SMX Israel 2014 is around the corner, and there’s a really great lineup of speakers and topics that will be covered: link building tactics, YouTube optimization, Hebrew SEO, recovering from penalties (ooooh that’s a critical one), and more. I’ll be speaking on a panel with John Mueller, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, aka the very helpful guy who answers your questions on the Google Webmaster forums and in Hangouts, on the topic of mobile SEO. John’s joining us from Switzerland! Barry Schwartz, the conference organizer, will be moderating.
And it appears that a lot of the attendees are interested in our session. Oh my:
Mobile SEO currently the most sought after session at SMX Israel – makes me so happy! fyi @JohnMu & @miriamschwab
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) January 14, 2014
I requested to speak on mobile SEO because it’s such an exciting and fresh field, especially for web developers like ourselves, and it’s just getting started. With mobile usage growing exponentially, it’s clear that the web’s future is mobile. Google in particular is pushing hard for websites to become mobile-friendly, with the notification that they “plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.” In other words, if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, it may take a hit in the search engine results.
Yet we can’t ignore non-mobile devices, as laptops and desktops still make up a large percentage of traffic to websites. How do we make sure our websites are user-friendly and useful to visitors, no matter what device they are using to access it? And what does that mean: “mobile-friendly”? What deems a site mobile-friendly or not? What are best practices when it comes to creating mobile sites? What are some pitfalls you may experience? And how does having a mobile site impact your site’s rankings and traffic? Since 2013 was the first year that every one of the sites that we built was responsive, we’ve learned quite a bit along the way about this topic. John will be bringing the Google angle to the session, and I’ll be coming from our experience at illuminea implementing mobile websites for clients.
I’m really excited, and hope you are too! If haven’t yet ordered tickets, there are about 20 left (last I heard), and you can register here: https://www.rustybrick.com/smx/.
Hope to see you there! And stay tuned for my follow up post where I’ll round up what I’ve learned at the conference.
P.S. Barry Schwartz will be keynoting this year, and it’s about time! It’s great that he’s taking the stage like that as we can all learn a ton from him, and it’s also great that the conference will start off with everyone in one place. It’s a good way to start the day.
P.P.S. There’s been a lot of talk about booth babes since CES. I actually never knew what a booth babe was until I attended another search marketing conference here in Israel and was accosted by some very scantily clad women at the entrance who were selling…who knows what they were selling? Someone said, “oh, those are booth babes” and I thought that they were just being witty. Turned out that’s the actual industry term for these women. And then someone took our picture together, because what says “search conference souvenir” like a picture of me with some bare-skinned babes? Needless to say, my reaction to this whole phenomenon can be summed up with one word: barf. So thanks Barry, for keeping it pleasant for the dosim and womankind.