April 21, 2015….that was the deadline. Google has flat out said “mobilize your site now or we’ll kick you off the Internets!”

OK, so maybe they didn’t say it like that verbatim, but more or less. My favorite co-worker with a name that starts with C, Chris Lister, covered Google’s announcement and what it means to you in depth with his post “Google’s New Mobile Friendly Algorithm Update“. So I won’t bore you with those details.

What I will bore you with is what we (and by we I mean I) did to our own site to make it pass the Mobile-Friendly Test. If you’ve got what it takes, you can follow along and attempt to do it on your own site.

Forewarning! This isn’t Going to be Easy!

Assuming you’ve already run your site through that test and have seen that it failed, what can you do? Well if you don’t know anything about HTML or CSS…nothing…you’re screwed. Close down your business, it’s washed up.

Having a mobile friendly website might be one of those items that’s been on your to-do list, but was never a real priority and kept getting pushed back for more “important” tasks. You might regularly brush aside mobile recommendations from your web designer or digital marketing agency, or feel that mobile isn’t an important facet for your online business.

Well, if Google is to be believed, this procrastination could end up hurting you on April 21^st, when mobile friendliness is officially introduced as a new organic ranking signal.

The Announcement

On Thursday, February 26^th, 2015 Google posted a blog article entitled “Finding more mobile-friendly search results”. You can read the complete announcement post here.

The key section we want to cover is, “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. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”

Our annual guide on where to eat and drink while attending Searchfest.

It’s February which means SEMpdx’s Searchfest is right around the corner, and with it is our updated for 2015 Guide to Eating and Drinking in Portland.  Once again I’ve updated this guide with some great spots located close to the Sentinel (formerly Governor) Hotel where you can enjoy a meal, find a great happy hour special, grab a cocktail or quench your thirst with one of Portland’s fine craft beers.

Beer Me

Keep Portland Beered! by Yellow Dog / CC BY 2.0

Let’s start off with my true love. Beer.

Almost every Portland restaurant and bar is going to offer at least a couple fantastic local beers for you to try. This is Beervana, and our great city has more breweries per capita than any other city in the world.

Given the option, brews from local breweries like Laurelwood, Gigantic, Breakside, Ninkasi, Fort George, Boneyard and Hopworks are always a sure bet.

Agencies don’t want to hear these questions…

A few weeks ago there was an excellent blog post by David Rodnitzky on Marketing Land titled “7 Questions Agencies Never Want You To Ask In The Sales Process”.

Looking over these questions we certainly can understand why some agencies might be hesitant to answer these questions. As mentioned in the article, while these questions might be very reasonable, they do pose as Catch-22s for an agency to answer.

And face it, complete transparency can be scary.

Never ones to shy away from a difficult question, for better or for worse, we’ve decided to tackle head on all 7 of the questions no agency wants to be asked in the sales process.

Here goes…

Charles Barkley made some recent comments on the use of Analytics in professional sports. In particular, “Analytics was Crap”, seemed to be a poor way to describe an entire industry. Over all we found them, well, just Turrible.

This year was the first time I have been to MozCon. I can honestly say that I hope it won’t be my last!

As I was sitting and listening to the speakers, I thought to my self “I wonder how many people will be writing recap blogs about this?” Then Dr. Pete Meyers gave me a great idea while going over his presentation “How to Never Run Out of Great Ideas.” Now, when I say he gave an idea, I just mean that something in his presentation made something click in my head.

I figured there will be 101 different “What I learned from MozCon” and “MozCon 2014 Recap” posts, so I had to come up with something different, something unique, something no one had done before. With that, I came up with THE idea. And here it is.

29 (literal) Takeaways from MozCon 2014

Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts of 2014

 
PPC Hero just published their yearly “Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts” list for 2014. Congratulations to our very own James Svoboda for making the list again at #15 this year. Up 1 from #16 last year.

HeroConf 2014 in Austin, Texas

 
This week I have the honor of presenting at the HeroConf in Austin, TX in the “More or Less: Flexible Bidding Strategies” session. My presentation for this session is entitled “PPC Bidding Strategies: from Foundational to Flexible“.

Here is the full powerpoint presentation for you to reference. I hope you enjoy it!

Last week I had the honor of presenting at the SEMpdx’s SearchFest in Portland, Oregon in the “#Fail Free PPC” session. My presentation for this session was entitled “Creating Linear Models that Lead to Successful PPC Campaigns“.

Here is the full powerpoint presentation for you to reference. I hope you enjoy it!

WebRanking’s Guide for Eating & Drinking in Portland

So, you might ask, what is WebRanking’s most tenured non-Svoboda contributing this year to make Searchfest awesome?

Glad you asked.