by Donna Denise Scharnagl, from Your Friendly Digital Coach
Between Google, Facebook and Instagram lots of things have happened which will have a direct influence on your businesses.
Where to start?
I am going to give you a few pointers about Google’s newest changes — but for IG, you need to either join me Thursday, November 4th at 8:30 PM 😜 or click here to sign up for the video.
Google Smooth Scroll: Making it easier for small businesses?
As of mid-October, Google advised us of a “novità” for mobile / cell phone users across the world: Google’s smooth scroll.
Previously, Google’s mobile search engine results adhered pretty closely to the ‘ten blue links’ format that originated on desktop search. You know, you see 2 or 4 Google ads and then 10 organic results and a series of numbers on the bottom that you click on to see more results. Only instead of displaying a paginated list at the bottom of results, a mobile search page would display a ‘see more’ button.
NOW (or in the very near future), when you view Google search engine results, you will now see a constant scroll instead of 10 results and then a see more button. Google is warning that the see more button hasn’t gone away, but it will show a lot more results now than before, especially with open-ended questions:
-
- what can I do with olives?
- how many types of dogs are there?
What does this mean for you, a small business owner?
Well, it hasn’t quite hit all of Italy yet, (patience it will soon arrive.) So if your target audience is here, it means probably very little – but that just means we have more time to prepare!
With continuous scrolling on mobile, it’s almost like all results are page one results now.
Statistics tell us that less than 1% of the persons who arrive at the bottom of the first page of results (and let’s not even talk about the second page) actually CLICK on a link. So those scary numbers about being in the top 5 organic results or at least somewhere on the first page of search results just became a lot less scary.
We know that while most searchers can often find what they are looking for in the first few results, many times they will keep looking for up to four pages of search results. The thing is they just don’t click.
BUT with this update, people will have the illusion of never having left the first page, and though the numbers are still pretty low that they will click (stats are not in yet about this) just being seen actually is a really GOOD thing.
Why is “just being seen a really good thing?” I am going to take you one step further, Facebook calls it the “recognition factor”. This translates into the number of times someone needs to see you, the name of your business or service before they start to recognize and remember you. This factor is bound to improve, which makes writing those meta titles and meta descriptions very very important.
Of course, the best thing is if they 1) recognize your name, logo or service as well as 2) click on your link!
Google hypotheses that “Websites ranking on the second page of Google (and lower) may start to see their traffic go up as a result of this update.” Yahooo!! (opps, wrong search engine)
PRO-TIP:
Make sure your meta title and meta description are keyword-friendly and memorable.
Again, what does this mean for you?
When you take a step back and look at the overall picture, Google’s smooth scroll feature can be an important addition to your online reputation management strategy and generating new leads. (Big words and strange concepts, no?) Let’s just say “tutto fa brodo” and if you increase your visibility in the search engine results, combined with your visibility on social media platforms, then you are improving your possibility to generate new leads!