\nGoogle\u2019s been playing around with Local all year, and the results so far are pretty interesting. Ads are infiltrating the local pack, appearing above local results, something that\u2019s sure to sting local businesses lacking paid budget. Local ranking factors have changed over time, local citations lose their effectiveness in competitive markets and organic factors<\/a> are looking like they\u2019re playing a part in local results. That said, some things have remained the same. Links continue to be essential, and Google My Business verification, reviews and photos were always going to help and still do.<\/p>\n
Organic Search<\/strong><\/p>\n The Continuous Rise of Mobile We\u2019ve seen Google warn us that websites need to be responsive and mobile friendly, and really, they\u2019ve given us plenty of time to act on this (the first announcement was back in April 2015).<\/p>\n Launching a non-responsive, non-mobile friendly is unheard of in this day and age. Take a look at almost every website\u2019s usage stats in Analytics and see if the proportion of mobile\/tablet visits can be ignored – in almost every case, they can\u2019t. We\u2019re living in a mobile-first world and every website should fall in line with that.<\/p>\n Google have announced they will be changing to a mobile first index<\/a>. Now is the time to look at our websites and decide whether mobile variations are ready to perform as well as desktop versions organically as well as from a usability point of view.<\/p>\n Clues have been dropped throughout the year, including a warning of penalisation for \u2018intrusive interstitials\u2019 on mobile pages, dropping of the \u2018mobile friendly\u2019 tag due to so many sites now been mobile friendly, and back in March, confirming another \u2018mobile friendly update would be rolling out.<\/p>\n Most notably, Google is now indexing millions of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)<\/a> to improve mobile web experiences. We\u2019re going to see a lot more use of AMP going forward, so it\u2019s going to worth getting up to speed with its structure.<\/p>\n Pandas, Penguins and Real Time Updates The two most notorious updates live on in the SEO world, but gone are the days of bracing yourself for the latest algorithm update roll out. Panda is now part of Google\u2019s main core ranking algorithm, so no more Panda announcements. Going forward it\u2019ll be a bit trickier to see if Panda is impacting your site, with core updates taking months to rollout rather than the one swift hit that we\u2019re used to.<\/p>\n As for Penguin, the roll-out of 4.0 is now complete. It\u2019s the last of it\u2019s kind because it\u2019s now real time and Google suggests that it now devalues links<\/a> rather than demoting sites. Businesses are finally being released from the shackles of historic spammy link building, as long as they\u2019ve cleaned up their link profile.<\/p>\n![\"Mobile](\"\/our-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/mobile.jpg\")
<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Penguin](\"\/our-ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/the-penguin.jpg\")
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