September 2015 | The Web Authority

September 30, 2015September 25, 2015

Is It Time to Go Build Your Responsive Website?

Confused senior man — Don’t Make a Big Mistake, Do Your Research!

Wow, Monday’s blog post was a bombshell! With AdWords saying that the use of DudaMobile redirect scripted sites being an advertising URL policy violation, sites that did not embrace the mobile sphere in April will now have to embrace going mobile in order to appear in AdWords ads. At least for now, until Google makes a decision on the redirect policy used by many.

So, what can you do if your website files now need to reside on your own server and you cannot utilize a redirect script for mobile?

Move your website design to WordPress and use a mobile responsive website template.
Consider doing away with your webhost and website files and move to a website template building service like WIX, Weebly, or even Duda.com. The tradeoff is that although you get a mobile version site, your regular website now goes away. Plus what you build there is not transportable to a new host.

Notice how either option is a rebuild/ redesign. There just isn’t a good quick fix to just create a mobile site and keep your old site too.

However here is one way to build a single mobile page with phone, directions and a short amount of content and link to visit your main site just for mobile complete with a mobile sensing script: http://buildinternet.com/2011/01/add-a-mobile-landing-page-to-your-site/ .

It is not glamorous, but gets your phone, directions and brief info into a mobile friendly format. For those AdWords advertisers that need to get rid of DudaMobile redirects, this may be a fast workaround until they have the budget to build a fully responsive website.

Remember, not embracing responsive at this point may not only mean that you cannot advertise on AdWords, but that you may have an organic penalty later too. I say it is simply time to move to a responsive design.

Want more information about our responsive website design services? Find out more here: http://www.mccordweb.com/web-design/index.php.

September 28, 2015September 25, 2015

AdWords Implies that Ads Will Be Stopped for DudaMobile Sites

Google Partner Badge — McCord Web Services is one of the few Google Partners in the Fredericksburg, Virginia area.

I just got of the phone on Friday with Dan, an Account URL Migration Specialist, for Google AdWords and wrote this post for Monday delivery.

Dan told me that Google will be in the “very near future” marking as disapproved, ads for any websites that have the DudaMobile script on their site. He said that there is talk that Google may allow sites that use DudaMobile to continue to show ads using Google AdWords but just as easily Google may decide not to do so.

Here’s the issue from Google’s viewpoint. If someone clicks your ad and goes to your website and the URL that is delivered to them is not your domain but rather a redirect to a DudaMobile site or for that matter even a DudaMobile site with a m.domain setting Google will be considering this redirection an advertising policy violation. Even if in your AdWords control panel the destination and display URL are both your domain.

You will now need to have your mobile site files actually housed at your domain or in a subdomain on your hosting server. The files have to reside where your main website is located.

Ouch! That is going to hurt many, many advertisers! What Dan goes on to say is that the ads will be disabled as part of a URL violation and will not be able to be turned back on except by either removing the DudaMobile redirect script from your entire website – rendering your website not mobile-friendly – which has its own serious organic impact, or quick get a mobile responsive website in place to stay an AdWords advertiser.

I hope that Google will reconsider as DudaMobile is used by many small businesses to buy time to not have to invest in a new responsive website especially where mobile maybe only 20% of their overall site traffic.

September 23, 2015September 18, 2015

Bing Places – Local Business Listings – How To Guide

Of course you’ve listed your business on Google, but have you grabbed your Bing Places account? With Windows 10 and more Bing integration with this new platform, I am finding my own self on Bing more. So don’t forget you want your own business to be found easier and faster on Bing too as they get more traffic.

Grab Your Listing

First make sure you have a Microsoft ID for your business, then visit Bing Places online at https://www.bingplaces.com/ then go to the site and login and enter in your business phone number. Bing will auto populate a form with what it knows about your business. You can then either claim the listing or create a new one.

If your old address shows, go ahead and claim it as you have to claim and verify by phone before you can change to your new address.

Update Your Listing

Then work your way through the five or so screens to add information about your business. You’ll be asked to choose one of Bing’s categories for your business. This is not the time to get creative, you’ve got to choose one of theirs. Add pictures to your listing, but they have to be bigger than 468 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall.

Verify Your Listing by Snail Mail

To assure Bing that you are who you say you are, you will for the first time need to verify your listing by snail mail. Bing will regular mail you a postcard with a PIN. It will typically arrive in less than one week.

There’s No Optimization

Really there is nothing more you can do for your listing. Don’t get fooled into buying any optimization services. There is simply nothing else that can be added to your listing to boost performance.

Do I think it is important to claim your listing – absolutely! Better to provide the “right” information as the business owner than for Bing to guess about your business hours and possibly even use the wrong phone number.

September 21, 2015September 18, 2015

No Comments on Your Blog What Will Google Do?

If your blog does not have comments, will you take a hit from Google in regards to organic search placement? I’ve done a little bit of research on this topic and feel that instead of worrying about comments or lack of comments, it is more important to consider your blog post bounce rate.

People are busy. Even I don’t routinely comment on blogs I read, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t find reading them to be of no value. Actually I spend 30 minutes every day reading industry blogs and news.

What I feel Google is considering more important than the number of comments is engagement and stickiness. If your blog has no comments, but people are there longer than 5 seconds and dig deeper into your content and your bounce rate is under 70% for a blog post, you most likely are not in trouble with Google.

The types of blogs that get punished for poor performance are those that are either built for advertising links, are scraping content from other resources, or have one and two line blog posts.

If you are taking time to write a thoughtful blog on a topic that matches your main authority – even without blog comments your website will still be consider meaningful to Google. Just take a look at the search results to know this is true as Google is showing even comment-less blog posts in their index.

What Google can monitor more closely than the number of comments back on your own site is click through and bounce rate – right from the Google.com page.

So if you don’t have comments on your blog, not to worry. Some of the biggest sites in the industry (like Copyblogger) have actually turned off commenting.

If you need to get blogging and have content worth reading, I invite you to check out our blog writing services and pricing.