already testing PWA code and integrations on their sites. Lyft, Mic, Washington Post, Flipboard, The Weather Channel and more have already launched beta PWA sites for testing. Google has already published some PWA development guidelines for SEO, but I think the update may depend on how aggressively Google and other influential companies promote PWAs.

Google has also been hinting at cross-over between AMP and PWAs, using AMP to make PWA’s work in Safari, so there may be some new iteration of AMP that makes AMP enabled content available in PWA format. The PWA news viewer already behaves a lot like a PWA. My guess is that in the next year, we will see some of the more agile and cutting edge companies take their PWAs out of beta, and making them their main sites, with or without the influence of AMP.

It will be interesting to watch more widespread adoption of PWAs unfold. As with anything new, of course, it can sometimes be hard to get clients to adopt bleeding edge technology. Here’s how Cindy is getting her clients on board.

Cindy: The main recommendation is to try it out. You can add a service worker and an app manifest to any existing website. It is not enough to get the full benefits of a PWA, but it is enough to learn how easy or difficult the integration will be for your company. In our case, we developed an app manifest in five minutes, and a service worker in 90 minutes.

Making web-apps indexable tends to be the harder part of the equation, but that is true with or without the PWA elements. Web apps are hard to index because developers don’t always include URLs for state-changes in the web app.

For the immediate future, PWAs are something to be aware of, and if you’re able to, start working into your testing and planning cycles. There are no guarantees it’ll be the go-forward structure and remain supported by Google forever, but you don’t want to be left behind. There are practical upsides to PWAs that are worth considering regardless of how long it takes this to be a mainstream approach.

The post What is a Progressive Web App & Who Should Be Using It? appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

In SEO we focus a lot on Google, but app developers have a special need to get their app content to show up in Apple Search as well as Google.

Take a crash course on Apple Search and Universal Links, the latter of which are used to get your iOS and Android apps to show up in Google search.

Speakers:

Emily Grossman (@goutaste), Mobile Marketing Specialist, MobileMoxie
Ian Sefferman (@iseff), CEO, MobileDevHQ

Emily Grossman: How to Optimize Apps for Apple iOS Search and iOS 9 Universal Links

Google pays Apple $1B to be the default search engine on Safari. Google makes a lot of money off iOS devices and searchers. They’re probably making a huge return on this investment. iOS users are not likely to change their default search engine.

But before the user hits enter in the search bar of a Safari browser, Apple gets to show them their own suggestions, like apps in the App Store. Apple is cutting in front of Google. Think about this: Apple’s App Store commission is now at a run-rate of $9B, more than its total revenue in the year the iPod launched.

In recent years, with the launch of iOS 9, Apple introduced Universal Links and Apple Search. These two help drive people back into apps.

Universal Links: take a traditional web URL and make it so the single URL opens up content in a website or in an app if the user has the app installed. It’s like “One Link to Rule Them All” and it’s the ideal for Apple.

Apple Search: Apple’s search engine provides results when searchers use Spotlight, Siri and Safari.

Apple has an index and will show your app content in the three areas above. Apple is expanding their index and predictive search engine.

Next, how these two things work technically.

Universal Links 101

Universal Links are not 100% universal yet; they only work in the Apple ecosystem. And there are some other problems, but the upshot is that you can get your app to show up in Google app indexing.

Anatomy of a Universal Link:

Requirements:

• A registered domain
• SSL access to your domain (the most common barrier to entry)
• Ability to upload a JSON file to your domain

Major steps:

1. Prepare your app. Modify your application delegate. Adopt an entitlement in Xcode that lists each domain associated with your app.
2. Prepare your website by associating your app with the website. Create an apple-app-site-association file for each associated domain with the content your app supports and host it at the root level.
3. Use control paths to control indexing with Google. Modify the apple-app-site-association file to specify only the content that is parallel between the app and the website.

Universal Links services: 1-click and you’re done. Branch.io, Yozio, Deeplink.me, HOKO — this may be an option if you don’t want to go through the manual process yourself.

Apple Search App Indexing

Next, we’ll talk about getting your deep link app screens in Siri and Spotlight without setting up Universal Links. Apple doesn’t have one single index; they have a public index and a local device-specific index per user. When we know any particular Apple Spotlight search, for example, is aggregating general public and personal private, we can see why Apple has three ways to get info from different indexes.

NSUserActivity is like something that might be bookmarked, something that’s been interacted with by the user.

NSUserActivity

When Apple gets enough activity on a screen in an app, Apple may move it to the public index.

CoreSpotlight

Web Markup

Corresponding content on web page and app. To do this markup, Apple knows your website exists with iTunes connect. Use either the support URL or marketing URL to point to your corresponding website.

Ian Sefferman: Apple, the Next King of Search

• Spotlight: general purpose iOS search. (This is the potential gateway for Apple to be the next king of search.)
• Universal links: mapping the web to your app
• App indexing: indexing your app into Google

Spotlight

Gett is the taxi hailing app in Israel. If you put your destination in, Gett saves that destination location in case you want to use it again. Then, next time you search for the app, those location pages are results that come up in search.

Imgur indexes all their content into Spotlight and if you have the Imgur app and search Spotlight for “cat” you’ll see Imgur app results. This is search in a privacy conscious way.

Spotlight uptake in apps has been going up linearly since iOS 9 was released. 35% of the apps that have implemented Spotlight search rank in the App Store Top Charts.

Universal Links

This is the next generation of deep links. An example is Open Table, and how you can search Google on your Apple device, and then go to the app from the search result.

Universal Links by category:

27% of apps using Universal Links are in the App Store Top Charts. The level of engagement has been going up for apps with Universal Links. Engagement here means the number of app opens that come from Universal Links (Google Search, another app using the Universal Link).

Measuring Spotlight Referrals

By adding some code you can tell how many people open your app from a Spotlight search:

Similarly you can add parameters to count Universal Link referrals:

Related liveblog from SMX East (2015):
Emily Grossman’s How Apple’s Changing Up Search: From Siri to Safari to Spotlight.

The post App Developers: What You Need To Know About Apple iOS App Search & Universal Links #SMX appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Instead, digital marketers race to get ahead of competition, ahead of algorithm updates, and ahead of upcoming technologies with early adoption and forward-looking strategy.

Where to start? Right here. Bruce Clay, Duane Forrester, David Szetela, and invited digital marketing rockstars have shared their 2016 predictions for the online marketing industry. What will you do with this foresight into the year ahead?

Read on or jump to predictions by:

• Bruce Clay – 20-year SEO veteran calls out apps, millennials, and local search revenue as drivers of change.
• Duane Forrester – HTTPS, podcasts and search from Facebook and Amazon make an appearance in this former Microsofties predictions.
• David Szetela – Facebook, Instagram and Bing display are big winners in the “Pay-Per-Click Marketing: An Hour a Day” author’s picks, but read to find out who he bets against.
• Cindy Krum – With mobile changing everything about digital marketing, you’ll want to read this mobile tech expert’s take on 2016.
• Eric Enge – SEO scientist and co-author of “The Art of SEO” sees machine learning, personal assistants and wearables in the future, but whether going up and down, you’ll have to read to find out.
• Larry Kim – What will be the biggest game changer this year according to the 2015 Search Personality of the Year Award winner? Hint: It starts with F and ends with R … ?
• Maddie Cary – U.S. Search Awards 2015 Young Search Professional of the Year dubs 2016 the year of removing resistance with PPC predictions to back it up.
• Dan Petrovic – The international SEO’s predictions echo a familiar theme — content quality — backed by some interesting new research out of Australia.
• Richard Baxter – In the UK, Baxter’s predictions center on technical SEO growth, the direction of SEO software and what makes content “work.”
• Marcus Tandler – User experience is Tandler’s hot topic in Germany, with conversion optimization cooling off — read why.
• Andre Alpar – The Berlin-based SEO’s predictions offer a helpful rule of thumb to multi-language businesses who must weigh the ROI potential of content in multiple languages.

Bruce Clay

(+BruceClay) President, Bruce Clay, Inc.

1. Mobile devices will surprise everyone with new wireless “attachments” rivaling the power of desktops, and by 4Q we will see an accelerated mobile use in the USA.

Until then it will continue to grow but not at the rate most expect. PC share will shrink as tablet and mobile dominate the space for quick information and location specific queries.

2. Google revenues will grow exponentially as they continue to place ads above organic results. For some queries there will be 4 or fewer organic results well below the fold.

Bruce Clay’s 2016 #SEO prediction: For some queries there will be 4 or fewer organic results well below the fold.
Click To Tweet

3. Google will emphasize local results for all queries.

Local will allow Google PPC prices to increase as merchants will no longer appear outside of their specific region and are forced to purchase ads.

4. Apps that load web content will be the rage.

This allows users to have a favorite app, yet get the power of a website. Most users will find that “mobile friendly” is simply not enough.

5. Millennials will be influencing a massive web design surge.

The need for minimalistic design, performance, mobile support mixed with elegant features will drive most websites to a redesign. As this happens, the HTML source code sites will begin to fade, replaced by css and javascript intensive dynamic content. SEO becomes much harder.

Bruce Clay’s 2016 SEO prediction: Millennials influence a web design surge, challenging #SEO with influx of dynamic content.
Click To Tweet

6. We will see the demise of link building as a prime influence in SEO.

Link building will be replaced by on-page technical quality, amazing content, mobile friendly, peak performing pages. If the link is inappropriate Google will just ignore it.

7. Internet marketing becomes Internet advertising in order to survive.

The web ceases to be a gold rush, evolving into a pay-to-play space. The few sites gaining true organic rankings and holding them will be gold. The rest will buy ads.

Duane Forrester

(@duaneforrester) VP, Organic Search Operations, Bruce Clay, Inc.

8. HTTPS will be much talked about in 2016 but little action will be seen with relatively few sites making the swap.

Security will remain a hot topic as consumers wake up to the ongoing data-theft problem, but businesses will be slow to make changes due to the inherent costs involved.

9. Mobile will continue to see growth.

Microsoft’s move with Windows 10 on a mobile device that can act like a larger computer/environment will see some traction for light-duty users. “Indestructible” and “waterproof” will be bigger marketing angles, so expect to see “tougher” versions of phones released, likely tied to some cool photographic features aimed at the vacation/adventure crowd.

10. Podcasts will see continued growth in popularity due to their ease of production/consumption.

2016 digital marketing prediction by @duaneforrester: Podcast consumption will grow & AI will be a hot search topic.
Click To Tweet

11. AI (artificial intelligence) will be a much hotter topic across search in 2016.

This will mostly be driven by a detailed lack of understanding of what level of AI is in play within systems like RankBrain. Overall, more folks will gain understanding of the three levels of AI, deepening our understanding of what we see in SERPs. All AI are not created equally, so expect some companies to claim to be using it, even though the first level isn’t very advanced. And the third level (human-like) has yet to be attained and employed in a meaningful, public way. Expect to see this level gain more traction in 2016, but, ah…we better be ready!

12. Facebook and Amazon will launch actual search engines.

Well, maybe. Don’t they already have these? OK, this prediction is that in 2016 both of these rumors will pop to the top again, whether they are factual or not.

13. Bing will continue to grow while Google starts to see more leveling off.

14. Yahoo will get out of search.

2016 #SEO prediction by @duaneforrester: Bing will grow, Google will level, Yahoo will exit search.
Click To Tweet

15. Round-ups will finally, thankfully, retire.

But the spam from random people will continue.

Bonus prediction: I will learn to play the guitar. :)

David Szetela

(@szetela) VP, Search Marketing Operations, Bruce Clay, Inc.

16. Website owners will put more effort into reaching mobile search customers that use mobile devices as the first step of their “buyer journeys.”

As a result, apps, built-for-mobile sites, and responsive websites will take off. To prepare for this trend, digital marketers should implement mobile-friendly advertising such as using click-to-call ads and easy-to-digest content, such as shorter ad copy.

17. Advertisers will invest more money into Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook will become a viable direct response platform and advertisers will take advantage of its latest features, including retargeting, dynamic product ads, and custom audiences.

2016 #PPC prediction by @szetela: Advertisers invest more $ in Facebook & Instagram which become viable direct response platforms
Click To Tweet

18. 2016 will be the year Bing Ads search and display traffic will be seen by more advertisers as a viable platform.

Bing Ads will finally have its own display advertising network capable of reaching target audiences based on behavior data from Windows 10 users and other search partners.  This will be fueled by the fact that the growing click inventory will be cheaper than Google CPCs. But take note: cheaper prices won’t last long, so make sure to purchase your fair share of Bing Ads while you still can.

19. 2016 looks grim for Yahoo/Gemini.

Direct response advertisers will stay away and digital advertisers will continue to see it as a second best option for native advertising.

2016 #PPC prediction by @szetela: Bing search+display becomes viable platform but the year looks grim for Yahoo/Gemini
Click To Tweet

20. PPC will be broken down into specific areas of expertise.

As ad platform products and features continue to develop and launch at a fast pace, individual PPC managers will have an even harder time keeping up with all aspects of PPC in 2016. Agencies will hire team members that specialize in those areas to act as resources for the rest of the agency.

Cindy Krum

(@suzzicks) CEO, MobileMoxie

21. I feel strongly that we are going to start to see more ChromeCast logos in Google properties — potentially directly in the SERPS.

Google has been focusing a lot of their talks on “video” and other types of media, and also focusing a lot of research on “cross-device behavior.”

2016 #mobile #SEO prediction by @suzzicks: We’ll see the ChromeCast logo in Google SERPs
Click To Tweet

22. Getting exposure in the ChromeCast app may become relevant for SEO.

ChromeCast automatically scrapes the Deep Linked video and music apps on your phone for content that it can aggregate, so you only have to go one place to see what’s on. Also, it seem seems very likely that video and audio content will eventually receive a rankings boost if they are integrated with ChromeCast, since Deep Linking is starting to be more seamless on iOS, and more prevalent on Android.

2016 #mobile #SEO prediction by @suzzicks: Exposure in the ChromeCast app via deep linking becomes relevant for SEO
Click To Tweet

23. App Streaming may be the way of the future – especially for entertainment apps like Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, etc, which already really work best on WiFi.

Why download the app when it is available from the cloud without wasting storage space on your phone? Streaming apps will hopefully make the app/web distinction less relevant, and save some developers from having to build/maintain both Android and iOS apps (finally!). Apps that can be easily streamed may consequently eventually be given an additional rankings boost.

24. App plugins will become more important.

Why develop an entire app when there is an existing app, with an existing audience, that already does most of what you need. We are already seeing this with keyboards and emoji libraries that can be added to your SMS app or Facebook Messenger. Why not make a Netflix Nanny that prevents your kids from watching more than an hour a day, or a Chrome App plugin that lets you take scrolling screenshots, ala Snagit on the desktop? (Somebody please make this one — I need it!!!)

25. I anticipate a consolidation in some Google properties.

I am not sure which way things will go, but Google Play, Google Music, YouTube, Google+ all seem to have some overlapping capabilities, and are sharing lots of data. Google is also really struggling with UX for people who have multiple Google accounts – I can only hope that they find a good way to manage that, so that all the services will work better together.

2016 #SEO prediction @suzzicks: Google properties consolidate – Google Play, Google Music, YouTube, Google+ overlap & share data
Click To Tweet

Eric Enge

(@stonetemple) CEO, Stone Temple Consulting

2016 will be a huge year in digital marketing, as there is so much going on. Here are some of my predictions.

26. The rise of content quality and user engagement as ranking factors will begin to be broadly accepted.

An increasing number of businesses will begin to invest in their overall site experience, and view part of the payoff of that as increased rankings and traffic.  More and more SEO agencies will correspondingly promote related services on their sites as a result.

27. The power of paid social as tool to drive content marketing campaigns will also become more mainstream.

Currently, only a small subset of the industry recognizes this, but the word will get out. This will cause more content marketing agencies (or SEO agencies) to offer paid social services.

28. Wearables will show a disappointing level of growth.

People will realize that they don’t find the functionality that compelling yet.

2016 prediction by @stonetemple: Wearables will show a disappointing level of growth.
Click To Tweet

29. Personal assistants from Google, Apple and Microsoft will continue to battle through the year.

As these companies view those platforms as one of the most important land grab battles for the future of digital marketing. This will result in major new announcements from at least 2 of the 3 aforementioned parties this year.

30. Machine learning will become more mainstream as well.

The computing knowledge needed to implement these algorithms is become much more accessible, and the power of machine optimized algorithms is undeniable.

Larry Kim

(@larrykim) CTO, WordStream

31. In 2016, Facebook will open up Facebook Messenger as a service. Meaning, developers will be able to build business applications on top of messenger to enable commerce activities, which up to now, hasn’t been made generally available. For example, say you’re doing a group chat in messenger, you could order an Uber for a friend, and they could see your status in real time. Or say you’re an ecommerce company — your customers could subscribe to a live update of the shipping, and do future orders by just replying to message.

2016 prediction from @larrykim: Facebook opens Facebook Messenger as a service for devs to build apps enabling commerce
Click To Tweet

Facebook Messenger matters because nearly a billion people use it, mostly on mobile. Filling out those complicated ecommerce forms that were designed for desktops is so much harder than texting an emoji or using voice input. To say this is disruptive and transformative to mobile commerce is an understatement. What’s a marketer to do about this trend? A simple growth hack would be to start supporting Facebook logins on your site or apps, and collecting Facebook login IDs and/or mobile phone numbers as part of your direct response marketing efforts, so that you can target them later.

Maddie Cary

(@MaddieMarketer) Senior Client Manager, Point It Inc.

Prediction by @MaddieMarketer: 2016 is the Year of Removing Resistance – think streamlined conversion
Click To Tweet

2016 is going to be the year of “removing resistance.” I think we’re going to see new features, ad formats, and campaign types rolled out that are streamlined and dynamic, as well as provide more data-enriched ways to target (and ideally convert!) searchers. A few ways I think that’ll play out throughout the year include:

32. More audience targeting in PPC

Keyword intent is incredibly important, but there’s greater power in layering it with high-quality audience data. I think PPC is going to follow the paths already carved out in channels like Display and Social, with Google and Bing likely launching more PPC targeting methods that are audience-focused

33. Removing steps in order to convert the mobile searcher

How many articles and studies have we seen over the last 1-2 years showing how mobile search volume is surpassing desktop? Yet why is it that it’s still difficult in many verticals to convert mobile searchers? I anticipate we’ll see search publishers take the Amazon route and start rolling out one-click options on the mobile SERP (like that Google mobile buy button) in order to shorten the conversion path and improve conversion rates, encouraging more PPC investment in mobile.

34. Increase in dynamic ad features

How else do you shorten the path to conversion? By showing the searcher what they’ve already expressed an interest in. Dynamic ad formats & targeting methods are going to expand further in 2016, and I think we’re going to get more ad building tools within the UIs to help further streamline that process for online marketers.

35. Growth of Shopping/PLA and available ad formats

SERPs are getting more visual, and therefore I think PLAs are the frontrunners for driving e-commerce growth through 2016. If you then start to imagine Shopping campaigns that incorporate layered audience targeting + mobile one-click buy solutions + dynamic ad formats…that could be the winning formula for notable PPC channel growth throughout this next year!

Dan Petrovic

(@dejanseo) Director, Dejan Marketing

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Content production has been increasing at a phenomenal rate. The abundance of choice and easy of access of web content lead to changes in our reading habits. One specific phenomenon is the rise of skimmers.

Dan Petrovic’s research shows a content consumption phenomenon: the rise of skimmers. Read his content #SEO prediction
Click To Tweet

An Australian-based study conducted by our team showed us that most people decide whether to read something within seconds of loading a page. This choice is influenced by a number of factors including:

• Presence of quick answers
• Scannable text structure
• Design and aesthetics
• Trustworthiness
• Text size

The majority of our respondents admitted to skipping uninteresting parts when reading content or even only quickly scanning pages looking for quick answers. We’ve known this for nearly two decades yet few are getting their content format right.

2016 #SEO prediction by Dan Petrovic: Producing lots of “OK” content isn’t going to cut it in 2016.
Click To Tweet

36. Producing lots of “OK” content isn’t going to cut it in 2016. I believe we’ll see a lot of digital agencies adjusting their approach to content formats and keeping in mind that more doesn’t mean better.

I’d like to see Google reward innovation when it brings good user engagement signals. It’s time for them to start treating content behind tabs, accordions and other mechanisms for what they are designed for — great user experience.

Bonus predictions:

• Penguin release will be mild and uninteresting.
• Google will continue to aggressively push mobile.
• Additional incentives will be offered to switch to https.
• We’ll start seeing a smarter AI-based results, but will not be impressed.
• New developments will be made on a personal assistant level involving two elements: email and voice input.

Richard Baxter

(@richardbaxter) Managing Director, Builtvisible

37. The demand for technical search expertise will increase significantly, especially in mobile.

Over the past 6 months we’ve seen a lot of development in the mobile influenced side of search. App indexing is now a standard part of most technical search audit recommendations, and as we progress into 2016 I’d expect to see more app only content in search results. This will include app streaming — enabling the use of an app without it actually being installed on your device. Put simply, the number of options available to marketers to drive traffic from mobile will expand, but will all require a great deal of technical discipline to get right. Over the longer term, we’re going to see the divide between desktop and mobile channel tactics expand.

38. SEO software companies are in for a transformative period.

The majority of the reporting and tracking tools we use today are going to need to provide a step change in their products to cope with mobile, mobile search results tracking, app traffic, traffic modelling and research. More emphasis on placement, channel, device, topic and targeting will be required by content marketers to provide more relevant content experiences to an oft content fatigued audience.

2016 #SEO prediction by @builtvisible: software companies enter transformative period to cope with mobile, app & traffic modeling
Click To Tweet

39. Anyone can produce content; 2016’s winners will be those who make that content “work.”

We’ve observed a large increase in examples of quite complex content production coming out of search marketing agencies, to the point where the ability to provide interactive content is no longer a USP. For our industry, I think 2016 will be a year of focused attention on what makes content “work”. This is a huge subject that doesn’t receive the coverage it deserves, and hopefully we’ll see the subject covered in more detail at this year’s search conferences.

Marcus Tandler

(@mediadonis) Co-founder and CEO, OnPage.org

40. I predict user experience optimization to be a dominating topic in Germany this year.

By now conversion optimization is an established tactic and within the standard repertoire of clever in-house online marketers and performance marketing agencies alike. Unfortunately, conversion optimization mostly focuses on single pages and almost always only on the last step of the entire customer journey. Attention needs to be shifted towards optimizing the whole customer experience. This does not only include the optimization of the entire customer journey but most importantly optimizing all touch points potential customers are having with the brand, including any social media platforms, as well as traditional marketing activity whatsoever. Personalization is key here, to enhance the brand experience and general user experience. Nowadays users expect a personal and individual attention — relevant content, at the right time via the right channel. No widely spread advertisement but rather authentic dialogue.

2016 digital marketing prediction by @mediadonis: user experience #UX optimization overshadows conversion optimization – multi-touch vs. last step optimization
Click To Tweet

Andre Alpar

(@andrealpar) CEO, PerformicsAKM3 Berlin

41. Technical SEO grows in complexity and importance.

The plurality and diversity of options for technical SEO measures is growing faster than ever before. On top of that, topics that used more separate from SEO are becoming more interconnected with SEO. Here are some examples:

• Web security: defense against spam / hacking
• Privacy: HTTPS etc.
• Server configuration and hosting: page speed
• The complexity and non-transparency of search engine results: the keyword position tracking when all results are heavily individualized. There are also all kinds of special insertions and result representations

Technical SEO will definitely require investment in terms of effort and costs. It remains to be a potentially great differentiating factor for those able to adapt quickly while managing effort thanks to a sound technical infrastructure.

42. Links will still matter.

It seems during the last three or four years that some search marketers have adapted “links are not important any more” as their version of the claim, “SEO is dead”. All search marketers who realistically can grow their own and their clients’ organic traffic over many years know that this false prediction is far off and will stay so for at least another five years. Sure, there may be other off-page signals that can complement links e.g. the analysis of traffic via browsers, but at the moment, and for the foreseeable future, there is no better off-page quality signal than a good link that drives direct traffic—and, ultimately, a large multiplicative of traffic via better positions in SERPs.

43. Drifting apart of content quality requirements.

This may be a trend that many do not see but we are confronted with it daily as we work in many multilingual and international setups in Europe. Investments per piece of content in large countries, or languages which are spoken in many countries, are growing rapidly. But this is not the case for smaller countries or less popular languages. Think, for example, of the many European countries with less than 10 million inhabitants and their own local language.

2016 international #SEO prediction by @andrealpar: Business will invest in content, prioritizing development by language populace.
Click To Tweet

Also think of the varying search terms and topics. Where it makes sense to invest a lot in content in, for example, English, Spanish or German, it makes less sense to do so in Italian or Dutch, for example, and even less in Serbian, Danish or Swedish.

You have to then also find and adapt how you measure SEO success or ROI on content, etc. The aftermath coming out of this development has a massive strategic impact. For multiregional and multinational companies and the agencies that they work with, this is a huge and massively growing driver of the complexity of SEO.

Thank you all for sharing your predictions with us here. If you reading have predictions, comment away. We’ll be checking back with our assembled experts through the year to see how their predictions stand.

Liked this post? Subscribe for updates!

The post 43 Reasons SEOs Can’t Fear Change: 2016 Digital Marketing Predictions appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Standout SEO Presentations of 2015

If TIME Magazine were to do an issue on the SEO industry in 2015, the table of contents would look like this.

2015 SEO Story of the Year: Mobilegeddon

Runner Up: More Mobile – App Deep Linking and Indexing

Runner Up: The Penguin that Never Came

Runner Up: RankBrain AI

15-Minutes-of-Famers in 2015: Millennials are the moment’s hottest market segment, but it’s an attention to audience that has staying power

We don’t publish TIME Magazine, but on the BCI blog, we do publish the SEO industry’s major news stories and marketing practices. A mobile-focused marketing perspective, Google’s MIA Penguin and link removal practices, and a search engine ranking algorithm that learns — these are the topics covered on today’s Virtual Conference SEO track.

First, a keynote to set the stage.

The Future of Search

Duane Forrester is a futurist. A futurist studies predictions and possibilities about the future of life and society. Forrester’s Pubcon Las Vegas keynote in October was one to watch. In it, the Microsoft search insider draws a roadmap for search, technology, and the digital marketing industry. Here are the looming landmarks.

• Millennials, baby. They’ve got spending power. They’re uber connected. They’re the Internet’s reigning kings. Does your business cater to them? (Step 1: Figure out what that even means for your business.)
• Mobile’s the word. The majority of web traffic is mobile, you know. Starbucks is a shining example of a brand that’s adapted to mobile. In the U.S., 11 percent of Starbucks transactions (order, pay, tip, get rewards, locate stores) happen with the company’s mobile app. Expect to see mobile payment becoming the norm in years to come; Apple Pay and other secure, phone-conducted commerce apps are about to blow up. Another growth area of mobile commerce is the rise in affinity programs. Starbucks turned being their customer into a community experience.
• Self-driving cars arise. What would you do if your commute time became productive time? But don’t expect to get that found time for free. Self-driving cars are also vehicles for captive audience advertising.
• Machine learning is real. Computer processing resources have finally reached the level of efficiency needed to let the computers learn for themselves at large scale. We’re seeing machine learning at work in applications that predict winners of political races and sporting competitions, and software that recognizes faces along with age and gender. Search engines are putting machine learning to work to improve the quality of ranking algorithms, as we learned later this year when Google confirmed the existence of RankBrain; more on that below.
• Digital butlers, aka agents, at your service. Here is the future of search. Search wants to bridge user intent with the experiences that the world (businesses, organizations, communities, governments) has to offer. A digital agent will do your bidding and proactively find ways to satisfy your tastes and preferences. Duane’s real-world examples are included in the full presentation liveblog.
• Your data is showing. Everyone reading is leaking data at a startling rate. Data is a commodity that is collected. Duane calls data the new oil.

Read our liveblog coverage of Duane Forrester’s Pubcon Keynote on the Future of Search to look closely at each of these revolutionary stops on the search road map.

Since this keynote, Duane was announced as the new VP of organic search operations at BCI. If you want to work with the former Bing search industry spokesperson, partner with the digital marketing agency dream team.

Next, the 2015 search marketing conference sessions get into the nitty gritty.

Mobile SEO Everything

April 21, 2015, the infamous Mobilegeddon, was the date felt round the SEO world. It was the date that Google announced would officially usher in mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. Five months later, at SMX East, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes shared “3 Things Google Wants You to Know about Making Websites Mobile Friendly.” Here he explains the properties of a web page that Google uses to judge mobile-friendliness. He talks about app indexing and how to get your app to show up in Google SERPs. And he explains the significance of predictive search app Google Now and its key characteristics: voice search and the tap-to-search feature Now on Tap.

In this same session, Stoney deGeyter does a deep dive into mobile SEO, from mobile configuration to common mobile website mistakes. Marcus Tober wraps up the session by sharing a study of mobile ranking factors.

Read it all in our liveblog coverage of Getting Mobile Friendly to Survive the Next Mobilegeddon.

Mobile apps are a big piece of the conversation around mobile SEO and mobile marketing. On this topic, you’ll want to review presentations by Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Mariya Moeva, Emily Grossman and Igal Stolpner. Moeva overviews Google’s documentation on how to get your mobile app (both Android and iOS apps) in the search engine’s index. Grossman builds on Moeva’s recommendations with tips for setting up your domain, app and server for Google indexing. Stolpner provides context for the app indexing conversation with case studies and stats that show how app indexing can benefit a business.

Read all these presentations in our liveblog coverage of SMX East’s Beyond the Web: Why App Deep Linking Is the Next Big Thing.

Not to be overlooked in a mobile SEO and marketing conversation, Apple is a big player with a different set of optimization rules from Google’s. Grossman is an Apple search and iOS app specialist, who shares her tips for optimizing brand visibility on Apple’s technology stack in the SMX East session How Apple’s Changing Up Search: From Siri to Safari to Spotlight. With 3,000 iPhone sales a minute, be sure not to pass over Apple opportunities.

Link Building Tactics in the Penguin Age

The Google Penguin update that was highly anticipated but never came in 2015 was a major SEO story. The Penguin update expected to pardon reformed link spammers is still ahead, while SEOs continue to do link clean-up while sharing link audit best practices with others. Megan Geiss outlines the link removal process. Sha Menz promotes the penalty recovery power of the Google disavow file. And Eric Enge gives marketers a link building attitude adjustment with content marketing inspiration.

Read all the expert’s link building and clean up tips in our liveblog coverage of SMX East’s Link Building, Auditing and Removal.

SEO in the Machine Learning Environment

2015 was the year for AI IRL. Machine learning, a process where a computer teaches itself, is a type of artificial intelligence. And, Google says it uses a machine learning ranking algorithm called RankBrain. So yes, the future has arrived. What does Google’s AI algorithm mean for search engine optimizers? Two pertinent points to note from the year’s liveblog coverage …

First, you must account for and optimize for engagement ranking factors. In Rand Fishkin’s Pubcon keynote, we read that there are the traditional SEO optimization factors we have always accounted for: ranking inputs such as keyword targeting, quality and uniqueness, crawl/bot friendliness, snippet optimization, and UX/multi-device optimization. Additionally, machine learning demands that SEOs optimize for searcher outputs such as CTR, long-clicks, content gap fulfillment, amplification and loyalty, and task completion success.

Get all the information in our liveblog coverage of SEO in a Two Algorithm World.

Second, keyword research and keyword optimization have evolved. Craig Paddock describes the shift from a keyword focus to a content and topic-oriented research mindset. He shares lots of tools and research starting points. Ash Nallawalla gives content writers a spreadsheet for documenting keyword competitor research from which you can select your organization’s winning phrases. Bruce Clay adapts the traditional SEO keyword research and optimization process to today’s semantic search analysis and voice search query behavior.

Read it all in our liveblog post of the Pubcon session Keywords and Keyword Research.

Bonus SEO Topics: Business Operations and Q&A

Worth mentioning are a couple sessions that don’t fit cleanly into our above story arc but that you might find an insightful read.

If you’ve ever wondered how your SEO operation might scale, read about how to grow a successful SEO agency from the Pubcon coverage of Building an SEO/SEM Agency.

The always popular AMA (ask me anything) style session, when SEOs can ask search engine reps their pesky optimization questions, hits many topics including the Knowledge Graph, AJAX and JavaScript crawling, social signals as ranking factors, content syndication best practices, HTTPS, and authorship markup. Read Gary Illyes’s and Duane Forrester’s thoughts on these topics and more in liveblog coverage of the SMX East session Meet the Search Engines.

The post SEO in 2015: A Retrospective for the Introspective – Virtual Conference Recap appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

The concept of mobile friendliness covers increasingly advanced digital media territory:

• Mobile apps: Do you have a mobile app? Is it indexable by Google? Are you taking advantage of Google’s stated ways of getting ranking boosts for your app?
• Mobile conversions and personas: Is mobile traffic failing to convert? That’s to be expected if mobile personas, mobile-specific conversions and calls to action haven’t been identified. Mobile visitors are not the same as desktop visitors, after all.
• Mobile advertising: Are you utilizing mobile search PPC features like call extensions and call-only campaigns?

At the two biggest search-industry conferences this fall, SMX East in New York and Pubcon Las Vegas, search engine reps and renowned speakers covered the full range of Internet marketing topics, especially mobile issues — everything from Google’s mobile-focused features to app indexing to mobile ads. We published 46 sessions and keynotes from these conferences on the BCI blog. Here I’ve distilled most important news and advice that was shared related to mobile.

App Indexing Is Essential

App usage is growing, and Google is serving app content in search results. In the SMX session “Beyond the Web: Why App Deep Linking Is the Next Big Thing,” Webmaster Trends Analyst Mariya Moeva explained that Google currently supports deep app links for signed in and signed out users on Android. In other words, when people do a search on an Android smartphone or iPhone, they can see an install button for an app in the results. Read the developer documentation for Android app deep link indexing and the just-released developer details for indexing iOS app deep links.

Developers should implement app deep linking and get their apps indexed so they’ll show up in Google-powered searches. Session co-speaker Emily Grossman called app deep linking “the next big thing” and gave a list of in-depth recommendations and resource links to help people go from an app store model to a search engine model. See the liveblog for details.

Some tips for implementing app deep linking:

• Use http instead of a custom scheme.
• Associate your website with your app (in Google Search or Developer Console).
• Publish your deep links with the app-indexing API and get a ranking boost.
• Fetch as Google for Apps lets you test changes to your app before you push it live to Google Play.

Note for SEOs: In a recent Google Office-Hours Hangout focused on app indexing, Google reps Mariya Moeva and John Mueller clarified that there’s no concern over duplicate content if you have an app or a mobile site delivering similar content as your website; the search engine can tell the difference.

Mobile Personas

Advertisers need a mobile strategy. In “Social and Mobile PR Secrets” at Pubcon, Lisa Buyer said that social advertising is predicted to grow to $35.98 billion by 2017. While the audience is there, you’re not alone if you’re finding conversions are much lower from mobile traffic. If that’s the case, the problem is likely you, not the users.

Mobile visitors have their own unique needs and motivations. To capture their attention, it’s crucial to understand the mobile audience and do mobile persona research.

Mobile customers fall into four basic categories, according to Aaron Levy in the SMX session “Winning at Mobile PPC”:

• Bored: Mostly professionals, either commuting or not wanting to talk to people. Tend to be impulsive.
• Research: Often parents, these are busy people filling a few minutes of time. Tend to be thoughtful before buying and usually convert on other devices, not on their phone.
• Need: People with only a phone to access the Internet, often low income. Tend to respond to promises of convenience.
• Desperate: These people forgot something and need it right away. Tend to be rich enough to buy the first thing they find.

For each type of audience, Levy recommended ways to tailor mobile ads. Also in this session, co-presenter Amy Bishop explained how to effectively target local searchers by their location, and John Busby showed how to use Google’s PPC ad formats that support phone calls, enhanced campaigns and call-only campaigns.

Mobile Advertising

Along with Google’s mobile-friendly advertising options described above, some paid search-focused sessions looked at the unique challenges of mobile advertising, including the trouble with social media referrer data.

In the Pubcon session “Social Media in a Mobile World,” social media managers Cynthia Johnson and Kendall Bird presented many tips for social media marketers. Though ROI from social media is difficult to assess, social media efforts can be tracked using a combination of Google Analytics (such as the Social report under Acquisition) and the data that each network natively provides. Build a dashboard that monitors whatever KPIs are important to your business, which differ between social media platforms, and you’ll have a way to showcase economic value to stakeholders.

Be aware, however, of dark social media, which refers to the sizable chunk of direct traffic that you can’t track in analytics (for example, users clicking a link from Instagram). Speakers Johnson and Bird recommended URL building as the best way to recapture those hidden (dark) metrics.

Google AdSense came into the spotlight when two Googlers (Richard Zippel and John Brown) hosted a Q&A style Pubcon keynote. Takeaways for advertisers were:

• Ad blockers are a big concern for Google. They’re looking into what they can do to help advertisers.
• Faster is better with mobile, but ads can slow down a page’s loading. Google’s brand-new Accelerated Mobile Pages tool can help publishers speed up a website. Use this and avoid bogging down pages with too many ads.
• Mobile is necessary, so figure out your best mix of products (Google has products for videos, AdX, etc.) and platforms (iOS, Android, wearables, etc.).

Think Mobile First — Google Does

If you do nothing else, forget about mobile being a subset of the Internet. With mobile searches exceeding desktop searches, Google now focuses exclusively on mobile — that’s what Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes reported in the “Getting Mobile Friendly to Survive the Next Mobilegeddon” session at SMX East.

Here are three ways Illyes advised webmasters to stay mobile-friendly (watch video):

• Make content legible and usable on mobile devices. Illyes said Googlebot looks at “5 or so” properties of a page to see whether they appear correctly.
• Don’t disallow resources (such as CSS, JavaScript or image files). You don’t want to block Google from seeing the site as mobile-friendly — a misunderstanding that would hurt your search rankings.
• Focus on giving the user a great experience on your website and “everything else will follow.”

SEOs and webmasters should follow suit by making mobile their primary framework for thinking of online visitors.

The post Latest on Mobile: Essential Takeaways for Marketers from SMX East & Pubcon appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Speakers:

• Mariya Moeva, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google (+Mariya Moeva)
• Emily Grossman, Mobile Marketing Specialist, MobileMoxie (@goutaste)
• Igal Stolpner, Head of Growth & Marketing, Investing.com (@igalst)

Mariya Moeva: Get Your App Indexed with This One Weird Trick!

Here she’ll cover app indexing best practices. She says it will be practical, specific advice for people with apps.

Where are we with apps? The progress with app indexing is similar to where websites were in 1999. There are no set standards with apps as we have today, like with HTML and CSS, and we’re learning as we go. Google currently supports deep app links for signed in and signed out users on Android. Soon (in October, says Moeva) they will support iOS 9 universal links, and then you’ll see app deep linking in Google Search for iPhones in Safari, as well.

Google has indexed more than 50 billion app links, and the number is growing every day. Twenty-five percent of searches on Android return app deep links.

Visit g.co/appindexingstudies to see featured case studies. You can read these to ask yourself: does this makes sense to you? Have some accurate KPIs that you can measure so you can see if you’re getting what you want out of it.

Tips for Implementation

• Use http scheme instead of a custom scheme.
• Associate your site with your app. You can do this from either Search Console or Developer Console.
• Publish your deep links. She recommends using the app indexing API to do this. Send a title and description of the page and Google maps it on their end. It’s a simpler implementation and comes with a ranking boost.

Monitor What’s Going On

Add your app to Google Search Console. You can see clicks and impressions for your content, as well as queries. You can also be part of their beta test by going here: g.co/SearchConsoleTester.

Check for Errors

• Fetch as Google for Apps. See how your app looks to the Google crawler.
• You will be able to test changes to your app without pushing it live to Google Play.
• Fetch as Google for API information:

Google updated its infrastructure so that it can do deep linking for iOS. A year from now, she hopes for a shared standard that we can talk about that gets app content in front of users in the same way we have for websites.

Note: Here’s where you can find Google’s documentation on app indexing: https://developers.google.com/app-indexing/

Emily Grossman: App Store Model Versus Search Engine Model

The app store model relates to meta data providing a preview of the type of content that’s in the app. Until recently, Google wasn’t able to get inside of apps to understand what’s inside. That’s a problem if you’re Google and your goal is to index all the world’s data.

Now rather than an app store model, we’re looking at a search engine model powered by deep linking. A specific URL is assigned to an app screen in either of these ways.

• HTTP scheme
• Android API

Google App Indexing

Grossman shows the headline of an article she co-authored on Search Engine Land that explains how marketers can promote their app content in Google Search.

Android

If you use custom scheme URLs, you have to do web markup. Here’s the deep link URL format:

Sync your URLs with Google Play Developer Console or Search Console.

iOS

iOS was added to the developer documentation as of last night. This is very different documentation from any documentation Google’s released before.

Requirements for app indexing to support universal links in iOS:

• A registered domain
• SSL access to your domain
• Ability to upload a JSON file to your domain

Get your app ready:

• Modify your application delegate.
• Adopt an entitlement in Xcode that lists each domain associated with your app.

Get your server ready:

• Create an apple-app-site-association file for each associated domain with the content your app supports and host it at the root level.
• Association file must be hosted on an HTTPS domain.
• CocoaPods is the dependency layer that allows for functionality between the app and search. iOS 9 gets rid of the need for this, but CocoaPods syncing is still required:

[Editor’s note: View the slide deck embedded above for more of the technical details.]

Apple Search

Apple is invested in getting users into apps because Apple’s made $9 billion on the App Store. Apple Search works with a public and private index. Results in Apple Search pull from both.

With NSUserActivity, Google won’t put content in the public index just because you say it’s public. They’ll start it in the private index and test it until they feel confident about adding it to the public index. Web Markup is the only option for directly getting it into the public index.

Using the App Search API Validation Tool, you’ll find out how Apple sees your app and how it will show up in search results.

Igal Stolpner: App Indexing Case Studies and Why You Should Invest in Deep Linking Too

Stolpner says he just now learned from Moeva that you can soon test an SDK (software development kit) before going live, and that’s a very big thing.

Apps and app indexing aren’t for everyone. Apps do a better job for his industry (finance) because:

• Native apps are faster.
• Apps offer more technology and features (such as camera, GPS, push notifications, rotation).
• Data can be collected.
• The brand is one click away.

Apps vs. Mobile Site

They offer the same content on both apps and their mobile site. They discovered the apps brought more pages per session and more monthly visits per user.

Since implementing apps in early 2014, there’s been a drop in the number of non-daily users from 15 to 8 percent.

Why aim for app indexing?

• Competition isn’t there yet (be first on the block).
• Increases CTR.
• Brings new installs.
• Improves rankings.
• In Google search results, an indexed app appears with its logo. This grabs attention and increases the CTR by 40 percent.
• Google drives new installs directly from search results. This isn’t at the expense of traffic to the mobile site.

Challenges of Apps:

• Coordinating the work between different teams.
• Apps are released in versions — everything is slower!
• Adjusting the app for Google Search.
• App’s back button.
• First click free experience.
• Slow loading.

Some Results: Android

Users coming to the app from Google Search view 20 percent more screens in a session and spend longer in the app. If a user has the app installed, they’re getting higher rankings.

To Summarize

For their company, app indexing-related projects became top priority.

He suggests that you read the guides carefully. He also notes that the final quarter of 2015 begins tomorrow; invest in deep linking today.

App Deep Linking Q&A

Question for Moeva: Can you explain the ranking boost again?

If you have web content corresponding with an app page, you get a ranking boost.

When you let Google index content using the API, you let Google see what pages of your content users like the most. For those, there’s an additional ranking boost.

Is the ranking boost given regardless, or just for high engagement?

There aren’t many apps using the API now, and those that are are all high quality, high engagement. As more apps join, they’ll tune and adjust.

Search Console shows you everything that happened before a click and the click. Analytics is everything after the click. Together you see the full picture.

The post Beyond The Web: Why App Deep Linking Is The Next Big Thing appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

If you have an app or are developing an app, then app indexation and deep linking are things you definitely need to be paying attention to. Basically, Google wants to treat your app like a website. It wants to crawl it and index it so that search results can return specific pages from an app in mobile searches. That ability to return specific pages within an app? That’s called deep linking.

This article is for those just dipping their toes into app indexation. Read on for a breakdown of what app indexing and deep linking actually are, as well as helpful examples of deep linking in action (and how they will affect your SEO). You’ll also learn basic requirements for Android and iOS setup.

First, Some Definitions: What are App Indexing and Deep Linking?

What is Deep Linking?

Deep linking, in a general sense, involves linking to specific content within a website or app, rather than to the homepage. Here we’re talking in particular about getting specific elements of an app to show up in search results on a mobile device, allowing users to open an app directly from a search results page. Note: Users will only see this prompt if they have the particular app installed.

What Is App Indexing?

App indexing is the result of getting your app in Google’s index to enable deep linking. By allowing Google to index pages within your app, features (or promotions) within the app can begin showing up in users’ mobile searches, driving visits (and hopefully conversions) to the app.

Deep Linking in Action

Let’s say you search for “Jurassic World” on a mobile device, and you’re offered IMDB’s Jurassic World page rather than the IMDB homepage — this is deep linking in action. You, as the user, have the IMDB app installed on your smartphone, so you’re pleased to find among the top results the page for “Jurassic World” in your app, as well as a listing on IMDB.com directly.

Furthermore, if you wanted to read some reviews for the movie, you might type in “Jurassic World reviews” in a mobile search.

This result doesn’t give you the option to open the reviews in the mobile app. This would be a great opportunity to drive you to the app rather than the website, but that option simply doesn’t exist. Now, what if IMDB’s reviews page wasn’t ranking on the first page? Using deep linking in this instance would be a great way for IMDB to keep driving people back to the IMDB app, since Google is giving favor to apps that users have installed.

Next Steps: Getting Your App Indexed

To begin with, there are general setup requirements for Android and iOS:

Android Setup Requirements

1. Must be developed with minSdkVersion 17 or lower.
2. Only available on searches using Google app version 2.8 or higher, and Chrome for Android 4.1 or higher.
3. Users must be signed in for deep linking to work.

iOS Setup Requirements

1. Developed on a base SDK of iOS8.
2. Only available on searches using Google app version 5.3 or higher, and Chrome for iOS.
3. Users must be signed in for deep linking to work.

From there, Google offers specific guides for setting up Android apps and iOS apps for indexing. It is a technical process, but investing the time and effort can drive more users into your app and increase your relevance and visibility.

Have a specific question about app indexing and deep linking or mobile seo in general? Ask us in the comments! We’re always here to help.

Related blog posts:

• SMX West (2015) – Deep Linking and Development
• SMX East (2015) – Why App Deep Linking is the Next Big Thing

The post Apps 101: Deep Linking, App Indexing, and Why They Matter appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..