Difference Between a Website that Doesn’t Render on Mobile and a Non-Responsive Website:

Doesn’t Render: Often, due to technical errors, incompatible elements, or server issues, the website fails to load or display correctly on mobile devices, making it unusable.
Non-Responsive: The website loads but is difficult to navigate and read on different mobile devices due to the lack of responsive design. The site is usable but offers a poor user experience on mobile.

What It Means for a Company’s Website

This change in ranking criteria means having a mobile-friendly design is no longer optional—it’s imperative. Websites that do not render on mobile will experience a notable drop in search engine rankings. This change will directly affect a company’s online presence, traffic, and potentially its revenue. As users increasingly use smartphones and tablets for browsing and shopping, a mobile-friendly website creates a better user experience and higher engagement rates.

Should a Company Care?

Absolutely. Here are a few reasons why companies should prioritize a mobile-responsive design:

1. Search Engine Visibility: As of February 2024, almost 60% of all worldwide website traffic is from a mobile device. Without a mobile-friendly design, your site won’t be indexed, leading to a loss of organic traffic from search engines.
2. User Experience: Mobile users expect a first-class experience. A mobile responsive design ensures your site is accessible and user-friendly across all devices.
3. Competitive Advantage: Companies adapting to mobile-first indexing can gain a competitive edge over those that don’t. Being mobile-friendly can improve your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).
4. Customer Expectations: With more than half of global web traffic coming from mobile devices, users expect websites to be optimized for mobile use. Not meeting these expectations can result in higher bounce rates and lower engagement.

How to Prepare

Preparing for mobile-first indexing involves several key steps:

1. Responsive Design: Make sure your website uses a responsive design that adjusts seamlessly to different screen sizes and devices. You can test your website’s mobility design with tools like Google Page Speed Insights and MobiReady.
2. Content Parity: Ensure that your mobile site’s content matches your desktop site’s content. This includes text, images, and videos. Google crawls the mobile version of your content for indexing, so it’s crucial that the mobile content is complete and of high quality.
3. Structured Data: Verify that structured data is present on your site’s desktop and mobile versions. Structured data helps Google understand your pages’ content and can improve your search visibility.
4. Performance Optimization: Optimize your site for speed and performance on mobile devices. Use techniques like image compression, lazy loading, and leveraging browser caching to enhance load times.

The Future of Mobile-First Indexing

The move to mobile-first indexing is just the beginning of a broader shift towards prioritizing mobile experiences. The online search experience is being influenced by societal, technological, and competitive forces like never before, so here are some future trends to consider and plan for:

1. Voice Search Optimization: As mobile devices are commonly used for voice searches, optimizing for voice search will become increasingly important. This change involves focusing on natural language, long-tail keywords, and answering specific questions users might ask.
2. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs): PWAs combine the best of web and mobile apps, offering fast, reliable, and engaging experiences. Adopting PWAs can further enhance the mobile experience and keep users engaged.
3. AI and Machine Learning: Google’s algorithms will continue progressing in AI and machine learning. It is imperative for companies to stay current with best practices and emerging SEO and web development trends.
4. Enhanced User Experience: As Google emphasizes user experience (UX) metrics like Core Web Vitals, companies must prioritize UX in their mobile design strategies. This focus includes aspects like loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability.

Google’s decision to enforce mobile-first indexing marks a significant juncture in the future of the web. Companies must adapt to this change by ensuring their websites are mobile-responsive, user-friendly, and optimized for performance. By embracing these practices, businesses can maintain their search engine visibility, meet customer expectations, and stay competitive in an increasingly mobile-centric world.

If you are concerned about your website’s mobile design, contact Power Marketing for a free analysis and consultation.

The post As of July 5th, 2024, Google Will No Longer Index Non-Mobile Websites appeared first on Power-Marketing.

What Are Cookies?

Cookies are small text files stored by your browser when you visit a website. They serve multiple purposes, including:

● Storing login information

● Saving preferences like language and font size

● Keeps track of shopping cart items

● Identifying users with a unique ID

● Tracking the pages you visit

Cookies can be temporary (expiring after a session) or persistent (stored until you delete them).

Why Are They Called Cookies?

The term “cookie” comes from “magic cookies,” a computing term referring to an exchange of information between two programs. Lou Montulli, a developer in the mid-90s, introduced the term “cookie” in the context of the internet. Like a fortune cookie, which contains a snippet of advice, internet cookies contain important information about your activity on a website.

First-Party vs. Third-Party Cookies

Websites you visit create First-party cookies, which can only be accessed by that site. These cookies improve user experience by remembering your preferences. For example, an e-commerce site might use cookies to keep track of your shopping cart items.

Third-party cookies are created by websites other than the one you’re currently visiting. They track your activity across multiple sites, gathering data about your browsing habits for advertising purposes. This “tracking” is how ad networks know to show you targeted ads. For instance, if you’ve been searching for flights, you might see ads for hotels and car rentals on other sites.

What’s Changing?

First-party cookies remain unaffected. However, most browsers are now blocking third-party cookies. Privacy-focused browsers like Firefox, Brave, and Safari have done this for years, and Google Chrome started blocking third-party cookies by default in 2024. Given Chrome’s dominance, this change is significant.

On January 4, 2024, Google began blocking third-party cookies by default for 1% of users, with plans to increase this to 100% by Q3 2024.

How Will This Affect Your Business?

While other browsers have weakened third-party cookies, Chrome’s upcoming phase-out marks a significant shift. Chrome will continue tracking users through different methods, with anonymized and categorized data sent to Google or other parties. Learn more about The Privacy Sandbox initiative.

Meta’s Pixel defaults to first-party cookies but still uses third-party cookies for cross-website tracking. Meta can still determine users’ interests with data from its own platforms, and its Conversions API helps fill tracking gaps.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is designed for a cookieless world. It relies only on first-party cookies and uses statistical modeling to fill tracking gaps.

Overall, the most significant impact will be targeting accuracy, not attribution. Publishers may feel a bigger impact than marketers since advertising networks rely heavily on third-party cookies. If you don’t run programmatic advertising, there’s less cause for concern.

Digital Marketers anticipated this gradual change for years, and platforms have adapted accordingly. More importantly, there’s no reason to panic. If you’ve been using third-party cookies for your marketing campaign, most seasoned digital marketers are prepared with marketing alternatives based on privacy concerns.

If you have questions about third-party cookies or digital marketing strategy, contact Power Marketing.

The post The End of Third-Party Cookies: What You Need to Know appeared first on Power-Marketing.

It would be an understatement to say we were dumbfounded. The Power Marketing team has managed 8-12 Google Ads accounts without an issue. We thought Google’s new advertiser verification policy would be simple since we’d been using Google Ads (a.k.a pay-per-click) for years, and we viewed our team as model internet citizens. After effortlessly having the first eight accounts verified, we thought we were in the clear, and then we received this message:

Your Google Ads account was suspended for violating our Circumventing Systems policy. Suspended accounts are prohibited ads in all locations.

The notice went on to describe all the ways an advertiser can “circumvent”:

● Posting similar ads to ones that have been disapproved
● Redirecting visitors to non-compliant content
● Submitting false information on the verification process
● Billing/Payment Issues
● Unauthorized usage.

The notice ended with:

The suspension will be permanent unless you successfully appeal within five business days.

The First Appeal

The paperwork was standard. We told Google about our website security measures and long-term use of Google Ads. We documented the excellent site health of the landing page and website. It was a simple mistake by Google. Surely, a quick review of our account would show we were legitimate.

5 days later – APPEAL DENIED!

The Second Appeal

Obviously, the alleged violations were more complicated than we thought. For the second appeal, we changed our strategy. Since we had no idea what the violations were, we would put our team on the phones to find a live person at Google Ads. After several hours of making calls and being hung up on, a team member spoke to a Google Ads specialist. The specialist told our person she didn’t have access to the reason our account was suspended. Our man persisted and eventually was pushed to a manager who told us there was suspicious traffic on the website. The suspicious traffic appears to be from a Google Analytics issue with Poland (nothing to do with Power Marketing). So, our “A-HA moment” was here. We figured it out and submitted a new appeal.

7 days later – APPEAL DENIED!

The Third Appeal

Back to the drawing board! We had no idea why we were suspended or what to do next, so we turned to online forums, continued our phone call campaign, and had our senior developer review the website for any functionality that could be causing the issue.

Through the online forums, we read about issues with plugins and pixels, collecting information about website visitors. Our senior developer removed any pixels or plugins that might fall into this category. We scheduled another meeting with a Google Ads Specialist Manager to review the changes. We submitted the third appeal with extremely detailed descriptions and images showing all the hoops we jumped through to be compliant.

3 days later – APPEAL DENIED!

Then, suddenly, 27 days after we submitted the information to verify our account, we received this message from Google:

Your Google account has been reactivated.

What We Did Wrong

Thinking It Was a Simple Mistake—We lost over a week because we thought a simple email would fix the problem on the first appeal instead of submitting a more thorough case. When dealing with a massive corporation like Google, be extra diligent and remember to overwhelm them with the tactics you’ve executed to fix the issue.

Believing Someone Would Tell Us the Problem—If you have high blood pressure, dealing with Google’s support won’t help. The initial support person told us she didn’t have access to the reason our account was shut down. Once we moved up the ladder to speak with a manager, he stated the website had suspicious traffic, which we may or may not have been accurate.

What We Did Right

Insisting to Speak with a Manager—We will never know what pushed our case over the top. I think the multiple calls and subsequent meetings with managers at least showed we wouldn’t give up and that this was a fixable issue.

Deep Dive into Online Forums—Oddly enough, the resource we found with the most recent and thorough answers was Reddit. In the Reddit discussion, we followed a detailed step-by-step strategy that worked for another person with the same problem. The description included information on the appeal, timeline, and the job title to connect with at Google Ads to get answers.

All Hands On Deck Approach—Once we realized the depth of the issue, we organized our team members with different responsibilities. One person made phone calls to Google, two did online research and reached out to Google Ads experts, and a developer audited the website. Ultimately, we had no idea why our account was reinstated, so one of the elements corrected the issue.

Keep Meticulous Records—We used a shared spreadsheet to document every effort we made to make the website compliant. Documentation saved a lot of time when adding information on the appeals and was a great reference if our person making phone calls reached someone.

Didn’t Give Up—One common theme appeared in our research. It will take about a month, and you must make multiple appeals. Without that information, we may have given up after the second appeal and moved the money to social media.

Google is the 600-pound Gorilla in the room, and we must play by its rules. If you need help reinstating your Google Ads account, don’t hesitate to contact Power Marketing for a free evaluation.

The post My Google Ads Account Was Suspended: One Advertiser’s Journey to Reinstatement appeared first on Power-Marketing.

What Happened

The surge in seemingly high traffic numbers was due to spam websites. Originating primarily from Poland, this spam traffic tampered with GA4 by artificially increasing “referral traffic” counts. Referral traffic is visitors to your website from other websites, most likely through a link. But, this “hack” did not reflect actual visits to the affected website, resulting in what’s known as “ghost traffic.” These visitors never actually visited the websites, but GA4 recorded them.

Impact on Google Analytics Users

For those using GA4 to gain insights into website traffic, the flood of ghost traffic tainted the reliability of their data. Aside from traffic data, ghost traffic can also skew other user metrics in GA4. For example, bounce rate and session duration may appear lower due to the influx of false traffic. This can make it challenging for website owners to accurately measure their website’s performance and make informed decisions for optimization. Additionally, ghost traffic can also impact conversion tracking, making it challenging to determine the effectiveness of advertising campaigns or overall website conversions.

Countermeasures

To fix this, immediate action was required to sift through and identify the bogus traffic sources. Google advised users to review their GA4 account, pinpoint the affected data, and block the IP addresses linked to the spamming referral websites. This tactic was a good start if you had an agency or an internal IT person to block this traffic. Otherwise, you were stuck until Google figured it out.

Was My Website Affected?

If you are familiar with Google Analytics (GA4):

• Go to your dashboard
• Find: Users by Country
• Select: Last 30 Days or enter in custom dates that include 2/17 – 2/29

If there is significant traffic from Poland, your website visitors and metrics are inaccurate.

OR

• Go to your dashboard
• Find: Sessions by Default Channel
• Select: Last 30 Days or enter in custom dates that include 2/17 – 2/29

Your website could have been affected if it received a large amount of referral traffic. Typically, referral traffic on a website is a category producing a small number of users.

As of this article’s writing, Google has fixed this issue. If you want to know your website’s impact, contact us at Power Marketing, and we will provide a free analytics check.

The post You May Want to Double Check Your Website Traffic from February appeared first on Power-Marketing.

The CEO and founder of the Marketing AI Institute, Paul Roetzer, compares the existing AI tools to a team of skilled interns for any task that can do large parts of the legwork to increase your overall efficiency.

Essentially, digital marketing is too nuanced to be replaced by A.l., but AI can make digital agencies more efficient in executing strategy.

Here are the four significant limitations of AI in the digital marketing space:

AI Makes Mistakes
Artificial Intelligence can make mistakes. Understanding that AI is not perfect and prone to errors is crucial. AI is designed, trained, and maintained by humans who are not infallible. The algorithms used in AI systems are focused on large amounts of data, and if this data is biased or incorrect, the AI will make mistakes. The AI systems also learn from their experiences and improve over time, meaning they are subject to trial and error.

Also, remember that ChatGPT’s data was cut off in 2021, meaning the knowledge database doesn’t include news or events that have occurred since then. Therefore, ChatGPT doesn’t know about specific events, news articles, scientific advancements, or real-world developments after this date. Bard’s cutoff date is unknown, but current information is not in the knowledge database. Eventually, up-to-date information will be part of the model.

Expertise
AI will make digital marketing agencies leaner. Estimates are between 10% and 33% of knowledge-based workers will be displaced by AI But, GDP should increase by 7%. The digital marketers who are left will be able to put out more work more efficiently. Digital marketing agencies are staffed with specialists who have honed their skills in various areas, including SEO, Email Marketing, Content Development, CRM Management, Hosting, and Social Media.

AI can create an SEO plan, write and schedule social media posts, and help website developers with coding. Still, AI doesn’t understand the importance of trends in social media. For example, AI can’t keep up-to-date with the SEO algorithm, which is adjusted daily, and significant changes occur annually. AI can streamline some aspects of CRM management, like data entry and analysis. But building customer relationships, addressing complex issues, and strategizing for customer retention requires a human touch. In addition, developers need to review code on websites as there can be mistakes (see previous section).

Creativity and Emotion
Over-reliance on AI technology can lead to less collaboration and creativity among marketers. AI can create efficiencies in the development process and create images and content from only a prompt. But working with people gives a human touch to creativity that AI doesn’t have. Humans are unique in their capacity to feel complex emotions and translate those feelings into connections, an area where AI still needs to improve.

Ethical Concerns
There needs to be increased transparency in how AI gets its information. The creators of these services need to tell us how their models make decisions, which algorithms it uses, and how it processes data to create marketing strategies. This secrecy can lead to issues of accountability and trust.

The overuse of AI can lead to the potential misuse to manipulate emotions. For example, AI could deliver tailored messages that feed off a person’s insecurities or fears to convince them to buy a product or service. As a result, digial marketing companies depending on AI without human oversight may unknowingly operate deceptively.

The post With the Rise of AI, Do I Need a Digital Marketing Agency? appeared first on Power-Marketing.

Google Analytics has become the standard web analytics service used by companies worldwide to gain valuable insights into how people interact with their website.

First introduced in 2005, Google Analytics allows you to track a wide variety of metrics to assess the success of your website. These metrics feed into sales funnels and buyer personas and can direct strategic changes.

This is why Google’s announcement in October 2021 of a major overhaul sent shockwaves across the internet. Google Analytics 4 is the newest iteration of this longstanding and widely-used tool, introducing some considerable changes to its use and understanding.

We’ll explore these essential aspects of Google Analytics 4:

• What’s Different About Google Analytics 4?
• How Do I Set Up Google Analytics 4?
• How Do I Use Google Analytics 4?

What’s Different About Google Analytics 4?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a new property aiming to evolve digital measurements further. A property “is a set of Google Analytics reports and data for your website and/or app.”

The current form of Google Analytics focuses on a user’s sessions. GA4 is focused on users and events by processing each interaction as its own event. This provides metrics on usage instead of just traffic.

Universal Analytics is the engine that drives the current version of Google Analytics. This is being replaced by GA4, which allows administrators to get metrics on both websites and applications.

GA4 provides a more well-rounded view of the behavior of users.

The reports dedicated to sessions will still be available, but now you can dive deeper into specifics like engagement metrics.

The new insights provided by GA4 go beyond something as simple as page views (even though this is what we’ve been taught to value for years). But along with this learning curve, there will be more actionable metrics.

How Do I Set Up Google Analytics 4?

Universal Analytics will still be available until July 1st, 2023. There’s no need to panic and ditch all of your current analytics reports. However, setting up your GA4 account as soon as possible is recommended so you can get used to the new interface and start seeing the potential of the new functionalities.

Luckily, it’s straightforward to set up your GA4 account.

1. Log into your current Google Analytics account and click “Admin” in the lower left-hand corner.
2. Select your desired account and property.
3. Select “GA4 Setup Assistant”
4. A Setup Wizard will come up where you can click a button that says “Get Started.”
5. Click the “Create Property” button, and you’re all set!

How Do I Use Google Analytics 4?

Your new GA4 homepage will provide a quick overview of some important metrics:

• Where new users are coming from
• Your pages that are getting the most views
• Your campaigns that are performing the best

Use the search bar to ask specific questions such as “How many visits this year vs last year?” You can also search for specific reports, configurations, or functionality queries like “how to create a new report.”

Use the Realtime Report in the navigation bar to see events that occurred within the previous 30 minutes. You can even click “View user snapshot” to see where your current visitors are located and the devices they are using.

Life Cycle Reports explain how users enter the funnel and what they do once they are there.

The Analysis Hub is where you can get the truly impressive metrics of GA4. There are various techniques to choose from, which then automatically create their reports.

Numerous types of analyses can be run, including:

• Exploration
• Funnel
• Path
• Segment Overlap
• Cohort Analysis
• User Lifetime

The information gathered from these reports will provide a much clearer view of your users’ behavior.

The flexibility and expanded metrics make Google Analytics 4 an essential tool in any marketer’s toolbox. It might take a little bit to get used to the new interface, but take some time to explore the various reports and functionalities, and you’ll be better equipped to maximize your website and application to suit your users best.

Call Us to Get Prepared!!

The post Everything You Need to Know About Google Analytics 4 appeared first on Power-Marketing.

DesignRush is a B2B marketplace that connects brands with professional full-service agencies, web design companies, digital marketing firms, and top technology companies.

Their platform lists over 9,300 agencies from over 50 different countries and is consulted by thousands of decision-makers looking to start a project.

This is an incredible honor for our agency to be recognized for our branding work. We always strive to deliver top-quality work for our clients. It’s great to be recognized for all that hard work. said Josh Miller, Growth Marketer at Power Marketing.

Power Marketing continues to highlight standard digital marketing services such as SEO, PPC/Google Ads, CRM management, content development, hosting, and web design services. In addition, Power Marketing has added website audits, interactive floor plans, interactive site plans, non-digital graphic design, and a resource section to the website.

Power Marketing is a full-service website design and digital marketing agency that has generated growth and leads for homebuilders, contractors, real estate, and home services industries since 1992.

The post Power Marketing Ranked As Top 10 Branding Agency appeared first on Power-Marketing.

As you may or may not know, Google continuously updates its algorithm. There are roughly 1,000 updates per year. That’s close to three a day and is a lot to keep up with for agencies, let alone small businesses.

Most updates are minor and have little to no ripple effect. But a few times a year, broader updates significantly impact the search engine results page. This update will bring page experience into the ranking signals. It will combine Core Web Vitals and previous UX-related signals.

Core Web Vitals are speed, responsiveness, and visual stability metrics. Get ready to add more three-letter acronyms to your vocabulary. Here’s what Google has established these Core Web Vitals as:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) or loading: This means how long it takes a page’s primary or main piece of content to load from the user’s point of view. The measurements here are under 2.5 seconds for a good evaluation, and anything over 4 seconds ranked poorly.

First Input Delay (FID) or interactivity: This metric is the time it takes for a user to actually interact with your page. When someone clicks on something on your website, how fast can the browser process the request and load it. The ideal measurement is under 100 milliseconds (ms); anything over 300 ms is considered poor.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) or visual stability: This considers stability, or how a page acts as it loads. Have you ever gone to click something on your phone, and the website shifted or moved unexpectedly? The main reason for this issue is that images are not optimized and create disjointed downloads. The ideal measurement is under 100 milliseconds (ms), and anything over 300 ms ranked poorly.

Or this is how Google states it:

Core Web Vitals are a set of real-world, user-centered metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience. They measure dimensions of web usability such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads (so you don’t accidentally tap that button when it shifts under your finger – how annoying!).

By announcing a change to the algorithm far in advance, people can have a three-month head start. It is better to fix things before they become issues. As a result, there will be a shift in the search results for all industries. Now is the time to take advantage of this opportunity, or you’ll potentially face the uncertainty of putting your website at a significant disadvantage.

There are some great free tools and resources available to help evaluate websites. Google has a great page speed insights tool that will scan and evaluate individual pages, or you can use another free tool from Experte that will check your entire website up to 500 pages. Knowing where your website stands helps you evaluate your situation and develop an action plan.

Power Marketing can analyze your website and provide a report on where your current websites stand. If your website isn’t fully prepared, our team is happy to help provide a strategy to help you successfully navigate this update.

Reach out for a free site audit and evaluation today.

The post What to know about Google’s Core Web Vitals update coming in Mid-June 2021 appeared first on Power-Marketing.