SMX West Recap – San Jose 2017
One conference for digital marketing is useful, if you have learned a lot and made contacts!
This year another SMX West conference was carried out which was about SEO, social marketing and advertising {AdWords} in San Jose, Californa in USA, on which the owner of SEO Аgency Serpact was present. Remarkable lecturers about which you will read below, perfect organization by Matt Van Wagner and much, much new knowledge.
SMX is as big as the lecturers are, it’s huge!!
Jason Douglas from Google to Google Home Assistant
The future lies in Voice Search which is going to become a stronger factor in SEO 3.0., and Jason Douglas explained about Google Home Assistance, which is emerging as a SEO 4.0., several advantages:
1. Easier surfing , you don’t need to type from your keyboard
2. Very well-organized information
3. It helps you organize your day better
4. Several important questions that were asked:
4.1. Is SEO possible for Google Home Assistance?
4.2 Are there going to be advertizements in Google Home Assistance?
4.3. How to add our website in Google Home Assistance ?
4.4. All the questions were answered of course but we will keep that to ourselves..
Eric Enge – down to earth and amazing!
It’s not hard to pay attention to the people that have huge aura around them. People that have big knolwedge and who you should much respect for all their achivements and knowledge. Eric Enge is the perfect example for this. I thank him for all his priceless advice and a wonderful presentation. You can find more information about him and Mark Traphagen on https://www.stonetemple.com/.
Mobile Index 1st – Eric Enge
1. Making a comparison between mobile and desktop search.
1.1. Moibile – 55.79%
1.2. Desktop – 44.21%
2. Where to look for mistakes:
2.1. Key content is maybe missing from your pages
2.2. Your Crawl budget is maybe spent
2.3. Missing structural information
2.4. Missing SEO tags
3. Next were several Case Studies by Eric:
3.1. Discrepancy between the indexed pages for desktop and mobile devices in favor of desktop, we all know that this is a problem.
3.2. Broken links between the two versions
3.3. 301s discrepancies
3.4. 302s discrepancies
4. Canonical – two copies for mobile pages
5. Categories without navigation for mobile devices thanks to click depth, which is 217 clicks
6. Missing structured data for mobile pages
7. This is a little part from all common mistakes
Leslie To on Mobile SEO Design
A really interesting presentation by Leslie To, who explained very accurately about the big gaps in the design of mobile devices, and namely:
1. Speed
2. Usability
3. Accessibility
4. Avoiding to put Download APP on the whole screen because a user always can download an APP if they want. If you want, you can put it above in the header, stylized and discreet.
5. Mega menu should not be used for mobile devices!
6. Make sure the text is at least 16px
7. Tap target minimum 48px
8. It will be good if you have user functionality in the website with which they do not exit their keyboard during the flight changing – for example in a contact form.
9. Target blanc should not be used for mobile devices
10. Check your Meta Viewport tag
Barry Schwartz – he knows what SEO is!
Danny Sullivan – unique moderator without secrets in the digital marketing !
Voice Search – SEO 3.0.
Benu Aggarwal, Bryson Meunier, Purna Virji on Voice Search
A lecture connected with Voice Search which is emerging very quickly and is expected to become SEO 3.0., in brief about the presentations by Benu Aggarwal, Bryson Meunier, Purna Virji:
1. Huge rate of Voice Search until 2021
2. Longer words are being searched
3. The main search is with questions
4. There are PPC campaigns
5. Analysis: Where | When | Why | Who | How?
6. SEO without Serp – it is possible!
7. The use of schema.org is necessary
8. Zero {0} position in Serp
9. How to test with Voice Search
10. Checks
11. What happens with CTR?
12. There were many interesting questions because of the fact that the topic is higly interesting.
International SEO оptimization with Aleyda Solis and Andy Atkins-Kruger
Aleyda Solis and Andy Atkins-Kruger about international optimization
The lecture was full with many examples given by Aleyda Solis and Andy Atkins-Kruger in which they show what we should pay attention to and what are the most common mistakes in the international SEO. Of course they were discussed in detail:
1. Hreflang
2. Canonical
3. The translations and their quality
4. URL structure
5. Settings in Google Console
Gary Illyes – extraordinary, AMA!
This was an open panel in which the public asked qustions and Mariya Moeva and Gary Illyes had to answer. Some of these questions were really interesting:
- Do subdomains of authoritative domains have the same weight, if we create our own blogspot for example
2. Is there subdomain authority?
3. Fred, how the next one is going to be called, maybe Bob?
4. How we can have control over the photos in Open Graph?
5. About Subdomain and folder
6. About Exact much domains
7. Adaptive design and mobile version
Kristine Schachinger – specialist on a world level
Kristine Schachinger on Friendly SEO Design
Successful SEO with
Aaron Bradley on a successful integration of structured data
The lecture was filled with many examples given by Aaron Bradley who is Web Channel Strategy Manager in EA. The next photo that the lecturer showed to the public was interesting. All the same, we will make several more important points:
You should know where to use the structured data
You should know how to use it
You should know what you should use it for
There are many ways to check, not only Google Structure Data Testing Tool
You should combine it in the different search engines
AMP
Ranna Zhou, Jeff Preston, Paul Shapiro on AMP
1. The lecturers explained about the AMP technology and the benefits it brings:
2. 6 times faster websites
3. Whole 85% from the owners of websites receive higher CTR because of the fact that users recognize it
4. Ranking improvement of 13%
5. AMP Ads
6. Higher CPMs
7. Many websites use AMP, like LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, Medium, Google, Feedly, Moments, Bing, Nuzzel and many other;