Our Blog

Google Leads the Push for Mobile-Friendly Sites

When something changes on the internet, there is usually a familiar name leading the charge, facilitating the movement, or assisting in the process. That name is almost always Google. When it comes to the push for mobile-friendly websites, it should come as no surprise that Google has decided to lend a helping hand. Google Developers and Mobile-Friendly Sites Google understands that internet usage is becoming increasingly interconnected with mobile devices. While desktops…

Google’s New “Non-Mobile Friendly” Icon: A Modern Scarlet Letter

Building upon our blog post from last week, back in February 2014, estimates indicated that mobile traffic was responsible for up to 30% of site visits and 15% of purchases. Fast forward four months later and mobile devices are now responsible for more than 50% of site visits, according to comScore. Although the demand for mobile-friendly sites has been underway for quite some time, Google gave it a marked shove when new…

Google Testing Icons to Highlight Mobile-Friendly and Unfriendly Sites

Today, people are using phones more and computers less when it comes to accessing the internet. Unfortunately for some websites, this could mean a serious downgrade in the search rankings. Google is currently testing icons that alert users to “unfriendly” websites – sites that do not load correctly, or at all, on mobile devices. Google’s icons will alert users to unfriendly sites via a picture of a smartphone with a slash through…

Panda 4.1: Is Your Website Affected?

Ranked 27th in a long line of updates, Panda 4.1 rolled out at the end of September, inciting fear in some SEOs and inspiring praise from others. Affecting 3-5% of search engine queries, Google slowly rolled out Panda 4.1 over a period of weeks. Though some webmasters are picking up the broken pieces of their SEO strategy, small and medium-sized websites stocked with useful content are beginning to receive well-deserved visibility. Panda…

A Brief Update on Penguin Progress-What Does the Future Hold for Rankings?

Almost a year ago, Google implemented a new round of algorithm updates negatively impacting a large portion of their users. The update brought unwanted search engine demise that couldn’t be fixed by typical SEO practices for many businesses. Even with meticulously planned links and content, the normal fixes didn’t help these companies fight the slow-to-refresh Penguin 2.1. Good News for the Weary! There is no guarantee of precisely when Google plans to…

From Panda to Pigeon, Why is Google Changing Their Algorithms?

Google likes being secretive. In an internet world dominated by SEO, rankings, and complicated algorithms, users don’t like change happening without their knowledge. Google has now played this trick not once, but twice. The Mighty Pigeon Although Google never officially named this update, groups on the web decided to nickname the algorithm update Pigeon when they started experiencing changes at the end of July 2014. The change primarily focuses on local searches.…

Google Wants to Find your Business

Businesses, no matter the size, have been looking for ways to get themselves on the map for decades. In keeping up with the latest news in the world of online marketing, SteerPoint has found that one of the world’s largest internet search engines, Google, has taken steps to help make that easier. Last week, Google announced an upgrade to its Google+ interface for businesses. The new service, called Google My Business, is…

How Google’s Panda 4.0 May (or May Not) Affect You

We all know Google has openly said it would stop informing us about Panda updates, but the latest one is a little different. For those who aren’t tech heads, Panda updates generally happen at least once a month, but these are data refreshes. Usually, the changes that occur over refreshes are minimal and don’t affect overall rankings much, so there’s really no need for a major announcement. Panda 4.0 is different. It’s…

Google’s Getting Ready to Twitch

It’s been a crazy week for acquisitions. Last week, we were reading about Apple acquiring the headphone giant, Beats, and this week seems to be playing out with more of the same. AT&T officially announced that it’s going to buy DirecTV, and the newest on the bandwagon is Google/YouTube’s plan to buy Twitch. If you haven’t heard of Twitch, chances are you aren’t a gamer. Twitch is a social media platform for…

The Difficulties of Duplicate Content

For companies trying to get viewers to see their posts, press releases, and advertisements, there are several factors and difficulties that must be taken into consideration. One of the most prevalent is the issue of duplicate content. Duplicate content is, just as it sounds, multiple postings of identical content in different places across the web. Where this becomes a problem is when someone searches for a portion of that content. Due to…

Volusion’s Penguin Penalty

You might not have heard about Volusion’s run in with Google Penguin 2.1, this is primarily because the mega e-commerce site has a powerful PR team and knows how to work Google search results. However, a study from Link Research Tools provides a very nuanced look into what happened to cause Volusion to essentially disappear from SERPs due to Penguin. While Volusion is a powerhouse brand that was able to bounce back,…

4 Best Practices for Adapting to Google Hummingbird

Back in September, Google announced the debut of Hummingbird, an algorithm update that was primarily focused on semantic search and understanding natural language. This update forced marketers and SEOs to begin reinventing their strategies in order to cope with a search engine that is less focused on keywords and more focused on phrases and concepts. For the last several months, marketers have been working frantically to figure out how to approach the…