tedster - 8:18 am on Sep 20, 2012 (gmt 0)

We're still 80% down in organic but the sales are actually higher.

I've done the same for quite a while now - even for sites that thrive in the Google SERPs. I love focusing on the customer experience directly.

And the paradox is, I find that over time Google rewards those sites where I focus on the user experience (of course while covering the on-page and on-site SEO basics.)

September has been a wild month for some of us. For sites where I have access to analytics of some kind, Google traffic has stayed mostly steady. A few are up and two are down, but the changes are not lining up with any of the updates we've noticed here. Maybe this comment from @fabulousyarn on September 9 does line up:

I am also seeing very odd things in the product listings - many, many listings don't show, but it also seems to be browser and machine dependent.

From the stats that I see, I think there was some kind of update around September 5-8 that tilted the SERPs even more toward the mobile user - even tablets, not just the smartphones. Even on a laptop or desktop, that tilt is bleeding through.

To come clean, I'm behind the curve on responsive website design. I always thought I'd get on with it when I saw a lot of mobile users. The problem seems to be, these two down sites won't get many of those mobile users from Google if I don't make website that ranks well and that probably means upgrading them for mobile.

Time to roll up my sleeves.

[edited by: tedster at 11:14 am (utc) on Sep 20, 2012]