Upon looking deeper, you find that your normal 50/50 split of desktop to mobile visitors has shifted to 90% desktop traffic and only 10% mobile., which is reducing your total traffic by over 40%.

After scratching your head, you check the calendar – Nothing looks strange.

Welcome To Google’s Latest Update.

On April 21st, Google rolled out their global algorithm update targeting users using Google search on their mobile device.

If you’re one of the many business owners caught up in this update, rest assured that it’s a step in the right direction.

To put it simply, Google wants you to have your website looking less like the website on the left, and more like the website on the right.

This not only helps people searching for content on their mobile device, but helps you as the business owner whose website a potential lead has landed on for information. If that information is displayed in an easy to digest manner, your visitor is happy.

Very Un-Google

In a very un-Google like manner, they published their plan on the Google Webmaster Blog prior to implementing this update. This is rare for Google algorithm updates, which are traditionally rolled out in without notice.

Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.

This strongly indicates Googles desire to not penalise website owners with this update, but rather to provide a better searching experience for it’s users, and pushing the responsibility of this on you, the business owner.

Did Your Website Get Hit

Here’s a few ways to test if your site has been affected by Googles mobile update.

Search for your site using your mobile device.

Simply add “site:YourDomainName.com” into the Google search box and if you see the mobile friendly badge before your sites description, Google has classified your site as being mobile friendly.

This has long been a feature when searching Google from a mobile.

Use Googles Mobile Testing Tool

Google has provided a simple tool that will give you a pass or fail result. Head on over to Googles Mobile Friendly Test

This test will only test a single page on your website.

Google Webmaster Tools

To test your entire website, Google’s Webmaster Tool has you covered with their Mobile Testing Tool.

Run your verified site through the mobile testing tool and be presented with either a pass message: No mobile usability errors detected” or a list of issues to look into.

What To Do If Your Site Fails The Mobile Test

As with any update from Google, there’s no fighting it. Think of this as a good chance to bring your website up to a modern standard.

Mobile responsive websites aren’t a new thing. They’ve been around Cite note – Wikipedia. More so now,  than ever before, it’s important to ensure your website looks great and is functional across all devices – Desktop, mobile, tablet etc.

This includes having a website with clean code,  images that adjust their image size and quality, and removing all flash elements on your site if you have any.

A simple test, is to resize the width of your browser on your computer. If content is being hidden off to the side of the screen, you need to either make some adjustments to your current website theme, or take this opportunity to refresh the entire site. Your website visitors deserve it.

Authorship was introduced by Google in 2011 and whilst they have never announced it’s effect on search results, it certainly made the results with authorship linked posts more enticing to click.

The screen capture above shows how the top result is more enticing to click-through due to the rich media.

Although with their latest changes, they have removed the thumbnail from the search results, and hidden the number of Google Plus circles that the author is in.

Time will tell what impact this has on click-through rates. One thing that we know for sure – Google has plans to tightly integrate Authorship into their algorithm, we just don’t know how exactly yet.

For the time being, continue to make sure that all your articles are linked to your Google Plus profile.

Heartbleed is a huge security hole that’s been discovered in SSL – The system used to encrypt the data between your computer and the website that it’s talking to. Thanks to Mashable, we have a list of sites that were affected by this flaw.

Thankfully, we’re always on top of security here at MMBW, and the risk isn’t present on our servers. Your information and website are safe.

As for other websites that you use, including popular sites such as Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and Google, they were exposed to the security flaw and you should change your passwords immediately.

Here’s the top 9 sites that you should change your passwords on:

• Facebook
• Pinterest
• Tumblr
• Google
• Yahoo
• Gmail
• Amazon Web Services
• Dropbox
• Instagram

A more complete list of websites can be found here.

HTML 5 and Schema.org Microdata are the most common of these buzzwords and the good news is that they are here to make your business standout and your life easier.

What does that mean for you and your business?

On the visual front, WordPress is more beautiful and user friendly than ever. Natively mobile responsive and improved cross browser compatibility.

Gone are the days that you would lose that new article that you were writing as your computer crashed – WordPress now autosaves your content every 60 seconds.

Want to compare a earlier version of the same blog post that you’re working on? The updated revision feature makes it easier than ever to compare two versions side by side. You can even copy selected content from the previous revision now!

Video management has never been easier. Simply adding links within your post will automatically pull in the appropriate video player. Adding YouTube or Vimeo clips is now a matter of pasting the URL within your content!

Increased visibility for your business with improved SEO options.

Schema.org Microdata allows for a richer viewing through proper classification of certain types of content. When done well, this can make your content standout in the crowd!

Here’s what Google has to say about it:

Google doesn’t use markup for ranking purposes at this time — but rich snippets can make your web pages appear more prominently in search results, so you may see an increase in traffic.

And it’s not only Google that are using Schema.org Microdata, the other 3 major search engines are too: Yahoo!, Bing and Yandex.

In fact Yandex is leading the way with its use of microdata, allowing direct interaction between the person searching and your website, directly from within the search engine. More info on how Yandex are doing this can be found here.

This is only a glimpse of what’s to come.

Future proofing your businesses website.

You can rest easy knowing that we have the future in mind with all of our products here at MMBW. HTML 5 and Schema.org Microdata is the future of all websites, and we are at the cutting edge of bringing these technologies to your business in an easy to use way.

All of our new themes will be HTML 5 compliant and we’re in the process of updating all of our current designs to bring them up to date with the newest standard.

Sure you can encourage them to engage with you in Facebook, but you don’t control the platform, and with Facebook’s constant updates, your message is competing for visual space and is being seen by less people every day.

Here are the top 5 locations for signup form placement on your website:

#1 Feature box at the top of your homepage

This is without a doubt, the most eye catching location for visitors who arrive on your websites homepage.

If you have an enticing call to action, your signup rate will sky rocket!

You may have noticed that we don’t have one here at Money Making Business Websites yet, and for good reason. The feature box is best left until you have enough high quality content, that your site is regarded as a valuable resource to your readers.

Let your content be your message when you’re growing your website, and then add the feature box only once you have sufficient traction.

#2 Website sidebar

As your sidebar is part of most of the pages on your website, it’s an obvious place to put an email subscribe form.

This may seem like common sense, but you would be surprised how many people fail at having their email subscription form in their sidebar.

The best spot is at the very top, above the fold so that it captures your readers attention without them needing to scroll down the page.

#3 At the end of your blog post

Having a strong call to action after you’ve just shared a piece of valuable content is the perfect time to ask your readers to subscribe to your email list.

With our testing to date, the signup area immediately after a blog post is one of the highest converting areas on your site. It makes sense, as you’re not asking for a general signup for no reason, but rather explaining to your readers that signing up to your email list is the easiest way to stay up to date with content just like they have finished reading.

To see a working example of this, scroll down to the bottom of this blog post.

#4 Your about page

After people have read through a blog post or two and maybe your homepage, your about page will be next on their hit list.

Open up your Google Analytics account and you’ll find that your about page is amongst the highest viewed pages on your website.

This is a great opportunity to create a strong call to action to join your email list.

Check out our about page to see an example.

#5 Facebook Tabs

It’s a pretty well known fact that you don’t want to be relying on your Facebook page and it’s “likers” as your main source of contact for your readers.

What’s less known is that if you choose to use Facebook Ads to increase your readership, you pay significantly less when directing the click for your ad to a Facebook page rather than a website.

One of the great things about pages on Facebook, is that you can embed mini webpages within tabs of your page and still get your visitors to subscribe to your email list from within your Facebook page.

Which one should you use?

All of them!

Of course it’s industry specific, and you want to be sure that your call to actions don’t detract from your content and it’s message, but most business owners can benefit from adding an email signup form to each of the above locations.

Above all, make sure that you are tracking each signup area so that you know which ones are converting and which ones are not. With this information at your fingertips, future tweaks to your call to actions can be s based on data rather than best guessing.

Where do you have your email subscribe forms on your website, and which areas are working best for you? Share in the comments below.

Wow! We’re finally here. After exactly 12 months of testing, testing and more testing, we are proud to say that Money Making Business Websites is now open for all.

What you can expect from Money Making Business Websites
Tips, tricks and techniques that you can integrate into your online marking immediately.

We will such topics as search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, copywriting, internet marketing, business systems, marketing automation, social media, productivity, video marketing and podcasting just to name a few.

Of course, we do have amazing websites designed specifically for business owners in the service industry, however that isn’t our primary focus.

Our primary focus is to help you have the most optimised online presence that you could possibly have, as we know that if you have this sorted, you’re entire lead generation system will sorted.

So now let me hand it over to you – What specific content would you like to read, watch and listen to regarding online marketing. Our ears are open. Leave a comment below.