The 10 most important on-page measures – How to get your shop to the top of Google & Co. rankings!
Introduction
The importance of search engines in e-commerce can undoubtedly be seen as one of the most influential factors affecting the industry’s revenue figures. To illustrate this, here is a brief example: the keyword “Rolex” alone generated a search volume of 110,000 queries in Germany in January 2015.¹ Optimizing your online shop for Google and other search engines can therefore be worth its weight in gold. By significantly improving your positions for user queries—and thereby increasing the flow of visitors to your website—SEO offers the potential for substantial revenue growth.
Another advantage lies in the relative protection SEO provides against ongoing updates from various search engines, which steadily devalue non-optimized pages in the rankings. In other words, optimizing your shop for search engine algorithms holds the potential for sustainable, long-term business success.
Search engine optimization essentially consists of two elements: OnPage and OffPage optimization. Both areas pursue the same goal—improving the ranking positions of your shop pages through different measures. The distinction between OnPage and OffPage optimization can be defined based on where the measures take place:
OffPage Optimization
OffPage optimization refers to all external SEO measures that take place outside your own domain—i.e., “off-page.” This includes, for example, optimizing external links pointing from other domains to pages within your shop.
OffPage SEO should follow OnPage measures, because even the best external links have limited impact if the pages on your own domain (OnPage) are not optimized. For this reason, this tutorial focuses on OnPage optimization.
OnPage Optimization
Before we discuss specific SEO measures, we would like to provide a brief introduction to the OnPage field. A first definition already captures the core components:
“OnPage optimization includes all content-related adjustments to one’s own website. This includes optimizing page content (also called content) in terms of quality, formatting, headings, etc., as well as technical aspects such as headers and tags and the internal link structure of the site.”²
(Emphasis added by the author)
So, this is about various adjustments within your own domain—put simply, the areas of your shop that are visible to customers. Alongside content (product or category descriptions), optimizing technical elements is another key part of the work.
We have compiled the 10 most important OnPage optimization measures for you. In terms of structure, we follow this distinction and present useful tips and detailed information in two thematic blocks:
Block 1
This block focuses on the technical factors of your website—measures implemented in the HEAD section of the HTML code. We explain what Title tags, meta descriptions, SEO-friendly URLs, sitemap.xml, and robots.txt are, and what you need to consider when integrating them into your shop system.
Block 2
The second block covers the content of your shop. This is about creating high-quality content that is equally important for Google and for your visitors. In particular, this area offers virtually endless potential for shop owners—both for improving rankings and for successfully increasing conversion rates.
At the end of each measure, we take a closer look at implementation in the shop backend. As a representative example for other shop systems, we focus on Shopware.
Let’s briefly keep the overall goal of these measures—OnPage and OffPage—in mind: improving your ranking positions for relevant search queries. It is important to note that the measures described here are based on two different logics for achieving this goal:
1) Direct Measures to Improve Rankings
These measures directly “feed” the search engine algorithm and are therefore directly responsible for your rankings. In our overview, this applies to:
Measure 1: Optimize your title tags
Measure 4: Create a sitemap.xml
Measure 5: Create a robots.txt (actively support the crawler)
Measure 7: Create high-quality content
Measure 8: Avoid duplicate content
Measure 9: Carry out semantic keyword analyses
Measure 10: Use internal links
2) Indirect Measures to Improve Rankings
These measures increase your click-through rates (CTR) in the search results and help you stand out visually from competitors.
Indirectly, they also improve rankings: more clicks signal that your page is interesting to users and relevant to the query. Search engines reward this user behavior, which can lead to better rankings for your shop pages. The following measures follow this logic:
Measure 2: Craft your meta descriptions deliberately
Measure 3: Use meaningful URLs
Measure 6: Use Google rich snippets
For simplicity, we use Google as the representative search engine, as it is the undisputed market leader in Europe. In 2014, Google held a market share of over 94% in Germany.³ The remaining share is split between Bing, Yahoo, and T-Online search.
Before we begin outlining individual measures, we should define two key SEO terms you will encounter repeatedly: snippet and SERP, both describing characteristics of a search result.
A snippet literally means a “small piece” and refers to an individual search result. It usually contains the title, meta description, URL, and additional information for rich snippets. Our first measures address optimizing these elements.
SERP is short for Search Engine Results Page and refers to all results for a given query. All snippets together form the SERP. Since most queries extend beyond the first page, the plural SERPs is commonly used.
Measure 1: Optimize Your Title Tags
In the SERPs, the title tag is displayed as the headline of the snippet. The title is a decisive factor Google uses to calculate rankings, which is why optimizing title tags is one of the most important OnPage tools.
When creating a title tag, be sure to observe the following:
Provide each URL with a unique title.
Use a maximum of 55 characters (including spaces). Anything beyond that is cut off with “(…)”.
Place your keywords as early as possible, because Google gives more weight to words at the beginning of the title.
Don’t only think about ranking factors—think about users. Even an SEO-optimized title won’t achieve the desired effect if it isn’t phrased appealingly and doesn’t encourage the user to click.
Figure 1: This is how the title appears in the search results
Figure 2: How to check your title tag easily in your browser (example: Firefox)
In addition to checking in the browser, there are numerous tools online that show your title tags the way Google displays them in the SERPs. Based on practical experience, the following two have proven particularly useful:
SISTRIX SERP Snippet Generator: a comprehensive tool that lets you check all snippet elements and also test existing URLs.
MOZ tool/blog preview: shows the title tag and bolds parts of the search phrase when you enter them.⁴
Modern content management systems (CMS) provide convenient integration of title tags in the backend of your shop system. With Shopware, you can easily and individually adjust title tags within your personalized backend.
Further reading:
Measure 2: Craft Your Meta Descriptions Deliberately
Contrary to various (blog) opinions, meta descriptions are not a direct ranking factor used by Google to evaluate results. However, that does not make them less important—meta descriptions should be optimized with your viewer in mind, i.e., your potential customer.
The meta description gives users a first impression of what your page offers. You should aim to convince the reader and stand out from competitors. A strong meta description can significantly increase click-through rates (CTR). In addition, Google tends to rank pages higher when they achieve higher click-through rates. By writing meta descriptions consistently and consciously, you gain the opportunity to indirectly improve your search positions.
For optimal display, consider the following:
Use a maximum of 156 characters including spaces; anything longer is cut off with “(…)”.
Each URL should have a unique meta description.
Add symbols to make the snippet more visually distinctive (e.g.,
, ©, ™, |, ), *, …).A good overview of common, Google-compliant special characters can be found online.
As a shop operator, you can present key benefits here—such as free shipping above a certain order value or payment by invoice or installments.
Even if you follow all best practices, Google may still not display your meta description and instead show a seemingly random excerpt from the first third of your page content. In general, the description is merely a suggestion to Google and does not have to be used. You can do relatively little to guarantee acceptance: a complex algorithm determines the best snippet depending on the search query. However, that algorithm does consider the meta description as an input—so the work is not wasted.
Here as well, modern CMS solutions such as Shopware make manual entry easy. You can also use the SISTRIX snippet generator to check how descriptions will be displayed.
Figure 3: This is how a meta description appears in the SERPs.
Further reading:
Measure 3: Use Meaningful URLs
As a shop operator, you have likely paid special attention to your domain name—because a memorable, meaningful address helps visitors find your shop and tends to stick in their minds. However, reality is often different. Not everyone can rely solely on the brand power of domains like Zalando or Amazon. Most online shops—probably yours as well—generate visits via SERPs for search queries that are entered into Google millions of times per day.
That is why you should assign meaningful URLs to all pages. URLs that consist only of a seemingly random string of characters and letters look uninformative. Google can also better understand your page content when keywords appear in the URL.
Make your URLs “speak.” With manually created URLs, you signal what the page is about. So it isn’t only the title and meta description that communicate page content. Another advantage is that you can integrate high-volume keywords into the URL—these are then shown in bold within the snippet and can attract the user’s attention.
Figure 4: “Speaking” URL in the SERPs
Three Ways to Create “Speaking” URLs
The key to optimal URL creation is assigning each URL clearly and unambiguously. For shop operators, three main approaches emerge:
Option 1: Category-based logic
URLs follow the shop’s category structure, starting from the main category and leading into subcategories. This is ideal for large assortments with relatively balanced revenue distribution across categories.
Example: http://www.neuesbad.de/badarmaturen/hsk/rund/deckenarm
Option 2: Product-based logic
Best suited for shops where revenue concentrates on a few key products. URLs are built around top-selling products and often include the product name right after the domain. This keeps URLs short and visually prominent.
Example: http://www.perfektegesundheit.de/vitamix-s30
Option 3: Landing page logic
Use existing landing pages for highly competitive keywords or product groups with weaker rankings. A positive side effect is that these URLs are often much shorter than deep category paths.
Case example: Imagine you run an online shop selling shoes. You offer fashion shoes for women, men, and children and want to promote women’s summer shoes for the upcoming season. You already created a landing page and analyzed relevant keywords. A URL like:
www.meinshop.de/sommer-damen-schuhe
is much shorter than a category-based URL like:
www.meinshop.de/schuhe/damenschuhe/neue-kollektionen/jahreszeiten/sommerschuhe
Figure 5: Keep your URL structure as short as possible!
Such a short URL is not only easier for you to read—users notice it more quickly as well. And if it contains the keyword, the bold highlighting in the snippet can further increase the visual impact and boost CTR for competitive queries.
Shopware also enables manual adjustments to speaking URLs via its URL module, allowing individual customization.
Further reading:
Measure 4: Structure Your Online Shop with a Sitemap!
With every update, Google is moving more and more toward an “intelligent” search. However, a concrete algorithm still runs upstream of everything. This algorithm looks specifically for structures on your website and rewards shop operators who make the information needed by search engine crawlers easy to access.
This is where the sitemap comes into play. It works like a table of contents, contains a list of all pages (URLs) in your shop, and therefore serves as a structural representation that helps Google understand and index your shop more effectively. Subpages that might otherwise be overlooked can be found more easily—especially in large shops, where this can happen frequently.
For Google, it is important that your sitemap is created in XML format.
If your shop contains a large product range, it is recommended that you split the sitemap so your server is not overloaded when providing the sitemap to Google. Google’s guidelines state that a sitemap must not exceed 50,000 URLs or a file size of 50 MB. Instead of submitting each individual sitemap, you can combine all sitemaps into an index file and submit them to Google collectively. For very large sites, you can use a gzip version or split the sitemap into multiple files.
If your shop system does not generate a sitemap automatically, you can find a common tool for creating such a table of contents here.
Further reading:
For submitting a sitemap to Google, you can find a helpful guide here:
http://www.sistrix.de/frag-sistrix/sitemaps/wie-kann-ich-eine-sitemap-bei-google-einreichen/
(We recommend choosing the second option via the Webmaster Tools.)
Measure 5: Actively Support the Crawler!
With the help of the sitemap.xml, you have prepared the basic structure of your shop so that search engine crawlers can navigate your pages much more easily, and indexing for the SERPs should be faster.
When the web crawlers (robots) of various search engines try to read your sitemap, they first look for a robots.txt file in your shop.
By creating a robots.txt, you tell crawlers of all search engines where your sitemap is located and what it is called. In addition, you use robots.txt to control the crawler and define which pages should be read (crawled) and which must not be visited.
Specifically, the robots.txt file ensures that you can define which pages of your shop should not be indexed. Reasons for excluding pages from the index may include pages still under construction, cache pages, or administration areas.
Why and how do you need to act proactively now?
Search engine crawlers initially assume that all pages may be read and indexed. This means you must explicitly define which pages should not be read. You specify this in the robots.txt file using the Disallow command.
There are various ways to block crawlers. It is possible to exclude an entire website—or only certain sections—from indexing.
You can find an overview of the different commands here.
A tool for testing your robots.txt can be found here.
Further reading:
Measure 6: Use Google Rich Snippets!
By creating a sitemap and robots.txt, you have successfully communicated your shop structure to the crawlers of various search engines and excluded pages from indexing in Google.
With this sixth measure—using Google Rich Snippets—we return directly to the content of snippets. In addition to the title, meta description, and meaningful URLs, Google Rich Snippets are another way to enrich your search results with more information.
Although no direct connection can (yet) be proven between the use of structured data and rankings within the SERPs, you help Google understand your information better and output it as defined microdata in a visually more noticeable way for users. Rich snippets allow you to stand out from competitors—visually—and thereby increase your click-through rates. And as you already suspect, this leads indirectly to improved results in the SERPs.
Examples of rich snippets
Images
Prices
Ratings
Product details
Display of additional subcategories
For Google to interpret the relationships of structured data correctly, these data must be properly defined. In principle, such data can be defined using three different methods: microdata, microformats, or RDFa. Google recommends using microdata markups based on Schema.org, so that you can add structured data to your pages even with basic HTML knowledge.
Example: Integrating prices into Google Rich Snippets
Microdata are often embedded in simple HTML tags such as <span> or <div>. A command like itemtype=http://schema.org/Product indicates that the element (also called an entity) is a product. Properties of the product are specified using the itemprop attribute. You can store a wide range of information here—such as price, EAN, or stock availability.
Figure 6: How price information is displayed in snippets.
You can find an overview with helpful instructions and examples here.
Also useful is Google’s own development tool for rich snippets. It provides correct coding for many markups and allows you to test them afterward.
In the following figures, you can see two further examples of structured data in Google rich snippets:
1) Ratings
As an online shop operator, you depend on positive customer reviews—this only works if they are communicated outwardly. With a rating system displayed directly in the snippet, you can present product reviews in an attractive way and convince potential customers of your good reputation.
Figure 7: Ratings for Google rich snippets.
2) Subcategories (Breadcrumbs)
This type of structured data is called a breadcrumb navigation and usually shows URL paths in relation to the overall domain. This can be the category tree that displays parent categories so users can understand where they are on the website—or, as in this example, which subcategories exist.
This provides the searcher with additional information that they may not even have been aware of at the time of the query. In the best case, structured data helps satisfy a need the user didn’t yet realize they had when entering the search term.
Figure 8: Display of additional subcategories.
Links for viewing and reading:
A First (Interim) Conclusion
The first 6 measures of our 10 OnPage optimization tips have shown you how to shape the various technical aspects of your shop pages. By manually adjusting title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs, you can either positively influence Google’s ranking factors—or increase click rates on your snippets and thereby indirectly improve your position in the SERPs.
In short: the key points again
Write unique, appealing titles for your URLs.
Create informative, inviting meta descriptions for your pages.
Use meaningful and as short as possible URLs.
Create a sitemap in Google-friendly XML format.
Control crawlers using a robots.txt file.
Use structured data via Google rich snippets.
The following figure shows all elements of an optimized snippet once again.
Figure 9: Have you considered all important snippet elements?
Of course, technical optimization is a crucial milestone for reaching top SERP positions in the first place. However, even the best ranking is of little value if users land on low-value pages and don’t find answers to the questions that led them to search in the first place.
In recent years, content has gained steadily increasing importance within e-commerce. Not only since multiple Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird updates pushed Google further toward a semantic search engine has high-quality content been rewarded more strongly.
This demonstrates that e-commerce is not a “consultation-free” space and that revenue has not been driven solely by price for quite some time. Customers need a wide range of product information, because they cannot physically experience the goods. You can compensate for this disadvantage—especially with useful, high-quality, and engaging contributions related to your products.
Measure 7: Create High-Quality Content!
As a shop operator, you have likely built excellent expertise in your field over time. Now it’s time to share this knowledge publicly—i.e., with your (potential) customers. With high-quality content, you can position yourself as a trusted expert and go-to authority for your product range.
Creating high-quality content has been the recipe for sustainable success in online business for several years. Not least, Google updates have ensured that website content is considered a key ranking factor in search results. The algorithm rewards content that provides the best and most precise answers to search queries.
Increasingly, solutions to users’ problems are taking center stage. It is no longer about placing a keyword as often as possible in your product descriptions—it is about creating real value for visitors. To satisfy these increasingly complex needs, you must put yourself in the searcher’s position.
Ask yourself, for example:
Why is a user entering this term or phrase into the search bar right now?
Which questions does their search query imply?
What answers does the searcher expect?
What can you contribute to satisfy this need as effectively as possible?
Does this still sound too abstract? Let’s provide a concrete example that introduces the importance of content creation.
Figure 10: Everything for your health!
The core business of this shop is selling high-end blenders and juicers in higher price ranges. The shop could simply have used a domain like mixer24.de or entsafter.com. So what motivated the owner to choose perfektegesundheit.de?
From a content perspective, the choice becomes logically compelling. If we consider which customers buy blenders and juicers priced in the hundreds of euros, it seems likely that these users are not only interested in high-quality products—but that the desire for a healthy lifestyle is a central motivation.
The shop operator took the effort to address potential questions from searchers and did not limit themselves to simply analyzing top keywords related to “blender” or “juicer.” With various articles on health and healthy nutrition, the shop answers users’ questions directly and creates value for people looking for guidance on healthier living.
This example clearly shows how strongly content has entered the e-commerce world. Above all, Google itself wants to rank good, informative content for users much more highly. The algorithm increasingly detects websites that deliver no value and disappoint users—such pages are identified more effectively and devalued in the SERPs.
By focusing on high-quality content, you not only increase trust among customers and position yourself as an expert for your users’ needs—you also reduce the risk of being downgraded by future algorithm updates.
Recent developments also show that Google is increasingly aiming to promote “hard facts” rather than pseudo-knowledge. In a newer scientific paper, this objective is described as knowledge-based trust. In “Google language,” it’s about displaying “nothing but the truth” at the top of SERPs. This makes it increasingly important to describe products truthfully and address real user needs—rather than selling assumptions, speculation, or promises.
Now you are likely wondering how to create high-quality content in practice and what you should pay attention to.
First things first: before you start writing, take the time to answer the questions above as precisely and completely as possible. Even technically correct content implementation helps little if you haven’t thought through the page content beforehand.
Key considerations for content creation
Keywords: In addition to deciding what content customers should find on your pages, you cannot avoid analyzing keywords for each topic area. Google is moving toward an intelligent search engine, but a classic algorithm still underlies it. Relationships between keywords increasingly influence rankings—yet this only works if relevant keywords appear in the texts. Therefore, always conduct keyword research before writing (Google provides the Keyword Planner, for example, which shows frequency distributions for selected keywords).
Keyword frequency and distribution: Despite the importance of keyword research, remember that the content should remain the priority. A stringing-together of keywords pleases neither Google nor readers. Usability—meeting user needs—comes first. An engaging story that captivates your readers will bring greater success than obsessing over whether a keyword appears 8, 9, or 10 times.
Headings and text structure: Use headings to structure your text in a user-friendly way and make it easier to scan. Web texts are read differently than print: studies show online texts are more often scanned than read word-for-word. The eye moves more from top to bottom than left to right. Therefore, key information should appear early, ideally at the beginning of sentences. Always use an H1 heading that contains the keyword, because Google pays special attention to this when crawling the page. Use H2 and H3 headings to further structure the text and highlight important information. You can also use bold or italic formatting to add emphasis. Make sure to use only one H1 per URL, otherwise the Google bot may not recognize which heading is the primary one.
Content formats: Use different formats that appeal to different senses. Demonstrate products with high-quality videos or inform customers via newsletters. Blogs have also become popular, where you and your customers can discuss controversial topics. This not only builds loyalty among existing customers, but also keeps people informed and ideally encourages participation.
Measure 8: Avoid Duplicate Content!
Make sure every single URL of your domain(s) contains unique content. Avoid publishing duplicate content at all costs.
If you tolerate duplicate content, you risk being downgraded by Google. Because the algorithm searches for the best possible page for each query, duplicate content makes it unclear which page is most relevant. The pages then have to “share” relevance and can lose significant visibility in the SERPs.
Label internal duplicate content!
Duplicate content can have different causes—for example, when you offer multiple variants of a product or when the same item can be reached via different URLs. This can happen if a product is placed in multiple categories and is also promoted on a dedicated landing page.
You can see that internal duplicate content is often difficult to avoid completely. However, Google allows you to explicitly label duplicate content. Using canonical URLs, you indicate which page should be indexed in the SERPs.
You do this by marking the URL that should not be indexed for ranking with a rel="canonical" tag pointing to the canonical page. This labels duplicate content clearly and ensures it does not distort ranking calculations.
Avoid using external duplicate content
This occurs when identical content is published across different domains. Shop operators often face this problem when they copy manufacturer texts onto product pages. The only real solution is to avoid this as much as possible—because Google actively fights precisely this type of duplication. If multiple pages show identical information, no additional value is created for users, and it becomes unclear which page best fits the query.
Identifying duplicate content
We could list various tools here—but the truth is: the easiest way to identify identical content is often simply using Google Search itself. Highlight the relevant passage and paste it into Google’s search field.
Further reading:
http://www.sistrix.de/frag-sistrix/onpage-optimierung/duplicate-content/
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066#2 (detailed guide to setting canonical tags)
Measure 9: Perform Semantic Keyword Analyses!
Google’s search algorithm is increasingly becoming a “semantic search engine.” With every update, more attention is paid to the semantics (meaning and context) of search queries. This is intended to ensure that search queries are answered more precisely with the most appropriate pages. The goal is to provide the most relevant answer to a concrete question.
Since Google is (still) not truly intelligent search, it will continue for some time to provide a selection of possible answers in the form of multiple snippets in the SERPs.
To continuously increase relevance, Google uses semantic connections in the environment of a term. For the query “dog leash,” for example, Google does not only look for relevant pages for the exact keyword, but also for surrounding terms that carry high relevance.
Figure 11: Semantic keyword analysis for “dog leash” (source: SemaGER).
As a shop operator, you can use tools to identify related terms around the main keyword and integrate these into your website content.
A semantic keyword analysis increases the likelihood of improving your positions within the SERPs sustainably. It is therefore not only important to analyze search volume for keywords, but also to incorporate semantically related terms into your content creation.
Measure 10: Use Internal Links!
In addition to forming title tags correctly and creating high-quality content, links are another extremely important ranking factor for Google’s algorithm.
Links are divided into:
Internal links (linking from one page to another within your own domain)
External links (links from other domains pointing to your URLs)
External links can improve your rankings when they come from trustworthy sources and match the topic for which the link is placed.
However, since we focus on the most important OnPage measures—and external links come from outside (OffPage)—this tenth and final measure explains the significance of internal link structures and provides practical tips for creating them.
Google crawls and indexes countless websites every day. Within your domain, the crawler moves from one page to the next via internal links. The information found on URLs is stored and used for ranking calculation in SERPs.
Contrary to popular belief, not only external links matter for better SERP positioning. Google itself emphasizes the role of internal links in its own PDF introduction to SEO. It states that internal links improve navigation for visitors and help Google understand what the linked page is about.
Unlike external links, you have full control over the quality and origin of internal links. The search engine algorithm recognizes this and evaluates it positively.
A simple example illustrates the weighting of internal links: if you look at visibility among top domains, you’ll notice Wikipedia URLs dominate. You likely have the impression that Wikipedia entries appear near the top for many queries.
Why is that?
In addition to the high-quality content on many Wikipedia pages, the site is heavily interlinked. Yet these links don’t feel manipulative—they feel natural. They are topic-related and point to pages explaining terms, which then link further, and so on.
What does the optimal internal link structure look like?
In general: each link helps the crawler find deeper pages more easily and incorporate their information into ranking calculations.
When building internal links, be sure to observe two key principles:
1) Internal links must point to relevant topics
Link to further subcategories, specific products, or your own videos, blog posts, and dedicated product pages.
Every link must provide user value and satisfy a specific interest.
2) Internal links must be easy to recognize
Links should appear directly in the main content area, not hidden in the footer or side areas.
They should be visually highlighted and clearly recognizable as links (often achieved via different text color).
The linked text (anchor text) should be precise and describe the topic clearly and briefly. Preferably use keywords as anchor texts.
Further reading:
Conclusion
As you have likely seen, SEO is not something you can “order” casually or handle in passing. It should also be noted that we have dealt here “only” with OnPage optimization and deliberately left out topics such as external links and other OffPage factors.
Nevertheless, the effort is worth it: once SEO has been worked on thoroughly, you can soon harvest the fruits of your work—improved rankings in the SERPs—for a long time. Higher click-through rates and, ultimately, increased revenue are positive outcomes of these efforts.
Of course, other factors must also be considered, such as current inventory and optimal positioning in the market.
When it comes to sustainably increasing revenue, no single measure—whether OnPage or OffPage—can be viewed as the sole “savior” of economic success. Only the interaction of all measures and a holistic approach to SEO will deliver the long-term results you expect.
Outlook
Since we are aware that we could not cover every aspect of OnPage optimization here, our next article will continue this topic—but with a stronger focus on OnPage measures that improve rankings in mobile search.
One trend that became clear in the past year within SEO is the shift of search queries away from desktop PCs toward mobile devices. As early as 2014, searches from smartphones, tablets, and similar devices were already nearly equal to desktop search.⁵ Matt Cutts, Google’s head of webspam at the time, expected that in 2015 the balance would shift in favor of mobile devices for the first time.
At one of the world’s largest search marketing conferences, SMX West, he spoke about the importance of mobile friendliness as the newest Google ranking factor. Starting April 21, 2015, Google’s algorithm would be expanded to include mobile usability. For you as an online shop operator, this means your shop’s usability for mobile devices should urgently be optimized.
Our next article will therefore focus explicitly on SEO for mobile devices and will cover topics such as optimal image size, Google PageSpeed, and adapting design to the requirements of smartphones, tablets, and similar devices.
Sources
Google Keyword Planner, accessed 09/03/2015.
http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/167841/umfrage/marktanteile-ausgewaehlter-suchmaschinen-in-deutschland/ (last accessed 02/24/2015)
Nice to know: The “Cutts ME, Google!” button is a reference to Google’s head of webspam, Matt Cutts.
See: http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/257625/umfrage/verwendete-endgeraete-bei-google-suchanfragen/ (last accessed 03/06/2015)
Image credit: Adobe Stock / chaylek