Tag: seo

Is the website you were sold by a web developer that good?

Did the web development agency who cold called you really do a great job on the new website you commissioned?

Maybe. Maybe not. Or, maybe somewhere in between. How do you know if you’re not working with an website experience professional?

You don’t know.

A new client just had a website built for them by an agency who exclusively works with contractors. He showed me the website they’d built for him.

He thought it was great. On the surface, it was pretty good. I’d give it a 6 or 7 for design and they were using some professional grade plugins like Elementor, RankMath, and even Gravity Forms, my go to for form building.

But after the initial scan, I tore it apart.

  • No FAQs. Everyone in web development today building websites for contractors should build a FAQ page, as that’s a great way to have your answer to a common question surfaced as an answer in search.

Fix: Add a popular FAQ plugin to manage your FAQs. You can use all on the FAQ page or pull one with a short code or block into a specific page or post.

  • Portfio page video carousel has no text describing each portfolio project and all the insights and strategy going into each project. Your customer comes to the page and sees the project video but no other details to sell them on the project. What, why, when, where, and how. Provide that level of detail and not just for search but to close the sale. Be the expert in the room. And include a testimonial from the customer which can close a sale.

Also on the portfolio page, a carousel of random projects where the images were not titled properly, there are no captions, and like the videos above, no explanation of what you’re seeing. How can you sell people on your expertise and authority in this domain by just showing them one photo and not explaining what it is or why it’s important enough for you to showcase it.

Fix: Add a portfolio plugin to generate a page for each portfolio project. Add the video and the images you have and then build a page with content describing the project, its location (for local SEO), and how you solved the problem. Add a sidebar listing all portfolio page links so the viewer can navigate your portfolio and get a better look at what you have to offer.

  • After a Google Page Soeed review, the desktop score was 97, but the mobile score was 67. We know that Google prioritized mobile search.

Fix: Review all issues uncovered by Google with your image sizes and serve images in next gen formats like webp. There are plugins that help compress images and swap out jpg for webp. Resolve critical CSS and render blocking JavaScript issues to improve load times. Use lazy load for images and video. You have to look under the hood to fix the car.

These are just a few of the issues I uncovered that need to be resolved. If your curious whether your web developer did all they could do on your new WordPress website, I offer an inspection and report for just $299* (per website). Contact me to discuss.

WordCamp Raleigh 2017 – WordPress SEO for Beginners Workshop

This post feature the WordPress SEO for Beginners presentation slide deck for my talk at WordCamp Raleigh 2017. You'll also find a link to download the popular All in One SEO Pack Pro and a coupon code to get 50% off the subscription price.

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Never duplicate your sites content under another URL

I was helping someone out today in an online forum pertaining to domain-mapping for WordPress multi-site networks. Over the course of the conversation, it was revealed the the developer was looking for a solution where he could simply set up a second web site under a WP multi-site network, and then publish the exact same content from one into the other, but under another, similarly sounding URL. His goal was to make it simple to publish to two blogs simultaneously (which you can do, by the way) in order to up the Google page rank, so both sites would rank high in search. Good in theory, bad in practice.

First, this is an often tried and well known “black hat” SEO trick; publishing two sites under two URLs with the same content. What? Do you think Google was born yesterday? Well, maybe they were, lol. They’re not all that old, but they certainly aren’t stupid. Google figured this one out long ago. Let’s think about this. It’s common sense. Why would two sites with the exact same content under different URL’s be weighted separately by Google (or Bing, let’s not leave them out)? Google is going to spider both sites, look at the content, and then penalize both for trying to game the system. They’ve already penalized many sites for publishing stock content on massive site farms that were trying to dominate the rankings by publishing generic how-to guides and tutorials. What makes you think they can’t see what you’re trying to do?

If you’re trying to game the system, stop! It’s not going to work. Google looks at content, matches it, and then ranks it. If the same press release is published across one hundred web sites, only the sites that do more, like put the press release around other relevant information about a company are going to rank. I gave an example of Yahoo! Finance. They publish corporate press releases under a company’s financials in their database. The collective sum of all the information that Yahoo! Finance provides on a company, including press releases that are duplicated across the web on other sites of similar ilk, is still going to be the trigger that helps Google rank them higher, because they are the authoritative voice on the company. If you publish just the press release, but nothing else about the company, then why should Google rank you above Yahoo! Finance? They shouldn’t. You’re not the authority, you’re just trying to get some traffic to your press release farm and generate remnant banner ad revenue or click through revenue. And, to advertisers, they don’t want to be on sites that aren’t the authoritative voice. Well, some don’t, while others don’t care. But I’m betting the farm that if I’m an advertiser, I don’t want to be on a site that is trying to game the system. I want to be on the authoritative resource for that subject.

Google is working hard to deliver search results based on authenticity, authority, timeliness, and other factors like maintenance and updating of the content over time. Every time someone tries to game the system to profit from it, Google will figure it out and you will get penalized. That can mean a death knell for certain companies who try and do this. If you’re number 11 and you want to be number 4, there’s a reason for that, which you have to work hard to overcome. If you try and game the system so that you go from 11 to 4 overnight, remember, you have to work even harder to stay there. Once you’re found out, you can quickly go to number 400. Is it worth the risk? Probably not. I’m happy to be at number 11 and move up incrementally, then try to force a higher ranking and suffer the wrath of the Google search algorithm.

If you’re thinking about taking a chance, don’t. Google (and Bing), can see you. It’s not like the days where you hid from your teacher in the school yard and he or she couldn’t find you. Once you publish online, your stuff is in the ecosystem. It can be seen, searched, and catalogued. It’s just a matter of time before you’re tricks are uncovered and you’re penalized for it. It’s not worth the risk. For more information on Search Engine Optimization, check out https://searchengineland.com/ or https://searchenginewatch.com/