Google’s search results are finally going to catch up to the shift towards mobile.

With more searches occurring on mobile devices than ever before, Google recently announced that it will start experimenting and tweaking their index to be mobile-first – a major shakeup in the status quo of how sites and pages will be ranked.

What does a mobile-first index mean for marketers? It doesn’t mean that there will be two separate indexes, rather Google will begin prioritising mobile content over desktop websites when it comes to rankings.

The change in Google’s algorithm has been a long time coming, given that the usage of smartphones and tablets has long eclipsed that of desktop. With Australians spending 552 million hours Googling in 2015, marketers cannot afford to lose their hard-earned rankings (and traffic) when this mobile-first index is eventually rolled out to all users.

The websites that will be most affected will be those that serve different forms of content to users within a desktop or mobile environment. If you have a responsive web design, you’re least at risk however there are plenty of opportunities to optimise and improve your rankings.

It’s still too early to properly understand the mobile-first index’s impact on rankings, but there are several things marketers can do to equip themselves to make the most out of a mobile-first world.

Mobile Friendliness is key

If your website isn’t mobile friendly in Googlebot’s eyes, this should be your first port of call. Google’s own mobile friendly test tool will help you determine if your site is considered mobile friendly. Another useful tool is Google’s Mobile Usability Report which will flag usability problems such as interstitial pop-us, touch elements being too close to one another and fonts that are too small to be legible.

Web developers have been known to omit content on mobile versions of websites to keep things light, but Google’s Gary Illyes has confirmed that content hidden for UX purposes will not be devalued.

Ensure Googlebot sees your website accurately

If you employ a mobile website that has a different URL and content from your desktop site, you should firstly test how Google crawls and renders it via the Fetch as Google tool. Be sure to also signal the relationship between your desktop and mobile sites.

This is an invaluable check as you may discover that your page doesn’t render correctly or if there are other factors preventing Googlebot from crawling your site.

Populate your mobile site with content

If your mobile site is a simplified version or has less content than your desktop site, this could mean that you could potentially lose out on search traffic for long tail keywords.

With Google going mobile-first, marketers will need to adopt a similar approach as you will only be able to rank on content that appears on your mobile site.

In addition to making the browsing experience smoother for mobile users, working on cutting down load times on pages for those on mobile devices will help improve your site’s search performance.

It’s not inconceivable for Google to factor a mobile website’s PageSpeed into rankings. Their own PageSpeed Insights tool offers a helpful diagnosis and easy-to-understand solutions on how to implement fixes to accelerate website performance.

If your website has a robust blog or content hub, implementing the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) format so that content is served even faster is also likely to become more important when the mobile-first index rolls out to everyone.

It is important to note that Google is still experimenting with the mobile-first index and nothing is truly set in stone until they’re confident that they can provide a great experience for users.

In spite of that, it’s clear that Google is priming the web for the inevitability that is a mobile-first world.

Matthew Margey is SEO Manager at Scorch iProspect.

This article first appeared on Mumbrella.

Dentsu Aegis Network today announces the acquisition of leading performance marketing agency Scorch Pty Ltd (Scorch) in Australia. Scorch will become Scorch iProspect, joining the existing global performance marketing agency iProspect and adding scale to the network’s digital capabilities in the market, within search and more diversified areas of performance marketing, including content, UX, data, web development and social.

Terrence Hooi, Matt Crook, Simon Ryan, Kevin Hooi, Ian Hooi

Founded in 2006 by digital specialists Terence Hooi and Kevin Hooi, Scorch is headquartered in Melbourne with offices in Sydney and Manila, comprising of 50 staff. With a strong team of 50 digital experts, the agency offers digital consulting across a wide range of performance marketing services, including search, social, content, UX, web development and owns proprietary technology including Remarket360, Definico and PEM.

Following the acquisition, Scorch Founders Terence Hooi and Kevin Hooi will continue to manage all operations of Scorch, retaining their current roles of CEO and COO respectively reporting to Dan Kalinski CEO iProspect Australia.

Simon Ryan, CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network ANZ, said: “This acquisition will unlock the ability of Dentsu Aegis Network‘s digital businesses to scale up operations and capabilities and lead the way in the Australian performance marketing industry.”

“Strategically and culturally, Scorch is a strong fit for our growing Australian group. Both Dentsu Aegis Network and Scorch have an embedded entrepreneurial culture with a heavy focus on innovation and a digital-first approach to marketing. I’m very excited  to welcome Terence, Kevin and the team at Scorch to Dentsu Aegis Network.”

Matthew Crook, Chief Strategy Officer and CEO of Performance & Data for Dentsu Aegis Network ANZ, said: “Having worked alongside Scorch as both partner and competitor over the years, we have a great deal of respect for the business and the people within it. Scorch’s tenure, reputation and capabilities are rare in the Australian market, and will deliver capability to Dentsu Aegis Network that supports our digital ambitions and long term vision.”

Terence Hooi, founder of Scorch, said: “ It is rare opportunity to join an organisation which shares the same strategic vision and values of integrity and innovation that we hold dear. The digital-first strategic direction of Dentsu Aegis Network makes it a very natural partner for Scorch. We’re very excited to embark on this new opportunity and the continued evolution of the business that the team and I built from the ground up over 10 years ago.”

Scorch’s prorprietary tools include Remarket360, an EDM and SMS platform with unique delivery technology and inbuilt segmentation system. Definico is an SEO and change management risk detection technology which identifies SEO risks faster and in real time. PEM is Perfect Efficiency Model which is a methodology for achieving high yield from adwords bidding.

The acquisition includes Scorch’s operations in Sydney (SearchFound Pty Ltd) and in Manila (Scorch Philippines).

It’s hard to imagine what the world was like 10 years ago. Imagine a world without iPhones, Androids, Instagram, Twitter, Uber or even Google Maps but that was what living in 2006 was like.

The Google Homepage from 4 May 2006

On 4 May 2006, I incorporated Scorch (then called MessageForce) and became employee #1. From humble beginnings, Scorch has grown from strength to strength and currently boasts a rapidly growing team of 40, across two continents.

When I look at our team now, I’m extremely grateful for how much we’ve grown to deliver best practice and undeniable results for our many clients.

Our people are our greatest asset, allowing us to field a comprehensive suite of digital marketing disciplines covering SEO, SEM, UX, Design, Outreach, Digital PR and Social Media.

Our digital marketing journey has seen us thrive and survive the days of iframes, Flash websites, keyword stuffing, click affiliate networks, when expensive Adwords CPC was $3. As we walk down memory lane, flashbacks of websites designed in Photoshop and cut up in Fireworks/Dreamweaver trigger fond but also horrifying memories when we recall that sites were almost 95% images and took forever to load.

From days where TV, Radio, Print and Direct reigned supreme, we’ve seen out a global financial crisis, several Penguins and Pandas (who knew animals could affect so much change on digital), witnessed the rise of Facebook, Youtube and the rapidly changing digital marketing landscape.

I am proud to celebrate 10 years of Scorch. With a decade of continuous improvement ingrained in our culture, I am filled with boundless optimism for the next 10 years delivering only the best for our clients.

Who knows what the digital marketing landscape will look like in the next 10 years. We’ve got virtual reality threatening to hit widespread adoption any day now, AI helping us do our jobs better, and a whole new frontier of audience targeting and storytelling technologies to look forward to.

With Google patenting cyborg eyeball lens technology, it’s not too far-fetched to imagine a future where content is delivered straight into our fields of vision.

Whatever lies over the horizon, I’m confident that Scorch will be more than equipped to spearhead progress upon our foundational pillars of Marketing, Creative and Digital.

Here’s to the next 10 years!

Terence Hooi, Founder & CEO

Established in 2014, RateMyAgent has grown to become the no. 1 real estate ratings and statistics website in Australia. In 2015 alone, close to $8bn in real estate has been transacted with the help of RateMyAgent and not a dollar of commission has been charged to agents.

Forging a unique identity in a crowded market

With a focus outside of the traditional listing portal market, RateMyAgent turned their attention to the consumer with a desire to help vendors cut through the clutter of estate agents who all make the same claim, “I’m the best agent, I sell the most property”, says CEO of RateMyAgent, Mark Armstrong.

With RateMyAgent, agents have a powerful self-promotion tool and consumers have the ability to rate their experience with estate agents. This unique positioning has seen over 18,000 actively adopt agent profiles, 3,100 agencies sign up for profiles and most significantly, over 120,000 vendors reviews submitted to the site since launch.

RateMyAgent founders: Mark Armstrong, Xavier Perronnet, Ed van Roosendaal

Securing the support of an industry

Without the exorbitant marketing and ad war chests of the industry’s heavyweights, RateMyAgent had to think outside the box. With a collective 30 years of experience in the property market, co-founders of RateMyAgent, Mark Armstrong, Xavier Perronnet and Ed van Roosendaal, called upon their networks to spread the word of their impending release.

“We built our service around the agent community so we’d have their support as soon as we launched. We felt strongly that agents would promote us as soon as they saw the value in our service”, says Mark Armstrong. He added, “All the good agents bought into the transparency that we provided the market and the rest of the agent community followed suit”.

Initially reaching out to the top agents in each state across the country, RateMyAgent employed a top down approach to secure the support of the agent community.

Delivering value to the vendor

An internal survey from RateMyAgent revealed that 20% of vendors who posted a review on the site say they used RateMyAgent to help them choose their real estate agent. “Many people distrust agents and client reviews are one way of choosing and cutting through what vendors see as the usual agent spin”, says CEO of RateMyAgent, Mark Armstrong.

In two years since launch, RateMyAgent has grown to become the no. 1 real estate ratings and statistics website in Australia and the ultimate vendor’s companion to research, select and find the right agent to sell their property.

Digital strategy underpins success

To complement the efforts in securing the buy-in and interest of real estate agents, Scorch was enlisted to raise RMA’s digital profile and provide strategic SEO consultation on how the website could best be harnessed to compete against other more established real estate portals in search results.

The two-prong approach focused on optimising RateMyAgent’s digital assets, and a sustained drive to raise awareness in the market through digital PR, influencer marketing and social media marketing activities.

The holistic approach to SEO and Digital PR resulted in sustained success, netting RMA an increase in organic search traffic by approximately 160% compared to the previous year within 5 months.

Keep your car cool this summer with Kulcar

Summers are a quintessential part of the Australian and NZ heritage—ice cream, beaches, swimmers and BBQs. Everyone who enjoys the splendours of summer also has to suffer boiling hot car interiors and scalding seats.

Kulcar has an ingenious product that eases the pain of hot car interiors. Powered by the very thing that causes hot car interiors (the sun), the Kulcar actively vents hot air and chemical build up in a car. This means that getting your car back into that comfortable stage is much faster when you have a Kulcar installed.

Scorch was engaged to design and develop a website for Kulcar. Our brief was to ensure that the brand’s key unique selling points were well presented. Key features like social media integration and the ability to easily add the product to a shopping cart and transact were also important.

The result is a website that is visually appealing and most importantly, helps support Kulcar in getting the brand message across to their target audience.

This June Scorch went junk free!

Junk Free June is a new fundraising event that challenges people to give up junk foods during the month of June.

Here at Scorch we decided to get involved. We’ve got the Cancer Society’s back – get ours by donating or spreading the word. 100% of the money raised from Junk Free June goes straight to the Cancer Society.

The Cancer Society provides a range of support and information for people affected by cancer and funds cancer research.

The reason we went junk free is because what we eat and drink may cause around 30% of cancers in industrialised countries – making diet second only to tobacco as, in theory, a preventable cause of cancer. No particular foods or eating patterns are guaranteed to prevent cancer; however, some foods and eating patterns can reduce your risk. For healthy adults we recommend that you eat a diet that is mostly from vegetables and fruits, be physically active, and maintain a healthy body weight.

The definition of ‘junk’ is self -defined and different for everyone. Junk Free June is about sacrificing something that you eat often and know isn’t good for you. By cutting one’s own version of ‘junk’ out for the month, individuals raise money for The Cancer Society. The Cancer Society provides free and confidential support and information to people dealing with a cancer diagnosis, promotes ways we can reduce our risk of cancer and invests in cancer research.

Help us on our Junk free journey here –
https://www.junkfreejune.org.nz/participants/i-sizzle-i-scorch

Noveco – A Bespoke Approach for a Game Changing System

Noveco needed an agency to address brand and perception issues it was facing. Being a technical product with unique USPs, Noveco was in search for the right positioning and brand strategy for its brand and its flagship ePM product. It was in search of a Digital Marketing agency who could also help it reach its intended audiences globally.

Noveco’s Extended Project Management (ePM) solution is a software platform developed within SAP. Its primary value is assisting SAP project managers streamline their workflow when forecasting projects (amongst a sleuth of other SAP project management challenges) allowing project managers to be more focused on delivering projects on-time and on-budget as opposed to data administration.

Being a niche product with a niche audience, Noveco needed an agency that is Audience and Insights lead that could help with communicating the brand and selling points.

Scorch was engaged to deliver the brand strategy, a facelift to Noveco’s brand identity, content and video production, redesign of the website as well as a global marketing partnership.

View Noveco’s revitalised and responsive new website which effectively conveys Noveco’s revolutionary project management solutions and brand proposition like never before.

Here is a simple example that Bookworld has put in place and the process of getting to this content was simple:

a) They identified from web stats and the search bar usage stats that a certain portion of their visitors weren’t entirely sure what they wanted.
b) They identified that people enjoyed having a simple visual guide to picking books.
c) They also identified that with Christmas coming up, non-book lovers might want a more personal option than gift cards.

The result was a simple series of pages that conveniently listed the most popular books for this Christmas season. These pages reportedly improve time on site on the non-book lovers segment and over this period leading up to Christmas have already yielded a 6% increase in conversion rates compared to last year – a significant improvement for this typically nonchalant segment.

Kat O’Sullivan, Bookworld’s resident web guru reports:

Bookworld has a huge range of products (over 13 million) which makes providing a gift guide an absolute necessity for our customers; we can’t just rely on self-discovery alone. We pride ourselves on our book knowledge and as such are best suited to provide the best possible gift (and self) purchases for our audience during the Christmas period.

A key point of emphasis was the use of images of the popular books in the icons. This is an elegant way to help set an expectation of what the user would see if they clicked on the link. This ultimately means that the site is able to help with the visitor’s decision making, thus ticking 2 boxes simultaneously:

• Producing useful content
• Offering a useful decision support system

Scorch designed the EDM template and set up Godwin Charli’s customer database in Remarket360, our email marketing platform which manages both the database and send. It also gives clients the ability set up custom EDM templates for future sends.

Godwin Charli eDM

Customers could then enter the competition through a simple entry mechanic using AdmitOne, our Facebook competition system. Customers were required to “Like” the Godwin Charli Facebook page then enter their contact details. If they already liked the Godwin Charli Facebook page, they could still enter the competition by submitting their details.

Godwin Charli AdmitOne Competition Page

The benefits of the campaign to Godwin Charli were threefold:

• It leveraged their existing database of email addresses and rewarded loyal customers with the chance to win prizes;
• It grew the number of Facebook ‘likes’ from their existing customers;
• By sharing the page, it increased virality of the competition, as well as awareness of the Godwin Charli brand, to a new audience.

There was a great response to the competition and showed the effectiveness of an email campaign to existing customers can result in more engaged readers on Facebook.

About Godwin Charli

Godwin Charli is a fashion brand who design and manufacture clothing to the highest standards in both ready-to-wear and made-to-measure. Based in Melbourne, they have 3 retail stores as well as an online store.

Dedicated to bringing the best expert advice and guidance to Australians looking for the right courses, SEEK Learning made a commitment to ensure that its website offered the best user experience.

As a result, on the 26th of March 2013, SEEK Learning released its new website, true to its philosophy of personal improvement and achievement.

If you aren’t already familiar with SEEK Learning, it is an online resource for courses as well as a learning consulting service. With a dedicated team of consultants, SEEK Learning can help you find the right course for you; something that suits your goals and lifestyle.

The project that led to this release took meticulous planning, encompassed a range of new features, boasted a remodelled look and feel and improved searchability. A notable feature on the website is the collection of courses based on the user’s interest.

The website was developed on the Sitecore CMS platform and SEO tested with Scorch’s SEO Bishop.

About SEEK Learning

SEEK Learning offers hundreds of nationally recognised TAFE, university and vocational educational courses designed to meet the educational needs of working Australians. SEEK Learning provides free, personalised advice to help people find and enrol in the best course to reach their career goals and achieve their career calling.

Visit SEEK learning – www.seeklearning.com.au