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  • Common Pay Per Click Advertising Misconceptions To Be Aware Of

    Love them or hate them, pay-per-click advertising campaigns are (and have been) a staple of the social media advertisement space for years. Many of these campaigns have been directly responsible for increasing businesses profits tremendously while some have cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars with little to nothing to show for it. Part of the problem lies in the so-called “best practices” of running an effective PPC campaign. Here are some common pay per click advertising misconceptions to be aware of and the truths behind them.

    Common Pay Per Click Advertising Misconceptions

    Click-Through Rate is the Most Valuable Metric

    CTR may be the main goal targeted for certain campaigns, and that is generally fine. If that’s the case for yours, then you needn’t pay any attention to this one, but for the vast majority of campaigns run by businesses, there are other factors at play that need to be paid attention to. Conversions per impression, for instance, may paint a more vivid picture of the overall profitability of your campaign. While it might be tempting to set your rotation to optimize for clicks above all else, this is a dangerous move to make. Just because a potential customer is more likely to click through on your campaign, doesn’t mean that he or she will convert just as easily.

    Using “Exact Match” Will Always Yield the Best Results

    Depending on the nature of your campaign (and your niche in general), it may be prudent to utilize exact match instead of broader keywords or phrases. However, when it comes to a high-volume target, this often is not the case. The narrower your point of entry is, the harder it is to scale down your cost per acquisition, leading to a less-than-effective campaign, all told.

    Keyword Position Doesn’t Matter/Keyword MUST Be Number 1

    During many campaign runs, advertisers will generally not care if their keywords drop below 5 to 6 for their respective categories. By the same token, many will ensure that their keywords never drop below the number 1 spot across their entire campaign. There is a happy medium to be had here, and it’s all in the details. Your average spot being high up is very important, but if you are in the 2 to 4 range, you may be paying less for virtually the same results as the number 1, per category. It is important to “play the game” from keyword to keyword, optimizing the most effective ones and underplaying the under-performing.

    Using Broad Match Alone is Enough For A Campaigns Success

    This one is a bit tricky in practice to perfect, but the idea is that lots of brands will use very broad terms with no additional information, almost in a “set it and forget it” fashion. While this approach can be effective in large volume campaigns where CTR is the king, adding in a few negatives, or even a modified broad match term can really do a lot to lower the overall cost per acquisition, increasing the results of your campaign dramatically!

    Keep these misconceptions in mind when planning your next PPC campaign.

  • The Five-Step Guide to Mobile Marketing Automation

    The Five-Step Guide to Mobile Marketing Automation

    By Sophorn Chhay

    Your mobile marketing strategy might be watertight, but amazing products won’t sell themselves. If you’ve covered all the bases, and if you’ve anticipated future marketing forecasts, it might be time to consider automation. Mobile marketing automation is extremely important for online marketing because it directly affects the customer’s user experience. Likewise, if a customer has a poor mobile experience, chances are your business will suffer.

    Mobile Marketing Automation

    Firstly, assuming you’ve developed a mobile app, streamline your platform for quick downloads and a seamless UI. Once you’ve created the bare bones, it’s time to automate. Mobile marketing automation engages customers. It drives sales and garners results with custom-tailored options. Your brand and app alike deserve a personalized touch, and your consumers will thank you for automated messages along communication channels. Check out our rundown of mobile marketing automation below, and take advantage of the excellent strategies the world’s professionals have crafted:

    Step One: Target Consumer Segments

    Your consumer population is big, and it deserves a properly mapped-out marketing channel to succeed. You need to segment your users into separate categories before you can automate your mobile strategy, and you need to harness effective campaign plotting before succeeding with an SMS rollout. Segment your users by the following criteria:

    ● Area context, like Location, weather and nearby events
    ● Demographics, like marital status, gender and age
    ● Active time of day, work hours and weekend behavior

    Once you’ve divided your population, you can begin targeting them with specialized messages.

    Step Two: Trigger App Engagement

    Once you’ve created a segment plan, it’s time to impact users with app engagement. While SMS output is “the name of the game,” further engagement via mobile app ensures a rock-solid automated mobile marketing platform.

    Mobile apps are integral to your marketing strategy. In fact, they constitute 89 percent of your consumer’s media time on mobile. While planning your advertisement campaigns, direct users to your app platform via automation. Once you have, automate them further by:

    ● Prompting them to take action
    ● Encouraging them to revisit your app
    ● Assist them with activity completion

    Step Three: Establish Direct Connection

    Mobile automation benefits consumer connection, too. Automated SMS programs, when properly aimed, can direct users to your webmail platform. Moreover, they can institute a series of prompts capable of garnering direct communication channels.

    While an SMS platform is already “direct connection,” it’s still automated. Your key goals should rest in the consumer’s need to connect further. Here, benefits and location-based services are handy. Within the next three to four years, 94 percent of CMOs plan to execute mobile app strategies. Your benefits must extend from your SMS campaign, because a huge disconnect exists between business providers and cross-channel consumers.

    Step Four: Direct Automation Towards Social Media

    Social media is a natural partner of mobile marketing automation. Why? Because it garners big numbers, shares a lot of content and fosters in-depth relationships. Social media is also the home to Millennials. Currently, 50 percent of Millennials utilize their smartphones to research services, products and brand information. They’re a key demographic to your success, and they’re thriving on Facebook and Twitter.

    When possible, direct your consumers from automated SMS campaigns to your social media presence. Furthermore, workbackwards. Social media is a fantastic reverse-op source for cross-platform potential. Your social media presence should link users to your e-commerce site, encourage text communication and invoke direct communication to your brand.

    Step Five: Study the Data, and Provide Benefits

    Consumers like value, and they’ll connect with your brand if you can provide it. Once you’ve automated your platform, discover their preferences with data-gathering analysis. If you can discover their preferences, you won’t need to automate on smaller levels.

    Such smaller levels are vital to your strategy, too, as small consumer segments constitute a huge portion of return brand visitors. The market will change, but loyal followers will stay. Check out performance indicators, and personalize all of your marketing efforts. When possible, gather information from sales participants, and measure which strategies enhance your brand’s perceived value.

    While you’re at it, check out these five tips for effective bulk texting strategies.

    The consumer is always right, and they should be examined for their reasoning. Ironically, mobile marketing automation’s end-game is to reduce the need for automation. Automation providers sheer numbers, but long-lasting brands deliver value and drive consumer behavior. Don’t worry, you’ll always benefit from automation, but your brand’s durability, in the long haul, will carry itself into the newest stages of smartphone and consumer behavior development.

    Author Biography
    Sophorn Chhay
    Sophorn is an inbound marketer specializing in attracting targeted visitors and generating sales qualified leads. Through Trumpia’s mass text messaging automation solution he helps businesses and organizations communicate effectively with their customers or members.

  • 5 Time Saving SEO Tactics That Do NOT Work For Marketing

    5 Time Saving SEO Tactics That Do NOT Work For Marketing

    Search engine optimization (SEO) may seem daunting. That is why the temptation to take short cuts can be great. However, as Google’s analytic capabilities increase, it can spot short cuts much more easily. This will result in a loss of trust between the search engine and your site. In the same way that regaining trust between people takes much longer than losing it, building your trust with Google can take time. Google algorithms are becoming more and more adept at reading sites. This means that they can quickly determine whether the content on your site is legitimate or if it has been designed specifically to manipulate the search engine.

    Google recently acquired an artificial intelligence company which will only enhance its ability to fully understand your website. This means that proper SEO techniques will be more important then ever. With that in mind, you should avoid doing these time saving SEO tactics that DO NOT work to ensure that your website stays on the right side of Google. We elaborate on these tactics below.

    5 Time Saving SEO Tactics That DO NOT Work

    Avoid Duplicate Content

    Because so much emphasis is placed on content when it comes to SEO, there is additional pressure on site owners to produce as much content as possible. What happens is that someone decides to copy and paste large portions of text from one page of their site onto multiple other pagesin an effort to increase their size and web presence. Some webmasters attempt to rearrange the order of their paragraphs or sentences in order to make it appear less obvious that content has been copied. At this point, Google’s algorithms are intelligent enough to spot this tactic. When content is duplicated, it creates what Google regards as low quality or “thin” content, which may have size, but little useful information. Google avoids promoting sites like this.

    Meta tags are another area where duplication can be tempting but ultimately harmful. These tags are found in the backend of a website and allow Google to view a brief description of the site’s content. Repeating the same description across multiple tags will appear suspicious to the algorithm and result in lowered search engine results.

    Occasionally sites have a need for duplicate content. For example, if you have an online shoe store, there is no need to write a new product description for each size of the same shoe. However, it is important to understand how Google may view these duplicated descriptions.

    Footer Links

    Because footer links appear on each page of your website, it can be tempting to change the names of these links to the keywords associated with your industry. However, Google is well aware of this tactic and will rescind your trusted status if it is discovered.

    Buying Links or Using Link Farms

    One way to increase traffic to your site is by securing backlinks on other websites. This will increase your site’s importance in the “eyes” of Google. The fastest way to increase the amount of links to your site is by purchasing them. This tactic actually used to work well, but after a high profile case of link-fraud with JC Penny, Google has enhanced the ability of its performance metrics to spot this kind of link traffic. The same goes for link farms. If Google finds that you are participating in a link farm site, the penalties can be severe.

    Now that you know the common time-saving SEO tactics to avoid, you can focus on delivering quality content. It may take longer, but the results will be well worth your effort and you will not have to worry about trying to bounce back from a negative marking.

  • 4 Game Changing SEO Tips for Small Business in 2016

    2015 was an interesting year for SEO experts. Google changed its algorithm to favor mobile-friendly sites, a machine-learning artificial intelligence is now helping deliver search results, and a dozen of other minor updates were released. Now, all eyes are on 2016 and the trends that will dominate this upcoming year. To help provide a better understanding of the search landscape for small businesses, here are four game changing SEO tips for small business in 2016.

    4 Game Changing SEO Tips for Small Business in 2016

    1. Mobile Is the Future

    It’s getting bigger and bigger every day. The average consumption of digital content through mobile has almost doubled in the past couple of years. And, as of May 2015, mobile searches have officially overtaken desktop queries.

    Keeping up with the evolution of mobile devices is a real necessity for marketers who want to keep their audience close, engaged and excited. As more and more people choose smartphones and tablets over desktop computers, making your website mobile-friendly is one of the best SEO tips small business owners can follow in 2016.

    Apart from making your website responsive to all devices, you need to go a little further. In other words, you need to have a mobile mentality and adjust your strategy with user intent in mind. Consider how content will appear on a mobile device before creating your website or landing page. Give mobile users the same seamless experience as if they are visiting a proper desktop site.

    2. Social Media Is More Important Than Ever for SEO

    According to recent studies, the average consumer today uses more than ten online sources of information to make a purchase decision. They use search engines to find potential companies, to search for specific businesses, and to learn more about them. That is where social media comes into play.

    Nowadays, consumers don’t use just Google to evaluate a company. They read blogs, online reviews, watch videos and connect with content published on social media platforms. Publishing content across all these channels is a vital component of your search engine optimization process. It goes without saying that your social profiles matter to Google and to consumers who are looking for you online. In fact, social media profiles are often among the top results in search listings.

    3. Interactive Content Is on the Rise

    By now, you know that content is king and that delivering unique, valuable content is a key success factor. However, passive content has become fatiguing for consumers to sift through. Users are starting to get accustomed to personalized results, and will start to expect content that is tailored to their needs.

    Interactive content such as quizzes, infographics, and videos allow marketers to hold the attention of consumers and to keep them interested. Engaging content can help generate links to pages on your website from other publishers. These inbound links result in referral traffic that can boost your search engine rankings.

    4. The Growing Importance of Customer Reviews

    According to one study, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Think about it for a second: they aren’t asking their friends or their colleagues. Instead, consumers today know that they can find legitimate online reviews for just about anything.

    Customer reviews are a powerful source of information that has a big impact on customer behavior. They matter so much that, according to another study, products with positive reviews sold 200% more products that those that had no ratings. More than that, businesses with more reviews and positive reviews have higher SEO rankings of their competitors. So, it’s not a question of whether consumers read online reviews – statistics say they do. It’s a matter of pampering them with your stellar customer service and getting them to review your business.

    2016 may bring other exciting trends that will change the landscape of SEO. Regardless, you need to keep pace with the updates to make sure your small business will thrive. Remember these game changing SEO tips for small business this year, and you should have no problem keeping up with the competition!

    ➡ Click here if you’re in need of small business SEO services

    Barbara Dittert is a Content Marketing Specialist at Volume Nine in Denver, Colorado.

  • The Importance of Honest Website Project Timelines

    It can be a challenge for website designers or agencies to explain the intricacies that are involved with website design or website redesign to their potential customers. Even clients with a good grasp on how digital advertising and online shopping work might not understand all of the development and nuances that go on in the background to make a website successful. Of course, adding a new client to the roster is always exciting and sometimes even the best designer gets caught up in the moment, promising to deliver a website project that doesn’t fit into a realistic timeline. Giving an unrealistic timeline regarding website design sets you up for stress and potential failure, as well as undermines just how much work goes into good website design. Simply put, the importance of honest website project timelines cannot be understated.

    Usually when you’re contacted for a website project, the client either has a site that isn’t functioning the way that they’d like, or they are eager to get their new idea off the ground. In the competitive nature of the business, with people promising all sorts of abilities to design a website overnight, it can be a professional instinct to also make a promise that cannot be met out of the fear that you won’t be viewed as being able to provide the same services as your competitors.

    Anyone in the website design field that is good at their job knows that building a powerful, result driven website takes time and analysis. Expressing this to clients up front establishes a business relationship that allows both you and your client to operate professionally. Here are a few ways to help you set realistic project timelines for your website design projects.

    The Importance of Honest Website Project Timelines

    Understand The Scope

    Make sure you understand exactly what the client hopes to achieve with the website design or redesign. This may sound easier than it is sometimes, as many people tend to think that just having a website guarantees business.

    Have a form and process in place that allows the client to walk through their desired goals and make sure that you articulate those desired outcomes back to the client before beginning the project.

    Be Specific

    Once you know the desired outcome of the website and the elements that need to be built into it, make a schedule for the project with firm dates rather than approximate ones. Avoid giving nebulous timelines like, “It will be done in about two or three weeks” and instead deliver date-specific outlines. This allows for easy assessment of how the project is going by cross-referencing the project timeline with the work that’s been done.

    Look At The Calendar

    You’d think that looking at your calendar is a given when creating timelines, but so often designers forget to work holidays and peak busy seasons into setting realistic timelines. If your agency contracts with freelance professionals, assure that they are available to meet your deadlines before you promise to deliver.

    Despite efforts to provide realistic timelines for website design, everyone has encountered projects where you run into issues that you’ve never seen before or that pose problems that weren’t previously thought of. Should you hit one of those snags, make sure that you update your client right away. While they may not be happy about the delay, most professionals understand that sometimes unforeseen issues arise and will appreciate the honesty.

  • 4 Proven Ways to Optimize Your Business Blog Posts

    There is no question that the Internet has changed the way that people shop and live. As more and more businesses begin to recognize the importance of well-designed websites, they are also becoming aware of how critical page and search rankings are to their site traffic. That said, there are a few proven ways to optimize your business blog posts to improve your SERP listing and attract new business. (more…)

  • How To Enhance The Checkout Process or Clients With Online Shopping Cart

    The holiday season is upon us, and online spending and shopping continues to grow in popularity each year. Is your website optimized for the most simple and quick shopping experience? Are you losing out on potential sales due to how your shopping cart function is designed? Well fear not! Today we’ll explore some tips on how to enhance the checkout process with online shopping cart for your customers.

    Consider your online sales process as the store that your customers are walking through. You want the store to be clearly labeled, so that customers can find products with ease. You want them to be able to fill up their carts without having to backtrack many times, and, most importantly, when it’s time to check-out, you want them to stay in line and pay for the products that they’ve added to their carts, not turn around and walk out of the store empty handed.

    The web design and function of the shopping cart on your website matters greatly and websites with the simplest and most streamlined checkout process boast the most loyal and return customers. Here are some tips on how to enhance the checkout process with online shopping cart to make your website more efficient and your customers’ experience even better.

    How To Enhance The Checkout Process With Online Shopping Cart

    Customers Don’t Like To Register To Buy

    Initially, nearly all online sales required a shopper to register in order to proceed with the checkout process. After extensive studies of what the top factors are for sites with high-volume sales, many businesses are rethinking this concept. Jared Spool points to some eye-opening data about the registration process and completed sales that should definitely give pause to any online retailer as they consider the checkout and shopping cart on their sites. The undeniable message in the post: Shoppers don’t like having to register to checkout, and if the process isn’t simple, they will leave and spend their money elsewhere.

    What’s In The Cart: Design “Musts”

    When your customers are getting ready to check out, they will need to review the items in their shopping cart. It’s critical that your website design incorporate the most user-friendly and informative methods possible, so that there isn’t confusion and the need to hit the “back” button as shoppers try to assure that they have what they need.

    Rather than having only items listed, make sure that you include images of the products, the link to the product and the product specifications for simple assurance and a speedier checkout. Remember, the quicker and more simple the checkout process, the more likely your window-shoppers will become paying customers.

    Modify Link

    Online shoppers can use their cart for both items they want to purchase, as well as items that they might want to compare before they checkout. People can also simply add incorrect items into their shopping cart, only to discover them as they go to checkout. No matter what, your website shopping cart and checkout experience should include a “Modify” button that makes the process of removing items from the cart simple.

    By providing a quick “remove” checkmark next to products in the shopping cart, you’re assuring that customers won’t try to go back on the order, which increases the chance of the sale not being completed. Simple modification of the shopping cart makes for a better customer buying experience.

    Delivery Times: Spread The Word

    Despite the many advantages of shopping online, one of the biggest drawbacks to it is that shoppers cannot get that instant gratification of a product in hand as soon as they have paid for it. Be sure to counteract this by clearly advising of shipping and arrival times with each product.

    Adding sales-friendly lingo to encourage your website visitors to hit the “buy” button also helps. If they are weighing heading out to find a product in a store versus purchasing online, a reminder that they could have the product in their hands within two days might be all the encouragement that they need to complete the order on your website.

    Thank You: Don’t Forget Post-Sales Customer Service

    As soon as a customer completes a sale on your website, they should receive an email confirmation of the purchase. In that message you should thank them for their order, as well as include a link to track the delivery process. By incorporating customer service and ease of delivery into your online sales process, you are increasing the chance of repeat business. We might live in a digital era, but customer service never goes out of style.

  • 9 Web Design Elements That Improve Conversion On Your Site

    As we have discussed before, proper website design is critical to your business and brand. You only have about eight seconds to entice a visitor to stay on your page. The importance of good web design cannot be understated in our technology-driven economy. Often clients will assume that if they have a beautifully designed site, the work is done. But that’s never the case. Remember to include these 9 web design elements that improve conversion on your site to focus on your target audience and improve your SERP listing.

    9 Web Design Elements That Improve Conversion On Your Site

    There are many elements to consider when you’re considering the design of your new website, and any good web design firm will staff a host of media professionals, from graphic designers to copywriters and engineers in order to deliver the most compelling and rewarding websites to their clients.

    Today we’re focusing on the importance of the functional requirements that should be considered when designing a website. Consider it the technological way of assuring that beauty isn’t only skin deep on your website.

    Functional requirements require that you think about how you want your website to work and the core processes that you expect your website to be able to achieve in order to deliver.

    Think of the functional requirements of your website in the most basic of concepts, barring from your mind how you want the website to look. Consider the functional assessment of your website as the ultimate customer experience: What must your website do to attract and retain customers?

    Simple examples of functional requirements include:

    1. The website needs to be able to process customer orders.
    2. The website needs to be able to complete sales transactions.
    3. The website needs to retain customer purchase information.
    4. The website needs to have a sign-up function.
    5. The website needs to host video.
    6. The website needs to have a calendar.
    7. The website needs to have a blog.
    8. The website needs to have a contact form.
    9. The website needs to have social media links.

    Many websites fail due to the fact that the sites were designed considering only the visual elements of the website, with no regard to how the website would actually function behind the scenes. This often leads to a navigational nightmare for potential customers, who will think nothing of leaving your website to find one that operates in a more streamlined manner.

    In addition to forcing you to think about the customer experience, functional design planning will reduce website design and delivery delays and costs. If you solely focus on how you want your website to work, without assessing the functional requirements or reality of your site, this leads to major budgetary issues and time delays.

    While a graphic designer can create wonderful logos and images for your website, it’s important that website developers be a part of the initial process to assure that what you’re envisioning is technically possible and makes navigational sense.

    The last thing that you want to happen is to have a website designed that looks good, but that doesn’t make it simple to convert visitors to buying customers. It should be simple for someone visiting your site to sign up for a newsletter or purchase your product.

    The ‘pretty on the outside’ concept won’t get you good results in the long-term when it comes to e-commerce. A good web design agency can assist you with all of the important and unseen components that are critical to having a successful and profitable website. Contact the professionals at Digital Parc for a consultation, and remember these 9 web design elements that improve conversion on your site.

  • The Art Of Performing An Online Competitive Analysis

    A competitive analysis is a critical part of any business marketing plan. It refers to the process of identifying and evaluating your competitor’s marketing strategies and comparing that information with your own approach.

     

    An online competitive analysis is not an attempt to “spy” on the competition; it is a method of discovering the strengths and weaknesses in your own marketing efforts. It is a helpful method for uncovering new opportunities and it gives insight into whether a strategy worked for a similar company. Performing a competitive analysis can be an extremely complex or very simple process.

     

    8 steps of a thorough competitive analysis:

     

    • Identify your competitors
    • Identify products and services that align with your business
    • Determine the winners (who has the biggest market share?)
    • What are the winners doing now and what have they done in the past?
    • What tactics are they using currently? (digital and traditional)
    • Identify strengths and weaknesses of each competitor’s offerings
    • Identify any threats your competitors pose to your business
    • Identify the opportunities that may be available to you based on your analysis

     

    How to use the information from your competitive analysis to develop new marketing strategies:

     

    Once you’ve started gathering and bucketing information the true analysis begins. Sometimes a simple comparison chart is the best way to start. A comparison chart will help to visualize the differences between products and depending on what you offer, it might be a good chart to use to market your product. This can also be done on a company basis as opposed to a product differentiation. You can list each competitor across the top and along the right hand side list out important information about each company such as: products offered (price, size, method, etc.), delivery options, current marketing tactics, estimated budgets, areas served, and customer service options among others. Once the competitor analysis grid is set up it will become much easier to identify areas of opportunity and weakness. The business leaders can use this information to make marketing changes as well as overall business changes if the need is great enough.

     

    Remember, your competitors are analyzing you as well.

     

    Remember, there is a good chance your competitors are looking into what you are doing as well. We live in a free market and there are always going to be market changes. It could come as new competitors, changing competitors or just plain old industry changes. That’s why a true competitive analysis is not a one and done type of analysis. It should at least be done on and annual basis. The information garnered from the analysis can help shape your future success. Making the data available to everyone throughout the company can have major benefits including a better understanding of the business and the contribution of fresh new ideas from employees.

     

    Understanding your competitors is often times the first step to better understanding your own business. It helps reinforce your strengths and find solutions to your weaknesses. It will also help indentify industry threats and possible opportunities. Making the investment of time and resources into developing a thorough competitive review will be wealth forth the time and effort.

  • Technical SEO: The Essential Checklist

    Technical SEO refers to coding and technical elements that the major search engines analyze to understand the purpose and health of your site. If you are performing technical SEO correctly, your website will be running smoothly, meaning that you will not have 404 – or ‘page not found’ – errors, your site will be load quickly and all of your pages will redirect properly.

    Applying appropriate technical SEO techniques has a major influence on your search engine ranking. In other words, it is unlikely that websites with poor technical SEO will experience first-page status on Google and the other major search engines. In addition, a website with flawed technical elements will certainly frustrate its visitors and lead to an increased bounce rate.

    Technical SEO differs from the more recognized SEO aspects such as link building and content creation. Below we discuss seven fundamental technical SEO elements.

    If you wish to see your website on Google’s first page, make sure that you can answer “yes” to the following questions.

    Is your robots.txt file set up correctly?

    The purpose of the robots.txt file is to thwart search engine spiders from crawling specific Web pages. It is critical that you ensure the file has been set up properly. Many webmasters set up the robots.txt file incorrectly and block entire websites from being crawled and indexed.

    Google Search Console will tell you what URLs that are being blocked.

    Are your title tags unique?

    It is importance that your <title> tags are exclusive. If you use the same title tag on multiple pages, Google may perceive these pages as duplicates. Having duplicate content on your website can hinder your SEO efforts.

    Do not make multiple pages that discuss the exact same topic. Your title tag should be no longer than 70 characters and should contain the keywords that summarize what the Web page is about.

    Are your URLs descriptive?

    One of the most effective and simple ways to improve your chances of securing first-page ranking on Google is to have brief and readable URLs on your website. For example, if your URLs look like this:

    Yoursite.com/object?cat=34&type=8&order=b

    …it will be difficult for Google to understand what your web page offers. URLs should be explanatory and understandable. The best practice is to use your targeted keywords. If you have a Web page that is dedicated to selling kitchen appliances, your URL should look similar to this:

    Yoursite.com/buy-kitchen-appliances

    Are your pages being indexed?

    If your Web pages are not being indexed, you will not show up on Google search. One of the easiest ways to make sure that your pages are being indexed is to simply look them up on Google. Copy and paste the URL of your page into Google and search for it. Does it show up? If not, it could either be that Google has not yet indexed the page or you have blocked the page from being crawled.

    If you wish to view all of your indexed pages, simple search for the following query on Google:

    Site:YourSite.com

    Make sure that you upload an XML sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console. This way, you can quickly see how many of your pages are crawled vs. how many are being indexed. This will allow you to quickly identify any issues that your site may have.

    Have you set up an XML sitemap?

    An XML sitemap is a simple list the Web pages that you wish to index. This feature makes it easier for Google to find your pages. Every page that you want to index should be included in your sitemap. Make sure that you submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.

    Do your Web pages redirect properly?

    A redirect is a method of sending your users and search engine spiders to a separate URL from the one they originally visited. There are three primary types of redirects:

    • 301 = “Moved Permanently”
    • 302 = “Found” or “Moved Temporarily”
    • Meta Refresh

    If you decide to delete a Web page, it is important that you redirect it to a page that is still active. If you do not, you will create a broken links. Websites with many broken links may experience reduced search engine rankings.

    We recommend using 301 – or permanent – redirects because it passes all of the ranking power of the original Web page.

    Does your website load quickly?

    The speed in which a website loads is a major factor in SEO. If the site loads rapidly, it will be crawled more exhaustively and it will be more likely that the pages will rank high in the SERPs. Additionally, a website that loads slowly will see most of its visitors leave – or “bounce” – and visit its competition. You can check the speed of your site by using the Site Speed report in Google Analytics.

    ➤ Click here if you are in need of Minneapolis web design services