Google is now using a mobile-first index that is based on how users experience the web on their mobile devices. This is a radical change from how Google previously indexed the web with a desktop-first approach. This change has major ramifications for SEOs and web masters. Are you up to speed on these changes? Have you optimised your site for a mobile-first world? Leslie To and Google’s John Müller will present techniques for performing an audit in a mobile-first world to ensure that content, links, metadata and structured data are compliant, regardless of how your site is accessed by users. We’ll also discuss tactics and techniques to improve the mobile user experience and potentially boost rankings in this new mobile-first world.

Clear signals of local intent usually result in high-quality traffic for businesses targeting locally. But local search results can be different on mobile, based on where the searcher is located at the moment, making results more variable. “Near Me” searches were just the thing that local marketers were waiting for, yet, these search queries have declined. Why and how does proximity affect results? How should you optimise for the local algorithm (both on-site and off-site) and which of the once most hyped tactics no longer matter? Greg Gifford will give you the full, 2018, local playbook based on the results of a massive research project he ran: ~185,000 keywords in 150 cities, checking 1 to 20 organic spots, and looking at over 200 data points per spot. Then Cindy will complement your local playbook with the mobile chapters, focusing on how to track and optimise all these variables, when an increasing amount of the searches are not only mobile but voice. 

Users expect dynamic, responsive and interactive web sites that are not just functional but also super-fast. JavaScript is one of the many underlying technologies that help developers build these web sites. Although it is crucial for SEOs to understand how to use JavaScript and how to make them search engine friendly, many SEOs fundamentally reject this technology. Can Google and other search engines crawl and index JavaScript frameworks? What is the technology behind the Google Bot and what are Google’s technical crawling and indexing limitations? This session will provide a profound understanding of which factors can influence crawler budget and indexing based on many experiments.

Tom & his team have been helping companies run A/B tests for SEO for over 2 years now, and they have learnt a lot. In this session Tom is going to walk through some of the tests by Etsy, Pinterest and a number of customers on their split-testing platform, and highlight practical lessons that apply more widely. Some of these lessons are about how you can go away and apply a split-testing approach to your own sites, and other lessons are about some misconceptions around SEO best practices. From these test results and other studies, Tom will highlight how many SEO recommendations have no impact, and discuss some ideas for how you can make more effective recommendations.

With Accelerated Mobile Pages in use and fully integrated into Google Search, AMP adoption has expanded far beyond publishers and is now starting to be deployed by retailers and others. SEOs need to be aware of the latest implementation techniques, display issues, measurement capabilities, and more. In this session we will take a close look at AMP and discuss whether you should be “AMPing up” as well. The second part of the session will look at meaningful performance measurement, Critical Rendering Path Optimisation, and more tips to optimise your performance.

What‘s working on your site and what isn‘t? In this session you can get Google‘s opinion on this question. All registered SMX Munich 2015 conference attendees can submit a site for review before the conference. Learn only from the best and use the chance to receive the most relevant feedback you can get! Submit your proposal now under email hidden; JavaScript is required (NB: only registered attendees can submit a site, not all proposals will be discussed in the session).

Running thousands of checks in a multi-language situation was complicated by switching the tech stack to a new technology. That was on top of the challenging requirements of a large-scale, online fashion online shop (large number of products, high fluctuation in product states, etc.). It is obvious that manually checking SEO criteria could not keep up with the overall growth of the company. Pascal and his team addressed the challenge and now automatically run tens of thousands of hourly checks on all their domains. This allows to quickly iterate on the shop without the risk of breaking anything on the SEO side. In the second part of this session Ralf will share with you the Zalando How-To for Big Websites Site Performance. We all love fast websites, PWA-AMPs and instant experiences. But what exactly does “fast” mean? How can you measure speed correctly and which KPIs apply? You will get an exclusive look over Ralf’s shoulder to learn how Zalando approaches these challenges and how you can get big web sites up to speed even within slow 3G connections. Prepare yourself for a high speed journey through all dimensions of performance optimisation.

The Webmasters on the Roof, Mediadonis and his guests, will rock the stage again at SMX Munich. Like every year, they will discuss the most burning issues. What can webmasters do today to be future-proof for the changes coming with the Mobile First Index? And of course we’ll discuss Voice Search, how to get attention for your brand and remain unique in a future where 10 blue links are history and there is only answer. 

As the world becomes increasingly connected, it’s becoming more vital than ever for all businesses – regardless of size – to have a global online presence. From a technical as well as a cultural perspective, this is causing many challenges to customer centricity. Taking a one-size-fits-all approach won’t cut it. Learn Bill Hunt, renowned International Search Marketing expert and Matt Storms, SEO Strategist at Viator.com, a TripAdvisor company, as they discuss the right (and wrong!) approaches to international SEO. They will cover the technical implications and how marketers can win when going global. After attending this session, hreflang tags, geo-filters, and translation frameworks won’t be mysteries any more.

The First-Click-Free-Principle – Google ensuring free access to content – has been abolished. In the future, content owners can choose how much free content to offer, if any. Since April 2017, www.zeit.de has free articles, articles behind a paywall, and articles behind a registration barrier. In this session, Olaf Seydel gives insights into the resulting changes in search engine traffic. What is the influence on conversions from SEO reach and analysis given subscriptions and registrations? How does search traffic relate to blocked articles? What are the implications of different types of Google Search traffic and Google News coverage? Is Google’s Flexible Sampling the solution to drive reach and conversion rates? Are articles the best SEO landing pages for subscriptions and registrations? Come to this session and get the answers.