SEO

8 Stories Of Hope From The SEO Community

Published

2 years ago

April 6, 2022

8 Stories Of Hope From The SEO Community

February 23, 2022, was a regular Wednesday for Ukrainian marketers and SEO specialists.

We had our morning coffees and did tech audits, built some links, and revamped a couple of landing pages.

We were striving for better visibility and conversions, trying hard to keep up with the deadlines, and hoping to reach our KPIs.

Then, on February 24, the whole of Ukraine woke up in a newly fragile and terrifying world.

Our plans, aspirations, and priorities were transformed.

From that day on, the only thing that mattered was saving the lives of our families, helping those in need to survive the turmoil of war, and defending our right to live freely on our own land.

For this column, my team reached out to eight Ukrainian SEO and marketing specialists and asked them to share their experiences in the time since our world turned upside down.

It turns out they all had one thing in common: in a shattered world full of painful uncertainty, they’ve drawn strength from helping others and contributing to Ukraine’s future victory.

Here is how they’re doing it.

Bringing Accurate News To Russian People

Artem Pylypets is the Head of SEO at SEO7, lecturer, and the founder of an educational YouTube channel “Школа SEO” (SEO School).

Before the war started, Artem’s life was all about doing SEO himself and sharing his knowledge with others.

He led the SEO department at SEO7, ran his YouTube channel called “Школа SEO” (“SEO School), and conducted online training on SEO matters.

Currently, Artem is doing all the same things, but to the sound of artillery shelling.

War brought many challenges to his work. SEO7 team members are now scattered across Europe since many people had to flee their homes.

They are trying to streamline their operations, but it isn’t easy.

Besides, many SEO7 customers seized their operations, which left the team struggling to stay afloat with the few clients who target the U.S. and European markets.

Artem himself stayed in the Kyiv suburbs. He confessed that he is used to hearing artillery shelling and added that it is “not that heavy.”

His neighborhood community has set up roadblocks, and people guard them in shifts to control the situation.

Image source: Author. The photo on the left was taken three months before the war started. Artem’s T-shirt says, “Content gets better if it comes with a backlink.” The photo on the right shows a roadblock with sandbags, one of Artem’s new workplaces.

“It really pleases me to see how the war united my fellow Ukrainians. The way we help each other, the way we fight for our land, is just amazing.
At the same time, I must admit that I’d rather have a peaceful sky above my head.”

Like many other SEO specialists, Artem decided to use his SEO skills to help Ukraine win the informational war.

His goal is to help Russian search engine users see the true stories of war and not the deceitful official propaganda. For this to happen, he has been working on improving the visibility of international media in the Russian SERPs.

When the war ends, Artem plans to keep building his business and hopes to launch all the projects he always wanted to but never had the time for.

He’s looking forward to reading some good news – not reporting on mounting casualties and destruction in Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Mariupol, and other cities.

All he dreams of is celebrating Ukraine’s victory with his closest friends.

Volunteering 24/7 To Help Those In Need

Andrey Kapeltsov is the founder of SEO.Capital and a keynote speaker at leading SEO, Affiliate, and iGaming conferences in Ukraine. He has spent the last 18 years mastering SEO and is always looking for new out-of-the-box ways to keep up with search algorithm updates.

Since 2015, he’s focused on the iGaming industry, working as the CMO at major gaming and betting companies.

Because of the specific nature of the iGaming niche, SEO has always been at the core of every marketing strategy Andrey developed.

Today, Andrey is trying to serve his country and people in every way possible.

Some of his company’s employees lived in the cities ravaged by the Russian army – Andrey helped them escape to a safer place.

Today, he continues to help evacuate people from the shelled cities on the frontline to a place to live in the central and western parts of Ukraine.

With employees moved to safe places, Andrey decided to restore his company’s operations to support Ukraine’s economy – his business provides donations to the Ukrainian armed forces.

Also, they’ve established a charity foundation to support displaced families and volunteers.

In addition to helping out financially, Andrey and his colleagues spend their evenings at humanitarian aid centers unloading goods.

Andrey says that this kind of physical activity works just as well as going to the gym.

Image source: Author. Andrey’s portrait in peaceful times and photos from current volunteer activities.

“What fascinates me is how the war forced us to quickly establish complex processes – it seemed unachievable in times of peace.
I still sometimes face difficulties finding particular military equipment, but my friends and new acquaintances always help me out.
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I had the pleasure of meeting so many great people over the past weeks.”

Andrey notes that his life before the war started seems very distant and blurred. He has a feeling that war lasts forever but has found a role that works for him and is ready to carry on.

When it’s all over, Andrey plans to keep developing his business and actively participate in helping Ukraine recover.

He hopes to spend some time living by the sea, where the only sound would be that of the sea waves. But first, Ukraine has to win.

Helping Ukrainian SEOs Find New Jobs

Olesia Korobka is an SEO entrepreneur running multiple projects before the war started. She offered guidance and consulting to businesses and ran a couple of her own projects sponsored by third parties.

Unfortunately, she had to stop working with most sponsors because of their country of origin.

That left her with mostly consulting. She can now keep up with the tasks, but for a while could not work because of a slow internet connection.

Olesia, her son, and her mother were among the 4 million Ukrainians who had to flee their homes.

First, they moved to Poland and then to the Netherlands, where she could get back to work, which she admitted was challenging.

“My brain was reluctant to focus on complex technical tasks.
After operating in survival mode for a while, the first time I looked into coding, I spent several hours on a task that took me 5 to 15 minutes before, and I still wasn’t sure if I did it right.”

At the same time, working on her projects was something she needed badly. It was the only thing that helped Olesia feel she was doing okay and making a positive impact.

Image source: Author. A selfie made from the life ‘before’ on the left, another selfie made on a bus to Amsterdam (right), and a photo taken at a refugee center.

What inspired her was the new project she organized to support the Ukrainian SEO community. Since the war started, many people have approached Olesia asking for help finding a new job. Many Ukrainian SEO specialists lost their only source of income and felt desperate.

This is how Olesia got the idea to create a listing of Ukrainian SEOs that briefly describes their skills and areas of expertise.

She contacted Aleyda Solis with a request to share the listing on her Twitter and in the #SEOFOMO newsletter, and Aleyda kindly supported the initiative.

Then, Olesia started receiving messages from different companies open to hiring Ukrainians, so she compiled a listing of job openings.

As more and more experts and businesses joined the initiative, the spreadsheet became messy. So, Olesia is currently working on creating multiple websites targeting employers in Australia, the USA, and particular European countries.

Once the sites are up and running, the job-seeking and hiring process should be much easier.

Olesia dreams of the war coming to an end so that she can return home.

She misses her normal life and the people.

Olesia adds that many Ukrainians will have to deal with PTSD once the war is over and won’t lead a normal life anytime soon.

However, she is determined to keep her chin up and carry on with her projects. Olesia is also grateful to everyone who’s supported her in the past weeks.

“Soooooo many people are helping me. It was amazing and kind of even uncomfortable. I’ve never had that in my entire life and never expected that.
I kind of feel a bit guilty, but also very grateful. Thank you all for your support and input.
I cannot always find the proper words to thank everyone, but I’m super grateful for everything.”

Saving Ukrainian Four-Legged Cuties

Anton Shulke is the Head of Influencer marketing at Duda.co and livestream production manager.

Since 2015, Anton has held live events, webinars, and podcasts for leading companies in the SEO industry, such as Duda, Semrush, and Kalicube.

Duda – Anton’s latest workplace – is not a Ukrainian company and wasn’t directly affected (even though the company had about a dozen employees in Ukraine).

Anton was offered paid time off when the war started, but he prefers to keep working, so he is still doing one webinar a week.

On top of that, Anton joined the Ukrainian SEO community to help the affected people by trying to arrange accommodation, find job opportunities, or provide direct financial help.

Anton was amazed by the reaction of the Ukrainian SEO community. He always believed there were many good people but didn’t expect to see such overwhelming support for the less fortunate ones.

Anton added that he felt honored to be a part of it.

He also started a small charity project for collecting funds for cat and dog shelters, which you can learn about and support here.

“I decided to help small shelters because I thought they could be under the radar of big charities, which tend to help children, refugees, and the army.
I get messages from people who run the shelters, and they seem to be surprised and extremely grateful for the help I provide, which gives me motivation to continue.
The hard part is that while initially the reaction from people was very positive and giving, donations are drying up as time passes.
Still, I understand that people get tired, and I cannot blame them.”

Image source: Author. Anton with his cat and having his traditional morning coffee

Anton hopes to keep his job at Duda, but he also considers putting more effort into the charity initiative.

He will probably keep the cat and dog shelter project, though the format may change.

Another thing he hopes to do is have a coffee with all the lovely people who message him on Facebook.

Every day, Anton publishes a ‘Good Morning’ post with a #coffeeshot on his Facebook page. In reply, many people say they’d love to have a coffee with him.

Protecting Ukrainian Land In The Armed Forces

Eugene Lata is the CMO at Lemon.io and an experienced marketer who has spent the last seven years building marketing teams and developing growth strategies.

Up until January 2022, he was the CMO at SerpStat, an SEO tool company based in Odesa.

He had begun a new job at the Lemon.io marketplace not long before the war started.

In the first days of the war, Eugene decided to join Odesa territorial defense forces, and currently, he is a member of the 122nd brigade.

Due to Eugene’s previous experience, he became a managing paramedic officer in the material supply squadron.

This means he is in charge of training other paramedics and forming special evacuation and emergency brigades.

Such brigades consist of one paramedic and four assault soldiers. They work on the frontline evacuating wounded soldiers and civilians.

Luckily, at the moment, there is no need to evacuate civilians in the regions where Eugene is located.

In addition to training paramedics, he trains various military units on NATO’s methodology of providing first aid.

Image source: Author. Eugene serving in the territorial defense forces and a photo of him and his labrador dog before the war started

This is not the first time Eugene decided to join the army. Back in 2014, after coming back home from the U.K., he spent six months in the Donbas region fighting the enemies with other volunteers who joined the Dnipro-1 battalion.

This was when he started helping wounded people as a paramedic.

Eight years later, his previous experience allowed Eugene to teach other officers to save lives.

“What inspires me is the progress the guys whom I train demonstrate.
Those who joined just three weeks ago with no relevant experience and no medical background are now trained well enough to provide qualified help. These people are already evacuating people and saving many lives in the Mykolaiv and Odesa regions.
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Seeing this gives me a sense of accomplishment.”

Eugene confesses that he preferred his regular job, living under peaceful skies when his biggest worry was a wasted marketing budget or the spread of the coronavirus.

But until the war is over, he can’t imagine himself doing anything other than his current occupation.

When Ukraine wins, Eugene cannot wait to hug his family, now scattered around the country.

His wife and younger sister volunteer in Odesa, getting the necessary military ammunition for Eugene’s brigades.

He wants to go on a walk with his labrador dog.

Being an avid traveler, he’ll surely take on new adventures.

First thing, he’ll go to the Carpathian mountains. Eugene hopes for Ukraine to win before the spring ends – then he’ll enjoy the spring greenery while watching the sunrise.

He’ll also be working a lot because rebuilding a country takes many resources.

Finally, he wants to become a father – he and his wife had planned to start a family before the war broke out.

Fighting A Cyberwar Via SEO Community Chat

Igor Shulezhko is the CEO & Founder at rankUP and co-owner of Shmeo.Link. He has been in the business for over ten years as Head of SEO for several major Ukrainian brands.

Before the war started, he focused his efforts on building his SEO agency, rankUp.

His business was doing pretty well and boasted a varied customer profile that included startups and SaaS companies, ecommerce projects, and news portals.

All these customers were from Ukraine, which means the agency wasn’t impacted as much as other companies with close ties to Russia.

Still, the war forced many businesses to put their marketing spending on hold. Now Igor is trying hard to save his agency.

His team is currently scattered across Ukraine and works remotely.

Igor noted that he can feel how anxious everyone on the team is right now.

“Constantly monitoring the news is extremely exhausting. Besides, air raid sirens keep people awake at night—often there are two to four sirens per night with brief interruptions.
All this makes it hard to concentrate on your tasks. It’s easier to do SEO when all you need to focus on is the work.”
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Image source: Author. Igor on his way to the border and having a meal at a refugee center

One of Igor’s projects is an SEO community on Telegram, an extremely popular messenger in Ukraine. Currently, the community unites about 5,000 people.

Before, it had more participants, but many Russians left once the community started spreading war-related messages.

Igor regretfully notes that many Russians in the group vocally supported Putin and denied all war crimes.

“When the war started, we restricted commenting in the community and limited publication rights to admins only,” he said.

The idea was to use the community chat to deliver the most important initiatives to its subscribers. They shared links to verified charities and details on evacuation opportunities, posted lists of Russian sites whose operations they were seeking to disrupt, and links to communities that spread false news so that community members could block them.

Igor believes that he and his team are contributing to winning the cyberwar against Russia by doing all this.

Igor admits that he misses his peaceful life.

When the war ends, the first thing he’ll do is visit his mom, who lives in the Sumy region.

Luckily, the town is not on the frontline, but with Russian troops all around, it suffers from a lack of supplies. Evacuation is currently too dangerous.

Telecommunications are still operating, so Igor can still regularly call his mother.

He dreams of seeing her in person and giving her a big hug.

Helping Ukrainian Families In Need

Max Karmazin is the Digital Marketing specialist, Country Manager (Germany) at SE Ranking. He returned to Ukraine in November 2021 after living in Switzerland for seven years.

Max was working on his Master’s degree in Sociology and Media Studies, working different jobs, and traveling.

As an expat, he always felt he had limited working hours, income, job, and social standing opportunities.

Feeling detached, he couldn’t completely embrace the new mentality and social rules.

Thus, he decided to return to Kyiv, and three months later, the war started.

The first days after the invasion were tough. Max couldn’t continue working because he was constantly distracted by the news.

When he left Kyiv on the third day of the war to get farther from the danger, he felt saving one’s life and leaving countrymen to fend for themselves wasn’t in accordance with his values.

Doing his regular job also felt wrong at that time.

Max decided he would join the army and fight the enemy back or start volunteering.

This led him to join the territorial defense forces, volunteer military units that protect city residents.

He spent about a week guarding one of the few open gas stations, controlling incoming traffic, and keeping order.

Image source: Author. Max (left) with his comrade, a 65-year-old veteran of the war in Donbas.

“I had this desire to prove myself that I had the guts to join the army and potentially sacrifice my life for the country I love (and wanted to get back to). I guess many men feel the same way at the time of war.”

Then the unit was rotated and Max joined one of his comrades who was evacuating his family to western Ukraine and Poland a few days later.

Max’s new acquaintance had lost his job a few months before and the family ran out of money a week into the war.

So, Max decided to support them at least financially.

Max was lucky to have good and caring friends from Switzerland and Germany who were eager to help.

They decided that the best option would be to send money directly to Max’s account so that he could provide help to people in dire need whom he knew personally.

“So far, we have helped six families in need, a total of 15 people, and the army. It might not be much, but it’s quality help that provides a sufficient amount of money for a month or two.”

Currently, Max is with his family. He believes that the most important thing he can do right now is support them. He continues working for SE Ranking from his home office.

Max will continue working for SE Ranking, and would love to see everybody back at the office after his colleagues return home when the war ends.

He hopes the war ends before summertime to start new hobbies: canoeing and rowing.

He dreams of rediscovering Ukraine and its beautiful rivers with his friends on camping and canoeing trips.

Max also plans to start voice actor training because he likes listening to audiobooks and has a suitable voice. He had planned to start training on the 6th of March.

Max confesses that he misses small things from his life before, such as going to the movies with friends, having a coriander omelet for breakfast, exercising at the gym, and having a long hot shower.

While the future remains unclear, he believes he’ll be able to fulfill his dreams, from buying a car and going on a road trip with his friends to starting a family.

And he believes that all his dreams can come true here, in Ukraine.

Building A Strong Community Of Marketing Heroes For Mutual Support

Yurii Lazaruk, is the founder of multiple well-known Ukrainian SEO communities, such as SEO Club UA, SalesHero, CPC Real Talk, and Marketing Club UA, and a community development expert.

Before the war started, he used his communities for connecting Ukrainian experts. Yurii helped them share experiences and get notable career growth.

Image source: Author. Yurii wearing a sweatshirt with his brand’s logo.

After the first day of the war, Yurii set all his earlier initiatives aside. He decided to unite all of the active members of his numerous communities into one group called Ukrainian Hero Help.

The goal of the new community was to bring together Ukrainian SEO people to support each other, share vital information, and help the army and the entire country.

Yurii himself needed assistance finding a job to support his family.

And he found one thanks to David Spinks, a co-founder of CMX, the world’s largest network for community professionals.

Yurii now works as a part-time consultant, providing guidance on community development to Cultivate, an AI-powered coaching platform.

Yurii appreciates the opportunity to use his skills to make U.S. communities thrive.

But since it is not a full-time job, he is still looking for more opportunities.

Yurii is also trying to help his fellow community members by collecting requests from SEO, PPC, marketing, and sales experts, and finding them jobs with the help of international experts communities and great people within them.

So, if by any chance you are currently looking for a digital marketing specialist and are willing to help Ukrainians, you can contact Yurii, who will happily share contacts with you.

All Yurii dreams of is for the war to be over.

He aspires to create an even more powerful digital community in Ukraine, find more international clients to work with, make a lot of money, and rebuild the country!

How You Can Help Colleagues In Ukraine

Search Engine Journal has shared a collection of causes in SEO Community Support For Ukraine & How You Can Help.

The SE Ranking team has a resource on how you can help Ukrainians here, as well, that we’ll be keeping updated.

Image source: Created by author, 2022.

Related Topics:Community Hope seo stories

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SEO

2024 WordPress Vulnerability Report Shows Errors Sites Keep Making

Published

15 hours ago

April 18, 2024

Max

2024 Annual WordPress security report by WPScan

WordPress security scanner WPScan’s 2024 WordPress vulnerability report calls attention to WordPress vulnerability trends and suggests the kinds of things website publishers (and SEOs) should be looking out for.

Some of the key findings from the report were that just over 20% of vulnerabilities were rated as high or critical level threats, with medium severity threats, at 67% of reported vulnerabilities, making up the majority. Many regard medium level vulnerabilities as if they are low-level threats and that’s a mistake because they’re not low level and should be regarded as deserving attention.

The WPScan report advised:

“While severity doesn’t translate directly to the risk of exploitation, it’s an important guideline for website owners to make an educated decision about when to disable or update the extension.”

WordPress Vulnerability Severity Distribution

Critical level vulnerabilities, the highest level of threat, represented only 2.38% of vulnerabilities, which is essentially good news for WordPress publishers. Yet as mentioned earlier, when combined with the percentages of high level threats (17.68%) the number or concerning vulnerabilities rises to almost 20%.

Here are the percentages by severity ratings:

Critical 2.38%
Low 12.83%
High 17.68%
Medium 67.12%

Authenticated Versus Unauthenticated

Authenticated vulnerabilities are those that require an attacker to first attain user credentials and their accompanying permission levels in order to exploit a particular vulnerability. Exploits that require subscriber-level authentication are the most exploitable of the authenticated exploits and those that require administrator level access present the least risk (although not always a low risk for a variety of reasons).

Unauthenticated attacks are generally the easiest to exploit because anyone can launch an attack without having to first acquire a user credential.

The WPScan vulnerability report found that about 22% of reported vulnerabilities required subscriber level or no authentication at all, representing the most exploitable vulnerabilities. On the other end of the scale of the exploitability are vulnerabilities requiring admin permission levels representing a total of 30.71% of reported vulnerabilities.

Permission Levels Required For Exploits

Vulnerabilities requiring administrator level credentials represented the highest percentage of exploits, followed by Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) with 24.74% of vulnerabilities. This is interesting because CSRF is an attack that uses social engineering to get a victim to click a link from which the user’s permission levels are acquired. This is a mistake that WordPress publishers should be aware of because all it takes is for an admin level user to follow a link which then enables the hacker to assume admin level privileges to the WordPress website.

The following is the percentages of exploits ordered by roles necessary to launch an attack.

Ascending Order Of User Roles For Vulnerabilities

Author 2.19%
Subscriber 10.4%
Unauthenticated 12.35%
Contributor 19.62%
CSRF 24.74%
Admin 30.71%

Most Common Vulnerability Types Requiring Minimal Authentication

Broken Access Control in the context of WordPress refers to a security failure that can allow an attacker without necessary permission credentials to gain access to higher credential permissions.

In the section of the report that looks at the occurrences and vulnerabilities underlying unauthenticated or subscriber level vulnerabilities reported (Occurrence vs Vulnerability on Unauthenticated or Subscriber+ reports), WPScan breaks down the percentages for each vulnerability type that is most common for exploits that are the easiest to launch (because they require minimal to no user credential authentication).

The WPScan threat report noted that Broken Access Control represents a whopping 84.99% followed by SQL injection (20.64%).

The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) defines Broken Access Control as:

“Access control, sometimes called authorization, is how a web application grants access to content and functions to some users and not others. These checks are performed after authentication, and govern what ‘authorized’ users are allowed to do.
Access control sounds like a simple problem but is insidiously difficult to implement correctly. A web application’s access control model is closely tied to the content and functions that the site provides. In addition, the users may fall into a number of groups or roles with different abilities or privileges.”

SQL injection, at 20.64% represents the second most prevalent type of vulnerability, which WPScan referred to as both “high severity and risk” in the context of vulnerabilities requiring minimal authentication levels because attackers can access and/or tamper with the database which is the heart of every WordPress website.

These are the percentages:

Broken Access Control 84.99%
SQL Injection 20.64%
Cross-Site Scripting 9.4%
Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Upload 5.28%
Sensitive Data Disclosure 4.59%
Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) 3.67%
Remote Code Execution 2.52%
Other 14.45%

Vulnerabilities In The WordPress Core Itself

The overwhelming majority of vulnerability issues were reported in third-party plugins and themes. However, there were in 2023 a total of 13 vulnerabilities reported in the WordPress core itself. Out of the thirteen vulnerabilities only one of them was rated as a high severity threat, which is the second highest level, with Critical being the highest level vulnerability threat, a rating scoring system maintained by the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).

The WordPress core platform itself is held to the highest standards and benefits from a worldwide community that is vigilant in discovering and patching vulnerabilities.

Website Security Should Be Considered As Technical SEO

Site audits don’t normally cover website security but in my opinion every responsible audit should at least talk about security headers. As I’ve been saying for years, website security quickly becomes an SEO issue once a website’s ranking start disappearing from the search engine results pages (SERPs) due to being compromised by a vulnerability. That’s why it’s critical to be proactive about website security.

According to the WPScan report, the main point of entry for hacked websites were leaked credentials and weak passwords. Ensuring strong password standards plus two-factor authentication is an important part of every website’s security stance.

Using security headers is another way to help protect against Cross-Site Scripting and other kinds of vulnerabilities.

Lastly, a WordPress firewall and website hardening are also useful proactive approaches to website security. I once added a forum to a brand new website I created and it was immediately under attack within minutes. Believe it or not, virtually every website worldwide is under attack 24 hours a day by bots scanning for vulnerabilities.

Read the WPScan Report:

WPScan 2024 Website Threat Report

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Ljupco Smokovski

SEO

An In-Depth Guide And Best Practices For Mobile SEO

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2024

Max

Mobile SEO: An In-Depth Guide And Best Practices

Over the years, search engines have encouraged businesses to improve mobile experience on their websites. More than 60% of web traffic comes from mobile, and in some cases based on the industry, mobile traffic can reach up to 90%.

Since Google has completed its switch to mobile-first indexing, the question is no longer “if” your website should be optimized for mobile, but how well it is adapted to meet these criteria. A new challenge has emerged for SEO professionals with the introduction of Interaction to Next Paint (INP), which replaced First Input Delay (FID) starting March, 12 2024.

Thus, understanding mobile SEO’s latest advancements, especially with the shift to INP, is crucial. This guide offers practical steps to optimize your site effectively for today’s mobile-focused SEO requirements.

What Is Mobile SEO And Why Is It Important?

The goal of mobile SEO is to optimize your website to attain better visibility in search engine results specifically tailored for mobile devices.

This form of SEO not only aims to boost search engine rankings, but also prioritizes enhancing mobile user experience through both content and technology.

While, in many ways, mobile SEO and traditional SEO share similar practices, additional steps related to site rendering and content are required to meet the needs of mobile users and the speed requirements of mobile devices.

Does this need to be a priority for your website? How urgent is it?

Consider this: 58% of the world’s web traffic comes from mobile devices.

If you aren’t focused on mobile users, there is a good chance you’re missing out on a tremendous amount of traffic.

Mobile-First Indexing

Additionally, as of 2023, Google has switched its crawlers to a mobile-first indexing priority.

This means that the mobile experience of your site is critical to maintaining efficient indexing, which is the step before ranking algorithms come into play.

How Much Of Your Traffic Is From Mobile?

How much traffic potential you have with mobile users can depend on various factors, including your industry (B2B sites might attract primarily desktop users, for example) and the search intent your content addresses (users might prefer desktop for larger purchases, for example).

Regardless of where your industry and the search intent of your users might be, the future will demand that you optimize your site experience for mobile devices.

How can you assess your current mix of mobile vs. desktop users?

An easy way to see what percentage of your users is on mobile is to go into Google Analytics 4.

Click Reports in the left column.
Click on the Insights icon on the right side of the screen.
Scroll down to Suggested Questions and click on it.
Click on Technology.
Click on Top Device model by Users.
Then click on Top Device category by Users under Related Results.
The breakdown of Top Device category will match the date range selected at the top of GA4.

Screenshot from GA4, March 2024

You can also set up a report in Looker Studio.

Add your site to the Data source.
Add Device category to the Dimension field.
Add 30-day active users to the Metric field.
Click on Chart to select the view that works best for you.

A screen capture from Looker Studio showing a pie chart with a breakdown of mobile, desktop, tablet, and Smart TV users for a site

Screenshot from Looker Studio, March 2024

You can add more Dimensions to really dig into the data to see which pages attract which type of users, what the mobile-to-desktop mix is by country, which search engines send the most mobile users, and so much more.

How To Check If Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly

Now that you know how to build a report on mobile and desktop usage, you need to figure out if your site is optimized for mobile traffic.

While Google removed the mobile-friendly testing tool from Google Search Console in December 2023, there are still a number of useful tools for evaluating your site for mobile users.

Bing still has a mobile-friendly testing tool that will tell you the following:

Viewport is configured correctly.
Page content fits device width.
Text on the page is readable.
Links and tap targets are sufficiently large and touch-friendly.
Any other issues detected.

Google’s Lighthouse Chrome extension provides you with an evaluation of your site’s performance across several factors, including load times, accessibility, and SEO.

To use, install the Lighthouse Chrome extension.

Go to your website in your browser.
Click on the orange lighthouse icon in your browser’s address bar.
Click Generate Report.
A new tab will open and display your scores once the evaluation is complete.

An image showing the Lighthouse Scores for a website.

Screenshot from Lighthouse, March 2024

You can also use the Lighthouse report in Developer Tools in Chrome.

Simply click on the three dots next to the address bar.
Select “More Tools.”
Select Developer Tools.
Click on the Lighthouse tab.
Choose “Mobile” and click the “Analyze page load” button.

An image showing how to get to Lighthouse within Google Chrome Developer Tools.

Screenshot from Lighthouse, March 2024

Another option that Google offers is the PageSpeed Insights (PSI) tool. Simply add your URL into the field and click Analyze.

PSI will integrate any Core Web Vitals scores into the resulting view so you can see what your users are experiencing when they come to your site.

An image showing the PageSpeed Insights scores for a website.

Screenshot from PageSpeed Insights, March 2024

Other tools, like WebPageTest.org, will graphically display the processes and load times for everything it takes to display your webpages.

With this information, you can see which processes block the loading of your pages, which ones take the longest to load, and how this affects your overall page load times.

You can also emulate the mobile experience by using Developer Tools in Chrome, which allows you to switch back and forth between a desktop and mobile experience.

An image showing how to change the device emulation for a site within Google Chrome Developer Tools

Screenshot from Google Chrome Developer Tools, March 2024

Lastly, use your own mobile device to load and navigate your website:

Does it take forever to load?
Are you able to navigate your site to find the most important information?
Is it easy to add something to cart?
Can you read the text?

How To Optimize Your Site Mobile-First

With all these tools, keep an eye on the Performance and Accessibility scores, as these directly affect mobile users.

Expand each section within the PageSpeed Insights report to see what elements are affecting your score.

These sections can give your developers their marching orders for optimizing the mobile experience.

While mobile speeds for cellular networks have steadily improved around the world (the average speed in the U.S. has jumped to 27.06 Mbps from 11.14 Mbps in just eight years), speed and usability for mobile users are at a premium.

Best Practices For Mobile Optimization

Unlike traditional SEO, which can focus heavily on ensuring that you are using the language of your users as it relates to the intersection of your products/services and their needs, optimizing for mobile SEO can seem very technical SEO-heavy.

While you still need to be focused on matching your content with the needs of the user, mobile search optimization will require the aid of your developers and designers to be fully effective.

Below are several key factors in mobile SEO to keep in mind as you’re optimizing your site.

Site Rendering

How your site responds to different devices is one of the most important elements in mobile SEO.

The two most common approaches to this are responsive design and dynamic serving.

Responsive design is the most common of the two options.

Using your site’s cascading style sheets (CSS) and flexible layouts, as well as responsive content delivery networks (CDN) and modern image file types, responsive design allows your site to adjust to a variety of screen sizes, orientations, and resolutions.

With the responsive design, elements on the page adjust in size and location based on the size of the screen.

You can simply resize the window of your desktop browser and see how this works.

An image showing the difference between Web.dev in a full desktop display vs. a mobile display using responsive design.

Screenshot from web.dev, March 2024

This is the approach that Google recommends.

Adaptive design, also known as dynamic serving, consists of multiple fixed layouts that are dynamically served to the user based on their device.

Sites can have a separate layout for desktop, smartphone, and tablet users. Each design can be modified to remove functionality that may not make sense for certain device types.

This is a less efficient approach, but it does give sites more control over what each device sees.

While these will not be covered here, two other options:

Progressive Web Apps (PWA), which can seamlessly integrate into a mobile app.
Separate mobile site/URL (which is no longer recommended).

Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

Google has introduced Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as a more comprehensive measure of user experience, succeeding First Input Delay. While FID measures the time from when a user first interacts with your page (e.g., clicking a link, tapping a button) to the time when the browser is actually able to begin processing event handlers in response to that interaction. INP, on the other hand, broadens the scope by measuring the responsiveness of a website throughout the entire lifespan of a page, not just first interaction.

Note that actions such as hovering and scrolling do not influence INP, however, keyboard-driven scrolling or navigational actions are considered keystrokes that may activate events measured by INP but not scrolling which is happeing due to interaction.

Scrolling may indirectly affect INP, for example in scenarios where users scroll through content, and additional content is lazy-loaded from the API. While the act of scrolling itself isn’t included in the INP calculation, the processing, necessary for loading additional content, can create contention on the main thread, thereby increasing interaction latency and adversely affecting the INP score.

What qualifies as an optimal INP score?

An INP under 200ms indicates good responsiveness.
Between 200ms and 500ms needs improvement.
Over 500ms means page has poor responsiveness.

and these are common issues causing poor INP scores:

Long JavaScript Tasks: Heavy JavaScript execution can block the main thread, delaying the browser’s ability to respond to user interactions. Thus break long JS tasks into smaller chunks by using scheduler API.
Large DOM (HTML) Size: A large DOM ( starting from 1500 elements) can severely impact a website’s interactive performance. Every additional DOM element increases the work required to render pages and respond to user interactions.
Inefficient Event Callbacks: Event handlers that execute lengthy or complex operations can significantly affect INP scores. Poorly optimized callbacks attached to user interactions, like clicks, keypress or taps, can block the main thread, delaying the browser’s ability to render visual feedback promptly. For example when handlers perform heavy computations or initiate synchronous network requests such on clicks.

and you can troubleshoot INP issues using free and paid tools.

As a good starting point I would recommend to check your INP scores by geos via treo.sh which will give you a great high level insights where you struggle with most.

INP scores by Geos

Image Optimization

Images add a lot of value to the content on your site and can greatly affect the user experience.

From page speeds to image quality, you could adversely affect the user experience if you haven’t optimized your images.

This is especially true for the mobile experience. Images need to adjust to smaller screens, varying resolutions, and screen orientation.

Use responsive images
Implement lazy loading
Compress your images (use WebP)
Add your images into sitemap

Optimizing images is an entire science, and I advise you to read our comprehensive guide on image SEO how to implement the mentioned recommendations.

Avoid Intrusive Interstitials

Google rarely uses concrete language to state that something is a ranking factor or will result in a penalty, so you know it means business about intrusive interstitials in the mobile experience.

Intrusive interstitials are basically pop-ups on a page that prevent the user from seeing content on the page.

John Mueller, Google’s Senior Search Analyst, stated that they are specifically interested in the first interaction a user has after clicking on a search result.

Examples of intrusive interstitial pop-ups on a mobile site according to Google.

Not all pop-ups are considered bad. Interstitial types that are considered “intrusive” by Google include:

Pop-ups that cover most or all of the page content.
Non-responsive interstitials or pop-ups that are impossible for mobile users to close.
Pop-ups that are not triggered by a user action, such as a scroll or a click.

Structured Data

Most of the tips provided in this guide so far are focused on usability and speed and have an additive effect, but there are changes that can directly influence how your site appears in mobile search results.

Search engine results pages (SERPs) haven’t been the “10 blue links” in a very long time.

They now reflect the diversity of search intent, showing a variety of different sections to meet the needs of users. Local Pack, shopping listing ads, video content, and more dominate the mobile search experience.

As a result, it’s more important than ever to provide structured data markup to the search engines, so they can display rich results for users.

In this example, you can see that both Zojirushi and Amazon have included structured data for their rice cookers, and Google is displaying rich results for both.

An image of a search result for Japanese rice cookers that shows rich results for Zojirushi and Amazon.

Screenshot from search for [Japanese rice cookers], Google, March 2024

Adding structured data markup to your site can influence how well your site shows up for local searches and product-related searches.

Using JSON-LD, you can mark up the business, product, and services data on your pages in Schema markup.

If you use WordPress as the content management system for your site, there are several plugins available that will automatically mark up your content with structured data.

Content Style

When you think about your mobile users and the screens on their devices, this can greatly influence how you write your content.

Rather than long, detailed paragraphs, mobile users prefer concise writing styles for mobile reading.

Each key point in your content should be a single line of text that easily fits on a mobile screen.

Your font sizes should adjust to the screen’s resolution to avoid eye strain for your users.

If possible, allow for a dark or dim mode for your site to further reduce eye strain.

Headers should be concise and address the searcher’s intent. Rather than lengthy section headers, keep it simple.

Finally, make sure that your text renders in a font size that’s readable.

Tap Targets

As important as text size, the tap targets on your pages should be sized and laid out appropriately.

Tap targets include navigation elements, links, form fields, and buttons like “Add to Cart” buttons.

Targets smaller than 48 pixels by 48 pixels and targets that overlap or are overlapped by other page elements will be called out in the Lighthouse report.

Tap targets are essential to the mobile user experience, especially for ecommerce websites, so optimizing them is vital to the health of your online business.

Prioritizing These Tips

If you have delayed making your site mobile-friendly until now, this guide may feel overwhelming. As a result, you may not know what to prioritize first.

As with so many other optimizations in SEO, it’s important to understand which changes will have the greatest impact, and this is just as true for mobile SEO.

Think of SEO as a framework in which your site’s technical aspects are the foundation of your content. Without a solid foundation, even the best content may struggle to rank.

Responsive or Dynamic Rendering: If your site requires the user to zoom and scroll right or left to read the content on your pages, no number of other optimizations can help you. This should be first on your list.
Content Style: Rethink how your users will consume your content online. Avoid very long paragraphs. “Brevity is the soul of wit,” to quote Shakespeare.
Image Optimization: Begin migrating your images to next-gen image formats and optimize your content display network for speed and responsiveness.
Tap Targets: A site that prevents users from navigating or converting into sales won’t be in business long. Make navigation, links, and buttons usable for them.
Structured Data: While this element ranks last in priority on this list, rich results can improve your chances of receiving traffic from a search engine, so add this to your to-do list once you’ve completed the other optimizations.

Summary

From How Search Works, “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

If Google’s primary mission is focused on making all the world’s information accessible and useful, then you know they will prefer surfacing sites that align with that vision.

Since a growing percentage of users are on mobile devices, you may want to infer the word “everywhere” added to the end of the mission statement.

Are you missing out on traffic from mobile devices because of a poor mobile experience?

If you hope to remain relevant, make mobile SEO a priority now.

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

SEO

HARO Has Been Dead for a While

Published

2 days ago

April 17, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Every SEO’s favorite ~~link-building~~ collaboration tool, HARO, was officially killed off for good last week by Cision. It’s now been wrapped into a new product: Connectively.

I know nothing about the new tool. I haven’t tried it. But after trying to use HARO recently, I can’t say I’m surprised or saddened by its death. It’s been a walking corpse for a while.

I used HARO way back in the day to build links. It worked. But a couple of months ago, I experienced the platform from the other side when I decided to try to source some “expert” insights for our posts.

After just a few minutes of work, I got hundreds of pitches:

So, I grabbed a cup of coffee and began to work through them. It didn’t take long before I lost the will to live. Every other pitch seemed like nothing more than lazy AI-generated nonsense from someone who definitely wasn’t an expert.

Here’s one of them:

Example of an AI-generated pitch in HARO

Seriously. Who writes like that? I’m a self-confessed dullard (any fellow Dull Men’s Club members here?), and even I’m not that dull…

I don’t think I looked through more than 30-40 of the responses. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt like having a conversation with ChatGPT… and not a very good one!

Despite only reviewing a few dozen of the many pitches I received, one stood out to me:

Example HARO pitch that caught my attention

Believe it or not, this response came from a past client of mine who runs an SEO agency in the UK. Given how knowledgeable and experienced he is (he actually taught me a lot about SEO back in the day when I used to hassle him with questions on Skype), this pitch rang alarm bells for two reasons:

I truly doubt he spends his time replying to HARO queries
I know for a fact he’s no fan of Neil Patel (sorry, Neil, but I’m sure you’re aware of your reputation at this point!)

So… I decided to confront him 😉

Here’s what he said:

Shocker.

I pressed him for more details:

I’m getting a really good deal and paying per link rather than the typical £xxxx per month for X number of pitches. […] The responses as you’ve seen are not ideal but that’s a risk I’m prepared to take as realistically I dont have the time to do it myself. He’s not native english, but I have had to have a word with him a few times about clearly using AI. On the low cost ones I don’t care but on authority sites it needs to be more refined.

I think this pretty much sums up the state of HARO before its death. Most “pitches” were just AI answers from SEOs trying to build links for their clients.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not throwing shade here. I know that good links are hard to come by, so you have to do what works. And the reality is that HARO did work. Just look at the example below. You can tell from the anchor and surrounding text in Ahrefs that these links were almost certainly built with HARO:

Example of links build with HARO, via Ahrefs' Site Explorer

But this was the problem. HARO worked so well back in the day that it was only a matter of time before spammers and the #scale crew ruined it for everyone. That’s what happened, and now HARO is no more. So…

If you’re a link builder, I think it’s time to admit that HARO link building is dead and move on.

No tactic works well forever. It’s the law of sh**ty clickthroughs. This is why you don’t see SEOs having huge success with tactics like broken link building anymore. They’ve moved on to more innovative tactics or, dare I say it, are just buying links.

Sidenote.

Talking of buying links, here’s something to ponder: if Connectively charges for pitches, are links built through those pitches technically paid? If so, do they violate Google’s spam policies? It’s a murky old world this SEO lark, eh?

If you’re a journalist, Connectively might be worth a shot. But with experts being charged for pitches, you probably won’t get as many responses. That might be a good thing. You might get less spam. Or you might just get spammed by SEOs with deep pockets. The jury’s out for now.

My advice? Look for alternative methods like finding and reaching out to experts directly. You can easily use tools like Content Explorer to find folks who’ve written lots of content about the topic and are likely to be experts.

For example, if you look for content with “backlinks” in the title and go to the Authors tab, you might see a familiar name. 😉

Finding people to request insights from in Ahrefs' Content Explorer

I don’t know if I’d call myself an expert, but I’d be happy to give you a quote if you reached out on social media or emailed me (here’s how to find my email address).

Alternatively, you can bait your audience into giving you their insights on social media. I did this recently with a poll on X and included many of the responses in my guide to toxic backlinks.

Me, indirectly sourcing insights on social media

Either of these options is quicker than using HARO because you don’t have to sift through hundreds of responses looking for a needle in a haystack. If you disagree with me and still love HARO, feel free to tell me why on X 😉