Back in the day, way way back, your website domain could have had a major impact on your site’s rankings. That changed a few years ago (2012 to be exact) when Google wanted to weed out websites that may have good domain names but very little “substance”.
Exact Match Domains (EMD) is where the problem started. Businesses would essentially purchase keyword domains to rank for a particular keyword. And the EMD was enough for them to rank: they barely focused on quality content and relevance (two things that matter greatly for SEO nowadays). That strategy no longer works.
That’s not to say that domain names no longer affect SEO. They still do (and studies have proven that), but how?
Let’s find out.
How Domain Names Impact SEO
There have been a lot of changes to SEO, particularly from the largest search engine: Google. But one thing that hasn’t changed, but has been emphasized more, is original quality content, relevance and always aligning with search engine best practices. A component of this is your domain name – it’s unique, only you can have it.
Even though it may not directly impact your rankings anymore, a good domain name will get you more brand recognition, trust and higher click-through-rates (CTR).
However, the definition of a good domain name has changed, at least according to Google. We see this in how the search engine treats certain types of domains.
Exact Match Domains (EMD)
EMDs are domain names that include keyword phrases. For example, let’s say you are selling hair products and want to rank for “quality hair products.” The EMD you would most likely use is qualityhairproducts.com. Just purchasing that domain would have gotten you the first page ranking a while ago.
Yup! You wouldn’t have needed original content or backlinks. You would simply rank for it with your domain name. That all changed after Google released the Exact Match Domain Update.
The update essentially made EMDs obsolete in search engine rankings. In fact, a study by High Position showed that the average EMD ranking went from position 13.4 to 26.6 (yikes!) after Google’s update. The average top 10 EMD also dropped in rankings: from 3.2 down to 11.9. So now we know that choosing an exact match domain in 2017 is quite pointless, a bad idea even.
So how should you decide on a domain name to maximize SEO? You need only do two things: choose a memorable brand name (to make your domain name) and pick a .com extension.
Let’s go into more detail.
Your Brand Name Should Be Your Domain Name
We can all agree that your brand is important. Your brand name is how your customers recognize and find you in search engines and social media platforms. So think of your domain name as the foothold of your online brand.
In fact, the more customers are using your brand name to search for you online, the more your SEO and rankings will improve. This is referred to as brand signalling (any reference of your business online). Matt Cutts, former Head of Web Spam at Google, claimed that Google “actually came up with a classifier to say, okay, IRS or Wikipedia or New York Times is over on this side, and the low-quality sites are over on this side.”
That’s right, Google now cares more about brands for SEO than it does about keywords and links. For that reason, using your brand name is more important than keywords. You’re probably scratching your head at this point, wondering how Google would associate your brand with certain keywords…
Well, Google will associate keywords with your brand as your brand becomes more popular; and as you produce more relevant and high quality content. Let’s take a look at Bitly as an example. It’s a URL shortener and link management platform yet their brand name does not match those keywords. It however ranks at the top for those keywords in Google.
That’s because of its popularity. As long as people recognize it and are searching for it, Google will measure that brand signal and rank it accordingly. For this reason, it is important to have a memorable brand name and consequently, a memorable domain name.
Don’t worry if your brand name contains a keyword, or in other words, is a PMD (partial match domain). That’s because Google is only searching for spam sites with EMDs and PMDs – the actual problem isn’t the keywords, but rather the content and quality of the site. A PMD or EMD with bad user experience and low quality content would experience a steep downgrade in rankings. Whereas, a PMD or EMD with great user experience and content would not be greatly affected.
However, if you are just starting out, you should go with a memorable brand name domain and avoid using keywords.
Opt For a .com Extension
You probably already know that .com is the most popular domain extension. That is because most other domain extensions like .biz and .us are viewed as spam. Although choosing it may not directly impact your rankings, you may be viewed as a low-ranking site which could affect your SEO.
.com is simply the most convenient and safest choice to go with. When in doubt, go with it.
Tips for Choosing the Perfect Domain Name
Now let’s recap and go over the tips on picking the best domain name:
Use your brand name
Don’t use exact match domains. Partial match domains are OK but a brand name is always more effective
Choose a .com extension
Make it memorable so users can easily remember it
Keep it short, 15 characters at most
Avoid numbers, hyphens and special characters
Avoid misspelling words on purpose. It’s a no-no for branding
Make it easy to spell
Wrapping Up
We hope you now have a good understanding of how domain names affect SEO in 2017. If you’re starting a new business or changing to a better domain name, the tips above should help you pick out the best one for your business.
Remember: As long as you have great content and a good SEO strategy, a strong and unique domain name may rank you higher. Choose one wisely, use it correctly and start reaping the value.
Do you spend hours staring at a blank computer screen or piece of paper, desperately racking your brain for just one great content idea? Well, the sad reality is that you cannot afford to wait for inspiration to strike: your readers are waiting for yet another one of your great posts to enjoy and share.
This article is your reference for tips and tricks to find inspiration and create great content to grow your WordPress site.
We’ll cover the following topics:
How to source inspiration directly from your readers
How to get great topic ideas from your social media channels
Useful tools you may already be using, but not as effectively
How to overcome writer’s block
Know Your Readers and Their Concerns
This is arguably the starting point to creating great content: knowing your reader and their concerns.
To gain and maintain a steady stream of followers, you must produce consistently good content that your blog visitors are interested in. Since your content is ideally centered around the needs and interests of your readers, it is therefore very important to know who they are. But how would you know what your readers are interested in?
First, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Then ask and answer the following questions:
What issues do your readers struggle with most?
What would better enable them to understand and solve those issues?
What would a reader enter in search engines to find content in your niche?
Creating valuable content boils down to problem solving. You can start writing winning content more easily once you know what your readers are looking for and what their pain points are.
A key thing to remember, however, is that some of your readers may be beginners who are trying to come to grips with your subject area. So create content that is clear & appealing to beginners and which does not exclusively focus on advanced readers.
Look at Your Analytics
Your website analytics will provide you with a lot of insight regarding where your readers are coming from and how they’re interacting with your site. Check Google Analytics for keywords that users are searching for to get to your site, and then create engaging content about those topics.
You can also use those insights to update and keep existing posts relevant; or to create new posts with detailed information on the problems your target audience is trying to solve.
Go Through Your Blog Comments
Your blog comments can be extremely helpful to you in a number of ways.
First of all, they provide you with great insight into what readers think of the content you have written. This may include positive or negative feedback on the style and clarity of your writing, questions for more information on areas you can expand on, wide-spread problems being discussed and/or solutions to those problems.
Note them down and come up with post ideas to help your readers.
If your readers take the time to report a problem they are having, or to give you feedback, you need to listen. It usually means that it’s a significant challenge they, and other users, are facing.
Sift Through Your FAQs
You can actively engage with your readers by answering their most frequently asked questions in blog posts. This will show readers that you have carefully considered their responses to your content, and also helps other readers who may also have similar questions.
And as a nice bonus, you may attract some more visitors that wouldn’t have found your WordPress site otherwise.
Use Social Media
Social media channels are arguably the best place to source inspiration. Take BuzzFeed for example. They constantly browse the web for fun ideas – typically small trends or trending topics in niche areas – and make them more mainstream.
At the time of writing, Twitter show us that growth hacking and content marketing tips are now trending among bloggers.
You can also use social media to stay on top of industry trends; and to monitor the new keywords created by these trends. Use tools like Google Trends, Twitter Trends, Reddit, etc. to keep up with the conversation and take it to your blog.
Questionnaires and Polls
Another useful way to engage with readers is to put out short surveys or polls on your blog, social media or your mailing list. Ask them any questions they may have or for their opinion on certain topics that you covered. This is also a fantastic way to keep them engaged with your content.
Make it clear to your mailing list that you welcome questions. One way to do this is to offer some sort of incentive: perhaps a product discount, a coupon, or free mentoring to anyone who is willing to give a short interview. Interviewing in particular is a great way to find out a host of questions or issues your audience may have with your topic or industry that may never have even crossed your mind. This strategy may seem daunting, but is an effective way of coming up with content that is higher quality and more relevant to your audience.
Recycle and Transform
The fastest way for you to generate content ideas is by reading through existing content and expanding and improving on it. This means looking though what your competitors are writing about, and using that as a beacon to light your own blog posts. It is about taking already existing material, not copying it, but using it as a starting point for your own inspiration.
An important thing to consistently keep in mind when expanding and improving existing material is to not limit yourself to the original piece; to consider what else readers would benefit from knowing. Perhaps you could make the piece more personal and relatable by referencing your personal experiences.
Using Feedly, you can quickly find out what your competitors are writing about and use their content as a source of inspiration for your own.
So how can you discover other content in your niche? Use tools such as Feedly which shows you a list of publications that have been produced about a certain topic. Once you create an account, you can simply enter in specific keywords, URLs, or browse through existing categories.
Read Every Day
Reading every day actually means reading something relevant to your niche every single day. By doing so, you will find that over time, not only will your knowledge of the subject matter improve substantially, but that new sources of inspiration will spring up as well.
Reading content written by others in your field and the comments left behind by their users is also a good way to find inspiration. When reading through other peoples content, you may notice that similar problems keep cropping up but have remained unanswered. You can subsequently try to answer those questions in depth and address those issues in your own blog.
Visit popular blogs and websites, and observe the different ways in which they operate. Pay close attention to their writing style, and the topics that they are covering. You will slowly begin to pick up fresh ideas, and gain exposure to different viewpoints.
Reading stimulates the brain, thus making it that much easier for you to generate great content ideas.
How to Tackle Writer’s Block
So you’ve found inspiration and are now struggling with writer’s block. One of the best techniques to overcome it is simply to write! Write something down every single day, no matter how small, or jumbled. The point is to get all your ideas down on paper, which you can later revise and expand on.
Keep your work well organized, and easy to refer back to. You can use online note applications such as Evernote or Google Docs to keep your work backed up and easily accessible.
Having something to start with makes that blank page much less intimidating.
In a Nutshell
Once you get started using these tips and tricks, you will find that generating good content ideas is not as difficult as it may have initially seemed. So we hope this post has helped you to find inspiration for your next engaging blog post. The truth is, you really never know when your next source of inspiration may strike, so best of luck to you!
Do you have any special tricks to come up with great content ideas? Share them with your fellow readers below in the comment section!
Social media has evolved quite rapidly in the years it has been around. From BBS (Bulletin Board) to Friendster, Diaspora, Myspace and onto Facebook. But when we think of social media today, we arguably only have 3 or 4 large networks in mind: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Nowadays, those four platforms have become essential to every marketer’s strategy and are used to effectively get your brand in front of your target audience; but do they directly impact your SEO and search ranking? No, they currently do not.
However, that doesn’t mean that social media marketing and SEO do not affect each other in a variety of different ways. They are both inbound strategies that aim to attract your audience or customers to your brand. They are also both organic ways to attract your audience with unique quality content.
Perhaps the best way to describe the relationship between SEO and social media is to say that they are co-dependent. Effective social media campaigns will help improve your site ranking, and good SEO will inevitably boost your social clout. This is what we refer to as social SEO: the use of social media to boost your search engine rankings.
This post will demystify the relationship between social media and SEO; and show you how you can make social SEO work for your WordPress site.
How Important is Social SEO?
You can certainly rank your website well without focusing much on social SEO. You can’t, however, rank your website by focusing solely on social SEO. But that shouldn’t make you dismiss the whole idea too soon.
An active and strong social media presence makes it easier and faster to rank your site as search engines attribute authority based on tweets, shares, likes and Google +1s. Your social media presence also puts your content in front of a larger audience, some of whom will link your content on their own sites, creating valuable organic backlinks which contribute to your PageRank.
According to a recent study, Social Media Marketing even surpassed the impact of regular SEO in 2016, considering that market is already rather saturated. Time to hop on the bandwagon! Source: smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/marketing-innovation/marketing-trends-2016/
That is not to say that social SEO will eventually replace regular SEO, but we cannot ignore the fact that social signals are slowly becoming an integral part of search engine algorithms. Even though they have nothing on backlinks – and probably won’t, at least not in the near future – social links are still quite important. But how much effect or weight do they have on your rankings, particularly your ranking for target keywords?
Well, search engines have not yet made that information public. We just have to work with the definitive information that social signals do (indirectly) impact your site rankings and will continue to do so.
When Should I Focus on Social SEO?
If you are in an industry where your competitors are heavily focusing on both SEO and social SEO, and you want to rank well for your industry keywords, you have no other option but to do the same. Backlinks coupled with social signals will boost your rankings much more than backlinks alone, so you will lag behind your competition if you are only focused on building the latter. And if they aren’t focused on social SEO, you should jump on the opportunity to get one step ahead of your competitors.
Although social media does not directly impact your site rankings on Google, social networks are dominating the internet and will arguably dictate the future of the internet. You should invest properly in social media as it could soon directly impact your site’s rankings on search engines.
How to Effectively Implement Social SEO
How can you increase your site rankings with good social SEO? Here are a few summarized tips:
Create a business page on the “main” social networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.
Be active on those channels and engage your followers and subscribers
Create shareable, engaging and unique content
Make it as easy as possible for people to share your content
Share your content, and that of other influencers in your field on your social channels
The more active you are on social media, the more awareness you are bringing to your brand, the more your social following grows, and the higher the chance that your content is being shared across a broader network. It’s a snowball effect: the more followers you have, the more engagement you’ll get and the easier it will become to grow your community.
A bigger community means that more people are viewing your content and the higher the chance that the content will be shared. This increases the number of backlinks to your site which will impact your search rankings for the better.
Also, the more engagement you have on your social channels, the higher the chance that people will look for your brand on Google or other search engines via branded searches – which help your site rank for non-branded keywords that are relevant to your brand.
You do have to consider that the above scenarios are based on the assumption that you are producing quality and unique content. If you are creating bad content, you won’t get anywhere. Users will not interact with your brand if you’re not offering them value or good entertainment. If you want your content shared and widely distributed, you need to put in the time to create quality and valuable content your audience will enjoy.
In summary, the following social signals will increase your search engine rankings for the keywords you’re targeting:
Your social network followers
The likes, shares, retweets, Google +1s your website gets
Mentions by other authority or influencers in your field
Positive reviews on your business’ Google+ page
Using All in One SEO Pack for Social Meta
Our All in One SEO Pack plugin comes with a Social Meta module to help you get going with social marketing. This feature allows you to add Open Graph meta tags to enrich your posts by creating a rich snippet. Let’s briefly go over how Open Graph meta tags work and how they specifically help you with social SEO.
Basically, every web page on any site can be shared on social media channels. However, the way that shared page is displayed on social media may be very different. Websites that aren’t optimized with Open Graph meta tags won’t be as easily interpreted by Facebook, Twitter and the like and will, most of the time, show up as a blank link with a small description underneath.
Would you be more inclined to click on a blank link or on a rich snippet such as this?
However, adding Open Graph meta tags to a page on your site enriches the snippet and enables Facebook and other social media networks to display your content in the way you want to present it when it is shared. This is where All in One SEO Pack comes into action. For a full overview of all Open Graph and social meta features, please visit our documentation section.
There is no concrete evidence that Open Graph meta tags are important for search engines, but they do enable you to create presentable good looking posts on social media (instead of a bland-looking post). This significantly increases your organic traffic from social media to your WordPress site. Studies have shown that traffic increases 100%-200% if a post looks great vs. a blank link that doesn’t really mean much to social media users.
Wrapping It Up
Overall, a solid social media strategy, in conjunction with good SEO practices, will increase organic traffic to your site. Solely focusing on SEO may not cut it any longer if you want to be a step ahead of your competition. Revising your strategy to incorporate social SEO will inevitably boost your organic traffic and could very well increase your search engine rankings in the near future.
Do you currently have a social SEO strategy that’s working for you? Have you been using the social SEO module of our All in One SEO Pack plugin? Let us know in the comments below!
Are you creating categories on the go while you’re publishing posts? Do you have more than 15 categories on your blog? Are you using tags to bring some order back to your site? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you may be among many WordPress users that are confused about how to use categories and tags effectively, particularly to benefit SEO.
Categories and tags are the two main methods to organize posts in WordPress, but they also serve different purposes. Using them in the correct way will not only help you improve your SEO, but ultimately provide a much better user experience for your readers.
This article will explain the difference between the two and show you how to get the most out of each of them in the hopes of bringing some order back to your site.
What about SEO?
Categories and tags, when used correctly, could improve your SEO in three ways:
The internal links will help search engine crawlers find all your site’s content by following those links. In short, it allows search engines such as Google and Bing to access and index all of your posts and include them in search results.
Your category and tag names, which are the anchor text of the internal links, will give search engines a clue as to what your site is about. This helps you rank your content for those valuable keywords.
Popular posts that generate inbound links will use categories and tags to link to other related posts on your site, effectively boosting your website’s ranking on search engines and getting you that extra link juice.
What are Categories?
Before WordPress version 2.3, categories were the only way to organize your blog posts in WordPress, so you probably used or at least heard of them before. In fact, you can’t even publish a post without assigning a category to it. So what exactly is their purpose again?
Categories are used to group similar topics together – kind of like book chapters. The chapter titles of a book usually give you a pretty solid grasp of what the book is about and how it is structured. If the author or editor of that book were to reorganize or remove chapters, it would change the whole structure, and perhaps the whole story.
You may need to add extra subcategories in time as your site grows larger.
Let’s take an example of a health blog. If you’re running a comprehensive blog, you could select and create your categories based on the main components of health: Exercise, Nutrition, Motivation, etc. You can add sub-categories to each of those if needed (ex. Recipes under Nutrition). But there are a few rules you need to keep in mind:
Categories can only be used for posts, not pages
Every blog post should fit into one category (sometimes a post fits into two categories, but this shouldn’t occur often)
It is best to work with a single category limit for most of your posts
Categories shouldn’t be created for topics that you’re not going to discuss any further in the near future
You should place your categories into hierarchies and add subsequent subcategories as your site develops
You can create categories from the category interface (Posts > Categories). Let’s look at the Add New Category screen:
Name Speaks for itself. Give your categories easily identified, short names that visitors will instantly recognize. The category name should include a relevant keyword.
Slug This is the URL of your category name. It is found in category archives and your post URLs if you’re using custom permalinks. Use dashes to separate words and don’t stuff it with keywords.
Parent You can create a subcategory by assigning a parent to it. Leave it at “None” if it is a top-level category.
Description This is where the category description goes. It is not shown by default, but some WordPress themes may display it.
Although you are able to create as many categories as you like, the less you have the better. Typically, if you have more than a dozen blog categories, your content may not be as focused as you might think.
Google may translate a large number of blog categories to a lack of focus. This will make it much harder for your content to get the ranking which it deserves. That’s why it’s important to think very carefully about each category that you’re adding to your site.
Another reason why you should think carefully about each category you add or assign is that it can be quite challenging to change a post’s category later on, especially when it is part of a post’s URL slug. So to avoid redirecting 404 pages, choose categories wisely to save yourself some trouble in the future.
What are Tags?
Tags are used to provide specific details about your posts and also link related posts on your blog. This is why posts typically have quite a few tags to them (in comparison to categories). Think of tags like a book’s index – an extended list of more specific topics which the book covers. If a topic is in the index, it is mentioned in more than one part of the book; and adding or removing a topic from the index does not change the structure of a book.
So let’s go back to the example of a health blog. Possible tags to feature are fitness, body composition, nutrients, etc. You want to keep the names short and easily identifiable as well.
Remember that tags whilst helpful, are entirely optional. You should only include them if you are certain that they will add value to your site. Here are a few rules to keep in mind:
Try not to use more than five tags in each post. Remember: you want to make it clear and easy for your visitors to find what they are looking for
Don’t create a tag that can only be applied to one post
You shouldn’t repeat tags too often for different categories, as this may make things more complicated
Try not to capitalize your tags, as it is better to use lowercase
Tags are flat, which means that you can’t create a hierarchical structure with sub-tags
Categories and tags are quite straightforward to use once you understand the difference between them and their individual value. They are there to improve your site’s usability (categories more so than tags) and are thus a vital component of SEO. So choose your categories wisely and always link your decision back to your end user.
Hopefully you now have a better understanding of categories, tags and how to use them. For those that want to know even more about the usage of categories and tags: there’s an advanced user guide available at WordPress.org.
Please share your thoughts on the subject. How do you organize your content? Do you have any tips you’d like to share with your fellow WordPress users?
Did you know that with All in One SEO Pack Pro, you can control SEO for categories and tags?
If you haven’t noticed, SEO has changed over the past months. Search engines constantly update their algorithms which often makes it difficult to keep track of the latest best practices. We’ll help you get started on implementing an effective strategy and getting your site to the top.
Whether you’re setting up a new site or optimizing a current one, this checklist contains everything you need to know.
Let’s start with three vital changes that have dramatically affected SEO in 2016.
Mobile Dominates
Mobile has become more important than desktop: over 50 percent of all Google searches queries are now performed on mobile devices. This means that we’ll have to prioritize mobile from now on when it comes to SEO and web development. It’s of the utmost importance that your website is responsive –scaling content and built with mobile users in mind.
Social Matters More
Social media content is becoming an equal to website content at a fast rate. Search engines are now indexing and ranking social media pages, so it is inevitable that website content and social content will hold the similar weight in rankings in the near future. This means that businesses should claim their social pages, become more active on their relevant social networks and engage their audience.
Video Conquers The Web
Video is now key to any branding or marketing strategy; perhaps because it is more engaging and immersive than any other form of content. This is the time to start taking advantage of video and reach your audience in creative ways.
Now let’s look at our SEO checklist.
SEO 101: The Basics
Design a Responsive Site
As I mentioned earlier, mobile dominates. More than half of all Google searches are now performer on mobile. Your site not only needs to be mobile-friendly, but responsive on all devices. Ideally you create your site with mobile users in mind first and desktop users second.
Go with Google Analytics
Statistics are at the core of SEO. They provide important insights into your audience and traffic: site visitor behavior, where your prospects are coming from, how they’re finding your site, etc. – metrics that enable you to hone and optimize your efforts accurately.
Setting up Google Analytics is fairly straightforward with All in One SEO Pack: just sign up and add a tracking code to your website. You’ll find all detailed instructions on how to get started right here.
Check Your Page Speed
It’s important that you’re website’s pages load fast. The ideal load time is less than 2 seconds, because most users tend to leave your page if it takes any longer than 4 seconds to load.
Checking your site’s speed can easily be done using Pingdom or Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. These tools analyze your site within seconds, telling you what’s wrong and what you can do to fix or improve it. A score above 80 (out of 100) is considered great for both mobile and desktop.
Within seconds, PageSpeed Insight tells you what to do to improve your site’s speed.
Install a WordPress SEO Plugin
An SEO plugin will help you with on-page SEO like titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemap, social meta, etc.
Our All in One SEO Pack is one of the most popular plugins with over 30 million downloads and over 5 million users. You can find documentation and beginners guides to help you get the most from this powerful SEO tool over in our Documentation section.
Add Your Website to Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools help you analyze and monitor various search traffic factors like security concerns, search queries, broken links and many more. In conjunction with setting up those accounts, you should also create and submit an XML sitemap to Google and Bing.
Sitemaps provide search engines with a list of pages that are accessible to them. High-value or high-performance pages should be at the top. Luckily for you, All in One SEO Pack makes sure you don’t have to do this yourself.
It’s highly recommended – in fact, necessary – to do a full site audit after setting up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Go through every section to ensure that nothing is broken or needs to be fine-tuned.
Run an SEO Audit
Last but not least, get an SEO audit performed on your website by a professional. We provide such a service and details can be found on our website.
On-Page SEO
A lot of people ask us if keywords are still relevant.
They are, but not as you might think of keywords. Google has switched their emphasis from looking at basic “keywords” in your content to long tail terms. Their analysis of the way we use search engines showed that we don’t search by entering a string of keywords, we search by asking Google a question (entering a search term). Google realized back in 2013 that they had to change the way they return search results, so now, they don’t look at keywords in content, but instead they read and understand your content.
Depending on your niche, it can be quite hard to figure out which long tail terms you should actually focus on. Luckily, there are a few effective methods you can use and combine to get a list of relevant terms for your site. Keep in mind that writing quality informative content is much more important than paragraphs of poorly written text stuffed with keywords nobody bothers to read.
Develop Your Buyer Personas
Buyer personas will help you accurately define your audience; and consequently create a marketing strategy that targets them. To build one, think about the problems your ideal customer is facing; their needs; and their online and offline behavior.
Generate a list of trending topics and keywords. It also has a tool that compares keywords and checks the performance of keywords in different locations.
You can also just browse related searches and suggestions in Google – they can be found towards the bottom of the search results page.
Titles, Descriptions, Headings, Permalink Structures and Images
Create Unique Title Tags
You should write unique title tags for your posts and pages. Here are a few essential tips when writing title tags:
Limit the title tag length to 60-65 characters. Search engines like Google won’t display more characters in the snippet and will cut your phrase off
Add your company name at the end of every title tag to raise brand awareness
Place the relevant keyword at the beginning of the title tag as this could increase your SEO score
Our All in One SEO Pack plugin will help you with your titles.
Write Engaging and Succinct Meta Descriptions
Write a succinct and engaging meta description for every page or post. You should:
Limit the meta description to a maximum of 160 characters
Include a call-to-action, i.e. “read more” or “call [phone number]”
Make sure each description is unique
Meta descriptions do not affect the score of a certain webpage, so you shouldn’t focus on stuffing them with relevant keywords. Engaging, well written meta descriptions however have been proven to increase the click through rate and are key to attracting visitors to your site.
This is how an ideal Google Snippet should look like.
In fact, combined with title tags, meta descriptions are the billboard for your site. Google’s final word on meta descriptions has always been to use quality descriptions. As with title tags, All in One SEO Pack will help you with you descriptions.
Make Use of Heading Tags
Heading tags give search engines an idea of what your page is about. There should be one H1 heading which should be your page or post title. Headings should be used (H2, H3, H4…) appropriately across your content to break up content. Headings also allow you to define the structure of your text and add more detail to the appearance and layout of your content.
Use Keywords in Your Permalink Structure
It is highly recommended to use your keywords, particularly high value ones, in your page URLs. Try to use them whenever possible as they are a ranking factor for search engines. Where possible, your URLs should closely match your page structure and page titles.
Alt Tag Your Images
Always include your keywords in image Alt tags and titles; and use at least one (featured) image in every post. Alt tags are displayed when the image cannot be loaded on the user’s device and are very much appreciated by Google and the like.
Always Create Qualitative Content
You should never create content for the sake of creating content. All your content should serve a specific purpose, usually to help answer a prospect’s questions or address their concerns. Here are a few rules to creating quality content:
Content should be over 500 words (it can be lower if necessary)
Speak directly to the reader – use a conversational tone of voice
Do not overstuff your content with keywords, Google may penalize you
Provide accurate titles and descriptions
Use images and videos to increase visitor engagement
Use Internal and External Links
Direct readers to other relevant content through internal and external links. They will not only be appreciated by your visitors, but also add some extra SEO juice to your page and help search engines crawl and index related content on your site.
Keep Your Site Structure Simple
KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) applies to everything that deals with SEO and user experience on your site. In fact, SEO is all about user experience. In that vein, KISS also applies to your site’s structure.
Make sure that all key content is easily accessible in as few clicks as possible, preferably under three clicks from your homepage. If that’s not possible, you may want to rethink your site’s navigation.
Off-Page SEO
Quality, relevant backlinks tell search engines that your site is reputable and shows you are an expert in your field. Below we’ll describe some creative methods to get some quality backlinks.
Analyze Your Competitor’s Backlinks
It’s important to know where your competitors are getting their links from, so you can acquire links from those places as well. You can find competitor backlinks via SEMrush or Moz.
Next, create a list of your competitor’s most valuable links. This list will help you organize and develop an effective link acquisition strategy.
Finally, reach out to the owners or editors of those sites and ask them for backlinks if it could be beneficial for the both of you. There’s no point in requesting backlinks from, for example, a site on American history if your site is about great hamburger restaurants. Website owners need to be able to offer their users value as well.
Find Key Influencers in Your Niche
Influencers have contributed to the success of many big brands. Google Search and social media (particularly Twitter and Instagram) can identify relevant key influencers in your niche. Engage them and aim to cultivate valuable relationships.
These, for example, are top 5 influencers for SEO.
Consider using Klout – it’s a great platform to identify and engage with key influencers in your industry.
Find Non-Linked Content About Your Business
You write great content and have great products or services. So chances are someone has written content about your business. Search for it, then contact the site owners or publishers and kindly ask them to link the content back to your site. Chances are they will be more than happy to comply.
Review Existing Backlinks
Go through your existing backlinks to see if they are relevant and link to the right pages and content. If they’re not linked correctly, you can reach out to the author and have them update the link or use a redirection plugin if they are linking to a non-existent page. Also check to see if they are using the appropriate anchor text. If not, kindly request that they change it to something more suitable.
Believe it or not, you can remove backlinks that are irrelevant and harmful to your site. Simply ask Google to remove it from your SEO search assessment. That essentially means that you’re asking Google to not include it when calculating your PageRank. Here’s how to go about disavowing backlinks.
Join the Conversation
Participate in relevant forums and discussion boards to develop your authority. Provide useful and informed responses to relevant questions (on topics in your niche). You can always direct users to your site to find more comprehensive and thorough answers.
Quora is a great forum for the above. You can answer questions and link back to your site.
Finally, use social media and enable your visitors to share your content easily on their social networks. Respond to people who contact you via social media.
Social SEO
Go Where Your Customers Are
Where are your prospects socializing online? Identify those networks, create profiles and build strong followings on those channels.
Nowadays it’s essential to claim your social business pages on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter as it is expected that social content will become as valuable as regular site content.
Monitor the Social Conversation
Keep your ears tuned to the social conversation. You should know when people are looking up or discussing your company, products, services or anything else that pertains to your business. There are several social media monitoring tools you can use, such as Hootsuite, Buffer and many more. Hootsuite and Buffer also help with scheduling and managing social media posts.
As mentioned earlier, identify your key influencers on social networks. Engage with them and cultivate mutually beneficial relationships. You’d be surprised at the power of a direct message (to the right influencer) in getting your content distributed over a wider network and to new audiences.
Conclusion
This checklist should help you to greatly improve your SEO if your site performance is below expectations. Although this list mostly covers the technical aspects of SEO, always keep in mind that delivering quality content to your customers is key to excellent SEO. And spamming links to generate backlinks isn’t the way to go.
Stay tuned to our blog for more helpful tips to help you with your SEO and social media marketing.
Your website is a goldmine for cyber criminals. They are fast, invisible and always on the prowl for sensitive customer account details or to simply destroy. If you’re a WordPress site owner, you are no doubt aware of the vulnerabilities WordPress sites have experienced in recent years. The good news is that Automattic recently took a much anticipated security step by adding HTTPS encryption to all custom WordPress.com domains (more than 1 million WordPress sites).
You are probably familiar with web encryption as one of the most effective ways to keep data secure. Indeed, encryption is a hot topic right now. Apple recently made headlines after refusing to comply with a court order to assist the FBI to unlock the iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter. Apple stated that it would need to write new software that would essentially be a master key to opening any iPhone. The main argument was that if the FBI could unlock that iPhone, they could unlock many others, putting everyone’s privacy and personal safety at risk.
For those reasons, among many others, web security should always be at the top of your mind in running your business. But what exactly is HTTPS and how is it beneficial to your business? Can HTTPS alone sufficiently protect your WordPress site? This article will answer those questions in the quest to help you bolster your site security.
What Exactly Is HTTPS?
HTTPS stands for Hyper Text Transport Protocol Secure – the secure connection protocol for HTTP. When you connect to HTTPS, you are using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols to protect communications between your computer and a remote server. Both protocols use encryption to keep cyber criminals from intercepting communications.
The information you send across the web passes from computer to computer before it arrives at the end server. That means that all computers the information passes through could read the sensitive information: from usernames and passwords to credit card information and social security numbers. SSL or TSL encrypts the sensitive information through its journey to the intended recipient, so that only they can understand it.
How Is HTTPS Beneficial to Your Website?
HTTPS encryption is very important for both site security and SEO.
HTTPS keeps your business communications with your online customers safe and secure. When it is enabled, any information between the server and a client cannot be diverted, modified, or stolen. This kind of security is essential for any site that has a login and/or payment system – basically any ecommerce business. It not only protects your data but allows web visitors to view your site as credible. In that sense, HTTPS is essential for all businesses and new websites.
Google has also highlighted the importance of HTTPS encryption. In 2014, Google announced that it would start using HTTPS as a ranking signal. That’s right: Google is ranking sites with HTTPS encryption higher than those without it. That announcement pushed a lot of websites across the globe to obtain HTTPS.
Is HTTPS Encryption Enough to Keep Your Site Secure?
No. Although it helps protect your sensitive data, securing your websites is much more complex than HTTPS. The bottom line is that it does not protect your site, network or server from getting hacked. It also does not prevent hackers from abusing software vulnerabilities that may be present in WordPress. In fact, in general, we’ve seen quite a few major attacks on SSL and TSL protocols: Poodle, Heartbleed, Shellshock, LogJam to mention a few.
So what are your options? What can do you to fortify your site?
What More Can You Do to Protect Your Site?
Security is highly important and as such, there are quite a few things you need to do and stay on top of. We’ll go into this in more detail in another post. For now, here are a few things you need to do to fortify your WordPress site.
Know What the Threat Is
Stay on top of hacking threats. You need to know what is happening, what is possible, in order to protect your site against potential threats. Set up news alerts or follow hacking news sites. The information you receive will give you the ability to take precautionary measures.
Update, Update, Update
Update software as soon as an update is available. The reason behind a lot of updates is to protect against a security vulnerability, so delaying an update greatly exposes you to a potential attack. Hackers are constantly on the lookout for vulnerabilities. If you don’t move quickly to patch vulnerabilities, chances are you’ll become easy prey.
Secure Your Admin Dashboard
Access to information in the admin dashboard of your website is every hacker’s dream. Set usernames and passwords that cannot be easily guessed; greatly limit the number of login attempts within a specific time period; don’t send account details over email etc. Your admin panel is a treasure-trove so keep it secured at all times.
Keep Your Network Secure
An insecure network provides fairly easy access to your site servers. Take some precautionary measures such as frequently changing passwords, expiring logins after a certain period of inactivity, setting strong passwords, and scanning malware on each and every device that connects to your network.
Back-Up Everything
Back-up everything, both on-site and off-site. Set up automatic backups several times a day, to various locations, so you don’t lose everything when the worst-case scenario happens.
HTTPS encryption is great for security, SEO and credibility. You most likely were quite overjoyed when Automattic made the announcement that all custom domains would automatically switch to HTTPS encryption. But that does not mean you’re in the clear when it comes to site security.
There is a whole lot more that needs to be done to keep any website safe from advanced, constantly evolving and persistent cyber threats. Some of the tips mentioned in this article will help to reinforce your site security; and keep your mind at ease to tackle the more fun business operations.
