Google has recently fully rolled out its much-awaited (and feared) algorithm change that essentially enforces the old adage “you are either with us, or against us.” The new update either makes you mobile friendly or not mobile friendly. New criteria have become increasingly important, while others have become relics of times past. So what do these changes tell us about E-commerce?

Constant monitoring and maintenance is essential

One of most overlooked aspects of a business is maintenance. When you are at the top, everyone wants what you have. Staying on top of your game, monitoring the landscape, constantly adapting, and staying one step ahead of everyone else is a full time job in and of itself.

In the past 5 years, Google has rolled out a series of updates that have really shaken up how things work in the world of the internet. They’ve been given names like Penguin, Panda, and other fanciful things, but what they have in common is that they’ve all been major changes that have rearranged search rankings. This particular update, according to recent tests, could have an effect on 40% of the 500 largest websites. For smaller businesses the effect could be even greater, and they don’t have the revenue streams to recover from major hits.

Takeaway: Always stay on top of your SEO game. A small investment now pays real monetary dividends in the future.

Talk is cheap (but extremely valuable)

There are few things in the world that are cheap, but valuable. The E-commerce world happens to have talk, and by talk I mean social media buzz. This includes reviews, likes, mentions, views, tags, pictures, or whatever other ways people use to communicate with each other. What this shows is that in recent times, and especially more in the coming years, the best source of advertising for your business will be in the form of social media engagement.

Being visible, being engaged, getting reviewed and responding promptly, posting photographs of products, and running giveaways are just the tip of the iceberg. Although this is widely known and accepted in the E-commerce world, there are a large number of mobile-unfriendly practices out there, and many companies sticking to more “traditional” types of advertising. Make the change now, or get left behind.

Takeaway: You have to utilize social media and word of mouth far more now than you used to. Organic advertising is worth a lot more than traditional ads.

This is only the beginning

Mobilegeddon, as it has been so aptly named, really wasn’t as bad as it was played up to be. The biggest changes we have seen so far have been in loss of traffic, and some websites falling out of the top ranks. Still, what this update spells is really the beginning of a much bigger trend.

Google announced not long ago that there were finally more queries via mobile than desktop for the first time in history. While many have said that this is as bad as it will get, we see no reason for believing that Google will not continue to place more reliance on mobile-friendliness.

Google’s Gary Ilyes even hinted at more updates to come soon when he said “there is no reason for us to stop improving our algorithm.” Soon enough, we believe that mobile-friendly optimization will be so commonplace that we will stop even referring to it as something different from SEO, and the term will simply be synonymous with search engine optimization.

Takeaway: As soon as this update has settled in, the next one will come. Be prepared. Get mobile friendly now, and always be on your toes.

In the end, most of the world survived the overly dramatic “Mobilegeddon” – but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t have very real implications for the world of digital marketing. The move toward mobile-friendliness is unavoidable, and it is necessary to update and maintain your site or you will find yourself at the bottom of search results. The most important takeaway to remember is that this is only the beginning, and very soon there will be much more to come from Google. Are you prepared?

To stay ahead of Google’s algorithm updates, trust the expert search engine optimization team at BlueHat Marketing.