Samuel Edwards

Online marketing has and continues to change. The industry is moving in a clear direction: user experience matters more than anything. In this Definitive Guide to Marketing Your Business Online. we explore the nitty gritty of how you can combine SEO and online marketing to maximize the ROI of your paid and organic marketing campaigns. Without further ado, venture forth and start learning how to market your business online. SEO for Online Marketing SEO, or search engine optimization, is important to every business. It doesn’t matter if you run a small, local mom-n-pop business or a large corporation. But what exactly is it? SEO or organic online marketing is simply the process of setting up and optimizing your site so that it’s easily found (and favored) online by search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Most people, today, aren’t going to pick up a phone book when they need something. Instead, they’ll go online to search for it. If your business isn’t showing up in search results, you’re almost certainly losing customers to your competitors that do. Furthermore, users that find your website via organic, online search tend to be highly targeted, making them more likely to convert to customers. Most businesses realize they should have a website, but simply having a website is only the first step, and doesn’t guarantee that you’ll receive any significant traffic. Building an effective website that will provide a strong, consistent flow of leads or sales requires online marketing. For the purpose of online marketing, the phrase “if you build it, they will come” does not apply. Building a website without internet marketing it is akin to building a brick-and-mortar store in the middle of the Sahara desert. There are no roads that lead to it, no traffic driving by and seeing it. Even people who need your products or services can’t buy from you because they’ll never know about you. That’s where SEO improvements come in. SEO is like transplanting your brick-and-mortar store from the Sahara desert to a busy street in downtown New York. SEO makes your website visible to potential customers so that you can make sales. Take a moment to think about what someone might search for when looking for your business online. If you’re a dentist that specializes in sedation dentistry, possibilities could include: sedation dentist dentist that puts you to sleep Houston sedation dentist (replace Houston with your town’s name) Now, search Google for those terms. Does your business show up? If not, an SEO campaign, including multiple SEO hacks, is how you get there. Think about it… if you have a website and it’s not showing up in search results, it’s just the same as having customers drive right by your business while looking for what you offer, and not even know you’re there. Website Design and SEO Just as building a beautiful storefront isn’t the only factor that will result in sales, online marketing isn’t as simple as building a beautiful website. Sure, having a well-designed site is important for SEO; if visitors to your website don’t feel comfortable (perhaps, for instance, because there are too many ads), get frustrated trying to find what they need (due to a poor navigation structure) or any number of other factors that drive visitors away, then you probably won’t make the sale. But design is only the beginning. There are hundreds of factors that can affect your search rank, generally categorized as “on-site” factors (like design, UX, and content), and “off-site” factors (like external links, brand mentions, and social signals). In order for your website to be effective as an online marketing tool, both on-site and off-site SEO factors have to be included in your digital marketing strategy. On-site SEO SEO is divided into two main categories: On page SEO and off page. On-page SEO consists of the elements (such as text and meta data) that exist on your website, and in your website’s HTML code, over which you have control. Here are the three main things your on page SEO will need for effective search engine marketing: Structure The structure of your website is very important, not just from an SEO perspective, but also a user experience perspective. When building your website, ensure that your web designer is knowledgeable in SEO best practices or works in conjunction with an SEO professional. Structure includes: Optimization for mobile devices UI/UX Design URL structure Navigation (menu) structure Search functionality Page layout Internal linking Website Speed HTML & XML sitemaps Coding The code, the backbone of your website, needs to be clean and efficient if you want to win in internet marketing. Messy code will bring your website search engine rankings down and result in slower load times for your visitors. Usually, your website visitors won’t see the code, but it’s the only thing search engine crawlers will see. So, don’t cut corners with messy code. Ensure the code is up to date, and includes proper meta tags, headers, and descriptions. Using a template website, such as through the WordPress CMS, can almost guarantee that your code will be clean and efficient. However, you’ll still need to make occasional tweaks and conduct periodic SEO audits to ensure your site is running smoothly. Such tasks may include updating old content, deleting old content, updating your SEO plugins, and optimizing images. Content This is what your customers will see; the front-end text copy, images, and videos that are on your website. The content of your website is the most important part of proper SEO and online marketing, because search engines are constantly tweaking their algorithms to ensure they’re delivering search results with the most helpful and accurate content. Your content should be fresh and engaging. Don’t make the mistake of writing purely “for the search engines” by stuffing unnatural keywords into the content and other old tricks that no longer work. Content should target topics you want to rank for, but it needs to be natural and fresh. Furthermore, it needs to be original,

Link building for SEO will always be a hot topic among digital marketers, SEOs, content marketers, entrepreneurs, and business owners. It’s also a sensitive one with a bit of a complicated history. But for those who are willing to look back and learn from the past – mistakes included – there’s far more clarity on how to move forward. Link Building: Trial and (Lots of) Error If you’re looking to make some casual friends at a digital marketing conference, you’ll want to bring up some safe, casual topics like social media or SEO content via video. If you want to stir the pot and see what people really think, just mention link building. Link building is kind of a hot button topic. Some see it as the be-all-end-all – the ultimate marketing tactic in a world where content and SEO are the cornerstone pieces to every digital strategy. Others see it as a spammy practice or unethical pursuit that renders very little long-term value. But as heightened as people’s emotions are around the topic of link building, the actual state of things is much simpler. Over the years, it’s become clear that attracting organic inbound links from high-quality websites that are relevant to your niche has a significantly positive impact on search rankings and online visibility. But it’s hard to truly understand where things stand today without first taking a look back at what’s happened over the past 20-plus years. The industry has evolved. Changes have been near constant. And, as you’ll see momentarily, mistakes have been made. But before we dig into link building failures, let’s attempt to wrap our brains around the history of link building. Here’s the basic gist: Google was founded in 1998, and webmasters quickly realized that they could make their sites move up in the search rankings by attracting links back to their sites. This led to the rise of link exchanges, where people would trade links with one another. By 2001, SEO directories started popping up all over the internet. This gave website owners the ability to submit their sites to directories that would provide links in return. Around 2003, savvy marketers and webmasters discovered that blogging was very useful for building backlinks. This led to some good practices, as well as dreadful ones like mass blog commenting and spam. By 2005, questionable blog rolls and low-quality article submission sites were everywhere. Google quickly realized that these sites existed for the sole purpose of gaming the system. In response, they released an algorithm update aimed at devaluing low-quality links. The “nofollow” attribute was introduced and reciprocal/paid links were targeted. Around 2008, “linkbait” became a popular concept and people began publishing anything they could – whether truthful or not – just to attract links and attention. In 2011, massive businesses like Overstock.com and JC Penney were penalized for black hat search practices – including manipulative link building. In the following year, Google released the Penguin update. This update enacted severe penalties for over-optimization and low-quality link building practices. High quality links, however, are more difficult to acquire. Around 2013, the rise of organic content marketing further complicated matters. It paved the way for authentic link building that adds value to readers – precisely what Google wants. In 2016, new algorithm updates shifted away from penalties and instead began devaluing bad links. If you look at today’s world of SEO and link building and contrast it with what was happening in the early 2000s, it’s almost unrecognizable. Whereas black hat techniques once ruled the day, they’re no longer viable. White hat is the new black hat. Organic is the new spam. Quality is the new quantity. But it’s taken us – meaning those of us in the search marketing industry – years to learn and embrace this shift. And the primary method of learning has been through firsthand experience and the dreaded…F-word. Hey now, we’re talking about failure! 9 Lessons From Failed Link Building Campaigns Failure isn’t a comfortable topic. Most of us would prefer to gloss over the shortcomings and focus the bulk of our attention on the good things. But that’s not how you learn. True growth occurs when you understand what went wrong and use this knowledge to improve, to enhance, to evolve. Now that we’ve set the table, let’s dig into the main course. Let’s explore some of the biggest lessons learned from failed link building campaigns of the past – and what they mean for us moving forward. 1. Don’t Create Content for a Specific Publisher We’ve all had that epiphany. You know, the one where you’re staring off into space and then it hits you. You have the perfect piece of content for the editor you know over at a major industry website. You take the next few days working with your content team to come up with an article that’s carefully tailored to the publisher. Then you send the finished product over to the publisher. You wait a few hours. Then a few days. Finally, you touch base with the editor and she tells you that she isn’t interested in the piece. It’s a gut punch. But do you know what makes the rejection even worse? The fact that you created the content with that specific publisher in mind. You can’t just turn around and pass it on to another editor at another blog. The content must be scrapped. The lesson here is simple: Don’t create content with a specific publisher in mind. You can’t control what a publisher will do and it’s possible that all of your time and creative energy will be wasted with a swift rejection. It’s much better to get full approval before writing the piece, or to write a post that’s flexible enough to be published on a handful of websites or blogs. 2. Building Links With Video is Hard via GIPHY Video is the most powerful content medium on the planet – there’s no doubt about it. Video is visual, engaging,

Google Search Console is extremely helpful. But sometimes, it can be confusing. Have you noticed one of your pages marked with the status: “Discovered – currently not indexed”? If so, you’re in good company. While seemingly straightforward, this status can be a bit ambiguous and tricky to fix. But we’ve got all the information you need to better understand this status – and ultimately resolve it. Discovered – Currently Not Indexed: What Does It Mean? Google Search Console makes it easy to evaluate the status of various pages in your website. Many of these status messages are clear and straightforward, and hopefully, most of them won’t require any action on your part. However, the “Discovered – currently not indexed” status can be perplexing in a few ways. Why is a discovered page not being indexed? What’s taking so long? And what can we do about it? Essentially, this message means that Google is aware of a page that exists, but it has not yet crawled or indexed that page. Google’s indexing process always unfolds over these three steps: discovery, crawling, and indexing. This status indicates that the page in question is currently between steps one and two. And yes, it does mean your pages aren’t showing up in Google search results. This is a totally normal message to receive, especially if you have a website with fewer than 10,000 pages. In many instances, the message will resolve itself. This is simply an indication that Google is between steps of indexing your pages, and if you give it a few more days to a few more weeks, it should resolve on its own. But what if you want your pages to be indexed faster? Or what if you suspect a deeper problem could be affecting your pages? Root Causes of the “Discovered – Currently Not Indexed” Status There are a few potential root causes of this status, but most of them boil down to an issue with something called “crawl budget.” Believe it or not, Google doesn’t have infinite power or infinite resources. It deploys a network of crawling bots affectionately known as spiders to crawl and index webpages, but it can’t crawl the web all at once and it can’t crawl the web instantaneously. Accordingly, there’s a kind of “budget” in place to make sure crawling resources are used effectively. If a crawling effort would be fruitless, it becomes a much lower priority. If a crawling effort would result in indexing low quality pages, it becomes a lower priority as well. Google wants to prioritize crawling and indexing webpages in such a way to improve user experience and minimize total resources spent doing so. If it’s deliberately choosing not to crawl one of your webpages, despite that page being discovered, it’s probably because your page is a lower priority than other pages. These are some of the potential root causes:       An overwhelmed server. If your server is overloaded, it’s going to be problematic for users and crawling bots alike. Accordingly, Google will probably avoid calling and indexing your page temporarily, trying again in the future to see if your server issues have been resolved. Fortunately, these server issues are relatively easy to fix. We’ll explore potential solutions in the next section.       Too much content. It’s also possible that your website simply has too much content, considering its age, relevance, and position. If your website has hundreds of new pages in the first few days after launching, or if it has thousands of pages to crawl, Google is going to delay crawling and indexing it. While it’s good to develop more content, there is an upper limit in the early days – and besides, excessive content production could be a sign of an organization focusing on quantity over quality. Cleaning up and streamlining your content could be the answer.       Poor quality content. If you have a reasonable volume of content on your website, Google could be selectively ignoring your pages because of potential quality issues. If Google has reason to believe that your content isn’t good or isn’t helpful for users, it’s going to deprioritize your website in its crawl budget and indexing purview. There are many individual issues that could cause Google to evaluate your content as low quality, many of which are obvious. In any case, you’ll need to make a concentrated effort to improve the quality of your content if you want to succeed.       Missing or poor internal linking. Internal linking is how Google better understands how your pages relate to each other and better understands how your website functions overall. It’s also indispensable for assisting with user navigation and overall user experience. Accordingly, if your website has no internal linking structure, or if your internal linking structure is fragmented and confusing, Google isn’t going to prioritize crawling and indexing your website. How to Solve the “Discovered – Currently Not Indexed” Issue If you’re currently struggling with the “Discovered – currently not indexed” status for one or more of your pages, there are several solutions you can try. The first step of the process is to try and ascertain which root cause is affecting your lack of indexation; you may or may not be able to pinpoint a root cause, given what you currently know. In any case, some combination of these strategies should allow you to fix the “Discovered – currently not indexed” status and allow your pages to be indexed:       Wait. The first, most straightforward, and easiest strategy is simply to wait. In the vast majority of cases, your pages only have this status because Google hasn’t gotten around to crawling and indexing your webpages yet. If your website is relatively new, or if these pages were recently published, give it a couple of weeks before you start to become concerned. Of course, if you’re in a hurry, or if you suspect something might be wrong with your website, you

Understanding how to properly insert links into content and how those links impact your ranking is a critical component to your SEO link building strategy. There are generally two types of links that are inserted into content: internal links and external links. Internal links typically link to other pages or pieces of content on the same site. External links link out to another target website that hopefully has relevant and trustworthy information. External link building can be incredible difficult. One of the primary other link building strategies is to insert external links to relevant sources that build the domain authority of the primary site. Part of that strategy often includes tactics like link exchanges and guest blogging. We’ll dive into both of these topics so that you have an understanding of the importance of running a solid link insertion campaign, how link building has changed and how it has impacted the importance of link insertions. This will  show you how to make the most of your link building efforts. What are Link Insertions? The practice of link insertion is getting link placement to your content hosted on other sites. This is the key principle behind the practice of link building, though link building as a whole involves much more than getting your links hosted on other sites. We don’t want to go too elementary on you, but it’s important to understand the basics. This is so that you know what you’re actively trying to do rather than just going out and begging for links or building sites trying to artificially sell yourself. The former of these options is difficult and is generally unsuccessful, while the latter is technically wrong and will incur the wrath of Google via search rank penalties. Proper link insertion tactics require you or the hired agency to build relationships with other sites, who agree to put a link from their content back to your content on your site, hence why it’s called a backlink (gasp). It sounds really simple, right? Too bad, it’s not. Like we mentioned, begging for links from anyone doesn’t work, and falsifying backlinks will see you lose ranking. So what do you do? There are three ways that links are gained to where they are beneficial to the party that is trying to actively perform the link building. Link Exchanges The first link insertion type is a link swap, which is basically a mutual agreement between two (or sometimes three) parties to share content and backlink to each other. These are quite common but can be difficult to achieve depending on the niche you’re in and your brand’s size, among other factors. Guest Blogging The second link insertion strategy is through guest posts. Guest posting is the practice of a person writing content for another site that agrees to link back to the poster’s site. This practice has become quite common as it is mutually beneficial for both parties. One party gets content for their site, while the writing party gets a guaranteed backlink. Being an Authority The third link insertion method is less common and relies more on luck as well as being authoritative in your field. These are basically backlinks you get from sites that link to you because you are useful and offer value to their users, even if no formal link exchange has been formed. These are difficult to gauge, and while you’d think all backlinks are good, that’s not necessarily the case. If you’re constantly being linked to sites with sketchy backgrounds and low domain authority, this can damage your own reputation and ultimately hurt your brand. It’s essentially like the concept of being guilty by association; your reputation suffers because of the deeds of someone you casually know. We’ll cover all three link building strategies in detail so that you know which ones will work for you and when to seek out backlinks through different methods. Link Building Has Changed Link insertions is that they are much more important (and difficult) than they used to be, especially if you’re going the white-hat link building route and not paying for them. The reason why many websites and businesses are turning to link building and SEO agencies is because it takes a much more strategic approach to properly utilize link building together with other SEO strategies. Businesses turn to these experts to get help with these complex matters. Even some SEO experts still swear by only focusing on “the most relevant long-tail keywords,” when in fact, SEO is now a multilayered process. While keyword density and relevance are still important, a unilateral approach will not rank your site highly anymore. Your site can use all the best keywords that exist, but if it doesn’t properly use links to other content to build relevance and authority, you’ll likely see your page ranking way lower than a site that uses fewer keywords. The reason for this is that keywords are becoming more competitive with more sites on the web. This means that this single metric is not enough to crack the top of the SERP. You can liken it to a person having an Oxford English vocabulary coupled with a terrible personality. He might speak well, but no one will want to talk to him. 1. Link Insertions Through Link Exchange (BEWARE!) Link exchanges can be immensely beneficial to a brand that is trying to build its site ranking and domain authority. Finding willing partners for an exchange has many challenges tied to it, though. Beyond finding sites that are willing to backlink to your content, to properly benefit from reciprocal link building, you want to find topically relevant websites directly related to your business. An example would be a parts salesman that is partnered with a local mechanic. Both businesses are in the automotive niche and the content that both produce will be able to build off of each other. Ensuring your link insertion is performed on topically levant websites is a large part of the exchange equation, but

There is a common misconception that to rank highly in search engines you have to build lots of backlinks. While the data DOES show that backlinks are a critical factor website rankings, the truth is, there’s no instruction manual on how exactly to outrank your competition that has more content, more brand recognition, more backlinks, and more experience on the web. Ranking without building backlinks is akin to trying to get backlinks without quality content. It’s possible, but not likely. There are metrics that you can learn about through Google though, that will let you rank without backlinks and otherwise outrank your competition for competitive terms, even if they have a much more dominant presence on the web. We’ll break down the strategies on how to rank without backlinks to help you better understand them and so that even without backlinks, you can rank highly in search engines. 1. Be Patient It can take a long time to rank. In our experience, it can take 3 to 5 years for the most competitive keywords. NOT heavily building manual links in the first couple years is actually better for your long term viability. Take our client in the “video production” space. Their website has only had 81 referring domains over the last four years. We spent most of our SEO services budget tuning pages, optimizing for visitors and mostly doing on-page SEO (more on this below). The result: The company now outranks its top competitor for the industry’s most coveted keyword, all by building a very strategic number of inbound links.  Could they have gotten their faster if they had built links aggressively over that time period?  Maybe. It depends on the execution. Are they ranking for long tail keywords?  Absolutely. When you are able to capture the money terms by SEO tuning, the long tail keywords take care of themselves. SEO ain’t a microwave, it’s an slow cooker. As such, if you’re a new site, you should plan on being in it for the long game. Build links to increase organic traffic, but remember links can hurt if not done with the right strategy. 2. Internal Links are Underutilized What we mean by this is using internal links to point people towards the most important web pages on your site. Google sees large numbers of internal links pointing to a particular page as that page being more relevant and thus Google tries to rank it higher. Using lots of internal links to a target page and the right content, using the anchor text of your target keyword, shows its importance to you and helps to drive search engine traffic. Google sees this as a positive sign of content quality and content relevance. It’s basically about using what you already have available to make yourself rank higher. Internal links are free while the right inbound links can be extremely expensive and time-consuming. We typically advise internal link building in the following ways: Focus on your money terms first, using anchor text that aligns with search results, search volume and cost per click metrics that will drive leads and sales Don’t worry too much about over-optimizing for anchor text on-site. You can certainly get in trouble if too many of your off-site links have the same anchors, your internal links can be heavily weighted toward your target keywords. Make sure all of your most important web pages have multiple (if not many more) internal links Make sure the largest volume of your internal links point to the web pages you want to rank, including those with the highest search volume and cost per click from your keyword research. 3. On-Page SEO Tuning The second most underutilized tactic for ranking in search engines without backlinks is using a good on page SEO strategy as well as technical SEO. The great thing about on page SEO is that it’s inexpensive and completely within your control. Focus on things like the following: Optimize your title tag, H1 tag & meta description. Make sure you have enough H1-H6 tags, the right keywords in your title tags and meta descriptions and that they’re fully diversified. Keep URLs and titles, straight, short, to the point and fully optimized. Make sure your URL strings target high volume keywords, but that your initial strategy is aimed at low competition keywords until your site is fully vested. Optimize images, including alt text and exif data Add schema markup to pages Place outbound, external backlinks to other quality resources Implement and optimize your sitemap and overall site structure for crawlers Install an SSL certificate Make sure you have Google Analytics and Google Search Console fully implemented Focus on page speed, load speed and other Core Web Vitals (CWV) Optimize for local SEO, including Google Maps Get the right target keyword density comparable to other top-ranking web pages Disambiguate your content with the right entity keywords and semantic keywords. Make sure your bounce rates are low and dwell time is high. This will throw off the right signal for the particular keyword rankings to the search engines as long as you are able to nail user search intent. These on page SEO items represent very low-hanging fruit in your overall SEO strategy. We discuss these and others in our complete on-page SEO guide here. 4. User Data is Key Everyone pretty much knows by now that Google controls the search engine market and that user experience is one of the main ways they judge the value and ranking of your site. Many sites use a lot of backlinks to prove their domain authority on a subject and generate traffic from external links and external sources, but that doesn’t mean they provide the best user experience or even that they fully understand their audience. Google Analytics provides all the data you need about user experience to optimize your site so that users click on links to your site, stay on the site longer and click to other pages on your site to acquire

Optimizing for mobile SEO isn’t complicated, but it isn’t always as simple as flipping a switch. There’s no single patch of code or button you can push to magically alter your site to be compatible with mobile devices. However, you do have several options when optimizing for mobile devices. Mobile Responsive Websites Responsive websites are optimized for mobile at a design level. They are created in such a way that allows the components of the page—such as the banners, blocks of text, headlines, and so on—to organize themselves on the page based on the size of the screen that’s accessing the webpage. These components may flex or stack to accommodate a smaller screen size, so a desktop user and a mobile user would both be able to easily navigate the site (even though the layout might be different). There are a number of advantages to responsive websites. Since the design is flexible enough to adjust to any screen, every type of mobile device will have a customized experience. However, the “responsive” element only needs to be built once. There is only one URL for your website, which makes it easy to develop and easier to manage over time, and it’s relatively simple to implement. The loading times for responsive sites tends to be slightly slower than the other options, but that’s generally a small price to pay for a universally adaptable website. Mobile URLs Mobile URLs are exactly what they sound like—they’re separate, customized URLs that exist for the mobile version of a webpage. For example, if your traditional website was www.example.com, your new website could be www.mobile.example.com. Whenever a user accesses your site using a mobile device, you can automatically re-point them to the mobile version of your site (and provide a link to toggle between these versions, just in case a user wants to switch). Mobile URLs are starting to become antiquated, but they’re still useful for some businesses. They take more time to create than a responsive design, since they require an independent creation, and require more extensive ongoing upkeep. They’re also vulnerable to fault points in the redirect system—if you accidentally direct a mobile user to the desktop version, they may have a poor experience. Dynamic Content The third option for mobile optimization is closer in theory to responsive design. Like with a responsive design, dynamic content structures require a single URL to house both a mobile version and a desktop version. The difference is, in a dynamic content setting, you’ll have twin versions of your site—the desktop and mobile versions—ready to display based on the type of device and screen size trying to access them. This is an improvement over mobile URLs, since you’ll only need to manage one URL, and you won’t have to worry about creating and sustaining a redirect. However, there are some flaws that may prevent you from achieving the best results. Creating one mobile version can be problematic, since there are hundreds of different mobile devices that could theoretically access your site. Ensuring Google Approves of Your Mobile Site Before you start trying to optimize specifically for a mobile experience, you have to ensure that Google approves of your mobile site. That means having your website perfectly capable of loading when accessed by mobile devices. There are three types of mobile layouts that are considered the standard for modern websites: responsive designs, dynamic content, and mobile URLs. All three are viewed equally by Google, but some webmasters may have a preference for one over the others. Responsive Design A responsive design is one that automatically detects the type of device being used to access it, and adjusts the layout of the site accordingly. For example, if your site is being accessed from a desktop machine, it may display traditionally, but if it’s being accessed from a smaller, vertical smartphone screen, it might “stack” some of the horizontal features to maximize the user experience. Responsive designs use one URL and one design, which makes it very convenient and efficient for developers. It’s relatively easy to incorporate, and it consolidates an otherwise multifaceted development effort. The only potential drawback of the responsive web design is loading time—since mobile users will technically be loading the entire site, it may take longer to download than a specific mobile landing page. Still, responsive design is the most popular mobile option today. Dynamic Content Dynamic serving content is similar to a responsive design, since only one URL is used no matter what type of device is accessing the content. However, under dynamic content, you’ll actually be serving up totally different versions of your website. For example, you’ll have a “desktop” version of your site loaded up and a “mobile” version of your site loaded up, and you’ll serve the version that corresponds with the device trying to access it. This allows you to serve each device more specifically. However, it takes much more work to develop, implement, and manage since you’ll need to create a version for almost every type of device that could access your page. Mobile URLs Mobile URLs are an old-fashioned way of getting your site optimized for mobile devices, but they still work fine for some businesses. Rather than trying to adapt on the fly the way responsive designs do, with mobile URLs, you’ll essentially be building a separate, mobile version of your site on a different URL. When a user access your site from a mobile device, you’ll automatically redirect them to the proper URL, usually a variant of your primary URL. Mobile URLs are typically more difficult to manage. You’ll have to ensure that your desktop and mobile versions redirect appropriately, which can be difficult. Otherwise, your users will view an inappropriate version of your website, and they may be left with a terrible first impression. Optimizing for Mobile-Specific Searches Users searching on mobile devices, like smartphones, are searching using the same index as desktop or home searchers. That means, as long as your site is present on that