5 Things you can do to Improve your Website’s Google Rank

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If you own a website and have installed Google analytics or any form of tracking, you would know that having a website just is not enough to get organic visitors through Google. This is because most websites that own the #1, #2 or #3 position on Google for specific queries deserve to be there based on Google’s Algorithm. And what is Google’s Algorithm you might ask? Well, sadly, no one knows. However, we do know that Google has hundreds of signals they use to determine ranking and there are many tried and true methods that work.

If you are a basic website user, Here are 5 things you can do to your website to improve your Google Rank. They aren’t difficult and whats more, it will take you less than 1 hour to do this. All these are Onsite SEO which is easy to implement on any website you might own.

Setting a great Page Title

Choosing a great page title is definitely one of the most important things you need to do to rank on Google’s search engine. Firstly, you need to ensure that whatever topic you are writing has some sort of demand in your local area. There is no point writing an article or a page that no one searches for! This is where good Keyword research comes in. Ensure that the topic you are writing for has some search volume before you write it. In addition, ensure that your page title is enticing to make people want to read it. If you need some inspiration on making a good title, check out buzzfeed. They are one of the pioneers in clickbaiting people with their enticing Titles and I’m one of their victims.

Setting your Permalink

Permalink is basically the static URL that people can type to get to your specific page. By default, certain CMS or website management softwares will automatically determine your permalink for you and give it weird numbers based on the date the article/page was published. Having good permalink structure helps Google to understand what your article is about and also your visitors before they read the page. Just take a look at the picture below and you’ll see what I mean.

Adding Description to all your pages

If you have did a search on Google, you’ll understand that besides the title tag, the description tag is what the readers will read to get an understand of what the page is before clicking into it. For most website builders, changing the description is really easy. If you are using WordPress, you can install plugins such as All-in-one SEO or Yoast SEO and options to change the description will be available. For more advanced coders, you can add description tags through HTML coding with the following code.  <meta name=”description” content=”Your Description”>

Adding different types of Media to your Post

Google is taking a more rounded approach when it comes to different types of media. Do a search on any query on Google and you will often find a mixture of videos and photos taking up the top spot in the search engine. As such, Adding photos as well as videos are a great way to diversify your content. Whats more, picture and videos tend to tell a better story and is often regarding a more immerse type of content. As a whole, mix up your content to show all different types of content so that you can attract a wider range of audience.

 

Inbound links

If your website is about a wide topic which can include many sub topics, it is often a great way to bring visitors to different parts of your website for them to learn more about the topic. This is where Inbound linking comes in. Where possible, build links within your articles to different articles in your website. Not only does this increase the amount of time a user spends on your website, you can be an authoritative site for your niche. This can bring in valuable and long lasting audiences to your website over a period of time. To learn more, read more about Content Silos. One great example of a website that uses a lot of inbound links and different content silos is Wikipedia. In any given article of theirs, there are more than 30 inbound links to help you understand more about the topic.

 

Conclusion

As mentioned earlier in this article, there are more than 100 different signals that Google use to determine the ranking of a website. That said, have you tried these 5 items? There are still much more to Onsite SEO which you can use to improve your site’s ranking. Set up a meeting with us and we will share with you more.

 

What Are H1, H2, H3 meta tags?

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You probably have heard on some SEO guide about adding H1, H2, H3 meta tags on your articles and pages but what is a h1, h2, h3 tag? And more so, how does it help in onsite SEO?

Origin of heading tags

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 are heading tags that is used in html that you can mark up on title or headings. The number denotes the importance; the higher the number the lower the hierarchy. Usually, H1 will also have the largest font size to denote the over arching importance while the rest will have a smaller font. Heading tags provides readers a clear structure and they can then decide which paragraphs or headings are important to them. One example of good use of headings is when you are talking about a broad subject. For example, Soccer. In this case. the word “Soccer” will be your h1 while other topics beneath soccer such as the rules, methods of playing, types of field will be your h2 or h3.

Heading tags can be found on almost any WYSIWYG editors and even in Microsoft word. However, for Onsite SEO, heading tags have a great importance and it is essential to understand how to make the full use of it to gain an edge in the SERPs.

Onsite SEO

Headings are important for SEO because it gives the search engine robot that are crawling your page understand better about the topic of your article, it also uses heading tags to identify keywords that stand out from the rest of the paragraphs. As such, it is important for any content written to have specific heading tags that are clear and describe what your article is about. As a guide, I usually will not use more than h3 for articles that are less than 1000 words because there simply isn’t enough to elaborate further. However, if you take a look at Wikipedia’s entries, you will see that many of their articles utilise the full h6 tags. Especially for their broader topics that require a lot of explanation.

What to take note of?

Keywords used in the heading tags should help the user to understand what the underlying paragraph is about. In addition, you do not necessarily need to use all h1-h6 tags especially if your article does not need to. As such, it is important to do some keyword research so that you can also attract visitors to pinpoint parts of your article. Especially if you are looking to get them to purchase a product or service

What to avoid?

Randomly adding sentences to a heading tag will not help readers nor search engines. As such, avoid stuffing keywords as this might also have a negative effect on your onsite SEO optimisation.

What Are Buying Keywords?

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If you are running Google ads, did you know you can instantly increase profits and reduce cost just by using buying keywords? Before we dive into what are buying keywords, it is important to understand more about keywords and, how people use searches to get what they want.

Search Process

When people are searching things on Google, they are usually in 3 different stages. Information Gathering, Navigation queries, and Transactional phase. Understanding which stage you want to target will directly affect your sales and revenue. In addition, having a keyword research tool is invaluable especially if you want to find out what queries people are searching for.

 

Information Gathering Query

Individuals in this stage have two intentions; to find out more information about the product or service, and to find the different products/website to serve their need. During this stage, 90% of the queries will not result in a purchase. Take for example this scenario:

Mike is looking to take up a new hobby in Cycling. Due to the various discipline within cycling, he must first choose what type of cycling does he intend to embark on. Road cycling, Mountain biking or Trial riding to name a few disciplines. At this point in time, he will likely search on Google with the following keyword query: “Mountain biking” “road bikes” “mountain bikes” “types of bikes”. As the keyword search imply, Mike is not looking to purchase anything but rather to do more research on the topic. If you are a small site that is targeting the transactional phase, it is likely that Mike won’t be your target customer. As such, it is important to ensure your marketing efforts do not go to waste on general keywords. However, if you are a silo site whose sole purpose is to report on anything and everything bikes. It is then likely that you can eventually convert Mike through one of your Sales Funnel. There are many websites that do this effectively. Some examples are bodybuilding.com, bikeradar.com. These websites target all visitors because they bring the visitor through a complete journey. Such websites draw thousands and thousands of visitors everyday. However, it is not easy to be such a site and usually takes decades to build.

 Navigation Queries

Navigation queries come from the idea that people already know what they want. They are just using the search engine because they either have no idea what the URL address is or they are looking for something specific within the website. Due to the nature of navigation queries, there is almost no way that you can compete for such keywords unless you are using Google Ads. While the chance is low that you can convert someone that is looking for something specific, you could still sway their navigation if you have a more attractive product or service. Some examples will be competitor brands such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, Reebok. If someone is search for Nike Shoes, if you are Adidas, you could still sway their navigation if you have a more attractive sale or product. Perhaps offering free shipping and 10% off. Other than using Google ads for this, you have little no zero chance of getting on the organic query. This is also the reason why you should always choose a brand name instead of naming your website or brand as a generic keyword, this way, Google will have an easier time categorizing queries especially if your visitor is looking directly for you.

Transactional Queries

Transactional queries are the go-to query if you want to get the most conversions out of any product or service. This query comes from a user that has already obtained all the information he/she requires and is just looking for a website to complete the transaction. This query usually includes an exact brand name and occasionally the exact model number. It can include filler words such as “where to buy” “package” “free shipping”.

Out of the three types of queries, transactional queries usually consist of the least amount of searches or also known as the long-tail keywords. While they have lesser queries, they tend to have the highest conversions and also the most competition due to the stage of the searcher. As such, it is important for your website to be right in front of page 1 position 1-3 if you want to see any conversions. On Google ads, you will also find that the cost per click for such queries usually cost a lot more than the generic keywords.

How to position yourself for conversions？

One of the best ways you can position your website for such queries is usually to have a few dedicated articles for the product model as well as a “best of” article. These articles tend to do very well because people always aim to have the best of any product, as such, you are providing others your insights on what is better. Of course with any form of content, it is always better to be very detailed and concise. Adding different types of media also tend to work better because visitors are able to visualize what the end product will look like. More forms of media will also lead to more traffic from different sources which will definitely aid in your conversions in the long run.

In addition, it is important to have some local SEO integration done for the specific product or service that you are looking to rank for. Search Engine Optimisation is the core basis of ranking organically on Google

Google Ads

One of the best ways to get right in front of the searcher’s eyes is through Google Ads. Instead of appearing below through organic listings, you pay per click and compete against like minded merchants for a spot for 1-4. The higher your quality score and bid, the higher your position. From our experience, Google ads tend to work better for transactional queries because the user already knows what they need and are just looking for a provider. In addition, Google has so many new ad formats which makes it very visual and easy for the user to get what they need quickly. Using the right targeting techniques, Search Engine Marketing can be very effective to drive sales and leads.

 

Overall, All types of query can lead to conversions. However, it is important to identify what type of website you have and select the group you should target. Only if your website is a silo site with tons of content then will you be able to target all types of searches.

 

SEO Mythbusters by Google Webmasters

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The art of SEO has always been a grey area for the entire SEO community. Not much information is available on Google about what the search engine sees as positive SEO and negative SEO except for the Google Webmaster Guidelines. These guidelines are so vague that it is difficult to decipher what really works. However, it looks like we are about to get more information from Google themselves who just released a video on their YouTube Channel about an upcoming series on demystifying SEO.

Google Webmaster SEO Mythbusting

From the looks of the trailer, it seems as though its going to tackle a lot of the grey hat SEO techniques and also touch a little more on the essential items to take note of from a technical SEO standpoint as well as navigation. Hopefully with this, the whole community will have a better idea on what to look out for and finally not get so many misconstrued information that it becomes a near impossible task to identify what works and what doesn’t.

From the video we can roughly tell this is what the topics are going to cover

  • Technical SEO – Javascript, HTML, CSS
  • Google Bot and crawling
  • Top 3 things to take note of for SEO
  • SEO for Applications and website
  • Navigation on your website
  • How to conduct a proper SEO audit with your developer and SEOs

What is SEO Integration?

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With about 4.41 million devices in Singapore, 2018 in Singapore saw the highest amount of smartphones in active use. Almost everything that used to be available in brick and mortar stores are now available in Online stores. Even purchasing high dollar value electric equipment or household products online is becoming a norm. This phenomenon is leading to many traditional stores such as Robinson, Metro and Isetan closing its outlets and changing the way they operate their business. More and more businesses are looking towards digitalising their processes and it is highly likely that businesses that do not get on the train will get left behind. However, it is also apparent that just having a website is not sufficient any longer. With the likes of Google paving the way forward, you need to get your business in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) in order to get new leads or new visitors to enter your website. And this is the key factor where SEO integration is.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the process of increasing the quality of visitors and quantity of visitors streaming into your website through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing. By Optimising your website, you encourage search engines to give you a positive ranking which in turn will bring visitors based on specific keywords and search terms queried.

Google has always ranked websites based on its Google Webmaster Guidelines which is available to all. As such, most of the methods we will be going through today aims to integrate as many factors found in the Google Webmaster Guidelines to all websites created. This can be added on top of any Social Media efforts or Google Ads efforts you are working on.

Content

Content is the basis of any website. Have too little content and people will not understand what service or product you are offering. However, too much information will put off potential buyers. Content should be specific, concise and give the user the information needed for them to make a purchase decision. One example is a landing page. Landing pages/squeeze pages have specific goals to convert visitors into customers through very concise information and directions.

landing page
One question we get at Proximacy is how we should add content when a website is a corporate site. Corporate sites by nature have various product/service pages. However, apart from that, it is difficult to add appropriate content alongside the products and services. In such cases, using a corporate blog will be the best option. A blog will be the best place to feature news, updates or even new happening within the niche. In addition, you can always create valuable content about your related products and services. This helps you to build content and also increase returning customers and visitors to visit your website.

Cross media content

Using different types of media is becoming more essential to add value to your content. Adding contextual pictures as well as videos and bring your post a new perspective and will definitely stand out amongst other similar content. In addition, you can also get more referring traffic from other sources such as Google Images and Youtube.

social media

Content silos

Content silos are another great method to build massive amounts of content. Building a silo basically means finding a general topic that is related to your niche. For example, Fishing. Fishing has thousand of aspects related to the sport; fishing rods, tackle, different types of fishing, boats, salt water and fresh water fishing etc etc. By writing an article on a wide topic, you can then build more content on the different aspects of fishing and thus build a reputable source of information about fishing in General.

Mobile Optimisation

Look at any website’s analytics and it will tell you that mobile devices now make up more than 50% of any traffic. Mobile devices are becoming the standard way of browsing for majority of the population. Google also has a separate mobile search which results differ from its desktop version. This means that while your desktop ranking for a particular keyword is rank #1, it could be very different in a mobile view.

Google takes mobile views very seriously and it has different algorithms to detect even the most minute issues such as small font or small surface area for buttons to be clicked on. All these issues can be found on Google search console but you will have to set it up before you can notified about any issues.

AMP Pages

If you want lightning load speeds for your mobile, you can also consider Google’s AMP pages. AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile pages and is represented by a lightning logo in the search results. This markup makes your pages load lightning quick and will definitely sit well for users with even the weakest mobile data signals. It works by having a stripped-down form of HTML. It is easily configured and can even work for CMS such as WordPress.

Optimise for speed

Loading speed is becoming a key factor in Google’s ranking algorithm and is one of the largest factor that determines whether a visitor clicks back and heads to another page. Because the topic of speed is so large and many items on your website can affect your website loading speed. It will be better to take a look at a dedicated article on this. There are also tools that you can use to determine the speed of your website. If you intend to create or revamp your website, it is imperative that you request your website designer to place this as a priority.

Community

Building community as well as engagement through your various platforms has been long regarded as a clear signal of the reputation of a website. Google has over 100 algorithms that determines a website’s ranking and there has been signals that the amount of engagement, bounce rate, time spent on page as well as the amount of pages visited is a clear indication of a website’s worth. Community also ensures that you have a healthy amount of returning customers which will definitely help you in the long run. Community engagement can also help you build content as well as build valuable links towards your website. All these can be further enforced with the use of social media platforms to help build your platforms. Adding pictures, videos as well as content through all these platforms can funnel customers to your webpage and convert them into life long customers.

Some platforms you can use for a start are YouTube, Facebook pages as well as Google my business listings.  It is important to start earlier and also to encourage more feedback and comments through this platform. Many users are already reaping the effects of continual engagement with customers and it won’t be a surprise when Google eventually places more emphasis on this.

community

 

5 Free SEO Tools I use to Improve Proximacy

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If you are an in-house marketer and have the arduous task of managing your company’s online properties such as websites, or online marketing materials, you probably know how essential SEO or tools are. In this list today, I will be sharing a few of my most used SEO tools to help me manage my clients and Proximacy’s website. These 5 free SEO tools range from SEO tools to track my rankings to tools to help me post simultaneously to different platforms. Most of these tools I use is completely free and can be utilised by all.

IFTTT

One of the most invaluable free tools I use is IFTTT, also known as “If This, Then That”. It’s an ingenious way to link different applications and devices together. This means if you have multiple platforms or applications you use to market your products, posts or services, you can get IFTTT to automatically link them together and post them for you in a single post. There are hundreds of different methods of using this website but I’ll just share those that I feel is useful for my method of working. These instructions are also known as Applets and they direct IFTTT on what to do when an event is triggered.

Facebook Auto Posting

Proximacy is a website that provides online marketing services to businesses and individuals and we also post regular tips and tricks to the public. As such, we are constantly posting articles and blog posts onto our website. As much as possible, we also want to engage with our audience on Facebook so Building an Applet to automatically post our blog posts onto our Facebook page is essential.

Start by creating a new Applet. From the “choose a service” page, you have over 100 types of services you can choose from and to help make your life and processes more streamlined. But for a start, we will choose WordPress. You can choose between “any new post” or “new post with tag or category”. Because I want my facebook to be automatically updated when I publish a post, I will choose “any new post”

Next, you want to fill in “that”, this completes the equation of “when a new post is created on WordPress, then create a link post on Facebook”

If you are worried you are unable to customise the message on facebook, you can actually add ingredients and custom texts so it looks more personal. Once you create the action, every time you post something new on your website, it will automatically post the same entry on Facebook.

There are a ton of customisation you can use with IFTTT and its really up to you to determine how your business processes work.

Image Compression

If you have been following our posts, you will know that conversions on a website are heavily dependant on the speed of your website. If you want to learn more, check out our post about how to speed up your website. To summarise the post, image compression is essential for all fast websites. Contrary to belief, compression takes away very little to no quality loss at all. If you place a full sized image on your website, your visitors will spend a lot of time and data waiting for the images on the site to render. In addition, It will drain your server’s bandwidth resources quickly.

Optimizilla

I personally use Optimizilla as my first choice. Not only is it available online, it also completes the job quickly and you can upload up to 20 images at a time. There is also an easy gauge you can use to determine the quality of the image. Do note that the website already optimises the images automatically. 

To start this process, just drag or upload your pictures on the website. Once it has automatically compressed your images, you may choose to download the optimised images or even adjust the quality yourself. 

Search Engine Optimisation

If you have been tasked with SEO or Search Engine Optimisation for your company’s site, you’ll know how expensive it is to purchase tools to help you track your progress or to help you to find places to post links on. One free tool I can recommend for personal businesses besides the Google tools such as Google Search Console or Google Analytics is SEO Powersuite.

SEO Powersuite

SEO Powersuite is a free software that within its ecosystem contains a few software you can download for both Mac or Windows users: Rank Tracker, Link Assistant, WebSite Auditor, and, SEO SpyGlass. In brief, this four software help you with different aspects of your website. There is a free version which can help you track one website at a time and with limited functionality and a business and enterprise version which will unlock different features. For a single business user, the free version is sufficient for simple tracking and use and should prove useful for your personal use.

Rank Tracker

ranktracker

Rank Tracker helps you to conduct keyword research and track the Search Engine Ranking Position on the various search engines such as Google, Yahoo and bing. While Google’s keyword planner can help you to do keyword research, Rank Tracker provides more avenues to research on. You can also track your competitor’s ranking and see the difficulty of the keyword to rank it.

WebSite Auditor

This tool helps you find onsite errors in your website, It also gives you the backbone structure of your website and also provides you with important metrics such as title tag, description tag, click depth and URL to name a few. This tool truly helps you with your onsite optimisation in a long run and keep track of what is missing on your website.

SEO SpyGlass

More for advanced users, SEO Spyglass helps you find your links that are pointing towards your website. This allows you to monitor them and also determine whether spam is building up on your website. From there you can use Google search console and disavow any bad links that could penalise your website in a long run.

Link Assistant

5 Free SEO Tools I use to Improve Proximacy

Similar to SEO SpyGlass, Link Assistant is a link management tool that helps you to find different types of links from various platforms such as Guest posting, directories, blogs and many others. Link Assistant can also help you to email the website administrator to get a link.

Website Speed

Optimising your images, working on Onsite Optimisation is part and parcel of improving your user experience and website speed. Website speed is also becoming an important factor in Google’s ranking algorithm so it is important to take note of these. I usually use two different types of platforms for this to test my website. GTmetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights.

GTmetrix

One of the best tools in checking your website speed, GTmetric analyses your website and uses different tools to check the bottleneck issues in your website. It also includes important recommendations that you can pass to your web developer to help optimise your website.

Simply input your website and it will start to analyse your website in its entirety. It even breaks down for you into different sections so you understand what to focus on.

Google PageSpeed

One of Google’s tool, it is the “holy bible” where you probably have to scrutinise your website over when it recommends you something. Since the tool comes from Google, its likely that those metrics that they advise you will be used to either reward you with better ranking or penalise your website for not following its guidelines. Either way, Google is taking a hard stance on website loading speed and you should too. Especially if you want to retain your visitor count or improve it.

 

Use Google Search Console to Find Buying Keywords

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The traditional method of keyword research to find buying keywords has always been through Google Ads with the keyword planner. However, there are some limitations using keyword planner if you do not intend to do Google Ads. Here is a great post from Moz about why the figures from keyword planner give really unreliable results. In this post, we will take a look about the other method of using Google Search Console to find out what people are searching for. This, of course, means you need to place your website on Google Search Console. If you haven’t done so. use this link on how you can install Google Search console on your website.

The Truth about Google’s Keyword Planner

While Google keyword planner is a great starting way to get general short tail keywords that are applicable to your business, they aren’t really accurate unless you use Google ads. If you do not use Google ads, you get a wide range which might not be accurate. We are going to use an example of flowers for an account that does not use Google Ads. Just take a look at how vague the results are.

They even tell you that for more detailed statistics, run a campaign! The Average monthly searches for the top performing keyword, “flowers” has a range of 10-100k. Give this figure to any marketer or business trying to run ads and definitely they will have something negative to say about the wide range of results. There just isn’t any way to find buying keywords with such a wide range of searches.

However, this situation automatically changes as long as you run ads on Google. Take for instance another account where we have been consistently spending 1k a month.

From this picture, you can get an exact figure and even the trend of monthly searches. Correlate this with your calendar and you’ll be able to tell which months are receiving more searches and how much to set aside for your budget. With Google Ads out of the way, let us take a look at how you can get more accurate findings on what people are searching.

Google Search Console to Find Buying Keywords

Previously known as Google Webmaster, Google search console is a web service by Google for Website and business owners. it allows you to see important statistics about your website and how your website is doing on Google’s search engine. We are assuming that your website has already been added to Google Search Console. If you haven’t done so, refer to this link to find out how to add your website onto this free platform.

Once you have entered your website’s profile, head to “Search Traffic” “Search Analytics”. This tab allows you to see what keywords have been used by visitors to search for a product or service related to your website.

Google Search Console Main Menu

Once loaded, you will be able to see the different keywords used by visitors and how many actually clicked into your website, the Click Through Rate (CTR) and your average position over 30 days.Google Search Console to find buying keywords

The key Metric you want to be looking at is “impression”. An impression is counted each time your website details are shown on the search engine result pages. This practically tells you the exact number someone searches for that certain keyword. With that valuable information, you can identify buying keywords for Google Ads to use for Search Engine Marketing or build links and posts about the topic to help improve your Website’s Search Engine Optimisation.

Other Uses for Search Engine Console

Besides tracking your Search Traffic for your site, there are many uses for Google Search Console. You can suggest to Google the country you are targeting, check messages on an error on your website, indexing issues or even disavowing links that come across as spam.

 

 

Why your Website needs HTTPS

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Introduction to HTTP

difference between http and https

Ever wondered what the http or https stands for whenever a website loads? “http” stands for the HyperText Transfer protocol(HTTP). HTTP is basically the foundation of all communication for the world wide web. While this information is not very important for webmasters. Having HTTPS instead of HTTP makes a huge difference for your visitors and the way people perceive your website.

Introduction to HTTPS

HTTPS refers to the secured version of the hypertext transfer protocol, the “S” being secure. In today’s digital world, security and personal information are of the outmost importance. the term “secure” is this added layer of protection. It acts as an authentication of the website and communication between your data and the server. This means that it encrypts your information and protects you against eavesdropping and stealing of information. While it was originally intended for e-commerce, email and user portal sites, https is becoming widely used to protect their end users and to increase user and visitor confidence

Why is HTTPS Useful For Any Website

Google is clamping down on non-HTTPS websites

non-secure sites on google chrome

the Google Chrome Blog recently posted about Google Chrome’s security indicators. websites that are not https will be marked as not secure and https websites will have a green lock. If you do not have a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), chances are you are losing visitors who are worried about getting their information stolen just by visiting your site.

Increase in Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPs)

Back in 2014, the search engine giant announced its plan in 2014 during Google I/O about its plans for http and https. The event highlights its future plans and also the impact https had on Google searches. Google basically said that if two sites were equal, they would rank the https higher than the non-secured site. Make a simple check on Google and you’ll notice that more than 50% of websites are already secured.

Cheap to Implement

Depending on your hosting plan, converting to https is fairly affordable for anyone. With the number of benefits it brings to the table, its no brainer to implement this. If your website currently non-secured, there is no disadvantage or penalty in changing it.

Protect your Clients and your Business

secure sites on google chrome

How much is your business worth to you? If it’s your livelihood, you’ll definitely want the change. Even if you aren’t, spare a thought for your clients and visitors. The data transmitted through online forms, surveys or purchase could be intercepted by someone with ill intent. whether is it to sell your information or use your credit card information. Would you really want to expose your users and your business to such vulnerabilities?

Hackers and exploiters are constantly looking for loopholes in websites and chances are if you aren’t secured yet, your website is on the target board.

Secure your Website today!

If you need assistance to secure your website, or would like to find out more about the https protocol, please feel free to contact us for a non-obligatory assessment.

Google’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) starter Guide

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In case you aren’t aware, Google recently updated their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter guide. This guide was not updated since 2008 which is over a decade ago and it updates its content with it’s latest algorithms. You can view the guide here. If you are just getting started or have no clue to what SEO is all about, it’s a good place to start, It teaches you everything from onsite SEO to even promoting your website through various means such as social media, newsletters and through its other sites such as Google my business and Google maps.

Here are some of the key pointers from the guide that most people know of but do not use more of.

Organising your website to 3 or fewer clicks

This is also known as organizing your site hierarchy. Navigation through your website is important so that visitors can find what they want quickly. As a guide,  plan your website such that they can reach what they want in 4 or fewer clicks. As a start, creating categories for your product and services is a great way to future plan your website.

Breadcrumb lists

showing breadcrumb lists are also a great way for your visitors to understand which part of the website they are in and helps them to understand the flow of your website.

 

Optimising your images and content

Content is king and Google has always been advocating this. Make sure that your content is readable by proofreading before publishing. Always create fresh content and write your articles or posts that visitors want to read. Not for the search engines. Most people get carried away with always writing it for the search engines that they forget who their true visitors are. When you are dealing with images, it is always wise to compress your photos. compressing your images not only reduces the size which in turns reduces the waiting time for loading, it also retains the image quality from the original size. There are many free websites out there that help you to compress your images but the one I really love is optimizilla. You can upload up to 20 photos at a time and you can even choose what quality you would like. Allowing you to tailor what size you want your image to be.

 

Mobile Friendly Site

Ask any website owner who has integrated analytics into their website and they will tell you that about 50% of their visitors come from mobile devices. While it is easy to tailor your website for desktop/laptop users, it can look totally different on mobile view. Make sure that your images, buttons as well as navigation are properly laid out for mobile users. It can be really frustrating as a mobile user to click on a small text accurately.

 

These are just some of the many tips from Google. The next time you are trying to implement something new, check back to the guide and see if your methods align with the guide.

What Works for Offsite SEO?

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Offsite SEO is the most important component for any website if you want to rank on the search engine ranking page. However, most people have the misconception that it is a standalone action. For a website to rank high in the SERPs, there should always be onsite SEO, social media signals and supported with offsite SEO links. In this article, we hope to share what Offsite SEO works for 2017 and what doesn’t.

What works?

Social Media Engagement

Social media engagement popped out as one of the main indicator Google sees your business back in 2014. While social media engagements do not necessarily = ranking status, Google uses information such as the engagement between your customer and your business, the links generated as a form of link profile. The business profile you have has a certain reputation and this is something Google uses in their search algorithm. In fact, your business profile on Facebook can also rank on the search engines. Thus providing you with vital referral visits. See the video below for more information. The video is dated back in December 2010 and is still applicable after 7 years!

Directories listing

While the effectiveness of directory listing has decreased significantly, it can still be a good viable source of referral visits. There are many big companies in Singapore providing such a service. However, I will strongly dissuade anyone from getting paid versions which they will strongly emphasize on. Not only are they ineffective in providing you ample leads. The visitors they promise which is usually in the millions are usually not looking for your products or services. Some directories you can try putting your website on websites such as yellowpages, greenbook and many others.

Guest Posting

Guest posting is still one of the best methods of getting a valuable link. Not all links are created equal so it is important to get links from websites that are reputable or are similar in the industry you are in. Guest posting refers to writing an article or a post on someone’s website that is relevant to your business. For example, a shaving brand writing on a popular blog on how to groom oneself. Becuase the industry is highly relevant to your product, Google uses this as a signal to provide this link with more emphasis and link power.

Video Posting

video-sharing sites available

The video-sharing industry has been surging in recent years without any signs of it slowing down. It has even overtaken the print and TV industry within a couple of years with cable TV declining rapidly. There is an expected 1/3 of online activity spent watch videos. With such statistics, it will be unwise not utilize such an important part of the internet. Videos such as how-tos or even videos about your service or products can be a great way to add value to your website. Share these videos on Youtube, Vimeo or Facebook can definitely help.

Backlinks

I left backlinks to the end because it is one of the quintessential aspects of offsite SEO. backlinks from reputable sites are often one of the best methods you can use to increase your rankings drastically. As Matt Cutts from Google has always stated, content is king. When a website builds good content that is out of the ordinary, the chances of people linking to you from social media and websites are more likely. This is why it is important to utilize social media as well. Social media is a good platform for people to share content quickly and effectively. This will allow your content to be picked up by various media and most websites will leave you a link to share the content.