Archives for April 2015

The time to be mobile friendly is now

· · Leave a Comment

In a recent article here on the DMA blog, Not being mobile responsive is about to cost you traffic  I wrote about the coming update from Google that see the popular search engine giving preference to mobile friendly websites. Here’s a quick update since their search engine update has been rolled out just last week.

If you’ve not read the original post take a moment to check it out and get up to speed with what this is all about.

“Mobilegeddon” the proof

The SEO industry thrives on updates like this, there’s more than the odd blog post being published by SEO types discussing the change. It even hit main stream media here in Sydney last week.

SearchMetrics published a very good article where they compared a number of high profile websites in the same industry. In each example one is all setup for mobile devices (i.e. it’s responsive) and the other is not. SearchMetrics then looks at the traffic that each site has received before and after Google recent update.

Show me the graphs!

Always a good way to get a point across. Show a graph (we borrowed these screen shots from the original post here).

Here is the traffic from a website onlinekosten.de – which is not setup for mobile devices. The green line in the graph shows traffic coming from smartphones and tablet computers.

mobile-visibility-onlinekosten_de

On the other hand, there’s this website check24.de – which does work well on mobile.

mobile-visibility-check24_de

In both cases, it’s the last few days from the 19th April onward that shows you the effect.

If you’d like to jump off and read the full article, here’s the link.

What is interesting in their analysis is this: there’s more to Google’s current change than perhaps we all think. They point to sites that were not optimised for mobile devices but recently have been updated to be responsive. The interesting flow on is that their traffic from Google has increased with the conversion to being responsive – even before this change in Google’s algorithm had been implemented.

Test your site

Chances are that if we built your site in the past 24 months (or probably more) – it’s going to be responsive. If you would like to double check how Google sees it use their Mobile Friendly Test tool. It’s simple, you enter your website’s URL and click Analyze.

Not mobile friendly?

Chat to us we can discuss your options in updating your site so that it does work well on mobile devices.

It’s time to stake your claim for a new domain name

· · Leave a Comment

domainnamesIn a previous life, I lived and breathed domain names. It’s an old habit to keep an eye on the industry particularly as it sees amazing changes of late. Over the past twelve months the internet landscape has seen long awaited changes with the introduction of many many new top level domains. For those with an interest it’s hard not to behave like a kid in a candy store.

And while the opportunities are there to be had I can’t see that familiarity with these names domain names has really taken off. So let me play my part. If you’re new to the whole shebang I’ll explain.

What is a domain name ?

It’s the Internet address that you use to access different kinds of services online. TheDMA.com.au is ours. For many years there was basically two different kinds of domain names. Generic domains that were available for international use: things .com .net .org. Then there were domains that were allocated for specific counties. These ended in a country code. .au for Australia, .uk for the United Kingdom etc..

From the late 90s to more recent times there were a few minor changes but on the whole things didn’t change much. Particularly from the perspective of the general public. The end users. Starting a business, starting a website and needed an internet address. If you lived in Australia you’d start with .au if your desired name was not available there you might try to find the equivalent in .com.

The new frontier

You might thing it’s a bit strange using terminology like that but believe me, like there were prospectors in the push to develop many lands, there are developers who invest in domain names. Consider this: if you secure dogwalking.sydney weddings.melbourne or travel.nyc you will be able to sell it in the future.

The point of this article is not to convert you to prospecting on domain names. Instead it’s to make you aware of the opportunity for your business. If you’re in the music industry you might like to secure your name in .audio, or your business runs out of Sydney you like like to secure a name like XYZ.sydney. Think of the branding of a restaurant called Joe’s – joes.sydney would be perfect. It’s short and it’s memorable.

The list of new domains is staggering. Both what is available already for registration but also what is coming up. Check out a registrar like hover.com. They have a really good search tool that allows you to easily find domain names that might be of interest. View their pricing page here as well as cost it shows an updated list of new names that are available.

How much should you pay?

Most of the new domain names are available for around $17 – $50 USD for a one year registration. Like all domain names they need to be renewed every year at the same kind of cost. The cost is not high.

Good luck  colonizing your corner of the inter-webs.