Basic Digital Marketing
There’s a never-ending battle in app development between fast speeds and quality. When developing mobile apps, the longer development cycles can lead to more problems for both developers overseeing it and the entrepreneurs behind it all.
The race to being the first to be released can unfortunately lead to compromises. The rewards of being the first are very tempting, with dreams of instant success and hundreds of thousands of potential users.
No matter if you are an entrepreneur or a developer, every stakeholder can benefit from a better app development timeline. Here are a few simple tricks to keep in mind if you’re looking to develop and roll out a mobile app without an absurdly long app development cycle.
Low Fidelity Wireframes can be used as a Blueprint
Low fidelity wireframes can be used in the mapping of an app. They’ll save you time before you ever have to begin building your mobile app. These abstract representations of your app are admittedly rough but these wireframes will provide programmers direction on a number of things such as the functionality and user interface aesthetic.
B2B PPC campaigns are much more complicated than a PPC campaign targeting consumers. For a B2B PPC campaign, the sales cycle is much shorter and the sales funnel is actually quite different.
There may be multiple decision makers you need to speak to in a B2B sale before closing the deal. A recent report published by Salesforce identified the average B2B sales cycle as being 84 days long though admittedly, this number can vary wildly. Also, there’s a greater need for multiple messaging points across such a long, extended cycle.
When building your B2B PPC campaign, here are four strategies that have worked. Though a successful B2B PPC campaign can win big, there’s more opportunity to lose the decision maker along the way. Be smart and understand the importance of relevant, appropriate messaging that is changeable depending on where a decision maker is in the sales funnel.
Branded Keywords for Prospects
After you have drawn in the customer’s eye, they are likely to perform at least some research prior to buying. Comparing features and price points between you and others, to do that, they’ll be using branded keywords to find information on searches.
Data-Driven Attribution on Google AdWords
Data-driven attribution uses algorithms to calculate and assign partial credit to different touch points. Though Google will highly recommend that you take this specific algorithm as fact, volume requirements can be high to make them work. Businesses that don’t meet the threshold are not going to find much use necessarily out of this. There are alternatives however, including time-decay attribution and position-based. Be sure to explore these in some detail. An attribution model can also provide value in comparing conversion journeys.
Snapchat photo marketing campaigns have just become slightly more advanced, allowing brands to not only target by location as they’ve been able to do in the past but also to target specific segments of the audience.
This new Snapchat tool is being called ‘audience filters’. Instead of just marketing towards a location, brands are now able to target audience based on interests, age, gender, time of day, and other criteria.
This marks a major shift in Snapchat’s willingness to bring in more advertisers. In the past, location marketing on the app was seen as the height of what one could accomplish. Now that ads can be directed towards specific users, there is the potential to maximize the effectiveness of such campaigns.
Snapchat has already reached out to select advertising agencies, seeking to work with them on new ways to maximize the potential of the platform. Snapchat has also been eager to work with brands, help them run campaigns, and ultimately to refine its targeting capabilities.
Currently, filters are one of Snapchat’s most used features with more than 3 billion uses per day. There are already a wide variety to choose from and the collection is always growing. The model has been proven as a very attractive advertising mechanism for brands.
How to successfully build relationships with influencers in your space is easy if you follow these three steps and abide by the law of averages.
Chances are by approaching some influencers, you will find one or two who will be interested in providing some assistance. Though the end-game is to boost your content, keep in mind that influencers are people to so you need to bring something of value to them to get them interested. This is why we always advise to choose the most relevant influencers to your brand. If you’re looking for how to tap into the massive fan bases of influencers in your category, here is where we suggest you start.
Find who is Sharing the most Popular Content in your Niche
The influencers sharing the most popular content in your category of the marketplace are who you want to seek out. These influencers will be more likely to share similar content when it is put in front of them.
Identify those who have sizeable followings relevant to your brand. Provide them relevant high-quality content that you can see their followings wanting to consume. There are many tools on the market who can show you the most shared content and that can identify the influencers sharing this content.
Inexperienced website builders run into a range of preventable SEO issues when searching ways to optimize their pages. URL redirects evidently become a major problem that many website managers may not even be aware of.
Configured when URLs are modified or when content is removed, URL redirects are usually put in as people look to protect their SEO performance. For example, when old URLs in Google’s index reach a 404, all equity in a link is lost. The easy nature of re-directing an old, poorly constructed URL to a redirected, semantic URL makes it a useful tool.
‘Broken redirects’ however are when redirects produce errors and/or when they are redirecting to the wrong place. They can be very difficult to detect however it’s something that can be easily prevented. Websites that leave broken redirects ongoing, they see external links coming into their page no longer count towards their page authority and their search engine rank drops instantly. This damage does not only apply to that single page but also cascades across the whole site.
The first thing to do is to realize how precious links really are. As hard as it is to get links, keeping them should also be made a high priority. How one finds broken links is a little troublesome. After all, a typical audit tool will only examine on-site URLs and will not examine old ones. In addition, old URLs are quickly eliminated from Google’s index so you won’t see no search traffic coming there. The only way to find broken re-directs is to be actively testing them. That’s the difficult truth.
Marketing experts are using holiday email marketing to build stronger sales, move strategic inventory, and to meet shipping deadlines. These 7 holiday email marketing tips are designed to help in peak season accomplish those three things. Holiday email marketing is the biggest campaign all year. Knowing where to focus your efforts can help save on time and cost. Read ahead!
Plan Way Ahead of Time
Less than 21 percent of marketers plan for the holiday email marketing season more than three months in advance. It’s a big mistake that many marketers make when they don’t plan for the busiest time of year months ahead of time. By putting in the effort to plan, it gives you some time to get the right email look, strategy, and dates all set up. Execute your campaigns better by knowing the creative, production, and execution plan weeks before you ever need to deploy.
Use Interactive Elements
When a consumer receives your email, it should be exciting. Tastefully using interactive elements such as GIFs can help add interest to messages. It’s all about creating excitement. If big, bright GIFs are not your style, innovating your message with a slider, accordion, menu, flip effect, or something else can be equally satisfying.
Keep a Customer-Centric Mindset
Many marketers also make the mistake of sending out more emails during the holidays and not personalizing any of its messages to the actual human beings on the other end of communication. Develop a customer-centric approach and learn what the consumer expects from you during the holiday season. Don’t just distribute sales copy. Look at how other retail marketing brands are doing it. They build trust in the consumer by spreading joy, talking about the holiday experience, and communicating something more meaningful than general sales copy.
Consumer time spent on digital media has stabilized in growth and the distribution of a mobile user’s time has seemingly shifted.
A recent report by Verto Analytics shares how time spent on social media apps has decreased by a small amount while time spent on mobile game apps has remained flat, news and weather apps are losing engagement, and entertainment apps such as Netflix, shopping apps, and lifestyle apps have all gained in engagement growth.
As the ways in which mobile users spend their time online is continuing to fragment, it’s important to recognize what’s driving this fragmentation – the ability to multi-task and the pattern of app usage.
With regards to multi-tasking, a single smartphone session for anyone typically results in multiple apps being open at the same time. According to the Verto Analytics report, it is estimated that approximately 143 million adults engage with four or more apps in a single session daily. For most smartphone users, the sequence in which these apps are opened start with social media or social-related apps and then leads towards browsers and searches.
There are some notable differences between Android and iPhone users however. Android users typically will open a social media app first. iPhone users are more likely to start with their browser. Though it’s not clear what users are doing specifically on browsers or search apps, it can be assumed that it is either direct navigation to a known site, directed by other apps, or with the intention of searching. Entertainment-based apps such as Netflix and mobile games also play an important role in smartphone use but these are largely excluded from the primary consumer mobile pattern of going from social apps to browsers and search.
Increasing paid search advertising for Christmas and the holidays is not enough. If you want to get the most from your paid search throughout this year’s busy shopping season, there’s more you can do.
Identify key products to focus on for the holidays
Holiday marketing can be very broad in the goals one may intend to accomplish. By noting key strategic products you want to promote for the holiday season, you can set aside irrelevant account details and get down to business on what matters.
Ad extensions direct consumers to the right information
Ad extension products throughout the holiday season will help a brand receive more qualified leads. Sitelink extensions for all holiday pages, visual sitelinks, callout extensions to highlight delivery schedule and services, promotion extensions to identify ongoing deals and discounts, and structured snippet extensions to help get more optimized words into an ad are all valuable.
Build from generic terms
People are more likely to be searching for products to purchase and specifically for ads in the holiday season. By using generic terms with a holiday angle on them, different long-tail combinations may be just what you need. For example, there’s ‘baby’s first Christmas’, ‘Christmas gifts for pets’, and ‘best Christmas gifts for girlfriend’.
Shoppers are hitting up e-commerce sites and social media for Christmas gift ideas in big numbers. The days of window shopping in retail are hardly over but the growing presence of digital is unmistakable.
As consumer behaviour has changed and technology has made it possible to buy products from all over the world, more shoppers are seeking out unique gifts and storefronts on Facebook and Instagram. Subsequently, through app development and advertising technology application, retailers can now advertise entire catalogues of product via social media ads. Everywhere, retailers are putting their focus on social networks for the holidays. Here’s why you should as well.
It’s Easy Shopping
A consumer can sit down comfortably in their bed or on the couch and browse an entire catalogue with no pressure to buy. There’s nothing that can really top that. That said, brick-and-mortar stores can provide a more authentic shopping experience and many brands have noticed that. More today than before, online shopping ads for e-commerce websites are simulating a real shopping experience by allowing consumers browse merchandise and come across different ads like they would appear in store. By incorporating direct call-to-action for shoppers, the impulse to buy is still there and arguably stronger than it may be in certain stores.
By setting up digital storefronts, it plays on consumer interest, can spur brand engagement into purchasing, and provides instant gratification to a shopper without them ever having to leave the seat.
Tinder is the #1 dating app in North America right now, generating impressive growth since it was first launched in 2012. As of 2017 data, there are more than 1.6 billion swipes every day on Tinder. There’s a lot to be learnt for how Tinder has come to dominate this space.
Building a strong product
Growth hacking sites that are successful are usually successful because, among other reasons, they offer an excellent product. In Tinder’s case, the goal during app development was to help users seek out romantic pleasures while avoiding rejection and pain that is typically associated with in-person romantic requests. Remember, consumer behaviour is always driven by emotions. Approach anxiety is a very real phenomenon and it prevents some people from approaching someone they find attractive to see if that person feels the same way. Tinder eliminates the risk and provides only reward.
Instant Gratification-based user experience
Traditional dating sites have long required a person to fill out catalogues of information and enter in paragraphs of a profile in order to find potential partners. Tinder does not do the same. Tinder requires nothing more than a few pictures and makes participation easy.
If Tinder was difficult to sign up for or use, even if you were really excited about the app before, you’re less likely to use it after. Also, it’s image-friendly and specifically tailored to mobile devices. This, again, creates an easy, fun, optimized environment for any new or existing user to jump into.
Many entrepreneurs jump into growing a business under mistaken notions of how sales and marketing are used. To any experienced entrepreneur, they know that what they map out in theory rarely comes true in practice. The realities of growing a business are that it is extremely difficult, and dependent upon many identifiable and unidentifiable variables. To get the most out of marketing and advertising your business, this is how.
Be Smart about your Investment
Time, effort, and money. These things we invest in our businesses. When you catch on to marketing that works for your brand, don’t abandon it. The adage, “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” applies here.
There are many entrepreneurs who catch on to an advertising strategy that works only to end up bored with it and then, they turn away seeking new strategies. Wrong approach! When you find success in advertising, ride it until you have the sales you are satisfied with. Then take some of those revenues, and re-invest and diversify. The key to marketing is in finding a medium that is constantly turning out income for your business. Those revenues are what will allow your business success.
Bad news isn’t easy to deliver. It’s even harder to hear. Advising a client that you will miss a deadline, needing to reprimand a subordinate, and/or providing feedback in a team-based business environment are some examples.
Luckily, there are research-supported ways to deliver bad news that make it a little easier to do so. Here is some insight into how to deliver bad news in a business environment and different things to keep in mind.
Bad news is a threat to survival
Human beings have what is known as a ‘negative bias’. That is, we pay more attention to bad outcomes because in our brains, we see negative news as threatening. This is why some people are not as reasonable as others when hearing bad news. Therefore, any which way you tell them the bad news, it must be done in a way to minimize the blow.
Be positive
When people hear bad news presented with a more positive intonation of voice, they do not react in a defensive manner compared to when being given the same info in a negative manner. For example, instead of ‘criticizing’, try for ‘identifying areas of improvement’. Provide negative news in a way that is not meant as a personal attack on the person hearing it.
Paid search marketing strategies in e-commerce and retail have helped to drive sales in the holiday season. By following data culled together from the last year and a half, key paid search marketing strategies can be mapped out to help provide some direction on where to invest time and effort.
Black Friday continues to gain momentum in paid search
Though Cyber Monday is the big day for online deals, Black Friday is not just a juggernaut reserved for in-store. As a matter of fact, Black Friday paid search sales currently have more momentum in growth than Cyber Monday. The gap between paid search sales continues to narrow between the two dates. In 2015, Cyber Monday’s paid search sales were 102 percent higher than that of Black Friday. In 2016, that number reduced to Cyber Monday being 69 percent higher. Marketers who invest in Black Friday-based paid search can still see decent rewards and, in some spaces, would be recommended to do so.
Google Shopping continues to grow every year
E-commerce sites are well recommended to use Google Shopping as Product Listing Ad (PLA) sales throughout the holiday season have continued to spike every year since 2014. To help support this growth, Google has initiated a number of changes – doubling the size of PLAs on mobile devices in 2015; allowing Yahoo to show Google PLAs on their domain in early 2016; and a roll-out of PLAs on Google image search in the spring of 2016. In the third quarter of 2017, PLA spending is up 37 percent over last year’s numbers. Marketers are well advised to ensure products and services offered on e-commerce are optimized for this medium.
The holiday season from early November through to the end of December comes with promises of Christmas decorations, tree lighting ceremonies, and a battle for supremacy among retailers and the world’s biggest brands.
For your business, holiday marketing strategies are the chance to connect with your customers in a fun way. Reward loyalty with exclusive promotional offers, warm up leads in the marketplace, or launch a powerful branding campaign in your local region. These are all techniques used by small to large companies to heighten their revenues and increase their profits.
Every business should have some form of a holiday marketing plan in place. Ideally, this is something you want to plan out in the early fall for a Black Friday launch or post-Black Friday launch. Remember, it’s going to take repetition. Whichever strategy you choose and whatever promotional offers you are putting out there, it’s important to market often via emails, direct mailers, or graphic design work published via online platforms. Reach customers often and with strong, consistent messaging. For example, limited time offers does work to drive customers to buy now rather than to wait for tomorrow when they may be susceptible to marketing from a competing brand. Among the most widely used holiday marketing strategy are ‘limited time offers’.
Most companies are going to be competing against far bigger brands for attention. In your marketing, you need to be specific about what makes you unique. Demonstrate what sets you apart from corporate competitors. It might be quality, experience, service, pricing, or something else. Know what it is and publicize it. Targeting high-traffic areas is also not a bad place to put up posters or flyers, or to reserve advertising space. Though this approach sees varied results, for some companies, it may be an option.
Millions of digital video producers are struggling for space in the overcrowded marketplace. How to have your business succeed in the video realm involves learning different techniques to attract more eyes and keep them coming back for more. There are some brands who generate billions of views every week. Then, there are others who generate little to none. Decide where you want yourself to be amongst this activity.
The Less Ads on your Videos, the Better
Consumers are willing to tolerate limited ads but they won’t be impressed if you layer your video with multiple, meaningless advertisements. When most consumers are coming to your video on mobile platforms, that means limited screen space. Limit ads. The last thing you want to do is have your video come across as an excuse to share spam. Create high value content with limited ads and you’re almost guaranteed to generate more plays. Think about it. Nobody is going to want to go back to any site with a spam-y layout. Approaching video content should be done similarly.
Turn Long-form Video into short, shareable Clips
Take late night television as an example. YouTube is dominated by short clips from Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and others. They take long-from content and break it down into shorter, easily watchable clips. This approach has worked on all video platforms, including Facebook Video as well. Even for long-form interviews and similar content that would normally be shared in 10+ minute format, it can be much more effective to break that down into clips of 5 minutes or less.
The lead-up to the holidays and the New Year is the biggest time of year for retailers. The game is on and to win, retailers need to score big. Consumer shopping habits have changed rather significantly in the past decade however. More are flooding to online products and e-commerce to shop. To better understand where there’s opportunity to market and succeed in the 2017-2018 holiday season, here are three ways in which retailers are going to need to make a change.
Traditions in Holiday Shopping Patterns are out the Window
Holiday shopping in 2017 is not the same as holiday shopping in 2007 so don’t assume it will be. Many shoppers choose to research and begin purchasing even before Black Friday. As early as October, some companies are already seeing notable rises in purchasing likely related to the holidays. Consumer electronics is one area where this has happened these last few years.
That said, categories like toys and games are still holding strong according to traditional holiday shopping standards. As toys and games’ purchasing spikes are set closer to the final weekend prior to Christmas, other categories are seeing their inventory unload long before. Depending on what category a retailer is in, they may need to change when and how they plan out their holiday marketing strategy.
The five largest American tech companies are Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Each of these giants have growing economic, social, and political power not only in the United States, but all over the world.
Between them, they control the world’s most important tech, including smartphones, app development and app stores, and social media networks. The influence these five tech giants have is arguably stronger than that of any government. This is nowhere near more evident than in the testimonies of executives from Google and Facebook, admitting in front of Congress how the algorithms embedded in their technology and the platforms themselves may have been used to influence the 2016 election.
There are some who describe the power that these companies have as dangerous. Admittedly, these five corporations have grown to be so big that they’ve literally altered so many aspects of the world we live in. The difficulty in this growing power is that there may not be any real way to stop it from happening or even mitigating the consequences.
Tech can change Society in Unexpected and Messy Ways
Though tech developments have led to some of the most wonderful interventions in history, it does have a dark side. Having 5 massive tech conglomerates, it does provide some good in at least knowing that this is not necessarily a one-company-rules-all situation. That said, modern communication is really dominated by these five brands. Thus far, they’ve been able to be held accountable and seem to communicate genuine interest in ensuring their power is used for positive purposes. That said, the negatives that have come with these five companies are difficult to ignore for some segments of the population that are prone.
This holiday season, get to know the things you need to do to get your customers ready to shop. Creating a schedule, having measurable goals, and building a personal connection to consumers are all key.
Identify a Schedule to Implement and Measure Holiday Marketing Strategies
Creating the right holiday marketing schedule should be about building momentum. Map out weeks and months with specific goals for each. The goals you target may be different from others companies’ depending on your category of business and your customer base, so remember to customize it according to what you hope to achieve in the weeks to come.
Be More than a Sales Pitch
The holidays should be a time to have fun but instead, consumers are left worrying what to buy. Don’t be sales-y. Develop content that is less aggressive during these months and provide consumers with something they can use, such as an informative blog, tips on throwing the perfect Christmas party, or even some sort of discount code for loyal customers. Just be helpful.
Supply your Audience with what They Want
Monitor social media fans and followers to see what content they care about this holiday season. Remember, customers are being bombarded every day with hundreds of marketing messages during the holiday season. To be successful in your email and social media holiday marketing, you need to know what consumers are most interested in receiving from your business.
Digital marketing trends are adapting and changing faster than they ever have in the past. Cheap, organic-only strategies are on their way out in favor of paid digital marketing with a mix of high and low rewards.
To celebrate the New Year, we are counting down the top 7 trends in digital marketing that just don’t work anymore. Though these strategies don’t need to be abandoned outright, you will need to evolve how they are used to adapt in the new marketplace.
Long-Form E-books
Text-heavy e-books are out. No one has time to read them. Mobile internet use has surpassed desktop usage and it’s time to adapt accordingly. The days of long e-books in PDF format are over. Invest that same effort into interactive landing pages, video, and online animation instead.
Drip Campaigns
The days of impersonal email marketing sent out to large contact lists are done. Don’t expect high engagement rates with these anymore. The best solution is to begin with personalized emails using personalized content based in a contact’s demographics, recent engagement level, and consumer behaviour.
For when you don’t know where to start with your digital marketing goals, studying your competition’s approach is not a bad start. In fact, competitor research is almost a necessity in marketing.
Recognize your Online Competition
In all likelihood, you will be competing against more companies in the online marketplace than offline. By knowing your competition online, you can analyze their websites for the short-tail and long-tail keywords they are best ranked for. There are advantages and disadvantages to competing websites who may be ranking on the keywords you want. The truth is though that in order to gain your own share of marketing space on a search engine like Google, you need to know another site off for their position. That means you need to know what’s making them successful and finding a way to improve on that.
Define where your Competition is winning Engagement
By knowing where your competition are seeing their highest engagement, you can define where their success is coming from. Know where your competition is engaged on in social media, see the opportunities that they are not capitalizing on, and ultimately don’t necessarily assume that there’s any low-hanging fruit. This is merely to see where your competitor’s strategies are winning – not necessarily to provide you with an automated reply to their marketing campaigns by going into spaces you don’t need to be.
By publishing videos on YouTube, you agree to the site’s Terms of Service. By not respecting that Terms of Service, you run the risk of having your account banned and see real consequences on your business.
These three facts about YouTube’s Terms of Service are worth noting for any creator. Every publisher should be aware of these three things. They will save time and money, and will ensure you remain in compliance with all the relevant laws and legislation associated with online video publication.
There’s no Charging to Watch Content
Don’t charge people to watch your video content on YouTube, as agreed on by your commitment to the site’s Terms of Service. There are specific commercial uses not allowed on YouTube, including selling access to content without the written approval of YouTube. For example, creating an instructional video and putting it on a private channel on YouTube, you are not legally allowed to charge people to watch it. If this is what you want to do, you need to host the video on a different platform. Or, upload it to YouTube and then embed that video on another paid-for platform. This is perfectly allowed, as long as the users are not viewing said video directly on YouTube.
Video marketing maximizes the opportunity for any small business to grow their brand. Approximately
Define in your Video what Makes
Define your area of expertise and find your niche. Any marketing plan, video or otherwise, is dependent upon you figuring this out for your company. For customers to choose you, they need to know what makes you different when they line you up against your competition.
Choose your Target Market and give them something to Talk About
Many videos are played while people are on the move. In fact, more than half of all video content is consumed on mobile devices. That means a consumer looking for instant gratification and with no patience for anything more. Know who your targeting and how to capture their attention in ten seconds or less.
Use Calls-to-Action and answer Questions
Even if it’s adding a few short words at the end of a video, always have a CTA somewhere. Aim to answer questions through a video to give value and credibility to you as a subject matter expert (SME).
There’s something to gain for both employers and employees in remote work assignments. Remote work has been on the increase in the past decade and that trend is not expected to change any time soon.
Every company should be looking at ways to build remote employees and there are numerous reasons why. Though it may not be feasible for some jobs, for the companies that are based in over-the-phone customer service and/or similar tasks, this is something worth considering.
To successfully recruit new generations of employees, it may turn out to be one of the only ways some companies may be able to survive.
Ready to be Deployed in the Event of an Emergency
When hurricanes struck the southern United States earlier this year, some companied relied on remote workers to keep their businesses running. Commuting became nearly impossible and suddenly the value of being able to access work from home came clear.
Though this may not be an option for all companies evidently, some industries have the luxury of allowing employees to work comfortably from home. This is something that can prove to be a necessity in times of emergency or extreme weather.
Instagram has now made it possible to add guests to live video streams. This is huge news for many who have sought different ways to enhance live video feeds. Live video broadcasting apps and sites have been experimenting with this feature in the past however this is Instagram’s first foray into using it. It is hoped that through the use of adding guests into live video that it can tap into the more than 800 million Instagram users who don’t regularly use live video streaming.
This update on Instagram’s live video streaming capability builds on a limited test that started in August 2017. Instagram’s live video and messaging application just launched a little under a year ago, and since then, the platform has been looking at ways to encourage more users to engage with it.
How adding guests to Instagram live video streaming works is simple. Anyone live streaming can add anyone watching by clicking on the “add” button in the corner of the screen. When a person is added, that person joins you in a separate window located below yours on screen. For the time being, you can only add one person to your live stream at a time. Therefore, in order to add a second person, you need to remove the first.
Note how on Instagram when friends are using live video and the guest feature, they appear as circles stacked together in the ‘stories’ status bar. Any live video can be discarded after they are done or they can be saved as ‘stories’. After a live video is saved as an Instagram story, it can then be shared on Facebook as well and potentially other platforms in the future. As of now, there are no integrations built-in to collaborate Instagram’s live video with WhatsApp.
Long-awaited, Google’s mobile-first index has begun to roll out slowly. Though we don’t have a timeline yet on when implementation will be fully completed, an announcement is expected in the near future.
It is not known how many sites have switched to a mobile-first indexing process however it is suspected that it is more than ‘just a few’. In an effort to guard against any issues, Google has committed to rolling out the mobile-first index slowly, testing it every step of the way to ensure it is long-term feasible. Many did not expect the rollout to begin until 2018 however it is expected that positive test results has meant Google getting a jump-start on implementation.
Google has set up ‘classifiers’ to determine whether a given site is ready for a switch-over to a mobile-first index. These classifiers are designed to compare desktop and mobile versions of a site, analyzing content, links, schema, and multimedia among other factors. When there is a 100 percent matchup, it’s likely that site will be taken over to a mobile-first index. If a site reaches an 80 percent matchup, a webmaster may expect communications from Google encouraging changes that need to be made to bring a site closer to 100 percent.
