Though we aren’t exactly sure when Google will roll out the mobile first index, we have indication that it is happening soon. As such, everyone in our space needs to prepare by ensuring their website is responsive before the roll out.
If your website still uses an m-dot (m.domain.com) to handle your mobile traffic, this applies to you.
Step One: Migrate your M Dot Site to Responsive Before Mobile-First Launches
Unless you have already stopped using an M-dot on your domain to handle your mobile traffic, you need to migrate thought to a responsive design before mobile first launches. You can do this with any number of responsive WordPress themes. Many are available for free although there are a variety of attractive premium themes available as well.
If you want to verify that your site is indeed responsive already, you can use this tool to take a look at how the website is displayed on desktop, laptop, and mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.
Changing your website to a responsive theme will automatically make all content adjust to the screen size it is viewed on, so you can delete the M-dot portion of your website. However, don’t delete it just yet.
Step Two: Make Sure Your Mobile Content is the Same as Your Desktop Content
Once you have made the switch to a responsive design, take the time to make sure your desktop content matches your mobile content. If your mobile website does not match the content on your desktop site, you may see a negative effect on your SEO. If your mobile site has less content than the desktop version, you may not rank as high because Google will prioritize the mobile friendly version of your site.
A search engine’s number one priority is to keep their customers happy by delivering relevant content for each search query. While creating quality content does need to remain a primary concern, it is also important for the search engines that their users can easily access the content they deliver in the results. This means your responsive website should also be designed with user experience in mind. Make sure the content is easy to read and the website is easy to navigate. If you need to, use CSS and other frontend languages to make adjustments to improve the user experience.
When you believe your mobile responsive website is ready, check to make sure that Google can see these changes by using the Fetch and Render tool that’s available in the Google Search Console. All you have to do is specify that the user agent is a smartphone and you’ll be able to see how Google delivers your website to a user that’s coming from a smartphone.
Step Three: Setup the Necessary 301 Redirects
If you are switching from an m-dot website to a responsive website, you need to set up 301 redirects from the m-dot version on the domain to the full version of the domain. This way people who are used to going to the m-dot will be taken to the correct page on your website automatically which will then adjust for the mobile device.
Your 301 redirects must be done on an individual basis, pointing each mobile URL to the equivalent responsive URL to prevent anything from breaking. This is why you don’t need to delete the m-dot version from your server as soon as the responsive version is ready. If you need a refresher on how to set up 301 redirects, you can check out this post.
Step Four: Remove Any Mobile URL Specific Configurations Your Site May Have
Step Five: Setup Canonical URLs on Responsive URLs That Point to Themselves
Next, you want to set up rel=canonical on all responsive URLs that point to themselves. This ensures that Google recognizes the pages are the same so you avoid any kind of duplicate content issue. You should also do this on an individual basis to make sure you don’t accidentally overlook one or more of the URLs that need the tag.
When Can I Expect Mobile-First to Launch?
There is no set date or timeline for mobile first to launch. It’s speculated the roll out will begin sometime in early 2018, and it will happen gradually, on a site-by-site basis, or in batches. This is why it is important to act quickly, so that you’re ready whenever Google decides to begin making changes.
Failure to ensure you are off the m-dot separate site and on a single responsive site means that you could see a decline in rank. Why? Because Google will index all the m-domain and URLs, so your migration will take longer since they aren’t just updating the URLs, but also the content and signals found within your pages, too.
What if I’m Using Dynamic Serving and Want to Move to Responsive Design?
If your website uses dynamic serving and you want to start using responsive design, Google says you do not need to do anything in terms of redirects.
Conclusion
Don’t let the idea of switching from m-dot to responsive stress you out. While you do need to plan for the mobile-first index, Google will definitely let us know well in advance about how we should prepare for the roll out. If you need help with adjusting your website, the team here at Sachs Marketing Group is glad to be of assistance, so get in touch today!
In the world of SEO and content marketing, the only reliable factor is change. No matter how you approach writing for SEO or what strategies you use, those strategies will become obsolete within a few years.
This is how Google and other search engine giants prevent people from gaming the system. As time goes on and marketers get better at manipulating results, Google adjusts algorithms to end that manipulation.
Each change aims at better solving the searcher’s needs, rather than giving marketers the ability to sell more products.
“Wait,” you’re thinking. “Isn’t that a bad thing?”
That’s absolutely how it looks at first, but we’re pleased to say it’s mostly a misconception. Google’s changes may make writing for SEO more challenging, but they also create new opportunities for SEO writers to create highly marketable content.
Writing for SEO Is More Alive than Ever
For content marketers, Google’s constant changes to foil their efforts can be a tough pill to swallow. It makes writing for SEO effectively more challenging, and that has some SEO experts predicting a total failure of the industry. That’s a knee-jerk reaction; in reality, it’s more alive than ever.
It just doesn’t look the same.
Admittedly, the last five years have been incredibly rough in the SEO industry. So much changed, and unfortunately, some just couldn’t keep up with those changes. We saw a massive shift as lower-quality SEO providers and writers found themselves suddenly without work as mass-producing content fell by the wayside.
That left businesses suddenly faced with paying far more than they normally would for content just to achieve the kind of quality needed to prevent de-listing.
If you’ve been feeling disillusioned by the industry, know that the increased focus on user experience and quality isn’t necessarily an undesirable thing. Adjusting algorithms to better target these metrics also produces a marketing industry where skill + time + effort = results.
If you’re willing to do the work and hone your skills (or at least pay someone who can), you are significantly more likely to succeed in ranking. Instead of hacks and cheats, SEO is becoming about transparent, honest strategies that provide real, useful content.
Next, let’s look at exactly what’s changing, how it affects writers, and how you can adapt to make the most of the current (and future) changes for 2018.
Searchers > Search Engines
The most prominent feature we’re seeing for the coming year is a continuation of Google’s focus on user experience. Rather than writing for search engines, you should tailor your content to the needs of searchers and/or your audience instead.
Here’s a quick fact: 93 percent of all searchers land on your website after using a search engine to seek “answers.” To create successful content, you should try to provide those answers within your content. To achieve this goal, you need to learn the searcher’s intent.
To nail down intent, gather a list of keywords you want to target. Next, ask yourself exactly what it is the searcher is trying to solve when they search the keywords.
Keep in mind that questions aren’t always obvious. You can expect searcher intent to fall within one of these categories:
Navigational – Searchers in this category are seeking guidance on how find specific websites and/or resources. Examples: Trying to find a website, looking up local classifieds, searching for a local organization’s website, searching for the best website for a specific product.
Transactional – Transactional searchers want to complete a web-based transaction when they search. Examples: e-commerce transactions and non-monetary transactions, like downloading forms, getting a free quote, confirming a price, or subscribing to a platform like Netflix.
Informational – Informational searchers make up the most common sector of searchers. They want information on products, services, concepts, ideas, or other intangible topics. Examples: animal care tips, a local TV schedule, the answer to a math question, DIY tutorials, and most healthcare information.
If you manage to answer these questions, you will benefit from a boost in the search engines through intent matching. But you’ll also see a boost simply because your content will become more useful – and that’s what leads to more organic shares.
Where and When to Use Keywords
We’re hammering home the idea of writing for searchers, but that doesn’t mean you should totally forget keywords exist at all. Instead, you should search for keywords with intent in mind and slot them in where they do the most good:
Title tags
URL
Body
Htags
Meta tags
Which keywords should you use? Unlike earlier years, you should start targeting more than one keyword on the same page. Start by finding your main keywords, then use keyword planner, Google Trends, and other platforms to find commonly associated keywords that relate to your topic, concept, or niche (more on this in the next section).
How much is too much? There’s no specific percentage to aim for; in general, you should worry much less about keyword density achievements than the quality of the content. Anything over two to three percent is, however, probably too much, especially if it’s the same keyword every time.
Using Commonly Associated Keywords
Let’s talk frankly about the commonly associated keywords (we’ll call it CA keywords from here on out) we mentioned further up. What exactly are CA keywords, and how should you implement them into your text?
The first thing you need to know is what CA keywords aren’t. Specifically, they aren’t necessarily Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords, variants, or long-string phrases. A CA keyword can sometimes fall within these categories, but those descriptions just don’t get at the heart of what Google means by common association.
Which brings us to the inherent problem in the term “commonly associated;” it isn’t always easy to identify exactly what search engines mean by that. Generally, it means that the concepts and phrases used within your article all share a relationship somehow, but this is a really basic description. It also involves the kind of relationship between each phrase, keyword, or topic.
Finding CA keywords can be challenging, but usually, it comes down to common sense. A page about baseball isn’t going to talk about living room curtains, but they might talk about sports-themed window decals. Similarly, a page about pet care wouldn’t necessarily talk about human health topics, but they may discuss zoonotic diseases (like salmonella) that humans can catch.
CA keywords impact writing for SEO in a few specific ways. To start, it means you should stay relatively on topic within each article or content piece. But for some writers, it also introduces more freedom to diversify within the same theme.
Advanced AI and Algorithms
We mentioned CA keywords and how it changes content relevance. One of the reasons CA keywords have become so important is because search engines are now using incredibly advanced algorithms to decide exactly what “relevance” means. This includes entity salience, semantic distance, and phrased-based indexing.
Entity Salience
First, let’s talk entity salience. Entity, in this case, refers to anything within the article that fits into a specific definition – a phrase, a word, a topic, or a concept. Salience is a measure of prominence or importance.
Entity salience, then, interprets meaning by identifying prominence, importance, and relationships between the various phrases, words, topics, and meanings in your content.
Salience isn’t just about relatability; that’s a common misconception. It’s also about the search engine’s experience with trillions of other content pieces. Algorithms try to show how people behave when they interact with similar content, including how likely they are to consider it related and which combinations of words perform better alongside one another.
Semantic Distance
Semantic distance takes this one step further, using the relative distance within HTML elements of certain phrases or words to measure how likely they are to be related to one another. In practice, this looks a little something like using related keywords in the same paragraph or content block.
Need examples? A paragraph that has the words apple and pie, for example, is much more likely to be about food than computers. Conversely, a paragraph that holds the words apple and monitor is much more likely to be about tech.
If a writer is really skilled, they’ll weave multiple CA keywords into the text at regular intervals that make sense without feeling spammy. It’s all about balance.
Phrase-Based Indexing
Phrase-based indexing completes relevance analysis by allowing Google to identify very specific phrases, words, or even sentences that usually predict other relevant phrases. For example, people who write about cardiology would naturally use phrases like “high blood pressure,” “heart health,” or even, “The American Heart Association.”
How to Write for People and Algorithms
So, what exactly should writers and SEO experts do with all this information? You should continue to focus on improving relevance and writing quality while also diversifying within related topics. Focus on answering searcher’s most pressing questions, and always write first using a natural voice.
Lastly, the same old content tips for writers still apply. Keep it interesting, lively, informative, well-written, and well-structured for easy digestion. This will always be the number one way to avoid writing content absolutely no one wants to read.
Research shows nearly half of web users expect a website to load within two seconds or less, and they tend to leave a site if it takes more than three seconds to load. This may not sound like a big deal, but 78% of online shoppers who experience issues with website performance say they won’t go to the site to buy again, and 44% would tell their friends about that poor experience.
When you consider that research also shows a one second delay in page load time can contribute to a 7% reduction in conversion rates – you’re not only losing money, but potential customers. If your business earns $10,000 a day, a single second delay in your load time could cost you $250,000 a year.
Connection Speed
The type of internet connection you have will directly affect the speed at which any website loads. If you’re one of the people who are still stuck on dial-up, no matter how well optimized a website is, it’s just going to take longer. DSL offers a faster connection than dialup, but it’s not quite as fast as a cable connection. And as fast a cable connection can be, it still can’t beat a fiber optic connection.
Server/Hosting
Your web hosting company and the server it chooses to place your website on can have a major impact on the speed at which your website loads for visitors. If there aren’t enough resources on the server, it will slow things down for everyone. While shared hosting is the most economical choice for many small websites, it is not the best solution for all. Larger websites may need to look into a virtual private server, or VPS, which provides the cost efficiency of shared hosting, but the ability to control server resources like a dedicated hosting plan. The largest websites, like Facebook and Twitter, need to use dedicated hosting, where they are the only website hosted on the server, and have complete control of the resources. Sites of that size need more than one server to accommodate the traffic volume they receive.
When you choose your web hosting company, look for one that has an uptime rating of at least 99.5%. Many advertise 99.9% uptime, and will only have issues when they are updating the server your website is hosted on. If your host server is sluggish, no matter what improvements you make to speed up loading time, your website will remain sluggish.
If you have traffic coming from all over the place, you may want to consider investing in a content delivery network, or CDN. This is a network of servers, all of which host your site content. It will pull your site’s content from the server closest to the visitor, to reduce load time, since the data doesn’t have to travel as far.
File Types and Sizes
Generally speaking, the larger your file sizes are and the more files you have to load on a page, the longer it will take to load in the browser. While improvements in connection speed have made it possible to load larger files in less time, it’s still important to take time to optimize your files as much as possible. You can minify your code and optimize image formats and sizes to keep your files as lean as possible.
Plugins
I’m the first to say many WordPress plugins can be helpful in adding functionality to your site without much fuss… especially if you’re maintaining a website on your own without much technical knowledge. However, having too many plugins on your website, or opting to use plugins that aren’t optimized can dramatically slow your website down.
Each plugin in the repository has different functions and features. Some make database calls while others load front-end assets. The plugins that make a lot of database queries and require a lot of assets to load will slow down your load time.
When done properly, you won’t notice much of a difference in your load time, but if there are several plugins inundating the server with HTTP requests, then you will see a negative effect on user experience.
If you want to see how your choice of plugins is affecting your page load time, check the files the plugins are loading. Load your website. Use the “Inspect” feature in Google Chrome or the “Inspect Element” feature in Firefox to open the developers tools panel. Click the “Network” tab, and reload your website. As it reloads, you’ll be able to see how your browser is loading each file.
Alternatively, you can use something like GTmetrix or Pingdom to learn what’s going on when your site loads. You’ll also be able to see how many files are loaded, and how much time they took to load. This way you can see if a particular plugin is hogging up resources and look for another option to accomplish the same function.
Unfortunately, there’s no magic number for the maximum amount of plugins you should have on your website. It really depends on your website and which plugins you’re using. One bad plugin can load more than 10 files, while several good plugins can add just a few extra files. Well-coded plugins keep the files they load to a minimum, but ultimately it depends on the plugin developer.
Browser
The browser you’re using can affect the speed at which websites load. Older versions of browsers may struggle to load certain assets and code because they’re not compatible. If you don’t have your browser set to cache certain items from websites you visit often, you may experience slower page loading speeds. For best results, make sure you are always using the most up-to-date version of your favorite browser. If you don’t have it set to update automatically, make sure you check periodically to ensure you’re running the most current software version.
PC Cache
The computer used to access the website can also have an effect on website speed. The cache on your computer functions to store information you’ve recently used, so it can be accessed quickly. The cache stores items from the websites you visit to your hard drive. When you revisit the website, the data is already stored, allowing the website to load faster. If you clear your cache, you may notice sites that used to load quickly take a bit longer to load again. If your computer itself is slow because of RAM issues or you’re running too many processes at once, you may also notice slower page load times.
Traffic Volume
Many websites have a set amount of bandwidth. This refers to the amount of data transferred over a certain period of time – typically a month. If you’ve got high traffic volume, that’s a good sign, but if you don’t have a host with bandwidth that can accommodate that, you’ll not only risk a slower website speed, but a complete shut down until your period renews, or you upgrade your plan. If Google paid for bandwidth costs, YouTube alone would cost them billions of dollars a month. Add to it all the other properties they have, and it’s a truly astronomical number.
If you’ve got an ecommerce business, high traffic is an indication that business is doing well. This is a signal that your conversion rate is high. Keep an eye on your bandwidth and make sure you’re prepared to adjust it accordingly to prevent sluggish performance.
Checking Your Website Speed
Test on your local computer. If you’re a Chrome user, you can test website speed on your computer. Log out of all your Google accounts. Clear your cache and cookies. Press F12 to launch the “Inspect Element” feature. Then press CTRL+F5 on Windows or CMD+F5 on a Mac. This will reload your website without any of cache.
Open the “Network” tab in the Inspect Elements window. This will show you the acess times and total times for downloading. Refresh your site using the keyboard shortcuts again. If you see that the website loads faster, your content was optimized thanks to the cache and cookies. This method provides a basic result, but is based on your personal internet speed, so it won’t necessarily be the same for your website visitors.
Use Google’s Pagespeed Insights. This tool won’t directly measure the speed at which your website loads, but rather offers advice on how to improve your website’s load time. Enter your URL and see the score the tool gives you. If it’s high, check the other factors to ensure your load time is slow. A low score doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a slow loading time.
To see how fast (or slow) your website loading time is, you can use Pingdom and GTmetrix to test it from various server points.
Does Your Site Have Speed Issues?
If you find that your site is taking longer than three seconds to load, don’t panic. Follow the recommendations from the Pagespeed Insights tool, and then re-test your speed. The sooner you can make improvements, the better for your customers and your bottom line.
If you need help, reach out – and we’ll take care of it for you.
If you’ve determined you need to make changes to your website – either through a re-design, changing your URL structure, making the switch to HTTPS, or switching to a different CMS, it’s not a one-step process you can just decide to do on a whim. Making changes, particularly to the URL structure can have negative SEO effects if you don’t know what you’re doing, and if you don’t follow a series of steps.
I wrote this step-by-step guide to help save you frustration and preserve any existing ranking you may have.
Step 1: Plan Your Migration
Choose the right time to make the switch, and talk to any teams, if necessary. If your busy season is over the summer, don’t start the process in May. If your busy season is over the holidays, don’t start the process in November. Make sure you provide leeway in your timeline in case you run into problems throughout the process.
Before you do anything to your website, create the sitemap for your new website. Build your hierarchy, including all site pages, images, video, and other assets.
Export the list of URLs you have on your existing site. It’s not a good idea to change the URL structure of pages outside of the top level domain, but you should export the entire list of URLs that are on your site so you can see the big picture, You’ll be able to see all the major sections you need to keep an eye on when your new site goes live. You can export it with a number of tools like Google Analytics, or the WordPress Export All URLs plugin.
You’ll also need to make sure you have a complete list of all the URLs you’re using in any PPC campaigns – more on that later – to avoid negatively affecting your quality score.
Compile a list of all the URLs planned for the new site, and then map each URL from the old to the new site, individually. This will make it easier to implement 301 redirects to tell Google and other search engines where to send users when they click a link from your old site in the search results. Failing to do this can cause you to lose ranking.
Take a look at where your site currently ranks, so you can track your ranking progress throughout the migration process. Use as many keywords as you can – don’t stick to a handful. Opt for several hundred if possible.
While benchmarking ranking, also take time to benchmark your organic traffic levels. Include visits, unique visitors, bounce rate, and conversions for each individual page on your current website.
Prepare your ads for keywords that your site ranks well on organically. This way you’re ready to go if your organic rank tanks after the new site is launched.
Analyze the existing site’s backlink profile with a tool like Ahrefs, Majestic SEO, or Open Site Explorer. Find the most authoritative links so you can make sure they’re switched when the new site goes live.
Register and configure the new domain, if you’re switching domains, in Google Search Console and generate an XML sitemap.
Step 2: Prepare and Test Redirects
Prepare and test al the 301 redirects at page levels for all URLs from your old domain to your new domain. Don’t forget to include 301 redirects or any subdomains.
If you’re not switching domains, but switching to HTTPS, or otherwise switching your URL structure, this is important. If you’re keeping the URL structure intact, and simply switching from one host to another, you don’t need this step.
Step 3: Password Protect New Domain and Block Crawlers
If you’re using a new domain, you’ll want to password protect it and edit your robots.txt to block all crawlers, so the staging site isn’t indexed. Use noindex meta tags, too. If you skip this step, Google can index the site and it may lead to duplication issues since it will have both the old and new site in place. It’s possible your old site will rank below the new one, and no one wants that.
Step 4: Publish Content to New Domain/Host
Publish your content to the new domain.
Step 5 Check All Pages
Check that all pages exist with the correct information. Check that all internal links work correctly. Check that images and other assets are working correctly, as well. Remove any noindex tags.
Step 6: Disable Password Protection
Disable your password protection. Implement your 301 redirects from the old to new domain. Move through the next two steps quickly, so the redirects don’t go to a blocked site.
Step 7: Verify Redirects are Working
Verify the redirects are working as expected. There’s no need to do this manually.
Step 8: Edit Robots.txt
Update your robots.txt to remove the block on crawlers, so search engines can crawl the new site.
Step 9: Inform Google of the Change
Tell Google the site has moved using the Change of Address option in your old domain’s account in the Google Search Console. You can skip this step if you’re not changing to a new domain.
Now, go to the Google Search Console of the new domain. Select “Crawl > Fetch as Google.” Crawl the homepage and main category pages, and submit each of them to the index. Submit your new sitemap to Google, too.
Step 10: Update Google Search Console, Analytics, and My Business
Don’t forget to change the URL in your external properties such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Google My Business. Forgetting this step can make it hard to get data you need to monitor your migration.
Step 11: Change URLs in Social Sharing Buttons
Change the URLs in your social sharing buttons to ensure the share counts are carried over to the new website. You may lose the SEO benefit of social shares, but since social signals play a minor role in ranking, it’s not a big issue.
Step 12: Reach Out to Site Owners
Go back to your preparation for the site migration and reach out to the site owners where your most valuable links come from. Ask them to change the destination of the links so they point to the new URLs. This will ensure the maximum amount of link juice is passed through since there will be no redirect to interpret.
Step 13: Monitor the Migration
Check the Google Search Console every day for a month after the migration. Look for crawl errors. Fix any you find as soon as you find them.
Crawl your old URLs once or twice a week for the first month to make sure the 301 redirects are still working.
Check the indexation of both the new and old domains in the Google Search Console and with a site: search in Google for reference. You should see the old website gradually decrease and then disappear, while the new site increases.
Check your benchmark rankings to make sure your organic visibility is maintained, and that the ranking URLs are what you expected.
Check your positions for keywords as often as you can throughout the launch and the months that follow to make sure you’re not getting any errors.
Monitor organic traffic volumes and what your organic visitors are doing to make sure the new site is still getting traffic and users can successfully navigate through it.
Work on continuing to update any external links to the old domain when possible. Though the link juice will flow through the 301 redirect, it’s more valuable if they’re pointing directly to the URL.
Maintain the 301 redirects at the old domain until it stops being indexed, attracting links, and referring traffic.
Step 14: Create New Ads for PPC
If you’re running any kind of PPC campaigns for the old website, you’ll need to create entirely new ads for the new domain and URL. Running ads to the old site will affect your quality score. You can use this tactic to help you recover from a traffic dip if the organic traffic doesn’t transfer the way you’d hoped.
Approach with Caution
Site migrations need to be carefully planned and executed to preserve any ranking you already have in place. It’s important to remember migrating your site won’t help you recover from a penalty – only removing the content or issue that caused the penalty will do that. If you have any old redirects in place, you must update those, too. But each time you have a redirect in place, the page load time is increased as the newer version is loaded. Your bounce rate will increase as people are forced to wait as they are redirected from one page to the next. Lots of things can go wrong in a migration – and it’s not just changing domains – any change in URLs can create issues.
Need help with a site migration, or SEO after a migration? Get in touch and see how we can help.
If you’ve noticed even after a seemingly well executed SEO campaign that your organic traffic is falling, don’t get discouraged. There are several reasons this could be happening. I’m going to go through the most common issues and provide ways to address them, so you can start to see an increase in your organic traffic again.
It’s important to remember competition is rising. Every day countless new websites come online, while others shut down. There’s already someone out there gunning for the same keywords. Everyone wants (and needs) organic traffic to sustain their online businesses, so getting and holding onto a high ranking for valuable keywords is everyone’s goal. The reality is, there’s only one coveted number one spot, no matter how hard you try. And there are hundreds of factors that go into a ranking, even though no one will ever know exactly how Google does it.
Let’s take a look at what could be the reason why you’re seeing a decline in your organic traffic volume.
You’ve Been Given a Manual Penalty
Let me say this is rare and unlikely that you’ll face a manual penalty from Google, but it does happen. If you’ve been penalized, you’ll see a steep and instant drop in traffic, along with a message in you Google Search Console, letting you know your site has been penalized. If you don’t see both of those things, your site is in the clear. But, if you have gotten a penalty, you’ll need to find and correct the issue that caused it. Then, you can appeal with Google, or simply wait for it to be lifted.
If you’ve focused your efforts on white hat SEO, and haven’t built out spammy link profiles, or used poor quality plagiarized content, you should be fine.
Your Domain Doesn’t Have Enough Authority
Domain authority (DA) is a score that comes from Moz. It’s a prediction of how well a website will rank in the search engines, on a scale from one to 100. Higher scores mean there’s a greater ability to rank. Because of how it is scored, it’s much easier to build your DA from 20 to 30 than it is to move it from 70 to 80.
“Good” domain authority comes when your site has a high number of high-quality external links and inbound links. Typically, sites with larger numbers, like Google, are at the high end of the DA spectrum, where small business websites, or those with few inbound links will have a lower score. If you’ve got a brand new site, you’ll always start with a DA of 1.
It’s really a comparative metric because it helps you determine which sites have better link profiles than others – and there isn’t really a good or bad score. The only thing you can do here is focus on quality link building, and letting time pass if you’ve got a brand new site.
Your Page Doesn’t Have Enough Authority
Page Authority measures the strength of each individual page, rather than the domain itself. It’s the same thing, but calculated at the page level, and you can have a different score for each page on your site. You’ll start out with a low page authority, but as you build out quality content and start getting traffic and links, you’ll see it rise. The best way to improve your page authority is to improve its link profile – getting links to it from other high authority pages and websites.
Your Site is Slow
If your website takes a long time to load, people are going to get impatient and click away from it. When this happens too often, Google and other search engines will take that click back to mean they didn’t find what they were looking for. And if you’re ranking, but people aren’t finding their answers, the search engine will assume that you don’t need to be in that position anymore.
47% of people expect a website to load within two seconds or less. If your website doesn’t, then you could be missing out on lots of traffic. Use a website speed test tool like PageSpeed Insights to see how quickly your pages load. If you need to, use a content delivery network (CDN) to ensure content loads quickly no matter where your user’s servers are located. Keep in mind, a number of factors influence site speed – some of which you can control, some of which you can’t. Make sure you’re addressing all the things you can to improve it.
Your Bounce Rate is High
Bounce rate isn’t a direct ranking factor, but it can be a strong indication of user engagement. If your bounce rate is over 80%, it means people aren’t sticking around on your website for whatever reason, and you won’t hold your ranking position wrong. It could be that your content sucks, or that prices are too high, or people were looking for something other than what they found when they came to your page. Bounce rate is closely related to site speed, because if it takes too long to load, then people aren’t going to stick around and wait. If your site is slow, expect your bounce rate to be high. Fix your bounce rate by running some split tests to see if it’s the content, pricing, or what other factors could be contributing to it. Make adjustments accordingly to see if the bounce rate falls.
Your Content Isn’t Topically Relevant Enough
Yes, it’s true Google killed the authorship program, but the idea that authors have topical expertise remains. The use of the rel=author tag allowed Google to collect data, so many believe that it could still influence the results. Anyone can write and publish online thanks to blogging platforms and the ability to start a website at any time, but not everyone can write content for trust websites with relevant audiences and expertise.
Search algorithms have always used language processing, and the more Google focuses on user intent, the more relevant the search results become. Every search we do on Google teaches the AI the common language we use around various topics.
Your Backlink Profile Has Changed
If you’ve gotten a lot of spammy links suddenly – either through not knowing any better, or as a result of negative SEO, you could see a change in ranking, and thus a change in traffic. If some of your best backlinks are suddenly gone, or the websites are offline – then that’s a problem, too.
Audit your backlink profile with Ahrefs or SEMRush to see if there have been any changes that need your attention. Disavow any harmful links, and craft a link building strategy that will help you build more authority.
You’ve Recently Migrated Your Website
If you done any kind of site migration or moved old URLs around, especially if those URLs had strong backlink profiles, you can cause your rankings to plummet. Most websites receive the majority of their organic traffic from a small percentage of the pages on their site. If you’re moving your site from one host to another, make sure to follow a website migration checklist. If you must change your links for any reason, make sure to use a 301 redirect to alert the search engines that a URL once found at the original location can now be found at the new location.
There’s Increased Competition
If there’s a new player on the field, and that player has a bigger budget to spend on advertising and content, there’s a chance they’ll be able to rank quicker than you did. If they’re spending a lot of money on content and promotion, maybe they’re earning more backlinks than you. Maybe their PPC campaigns are bringing in more traffic. Maybe they’re running TV and radio ads to drive more traffic. Whatever the case may be, if a competitor comes into the game with more resources, they’ll be able to get further and faster, which puts more pressure on you.
Do a quick search of the keywords you were ranking high on before. See what kinds of new results are popping up, and specifically look closely at the competition that has the spot you used to be in. Check their backlink profile and compare it to yours. Look at their social media and compare it to yours. Use the information to make adjustments to your strategy that will allow you to better compete, and eventually surpass them.
Don’t Panic – It’s Fixable
Look at where your traffic drop is coming from. Though you may see your entire site’s traffic go down, it’s likely the drop is coming from a few particular pages or keywords. This information will guide the rest of your examination and help you determine the best way to fix it. If you notice it’s only happening on one page, but that page happens to be the most popular on your site, you can focus on links, content, and the competition to determine what you need to do.
SEO is a slow and steady long game. It’s going to have peaks and valleys from time to time. Just keep an eye on your analytics and adjust your strategy to keep everything moving in the right direction. Sometimes, you may take one step forward and two steps back, but with consistent effort, you’ll get to where you need to be.
What did you do to recover the last time you saw a major decline in your traffic? Tell me n the comments.
According to an article on Search Engine Journal, Google’s testing a new design for search results – both paid and organic. The new design, which appears to be only available for certain searches and in certain locations, is likely still in the early testing phases. There’s no confirmation at this time that the changes will go live for everyone for all searches, but just in case, it’s always a good idea to stay on top of what’s happening.
The new design is similar to what we see now, but there are some subtle differences.
There are only two ads at the top of the page, where the current design has four ads. This could mean stiffer competition to get your ads to display for certain keywords.
Titles and URLS within both organic and paid search cards have been rearranged – with the URL appearing above the title instead of below. The URL is now also listed in a black color, rather than green, and there’s a lighter shade of blue in use for the title tag. There’s even a lighter gray font used in ad copy.
Additionally, there are small changes in the way the map pack is displayed, with more filters being available at the top without having to click “more filters” to get to them. Where the typical results used to read “open now” and “top rated”, we now have the addition of a “within 20 miles” filter, so people can zero in on the options that are closest to them with less tapping and scrolling.
The screenshot also shows colored dots in the upper right-hand corner of the results, which at this time, appear to do nothing more than provide a change in aesthetic appearance, perhaps better in line with the multiple colors seen in the Google logo. Each search card also now has rounded edges.
The Evolution of the Google Search Results Page
The Google search engine results pages have changed dramatically over the years. Now we have mobile ads, and native ads that blend in and don’t appear to be ads, and many other changes. Google is constantly working to keep things up to date as technology and the times change. What worked five years ago may not work today, and Google is striving to provide a consistently positive user experience for searchers. This of course isn’t really a big deal to us as searchers, but for advertisers, it can be a big deal.
Removal of Right Side Ads
As an advertiser, you’ve no doubt noticed that Google removed ads from the right side of search results on desktop devices. That space is now used to show more information about a business, including location and reviews, in the case of local searches. In non-local searches, it is used to display other information, such as shopping ads.
When there were ads on the right side, you had three ads on the top. And now, at least until the testing of this current adjustment goes live as a global change, there are four ads above the organic results and Google My Business listings.
In the past, Google commented on the fourth ad placement, saying: “We’ve been testing this layout for a long time, so some people might see it on a very small number of commercial queries. We’ll continue to make tweaks, but this is designed for highly commercial queries where the layout is able to provide more relevant results for people searching and better performance for advertisers.”
Those “highly commercial queries” are those with intent to purchase. The fourth placement only shows on those kinds of queries, generally speaking. Under the new design, only two can be seen. However, the query in the test wasn’t a highly commercial query, and since the new design isn’t widely available, we were unable to duplicate it using the “adwords audit” query presented in the SEJ article. We still see the current results page, which includes four ads at the top.
Addition of Map Pack in Local Searches
Local searches also now bring the Map Pack, where local businesses are listed for the appropriate local searches. This makes it easier for people who are mobile to contact local businesses offering the services they are looking for.
Making Desktop and Mobile Search Look More Uniform
To create a more cohesive cross-device experience, Google has made changes to ensure the search results pages look generally the same from desktop to mobile devices. Compare the screenshots from above to the one below. It was taken from the mobile version of Chrome. Though the testing version of results didn’t show up in this query, you can still see that the results look close to the same as they do on desktop.
With this approach, we have four paid search ads at the top, three in the map pack below those paid ads, and then the organic results, followed by three more ads at the bottom.
Because Google has consistently seen a larger portion of their traffic come from mobile devices compared to desktops, they’ve put more of a focus on the mobile results of course. But, because a consistent user experience is necessary, it became more important to make the desktop look more like mobile, rather than insisting that mobile results pages be shifted to look more like the desktop.
This means we could see similar changes come in the desktop searches, should Google’s testing results determine that the changes in search cards we’re currently seeing become a “permanent” change. I say “permanent” because even if this change becomes mainstream and stays in place for years, there are always market changes that could mandate the testing of a new design like we’re seeing right now.
Could the Changes Impact Organic Search Click Through Rates?
Any time there are changes in the search engine results page layout, it means there could be changes in click through rate, and changes in your positioning. There’s no guarantee that everything will stay the same as it was – meaning you could see less traffic, either as a result of a lower click through rate, a change in rank, or both. Paid ads are taking up more organic real estate, meaning the organic search results are appearing further down on the page – though this could be alleviated slightly if the ads go from four to two – meaning people are more likely to click the paid stuff than they are organic.
Ultimately, this means marketers and SEO experts have their work cut out for them, and will have to work harder to make sure their audience finds them. It won’t make it impossible, but it means making adjustments in strategy, especially in the case of local businesses.
What to Do if You Notice Changes in Rank
If you notice changes in rank, don’t panic. It just means you need to make adjustments to your SEO strategy to counter the changes on the results pages. And if these tests become the new way Google displays, then you’ll want to make adjustments accordingly. You can do things to restore your rank, though it may take time to see the results. You’ve been competing with ads and the map pack for a while now, so this isn’t really anything new.
I know the changes seem like a pain to deal with, but from Google’s point of view, they are all about serving their customers better. And that’s what your business is about, too. Google cares less about the advertiser making sure their business is found, and cares more about providing searchers with valuable results that matter to them.
Have you managed to catch the change on any of your mobile searches? Tell me in the comments below.
Your product descriptions need not only to describe the product you’re offering, but do so in such a way that appeals to your audience and the search engines. It’s a task that’s hard for many businesses to accomplish. Getting it right will no doubt take time, but it’s an investment in your business, so it’s worth it, right? Here I break down everything you need to know step by step.
Start with Your Customer Persona
Your customer persona, also known as your buyer persona, is a critical piece of the puzzle here. If you don’t know who your customers are, how will you ever write copy that will appeal to them? Your buyer persona starts with a detailed look at your target customer. It should be as full of detail as possible, using information from your current customer base. Details could include: age, gender, geographic location, career, income level, education level, core beliefs, marital status, family size, and more. Ideally, you should create one for each segment of your target audience, and use the appropriate persona to craft the matching product descriptions.
For instance, if you have a men’s and women’s section on your site, use the ideal male customer persona to help you in writing all of the men’s department descriptions, and the female persona to help you in writing all the descriptions for the women’s department. If you already have a customer persona developed, then you can move onto the next step, but if not, start here before moving on. For more detailed information about what goes into a customer persona, I’ve written a blog post you can read. It also includes a template to help you build a character of sorts that you can pretend you’re speaking to as you write. It may sound silly, but using this approach helps make sure your copy is on point.
What are the Features and Benefits?
Your prospective customers don’t really care about what your product is or what it does. (I mean, yes they do, but not in the way you’d think.) Instead of point blank describing a product for what it is and what it does, you have to write your descriptions in such a way that tells the customer what’s in it for them. How does this product make their lives better? What problems does it take away?
To make this process easier, make a list of all the features and specifications of your product. You can batch this process for all the products in your catalog, if you want. Then, take that list and translate the features into benefits. Features are facts about your product, and benefits are an explanation of what the feature does for the reader. You can phrase benefits positively, or as a problem that’s reduced or eliminated.
For instance:
Feature: Blue-light filter
Benefit: Improves sleep, reduces eye strain – this includes both a positive benefit and a problem to be avoided
The way Amazon describes their Kindle Paperwhite is a wonderful example. They do a great job of mixing positive benefits with problems that can be avoided.
Positive Benefit: Battery lasts for weeks
Positive Benefit: Read anywhere day or night
Problem to be Avoided: Read without eye-strain
Problem to be Avoided: No screen glare
Remember, the majority of people are risk-averse, so it’s a good idea to include information about how your product avoids problems and hassles. What are some of the objections your customers could come up with, and how can you address them with features and benefits?
Tone of Voice
What’s the tone you’re using for the rest of your copy on your website and in your communications with your followers on social and email? Your tone of voice can make you sound like a huge corporation that’s boring, or it can foster engagement with your readers through humor and personality.
You can use your tone of voice to set yourself apart from your competition, and let it show more of your company culture and personality. Go beyond saying you’re fun and add a bit of humor to your content. Instead of saying you provide excellent customer service, your tone of voice should let customers see that you’re friendly and approachable.
Having trouble defining your tone of voice? Consider what you are and aren’t. Are you fun? Are you business-oriented, but purposely avoid jargon and empty phrases like “top of the line”?
If you’re still having trouble, think about how you would speak to your buyer persona if they were a real person standing in front of you. That’s the tone you want to take with your writing style.
Keep it Scannable
Studies show people only read about 16% of the words on the average web page. That means you’re probably doing the same thing right now, and that’s okay. But, it also means people aren’t going to pay attention to every single word in your product description. But to entice them to make a purchase, you need them to read it.
It’s all in the formatting. Use subheadings that focus on benefits, and body text to expand on them. Include pictures to show the product and make your reader feel like they are using it, or could see themselves using it. It will boost their desire to try it themselves. You could also use subheadings with bullet points, and try using color to draw attention to certain areas of the description.
Write a Description
At this point, writing a draft of your product description should be easier since you know who you’re writing it for, and have some idea of what you want to include. It’s time to go through your list of features, benefits, and possible objections to determine what you want to include and how. It’s a good idea to rank them in order of importance to your buyer.
If you have a short list, keep the most important benefits at the top, and work your way down to the least important benefit at the bottom.
If your product is expensive, that’s a risk, so to appease your buyers, you’re going to have to demonstrate the value your product offers. You’ll have to show them why your product is an investment.
Write quickly, without focusing on grammar or spelling. Write the draft when you feel positive and enthusiastic and it will come through in the words.
Edit the Description
Now that you’ve gotten the base of the description written, it’s time to go back to it and edit it to make sure it’s as persuasive as possible. I recommend walking away from the description for a day or so before you go back to it. If you don’t have that kind of time, enlist another set of eyes to look at it and edit it for you.
Go beyond editing for typos and grammar. Look at your list of features and benefits to make sure you haven’t missed anything. Is the copy focused on your company or your reader? Engaging copy uses the word “you” more often than the product name, your brand name, or the words, “us”, “we”, and “I”.
Are there any difficult words you could replace with simpler versions? What’s the average sentence length? Making shorter sentences will improve overall readability. Don’t stress it if you decide to start a sentence with “And” or But” because even well known brands like Apple do it.
Are there any generic phrases? You should replace those with specific details. I’ve already told you to avoid phrases like, “excellent customer service” because it’s generic and doesn’t make you sound credible. Instead, say something like, “we’ll get back to you in 24 hours or less” because it is specific and lends credibility. Plus, the use of numbers helps display fact and keeps the eyes from wandering.
Before you move on, visualize yourself talking to your buyer. Read your copy out loud. Do you find yourself stumbling over anything? Does it engage the buyer? Does it entice them to buy? Go over it again until you know it will convince your buyer to make the purchase.
Optimize for SEO
Writing your copy for your buyer persona means using the phrases he or she uses. When you use this approach, you’re automatically optimizing your product descriptions for the search engines, as these are the phrases your buyer will use to search on Google. Here are a few more tips:
Don’t use jargon unless you know your customer persona will do the same.
Use your keywords in the headlines, subheadings, and body text.
Optimize your images with keywords in the image description, file name, and alt tag.
Focusing too much on what the search engines think of your description will ruin the persuasiveness of your copy. Write for your readers first, and the search engine second.
Making Your Product Descriptions Irresistible
It’s easy to write drab product descriptions that talk about what you’re selling. That’s not what you’re going for. Think about your buyer and how you could make their lives easier or more enjoyable. Avoid using vague language. Don’t just list the features. Converting those features into benefits is what will convince the buyer to make a purchase.
If you’ve been in the SEO game for any length of time, you’re no stranger to Google changing things up on all of us. As they constantly strive to improve the user experience for their customer base, they’ve forced many websites to do the same. One of the recent updates cracked down on the use of interstitials, particularly on mobile websites.
Interstitials? What the heck are those, you ask? That’s nothing more than a fancy name for pop-ups, page takeovers, and scroll boxes… or anything else that comes up above your content that tries to convince your visitors to stop consuming your content briefly to close it before they can continue reading. Basically, it’s anything that tries to convince your visitors to subscribe to your email list or make a purchase from you.
We’ve seen them in use for years, and we won’t see them go away completely. Google knows you have to have a way to connect with your visitors via email, and they are okay with that. The problem, however, is with the pop-ups that get in the way of allowing the visitors to have an enjoyable user experience. That’s the case here because of the mobile-first index – Google’s answer to the fact that more searches take place from mobile devices than they do desktops these days.
No matter what changes Google comes up with in the future, we can safely bet on the fact that they will be aimed at improving the user experience… so let’s talk about how you can still use interstitials on your website without risking a dip in your ranking.
1. Size Them Accordingly
There’s nothing more annoying to me as a user than when I’m looking at a website on my phone, and the pop-up asking for my email address is so large I can’t find the X to close it. I totally understand why they’re needed, especially since I’m in the business. But, that doesn’t mean I like having to scroll around on my phone to find the magic “close” button. And that’s what Google is trying to stop with these rules. So, make sure your pop-ups are responsive to ensure that no matter what screen size your mobile viewer is working with, the pop-up doesn’t disturb their overall experience on your site.
2. Use Them Only When Necessary
Think about why you’re using the pop-up or overlay. Is it truly necessary, or is there another way you can accomplish the same thing? For instance, if you’ve been earning ad revenue from the pop-ups, think about how you can replace the revenue by inserting ads elsewhere on your site, or consider using affiliate links in some of your content to make up that revenue.
If you absolutely cannot think of another way to do things on your website, then you’ll be happy to know it’s not the end of the world thanks to my next point.
3. Opt for Embedded Alternatives
If you want to still give the appearance of a pop-up, but don’t want to bug your user, you can use an embedded pop-up. All you have to do is create a break in the content, and put what would be your pop-up in that spot.
To stay in line with Google’s guidelines, make sure it’s not embedded above the fold, and design it in such a way that it stands out from the rest of the content on the page. Since users will be scrolling through the content and won’t have to close it manually, making sure it stands out will ensure it is visible to them.
You can also integrate your newsletter subscription form below every single blog post and make use of content upgrades to get email addresses.
If you’ve been using page takeovers – or full-screen pop-ups, you know they’re the best converting type of interstitial, but you can’t use them on mobile devices if you want to keep your ranking in tact. But the good news for you is, like a traditional pop-up, these too, can be embedded.
Simply include a few paragraphs of text on the page, and then the user will scroll into your take over. Yes, this won’t convert quite as well as it would have if a visitor has to close it rather than just scrolling out of it, but it’s better for you than nothing. To draw more attention to it, you could use a parallax scrolling background.
4. Opt for Triggered Pop-Ups
Under the new guidelines, pop-ups the user triggers himself are okay. This means, if you keep a pop-up hidden until the user clicks something specific within your content, you’re good to go as far as Google is concerned. It’s completely legitimate since the user navigated there with the intention of opening something else up.
So, what can you do with a user-triggered pop-up? You can use them to offer content upgrades to your email subscribers. Or you can opt to have a large subscribe button that opens a pop-up. This way, people can subscribe to your email list without interrupting their experience. When they’re done, they can go right back to consuming your content as intended. They won’t have to open separate windows to subscribe, so in this case, it could be beneficial to the user experience to use a pop-up. Just make sure your user can clearly see that what they’re about to do will open a pop-up, and make sure that pop-up is appropriate sized for mobile devices.
5. Scroll Boxes are Your Friend
Scroll boxes are a type of pop-up, but they aren’t the type you have to avoid. They only come on the screen one a user has scrolled down most of the screen on the page she is on… around at least 40%.
When she loads the page, starts reading, and at a certain point the pop-up covers a portion of the screen. This approach converts well on both mobile and desktop devices. And because they aren’t loaded right when a page is loaded, they remain compliant under Google’s rules.
6. Embrace the Hello Bar
HelloBar is a tool from Neil Patel. It’s a small bar that occupies an incredibly small portion of the top or bottom of the screen. You can use these to advertise products and sales, or to encourage more email signups.
This approach works because the bar is small enough to avoid really hiding any content, so Google stays happy. You have two options: one, make it so part of the page that when the user scrolls, the bar disappears; or two, don’t show the bar as long as a user is scrolling down, but show it instantly when a user scrolls back up. The second one is the one you want to choose for a mobile site.
Think About Your Users First – And You’ll Be Fine
As long as your pop-up doesn’t impede the user experience, you won’t see a decline in your ranking because you have it on your site. To comply, your pop-up must not cover the main content when a user comes to your page after finding it in the search engines or at any point while they are looking at the page. It must not standalone and require the user to close it before being able to access the main content. It must not use a layout where the above-the-fold part of the page appears to look like the standalone pop-up, where the original content is below the fold.
There are some interruptive interstitials that are required by law – like notifications to let your users know your site uses cookies, and of course, age verification displays (required for tobacco and alcohol brands and retailers) and those need to stay as they are. In the case of age verification displays, those are intended to stop the consumption of content for users who are not of legal age.
If you want to implement these on your site and do it without coding, there are a number of WordPress plugins available to help you get the job done.
The solutions I’ve shared with you in this post will keep you in compliance with Google’s rules, which will help preserve your ranking and keep your users happy. If you notice a change in ranking even when you know you’re in compliance with the interstitials guidelines, it is likely due to something else. It may be time to conduct an SEO audit to see where improvements can be made.
Has the change in how Google addresses ranking altered the way you’re using pop-ups on your website? Do you feel it has caused problems for your website? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Single page websites have become popular among minimalist entrepreneurs, product announcers, and newcomers to the world of websites. The idea is a single page website is easier to maintain while the entrepreneur is doing their work.
Some of these people are often offering services that are a little more in-depth than something that you can drop into an online shopping cart. Some are your consultants or life coaches and they just don’t have the time or resources to devote to a blog or maintaining a website with fresh content on a regular basis. Or perhaps the purpose of the site is to garner some early excitement about a future product, in conjunction with a Kickstarter or other crowdfunding campaign.
In the past, many folks have claimed that single page websites don’t work well and SEO is too difficult for these sorts of websites. This is often true; however, we are going to show you today that it can work and with ingenuity, work well.
Why Single Page?
Let’s face facts, our society has become so inundated with information that when they visit a website, you have only a matter of seconds to truly capture their attention. Many of them don’t stick around and really look through the site unless something catches their attention immediately. Single page websites, don’t have to worry near as much as those of us who maintain multiple page sites.
Yes, you still have those few seconds to capture their attention, but they should provide enough information to convert their traffic into clientele when they contact for more information about the service. The wonderful thing about single page sites is they load much faster than a multi-page site and they are fantastic for the mobile user.
Our websites often tell a story, even on a business level. We are telling a story in which we invite the reader to become a part of our world through product and service. Single page sites truly are devoted to telling the story of how we came into existence, what we offer, and who partakes in our story. When we connect on a personal level with our community, we can improve our business standing.
Updating the sites become easier. With a multi-page site, it can take longer to make sure products and services, blogs, and testimonials are updated. Often, multi-page sites rely on a webmaster to take care of that sort of thing. With a single page, your updates can happen on your schedule and quickly.
Doesn’t It Counter SEO?
The short answer is maybe. If you are relying on a wide range of keywords, your single page site will work against you. Single page sites are focused on one concept and that means you are limited in your ranking opportunities.With a multi-page site, your keyword range can widen due to the keyword ranking on a page by page basis. So, before you make a big switch, check in with your marketing team on how effective your range of keywords are working for you.
Let’s say you are a local yoga instructor. Your keywords will be limited to your profession within your town. Unless you are the only yoga instructor, your competitors, with multi-page websites, will gain a higher ranking naturally. If you are venturing into the world of websites for the first time, look at how your competition looks online and how keywords play into that. This could very well be the reason why you opt for or against a single page site.
While single page websites sound easier to maintain due to lack of pages, the lack of information can be counter-productive to your business. Many people will not even consider converting to a business relationship if there isn’t plenty information that engages them and makes them feel like you are a personality. Because people do businesses with people, not companies. Overall, some people may feel that only providing a small portrait of what you do is a lack of motivation to take your business seriously. Not always a fair assumption, but it does happen.
On the upside, as we have mentioned before, single page transfer easier to mobile devices. More searches are occurring on smartphone and tablets. While multi-page sites can transfer to mobile devices, they take longer to upload and if they are not optimized for mobile devices, they can be harder to navigate. You don’t have to take any extra steps with your single page site to make it easier for your target market to find you.
Advanced techniques, such as siloing, do not work on a single page site. Siloing involves a very specific structure to your website to maximize your authority and presence online. Each page is given a category and/or a subcategory to specifically improve SEO ranking. With a single page, it’s simply impossible to silo.
So How Do I Make It Work?
If you have decided that you simply prefer the idea of a single page site over a multi-page site, there are ways to master SEO and maximize your online presence. It will require some intuition and ingenuity to make your site the best it can be. The important thing to remember is to go with the flow. Grow your site in the direction it needs to so that it can nurture your business. So, let’s talk about some strategy to help you find the recipe that will help you find your way!
Keep Your Site Fresh
There is this idea that with single page sites, you can just set it and then move on. Not true! For a high Google ranking, you need to update it regularly. The best solution to keeping your site fresh is to routinely change what information you share. If you have testimonials posted, change them out so that you are showing off the most recent. If you are in a lull with obtaining testimonials, rotate your favorites so that you give the appearance of a fresh face.
How regularly you update the site is solely up to you. Many successful sites update anywhere from daily to weekly. Be realistic with your time and energy so that you are updating often but not detracting from your other work. If weekly seems too often for your workload, consider hiring a social media manager and allow them to take over the updates. At the very least, begin with weekly updates and increase if you see an uptick in visits and conversions. If it’s working for you, keep the momentum going.
Define Your Sections
Many SEO experts suggest adding a page to your single page site. The problem is, that’s not really a solution but rather a nudge to change to a multi-page site. Instead, you can create sections on your page to be sure you get all the necessary information on the page, while still allowing spiders to search the page easier. You can choose sections like About Us, Contact, Product/Service Information, Testimonials, and even a Blog. The last three are the sections that you want to keep fresh and update routinely. About Us should change only if your business structure, mission statements, or ownership changes regarding the business. Contact info should include all methods of communication and include any social media networks you are using to engage with prospects and clientele. That only changes if you add or remove a platform.
If you find that you must grow your site due to increased traffic and increased products or services offered, do make the change to a multi-page site. It is frustrating for your business flow if you continue to not allow the site to grow in the way that it needs to. It’s also a fantastic sign that your business is gaining the notoriety it deserves and should be nurtured!
Make It Readable
No matter what SEO tricks you use, it should not interfere with the readability and flow of your website. If a site is too cluttered or it’s a wall of text without any breaks, you will lose the interest of your target market. Most everyone scans a site to see if it piques their interest before really reading anything. If you are unsure of how well your flow is, ask your site visitors. Ask if they’ve looked at your website and if so, what did they think of it? Getting feedback from your users can let you know what works for them and what doesn’t.
You Can Still Use Navigation Links
For a multipage site, using navigation links are great for traveling between pages that you need to find. It saves people from getting frustrated when they travel from page to page and can’t find the information they want. You can do the same thing on your single page site between sections. It is only beneficial if you have a long page that requires a lot of scrolling through to information. It saves that same frustration people can experience with a multipage site.
Add Anchor Links
If you think you can’t add anchor links to your single page site, think again! You can do it through your CSS ID names. Using keywords as your anchor links act like a lighthouse on a foggy night. Because of this, search engines will lock onto your page and your SEO has just shot through the roof! Do make sure that they keyword match the overall tone of your page. If it’s out of place or just doesn’t match, you will frustrate your target market and increase your bounce rate.
Credibility Through Links
Your ability to be shared is a big boon to your online presence. Adding social media buttons to your page allows people to connect with you in a variety of ways and lends credibility to your sharable nature. Link building can be a huge help. Backlinks to guest blogs where you are interviewed or offer some expert advice is incredibly helpful. Reviews of your products and services, that include a link, allow search engines to find you more often and raise your ranking. Another wonderful thing about link building is the networking aspect. You will be working closely with others, developing fantastic business relationships, and it can turn into major sales in the future.
Add Header Tags
Multiple header tags (or H1 tags) are not the most popular amongst SEO experts, but in the case of a single page site, they are a blessing in disguise. The trick is to use an H1 tag per section of your page. Most notably, use them in the header of each section since the tags are designed for headers of pages. These tags truly increase your SEO ranking overall because the spiders are looking to see what is so important on that page. Having multiple on your single page increases the likelihood that the spider will find you efficiently and raise that rank.
One Page Websites are Effective
While many may tell you SEO is difficult for a single page website, there are ways to make things work for you. Many experts will also suggest that single page websites should be limited to new sites and new businesses, but you should do what works best for you. Innovators have been told for centuries that things are impossible and then break the mold. Entrepreneurs with single page websites get to find innovative ways of breaking the mold and teaching us all new tricks. Beyond that, I encourage you to take on that multi-page website if you should outgrow your single page site.
Do you use a single page website? Do you find them helpful or harmful when you see them online? Tell me in the comments below.
NAP doesn’t refer to the short sleep you love to take in the afternoon, but instead stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. It is a critical piece of the local SEO puzzle, and without it, you will have a hard time getting a business to rank well. Search engines use the NAP information to determine which companies to show when users enter any kind of geo-targeted search. You may hear NAP referred to as “citations”. You get a citation when your NAP data shows up in a directory on the web.
Check Your NAP for Accuracy
Before you start working on increasing the number of citations you have out there, it’s important to make sure the information is accurate. It should be listed on your website, too. The information should match in every single citation you have. If there is a difference between how it is listed from one place to the next, the search engine bots may not be able to read it as the same place – thereby negatively affecting your ranking. Your online citations should match your business filings with your state, the information on your website, and match the information on file with the post office. Ideally, your NAP should also include a landline as a phone number.
You need to find all the variations in your citations before you begin working on local SEO in earnest. This means thinking about any previous business names you’ve had if you’ve ever changed your name in the past. You also need to think about any addresses you’ve had in the past, especially if you’ve moved offices recently or if you have additional locations. How many phone numbers are you using? Are you using call tracking numbers? Toll free phone numbers? Cell phone numbers? List all of that stuff out, and then go over to Moz Local and search for your business.
This tool lets you see all the primary data aggregators, so it’s easy to see any NAP variations you may have. Add those to your list.
Then, head on over to Merchant Circle and Yellow Bot. These collect data from various sources but aren’t good at merging data from the sources, creating a lot of duplicates. Though it’s a pain to clean up, it can help you find variations you need to address.
Next, search Google. At this point, you’re looking for variations you’ve not already found, by searching with the phone numbers you have. Searching the phone numbers and excluding the names ensures you’ll get a list of results mentioning only the number, so you can catch any new names you didn’t already.
How do you search for this?
Phone number =”name1″ –”name2″, etc.
You can reverse this to find more phone numbers, by searching for the names, and excluding numbers you’re already aware of.
Name1 –”phone1″ –”phone2″ etc.
Repeat this process using the phone numbers and exclude address you’re already aware of, using only a portion of the address leaving out things like suite numbers.
What If There’s a Problem with the Information?
If you notice inaccurate or inconsistent NAP information, don’t panic. It’s not necessary to go through each listing one by one to manually fix it. Major data agencies collect, verify, and distribute your business data – which is why it spreads through the internet quickly. These companies generally make money by selling the data as leads, or by selling the data to other companies.
Start with these main companies, as correcting the data here ensures the right information will trickle out to other websites. Once the information is corrected with those sites, go on to the most authoritative directory websites, which include:
But that doesn’t mean the job is easy, or done. When you fix an incorrect listing, it’s common for it to come back up again, since there’s not a single authority source of information for business NAP data. If you take the time to fix a Bing listing, Bing may see the listing (the wrong one) still exists on another site, and recreate it automatically.
As frustrating as the situation is, cleaning it up is essential to ranking locally. It will take time to get it done, and it will require diligence, but it can be done. The best part is, you can get the clean up done in ways that are not cost prohibitive.
Where Should You Enter Your NAP?
Your NAP needs to be entered using the same format anywhere it’s mentioned online – whether it’s your website, a newspaper article, a blog post, or a profile on any directory. It should always be included in text format, so Google and other search engine robots can read it. If it’s an image format, the search engines won’t “read” it like we can.
Here’s a list of some directories and websites to help you get started:
When you have all the NAP variations ready to go, you’re ready to start building citations. All you have to do is check all the NAP variations on the site before you submit a listing. This way, you’re not creating a duplicate listing.
You have two ways you can do this – using the site’s search feature to search by either the business name or phone number, or using Google. As simple as using a site’s own search feature is, it’s not the most reliable method, so I always recommend using Google.
Search it like this:
Site: domain.com “phone1”
Site: domain.com “phone2”
Site: domain.com “name1”
Site: domain.com “name2”
Site: domain.com “address1”
Site: domain.com “address2”
If you find an existing listing, follow the steps required to claim it and then update it. If you do not find a listing, follow the steps required to submit one. When you edit or submit listings, make sure they are fill out the profiles completely, with photos and descriptive copy.
What if You Have Multiple Locations?
Whether you have two locations, or tens of thousands of locations, clear and trustworthy location signals are necessary to high local ranking. But, with each location you have, keeping that information clear and trustworthy becomes more difficult.
You want a structured localized presence for your multiple location business, and you can do this using either subdomains or subfolders. Subfolders are typically the easiest, but if you only have a handful of locations, you could also create pages for each of them, and link out to them from a main location page. Treat the location pages as a landing page for each store location, optimizing accordingly for each locality.
If you’re a larger scale business with a bigger number of locations, you may want to consider the subdomain approach. You can piggy back on the root domain’s SEO “juice”, but now you’re able to optimize for the subdomain instead of the root. For example, if you owned redcars.com, and one of the countries you served is France, you could create france.redcars.com, and optimize the subdomain content specifically for your French customers. The local relevancy will boost your local SEO and improve your overall user experience to help increase conversions.
Do not rely on a single directory listing for multiple locations. Create separate listings for each location. Do not list corporate headquarter locations that do not serve customers. This approach doesn’t help local search or your customers. Many directories, including Google My Business now allow you to create multiple listings and optimize each according to their actual location.
Benefits of NAP Consistency
You’ll be able to increase your organic rankings since the information is the same and accurate across all channels. Whenever you move locations or change a phone number, you should update all citations as soon as possible.
You will appear higher in local search results on mobile devices and desktops. As such, you should see an increase in traffic, and hopefully an increase in calls from mobile devices. You’ll make it easier for new and existing customers to find your website and physical location.
Be Patient
NAP citations are a necessary evil for local SEO. If you find the process overwhelming, be patient and work methodically. If you’d rather not handle the task alone, the team here at Sach’s Marketing Group can take care of it for you.
Web hosting is an integral piece of the online business and marketing puzzle. Without it, you don’t have a way to get your website online. But, because it gives your website a place to live on the internet, it may have a small impact on your search engine rankings. Does that mean you should choose your web host solely with SEO impact in mind? Not really. Let’s take a look at why and how your web host may affect your rankings, and what you should think about when you choose the web host for your website.
Types of Web Hosting Plans
Shared: You have an account on a server that’s shared with other websites. While this is the most economical option, and is the ideal choice for websites that are just getting started, there are some disadvantages. Because you’re sharing the server with countless other sites, the hosting company has a number of limitations on your account. You’ll need to pay close attention to what features are included, the amount of space and resources you’ll have. You’ll have the same IP address as every other website on your server.
Virtual Private Server (VPS): A physical server is split into multiple virtual private servers, and you have access to a single account on that server. It allows you to control the environment on your slice of the server, as if you have a dedicated server. This is the ideal choice for websites that are not suited for shared hosting, but are not quite ready to go to a fully dedicated solution. You get independence from other customers on the server, with a bit more flexibility, but you don’t have the pay the higher cost of a physical dedicated server. The drawback to this is you still have the same IP address as other websites that are on the same physical server.
Dedicated/Managed Server: You pay for access to a full server, and it is not shared with anyone. These are expensive, and generally do not make sense for average small business owners and bloggers. You do, however, get full control over the server in terms of operating system, hardware, and other software. You’ll have reliability and speed – where you won’t really have to worry about bandwidth or downtime.
These of course, are the most common types of web hosting plans, but are not the only options out there.
How Web Hosting Could Affect SEO
There are a few factors related to hosting you need to think about as you decide which company to host your website with:
Speed: We know how fast a page loads is one of the many things search engines look at when they determine where to rank your website. Even though it is only a small portion of the ranking, it’s worth paying attention to. You’re in control of page loading time for the most part, since you’re in charge of the code and configuration. But, if you know your code is as clean and optimized as it can be, and you’re still experiencing a slow load time, it could be time to ask your web host to migrate your site to another server. Because shared accounts are often on the same server as hundreds of others that are also bogging down your resources, the slower your website will load. When you move your website to a server that’s not as busy, or decide you’re big enough to move to a VPS or dedicated server, your page load speeds should dramatically improve because there are more resources available.
Uptime/Downtime: Pay close attention to the uptime your prospective host advertises. This refers to the amount of time your server is up and running. If the website is down too often, this will upset your user base, and cause issues with traffic. If your website is frequently crashing or unavailable, then crawling it will be difficult, and ranking can be affected. The majority of web hosting providers guarantee 99.9% uptime, but just because you read it doesn’t mean it’s true. Take a look at reviews to see what customers are actually saying. The reality is, crawlers will likely try to visit your website several times a day, and if they see it down repeatedly, your site will get labeled as unreliable. Let’s put that 99% uptime in perspective for you – over the course of 30 days, you can expect your website to possibly be inaccessible for seven hours a month. Of course you want your website to be up 100% of the time, but server updates mean there will be unavoidable downtime. You can use a tool like SiteUptime to get notifications if your site goes down.
IP address: This is the number that identifies the location of your server on the internet. If you are on a shared server or VPS, your website is sharing the same IP address as every other website on the server. If you are on a dedicated server, then you have a dedicated IP address.
Location: Google considers the server’s physical location when determining where to rank a website in both local and general searches – where location-specific searches are concerned. This means if you’re building a website for your local business and anticipate people searching for it by location, it’s best to find a hosting provider nearby. The server’s IP address is assigned based on the country where it’s located, so hosting with a UK based server will help you rank higher in UK searches. That’s fine and well, if you’re in the UK. If you’re in the US, however, it makes it harder to rank for US search phrases, and gives you unnecessary additional work on the SEO front.
How to Choose an SEO-Friendly Web Host
Once you know the type of hosting you want to use for your website, it’s time to start thinking about what you need from it.
Do you need something simple like a WordPress blog, or something more complex? Do you have certain requirements, like needing a certain version of PHP? Do you have to have Windows applications? Are there any special software requirements your website needs? The answers to these questions will vary greatly on the type of website you’re building, and why you’re building it.
Then, start looking at your options for companies – and compare the costs. Then narrow it down to a list of three to five companies you want to look into in more depth based on those costs. Keep in mind that cost isn’t always an indication of quality.
Here is a list of some of the most popular web hosts, according to PC Mag. I’m not going to give you a recommendation of my favorite, because I don’t want to potentially sway you. I will tell you that none of these links are affiliate links – and I have nothing to gain.
Research each of the hosts you’re interested in so you can make sure they offer everything you need. Pay close attention to their features, the terms and conditions of any guarantees, uptime, and upgrade options. If you plan on growing your business, and thus your website traffic fairly quickly over the next two or three years, definitely choose a host that allows you to upgrade from a shared hosting account to a VPS or dedicated server. Having to find a new host to accommodate your growth in the middle of dealing with everything else associated with business growth – plus dealing with downtime as the result of the switch – can be a big pain. If you’re able to stay with the same company, it’s a bit less of a hassle.
Something else to consider is whether or not you’ll be adding on new domains. Any time you have an extra domain, you’ll need more hosting space. Some shared hosting accounts allow for you to add a finite number of domains, while some do not allow for any extra at all… and still others allow for an unlimited number of add-on domains.
And before you think you’re getting an awesome deal, remember, hosting companies often advertise discounted prices for new customers, meaning that when you renew your plan, you’ll pay a higher price tag. Make sure you are aware of what that price tag is so that you’re not shocked when the time comes – or are ready to switch everything to a new host.
Read customer reviews to find out more about what people have experienced with the company. Simply searching the name of the web hosting company with the word reviews should give you plenty to work with. If you notice a lot of issues, move onto another host.
Look at the email feature to make sure you have what you need for hosting email accounts on your domain. If you can’t find a host that makes that easy for you, but everything else works out, G Suite, formerly Google Apps for Work, allows you to get Gmail (plus Drive, Docs, and other Google Apps services) for your domain, starting at $5/user/month.
So Which Web Host is the Right One?
I wish I had the answer, and unfortunately, there isn’t one “right” company. Many quality web hosts exist, and what’s right for you has a lot to do with what your website requires. What works for the average small business owner isn’t going to be appropriate for a large website like Amazon or Facebook.
All of these things considered, choosing one web host over another won’t necessarily give you any kind of SEO boost. But, choosing the right host from the start can mean you avoid potentially significant (and costly) consequences you may face if you chose the wrong one.
Speed and uptime/downtime are two things that can fluctuate significantly from month to month, so it’s important to review them on a regular basis. If you notice a problem, notify your web hosting company immediately, because they may or may not know about the problem. They have a lot of servers to maintain, and you can’t assume that someone else on your server has already called to let them know something’s going on. And even if know something is going on – they may not even care.
This is why it is a good idea to pay for your hosting over the short term, instead of paying for years at a time, because if you notice the standards start to slip and you want to move to another host, you can do so without losing a lot of money.
Your web hosting sets the foundation of your success, so it’s important to do your homework. Worry less about bells and whistles designed to grab your attention like, “free website builder” and focus more on the details that matter.
Which web host do you use? Share your experiences in the comments below.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: despite what trendy social media experts might have you believe, social media marketing is not the new SEO.
Search Engine Optimization and social media marketing exist on two different ends of the spectrum, with very little overlap. Social media marketing is all about, well, being social. It’s about injecting humanity into your business, finding a way to connect with your audience and creating an environment on social media that encourages them to become a loyal community.
SEO is… none of those things. Granted, they both share the same end goal (turning a potential customer into a paying one), but they exist in two very different worlds. Social is a more creative space, with elements of analytics and metrics incorporated into it. SEO could be seen as the polar opposite of that, with a heavy emphasis on analytics and metrics, but still with some room left for creativity.
With that in mind, you can see SEO can be such a tricky topic to understand (especially if you’re trying to look at it through the lens of something like social media marketing). As if that wasn’t confusing enough, small business owners who are already having a tough time wrapping their heads around concepts like keywords and backlinks are being bombarded with every SEO tool on the market.
It’s confusing, frustrating, and when your success is dependent on you making the right choice? It can be downright frightening.
So in the spirit of helping the average small business owner, here’s a little list we put together to provide some guidance. By the end of this article, you’ll know what aspects of SEO to focus on right now and you’ll even have a few tools to help you get started.
SEO Audit
Since we’re focusing on the technical side of SEO today, it only makes sense that we start our list off with the role of the SEO audit.
For starters, it’s worth mentioning again just how important the technical side of SEO is in the wake of search engines like Google relying on complex algorithms to determine which companies end up on the first page of their search engine results. The biggest problem with the algorithm is how static they can feel sometimes. Even if your content and website presentation is the same as your leading competitors, if they’re in Google’s SEO good graces, you’ll be a step behind every single time.
Knowing that, it’s important to recognize that there’s a high chance that a variety of different SEO issues are present on your site that need to either be reviewed or completely fixed altogether. While we could write an entire article dedicated just to the importance of the SEO audit, for our purposes today we’ll just be tackling some of the general ideas at play.
When it comes to SEO auditing, the first thing you’ll need to focus on is the visibility of your site. After all, it’s going to be pretty difficult for Google to direct traffic your way if it can’t find your small business easily.
How exactly does one go about ensuring their site’s visibility? Well, if we’re being honest, this entire process will end up being significantly easier if you use SEO tools like the ones Ahrefs offers. With tools like Content Explorer, small business owners can gain access to analysis like never before.
First off, you’re going to want to look at the way your site’s codes and files are set up. Make sure that things like the robots.txt file are not restricting access to your site and that all your site URLs are error free. While it might seem overly simplistic (you might be getting a bit of a “did you try turning it off and on again?” vibe at this point), there’s no getting around that these seemingly minor mistakes can have massive implications on the visibility of your site.
Once that’s over and done with, it’s time to start looking at the indexability of your site. If you have no idea what that means, the easy way to think of it is seeing whether or not search engines are listing your site. Again, this probably seems too simple, but remember: you need to walk before you can run. And when the prize is a successful small business, making sure that you have every possible advantage over your competition seems like a small price to pay.
Fortunately for small business owners that aren’t quite that tech-savvy, most search engines offer a “site:” command that allows them to search for website-specific content. Using these commands will give you a rough idea of the number of pages indexed by a specific search engine.
Of course, you can dive even deeper than that, ensuring that your pages and even your company brand name are indexed. The important thing is to make sure that Google is aware of your existence because let’s face it: if Google doesn’t know who you are, no one does.
2. Rankings Analysis
Moving right along, there’s the subject of ranking and what it all means for your small business. More specifically, which factors matter and how they can be fine-tuned.
First off, there are a series of on-page ranking factors that you’ll need to consider. You’ll want to perform page level analysis because of how useful it is when it comes to identifying certain examples of optimization opportunities. Beyond that, the domain level analysis will help small business owners identify and define the level of effort necessary to make these site-wide corrections.
Going back to the topic of URLs, there a few issues that need addressing. First off, it’s important to make sure your URL contains relevant keywords. The better your URL describes its corresponding content, the more effective your overall SEO strategy will be.
Of course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Having a concise URL matters as well, with the best URLs clocking in at around 115 characters total. Your URL should be using subfolders instead of subdomains, with the former being easier for search engines to identify. Even something as simple as using hyphens instead of underscores to separate words can have a noticeable effect on your SEO effectiveness.
While on-page ranking factors are certainly important, they’re still only one piece of a much larger puzzle. Off-page ranking factors (or the ranking factors that are generated by external sources) are just as important.
At the cornerstone of understanding the off-page ranking factors of your website is your online reputation. More specifically, how reliable you are when it comes to reputable information. Or to put it simply: are you seen as a trendsetter in your industry?
While that might seem like a pretty vague description, there’s actually a tangible application to all this. The most straightforward one? Making sure that your site isn’t accidentally providing your users with malware and spam. There’s a fantastic Google service called Safe Browsing that can help you by providing references off of blacklists. Also be sure to check for keyword stuffing, hidden text and cloaking, all of which can land you on Google’s naughty list.
But beyond general concepts of reliability and the popularity of your site in relation to your competitors, there’s a critical off-page ranking factor that deserves to be mentioned here.
The overall quality of your site will inadvertently be determined by the quality of sites that link back to it. That’s why understanding the backlink profile of your site is such an important part of this process.
If you have no idea where to start, here are some concepts and ideas to keep in mind. First off, how many unique domains are linking to your site? Are you getting 10 links from 1 root domain or 1 link from 10 root domains? Ideally, you’re getting the latter instead of the former. Are the backlinks from these sites actually relevant? Google doesn’t care for random links and these kinds of links do little to establish your small business as an online authority in your industry.
Clearly, understanding your site’s backlink profile (and how best to proceed once you have an accurate picture) can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are a variety of SEO tools you can use, like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer Tool, designed to aid with the backlink profile creation and editing process.
These two steps, the SEO audit and analysis of rankings, might seem small when you consider the ridiculous amount of SEO advice being given out these days. And yet, these are the foundation of any solid SEO strategy. With these two steps down, your small business will be well on its way to dominating the competition and being an online authority.
Not disavowing links harms your SEO strategy. Bad links from spammy or irrelevant sites may lead to penalties from search engines, harming your site’s credibility and rankings. Regularly auditing backlinks and disavowing those that are low-quality or unnatural is crucial to maintaining a healthy and effective SEO profile.
Thanks to changes across the SEO industry over the last couple of years, online marketers have had to make some major changes to their strategies. It is becoming increasingly difficult to rank high in Google for competitive keywords.
Because black hat SEO is becoming more difficult to execute and less likely to deliver results, marketers have turned to an option known as negative SEO. This uses unethical technique to sabotage the competition’s ranking in search engines. Negative SEO may involve building spammy links to your website, creating fake social media profiles to damage your online reputation, removing the best backlinks your website has, and pointing links to your website using poor keywords such as” poker online”, “Viagra”, and similar phrases.
Negative SEO is a real threat, and it is much easier to prevent than it is to fix. That’s an entirely different article outside the scope of this one but the reason I bring up negative SEO is because of the backlink building tactic that can be used to sabotage your profile.
If you find spammy backlinks during a routine backlink audit or have discovered your rankings declined recently, it’s time to make sure there are no poor quality backlinks on your website. If you do find them, don’t panic. Thanks to Google’s Disavow Tool, you can tell the search engine robots you don’t want these link counted toward your link juice. This is particularly helpful when you are unable to remove the link to your website yourself. But, if you aren’t careful, you could do more harm than good with the tool. That’s why I’m going to show you how to use it correctly.
If you want to be proactive against spammers, perhaps the most important thing you can do is closely monitor your backlink profile. Typically, they will perform negative SEO campaigns against their website by building low quality backlinks or redirect. When you know someone is launching this kind of attack, you can stop it in its tracks with disavows.
There are several tools you can use to keep an eye on them your domain’s backlinks. These include:
Each of these options includes a paid upgrade feature that will allow you to develop a more comprehensive inbound link profile. with the exception of monitor backlinks, you will have to manually run reports everyday.
Creating a Spreadsheet of Backlinks
Instead of relying on a tool, you can create your own list of back length and a spreadsheet. You’ll begin by downloading links from a number of sources. I like to start with the Google Search Console. Once you’re logged in, go to the Search Traffic menu, then click Links to Your Site, then click More. Download both the sample links and the latest links, so you can get a more accurate picture who is linking to your website.
If you have a website that has more than 1,000 linking domains, it is possible to get more links from the Google search console by downloading your sample list of links everyday for a few days. You can also download your links from Majestic, Open Site Explorer, and Ahrefs.
Once you have everything downloaded, combine all of the links into a single spreadsheet. In each the source file, locate the column that has the URL of the site that links to you. Copy the entire column into a new spreadsheet. you can do this using either Excel or Google Docs.
When you’ve gone through every source, you’ll end up with a massive spreadsheet that contains every link reported by each tool. As such, you’ll have a lot of duplication but it’s easy to deal with.
You are also free to include additional columns that could help you with your audit, such as the anchor text used for each link, or the nofollow/dofollow status. But, I’m going to keep this tutorial simple and just focus on the URL.
Now, here comes the fun part where we start getting a little technical with formulas in the spreadsheet.
Create a new column to the left of the one that features your URLs. Then type in this formula: =left(B1,find(“/”,B1,9)-1)
Next, highlight column A. Press control+D. This adds the formula in every cell in the column so that you end up with the root domain in column A.
Highlight column A again so we can get the spreadsheet to convert the formula results to values. This is necessary so that you can copy and paste in this column. With column a selected press ctrl-c to copy and then go to the edit menu. Select paste special, and then paste values only.
The next step is to use find and replace to break these down to the subdomain level. with column A highlighted, go to edit and click find and replace. Type http:// in the “Find” field, and leave the “Replace” field blank. Click “Replace All.” Repeat these steps again using https:// and www. At this point, you’ll have nothing but the domains and subdomains in column A.
Next, we have to remove duplicate links so the spreadsheet contains only one link from each domain. A lot of the spreadsheets have a deduplicate function built-in, but if you were dealing with a large number of rows, this can crash the spreadsheet. It’s a good idea to sort column A Using alphabetical order and then create an additional column to the left of the domains and add a formula.
=if(B1=B2,”duplicate”,”unique”)
Highlight the new column, then press control+D to fill down the formula again like we did before. Now you’ll be able to see the duplicate entries. Filter the column to show only the duplicates and delete the rows.
Now you have a spreadsheet that is a ready for your audit.
Audit Your Spreadsheet
Now, visit each one of the websites to determine whether or not you want to disavow the link. Add a column in your spreadsheet so you can keep track of the ones you want to keep and the ones you want to disavow.
If you’re not sure what to do with one link, give it a different designation and come back to it after you’ve looked at more of your backlink profile. This way, you can make a decision about the link if you notice any kind of unnatural linking patterns.
As you think about each link, consider whether the link was made only for SEO, whether it will actually help your clients get to your website, and if you would be worried if a competitor, or someone from Google saw it.
What is a Disavow File?
The disavow file is what the Google tool uses to stop counting them as part of your backlink profile. It’s easy to make using your audit spreadsheet.
Filter the disavow column so that all you’re looking at is the links you’ve chosen to disavow. Create a new sheet in your workbook. Copy the domain column over to the new sheet. So it works for Google, you have to add “domain:” in front of each URL.
You can disavow at the URL level, but doing so runs the risk of missing bad links. This is why you should always disavow at the domain level.
Copy =”domain:”&A1” in column B. Copy the formula down the rest of the column. Then, copy the results, and then make sure you’ve chosen paste > special > and paste as values.
Voila! What you see in Column B is the disavow directives Google will follow, but you’re not quite done yet.
Your disavow file must be a txt file, either in 7-bit ASCII or UTF-8 format.
To do this, create a new document in Google Docs. Copy your disavow directives in the document. Then click File > Download as > Plain text.
You can leave comments in the file by starting lines with #. It’s important to remember that no one from Google will read the comments since the entire disavow process is done by bots. Reserve the commenting to leave notes for yourself, such as the date you disavowed the links, and why you disavowed them.
Using Google’s Disavow Tool
When you’re happy with the resulting text file, go to the Disavow Tool. Choose your site from the dropdown list. From here, you’ll click “Disavow links” twice, and then “Choose file”. Now navigate to where you stored the text file on your computer and upload it.
If you’re successful, you’ll get a message that says the file has been successfully uploaded. You may see errors, which are likely the result of special characters in domain names. If this is the case, you’ll have to delete them from your disavow file. If you see domain names with ports attached, remove the ports and try again.
If you need to update your file, you’ll need to download the file from the disavow tool. Your results will be in a .csv file, so you’ll need to copy the column, put it in a text file, then add the new sites, save it as a text again, and reupload it.
The disavow starts working as soon as you upload your file and it because to crawl the web. The next time it crawls the domain that’s on your disavow list, Google will add an invisible nofollow tag to prevent the link from being involved in algorithmic calculations. While most links are disavowed within a month, some can take up to three months.
Removing vs. Disavowing Links
If you can control the link and it’s easy to remove, then you can remove it. If you’re dealing with an algorithmic issue, it is easier to disavow the links than to spend time emailing each every single webmaster and hoping they’ll not only read the email but actually take the time to remove the link.
Oops – I disavowed the wrong link!
If you accidentally disavow a link that you didn’t intend to, you’ll need to edit your disavow file. Download it, copy it into a text document, remove the link you didn’t mean to disavow, and then reupload the file.
Monitor Your Site’s Backlinks Regularly
Because new backlinks can come into play all the time, monitor your backlinks often. The sooner you see an issue with bad backlinks, the easier it is to manage. Just because you aren’t engaging in spammy link practices doesn’t mean you won’t potentially fall victim to a negative SEO attack.
Have you seen your rankings improve as a result of disavowing links?
Many online businesses monetize their websites using display ads – either through a network like AdSense, or by selling ads directly. One of the first banner ads online belonged to AT&T, and was first displayed in October 1994. Logically, it makes sense that if you have a decent amount of traffic, you should make it work for you with ads.
And while you certainly can, it’s a bit more complex nowadays than it used to be. It’s no longer as simple as throwing up ads wherever you want on your website. If you’re not properly implementing ads, you could dramatically harm your search rankings. And if your search rankings plummet, your traffic, and thus earning potential will suffer.
How Ads Negatively Affect SEO
Too Many Ads Above the Fold
Your website visitors want to get straight to your content – and if they see a bunch of ads rather than they content they came looking for, they’re not going to be happy. Don’t make your visitors scroll past a bunch of ads to get to the article or blog post that brought them to your website in the first place. Chances are they’re not going to click those ads anyway –so you won’t make money either way.
If you’re not sure about the best placement for your ads, Google has an extensive guide that outlines their policies. Following these guidelines will ensure you’re not subject to penalties for too many ads or accidental clicks.
Too Many Ads in General
Google wants to make sure the websites that are ranking at the top are providing real value to users – providing the information they are looking for. Remember, Google is a business with customers (searchers) to keep happy, and if searchers aren’t happy with their experience, their business suffers.
Let’s talk about the prevalence of ad blockers for a second. In 2016, an estimated 69.8 million Americans used ad blockers, an increase of 34.4% over the previous year. It’s expected the figure will increase another 24% to reach 86.6% million this year. And while the use of ad blockers is more prominent on computers than smartphones and tablets, as mobile internet usage increases, so will the number of users relying on ad blocking software.
As scary as that is for publishers, The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) released a report that shows about 66% of consumers using ad blockers could be convinced to uninstall them in the industry changed the habits users find most annoying. These include:
Making sure ads don’t auto play, or use video in environments where customers aren’t expecting them
Ensuring ads do not block content
Have safeguards in place to protect users from malware
Ensuring ads don’t slow browsing.
This approach would not only make the experience better for users, but for Google as well.
Ads are Killing Your Site Load Time
Each time an ad requires an external call, it means the browser has to download something from another server. While you’ll likely have some non-ad related external calls, each one can contribute to site speed issues. Yes, there are load stacking tactics you can use to counter it, but that only works to a certain degree.
When you consider that 47% of people expect a website to load within two seconds or less, and 40% of people will abandon a website that takes longer than three seconds to load – there’s no point in having ads on your site for people to click, if they don’t even stick around for the site to load in the first place. Since site speed is a ranking signal, bogging your site down with ads can harm your ranking, too.
Want to know how your website is doing? Use a site speed testing tool like Pingdom or Web Speed Test. Then, turn off your ads, and run it again. Of course, your ads are not the only thing that can negatively affect your site load time, but the tool will help you with suggestions for improvement.
You’re Overloading the Crawler Bots Resources
Each ad on your website is a potential obstacle for users, but that also includes the bots that are trying to crawl your website for indexing and ranking purposes. When the ads require a lot of resources, it slows the bots down, and the bots don’t like it. If they have to work too hard, they’ll just give up and move on to the next time. The bots are tasked with crawling literally everything on the internet – and that requires a lot of resources. If you overload them, they’ll move on not necessarily because they want to, but because they have to.
Google has a crawl budget. This is the amount of resources Google will use to index your site. They don’t place a specific set limit on it because they know each site is unique – and larger websites will clearly need more resources. But, every time the bots hit a resource call (whether ad related or not) it’s a place for the bot to stop the crawl because of excess trips to the server and back delaying page rendering.
Many things can cause delays in page rendering. If your ad network isn’t compressing images or has scripting errors, that’s a recipe for disaster. If your content loads after your ads, the crawler has to wait for the rest of the Document Object Model (DOM) to load, and when this happens, it’s likely the crawler will just stop indexing.
In the past, Google had limited sites to no more than three AdSense blocks on a page, but they’ve since changed the rule. Now, rather than a limit, they will focus on penalizing sites that have more ads than publisher provided content. So, if the crawlers see more ad content before your actual content, you could be in trouble. Don’t worry about it too much if you’ve only got a few pages like this, but if you have an ad template on all pages, review it to ensure you’ve got a good balance between ads and content.
Best Practices for Ads on Your Site
Placement Matters
The main reason you’re getting traffic is because of the content you have to offer – not the ads. Yes, you’ll earn some money when people click those ads, but they should never be placed in such a way that detracts from your content. You could increase your bounce rate (thus negatively affecting your rankings) if you don’t think the placements through.
Eye-tracking studies have shown ads placed above and to the left get the most views. Above the fold ads aren’t an issue, as long as they don’t push down or distract from the main content of the page. When the ads get in the way, that’s what causes the poor user experience.
Less is More
Less is more is a great philosophy to live by in many types of design – and web design is no exception. Putting too many ads on a webpage may clutter the experience, which isn’t good for usability.
Ensure Your Ads Look Like Ads
Your ads should look like ads. That doesn’t mean you can’t design them in such a way that complements the styling of your website, but you must establish enough of a difference so that users clearly understand they are ads. Google doesn’t want you to mislead users for the purpose of getting clicks. When users think they’re clicking on something that will lead them to additional content on your website only to discover they’ve clicked an ad are taken somewhere they were not expecting, they don’t have a good experience. It’s upsetting, and when it happens too often, Google will take notice. Alternatively, you can turn to native advertising like sponsored content, so the ad fits the nature of your website.
To Sell Ads or Not to Sell Ads
Whether or not you should have ads on your site depends on the niche and purpose. If your purpose is to publish content – resulting in a website like Huffington Post – then ads are expected. But, if your website is your corporate business website, ads may not make sense. You’re monetizing the website in other ways, using it as a lead generation vehicle. Many e-commerce sites like Amazon advertise other related products, and that makes sense, too. Occasionally, you’ll see ads to take you offsite, but for the most part, it’s not a good idea to advertise on your business website – because the goal is to keep people on your website as long as you possibly can.
Ads, when implemented correctly, can be a tremendous source of revenue. With thought and planning, it is possible to incorporate ads without sacrificing the user experience. Think about your users, and ensure your website focuses on something other than ad revenue generation. People aren’t coming to your website to find ads to click – they are coming for helpful, valuable, information. If they click an ad and you make a bit of money, that’s just a fringe benefit.
Do you rely on ad revenue? Does this affect whether or not you use an ad blocker when you’re browsing? Tell me what you think in the comments below.
Once known as Google Webmaster Tools, the product was renamed in May 2015, to better represent its wider audience of users. Originally intended to help webmasters get a better view of what’s going on with a website, the resource provided valuable to other internet professionals, such as SEOs, designers, and marketing pros, thus the rebrand.
The Google Search Console is a free service that provides a great deal of information about your website and the people visiting it – but it’s not the same thing as Google Analytics.
If you want to know how to make it work for you – even as a business owner – this guide is for you.
Getting Starting: Adding and Verifying Your Site in Google Search Console
Before you can start using the tool, you have to add the website to your account, and verify that you either own it, are the webmaster for it, or are another authorized user. Because of the depth of information provided about a website, they aren’t just going to let everyone add any website they want to. If they did, it would be all too easy to get information on your competitors, and for your competitors to get the information on you.
All you have to do is log into your Search Console account. From there, you’ll see red button that reads “Add Property”.
At this point, your site is in your account, but you have to verify it before you can do anything else. There are multiple ways to verify your website, and you can choose the one that works best for you. There’s no need to use more than one method. If you don’t have the ability to upload files to the site, or experience working with HTML, you can choose alternate methods.
Adding an HTML Tag
From the dashboard, click “Manage Property” and then “Verify this property.” If you don’t see the HTML tag option under the “Recommended method” tab, then choose “Alternate methods” and choose “HTML tag.” This will give you the code you need for verification.
Copy the code and use your HTML editor to open the code for your website’s homepage. Paste the code from Google into <head> section of your HTML code. If there’s something else in the <head> section of your website, there’s no need to worry about where the code goes in relation to the other code. If you don’t have a <head> section, you can create one to verify the site.
Once you know the code has been added to your website, go back to the Google Search Console dashboard and click “Verify.” Google will check the site for the code. If it finds the code, you’ll be told the site has been verified. If it does not find the code, you’llget information about the errors.
Once the site is verified by Google Search Console, do not remove the code. Doing so will cause the site to revert to unverified.
Uploading an HTML File
You can only use this method if you have access to the root directory via FTP or the web hosting control panel.
From the dashboard, click “Manage Property” and then “Verify this property.” If you don’t see the HTML file upload option under the “Recommended method” tab, then choose “Alternate methods” and choose “HTML file upload.” This will allow you to download the file you need for verification.
Upload the file to the site’s root directory. You should not make any changes to the file – either in terms of the content or the file name. If changes are made, Google Search Console will not be able to complete verification.
Once you know the file has been uploaded to your website, go back to the Google Search Console dashboard and click “Verify.” Google will check the site for the file. If it finds the file, you’ll be told the site has been verified.
As with the HTML tag method above, do not delete the file after verification, or it will revert to unverified.
Verifying with Your Domain Name Provider
Your domain name provider is the company where you purchased your domain. Usually, this is the same as your web hosting company, but it does not have to be. When you verify using your domain provider, you’re proving to Google that you own the main domain – and everything associated with it. This is a good option for large websites.
From the dashboard, click “Manage Property” and then “Verify this property.” If you don’t see the domain name provider under the “Recommended method” tab, then choose “Alternate methods” and choose “Domain name provider.”
At this point, you’ll be asked to choose your provider from a list of the most commonly used, such as GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Bluehost. If you do not see your provider on this list, choose “Other.” You’ll then be presented with instructions on how to create a DNS TXT record for your provider. If this doesn’t work with your provider, you can create a CNAME record instead.
Adding Your Google Analytics Code
If you’re already using Google Analytics to keep an eye on your website’s traffic, this will likely be the easiest option for you. Check your site’s HTML code to make sure your tracking code is already in the <head> section of your homepage. If it’s not there, you’ll need to move in there for it to work.
If you’re not already using Google Analytics, but want to kill two birds with one stone, follow these instructions to setup Google Analytics on your site. Then, check to make sure the code isn’t in the <body> section of your website. If it is, move it to the <head> code, then move forward.
From the dashboard, click “Manage Property” and then “Verify this property.” If you don’t see the Google Analytics tracking code on under the “Recommended method” tab, then choose “Alternate methods” and choose “Google Analytics tracking code.” You’ll be given a set of instructions to follow.
Once the site is verified, do not remove your Google Analytics code from your website, or it will revert to unverified.
Using the Google Tag Manager
If you’re already using Google Tag Manager for your site, this could be the easiest way to verify it. If you want to try this method, make sure your “View, Edit, and Manage” permissions enabled in the Tag Manager account. Look at your site’s HTML code to make sure the Tag Manager code is placed immediately after the <body> tag.
From the dashboard, click “Manage Property” and then “Verify this property.” If you don’t see the Google Tag Manager on under the “Recommended method” tab, then choose “Alternate methods” and choose “Google Tag Manager.”
Click Verify. If Google finds the code, you’ll get a message to let you know the site is verified. Once the site is verified, do not remove your Google Tag Manager code from your website, or it will no longer have a verified status.
Linking Google Analytics with Google Search Console
Though it may seem like Google Analytics and Google Search Console offer the same data, there are some notable differences between the two. Analytics provides more information about the people who are visiting your site. You’ll see how many visitors are coming, how they’re coming to your site, how long they’re hanging out there, and where they’re geographically coming from.
Search Console, on the other hand, provides more internal information, showing you the websites that link to you, if there is any kind of malware on your website, and the keywords queries that your site is showing up for.
The two platforms do not treat some information the same way, so if you think you’re looking at the same report, you’ll likely not getting the same information in both places. Linking the accounts together helps you get the most of the information found in both products. This integrates the data from both sources so you can get more reports that you can only access when the accounts are linked.
Once your site is added and verified in Search Console, choose the site you’re trying to connect. Look for the gear icon, click it, and select “Google Analytics Property.” Now, you’ll see a list of all the accounts in your account, so you just click the one that matches the property you want to link it to and you’re done. Totally easy, and totally worth the extra information you’ll get.
Adding Your Sitemap
Sitemaps help the search engine robots get information about how your website is organized, and the kind of content they can find there. It helps them see how often your website is updated, and the images and video content, too.
When you submit your sitemap to Google Search Console, you’re making it easier for Google because the robots get the information they need to index and rank your site more efficiently. You do not have to submit the sitemap, and there is no penalty if you choose not to. But, it’s a good idea to do this if:
You’re a new site and don’t have a lot of backlinks yet
You’re an incredibly large website
You have a website with a lot of pages that aren’t linked together well
You have to have your site verified before you can submit the sitemap.
From your dashboard, choose the site you want to submit the sitemap for, and then look for the “Crawl” option on the left. Under it, you should see the “Sitemaps” option. Click that, then click the “Add/Test Sitemap” option. Fill in the address of your sitemap. It’s often /sitemap.xml, but double check where it is on your site before you add it.
Checking Your Robots.txt File
Chances are there are directories and files on your website that you don’t want to have listed in the search engines. This is true of several directories in WordPress, such as wp-admin. You can use a robots.txt file to tell the search engines which files you don’t indexed. But, it’s important to remember these aren’t a surefire guarantee that robots will ignore them. While Google’s crawlers will accept these instructions, other crawlers from smaller or lesser known, and lesser reputable engines may not. Certain web crawlers may interpret the instructions differently. This file won’t stop other websites from linking to content you don’t want indexed.
You can find your robots.txt Tester under the Crawl menu on the left side of the screen. This will let you see what files are allowed to be indexed, and which ones aren’t. You can use the tool to make changes to the file, and see any errors it may find. It’s also possible to enter a URL to allow or disallow, and then run a test to see if the URL is something the crawler recognizes.
Changes made in the robots.txt file in the Google Search Console won’t be made on the actual file hosted on your site. You can download the edited file from the console, then upload it where the old one was on your host – in the root of your domain. Once that’s done, you can click “verify live version” to make sure Google knows you’ve updated the file and you want them to craw it again.
Fetch as Google
If you’ve made a lot of changes to your website, the quickest way to get those update indexed is to submit them manually, so the changes will appear in the results as soon as possible, rather than waiting on the next Google crawl.You can select the URL you want to submit, being mindful to use WWW if and only if your website uses the prefix. Under the Crawl menu on the left side, you’ll see the option to Fetch as Google.
Leave the next screen blank if you want to crawl the entire site – or fill in the URL of the page. Click Fetch and Render. It may take a few minutes, depending on the size and number of the pages you’re fetching.
After this is finished, you can click the “Submit to Index” button. You can choose to crawl only this URL, or crawl this URL and its direct links. Choose the first one if you want to index only the single page, and the second option if you want to index the entire site.
Wait for the indexing to finish, andthen you’ll see your site show up in the search results in a few days.
Site Errors
You don’t want any errors on your website, but it’s possible something could happen and you’re not aware of it unless someone else tells you. Google’s Search Console can be that someone, letting you know if there are any problems when and if it finds them.
If you want to check your site for internal errors, select the site you want to check, then click “Crawl” > “Crawl Errors.” From here, you’ll see a list of URLs that have errors when Google bots crawl it. You can click the error to get more details about the error and when it happened.
Record the errors and include screenshots if appropriate. If you aren’t the one who handles the site errors, get in touch with the person who can handle everything.
Using the Google Search Console
The Google Search Console is a useful source of information as a webmaster and marketer. It helps you see what’s going on with your website internally, and ensures Google gets the information they need for indexing and ranking.
How do you use Google Search Console in your business?
There’s been some recent buzz about switching your website from the standard HTTP to the more secure HTTPS. While many large websites, especially those in the e-commerce sector have been using it for years, Google announced it as a lightweight ranking signal back in 2014. That means it didn’t affect much, in fact, it only affected fewer than 1% of global queries. However, they said in that announcement they wanted to give webmasters time to make the switch over to HTTPS because they may strengthen the weight of the signal. They’re making this move to boost internet safety in the hopes that more of the web will shift over to HTTPS.
So, should you make the switch? It depends.
A Non-Technical Explanation of HTTPS
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a system for sending and receiving information across the internet. HTTPS is another version of that system, where the “s” stands for secure. The two methods follow the same basic protocols, but the HTTPS version is faster, and encrypted for better privacy. It’s a bit more complex than that of course, but that’s really all that matters for the non-technical SEO, and to your audience.
SEO Implications
When and if Google decides to place more weight on HTTPS as a ranking factor, you’ll be ahead of the game. You won’t have to scramble to make the change and hope it works well, meaning you should see a boost right away, rather than having to wait for it. That small boost may not seem like much, but if you’re running a large website, that boost could mean tens of thousands of extra visitors every month. If you’re just getting started, however, it’s likely you won’t see a difference in your search traffic.
It Fosters User Trust
One thing worth noting is the way HTTPS displays in the user’s browser. The screenshots come from Chrome, but similar messages are displayed in Firefox and other browsers, too.
But take a look at what happens if the website isn’t using HTTPS.
Simply because there’s no HTTPS in place, the browser displays a message that lets you know your connection isn’t private. That doesn’t necessarily mean your information is at risk, or that attackers are coming after the website, but for the less than web savvy user, it could signal major red flags, working against the trust factor.
All you have to do is click the “Advanced” link in the lower corner, and you’re given a chance to proceed to the original website anyway. In most cases, this is okay to do, but some people may be afraid of the warning and not realize it’s still safe.
If you just have a blog, and you don’t require anything more than their email address to get their opt-in consent, there’s no real reason to switch to HTTPS – unless you expect to get a significant amount of search traffic in the next few years. But, if you’re collecting any kind of personal information or accept payments on your website, you should have HTTPS at least on the pages collecting the sensitive data.
Making the Switch
Step 1: Select Your SSL Certificate
Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, is the standard technology HTTPS uses. Your website must have an SSL certificate installed for it to become HTTPS. There are three different types of certificates to choose from:
Domain Validation:This is the basic (and therefore most affordable) option. It only covers encryption. These certificates are issued almost immediately.
Organization Validation:This includes encryption and authentication. If you’re collecting any kind of personal information, this is the option you should go with. These certificates are issued in about 24 hours.
Extended Validation:This is the most expensive option, but it provides top of the line security. It is the best level of security you can get under HTTPS. You don’t need it unless you’re a huge e-commerce website, or a website that collects important private information. This is the type of certificate big names like Twitter, and financial institutions use. These certificates are issued within three to five days.
Step 2: Buy Your SSL Certificate
You can buy SSL certificates from a lot of different websites, and because it’s possible to find different types at varying price points, it’s possible to shop around for the best deal. But, I recommend purchasing your certificate from your hosting company, since they sell them anyway, and most hosts will help you install them, too. It’s a measure of convenience worth looking into.
Hostgator, for instance, has SSL certificates starting at $39.99 a year, with extended validation certificates costing $269.99 a year.
Step 3: Install Your SSL Certificate
If your web host doesn’t install the SSL certificate on your server for you, start with Google, and search for the name of your hosting company and SSL certificate installation. If you can’t find anything, contact the company’s support. The process differs between hosts, so it’s impossible for me to provide a breakdown of each step required. Remember, SSL certificates are specific to your IP, so cannot be on shared hosting to install it. Some companies, like Bluehost, offer a shared certificate for those on shared accounts.
Step 4: Create a URL Map and Redirect Your Site
Currently, all your URLs are HTTP, and the HTTPS version is a completely different URL. It’s a pain, but it’s a simple process. Copy all your site’s pages and redirect all of the old HTTP versions to the new HTTPS pages.
If for any reason you want to make changes to your site structure or the URL format, now’s a good time to do it. If you’re using WordPress, you can add the 301 redirects to your .htaccess file. Each line needs to look like this: Redirect 301 /oldpage.html https://www.yoursite.com/newpage.htmlwhere you edit the bold parts.
Step 5: Update Internal Links
Hopefully, you’ve been using relative URLs – those that don’t specify an entire URL, but instead add something to the end of the domain. If you didn’t build it this way – instead using absolute URLs, where the entire URL is specified, you’ll have a bit more work to do.
Relative links won’t need nay work – because when you switch to HTTPS, the link will take you to the HTTPS version instead of the original HTTP. If you use absolute, though, you’ll have to change everything over to HTTPS yourself.
Step 6: Update Image Links and Any Others
I wish I could say you could be done when you’ve updated the site itself and all the links to pages on your site. But, you also have to update the links to resources, including styles sheets, scripts, and images.
Right click any page on your site and click “View source.” You’ll see a lot of tags that look like this: <script src=”http://www.domain.com/js/file.js” />
The issue is all files used on your site also use HTTPS. If the resources are located on your domain, you need to make sure they point to the correct HTTPS location. If you have both HTTP and HTTPS, you can use protocol relative URLs to ensure it pulls the correct version. <script src=”//www.domain.com/js/file.js” />tells it to pull whichever version the protocol is calling for – so if it’s coming from HTTP, it will pull that one.
If you’re using a content delivery network (CDN), make sure it supports HTTPS. Most do, but not all, so it’s worth double-checking. If yours doesn’t, you’ll need to switch to one that does. Your CDN should have instructions on how to implement HTTPS, but if they don’t, contact support.
To make sure you don’t miss any links that need updating, use a site crawling tool like Scream Frog SEO to get a full list, filtered by internal, external, and images to see what’s on your website. You don’t have to worry so much about the external ones, unless you happen to know they’ve also made the switch to HTTPS.
Once they’re all set to HTTPS, it’s time to move on to the next step.
Step 7: Add Your Site to Google Search Console – Again
It’s time to update your site in Google Search Console so Google starts to crawl it again. This way, you reduce the chances your traffic is negatively affected by the switch. The reason for this step is because the HTTPS version of your website, even though it may look the exact same, is considered a completely different website. Submit a new sitemap in your listing, too. Then, resubmit your old sitemap so Google will get the 301 redirects and update the listings.
Step 8: Testing to Make Sure Everything Went According to Plan
At this point, it’s time to test everything to make sure it went the way you intended. If everything ran smoothly, you should see no real change – other than maybe a small boost In your search rankings.
If you notice a traffic drop off that lasts more than a day or two, then it’s possible you have a problem and you need to go through the steps in this guide again. You should also ask your host or an SEO consultant to help you. Start by making sure your SSL certificate is installed correctly, using a free SSL server test. Put in your homepage URL and it will test everything for you. Click around the pages on your website and make sure that lock icon is showing up in your browser.
Technical SEO May Suck – But It Matters
I know not everyone loves the technical side of SEO, but the structure of your site matters just like the content on it. If you don’t address the technical side, you could have a site that would rank no problem, and still have trouble getting to rank where it could. HTTPS may not have that much ranking strength now, but it’s always better to try to be one step ahead.
Have you made the switch to HTTPS? Why or why not?
All kinds of things go into how Google and other search engines rank your website compared to your competition. Though no one really knows exactly how the algorithm works, we know there are many factors they consider, ranging from the cleanliness of the code itself, to keywords, time spent on site, age of the domain, and more. Some factors have more bearing on the rank than others, of course – and that’s why SEO is such a complicated science.
WordPress is a wildly popular content management system that’s user-friendly, too. If you’re using it to manage your website, here are some tips to ensure you’re building it with SEO in mind.
Use an SEO Plugin
One of the major selling points of WordPress as a platform is how good it is in terms of SEO right out of the box. But, it’s always a good idea to install an SEO plugin so you get full control over the optimization process.
To list all available SEO plugins would not only bore us both, but would take much more time than I have to dedicate to this article, so I’ll skip over the junk and get you straight to the two that are the most popular. They’re popular because they’re free, of course, but more important than the price tag is the fact that they do a good job at giving you control over the SEO.
Yoast SEO: This plugin allows you to get a page and keyword analysis, generates a sitemap, enables breadcrumbs, add social media and schema markup, and more. It’s a robust SEO plugin.
All-in-One SEO Pack: This plugin is older, but not as feature rich. It’s ad supported, but if that bothers you, there’s a premium version that will remove them. It will give you control of the meta description, and let you change a number of variables.
Now, there’s a chance the theme you’re using also gives you some SEO control – as many premium themes do have this built in. But, even though you’ll have fields for title and meta description, you won’t have as many features and tools as you would with Yoast or All-in-One. I wish I could tell you these plugins will actually do the SEO for you – but that’s not the case. And what fun would that be anyway?
Setup Permalinks
The default WordPress permalink setup isn’t clean, because it inserts the date and name in the URL. It creates a lengthier URL and one that Google’s not exactly fond of. It doesn’t mean you won’t get ranked, but changing the permalinks to something Google likes a bit better? Always a good idea.
Choose a Keyword for Each Post
There’s definitely not as much emphasis on keyword density as there used to be, but Google still looks for, and uses keywords as part of the ranking algorithm. What matters now is how naturally the keyword, and related words and phrases are woven into the post. Keyword stuffing just doesn’t’ work anymore, and hasn’t worked in quite some time.
Each post you write should be centered around that focus keyword, and use it, naturally, multiple times throughout the course of the content. Aim for a rating of around .5% – so the more words you have in your overall post; the more instances of the focus keyword you can safely get away with – as long as you’re not including it just to include it.
Write a Damn Good Title and Meta Description
Your title tag is what the search engines will show as your link in the results. When possible, include that focus keyword as close to the beginning of the title as you can. Your title tag does not have to be the same as your blog post title – though WordPress will by default, use your blog post title as your title tag.
Your meta description is the small piece of information that displays in Google under your link in the search engine results page. This is basically free advertising for your business, and is your chance to convince the users to click on your site instead of another one in the list.
Many SEO plugins include the meta keywords feature, but you don’t need to use them. Though search engine algorithms used to rely on them in determining rank, which is why you see a field for them, they no longer do. But, if for any reason you’re trying to rank on a global level, specifically in search engines like Baidu and Yandex, those still rely on meta keywords in their algorithms.
Use Header Tags Appropriately
The Google bots check header tags (H1, H2, H3, and so on…) to determine how relevant your site content is. In terms of best practices, it’s a good idea to have a single H1 tag, with multiple H2 and H3 tags nested in a hierarchy as appropriate to the content. It’s important not to abuse the use of headers for SEO – their primary purpose is to break up the text and make it easier for your audience to read.
Image File Names
Google Images chooses and ranks images, so it makes sense to boost your chances of appearing in the SERPS by using image file names to your advantage. Before you upload your content to the WordPress media library, change the name of the file to something that uses your keywords, or describes your image. Use hyphens in the file name so you make it easier for the bots to read – because files with hyphens are read as individual words. Only use your focus keywords on your featured image, if possible – because it’s better to use words that actually describe the image than match your keyword – if they don’t mesh up completely.
Always Include Image Alt Descriptions
ALT tags label the alternative text displayed when someone hovers over your images on your WordPress website. These are good for SEO because it’s another chance to use your keyword – as long as it relevantly describes the image. These are used to describe the photos for people who have low vision or are blind. The screen reader will read the ALT text to allow the user to get an idea of what the photo displays. You can add the ALT text directly within the WordPress media library upload screen.
Use the Image Title Tag Wisely
The image title tag isn’t necessary for SEO since Google and Bing do not crawl it – but it can help you add a CTA in a tooltip type style.
Word Count
Content is still king. Google’s first priority is keeping their users happy, so the higher-quality longer-form content that really dives deep into an issue is generally a better approach. Typically, posting shorter articles more frequently doesn’t do much to help you in terms of ranking, but this of course can vary depending on your niche. As a news site, it is expected that you’ll have multiple shorter updates.
The average length of the top 10 search results ranges from roughly 2,450 words in position one to barely over 2,000 words in position 10. The key is to not write words for the sake of words – fluff doesn’t add value. Google, and users, look for value in the content they read.
URL Length
Google likes websites, not just WordPress based sites, that are structured, clean, and organized. Part of this includes the use of short URLs. One study showed that shorter links can improve CTR by as much as 250%. WordPress will generate your URL based on the title of your post, which means you can end up with some pretty long ones. However, there’s a box that allows you to edit the permalink to shorten it.
Dofollow vs. Nofollow Links
By default, all WordPress links are do-follow. When Google crawls a website and sees dofollow links, the link juice passes between that link and the site its linked to. It helps build authority, and can affect your rankings in Google – hence the practice of link building. Typically speaking, the more dofollow links you have to your site, the better but it does get a bit more complex than that. I’ll have another post on the art of backlinking soon.
Nofollow links on the other hand, tell Google it should not pass link juice and to ignore them. Nofollow links can still generate traffic, so they are still important, even if they have no bearing on your link juice.
If you have affiliate links on your site, you should always add the rel=nofollow tag. There are WordPress plugins that can assist with this if you’re not HTML savvy. This ensures Google doesn’t think you’re just adding links for the sake of making money, which is something they frown upon.
Internal Linking
Interlinks are links that point from one place to another on your website. You’ll see I do it often, but only when relevant – such as when I’m discussing a subject I’ve already written about in detail in another post on the blog.
It’s a good thing to link to other content on your site because it helps your visitors navigate and spend more time on your site. It helps establish structure and hierarchy for your information, and they help spread link juice throughout your site since they are do follow. The number of interlinks you should include varies depending on content length.
External Linking
Just like you should link to other pages and posts on your website, you should link to high authority domains, related to your content. This helps your SEO by letting Google know that you are linking out to high quality content that’s relevant to yours, but also improves the user experience by making it easy for them to get more information, if they want to.
It can also help you establish relationships with other websites, which can help you get more backlinks.
Sitemaps
Search engines use sitemaps to understand the structure and hierarchy of your website, whether or WordPress or not, and will ensure better crawling. Sitemaps are not required, because the crawlers will work without it. But, creating a sitemap is always a good thing because it lets you get more data about what’s going on with your site.
If you use the Yoast SEO plugin I talked about at the beginning of the article, it will generate a sitemap for you.
Schema
While many WordPress themes have Schema already coded into them – some don’t. You can learn more about Schema and how it impacts your website rankings here… and validate your schema with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
Social signals play a role in SEO, but not the role you may think. Simply having a profile on social media isn’t enough. It’s the traffic and engagement you get to your site from social media that helps improve your rankings. You can learn more about it from this article at Search Engine Journal.
HTTPS
This is nothing but an added layer of security to your HTTP, with the use of a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate you can purchase from your host. Google has said it is an official a ranking factor – and though it is a small one, it can give you a competitive advantage.
This is Just the Beginning
SEO may not literally be alive, but it is growing and evolving constantly. What worked in the early days doesn’t work now, and what works now, will likely only be a fraction of what must be considered in the future. As Google continues to weed out poor quality content to better serve its users, we can expect to see more changes that always favor the websites that have focused on providing high quality information to their audience.
Doing SEO on your website today, doesn’t mean you’re done tomorrow. You’ll need to pay attention to the analytics and rankings, bearing in mind that it does take time to propagate and see a change in the ranks. And you never know when the competition will be increasing their SEO efforts in an attempt to outrank you. Always keep your eye on the ball.
When you think of online videos, what’s the first thing you think of? YouTube, right? While it may be the most popular video distribution platform, that’s not to say it’s the only option. And while YouTube could easily be considered the second most popular option behind Google, if it were a search engine anyway, there’s more to video than throwing it up on YouTube and hoping for the best. With a bit of work, you can make a real impact on your ranking.
Define Your Goals Before You Start
To provide a decent return on investment, your videos must align with your overall SEO and content strategies. If you don’t take the time to define your goals ahead of time, you could cost yourself a great deal of money – and that money could have been spent in other areas that are more effective for marketing or SEO improvement.
If you want the videos to increase the inbound links to your website to help boost ranking – what else are you hoping to accomplish? Do you want them to increase conversions? Increase targeted traffic that is more likely to convert to a paying customer? Or are you fine with it just helping with off-page SEO? This helps craft the content strategy you’ll use in your videos – and ensures you’re not wasting money, or focusing on the wrong benefit.
Write an Awesome Description
If you’re hosting your videos on a service like YouTube – the text in the description helps determine whether or not it will show up in the search results for the keywords you’re hoping for. If you’re hosting on your own website, the description can help users decided if the video content is really what they are looking for, and whether or not they want to watch it.
On YouTube, you’ll have 5,000 characters to write a description of your video. That’s a lot of space, so you’ll have plenty of room to write as much as possible about your video. You can also use that space to ask people to share, embed, and thumbs up the video. This will help influence your rankings not only in YouTube, but in Google as well.
Put Those Headline Writing Skills to Good Use
On YouTube, you only have 99 characters to optimize your title text, so you definitely need to first consider your target keywords, and any other related keywords you’re trying to rank for. But, of course you want to think about your users – who really want to know what the video is about – not just the keywords you’re trying to rank for. Make sure you weave the keywords into the headline naturally – so it’s engaging enough to encourage clicks without completely neglecting SEO.
Make Sure Your Videos Provide Value
Part of ranking focuses on the amount of time people spend watching your videos, just like the amount of time someone spends on your website. That means whatever your video is about, it must provide real value – to keep your audience engaged and paying attention. If you’re just churning out videos for the sake of getting content on your channel – it’s not going to serve you as well as taking your time and creating one absolutely stellar video would.
Use your video to show your audience how to do something – because tutorials are always valuable. Check out your competition and see if they’re using video in their strategy. If you find they are, take a close look at whatever they’re doing – and make a plan for how you can do it better.
If you can’t solve a problem – provide new information. Film white boarding sessions. Interview an expert. There’s always something you can do.
Include Transcriptions
Including transcriptions is helpful in a number of ways. First, when you want to catch someone who’s on the go – it’s not always possible for the to watch your video with the sound on. The transcriptions allow them to follow along with the video when they’re in an environment where it’s hard to hear, or would otherwise disturb people who are nearby.
But beyond usability, the transcription can also help videos get indexed. In an experiment, adding a transcript to a video caused it to go from unranked, to ranking on the first page, in Bing and Yahoo, anyway, within three weeks. YouTube recently included the ability to add transcriptions, but if you’re hosting on your own domain – more on that below – you can include the video transcriptions directly in the HTML of the pages where your videos are hosted.
And, you know I’m a huge proponent of repurposing content, just because it is not only useful for your audience, but also a major time saver for you. Transcriptions are great starting point for creating additional content – such as the basis for a blog post that you can link back to your video.
Host on Your Own Domain if Possible
Sure, video hosting platforms like YouTube and Vimeo have a place – but in terms of SEO value, there’s nothing better you can do but host the videos on your own domain. Why? Because when you use a dedicated hosting service like YouTube, you’re giving them the traffic. You can always embed the video to your site with the embed code, but it’s still getting all the credit.
When you host on your own platform, you’ll want to focus on accessibility, media RSS, and making it available in multiple formats – HTML 5, Silverlight, iTunes/iPad/iPod-friendly video formats, etc. to ensure that as many people as possible can watch the videos on their preferred devices.
Make sure your player code is optimized – it should be no different than the code on any other page on your website in that respect. Focus on delivering a stellar user experience, especially for the visitors coming to you from organic search.
Encourage your users to share the content, but to avoid theft, watermark the videos with your logo.
If for any reason, you can’t host the videos on your own platform, remember there are three things that YouTube looks at when it determines how to display their search results. It looks at the text in your titles and descriptions – hence the first two tips I wrote about – and the ratings.
Create a Video Sitemap
Use an online video platform that will create a video sitemap on a subdomain of your domain – like videos.yourdomain.com.
When you build that video sitemap, make sure it’s configured correctly. Each entry needs to link to a landing page for a video. You don’t have to include metadata, but it’s highly recommended. It’s best to use a video platform that will automate this process for you, or you will have to spend time updating the sitemap each time you add new video content. You can use a video sitemap even if you’re hosting on another platform, too, to ensure they’re indexed in the search engines. It all comes down to the data you provide with schema.
Use YouTube Wisely
If you’re not hosting your full videos on YouTube, it doesn’t mean you can’t still benefit from the popularity of that platform. Instead, treat it as a quick stop on the way to the final destination – your website. To take advantage of the awareness YouTube offers, while still benefiting your video SEO, upload shorter video previews, with annotations in the video that include a call to action to drive people back to your website’s video library. Your preview video should be a separate piece of content – with a different title and description or summary, and maybe even a different thumbnail. Think about whatever the view needs to be motivated to click through. This will ensure you avoid duplicate content, but still create a good user experience.
Video views aren’t added on YouTube until the video is watched for at least eight seconds, so you’ll want to make sure the beginning of your video is enticing enough to keep people watching that long.
Make it Possible for Others to Embed Your Videos
As you build a library of videos, make it possible for others to include it in their work. When you make it simple for others to embed your videos on their website, you’re more than likely going to see an increase in inbound links, which is a clear boost to your SEO efforts.
Include Interactive Elements
When someone is watching your video, there’s a chance to guide them to another step with a call to action. You have several options such as quizzes, surveys, and forms, and even in-video links. This can help your viewers go to your website, app, or another destination to help move them through the funnel.
Promote, Promote, Promote
When you have your videos ready to go and want to start driving traffic to them, it’s time to promote the heck out of them. Share them on your social media channels. Submit them to video search engines. Include them in social bookmarking. If you have a budget, consider using PPC to drive traffic that way.
Share your videos to your existing customers – if they are relevant, of course – in your email marketing messages. Reach out to influencers who would collaborate with you, either in a video, or through content. Write and distribute a press release to announce the development of your video library or new YouTube channel. Promote your video channels in your company’s printed materials.Develop a promotional campaign for your videos.
Video is Part of an Overall Content Strategy
Video is a vital part of content strategy, but it’s not the only thing you need to be paying attention to. Think about how it fits into the rest of your strategy, and take time to regularly evaluate how video is meeting your predefined goals. Don’t be afraid to switch gears or experiment when something’s not working out like you want it to.
What’s been your experience in video optimization? Tell me in the comments below.
In online marketing, a lot of terms are thrown around. Some are easier to understand than others, and some are used interchangeably when they don’t mean the same thing. In search engine optimization (SEO), two common phrases – search engine friendly and search engine optimized – are often used in place of each other, but have two similar, yet different meanings.
Whether you’re hiring us here at Sachs Marketing Group or looking to handle your SEO efforts on your own, you must understand what these terms mean and how to make both of them work as part of your strategy.
What is Search Engine Friendly?
Search engine friendly, or SEF, refers to building your website on a solid foundation that makes it easy for the search engines to read the code and crawl it for optimal indexing. It focuses on:
Website construction: Today, many content management systems (CMS), including WordPress, are built as search engine friendly solutions. This keeps your most important elements in HTML format, and avoids using Flash, Java applets, and other non-text elements. Non-text elements are generally either devalued, or worse, ignored completely, by the robot crawlers in charge of discovering and indexing your website.
Each page having unique content: This focuses on keeping all pages uniquely named, and structured, to avoid potentially confusing search engines. Each page will have unique content, whether it’s a just a paragraph or two, or thousands of words, depending on the needs and context of the page.
Title and description tags: SEF makes sure that unique title and description tags are used on each page, relevant to the content on each of those pages.
Readable URLs: The search engines clearly need to see the content to list the pages in their database, but they must also be able to see the links to find the content to begin with. That’s why a crawlable link structure is vital. Many websites structure their navigation in way that the bots cannot access, thus making it harder for those pages to be listed in the index.
What kinds of things can stop the search engines from being able to read a link?
Submission-required forms: If users must complete an online form before getting access to certain content, then the search engines are likely never see those pages. For some purposes, this is okay, because you don’t necessarily want those pages indexed.
Unparsable JavaScript: If you’re using JavaScript for your links, the search engines will either give them little weight, or ignore them all together. If you want them to be crawled, replace the JavaScript links with a standard HTML structure.
txt: This file allows you to restrict the files on your website you want the crawlers to access. If there are pages on your website that link to pages that are blocked by either the robots.txt or meta robots tag, those links won’t be counted, since the robots stop their crawl when they reach the information.
Relying on search boxes: While you should have a search box on your website to make it easier for your users to find information they’re looking for, you cannot assume the search engine bots will use it to find everything on your site.
Links embedded in plug-ins: The bots focus on text, so any links that are embedded within Java, Flash, or other plugins won’t get seen, crawled, and indexed, thus never allowing users to find them with a query.
Links on pages with hundreds (or more) links: The search engine bots will only crawl so many links on a page. They do this to avoid spam and keep rankings as user-friendly as possible. If you have a page with hundreds or thousands of links, you likely won’t see all of them crawled and indexed.
Frames/iFrames: Links in both are crawable, but the structure makes it difficult for the bots to organize and follow. Unless you’re a highly skilled developer who understands how the bots index and follow links embedded in frames, avoid them.
Canonical tags: Canonical tags are similar to a 301 redirect, but rather than actually redirecting visitors to a new URL, you’re just telling the search engines that multiple pages should be considered one. The 301 redirect sends all traffic, whether humans or bots, to the unique URL, and offers a much stronger signal that multiple pages have a single source, and can be used across domains, whereas the canonical tag cannot.
Current algorithm guidelines: SEF platforms should adhere to most of the currently published search engine algorithms. Many of the guidelines in use today were established years ago and are easily implemented at the code base.
SEF is a one-time process, done when a website is first setup. Of course, there are hundreds of elements involved, but once you’ve built a search engine friendly website, there is not much more for you to do. There’s always a chance that you’ll have to do something later, if there’s some kind of forced change to the system you’re using, but after you’re done, you’re pretty much done for good.
If you want to get an idea of how Google’s indexing bots see your website – look at the cached version of your website using a tool like Cached View. Compare that view to how your website looks in the browser, and you’ll see what is indexable. The Google bots crawl the web and take snapshots of each page to store for backup purposes, should a page not be available. If your site ever goes down temporarily, you can still access it with the cache. However, the cache may take a few days to update. It depends on how often your website is updated.
What is Search Engine Optimized?
Search engine optimized (SEO) is an ongoing process, as more content gets added to your site on a regular basis. There will always be more keywords to rank for, additional content to create, more links to go after and get, better rankings to achieve, more traffic to bring in, more conversions to get. It will never be done. It focuses on:
Site messaging: Rather than treating text as a placeholder on each page, optimization focuses on using keywords appropriately to signal to the search engines the page is on topic, but also on delivering the right message to the audience.
Optimizing content for rankings and conversions: This includes the use of keywords, but also calls to action, and ultimately relevant creating content that site visitors find useful and helpful.
Optimizing title and descriptions to drive clickthroughs: This process uses keywords appropriately to encourage users to click through the link to the actual page. These are built to match the users need and intent.
Eliminating issues with duplicate content: Optimized sites go beyond the bandaid fixes of simply directing the search engines to the correct content. It will, with the help of the CMS and as far as it will allow it to go, completely eliminate duplicate content issues all together, rather than sending the signals you have to hope the bots will follow.
Future algorithm guidelines: An optimized site, on the other hand, will consider more than what the search engines are looking at today. By focusing on the future, staying ahead of things like the spam filters, and providing real valuable content for visitors, optimized sites go beyond quick-fix loophole solutions designed to earn rankings. Any time there is a major algorithm change, we see a number of sites get hit hard, that spend months, if not years, recovering to build them again. If your site survives a major algorithm change like Panda, with little to no negative change in ranking, then you know you’re on the right track.
Because your website is never completely and fully optimized, there are a number of tools available to help you see how you’re doing in terms of ranking for keywords and the number of backlinks you have.
Using Both to Create a Stellar Web Experience
You can’t have SEO without SEF. If the foundation of your website isn’t built with the search engines in mind, there’s zero sense in optimizing your content for them. Start with a basic structure like something you’d find in WordPress, that’s built to be SEF. Then, move on to the various stages of optimization, according to the needs of your website.
If you’ve already established a website, and you’re not sure how well it fits the definition of friendly, or optimized, it’s time to do an audit. It will help you see the changes you need to make to improve your website, and then guide you through the process.
Begin defining goals. Check your Google Analytics and look at what the data has to offer. If you haven’t already, sign up for Webmaster Tools to get additional data Analytics doesn’t offer.
After this – it’s time to start the audit process:
Website crawl: Check in Google to see what they see compared to what’s actually on your website. In the Google search box, type: “site:http://www.yourdomain.com”. You can use a tool like Screaming Frog to get a deeper crawl and export everything into a spreadsheet so you can analyze your website’s current state. From there, you’ll see more information about page errors, links, and more.
Site Speed: Use the Google PageSpeed Insights tool to see how quickly your website loads on mobile and desktop. Pingdom can also help you see where the issues with site speed are, and how to fix them.
Domain: Checking both the www. and non www. versions of the domain in tools like org and whois.com can give you an idea of what the site used to look like, whether or not there were subdomains, and more, to help you see the kind of domain authority you’ve built up, based on what it was used for in the past.
Website information: Check the site with BuiltWith to learn more about what the site was built with, if you don’t already know for sure. This lets you know whether you’re on the right track with the platform you’ve built the site on.
Site structure/architecture: How many clicks does it take the user to get to where they need to go? Is there anything you can do to improve the process, thus improving usability? Is everything logically organized? If not, take steps to organize it accordingly.
File and URL names: Is everything readable for the visitor? Everything after the # in a URL Google ignores, so keep this in mind.
Key performance indicators (KPIs): Are there KPIs in place? Goals, engagement, sales, ranking, domain authority – whatever they may be, these are vital to know so you can work on making improvements in the order of priority.
Keywords: What keywords are you targeting? Which keywords are you ranking for? Use tools like SEM Rush to get some keyword insight. You may discover keywords that are easier to rank for because there are fewer overall results and less competition. With the keyword information in mind, move onto content adjustments.
Content: Adjust if necessary to be sure the keywords are used appropriately in the tags, on-page content. If written for the search engines rather than visitors, look for ways you can edit the content to provide real value to your reader.
Duplicate Content: Copyscape is a great tool for finding variations of your website’s content. Though you can also search for your content with quotes around it in Google, it’s a bit more of a painstaking process. When you find it, use canonical tags or 301 redirects to fix the issue as necessary.
Meta: Check meta tags and descriptions, for character length and proper descriptions. Keep titles limited to 70 characters, and descriptions limited to 160.
Images: Check to make sure there are no broken links to the actual image files. Check to make sure all images are properly compressed. If not, use tools like PicResize and TinyJPG to compress them for faster load time. Check ALT tags for optimal descriptions. Check image links – WordPress automatically links to the image file – and you may or may not want this based on whether or not the images will be useful in the search results.
Forms: Are your forms properly setup and operational? These are often necessary for conversion rates.
Links: Check all links on the site – internally and externally. Check for optimal structure, and make sure none are broken.
Social Signals: Do you have social profiles attached to the website? If not, get to work. Social signals play a role in overall ranking, so it’s critical to develop a social presence in the places where your audience is active.
Citations: If you’re a local business, citations in reviews and directories are important. Check for and claim listings in Google My Business, Yelp. TripAdvisor, and more.
SEF and SEO Create Magic
When you start with an SEF website structure, then build and optimize everything else, you’ll be well on your way to great rankings.
Have something else to add? Share it in the comments.
Suppose you’re a brick-and-mortar business that serves one or more local areas. In that case, the traditional search engine optimization (SEO) approach won’t deliver the same impactful results you’d see if you were marketing on a national level. By using geographical keywords, and local SEO, you’re alerting search engines that your business is relevant to local results. Still, you’re also decreasing your overall competition since fewer businesses compete for the same keywords within a certain radius of your city or town.
Begin with Keyword Research
Think about the words and phrases your customers are using to search for you. This is the beginning of keyword research. Using a tool like Keyword Tool or Google Keyword Tool, you can start with a basic phrase like, “roofer San Diego California” and get a list search volume and similar keywords you may wish to consider using in your optimization efforts.
Now, choose the keywords you’re most interested in using, and search them in Google yourself to determine what kind of competition you’re up against. Say for example you select:
San Diego roofing: 577,000 results
San Diego roofing companies: 865,000 results
San Diego roof repair: 928,000 results
You can clearly see which one of the phrases will be harder to rank for just because of the number of results.
If you want to take it one step further, you can take note of the top 10 to 20 organic results for each of the phrases you’re targeting, so you can analyze the competition’s backlink profile. This can help you see who’s linking to them, so you can try to get links from those sources as well, and assist you in knowing how many links you should be aiming to get to outrank them. Beyond the number of backlinks, you’ll also want to pay attention to the number of pages and the length of the content on each of those pages so you can make your website a more comprehensive resource.
Optimize Your Website and Content – On Page SEO
Site Structure: Ignoring this is one of the most common SEO mistakes you can make … Keep your site organized in a clear, easy-to-understand hierarchy. Build out logically from your home page.
Home Page: This may be the only page visitors ever look at – so make it count. Include all important pages – products, services, locations, and more – are visible with easy navigation.
Locations: If your business has more than one location, have a dedicated page for each location. This gives you a chance to provide location-specific information searchers are looking for.
Content: Your content should be written for users first, and search engines second. You want to naturally weave the keywords in the content as you describe the intention of the page. If your competition doesn’t have a blog, consider adding one to your website where you can add more valuable content for your readers, and include additional relevant keywords to help increase your ranking. For instance, your blog could include topics like: “How to Choose the Right Roofing Material for Your Home”, “When is the Best Time to Re-Do Your Roof?”, and “How Much Does a New Roof Add to My Home’s Resale Value?”
Meta Descriptions and Title Tags: The meta description is the small space underneath your link in search results. It’s a place to advertise why users should choose to click your link compared to the others on the page. It should explain what the page is about. Both are excellent places for keywords, along with your city and state.
Images: Images should be optimized for quality and speed, and include a descriptive ALT tag with keywords for web accessibility.
Page Load Time: The faster your page loads, the better. 47% of users expect a webpage to load in two seconds or less, and 40% of people will leave a website that takes more than three seconds to load. A one-second delay in page load time could decrease conversion rates by 7%. If you sell $1,000 a day, that’s a loss of $25,000 per year. Page load time is a search ranking factor worth paying attention to. If you find that your page is loading slowly, Google Webmaster Tools has advice to help you improve it. The search console can also provide other guidelines and advice about how to ensure your website is properly optimized.
Mobile Responsive: In April 2015, Google added mobile-friendliness as a search ranking factor, as mobile traffic becomes increasingly more common than desktop traffic. Working mobile responsiveness into your website design is as simple as choosing a responsive WordPress theme, or adding a responsive plugin.
Social Media and Link Building – Off Page SEO
List Your Business in Google My Business: Google My Business, formerly known as Google Places, is a directory that allows you get your business hours, phone numbers, and directions on Google Search and Maps. It allows you to keep your business information accurate, and controls how you appear in the results. Pay attention to how you list your name, address, and phone number here, as you should list it the exact same way in every site for the next step.
Create or Claim Listings on Review Sites and in Local Directories: Think about Yelp, TripAdvisor, Bing, Yahoo, YellowPages, Angie’s List, and any other niche specific options like Porch, Houzz, and Zomato. However you listed your business with Google, should be how you list your business in all of these.
Ask Customers for Genuine Reviews: Never use false reviews. User-generated content like customer reviews helps build trust and credibility in the eyes of your prospective customers, and the search engines alike. 92% of customers read online reviews, so your reputation matters.
Optimize Your Social Media Profiles: Include your business information and a URL back to your own website on all of your social profiles, keeping them consistent from one platform to the next. Ensure your Facebook page is categorized as a local business. Encourage your patrons to check in so you increase the chance of appearing in the Facebook search results, and claim any Facebook Place pages that were created as a result of people checking it and not being able to find our business. This allows you to get credit for all the likes and check-ins.
Make Consistent Effort
You’re not going to jump from the bottom to the top overnight. It is only through consistent effort, and working on these tactics a little a time that you’ll see results. Watch your analytics and use SEO tools to track ranking over time.
The Accelerated Mobile Pages, or Google AMP, is an open-source project designed to increase the speed at which pages load on mobile devices. Launched in February 2016, studies show websites that implement the AMP technology load anywhere between 15% to 85% faster than the same non-AMP version. Many publishers, including BBC and BuzzFeed are already using it. Though initially aimed only at news stories from online publishers, ecommerce providers like eBay are also using it. If your website can benefit from the AMP carousel style results, it’s worth considering.
How Does It Work?
By stripping down the website’s code to a restricted version of HTML, and disallowing the use of most JavaScript, the file sizes are smaller, which means they load faster. Sounds kind of boring, right? There’s a special AMP JS library that can be used to add rich content to the website, so most people won’t miss much.
But, what really helps speed things up is the fact that Google hosts a cached version these websites on their own servers, so when a user clicks your AMP site from the search engine results page, they’re getting content directly from Google servers.
What It Means for Designers and Developers
AMP means designers and developers need to shift to factor it into their mobile web design. Unless you have a good grasp on coding, it can be difficult to implement. Under the AMP protocol:
All third-party JavaScript is removed from the critical path
Resource loading is prioritized
Web fonts are optimized
Style calculations are minimized
Documents are pre-rendered with the preconnect API, only downloading resources above the fold. Resources that may use a lot of CPU power aren’t downloaded.
Designers are advised to design for the user experience first, regardless of whether or not that means it’s harder for the developer to implement. Place priority on anything that improves the user experience, but compromise when necessary. Just because it can be made fast doesn’t mean it will translate to a positive user experience. Focus on your design on the web browsers of today, instead of trying to get ahead and designing for a future, faster, browser.
For designers and developers who want to dig in and get their feet wet, there are plenty of tutorials and templates on the AMP project website. For the do-it-yourself designers, there’s a WordPress plugin that can assist with proper implementation, but it’s worth noting that custom styling, widget, and side bar items won’t carry over, and and everything must be canonicalized correctly to avoid duplicate content issues.
What It Means for Consumers and Publishers
The entire aim of the AMP project is to improve the mobile user experience. Data from Kissmetrics shows 47% of consumers expect a webpage to load within two seconds, and 40% of users will abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Mobile users expect a similar experience from a desktop on their smartphones and tablets. If your website’s page response time is delayed by just one second, your conversion rate can decrease by 7%. If you’re an e-commerce site that earns $25,000/day, that translates to a $625,000 annual loss in revenue.
AMP removes the clutter of full-page ads, along with the annoyance of slow loading times and full-page ads. And, because the website files are ultimately smaller, they’ll save you money in data use.
Wait, what? No ads? How is ad revenue based publisher supposed to make it in the days of AMP design? Fortunately for them, there’s an AMP for Ads program that’s designed to allow publishers to create compliant ads for AMP sites, translating to faster ad load time, too. Mobile users often scroll faster than standard web pages can even load the ads, which is a major issue for marketers.
Data from PageFair indicates there are 198 million active ad block users around the world, and it grew by 41% globally between 2014 and 2015. Perhaps what’s even more depressing for marketers is the average click through rate for display ads across all formats and placements is a dismal 0.06%. Adding faster, relevant ads to the AMP experience may help combat the blindness issue for marketers, increasing the potential for ad-based revenue.
Since Google serves a cached version of the site, when a user shares the AMP version, it’s going to point to Google’s version, rather than the live version of the site, which could negatively affect publisher traffic.
But What About Search Engine Optimization?
If you’re worried about AMP and your SEO efforts, Richard Gingras, Google’s senior director of news and products has said, “[sites that adopt AMP won’t] get a massive boost in search ranking. Though because speed matters, he also said, “If we had two articles that from a signaling perspective scored the same in all other characteristics but for speed, then yes, we will give an emphasis to the one with speed because that is what users find compelling.”
Is Google AMP good, or bad? Ultimately, it’s a good thing because user experience is a major part of what drives the online economy. But, it comes with its share of drawbacks for marketers and developers. Load time isn’t a direct ranking factor, and creating an AMP compliant website isn’t just as simple as flipping a switch.
Because the technology is fairly new, and we’ll likely see bugs being ironed out for quite sometime, it’s too soon to say whether or not AMP really is the future of the mobile web. Yes, there is the potential for major implications for the mobile web, but we won’t know for sure until we see how widely adopted it becomes. Not everything Google develops becomes an instant hit, as evidenced by Google+ accounts and the authorship markup. It’s always possible it too, will flop, but only time will tell.
The digital marketing and SEO landscapes are ones that constantly fluctuate, and it is for this reason that marketers and SEOs must keep up-to-date on the current trends and changes within the industry. As SEO has continued to evolve over the past few years, we’ve seen the algorithms move toward “white hat” methods and reward sites that do good work – work that is relevant for the search queries and that can provide the most pertinent and appropriate content to the person searching.
We have seen SEO move toward more content-driven strategies, focused upon providing the client or the customer with interactive and on-topic information. SEO has begun to rely much more on social signals, and social media has become a key part of any strong search-based strategy. Looking forward to the new year, what will 2016 bring for search engine optimization? Read on for a few predictions of what may come into play in 2016:
Content-driven, rather than keyword-driven strategy: It’s not all about keywords anymore when it comes to SEO. Content is still king, and users are most interested in blog content, video content, and infographic content that provides valuable information for them. We no longer have to focus solely on keywords to drive the most relevant traffic. As search algorithms have developed, relevant traffic will hit the site if the content is there and optimization is ideal.
User experience is key: Along with providing valuable and engaging content, we want to ensure that the experience is strong. Information should be share-worthy and quickly digested by the reader. Google and other search engines want to ensure that the person searching gets the right results within the first few pages. Providing relevant content will get your user the experience they are looking for.
Mobile and tablet optimization: Mobile and tablet-based search has been growing exponentially over the past few years. Ensuring your site is optimized for mobile is critical. Mobile traffic surpassed desktop traffic in 2015, indicating that mobile will be central to 2016’s optimal SEO strategy. Desktop-focused SEO will need to make some room for mobile-focused SEO.
Social media: While social media has begun helping SEO efforts and plays an indirect role, social signals will likely play a much larger part in 2016. Search engine algorithms are working to begin integrating social into the equation; for this reason, a strong social media presence will be more necessary than ever in the new year. Social media also provides consumers with information that affects how they make decisions.
Local SEO: For local businesses, local SEO will likely become an even bigger deal than it was in 2015. We expect to see more changes to local SEO – as we’ve already seen with the local pack at the top of Google searches and the consumers’ shift toward local purchasing.
Voice search: While this has not yet played a huge part in SEO strategy, the rise of voice search may begin to really shake up the best practices of search engine optimization. Voice search is usually based on the questions of “who, what, how, when, and where,” which may need to be taken into account as a part of SEO strategy if voice continues to grow.
What do you think of these predictions? Are there any trends that you are excited about?
In 2014, mobile exceeded PC internet usage. While the majority of users’ time was spent on apps, mobile Internet usage made up 28 percent of total worldwide web traffic. Search engines are the most popular sites with 77 percent of mobile users accessing them, ahead of social networking, retail and video sharing sites. Having a strong SEO strategy in place is important if you want to capture the growing mobile market. One of the best ways to do this is by implementing a mobile website design.
Mobile Design and SEO
While there might be some confusion over Google’s stance on mobile SEO, there is one thing that is not contested: Google is putting an emphasis on mobile-friendly sites. In 2014 they announced a “mobile-friendly” tag for sites that meet all of Google’s criteria for mobile optimization and also mentioned they were planning to test the mobile-friendly criteria as an additional signal for page ranking. What does this mean for you? Basically, if your site is not optimized for mobile, it will rank much lower in search results, which will ultimately reduce your organic reach.
While there are three different options for a mobile configuration, Google recommends a responsive web design as the best way to target mobile users. A responsive design allows a site to reformat itself depending on what device it is displayed on, making it user-friendly on tablets, smartphones and desktops. The best part is that it uses a single URL, which makes it simpler for Google to crawl and index content. But just because it’s responsive doesn’t necessarily mean it is mobile-friendly. Ultimately, the choice of whether to offer a separate URL, responsive web design or dynamic service (uses the same URL but generates a different version of HTML based on device) is up to you as Google does not favor any particular format.
There are, however, several best practices to ensure your site is mobile-friendly for all design formats.
Page Speed
74 percent of users will leave a site if it takes longer than 5 seconds to load. Due to hardware and connectivity issues, load times are even more important on mobile devices as users are generally using for immediate information needs. One of the best ways to reduce your load speed is to optimize your images to a smaller size, minimize code, utilize browser cache and reduce redirects.
Avoid Flash and Pop Ups
There are many mobile devices that do not have the Flash plugin available. Rather than alienate these users, you may want to simply avoid Flash altogether on your site. If you want to utilize some fun effects like an image slider, you should take advantage of HTML5 instead.
Another thing to avoid is pop-ups, whether that’s to subscribe to your newsletter or receive a free ebook. These pop-ups are intrusive to mobile users who are coming to your site for a specific reason. They are often difficult to close out of as well, which could lead to a high bounce rate.
Utilize CSS, JavaScript and Images
In the early day, many mobile devices could not support these elements so many webmasters would simply block them. Today, smartphones and tablets are more than capable of displaying all of these features. Not to mention, search bots are crawling your site for these elements in order to categorize your mobile site solution.
Optimize for Local Search
On mobile, 4 in 5 searches are local in nature. Of these local searchers, 88 percent take action within a day whether that’s contacting the business, visiting it or making a purchase. Due to the overwhelming popularity of local searches on mobile, Google has added local signals in the mobile search algorithm. If your business has a local element you should take the opportunity to optimize for local SEO. This means:
Standardizing name, address and phone number
Include city and state in your metadata
Think Mobile First
While smartphones and tablets might be revolutionary in the technology industry, it still has its limits. The easiest way to ensure your site is mobile-friendly is to approach your entire design with a mobile first mindset. This way you will already have tackled the issues of the small screen, less powerful processor and touch based navigation.
Supposedly launched about a month ago, Google announced their new Hummingbird algorithm on Sept 26, 2013. In a nutshell, Hummingbird focuses on the meaning behind a particular search quires as opposed to the individual words themselves. Called: “Conversational Search” – Google will attempt to return the most relevant web pages to what people search for rather than simply finding pages that match the words in the search. Search Engine Land did an excellent post explaining the various nuances of the Hummingbird Algorithm, you can read that HERE.
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