Google provided us a briefing on the mobile first website speed update that is rolling out, so we want to share with you some insights.

This Google update is one the travel and tourism industry should pay close attention to because of the  consumers preference for using mobile devices to make travel and vacation plans is increasing.

Starting in July 2018, Google is placing greater emphasis on website mobile speed to determine inclusion and placement in search results. Websites determined by Google to be slower will be downgraded in the search results.

So how do you know if your website SEO is at risk?
There are warning signs that you may have missed. Few of you have the time to dig into analytics like we do. Check to see if your bounce rate is trending up.  Are the number of repeat visits reducing? And you may be slipping in your SEO ranking. A quick and easy check of your website is to visit your site on your phone and experience how long it takes to load.

Travel and tourism websites have unique challenges.
These websites by their nature are heavy on images, videos and graphics. And many display member-submitted images and content. Adding to the load, most have databases and integrate multiple plugins like calendars, booking engines and itinerary planners.

So there is generally not a single solution. But with the proper guidance taking actions like image file size reduction, database indexing, hosting set up and site load progression can gain you some improvement.

One site we are managing for a CVB was experiencing a high bounce rate. In our analysis we discovered it was due to slow load time. There were a number of site optimizations we made and including changing the hosting to deliver a faster server response. As a result the bounce rate dropped from 80+% to under 10%. Now they are retaining 90% of site visitors.

What to do if your website appears slow.
To really check your site here is a link to a tool that Google has provided to gauge your website’s mobile friendliness and mobile speed. https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/.

The team that manages your site should be proactively monitoring Google’s myriad of updates and should already be preparing an action plan for you. If not, then seek an expert’s advice to provide guidance on what you can and should do before your SEO rank is impacted.

Google’s April SEO Update.
With this update, Google made a highly impactful change to how it selects websites for inclusion in search results. Before April it considered the desktop performance of a website as the primary determinant of its value to a search result. Now it indexes for search based on your mobile site. 

It takes into account content, friendliness to a mobile device and the all-important rendering speed.
This mobile first indexing which led up to the mobile speed update places even greater importance on solving your website speed issues.

Contact us if you need help. We recently helped one client increase its exposure on page 1 of Google by 300% and their visits from SEO grew dramatically. A great cost savings on SEM/PPC paid advertising.

As your digital marketing coach, CVB Digital can help you make the best decisions for your destination’s website.