Website Optimization: How Brian Gavin Diamonds overcame ‘mobilegeddon’
For most companies and its marketers, ensuring good placement in search engine results is crucial.
In 2015, Google updated its algorithm. The update earned the name “mobilegeddon.” Why?
“If someone is doing a search on Google using their mobile device, Google is going to show websites that are mobile friendly before websites that are not mobile friendly,” said Danny Gavin, VP, Director of Marketing, Brian Gavin Diamonds, in his interview at the MarketingSherpa Media Center at IRCE. “You can imagine that people who don’t have a mobile friendly site they lose a lot out because naturally they’re going to fall to the bottom of the first page or even on the second page.”
Danny sat down with Courtney Eckerle, Managing Editor, MarketingSherpa, to discuss how his company addressed the update and the impact seen from the rollout.
As a high-end jewelry retailer, Brian Gavin Diamonds didn’t see the early mobile traffic burst that some companies saw online. Danny shared how their mobile traffic was very small in 2012, but steadily increased as the years went by.
“As we saw that our customers are using their mobile device more so naturally we need to make sure that our website is more mobile friendly,” Danny said.
This became even more evident with the announcement of Google of the new algorithm.
Trying to be customer first, the team’s initial efforts focused on product and category pages, the pages people actually shop on.
However, just before the rollout, they realized the important of the content page, such as articles and blog posts. Those were they’re SEO drivers.
“At that point, it was the opposite of everything that was important. All of our SEO content pages, those are the ones that should have been mobile friendly because those are the ones that are actually ranking up in Google. So we had to dash and quickly make sure all these content pages that we had became mobile friendly,” he said.
Despite making all the content pages mobile friendly before the update, Google didn’t re-index those pages until after the update, so the team did take a small hit.
Watch the full interview above to learn the full impact of the initial hit and, more importantly, the long-term success the jewelry retailer saw due to “mobilegeddon.”
Danny also shares how the team has changed their mobile friendly approach since then to achieve better success and easier maintenance.
If you like to learn more about Danny and about Brian Gavin Diamond’s social media marketing approach, watch the video replay of his MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 presentation, “How a Custom Jeweler’s Creative Vine Campaign Reached 6 Million Loops.”
You might also like:
Social Media Marketing: How an online diamond retailer got 6 million Vine loops in one year [Danny’s interview at IRCE 2015]
Email Research Chart: Email opens trends on mobile devices in 2015
Why Responsive Design Does Not Care About Your Customers
Categories: Search Marketing Google, mobile friendly, mobile marketing, SEO
