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]]>Let’s be realistic, for most people, even the word algorithm makes little to no sense. You leave that to the big brains to figure out, right? But if you run a business that is dependent on how your site ranks in the search results, these are things you really need to pay attention to.
Google’s Hummingbird has rolled some of the biggest changes to the algorithm that the internet has seen in quite a while. And some of these changes are going to come as a complete surprise, while others will seem like common sense.
Did you know that Google updates it’s algorithm as many as 600 times in any given year? Most of the time, as an end user, you won’t even notice. But if you are involved in online marketing in any way, there are things you should know.
Here’s some of what you need to know in a nutshell.
What exactly is SERP and what does it mean for Search Engine Optimization?
SERP stands for search engine results page. This is the list of web pages that come up when you type your search terms into your favorite search engine. When it comes to SEO strategy, where your page lands in terms of the SERP – is going to be critical to how often viewers click and get to your site.
Some Factors for Determining Google SERPs
Outbound Link Quality: It is believed by many in the know that if you are linking out to authority sites, this helps send trust signals to Google.
Grammar and Spelling: If the grammar and spelling are good or bad, this is a quality signal. On the other hand, how this is weighted is uncertain. This does go into your content readability, however.
Affiliate Links: Affiliate links by themselves probably aren’t going to kill your ranking. But you don’t want to have too many. The more you have, the more Google is going to notice them. They will want to make sure you aren’t one of those “thin” sites just trying to push your affiliate links.
Quality Content: Does the content on your site add value? Or have you just thrown up a bunch of content to fill space? The higher the quality of the content, the better your site is going to rank.
There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach
And chances are, if something seems too good to be true, chances are it probably is. It’s also entirely possible that what was working well two years ago may not work as well today.
What’s the deal with HTTPS and what does this mean in terms of my SEO Strategy?
The HTTPs domain has received a global overhaul, so this deserves at least a little bit of our attention. Switching to HTTPS has created more security for internet users, and if a sight is highly secured, as displayed by the HTTPS designation, this creates a sense of trust in the user who is visiting that site. Google also uses this as a ranking signal for regarding your website as a trustworthy one.
There also is less chance of fear of losing data because of an unwanted attack due to a lack of security.
Remember Whitelists? You might have known them as “Exceptions.”
Well, they are a thing of the past. Basically, Google’s Safe Search eliminates them.
As you can see there can be a lot of factors that can affect the way a site will rank in terms of SERPs, and a lot of these factors are things you will want to keep in mind when considering your SEO strategy. Remember, the better your site ranks, the better your visibility. If you are an online business, more visibility means more sales.
But this does not have to be overwhelming at all and there are great tutorials out there to help you learn how to maximize your placement. The simplest tip, of course, is to make sure that the content you have up is quality content that people want to read. This is what is going to draw them in. User intent should be the focus for creating and sharing quality content.
In addition to all the above mentioned updates: duplicate, plagiarized or thin content, user-generated spam, and keyword stuffing has always been a core part of every Google algorithm update. These are very important to avoid for better search engine optimization of your website.
You can run regular checks to keep everything up to good quality standing. Another important thing is avoiding spammy links on your website. Google doesn’t take spam links lightly these days. That’s why you need to monitor your site links and back links regularly for better SEO results. Do your research and find an SEO consultant or SEO Company that can guide you on SEO tools for monitoring your website back links.
And then, of course, once you have drawn your users in, that quality and informative content is what is going to keep them wanting to come back. Your website conversion rates will increase accordingly!
To learn more about Google Algorithms and how they affect your business website SEO, Designatude has you covered! Don’t hesitate and contact us today!
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]]>Local SEO and how your local business can benefit!
The greater Portland Oregon area has grown tremendously in the past 10 years, and local business marketing has gotten more competitive than ever! For most brick-and-mortar businesses, local online search is one of the most viable means for advertising and reaching out to geo targeted customers in their local city or town.
With the rise of the Internet and specifically Mobile users, making sure your local business is visible online…is essential!
I can’t even recall the last time I sorted through the Yellow Pages to find and contact a local service. I haven’t had a phone book anywhere near my living presence, for what seems like decades!
Like myself, and millions of others, we cannot get away from our mobile devices when searching for – “the best Thai restaurant in Portland, Or”, “top defense lawyer in New York City”, “finest art galleries in Los Angeles”.
It’s really no mystery of how the modern day consumer finds what they are searching for. You can find some incredible statistics for Local SEO Search here.
Having had some great success with Local Search results, I wanted to share 5 of the most effective methods that have worked well for us at Designatude:
1.) Create an Awesome ‘My Google Business Page’
Google is the current search engine giant and taking advantage of having a descriptive and highly optimized ‘My Google Business Page’, will do wonders for your Local SEO Search results.
Many local business owners that have been around for a good time, don’t even realize that this page already exists for their local business.
Do a quick search for your business, an example – “designatude”, and see if your ‘Google My Business’ page pops up in the results.
Now, if you do you see your page come up in your Google search for your business, simply just click the ‘claim your business’ button. You will be taken through a process for signing up to ‘Google My Business’ via your Google account.
If you do not already have a Google account, I highly advise creating one!
For some quick information on adding or claiming your business visit: Google My Business.
Now that you have either claimed or created your Google My Business page, it is time to optimize it for your visitors. Here are the key steps for making your Google My Business page accurate, appealing, and ready for search:
- Make sure your business Name – Address – Phone Number (NAP) is absolutely correct! This is crucial for all Local Business directories that your business is listed in.
- Add the correct business hours for your business. Update them anytime you are closed for holidays, remodeling, or for whatever reason. (I have gone to a local business with the wrong hours listed, they were not open, and I never returned!)
- Pick the correct category keyword that describes your business (eg. ‘Lawyer in Portland, Oregon’ – ‘Website designer in Portland, Oregon‘)
- Link to your website, food menu, appointments page, or any other important landing page.
- Add engaging photos of your physical business, business logo, current employer/employee pictures, and product photos.
I would suggest taking your time and doing a thorough job when creating or updating your My Google Business Page. Always keep it updated with newer photos, business hour changes, and landing page links. This is your greatest representation for online local business search. If you are located in the Oregon area, you can always consult with an SEO expert to learn more about this.
2.) Get listed in All the High Quality Local Business Directories & Review Sites
There are several high quality business directory and review websites available for listing your local business on. Here are a few of the top ones:
As I mentioned above – creating and optimizing your ‘My Google Business’ page is the recommended start for the whole local SEO process. Then, getting listed in the top SEO friendly Local Business Directories, immediately follows. The most important part of this step is (NAP) Name – Address – Phone Number consistency!
When your business is listed in several of these directories, and the NAP is correct, this provides a great signal that Google picks up. Your Google local business listing will start to see higher search results.
Also, I recommend having your NAP on the home page of your website (usually in the footer toward the bottom), or have it on your Contact page.
There will be a verification process for most of these directories. Most are done through email, some by phone, and even some by mail. This can be a bit of a hassle and a bit tedious, but I strongly suggest having this done!
You can hire Yext or Moz Local for these services, or you can get in touch with us.
At Designatude.com, we will list your local business in the Top 100+ Local Business Directories for the same as what Yext.com charges for a third of these directories.
We include all your business photos, a short and long description (optimized with your local keywords), and all your social links! We will also repair any existing citations containing the incorrect NAP.
There are only so many Local Business Directories out there that have a positive effect for your Local SEO. We know who they all are and will list your business on all of these.
3.) Stay Connected to Your Listed Business Review Websites
I highly suggest that you be aware and tuned in to where your local business might be listed out there in the search engines. There might be a possibility that your business has received a negative review without you even knowing it. More times than not, you can respond to these negative reviews while maintaining your stellar business reputation.
An easy way to search and find out who is linking to or reviewing your website, is to just search “business name” on Google. By doing a search for “designatude” I have found out all the review directories we are on:
Scroll through all the search pages, see where your business is listed. Then check to see if you have any good or bad reviews. You can also claim your business this way.
You can always take matters into your own hands if you find a bad review out there. It is as simple as signing up for the website your business is listed on, then giving your “Owner’s Response” to the unhappy customer.
If you are too busy running your business and don’t have all the spare time to keep up with where you are listed and refuting bad reviews, you can always contact us for some excellent Business Reputation Management services.
4.) Connect With Your Customers Locally Via Social Media
Social Media has become a strong marketing tool for your businesses on a local and national level. Whether you are wanting to stay engaged with existing customers, or marketing your business for new customers, there are some social media platforms out there worth investing in.
Here is a quick roundup on some Social Media platforms that can help boost your Local Business:
- Linkedin – This is a fabulous B2B platform for connecting with other local businesses, creating relationships, while generating leads and referrals. In my opinion, one of the better local networking social media platforms available.
- Alignable – An up and coming small business networking platform that is set up well for connecting with other local Businesses (B2B). Like Linkedin, this is very useful platform for inbound marketing, relationship building, and generating leads .
- Facebook – A Facebook business page works well on a local level with building customer relationships. Posting your business events, gathering positive reviews, and increasing your brand awareness can easily be accomplished with Facebook.
- Instagram – An excellent platform for image content and brand awareness. Posting high quality photos of your local business atmosphere, employees/employers, down time activities, and all things related, will do wonders for your business brand. Instagram is very useful if your target audience falls in the younger – ‘Millennial’ generation .
- Pinterest – Works well and similar to Instagram for image marketing for your business brand. This platform is is a strong one for lead generation, as well as increasing incoming traffic to your website…just one click away on that stunning image you decided to post. Caters more to the 30’s – 50’s age range and the female gender.
While there are several other excellent Social Media platforms out there to take advantage of, based on my experience and success rate, I found the ones listed above to work well for my local business marketing efforts.
Twitter is also worth utilizing for your Local SEO efforts.
5.) Make Sure Your Business Website is Written Well and Optimized for Local Search
For business website owners, this would be the most important aspect for your local seo efforts. I would have listed this at the top, but low and behold, some businesses are able to obtain great Local Search results without even having a website.This is a very small percentage, and I highly recommend having a professional and appealing website to represent your online presence.
I would suggest learning more from a top SEO Company for getting a strong keyword analysis and SEO strategy. Then pass this along to your local Portland Web Design Company to either update your existing website or building one from the beginning.
So, to begin with, Meta Titles and Descriptions still matter for your website and keyword optimization.
You should always have your Geo-targeted location keyword at the beginning of your Meta Title for your home page!
I would recommend mixing in your business Geo-targeted location keywords for you Meta Description as well. This is not super imperative, and writing a natural, relative and flowing description will work just fine. As long as you have the location listed in the Meta title.
Here are some on site writing suggestions for improving your Local Search results:
- Have your main Geo-targeted keyword in your H1 title. This is the most important title in the minds of Google, and you should have 1 of these (and 1 only!) for every page on your website.
- Put your Geo-targeted keyword in the first body of written text on your home page and other pages.
- If you have multiple location keywords, make sure they are all in your website.
- Write natural contextual keyword links with your ‘keyword location’ – in your blog articles. Link these to the home page or specific location page.
- Place your NAP on the home page of your website (usually in the footer toward the bottom), or have it on your Contact page.
Related article: 15 TACTICS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE FOR HIGHER SEO RANKINGS FOR 2019
I have added some off site suggestions for improving your Local Search results:
- Make sure your website loads fast! This is probably one of the highest ranking factors for optimal SEO results.
- Check for broken links, 404 pages, and integrate 301 redirects.
- Have an SSL certificate…Google’s new pet peeve.
- Also, avoid ‘black hat’ back linking seo services that will do more harm to your site than good.
My favorite free tool for website auditing…Screaming Frog. If you don’t already use this tool, I highly recommend that you do. It rocks! For any questions you might have on optimizing your local Portland business for better SEO, contact Designatude today!
“We are recognized as a top E-Commerce Design & Development Company on DesignRush”.
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]]>The post 15 Tactics to Optimize Your Website For Higher SEO Rankings for 2019 appeared first on .
]]>Great Search Engine results start with your overall SEO friendly website.
Your organic Search Engine results are highly dependent on many website elements and techniques. I have had many experiences where people would ask me why they are not showing up on Google for the keywords they enter to find their website. I take a quick look at their site and usually notice an array of errors right off the bat.
There are no Meta Titles and Descriptions. Either their keywords are very scarce or stuffed all over the place. Their website layout is confusing and not logical for users and search engines. The content looks like it was copied from a technical manual and doesn’t pull me in, to say the very least.
1 minute later…time for me to bounce off!
Today’s Internet users and Google are both very savvy and expectations continue to get higher for very clean, informative, trustworthy, fast and relevant website experiences.
Google’s latest algorithms have really leveled the playing field, and Rankbrain was brought in to help weed out the many spammy websites of the past, and pave way for the well written, informative and humanly engaging sites of the now.
*This article was written for on-site search engine optimization. Their are several other practices that will greatly boost your SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Related article: 9 WHITE HAT BACK LINKING PRACTICES FOR TOP SEO IN 2019
White Hat Back Links, Content Marketing, and Social Media Marketing are a few worth mentioning. Stay tuned, as I have already written about some of these and others will be covered throughout the blog.
1.) Keyword Analysis
In my mind, this is probably the most important first step to take as you are creating your website strategy. You need to ask yourself – “What keywords would I enter in the search engines to find my business website?”
Jotting down a list with pen and paper is a great start. Think of Broad Match (2-3 words resulting in a wider and broader search), and Long-tailed (more than 3 words, longer specific search phrases – which narrow the search).
Google needs and relies on these keywords as they crawl your website. There are some keywords that are searched more – (usually Broad Match), which bring in more traffic, and therefore, are more competitive.
But, by using less competitive and lower traffic Long-tailed keywords, your chances of ranking for these are much higher!
TIPS:
- As mentioned before, write down a list of Broad Match and Long-tailed keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business niche products, services, and location.Stay focused on some of the lesser competitive Long-tailed phrases and jot down specific phrases you would use yourself, for searching your website.
- Keep in mind, if you are a local business, then use Geo-targeted keywords for your location. Example: “Portland SEO“, “SEO Portland Oregon” “Social Media Marketing services and consulting in Portland, OR”.
- Use some of the free tools for doing your keyword research and analysis.
Google Adwords Keyword Planner (Still widely used by many SEO experts)
SEOBOOK Keyword tool (Easy to use and get started with)
- If your budget allows it, there are some really excellent paid tools. One of my favorites for finding Long-tailed phrases is: keywordtool.io
SEMRush Keyword Research Tool
A Hrefs Keyword Explorer Tool - After compiling a good list of keywords with their competition and traffic statistics, logically narrow down which terms are realistic to shoot for in your business niche. Some of those highly competitive keywords can take several months and a big off-site SEO campaign budget to achieve great results.
- Be realistic with your marketing budget. By focusing on more of the long-tailed keywords in the beginning, you will start to accumulate traffic. You can then look toward focusing more on the Broad Match terms. If your business niche is unique and less competitive – then don’t hesitate using Broad Match right away.
- For existing website owners, it is always good to consistently do keyword searches and analyze the new competition and traffic stats. You will also want to continue to track your keyword traffic results.
- There are some awesome free and paid tools for analyzing and tracking your keywords:
Google Webmaster Search (free and must have)
SEOBook Rank Checker (free – does a great job!)
Rank Tracker (free & paid versions)
Authority Labs (paid – downloadable CSV files)
A Hrefs Rank Tracker (paid – comes with many other tools)
SEMRush Tracking (paid – comes with many other tools)
2.) Content – Relevant, Engaging & Trusted
It is probably no secret by now about how important your website content is in the eyes of Google and your incoming visitors. I had mentioned Google’s Rankbrain algorithm earlier.
The search engine ‘king’ has been really emphasizing high quality content that is relevant, engaging, trustworthy and informative for your visitors. Gone are the days of ‘keyword stuffing‘ and spammy sites riddled with ads everywhere!
Creating a content strategy should be the next step after having done an extensive keyword research and analysis. By utilizing your targeted keywords in a natural and free flowing writing style, your content will end up having more appeal and validation from both your readers and Google.
I find it very efficient for writing your content for all your main website pages, then designing everything around that content. This is my content strategy in a nutshell. Although there is a bit more to it than that.
There are several rules (or proper practices) for writing high quality content for your users and the search engines. These adhere to the latest Google algorithms and give you an upper hand for ranking higher with your website content.
TIPS:
- It is always a good idea to get your main targeted keywords/phrase in the first body of content, on the page you are writing for.
- Make proper use of your h1 h2 h3 h4 h5 h6 headings. Your h1 heading tag is highly valued by Google, and you should always have one of these at the top of each of your web site pages. I strongly suggest having your higher targeted keyword(s) in the beginning of this heading.
- Your content should be easily readable by an eighth grader. Google’s Rankbrain and human behavior play into this. Check out this article that fully explains on readability is:
-
Keyword Density is something to keep in mind. No more keyword stuffing! Many SEO experts have come to an agreement that between 1-2% keyword density is a good number to shoot for. This is much lower than in the past.
-
Characteristics of good content: Concrete, Clear, Coherent, Simple, Educational, Inspiring, Relevant, Practical, Credible, Emotional, Entertaining, and Trustworthy.
- Write for humans and not just for the search engines! This is what Google (Rankbrain) wants, and it’s what your visitors want. Writing naturally, informatively, and technical jargon free content, will bode well for your audience sticking around longer. High bounce rates will harm your SEO efforts and lower conversion rates.
3.) Create and Maintain a Blog
As mentioned above, the importance of great content is not to be overlooked. If your business website does not have a blog, I highly advise starting one ASAP. Your blog should be your ‘meat and potatoes’ of your overall website content.
Writing informative blog articles for your readers will pay off huge dividends, not only for your audience, but for your organic SERPs.
Ryan Biddulph, a good friend of mine on Twitter and a top blogger has an awesome blog on how to get you started and how to be successful in blogging! I suggest checking into this.
We tend to develop websites using the WordPress framework for various positive reasons. WordPress was originally used as a blogging platform, but now is one of the most widely used website frameworks on the Internet.
There are several other options out there worth looking at, but we usually stick with WordPress based on our excellent experiences and results.
“A good content marketer can empathize with their audience and can therefore understand what topics they should create content on, what tone of voice to use, and what channels to promote the content in.”
Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz, Moz Blog
TIPS:
- Write and publish quality blog articles consistently. This keeps your website alive, and keeps Google continually crawling and ranking your new content and keywords.
- Quality over Quantity – Writing one really good, informative, and inspiring article is much more effective than putting out 10 uninspiring and dull articles. Your audience will quickly skim over your article and will either bounce off in a matter of seconds, or stick around and feel engaged based on the informative effort you made when publishing your article.
- Write good catchy (Meta, H1) titles for your articles that include some of your high traffic keywords. This is your primary opportunity for capturing your audience during their search, and gives Google more of your relevant keywords to rank in the SERPs.
- Add images, infographics, quotes, videos and statistics for a higher user engagement rate.
- Use great formatting for your readers. Mix in one sentence with 3-5 sentences. Add colorful and bold headings with your keywords included. Make good and proper use of lists. Use readable fonts and stay focused on size, style and color.
- Write about the latest and trending topics that are relevant to your business and your readers. Buzzsumo is a great tool to find out what is popular and being widely shared.
- Make great use of everlasting ‘evergreen content‘. You can share this type of content for years and it still stays fresh and pertinent!
- Always include the main social sharing buttons in an easy and clickable spot on your blog. Your search engine optimization will benefit greatly when your articles are being consistently shared via Social Media.
- Divide your articles up into categories and tags. This provides for a better user experience and more keywords for Google to crawl.
- Always include at least one high authority outbound link for gaining the trust of Google.
- Use inbound links to relevant articles and pages on your website. Use natural keyword phrases for these links, as Goolge loves picking up on these. This also keeps your audience engaged with more pertinent content to link to and read.
- Cite your sources and give credit where credit is due. Link any images you borrow to their respective website owners. This establishes trust and builds strong relationships.
4.) Meta Titles and Descriptions
Although Meta Titles & Descriptions are not a Google ranking signal, proper optimization and good practices will really help to increase your website traffic. When search engine visitors can get a quick glance at the information that stands out to them, they will click that listing quickly, as it pertains to what they are searching for.
A high (CTR) Click Through Rate is a strong indicator that your Meta Descriptions and Titles are informative and convincing to web searchers. This ultimately increases traffic to your website, while giving you an edge over the higher ranked sites just above you.
Recently, Google increased the Meta Description snippet length up to 300 characters. The Meta Title still remains 60 characters. There is no need to go over the limit for both of these!
TIPS:
- WordPress users take advantage of the Yoast SEO plugin. This works awesome for Meta titles and descriptions, as well many other SEO functions for your site.
- Personally, I like to add our business phone number in the Meta description. This is a great call to action, and customers don’t even need to click on to our website to get in touch with us.
- Use some of your main keywords in both your title and description. If you are going for Local SEO, always have your Geo Targeted location in the Meta title.
- Do not keyword stuff your titles and descriptions!
- Write out naturally flowing and relevant descriptions covering the gist of your services and products. Write for the humans not the search engines.
- Do not have duplicate titles and descriptions for different pages!
5.) Image Optimization
A good bit of your website content most likely will made up of images. Images play a big role in user engagement, but also have a big role for strong SEO. You can do a web search and hit ‘Google Images’ – an low and behold, a plethora of images show up, linking to their website pages.
Driving traffic from well optimized images is just another bonus from knowing your content and how to make the most out of it!
TIPS:
- Use caution when adding stock photos. Many of these photos are used by other website owners and are clustered together when visitors are searching through Google images. Chances are greatly reduced that they click on your image and link.
- If possible, always try and use your own original images. This adds a unique trust and style to your brand, and stays in the memory of your visitors. Also, the chances of people sharing your original images via social media, are greatly increased!
Related article: 13 Awesome Free Stock Photo Websites For Web Designers Bloggers & Social Media Marketers
- Use the highest quality image that has the smallest file size. The .jpg image file type is generally the best for optimizing for quality and file size. .png image files are great for transparency and used for images like logos.
- Do not use copyrighted images. This is bad practice and could also land you a lawsuit. If you use images from bloggers, make sure you cite and link to the source.
- Give your images relevant file names and make use of keywords. Example: seo_optimized_image.jpg.
- Have a descriptive alt tag for your images that include keywords, but not stuffed with them! Example: alt=”web designer in the office at Designatude Portland digital marketing agency”.
6.) User Experience (UX)
A poorly designed website will not only effect audience user experience, but also could have a negative impact on SEO. When visitors have a difficult time navigating through a site, or are distracted by ads bombarding them, or just simply put off by poorly written content, they will bounce off immediately!
There goes the opportunity for a good conversion, phone call, subscriber etc. Although there is no clear answer as to whether Google uses bounce rate as a ranking signal, we do know that Google understands that higher bounce rates = spammy or less user friendly environments. If your are having challenges with UX design, then make sure to hire an experienced web design company to help you out with this.
TIPS:
- A good content strategy is the beginning of what a solid web design layout will become. Having all your content/pages written and images in mind, you can now design a logical and consistent layout that provides a smooth and flawless experience for your users.
- Your link structure is not only important for easy navigation, but needs to be logical for Google and for the pages you want to be crawled first. Think of a pyramid, your home page being on top.
- Less is better these days. Having bigger sites with hundred’s of pages will dilute their Page Authority. Fewer higher quality content pages have a better chance for increasing their Page Authority, and ranking higher in the SERPs.
- Be very careful of using pop-ups and landing pages. There is a lot of discussion on this, and many think that pop-ups cause visitors to bounce off quickly. A well designed popup is a must. Visitors need a clear choice for not opting in.
- Make use of a good Call to Action (CTA) that isn’t too distracting or annoying to visitors. Your visitors are on your site to learn who you are and what you can provide for them, not to be constantly shadowed by social media buttons and subscription forms.
- Formatting, font size, style, and color all play a huge role in user experience. Web safe fonts are a great way to go.
7.) Website Speed Optimization
Website loading speed is on of the biggest factors for successful SEO results. This all comes into correlation of slow loading sites = very high bounce rates. Savvy Web users are impatient and will have nothing to do with a slow website. This is a huge traffic killer!
Site speed has become a Google ranking signal. It is absolutely imperative to have your website loading as quick as possible…or face utter doom and disaster from very low traffic numbers.
TIPS:
- Check your website speed with these free tools:
Google Page Speed Insights
Pingdom Tools - WordPress users read: Speeding Up Your WordPress Website in Less Than 5 Minutes.
- Use optimal file and image compression practices. Hire a great web developer and web designer for this job. it is totally worth it for your SEO efforts.
- Make sure you are using adequate hosting for the size and type of website you have. Shared hosting works fine for smaller business sites. VPS (Virtual Private Servers) give you more control over your hosting and work well for bigger websites and high amounts of traffic.
- Check into some CDN’s (Content Delivery Networks). These are very useful for websites that use an abundant of images, videos, music, and any other content that requires big file sizes.
- Integrate a page and browser cache system. Combine and minify all files that are being used….css, .js etc. Again, it is worth hiring a good developer for these tasks.
8.) Mobile Friendly and Responsive
In this day and age, Mobile Internet users are increasing at a rapid rate, and as of 2018, 52% of all website traffic is generated worldwide through mobile devices! Websites not only need to be responsive and render consistent on all Internet devices, but need to pass Google’s Mobile Friendly test. This has been extremely important for Local SEO, as users are searching for local businesses mostly via phone.
Related article: 5 IMPACTFUL WAYS TO ENHANCE YOUR BUSINESS FOR TOP PORTLAND SEO RESULTS
The Mobile Friendly test has become an SEO ranking signal for Google in one of their latest algorithm updates. It is absolutely imperative to make sure your website passes this test for optimal SEO results in the search engines. This also provides for better user experience and lower bounce rates.
- Test your website to see if it passes the Google Mobile Friendly Test.
- WordPress users make sure you are using a theme that has responsive capabilities built into it. There are also several free and commercial plugins for responsive and mobile capabilities. Do your research and find which plugin works best for what you are trying to achieve.
- Hire a great Web Developer that specializes in mobile and responsive capabilities. This is money well spent!
- Read all about the Google AMP Project. This project is gaining popularity among many of the top websites and being integrated by many more business websites. These lightning quick mobile pages are having a positive effect for better SEO results.
9.) Clean Optimized URLs
Good and clean URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) will help benefit your users and SEO. It has always been a rule of thumb to keep your URLs short, descriptive, and clean with no characters or numbers.
Adding in your keywords to your URLs is always a good idea, when you don’t spam them.
An Example of good URLs:
www.designatude.com/web-design/
www.designatude.com/seo/
An Example of not so good URL:
https://example.com/13524600akw
TIPS:
- Keep your address Urls short and descriptive. Short is always good for your users when they copy and paste your site for whatever reason…saving and such.
- Add your keywords into you URL in a short and concise way.
- WordPress users should learn and know about permalinks and the best way to use them for your pages.
- Anytime you change your URL after publishing and indexing your page, make sure you use a redirect pointing to the new page URL.
10.) XML Sitemap Submission
An XML (Extensible Markup Language) Sitemap is a must have for your website pages. This is a machine-readable website map for all your pages you have published. You want these pages indexed by all the major search engines when first published, and anytime you update your website pages.
Eventually Google will get to your website and index your pages, but this can take a good amount of time. By creating and submitting an XML sitemap, you speed up the process, and get your updated pages indexed more quickly, which can really benefit your SEO.
TIPS:
- WordPress users should install the Yoast SEO plugin that was previously mentioned above. There is an excellent XML sitemap generator built into this plugin for easy use. You have the option to add in your pages, posts, archives, categories etc.
- There are many free and commercial XML site map generators to use and take advantage of. When you are ready to have your website pages indexed and found by your Web searchers, submit these sitemaps pronto!
- Use Google Webmaster Tools as well as Bing Webmasters to easily and quickly submit your sitemap pages and images.
- You can also upload your .xml file via FTP to your root directory. This is quick and easy for when you make future page updates.
11.) Internal and External Linking
Using internal and outbound links can really take your well written content to a new level of gaining awesome search results and more traffic. If your website is new and you want to quickly start gaining the trust of Google, outbound links to high authority sites is your answer.
A well structured content strategy along with a great content marketing plan, can greatly benefit from well placed and written internal and external links. The idea is to spread some page wealth throughout your entire website and not just focusing on the home page and contact us page.
TIPS:
- Add in at least one outbound link for each of your blog articles to a high authority website. This gains the trust from Google. You can add more but have at least one.
- Your internal and external links should be written in a natural, anchor text or contextual way. They should be relevant and provide value for the reader.
- Add in some of your long tailed keywords to the anchor text links, in a very natural flowing way.
- Make sure all your links are ‘follow links’, so Google will follow these externally or internally. This is where credit is given for the links and their perspective pages.
- A good practice for bloggers is to have your main article topic, and create links to your sub articles with their relevant sub topics. This works well when you are sharing your content and bringing in visitors via inbound marketing. They will engage and stay on your site when you have good and relevant articles linked from the one they are currently reading.
- Devise a deep linking system that works as a pyramid. Having your main page on top, linking to the main pages below and so on. You want to focus more of your link juice on the top (or most important) pages of the pyramid.
12.) Check for Broken Links and 404 Pages
Broken links and 404 pages lead to that heartbreaking dead end for your users and the Google search crawling spiders. There is nothing positive about any of this but can be remedied pretty quick and easily.
If any of your internal links are broken and not working properly, this can really confuse Google when they are crawling your website. In turn, your page crawl rate can drop and have an effect on your SEO.
Also, your visitors will tend to bounce off your site rather quickly if they click a link and end up at a dead end 404 page. So this would not be healthy for your traffic and SEO.
TIPS:
- Do a website audit with this fabulous and free tool: Screaming Frog. This will tell you everything you need to know about broken links and 404 pages.
- If you have found an outbound link on your site that has lead to a 404 page, either just remove the link, or link it to a relevant page that has a high page authority. Sometimes you can find better content to link to as well!
- You can use an excellent Chrome extension Check My Links to quickly find any broken links on your website.
- Although after some time, Google will not index any 404 pages you might have on your site, it is always good practice to do a 301 redirect of that 404 page to a page that is relevant on your website. WordpPress users are in luck as there are several
redirect plugins available. - Hire a good web developer that can do an efficient site audit and manually redirect any 404 pages to the desired source page.
13.) Schema Markup
Schema markup has become one of the latest revolutions of SEO and is being used more and more often. Learning Schema markup can take a bit of time, but gives you a plethora of options to spruce up your website search results.
Schema has a way of telling the search engine what things ‘mean’ not just what it says. An example would be that if I put the name ‘Brad Lindsey‘ on an article, and wrapped some Schema code around that, meaning ‘author of the article‘, then the information of Brad Lindsey is the author of the article, would show up in the SERPs.
There are many types of content that the schema data markup can be used for: Restaurants, articles, book reviews, events, products, movies, TV ratings, local businesses…and more!
- Check out this great article on how to get started using Schema Markup.
- Set some goals in mind for what you would like to have show up in the search results…events, reviews, article name etc.
- Use the Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.
- If you are really ambitious and want to lean all of the options available, then head on over to schema.org.
- Keep this information handy, as SEO results have been correlated to Schema Markup results being on the average of 4 places higher than the other results in the search query.
14.) HTTPS SSL Website Security
If you haven’t already noticed that most websites appearing in the search results have some sort of SSL security encryption (https: instead of http:), then it is time to look a little closer.
HTTPS has been declared a Google ranking signal. There has been a fair amount of debate on how much of a role this signal has on our SERPs.
In the minds of Google, SSL shows a sign of security and that the website can be trusted. HTTPS can act as a tiebreaker in the search results.
Despite all the debate of http vs https, having a secure connection for your business website is always a good idea anyway. SSL certificates are fairly inexpensive and sometimes free with a lot of hosting packages. To me, this is a no-brainer, I would just play it safe and switch to SSL (https).
TIPS:
- Check to see if your hosting service offers a free SSL certificate. Lots of them are offering this to their customers these days.
- Make sure all of your pages are redirected from http to https! This is crucial.
- For WordPress users, ask your host if they use the WordPress migration when switching to SSL. Everything will be redirected for you, and save you a bit of time. Also, make sure to have your WordPress website has a good firewall plugin installed for tighter website security!
- Don’t get too worried about your search rankings, as they might dip down for awhile as the https resolves. This usually can end up being a few days to a few weeks.
- Do your website transfer to https during a slow or down time for your business. As mentioned, your rankings might take a temporary dip.
- Add an https account to your Google Search Console and Analytics, as you will be getting your statistics here when your SSL resolves.
15.) Avoid Duplicate Content and Keyword Stuffing
By now, most of us probably know that duplicate content is certainly not a good thing! There are instances that Google is smart enough to recognize where duplicate content is simply unavoidable. Having links and other information in a universal footer is just one example.
If you are using a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress, you will run into some situations were duplicate content is inevitable. Google recognizes this and your website won’t suffer because of it. Many websites rank very well in the organic search results using WordPress. Our expert Portland SEO company strongly recommends WordPress for it’s robust blogging capabilities!
We have mentioned that ‘keyword stuffing’ is a thing of the past, and most points on this were covered in the content section. Just remember to keep a low keyword density in mind, and write naturally and let your keyword phrases come out where they feel logical for your readers.
TIPS:
- There are a number of tools for checking duplicate content on your web pages. My personal favorite is Copyscape. This is very reliable and inexpensive to use.
- Still use quotes from people in your content. This is one of those exceptions Google will overlook for duplicate content.
- Do not create duplicate Meta Titles and Descriptions!
- Do not publish your articles or content from your blog on other websites, via guest posting, in forums, Quora etc.!
- If you found someone stealing and using your content (from Copyscape or other tools), notify the website owner and ask them politely to take it down. I am am sure they know the consequences if this were reported to Google.
There is a lot to digest here, but hopefully these tips are useful for your business SEO improvement. When getting stuck on any of these tactics, get in contact and learn more from our SEO company Designatude today!
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]]>The post Creating Facebook Ads Why and How? appeared first on .
]]>With Facebook advertisements, you can gain a lot of email subscribers and build a massive tribe of people for getting to know and trust your services and brand. This will eventually increase the amount of money that you will earn from placing these social media ads.
Why are People Scared to Run Facebook Ads?
A lot of people seem to be scared to spend money on Facebook Ads these days. After making a first initial investment on one Facebook Ad, with no profit showing, they think it’s a failure.
Let’s take an example of a drop shipping store to understand this concept. The important method to finding a winning product for your business is to invest in 10-20 different products with different Facebook ads. This way you can find one or two winning products.
So, you are going to put $5 to $10 toward one product. You are running awareness based ads with a link that people can click on to ultimately buy your product. Now a lot of these ads are going to fail, they are not going to sell more than the ads cost. But out of those 10 to 20 ads, two will either break even or start making money.
And the benefit of that is, as they start making money, you can scale those ads to drive more traffic to your site and for more conversions.
Then you can start re targeting the people that are clicking on that product. The ones that don’t buy right away have a higher chance of coming back and buying later. So, it took 20 different ads to find a winning product.
That one product ad can then scale to be worth thousands of dollars for your Facebook income. If you’re not testing any product at all you will not be able to find your target audience and bestselling products. The successful Facebook Ads can really help propel your business traffic.
Perhaps if you are newer to running Facebook ads, and have any questions on targeting your audience and such, consult with a digital marketing company and see what they recommend to help get you started.
Three common mistakes people make in Facebook Advertising
There are two groups of Facebook advertisers. The ones that have actually tried Facebook ads and haven’t noticed any positive results, and have been severely disappointed. And then you have those who tried and got amazing results quickly.
The reason behind the failure are some of the mistakes in which the advertiser makes in their advertising approach.
Here are some common mistakes people make in Facebook Advertising:
Driving Traffic to the Homepage
First of all, a common mistake which so many people make when it comes to Facebook Ads is that they drive their traffic to the homepage of their website. Or to a page that is a sales page. Why is this a big mistake? Well quite simply, people that are on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, are not looking to buy anything.
They are not looking to visit a new dentist or looking to buy a manual on how to train a German shepherd. It’s not like search traffic in Google when someone types ‘chiropractor in LA’ – because they are really looking for one. But that’s not how Facebook Advertising works.
So, it’s important to understand that. Even if you have done your ads correctly, you may not be getting that many people to buy. What you should be doing instead, is building your email list. You should be offering what’s called “ethical bribe” to grab a name and email address in exchange for valuable information.
Daily Budget on Facebook
The reality is that you don’t need a massive daily budget to test whether an ad is working or not. Start off at $10 per day using the social network. And that’s more than enough to figure out if you’re going to convert in the appropriate measures. People going in with the mindset of spending a lot of money from the get go, with no testing, are setting themselves up for a budget disaster!
Your paid advertising budget should be balanced out with your overall SEO budget.
Creating a Dull Facebook ad
Another common mistake that people make in social media advertising is that they don’t focus on the ad much. The ad itself is very important for your advertising campaign! In your ad, you have a title, image and description.
Real quick, your title needs to isolate the exact target audience. Ad image is 60% of the reason why somebody clicks on the ad. So your image should instill curiosity among it’s target.
Lastly, don’t get emotionally attached to these ads, some will work and others won’t. You don’t need a lot of money to test one winning ad and that can skyrocket your sales. If you are not using Facebook for advertising, now is a good time to start.
With Facebook ads, you get a chance to do some testing. Figure out what works and what doesn’t. Then eventually, your business will get more traffic at a lower cost per click, and of course a higher “Click through rate”.
For any questions on Facebook advertising and running a campaign, don’t hesitate to contact Designatude today!
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]]>The post What to Look for In a Digital Marketing Agency appeared first on .
]]>But how do you choose the best digital marketing agency? What kinds of things should you look for? And what is going to make one agency stand out from the crowd over the others?
What does the Agency’s Website Tell You?
An agency’s website should be your first source for information. Their site should tell you a lot of background info before you even get around to talking with someone. The website should highlight their core competencies, what they feel that they do best. What are your primary needs for your business? Does the agency explain these things on their website?
You want to do your homework on a company before you ever even get to the point of speaking with a salesperson. Their website should be an integral part of that. What a company highlights on their website is going to give you a good and feel of what they do best.
Really Talk with Your Current Agency
If you are already working with an agency and trying to decide whether you should find a different one, this should really be one of your first steps.
When you are an existing client, often that agency does not want to disappoint you. Sometimes this may lead to them saying yes to requests they may not really be able to fulfill. They end up making promises they know they can’t keep.
It has more to do with a company trying to do everything they can to make a client happy, and sometimes some digital agencies will take on more than they can really handle. Find out if this is the case for your agency. Find out if there is any way of reconciling the differences, or if it is best that you look elsewhere.
Make your expectations clear from the beginning. That way, if what you are looking for is beyond their area of expertise, they can be up front about that.
Do Your Homework
Try to have some information and be familiar with an agency before you approach them. Do they list other clients they have worked with on their website? Reach out to them if you can. Find out what they feel the company’s strengths and weaknesses are. What do they do well? Is this in line with what you are looking for?
How are their search rankings? And some companies will leave reviews right in the search rankings. What are other people saying about this agency? Does it sound like their skills are in line with your expectations?
Check References
This goes hand in hand with doing your homework. You can always ask for references. Who have they already worked with? Who are they working with now? What makes them stand out and shine among the many different options that you have?
Once you are armed with all this information, you will be better equipped to make a decision.
Have and Be Clear About Your Expectations
The digital marketing agency you choose needs to be your partner in promoting your businesses and your goods or services. How much time are you willing to put into the partnership? How much are you willing to spend? What skills does your current team have? What skills do they lack?
Don’t make rash impulse decisions. Be sure that you think through what you are looking for and what you need. Think critically about the questions above and know what you are looking for.
What are Your Marketing Requirements?
Do you know what exactly is it that you need? What are you looking for the agency to do?
Some examples might include:
- Web design and development services
- Content creation and writing services
- Maintaining an updating a business blog
- Do you need an SEO consultant?
- Does your business need a fresh and new website?
- Are you in search of social media services?
- Are you looking for local SEO services?
These are just a few examples. Your list may look very different, or be more extensive. Objectives in outsourcing your marketing could include brand awareness, making sure that your branding is consistent, or even increasing traffic to your website, as well as other avenues. Increasing sales leads may be a significant focus for you.
These steps and tips are going to get you heading in the right direction. There are hundreds of different digital marketing agencies out there. However, not all are going to meet the needs of every business out there. If they did, there wouldn’t be so many different options. The most critical steps are going to be that you need to be clear about what you are looking for and do your homework. Don’t act without thinking.
For any questions on learning more about our digital marketing services, you can contact our seo portland team today…503-933-6950!
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]]>The post 9 White Hat Back Linking Practices for Top SEO in 2019 appeared first on .
]]>The Modern Day Guide on Building Back Links That Google Loves
Times have changed throughout the past few years for what practices have worked well for higher optimized SEO. Ranking your website well in the Google Search Engine entails a lot more than buying spammy back links, back links that are not relevant to your niche, and other outdated harmful grey and black hat techniques.
Since the inception of the Google Panda algorithm, there has been much more emphasis and effort made toward the ethical approach for building solid back links for your website SEO profile.
Modern day SEO services involve a good amount of outreach, relationship building, and a deeper effort toward earning those back links that Google can trust. One high authority, niche relative, or natural back link, is way more valuable than several spammy directory links that lack authority and trust.
Also, more and more websites are being penalized for lack of effort and cheap attempts for gathering low end back links that no longer have a place – in the eyes of Google.
Here are 9 highly effective ‘White Hat’ SEO back link techniques used by the modern day SEO experts.
1.) Guest Posting – Still Very Highly Effective
Guest ‘blogging or posting’ has been an SEO practice that has been widely used for some time now. Some SEO’ers have started to deem this technique as becoming ‘Black Hat” or ill advised by Google.
“Stick a fork in it, guest blogging is done.” – 2014
Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s Webspam Team
When I created our Designatude several years ago, I was convinced on becoming an experienced article contributor, and I still believe that Guest Posting practices are still alive and one of the more effective back linking methods used today. Based on my recent experience and results, I do find this to also be the case.
I feel that as long as your guest post is that of high quality (excellent, engaging, and relevant content for the reader), then any natural link you earn, should and will be in excellent standing with Google.
The main thing to remember, is the whole point for asking a blogger to accept your article/post on their site, is that you are giving them something of value for their readers to consume.
So, you are putting yourself in the position for submitting quality content that will be accepted and published, from the get go. For this all to work, it has to be beneficial for both parties involved.
By obtaining these valuable natural back links, your SEO link profile will become that much stronger. Just be cautious and don’t overuse this practice, and you will be safe from setting off any alarms with Google.
TIPS:
- Do a Google Search for “Write for us” + “blog niche (SEO blog)” and/or “Guest guidelines”. This helps you easily find some of the high authority websites that accept guest posts for your niche. Also, you can find out the blog guidelines, which you will need, if and when you get accepted by the website owner for a guest post.
- Track down the emails of website owners for article niches you would like to guest blog for. Email the owner and give them a genuine ‘pitch’ for how writing an excellent article for their readers, would benefit their site.
- In your email, remind the owner of how their website and articles have intrigued you, and that you have become a regular visitor. This will establish a healthy long term relationship and lead to more contributor opportunities for you on their blog.
- Make sure you are prepared, and have several ideas covering a variety of topics. Present some of these to the blog owner in your first email.
- Read the Guest Post Guidelines carefully. Should you not only meet all the requirements, but go above and beyond these. This will strengthen your relationship, and present more – future opportunities.
- Maintain your relationship with the blog owner. It shouldn’t be just about getting links to your website. Many of these bloggers will come to your website, and sometimes link to your articles that bring value to their readers.
- Should you need to hire a guest blogging service, make sure you get examples from real URL addresses to the website articles that the service provider guest blogged at.
2.) Find and Turn Mentions Into Links
Every once in awhile your website or brand might be ‘mentioned‘ on other blogs. This could happen through organic search or via social media. Often, your mention is not in the form of a link.
This is the perfect opportunity to contact the site owner and ask them to create a link for you!
You can use Google search, Google Alerts, and a variety of paid and non-paid SEO tools for tracking down these mentions of your brand and website.
Once you identify the source of where your brand or website is mentioned, it is all just a matter of contacting the website owner or Webmaster. Politely ask them if they would not mind linking this ‘mention‘ to the appropriate page on your website.
TIPS:
- Using tools such as: ahrefs.com, web.mention.com, buzzsumo.com, and many others…this will quickly help you track down and identify the source where your website or brand is mentioned.
- Once again, when you contact the owner or webmaster of the website that mentions your brand, be very polite. By asking for a link of your mention to your website in a polite manner, you will build some trust and establish a good relationship. This could lead to many other linking opportunities down the road!
3.) Broken Links & Link Building
What is Broken Link Building?
This is the process of identifying broken external links on high authoritative websites. Then, pitching the owner/webmaster that you can repair the 404 (broken) page by giving them the option to link to a page with similar content on your website.
These websites need to have been around awhile with several external links…which in time, the linked pages are no longer published.
There is a bit of work and effort in the process for finding the websites in a familiar niche and identifying the broken external links. With some patience though, this process can be learned and become very effective in obtaining awesome links.
This has been a practice that has gained popularity during the past few years. If this is not overused, the time and effort will greatly reap some nice rewards.
TIPS:
- To get started, do a thorough search for sites that are in the same familiar niche as your website/blog. There are some Chrome extensions that help you check the PR, Domain Authority, and unique back links – (MozBar, Quick SEO to name a few)
- Here are some useful tools for checking broken outgoing (external) links:
Check My Links
Ahrefs Site Explorer
Screaming Frog - Once you identify the pages that have the broken links, make sure the page is a good qualifier for linking to your website. Not having spammy links, too many external links (dilutes the link juice), high page authority, and relevant to your linking page.
- Contact and politely explain to the website owner about the detrimental broken link(s) on their page. Let them know that you have a similar in content page, of high quality, that they can easily link to. This quickly solves their broken link dilemma and earns you a great link!
4.) Sharing Content via Social Media
Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus are excellent platforms for sharing your articles to your followers and getting them to check out your blog/site.
When your visitors read and learn how useful your article content can be, chances are, they will link to your article as a good reference in an article they already have, or might be writing soon.
TIPS:
- Follow and find followers that are interested in your same industry niche. You want to share information from your website and articles that would be useful and engaging for your social media audience.
- Establish relationships with your followers and build trust. Retweets, Likes, Comments etc. will build a great foundation with your followers and gain you more.
- Be creative with your content sharing. Images will captivate your social media audience more than anything. When sharing an article link, always have a highly visual image and catchy title. There are several free open source image sites out there to use.
- If you have an infographic as part of your article content, certainly share it! Or look into creating infographics as part of your blogging content. These have attracted a great number of links for bloggers in the past few years.
- Keep a good mix of evergreen content and the latest trending topical content that you can find at places like Buzzfeed, Buzzsumo, and Google Trends.
5.) Blog Comments
Commenting on blogs within your industry niche can be an excellent way to build relationships. Although you receive a link to your website, this is not the original intention for commenting on blogs.
Most, if not all links, will be ‘no follow‘ links. Google does not follow these links, therefore not providing the link juice for increasing your website authority.
As mentioned, blog commenting is all about forming relationships. You search for some of the top blogs in your niche, actually read the full article, then ask your questions and provide some positive feedback on the subject.
Not only will the writer of the blog article appreciate your comment feedback, but the other commenters will take notice as well. In many cases, these interested and curious readers will go to your website/blog and search for some helpful information that they can refer and link to.
Also, if you establish trust with your fellow bloggers, eventually they won’t mind if you add some of your specific article links that would be useful for the topic and readers wanting to know more.
Earning editorial back links from blog commenting in your niche will really boost your SEO efforts!
TIPS:
- Find some of the top blogs in your industry niche. You want to not only learn information, but have a chance to share what you know on the subject as well.
- Read the whole blog post. Don’t just skim it and reveal the minimum knowledge you gained by doing that. Based on your comment, the author can tell if you are only there for your personal agenda.
- Write at least 3 lines of good, relative, and specific feedback for your comments. The whole idea here, is to get some readers to your website, based on the knowledge you present in your comment.
- Respond to any author responses and get engaged. Respect and etiquette come into play here. Authors appreciate this, and will keep you and your blog in mind, when it comes to referral links.
- Use your real name and an email address that is not gmail (if possible). Most comments are moderated and if you come off with a spammy name and gmail, your comment most likely will never be approved.
- Build a network of solid bloggers in your industry niche. Continue to enhance current relationships and add new ones within your network. This will increase several opportunities for guest posting, mentions, and referral links to your website.
- Stay consistent and try to comment at least once a day. Not only does this keep you in the groove with the network you are growing, but those ‘no follow’ links help balance out your back link profile, which provides more trust in the minds of Google.
6.) Testimonials
Testimonials are still considered a good ‘white hat” linking technique. Giving an honest and positive testimonial for a product or service you purchased – is a win win situation for both parties.
This can be a challenging practice, as not every website owner wants your testimony. Also, there are only so many testimonies to go around, as the smart website businesses don’t go over board with testimonials. It gives the visitor the belief that this service or product is too good to be true.
If you can succeed upon getting your testimonial published on some of the higher authority sites, then the time and effort certainly becomes worth it.
TIPS:
- Google is pretty stringent on back links being relevant to your website niche. Keep this in mind, when picking the businesses you would like to pitch for adding your testimony.
- Also keep in mind, that you need to have purchased a product or service from a business before submitting a testimony.
- When asking the business to submit your testimonial (with link), give them some live testimonials you have already made for other companies and bloggers.
- Only pitch companies that you have had a truly positive experience with. If the company has a negative reputation, this in turn can hurt your website reputation, if you are supporting this company’s service or product.
- Try and establish a line of communication by emailing the company with some positive feedback on your purchase. If they end up responding, the give them a pitch on how your testimony will increase their credibility.
7.) Info-graphics
Info-graphics made their way to the content marketing scene a few years back, and in my opinion, they are still an effective ‘white hat’ back linking technique.
Authors were just using featured info-graphics for their entire article post. I have seen more and more authors mixing up info-graphics with other content.
Depending on budget – this is a high risk/high reward opportunity for the taking.
There have been several attractive info-graphics out there, known to have brought in many links and shares for the blog publisher!
TIPS:
- There are several tools out there for creating info-graphics. Some are free and some are paid. Ask your web design company more about this.
- Prepare and make sure you have enough data for your topic.
- Stick with a cohesive color scheme and stay under 5 nuances of color.
- You should always brand your info-graphic, even if it is subtle. This is your property and a valuable one at that!
- There are several companies that create info-graphics, which can save you the time…and many cases, save you some money.
- Share your info-graphics on all the popular Social Media platforms – consistently and often.
8.) Scholarships
The .edu links are some of the highest authority and Google trusted links out there to obtain. They are golden and will do your SEO link profile wonders. One of the best ways to obtain these challenging to get back links, is by offering a scholarship.
This ‘white hat’ practice is alive and still going strong. This should be included in your link building campaign if your budget permits.
Budget is key as most minimum scholarships require $500. When all is said and done, the exposure, heightened reputation for your business, and .edu link…are totally worth the investment.
How this works: You create a scholarship requirements page on your business website. The students that are interested in applying for your scholarship will find your information and link on the .edu website, click the link and be brought to your website. That .edu link is priceless!
TIPS:
- Find the more popular and authoritative .edu websites that will accept your scholarship proposal. Do a thorough search on Google for schools that take in scholarships.
- See which .edu websites will let you add in an article for more exposure to your business on top of the valuable back link.
- Check Moz Site Explorer for Domain Authority and weigh in on whether the link is a high enough DA to make it worth the scholarship investment.
- Let your scholarship campaign be a lengthy one in time requirement for applicants. This will get your website more exposure and traffic from all those that apply. 6-12 months is a good time period.
9.) Charities Donations & Sponsorship
Organizing a charity event, donating to a charity, or sponsoring a community club, is an excellent way to build your business and brand reputation. These are also great ways to earn trustworthy and authoritative “white hat’ links.
You can organize a charity event and gather as many businesses to join. It’s no surprise that many businesses are open to this idea. You would have to be prepared to do a good amount of financial planning, but once again, the reputation and back links earned, are a great reward.
Searching for organizations and non profits that are running a charity drive or accepting donations is a great idea. After making a donation, these organizations will give you a ‘mention’ and link to your business web site.
Sponsoring a local community organization takes on the same role as donating, and can lead to brand reputation and some great back links as well.
TIPS:
- Try to stay within your business niche when organizing a charity, but you might have to shoot for other local options. This is okay, as their websites will have good content and trust, and this works fine with Google.
- When searching for organizations to donate to, make sure they are highly regarded and their website is not spammy. Also, check with Moz Open Explorer for their domain rank and weigh in on finding the highest ones. After all, you are making a considerable donation.
- You also want to make sure that the donation sites you are searching for, don’t have high numbers of links on the page your business link will be listed. This will dilute the link value you receive, when Google crawls these pages.
- Sponsoring a local event like a Marathon for cancer awareness or something of that nature, would call for a big budget, but would do wonders for your reputation and back links received.
- Be very cautious of any organization that is accepting donations. Be clear in your pitch, and ask kindly that they include a link to your business website. Google has gotten tougher on spammy sites accepting paid links as “donations”. Here is a great write up and list of some of those sites that you should stay clear of.
Takeaways
All these techniques and a few others have been more widely used in the past few years. Google has really cracked down on the spammy black hat practices, and for the better. As an Internet user, I really appreciate more predominant content rich and engaging sites resulting from the search engines.
The Web is getting cleaner and just more practical. My feeling, is that the practices listed above will be safe and sound for the few years to come. These are legitimate practices bringing legitimate results.
SEO has certainly evolved a great bit in recent years, and the algorithms continue to evolve on a daily basis. As a top SEO company, we find the importance of staying up to date on the current algorithms and any changes and updates to them. It changes rapidly.
Related article: 15 TACTICS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE FOR HIGHER SEO RANKINGS FOR 2019
Also, Content Marketing has been on the rise for the past few years. Using various ways for bringing your traffic and visitors to your website, is a strategy worth looking into. Blogging and Social Media have played pivotal roles for this type of marketing, and is gaining popularity rapidly.
I highly advise looking into Content Marketing as being a part of your Digital Marketing strategy moving forward. Organic Search Engine Optimization is getting more challenging as the rules continue to change as this article is being written.
Have questions on SEO or want a team of professionals to work out a custom back linking strategy with your online business? Contact our digital marketing company and we will gladly answer any questions you may have.
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]]>The post The Ultimate Guide For Choosing Your Business Social Media Marketing Platform appeared first on .
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Brian Solis
Unless your business has a really big marketing budget, or a lot of time for effective social networking, I find it best to focus most of your time on the 2 or 3 of the social media platforms which fit best with your business goals.
I find that one of the biggest mistakes a business/brand can make, is to leap into social media while having no clue on how the platforms work, and not having goals set in mind to begin with.
I am a big fan of the SMART technique when it comes to creating actionable social media goals.
SMART Goals
Specific: Be specific with what you would like to achieve! Are you wanting to raise brand awareness? Do you want to increase your sales? Improve your customer service? Strengthen your customer loyalty? is your target audience (B2B) Business to Business or Business to Consumer (B2C)?
Measurable: How will you know that your social media goals have been achieved? Which analytical tools will you use to track your progress?
Achievable: Are your goals realistic? When first starting to utilize social media, I suggest not aiming too high. It can be bit deflating when you are not experiencing high success right off the bat. Getting really adept to Social Media Marketing can take a bit of time, patience, and experimentation.
Relevant: Are your goals aligned with your company or business mission, vision, and values?
Time Specific: How soon do you want to achieve your goals? For adding a focus to your social marketing, have one overarching goal at a time. Example: “I would like to increase traffic to our website 15% in the next 3 months“.
There are a variety of methods and practices used for engaging your business and brand in the social media marketing world. Sharing content such as: articles, videos, images, infographics, lists, quotes, company news and events are just a few. Contact an experienced web designer if you need help with any of these tactics.
I am writing this article to specifically examine the target audience/demographics for each of the popular social media platforms, and adding some starting methods/tips in which to use these platforms to meet your business marketing goals.
Facebook is easily the most visited social network in the world with well over a billion users on desktop and mobile devices. Still the king of social networks, your target audience is pretty much guaranteed to be there.
The biggest percentage of users fall between the age range of 18-44 and there is a bit of an increase for male users. This is an excellent platform for brand awareness, paid advertising, business reviews, events and some content marketing.
- Create a Facebook business page and keep the name short. This will help if you decide to use Facebook ads. Then soon after, set up a Facebook vanity username and URL e.g. @yourcompanyname /www.facebook.com/yourcompanyname.
- Be very thorough, detailed and accurate when filling out your business information in the About section. Include your address, contact details, product info., website URLs separated by commas, and links to social profiles.
- Verify your page and get an official check mark on your cover photo. Go to Page Settings and choose Page Verification.
- Create an awesome cover photo! (820px X 312px is ideal, mobile renders 640px X 360px) Stay safe and keep text aligned in the middle. Use one powerful image that communicates who you are and what you do, or create a collage that highlights products, offers, and testimonials from one of your fans.
- Add a ‘call to action‘ button to your cover photo. “Book Now”, “Contact Us”, “Sign Up”, “Get Quote”, “Request Time”. When clicked, a Messenger thread is automatically created between your business and that person.
- You can include 5 featured photos at the top of your Facebook page. This can help show off the different elements of your business. This option sits underneath your profile photo.
- Upload a profile photo (180px X 180px) that accommodates your business. This could be your logo or a personal profile image. This will have the greatest influence overall, as it is seen on all your posts in the News Feed of followers and on your timeline.
- Create custom tabs to display on the column on the left hand side of your page. This helps promote your products and services. Add videos, contests, testimonials, news feeds, social links and more. Use Facebook search to find apps. Check out “freemium” services like: http://www.pagemodo.com/.
- Add a Facebook page plugin and share buttons to your website. Go to: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/page-plugin.
With Twitter averaging 6,000 posts per second, this social media platform can be intimidating at first. The good news is, once you get set up and going, you can share a variety of content and have the flexibility to share often! Brand awareness, content marketing, and customer service will pay big dividends from your Twitter business account.
Engagement and interaction is made simple on Twitter. You can like, retweet, reply and quote for all posts submitted into your timeline. Twitter allows you to promote your business but gives you a more personal voice as well. This helps establish relationships as your content can be varied and reflect a bit more about your business and individual personality.
- Create a short username most likely your business/brand name for your account. It will resemble something like: www.twitter.com/yourbusinessname. Twitter allows you to easily change your username, just use caution and update web links with your new username.
- Write an engaging Twitter Bio. Provide who you are, what you do, and why people should follow you. Use ideal keywords for search, and a few hash tags are okay. Use all characters available!
- Use an effective Twitter profile image. This should either be your logo or a great head shot of you smiling. This image appears in all your tweets, so it is important to present a professional first impression for future followers!
- Create a custom Twitter header image (1500 X 500 pixels). Simple branding, highlighting promotions, featuring customers, reviews, and spelling out your mission statement are a few strategies to use. First impressions play a huge role in the fast paced world of Twitter!
Instagram is sought out by more than 800 million monthly active users, and is the fastest growing social platform. The site is especially appealing to the millenials and younger audiences. It is ideal to promote products from online stores of fashion, art, decoration, travel, beauty, etc. It has become a reference of inspiration and information.
If you have your own brand, you really should be on Instagram. This social platform allows you to share photos and videos for 15 seconds.
- Instagram is a very visual platform suitable for fashion, health, beauty and lifestyle businesses. It’s a perfect social media platform to present your literal image to users. Choosing your images well will increase your audience engagement.
- Understand the ‘Culture of Instagram‘. Quality images over quantity. Avoid selfies and blurry night club photos. Take the time for excellent editing and “Wow” your visitors with carefully crafted and alluring images that represent you and your brand.
- Optimize your Instagram profile! Use all 150 characters and give your followers a reason to follow you. Tell them what makes you unique and remind them that they will be notified of special offers and promotions.
- Make sure your profile photo fits nicely within the allotted circle!
- Don’t forget to add the URL of your company’s website! It is the only clickable link you have.
- Keep the tone light and fun. Use relevant keywords for your SEO, Emojis if the mood fits, and business specific hashtags.
- Make sure you link to your Instagram business page from your website or blog, as well as other social media platforms you are using.
YouTube
YouTube is the second biggest search engine today, and processing 300 billion searches a month! Video marketing can be a valuable asset for your business, and promoting relevant, quality videos on your YouTube channel will do wonders.
Although some may question that this is a social media platform. In my mind, there is no doubt that it is. You gain subscribers, you have comments, and you build relationships.
30% of users are between 45 and 54 years old, 22% are between 35 and 44 years old and 18% between 25 and 34. It is a key piece to attract consumers through tutorials, video blogs, branded content and experiential marketing.
Brands use this medium to make viral campaigns producing original, entertaining and high quality videos.
This is an excellent platform for brand awareness and content marketing!
- Choose an optimal YouTube URL and link it to your Google+ account. Keep your username on the shorter side and have it reflect your brand.
- Take full advantage of your YouTube “About” section. Use this to sell your channel and the benefits to potential subscribers. Include all relevant social media and web links.
- Fill out a keyword rich description which will inform your viewers all about your channel, what they will gain from it, and why they should subscribe. The first 45 or so characters of this will show up in the search engines!
- Visit your Channel Settings’ “Advanced” menu and you will see an option to associate your channel with your website.
- Add a creative banner that fits your brand and is optimal and responsive for all devices. YouTube recommends 2560 x 1140 pixels.
- Create a short eye catching trailer for your Channel the only new non-subscribers will see (around 30 seconds). This is a great chance to show the why they should subscribe. Check out Animoto.com for video making tools!
Since launching in in 2010, Pinterest has reached 175 million active users and continues to keep growing. Pinterest is the second biggest driver of traffic, next to Facebook, and it is no surprise that thousands of businesses around the world use this platform to showcase their brand.
Whether pins are posted by an individual or business, they have a few things in common: they pair super images with content that solves a problem, inspires a user, offers something desirable, or appeals to a hobby or activity.
75% of Pinterest users access this platform via mobile. With the rapid rising of mobile users, this social media platform plays well for gaining overall traffic. This is a content marketing dream, as your pins (images and now videos), can link up to your website products and landing pages.
Pinterest Starting Tips:
- Sign up as a business or convert your personal Pinterest account. This option had become available in 2012. Once you have set up a business account, you will have access to a selection of business specific resources. These include analytics tools, case studies, and links to Pinterest buttons and widgets you can place on your website or blog to promote your activity on the site.
- Craft an effective username. Keep this short, simple, and memorable. You will want to publicize this online and in the real world. An example: (www.pinterest.com/yourcompanyname)
- Use the ‘About‘ section to your advantage. This appears at the top of your profile page and describes your brand and what you do. It will also appear under your URL in the Google search results. Which is crucial for including your top 2-3 keywords most relevant to your business.
- Don’t overwrite your About section. It should generally fall in the area of 160 characters. This is plenty.
- Add your website to display in the little globe icon. Show your users they can trust your business by getting your website verified. Click the “Verify your website” button next to the box in which your entered your URL.
- Upload a fantastic profile image! This should either be your company logo, or if you are the figure head of your business, this should be a personal, smiling and happy head and shoulders shot. This should fit in the 200px x 200px dimension.
- Customize the showcase at the top of your Pinterest profile. Take advantage of showcasing your five most important pin boards in the looping carousal. This can include a collection of your latest products or popular pins from the past.
LinkedIn is the central hub on the Internet for connecting professionals and businesses that want to market their expertise and skills to the world! LinkedIn is more of a professional site, and not necessarily for social enjoyment. This site acts as a professional networking event, so your approach should be treated as such.
As an individual, you can establish a professional profile, control the top search results for your name, and build a broad network of professional connections, tap into their knowledge, and discover new business opportunities.
A LinkedIn Company Page is a place for companies to provide more information about themselves and their products and services. Also, they can provide job opportunities and expert insights.
Any LinkedIn user can follow a Company Page to receive and interact with updates to their home page. This will drive brand awareness to a personal profile page and help with social engagement.
Research by LinkedIn has revealed that you only need 100-200 followers of your Company Page to reach the tipping point to start making an impact and driving engagement. It is very ideal to have a complete personal profile and Company Page acting together for maximum engagement in the LinkedIn community!
At the moment, the majority of users are men with a technological profile, at 57%, and only 44% are women.
- Personal Profile and Company Page: Fill them in completely
Have both of these pages set up as either page might be the first port of call for a potential client. You want to make a good impression for both pages! - The Experience section is the most important part of your personal LinkedIn profile. Here, you can really expand upon your current and past roles, responsibilities, and your achievements. This is also an excellent place to drop in some relevant keywords, which increase your chances for appearing higher in the LinkedIn search.
- To make a prospect’s job easier, use short paragraphs or bullet pointed lists in your Experience section. If you use bullets, start your sentences with verbs (past tense verbs for past positions, present tense verbs for present positions).
- The Intro section is also crucial. This is your first opportunity to write an overview or statement about who you are, what you can offer your audience, and what makes you unique and desirable to prospective connections. Express who you are as a person. Use your Company Page to tell people more about your company and company overview.
- Create a Company Page: Sign into LinkedIn as a personal user and click on the “Work” link in the bar at the top of the site. Click the ‘Create a Company Page’ link in the drop down menu. You must have a company email address, e.g., brad@designatude.com. You cannot use an address with a domain such as Gmail or Outlook.
- Personal Profile and Company Page: add a profile photo, logo, and banner images. LinkedIn profile pics are 200 X 200 pixels. Be smart about this and don’t post a pic of you in a swim suit at the beach, but a head and shoulders shot of you looking smart and presentable works great!
Add in an awesome cover photo! These are 1536 X 768 pixels. Use this image to showcase your brand personality, help people understand who you are, and what you do and how you can help them. A few ideas would be to include a photo of you, your contact details (email, phone, Twitter handle etc.), and a call to action.
Snapchat
Launched in September of 2011, Snapchat has garnered 150 million users daily, and in its own right, has become a very effective social media marketing tool. Millennials eat, breathe, and sleep with this popular app.
This video and photo sharing app is worlds apart from its rivals: all messages shared between friends via Snapchat, will self-destruct, never to be seen again! If you switch your thinking to view that this time limit is an opportunity, rather than a limitation, then this tool can be very effective for your business marketing!
When a customer is notified of a Snapchat message, first – they will be excited about the mystery it holds, and second – they know as soon as they open it, the need to pay close attention as they know that soon it will disappear forever!
By today’s standards, 10 seconds of someone’s undivided attention like this – especially on a medium as personal as mobile, is as valuable as gold!
Snapchat Starting Tips:
- FOMO (fear of missing out) – is one of the biggest emotional triggers for brands on social media. Use Snapchat to involve humor, sharing secrets, having fun, holding small conversations, and capturing share-worthy moments. The promise of unique, one of a kind – real time content, is your customer’s incentive for following you.
- Take advantage of Snapchat stories. Snapchat stories allow you to join multiple snaps together, to create a rolling 24-hour reel of content for all your followers to enjoy again and again.
- Think about the three pillars of storytelling: each one needs a logical beginning, middle and end, where each pillar of the story gives your fans a reason to view to the end.
- Brands with successful view rates tend to keep their snaps brief, and their stories anywhere between 1 and 2 minutes long.
- Don’t make the mistake of creating mixed messages for stories that don’t connect with your audience!
- Use Memories to develop new, repackage and repurpose content. As of July of 2016, you can now create content in any app or software to be uploaded into Snapchat. This opens up a whole new world of opportunity. Now you can repurpose this content with very little effort. For example: A long YouTube video can be chopped into 10 second clips to be repackaged into a serialize Snapchat story.
- Ask simple questions: A shoe brand might ask their fans something as simple as “Show us your shoes!” or “Snap us a photo when you’re in our store!”
- Show sneak previews: Snapchat is a great platform for showing a sneaky peak behind the curtain of your business. You can tease in some news, a new product launch, or an upcoming offer. Possibly tease out the content over the course of several snaps to keep it digestible and encourage people to look out for more!
- Offer coupons or special offers: As the promotion will be seen so briefly, make sure that your message is extra clear and succinct. An example: “15% off today only with promo code SNAP”. Consider sending out a heads up snap, alerting people to the day and time the promotion will be landing in their inbox.
- Have fun, be funny: Snapchat’s majority audience is teenagers and young adults and the app is dominated by fun and humorous pieces of content. If your brand image allows, don’t be afraid to have a little fun. Doodle on top of your snaps, use Emojis and stickers to tell a story, pull a face, or just surprise your audience with the use of your marketing imagination!
Five tips for good practices on social media platforms
After choosing the most effective social media platforms for your business toward reaching your target audience, it is important to take into account some practical advice when starting to use these tools. Here are a few tips:
- Produce a and optimal content strategy for each social media platform.
- Research all pertinent logistics and collect data for your target audience.
- Humanize your brand, especially in the area of customer service.
- Listen to complaints from users with attention and patience, and offer a quick response.
- Take advantage of the analytics marketing tools to better understand your target customers and ROI.
Social media marketing (SMM) can’t be ignored. Using the most effective platforms and an optimal strategy, your business can easily achieve desired results in no time. Remember that it is not about quantity, but about the quality of the most effective platforms which allow you to capture your target audience and help you grow your brand.
Your social media marketing is certainly connected to your SEO efforts. No mistake about it. It is important to remember how successful SMM will have a positive affect on your search results as well!
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]]>The post 13 Awesome Free Stock Photo Websites For Web Designers Bloggers & Social Media Marketers appeared first on .
]]>Thousands of free stock photos at your fingertips!
As a web designer, blogger and social media/content marketer, having a wide array of free stock photos to choose from, is like a lit up child in a candy store with an unlimited budget! SEO Companies are stressing how important images are in Google search today. Today, in 2019, images have to be clicked and as a result, they take you directly to the website!
While using your own original photos for business websites and blogs is ideal, in most cases, this is really difficult to achieve. Another alternative…buy stock photos. But the best alternative?? Get your photos free with no hassle!
Yes, there are some amazing photographers putting their work out there for all of us to use legally, copyright free, and in the list I have provided below, no credit or attribution required.
Most of these awesome websites and their contributors are working under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license which states – “You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. ”
A few of the sites have their own licenses that reiterate not selling these free photos in any way. They might politely ask for you to link to their website. You might have to also create a free account on a few of these to download the free photos.
I listed these sites in the order of what I use most frequently – based on the variety and number of images.
Pexels
There are thousands of very creative and original photos here.
You can browse by ‘photo color’, ‘popular photos’ and ‘popular searches’.
There is only one size to choose from and images are in .jpeg format.
No sign up required. License
Pixabay
Lots of images, vector – .png and .jpg, as well as illustrations and videos.
A variety of different categories to browse through.
There are different size options for download.
No sign up required. FAQ
Kaboompics
Lots of creative and original images with color pallete options.
A variety of different categories to browse through.
There are different size options for download in .jpg format.
No sign up required. License – FAQ
StockSnap
A various amount of creative and original images (some sponsored images).
A variety of different categories to browse through.
There is a one size option for download in .jpg format.
No sign up required. License
Gratisography
Lots of creative and original images by Ryan McGuire.
A variety of different categories to browse through.
There is a one size option for download in .jpg format.
No sign up required.
Picjumbo
Great selection of creative images. Buy picJumbo a coffee!
A variety of different categories to browse through.
There is a one size option for download in .jpg format.
No sign up required. FAQ – Terms
Freestocks
A great selection of creative images.
A variety of different categories to browse through.
There is a one size option for download in .jpg format.
No sign up required. License
Skitterphoto
A modest selection of creative and original images.
A variety of different categories to browse through.
There is a one size option for download in .jpg format.
No sign up required. License
Scatterjar
A modest selection of creative and original food images for ‘foodies’.
A variety of different food and beverage categories to browse through.
There is a one size option for download in .jpg format.
No sign up required. License
Burst
A modest selection of creative and original images sponsored by Shopify.
Has a variety of categories to select and browse through.
There are High/Low resolution options for download in .jpg format.
Sign up is required. License on home page
Shot Stash
A modest selection of creative and original images.
Has a good variety of categories to select and browse through.
There is a one option for .jpg format (right click and save img).
No sign up is required. License
Raw Pixel
An excellent selection of creative and original images.
Has a good variety of categories to select and browse through.
There is one option for .jpg, PSD and .png format.
Sign up is required. License
Life of Pix
An excellent selection of creative and original images.
Has a good gallery to browse through.
There is one option for .jpg format, and a link to free videos.
No sign up is required. License
Wrapping it up…
I have managed to find most of my images that I use for articles, websites, and Content Marketing from the list above. I deeply appreciate the website creators and awesome photo contributors for making this all possible.
Some of these websites accept PayPal and other ways of donating, and I highly suggest doing so, if you have the extra money on hand. Also, sharing these websites and the photo contributions via social media can only further your online reputation and Internet Karma!
Related article: 15 TACTICS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE FOR HIGHER SEO RANKINGS FOR 2019
Fro any inquires on web design, blogging, or SEO, get in touch with Designatude today!
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]]>The post Speeding Up Your WordPress Website in Less Than 5 Minutes appeared first on .
]]>The intention for publishing this article is to inform WordPress users that are not super technical savvy, on a quick and easy method of speeding up your WordPress site. There are plenty of options out there, some free and some paid, and I will go into a few of those.
I look at this method as being a good temporary upgrade, while giving you time to decide on other alternatives that will give your website near perfect scores for loading speed optimization.
Why is your website speed so important?
Well, first of all, nobody likes a website that takes forever to load. Most visitors, and myself included, will bounce off a website that is taking more than 3 seconds to load. Call me a speed snob, but reality is, that a slow loading site is in big trouble from a visitor and traffic stand point.
Second, as I write this article, Google has officially made website speed a Ranking Signal to become effective for the upcoming months. So from a visitor experience and top Search Engine Optimization results, having a quick loading website is essential for surviving and ranking well in the SERPs.
Related article: 15 TACTICS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE FOR HIGHER SEO RANKINGS FOR 2019
Some Methods for Checking Your Website Speed
There are several free tools out there for checking your website speed. Most of these give you a grade based on several of the factors involved for better speed optimization. For the method I am using and suggesting, I used these 2 tools:
Google Page Speed Insights
Pingdom Website Speed Test
My results after applying my free 5 minute method:
Unfortunately Google did not give me my speed grade, as they are now testing their Beta version of Insights, which I haven’t upgraded to yet. I will update the results for that as soon as I test on the Beta version.
Okay, so these scores are not perfect, but still better than many of the websites out there. I want to emphasize that this is the Free Upgrade. I used 2 WordPress plugins and the task was done in less than 5 minutes.
Image compression, website cache, and combining/minimizing files.
I have found these to be 3 of the most effective methods for greatly increasing website speed. Although there are several variables that come to play for website speed optimization, image compression, site cache, and combining/minimizing files, is a great start. I will be getting into a more in depth look at all the factors that affect your website speed, in my next article.
2 easy to install WordPress plugins.
First off, I installed the very popular cache plugin WP Fastest Cache. It has been downloaded and used by over a 1/2 million WordPress users!
So just download or easily install this through your WordPress dashboard. I checked off the following available free options:
This is the free version! For being free, this plugin does a fantastic job right out of the box. The web designers offer a paid version for just $39.99 that includes image compression and other great functions for increasing your site speed. For the low price, I highly recommend considering the premium version.
The second plugin I installed is the EWWW Image Optimizer plugin. Also, downloaded and used by over a 1/2 million WordPress users!
For this plugin, you can use the basic default settings, and it works just fine. They offer an inexpensive premium option as well.
Simple, quick and effective!
Well, there you have it. 2 very easy to install and use plugins. Both of these free, and very popular for a reason. They both offer inexpensive premium options as well.
Just by taking 5 minutes and using the free versions of the plugins above, my website became faster than over 90% of my competitors!
***I have tried several cache plugins that were tasking to set up, some did wonky things to my site, and were not as effective as the free version of WP Fastest Cache plugin.
These developers did an excellent job making this plugin very effective, and super easy for WordPress users to employ
For any questions on WordPress Web Design, get in contact with Designatude today!
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]]>The post What is Readable Content? Why Bloggers Should Care appeared first on .
]]>By now, many of us have heard that Google is more and more into web content being readable. Their latest algorithm is based more on human behavior. When humans have a hard time reading your web page content, they tend to bounce off quickly!
So, the relevance of writing good readable content, not only appeals to Google, but all your visitors as well.
Let’s take a look at how good readability can be achieved and how this helps for stronger SEO.
Make sure your content is readable at least for an 8th grade student
(yes you heard it right)
There are several readability tests out there. One of the more popular ones would be the Flesch–Kincaid grade level test. The formula base for the grade level readability can be seen below:
Based on an expert SEO opinion by Yoast, your Flesch–Kincaid readability score should be at least 60. The equivalent of an 8th grader. An even higher score is totally recommended.
If you run your website on WordPress, you are a fortunate one here. Yoast has a fabulous SEO plugin that has a Readability page score nicely built in. You can get a real time score while writing your articles for the following:
- Flesch Reading Ease test score percentage
- Percentage of sentences containing more than 20 words (recommended maximum 25%)
- The amount of words under each sub heading does not exceed 300 words
- None of the paragraphs are too long
- Percentage of sentences containing transition words (recommended minimum 30%)
- Percentage of sentences that contain passive voice (recommended maximum 10%)
Passive Voice: What is it?
Passive voice produces a sentence in which the subject receives an action.
Transition Words: What are they?
First of all, transition words are used to connect one idea to another. They are used to create a relationship in a sentence.
Yoast offers a premium plugin which gives you even more options for your readability page testing. Head on over there and check it out!
Another awesome readability tool we use…Readable.io
readable.io really does a thorough job analyzing the readability for your web pages. You can also submit just your text if you are writing your article in a text document. Most of all, their powerful tools analyze three different areas:
Readability Grade Levels – Readability Scores – Text Quality
First of all, not everyone is a perfectionist, including myself, but from using these tools from readable.io, I have a completely different perception for writing a highly readable blog article.
Head over to the readable.io blog for some very useful information on all the factors that go into writing great readability articles.
They offer a current monthly subscription for only $5 to use all their fabulous tools…which is a steal, in my mind.
What have we learned so far…and few more tips
- Write short sentences – keeping most under 20 words
- Keep paragraphs short – 3 to 5 lines is ideal
- Mix your paragraphs and sentences up well making for cohesive white space
- Make sure the amount of words under each sub heading is less than 300 words
- Keep your Flesch Reading Ease score above 60 at a minimum
- Don’t start a sentence with the same word 3 times in a row
- Include transition words in your sentences for the recommended minimum of 30%
- Make sure your sentences use passive voice under the recommended maximum 0f 10%
- Be mindful of not using too many syllables in words and sentences
- Stray away from long technical words and technical jargon
Wrapping Things Up
I have delved into the aspects that make good blog articles readable from the stand point of what Google is currently wanting. This holds up for the current year of 2019. The Google web search is based more on semantic search, focusing on the searcher’s intent. Any experienced SEO Consultant will agree on the importance of great readability for your website content.
Related article: 15 TACTICS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE FOR HIGHER SEO RANKINGS FOR 2019
Using strong readability skills for article writing, will play really well with Google search and better indexing! It is not officially a ranking signal, but when you think about it, Google’s Rank Brain is emulating human behavior, and as humans, we tend to be engaged with reading articles that are easier on the eyes and mind.
For any questions on content marketing and readability, feel free to contact us at Designatude.
Sources:
yoast.com
https://readable.io/
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