2 Tests To See If Your Site Is Affected By The Google Algorithm Update

Here's something that could be a big deal to those artists, bands, musicians, producers, managers, labels and just about anyone in the music business that has a website. Google now rates your site on how friendly it is when viewed on a mobile device.

The reason why this is important is mobile friendliness is now a big part of the algorithm that ranks your website during a search. That means that if you have an older site that didn't take this into consideration and doesn't look good on a phone or tablet, it's going to fall in the search engine rankings.

It's difficult to keep your site updated with timely information (which Google also looks at), but it's even more so to keep up with the latest technology. That said, if you haven't updated your site for a while (more than a year), it's not only time you do so, but it's important as well or it will be harder for your fans to find you.

How do you know if your site is mobile friendly? There are actually two quick tests.

1. Bring your website up in your browser, then grab the right side of your browser window and drag it all the way to the left until it won't shrink any more. If everything is a jumbled mess and you can't read it, it's probably not mobile friendly.

2. The second way is much better in that it comes from Google itself. Go to this test site and insert your site URL and click "Analyze." Google will then analyze it and tell you if it's mobile ready or not. If it's deemed not-ready, you'll not only be told why, but how to fix it as well.

The good thing is that sometimes the fix doesn't take much, but sometimes it does mean you need a total update in the case of a site built using older programming techniques.

Either way, do the test now so you can keep getting the most people to your site.

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Google Unviels A New Search Algorithm

Musicians, artists, bands, record labels, agents and managers interested in high search ratings should be interested to know that Google recently introduced a new search algorithm, their first major upgrade in 3 years.

The new algorithm is codenamed Hummingbird and supposedly affects about 90% of Google searches. It was introduced because the company sees the future of search as one using longer and more complex queries, and much more conversational in nature. It also paves the way for users speaking their requests directly into mobile phones, smart watches and other wearable technology that the company sees for the future.

The biggest feature of Hummingbird is the way it may interpret requests, but the way it ranks the search results may be a bigger jolt to those who practice SEO (search engine optimization) on a regular basis. Since the algorithm is intelligent, it doesn't focus on indexing of websites as much as interpreting what the request is all about. As a result, it's possible that some of the previous SEO techniques of keywords tags and seeding may become less important, while the actual content on the page will become even more important than ever.

It's another good reason to remember that content really is king. If you have a site that has a lot of helpful info that a visitor is searching for, that will always be the best SEO that you can provide.

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