Do you have a sitemap on your website? Do you know why you need to have one and what the SEO benefits are? We can help answer these questions.
What is a sitemap?
There are two different types of sitemaps - HTML and XML.
A HTML sitemap is what it sounds like - a list of pages on your website. The sitemap is often broken into sections, and is intended for humans. Meanwhile, an XML sitemap is intended for search engine robots.
Sitemaps include important metadata such as when it was created, when it was last modified, and how it is relevant to other pages. You can even give specific information about content on your page, such as photographs and videos.
Having a sitemap on your website helps with indexing, as crawlers will read this information.
Do I need a sitemap?
Google’s guide to sitemaps outlines who needs to include sitemaps on their websites.
You will need to include a sitemap if:
Your website is really large
Your site has a large archive of content pages
Your site is new with few external links
Your site uses rich media content
Pretty much everyone can benefit from having a sitemap on their website. While having your pages correctly linked helps crawlers, sitemaps will further help with this process. Best of all, you will never be penalised for having a sitemap on your website.
Why are sitemaps important?
Source: Diggles Creative
A sitemap tells search engines what the content of your website is, and how frequently it is updated. This means it is easier for search engine crawlers to find out about the content of your website, and makes the process of indexing easier.
While adding a sitemap won’t affect search rankings, it does make interaction between your website and crawlers easier. This is particularly important if you are frequently producing new content. Crawlers will then know what rate to crawl your website. While adding a sitemap will never negatively affect your SEO, it will help improve your visibility to search engines.
How do I set up a sitemap?
Once you’re convinced you need a sitemap, the next step is to actually set one up. Fortunately, if you’re using a WordPress website, it is relatively easy to install a sitemap.
All you have to do is install a plugin. Options for plugins include:
Google XML Sitemap: this has been supported for over 9 years, and is rated as the best WordPress plugin.
Yoast SEO: this is often considered to be the best SEO plugin, and can be downloaded for free, with premium options starting at $69.
Once installed, the next step is to submit your sitemap to Google, which can be done through the Google Search Console. To submit your sitemap:
Log in to the Google Search Console
Navigate to “Crawl” and choose “Sitemaps”
Next, click “Add/Test Sitemap”
Simply enter the URL of your sitemap, and click “Submit Sitemap.”
While there is no penalty for adding a sitemap, and no foolproof evidence of benefits, having a sitemap will help your SEO efforts. If you want to reap the rewards of having a site that is easier to index and crawled more frequently, it’s a great idea to set up a sitemap for your website.
Search engine optimisation is important for marketers. However, it also shouldn’t be an overlooked aspect of your blog.
Fortunately, most SEO updates needed for your blog are relatively simple, and can be implemented by yourself, without the need for an expert.
So what SEO updates can you do to improve your blog?
1. Have your own domain name
The first step is to make sure your blog has its own domain name. Sure, you can save some money and use a free blog site. But if you’re serious about blogging, or even want to turn it into a profitable business, then you’re going to need to invest in a domain name and hosting. Having your own domain name will help you to establish authority in your niche, as readers, as well as Google, will take you more seriously. Having your own domain name will help you to rank better in Google than if you choose to use a free site.
If you’ve got a WordPress website, some of the best hosting to consider is:
Bluehost
HostGator
SiteGround
iPage
UPDATED MARCH 2022
WordPress website hosts worth looking at are not in the above list.
It’s important to ensure what you’re publishing on your blog is original content. Some people try and manipulate Google’s rankings by having duplicate content posted on their website or blog. While you won’t receive a penalty for this, it can have a negative impact on your website, as Google doesn’t know which page to include or exclude from its indices, or which version to rank. To avoid this, make sure what you write on your blog is your own work, with content and images appropriately sourced.
You don’t just have to produce original written content. You can even consider making your own original infographic. Anything visual will gain more interest and is sure to get more shares.
Your content not only needs to be original, but it should be interesting and of value to your audience. If you’re writing about a topic that has been covered 100 times before - why would anyone want to read it again? Get to know your audience and find out their interests, and cater to their wants and needs. This will help you to increase traffic flow, social shares, and ranking on Google.
3. Use the correct categories
Categories can be used for more than navigating to archived posts. Using categories is an easy way to boost your organic SEO. This is because it creates more chances for you to rank on Google. If you’re considering using categories on your blog, make sure you don’t overdo it. Only select one category per post, and limit the number of categories you’re using, particularly if your blog is still small.
4. Include sharing buttons
You can share your content onto your social media pages and hope people will share it. Or, you can encourage readers to share your blog posts but including social sharing buttons on your website. If people are interested in your blog and want to share it, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. If it’s difficult to share your blog post, particularly from a mobile device, people may not bother sharing it at all.
Adding social sharing buttons improves the user experience and helps make sharing easier. When including sharing buttons on your blog, consider where you are going to place them. The best options are at the top or bottom of your blog post, or running vertically down the side. You can even include share buttons throughout your content if you like. You don’t even have to just pick one option - you can implement several.
Getting your blog posts shared on social media exposes your website to a whole new audience, and therefore increases traffic flow. It can also help to increase your social media engagement, as you can strike up a conversation with those who shared your article. The more your article is shared, the bigger positive impact it will have on your rankings, so what reason do you have to not include social media buttons?
5. Subscribe options
As well as social share buttons, you should include prominent RSS or Feed Subscription buttons. This gives people the option to subscribe to your blog if they wish to do so. Your subscribers will receive email updates whenever you post a new blog. This means your readers won’t have to keep checking your blog for updates, but you will still receive views when there is a new post.
6. Keywords
Keywords are one of the most important aspects of SEO. How else are people going to find your blog? Keywords are what people type into search engines, and what is included in your blog to help it rank.
When including keywords in your blog, you have to make sure not to overdo it, or else it will look like you’re keyword stuffing. This practice is viewed as black-hat SEO, and could see you receive a Google penalty.
Instead of keyword stuffing, you want to include keywords in your:
Title: Your title should tell people what the post is about. Keep your title short, aiming to be under 65 characters.
Headers: Use headings and subheadings throughout your blog to break up sections of content. Search engine crawlers will also use this information to know what your content is about, and what it should rank for.
Content: While avoiding keyword stuffing, make sure to naturally use your keywords throughout the blog post. Make sure you write for people, and not search engines. If you’re using too many keywords, it will be awkward to read, and you won’t help your rankings.
URL: Your URL also helps crawlers know what your page is about. The URL is often crawled first, so it’s a great opportunity to take advantage of. Optimise each of your URLs to include keywords.
Meta description: A meta description tells both search engines and readers what your post is about. Make it as engaging as possible to attract readers, while including one or two keywords as well.
7. Optimise your images
Your content is pretty important, but that doesn’t mean you should overlook the images used throughout your blog post. Images help your blog to look more visually attractive, and more than just a wall of text.
While readers will see images, search engines don’t. Instead, they search for alt text. What is alt text? It’s text that tell search engines what your image is. So instead of having your images called IMG0001, consider using a keyword instead. This won’t dramatically improve your rankings, but it is worth taking the extra bit of effort.
8. Include links
To increase your blog's SEO, you're going to want backlinks, and need to use inbound links. When using inbound links throughout your content, you need to make sure they are of high quality and are relevant to your content. Including lots of links, and to websites with a low authority, may cause you to end up with a penalty, which will damage your blog. Before adding a link to your content, carefully decide whether it is credible enough.
You also want to focus on getting backlinks to your website. This is when another website includes a link to your website or blog post. However, backlinks can also result in you receiving a penalty. Make sure you avoid buying backlinks, and don’t have backlinks on websites that are deemed untrustworthy.
Legitimate ways to gain a backlink is by reaching out to influential blogs within your industry to see if they will allow you to publish a guest post. This not only builds a link back to your website, but allows people to get a taste for your writing as well.
9. Be mobile friendly
With mobile use becoming more and more popular, it’s vital to ensure your blog is optimised for mobile users. This means people using a mobile device will be able to easily read and navigate through your blog. If it is not appropriately optimised, you may end up with a high bounce rate, with people not visiting your blog. Google also takes into account whether or not your website is optimised for mobile users. In 2015, Google released a new algorithm known as 'mobilegeddon'. This boosted the rankings of mobile-friendly pages in Google's rankings, and penalised those whose websites were not optimised.
To check whether or not your website is correctly optimised, you can use the Mobile-Friendly Test. Simply enter your URL and find out how easily someone can access your website on a mobile. Doing this will help ensure you benefit from the mobilegeddon algorithm.
10. Optimise old blog posts
Old blog posts can do more than just sit in the archives. Your old blog posts often receive the most traffic. This is because the posts have been around longer, increasing the number of shares and total views. Use Google Analytics to find out which of your blog posts are performing the best. If you can see there’s something more you can add to the blog post, why not update it. This gives you a chance to share the content again, increasing the amount of views and its ranking on Google.
Following these tips will help to increase your blog’s SEO. Just remember that no changes happen overnight. SEO takes time. Continue to post interesting, original content to your blog, and over time you will begin to see your authority rise, and your ranking will follow.
Think we missed something? Got any other tips? Let us know in the comments.
Ever ask yourself "why duplicate content is bad for SEO?"... we put this together (in 2017) to help provide actionable answers.
You’ve probably heard of duplicate content. That is content which appears on more than one URL. This can be within your own site, or across several different websites. This can often be unintentional, such as having a printer-friendly version of your website or duplicate content in discussion forums. However, duplicate content is often malicious, with intentions to manipulate search engine results.
This creates several problems with regards to SEO:
Source: Bitwizards
Negative user experience
One of the main aims of any website should be the user experience. Search engines are no exception to this. They want to create a good user experience, or else people simply won’t use them. Duplicate content helps to create a negative user experience. Users directed to the same content over and over again, rather than fresh, different content that matches their queries can find this frustrating.
Indexing
Because there is multiple pages with the same keywords and phrases, search engines don’t know which version to excluding when indexing websites. You risk losing traffic to your website, as the other URL with duplicate content may rank higher.
Back when this article was written this was a bit of an issue, nowadays (2024) this can just prevent pages from being indexed, i.e. ever appearing in Google.
“Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.”
So if you are intentionally trying to manipulate search engine results, and practicing black hat SEO strategies, you may find your website removed from Google’s index. However, this won’t happen with every case. If you have duplicate content, you can expect it not to rank as well as original content, but your whole domain ranking will not necessarily be affected.
The first thing to do is establish if there is duplicate content. Maybe your content has been taken and published elsewhere without your knowledge.
The first stage is to actually establish if any of your content has been duplicated. Fortunately, it’s very easy to find out. You can do this by:
Using Google: Take any content from your website and put it in quotes and search. The results will show you where that exact content is found on the web.
Use tools: Content checker tools such as Copyscape will do all the hard work for you. This tool will compare two articles or web pages. Simply enter a URL or paste text, and see if there is any duplicates.
If you've got duplicate content, whether on your own website or across different URLs, there are a few things you can do:
Use 301 redirects: this is particularly important if you have restructured your website. Make sure you use 301 redirects to avoid duplicate content and maintain your rankings.
Boilerplates: an easy place for duplicate content to appear is the boilerplates or copyright notices. Instead of including a lengthy notice, minimise this and include a link to where people can get the full statement.
Preferred domain: you can tell Google which is your preferred domain that you would like indexed. This avoids situations where http://example.com is indexed, while http://www.example.com is preferred, but not indexed. Google will also use this information when crawling your site in the future.
Minimise similar content: if you have many pages on your website with the same or similar content, consider altering this content, or condensing it onto one page. If expanding the content on the two pages, just make sure to make it unique, so there is not further duplicated content.
Canonical link element: if you have duplicate content, it can be tempting to block access to crawlers by using a robots.txt file. However, Google recommends against this method. Instead, Google suggests marking duplicate pages by using the rel=”canonical” link element. This allows for the pages to be crawled, while also minimising duplicate content problems.
Reconsideration: if you’ve been undertaking some tactics that are considered against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, don’t panic! You can still get relisted and gain your ranking back. If you have made the necessary changes and believe your website is no longer breaching the Webmaster Guidelines, you can submit a reconsideration request.
Copyright law: in rare cases, your content may be taken and used on an external URL that you have no control over. If the external website is duplicating your content, they will be in violation of copyright law. You can contact the website’s host to request the duplicate content be removed. You can also request Google remove the page by filing a request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The best thing to do is ensure every page on your website is full of high quality, original content. This means it won’t appear that your website is intentionally trying to manipulate Google’s results page. However, if you have been stung by having duplicate content, it’s important to take the time to rectify the issue in order to improve both your SEO and ROI.
Find and Fixing Duplicate Content
It is worth noting that our Technical SEO Audits and Content Audits, conducted as part of our Digital Marketing Strategy work, both uncover duplicated content and our team can provide tailored SEO recommendations to solve those issues. Solutions often include one or more of the following:-
Rewrites
Internal Linking
Deleting Content or Whole Pages
When you’ve got a website for your business, it’s important to ensure you keep up with and implement the latest SEO trends. Google is constantly changing its algorithm, so it’s important to make sure you know about these changes. Sometimes, an SEO tactic that used to be popular is now no longer the best strategy to use.
Back in 2012, Google introduced a new algorithm called Penguin. This update penalised websites which created unnatural backlinks. If there were too many backlinks, or backlinks were going to low quality sources, a website would be penalised. This encourages people to build legitimate links, rather than paying for them. So it’s a good idea to avoid paying for links, and just earn links by promoting your work, and reaching out to influencers in your niche.
2. Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing used to be a popular SEO strategy. Keyword stuffing is where you overload a page with too many keywords, whether that be short or long-tail. The aim of this is to get a better search engine ranking.
Keyword stuffing used to help improve rankings, but not so much anymore. Google looks at more factors than just keywords, including relevancy and user experience. Keyword stuffing does nothing to enhance the user experience, and users are therefore penalised.
Rather than trying to stuff your pages unnecessarily with keywords, focus on producing quality content, and use your keywords in context.
3. Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
This can often be an easy task for SEO specialists to overlook. However, this is an important factor for search engines when they are looking at your website.
A title tag will let search engines know what the page is about. The meta description gives a longer summary of the content, and is generally around 100 to 130 characters long. You need to make sure both your title tag and meta description are relevant to your page, and that they both include relevant focus keywords.
However, try to avoid keyword stuffing in your meta description. The meta description should be a way to sell the page and your business. Only use keywords that flow and make sense.
4. Forgetting Local SEO
You can’t overlook local SEO if you’re a local business! You need to make sure your website includes all the details anyone using a search engine to find you would need. That includes your opening hours (if necessary), contact phone number, physical address, and even a map showing your location. If people are searching for your business and they can’t find these details, they may be less inclined to visit your store. Make sure you also keep this information up to date, so people aren’t visiting the wrong address or calling an old phone number.
Make sure you include geographical keywords throughout your content and meta tags. This way, search engines will know to list your business when people are looking for geographically specific businesses. Don’t just assume Google knows where your store is located.
5. Mobile optimisation
In 2017, you can’t afford to ignore your mobile website. Mobiles are continually increasing in popularity, with more people making searches from their mobile devices than desktop. In 2015, Google released the algorithm “Mobilegeddon”, which penalises websites that aren’t mobile user-friendly. If your website doesn’t have a mobile version, you could see your search engine rankings slip.
Make sure you consider the layout of your website and whether it’s just as easy to navigate on a mobile. If not, it’s time to optimise your website and enhance the user-experience. You can test whether your website is mobile user-friendly using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
6. Mixing up redirects
You want your website to be as user-friendly as possible. This includes having the right redirects in place. This is a common mistake that can occur after someone has changed their domain name. Often a 301 and 302 redirect can get mixed up. While it doesn’t sound like a big deal, it can impact your rankings as search engines will be unable to find the correct page.
A 301 redirect is used when your site has been permanently moved to a new domain, or if you’re merging two websites. Meanwhile, a 302 redirect notifies users the website or page has temporarily moved. This helps search engines to know whether to keep a page, or replace it with the new one. 301 redirects are far more common, as you are more likely to permanently move a page or website. How often do you temporarily move a page? While it’s easier and less time consuming to create a 302 redirect, it’s often worth the time to create a 301 instead. After all, you don’t want your old pages to still be indexed, you want them replaced with the new domain. When you move your website and want to keep your link juice, your best option is to put a 301 redirect in place.
Remember to always consider the customer and the user-experience (UX) before considering the search engines. This will help you to improve your website and implement the best SEO practices.
When you’re optimising your website, it can often be easy to make mistakes.
However, those mistakes can have a dramatic impact on your website. It could cause a drop in traffic or even removal from search engine listings. When you’re optimising your website for SEO, it’s important to know what a penalty is, why you could get penalised and the best way to avoid a penalty.
What is a Google Penalty?
Google has constantly changing algorithms which scan for clean, optimised websites. It also notes any positive or negative behaviour occurring within the website. Any behaviour that is in breach of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, or what is considered ‘black hat SEO’, will attract a Google Penalty.
There have been three big algorithm updates introduced in recent years. These are:
Panda: this algorithm was introduced in February 2011, and focused on filtering the results featured in Google’s results pages. If the website was considered of low quality, it would lose rankings.
Penguin: introduced in 2012, this update focused on backlinks - how many a website had, and the quality of those links. Users would attract a penalty if the website had too many low quality links.
Mobilegeddon: in April 2015, Mobilegeddon was introduced, which penalised users if they didn’t have a mobile-friendly version of their website.
How will you know if you have received a penalty?
Sometimes, the user isn’t notified that they have received a Google Penalty. It’s therefore important for anyone with a business website to know what signs to look out for incase you have received a penalty.
Signs that you’ve got a penalty include:
Your website isn’t ranking. If it ranked before, particularly for its brand name, but now it’s not, you’ve probably got a penalty.
You used to have pages that ranked on page one, but are now several pages back.
Your home page isn’t ranking on Google, but other pages are still ranking.
What mistakes cause you to get a Google Penalty?
While it’s sometimes a simple error that causes you to get a Google Penalty, in other instances it may be caused by undertaking black hat SEO tactics.
Mistakes that can cause you to get a Google Penalty include:
Links
There are several ways links can cause you to end up with a Google Penalty. This includes:
Swapping links: if you’re exchanging a lot of links with clients or another business, you could attract a penalty. When including outbound links, always keep them natural, make sure it’s going to a high quality website, and don’t include too many on your website.
Links in a different language: this can seem a bit unfair if you’ve obtained a legitimate link. However, Google’s reasoning is users prefer a website in one language, and therefore there is no use for a link in a different language.
Footer links: placing legitimate navigational links in the footer is fine, just don’t use it to pass link juice or unnecessarily promote pages.
Hidden links: if you’re trying to hide a link, it seems a bit suspicious, and Google thinks so too. Make sure you links are visible, and never the same colour as the background.
Link building: links help get your site to rank, but it can go badly for you. If you suddenly have gained lots of links it can often be a sign of automation. Instead, gradually make changes to avoid a penalty.
Broken links: this is a big one. It’s important to make sure you keep all your links up-to-date to avoid having 404 error pages. These pages hinder the user experience, and will attract a penalty.
Malicious backlinks: this is one of the most unfortunate reasons for getting a Google penalty. Sometimes, a competitor will run a malicious backlink campaign against your website to try and get your website to have a penalty.
Content
Often, it’s the content of your own site that will attract a Google Penalty. After all, one of the main targets of the Panda algorithm was content.
So how can your content attract a penalty?
Duplicate content: if you’ve got the exact same content on numerous pages, you could attract a penalty. Avoid having several pages with the same content. This includes blog posts - don’t just copy your own or someone else’s content.
Keyword stuffing: you can insert keywords into your content, but if it’s obvious that you’re using too many keywords on the one page, you may attract a penalty.
Hidden content: this is a black hat SEO tactic that you should definitely avoid. Some people will hide content in order to manipulate keyword weighting or a theme.
Article spinning: article spinning is about rewriting an existing article and altering words, phrases or paragraphs, so you have a new, slightly different version of the content. While this can be performed manually, most article spinning is automated, is of low quality and considered unreadable. Content may often be plagiarised from other websites, and could attract legal problems because of copyright infringement.
Guest blogging: if it’s done well, guest blogging is a great way to increase traffic flow to your website. However, it’s important to always consider the Domain Authority of the website you’re writing for. You don’t want to put a link to your website on a page with a low authority, that looks untrustworthy and hasn’t been optimised.
To avoid receiving a penalty for your content, always make sure your web pages are well written with original copy all published in the one language.
Website design
If your website is poorly optimised, you can end up with a Google penalty. Here’s what you should avoid doing if you don’t want a penalty:
Too many H1 tags: you need headers to let Google know what the page is about. But using too many comes across as keyword stuffing.
Website speed: nobody wants to sit and stare at a white page waiting for a website to load. Instead, they will leave the site and look elsewhere. If you have a slow website, you’re not only losing customers, but gaining the wrath of Google as well. Make sure you follow our tips on website speed to ensure your site isn’t slow.
Website crashing: for one reason or another, sometimes your website will go down. However, this means Google won’t be able to find your website to index it. Ensure you keep track of your analytics and data to know your website isn’t going down.
Over-optimised websites: sometimes it’s tricky getting the balance right - you need to optimise your website, but not too much, or else you will make Google suspicious. Avoid introducing every SEO tactic all at once to improve your website.
Website design: Mobilegeddon was introduced in 2015 and targets those who do not have a mobile-friendly website. You need to ensure Google can detect that you have a mobile website, and that it is optimised to be user friendly.
Too many ads: it’s fine to include advertisements and sponsors on your website, just make sure they’re not the most prominent aspect of the page.
What do you do if you’ve attracted a Google Penalty?
The biggest step is often knowing you’ve got a penalty, and then finding out the cause of it. The final step is to remedy the penalty. The solution will often vary depending on the cause of the penalty. Some options include:
Manual fix: if the problem was manual, and something you have done on your website, you can fix the problem, and then submit a reconsideration request to Google. This asks Google to review your website after you have fixed the problem.
Disavow links: if your ranking is being negatively affected by links that are out of your control, you can ask Google to disavow links. Google will not take these links into account when assessing your website.
Remove links: You can’t just rely on disavow alone. Try and see if you can get some links pointing to your website taken down.
Change domain names: sometimes, it’s not an option just to wait out the penalty. If your website isn’t displaying on the search engine results pages, you could be losing business. If this is the case, the best option would be to make an entirely new domain name.
Now you know what can attract a penalty, it’s best to avoid implementing these on your website. However, if you have already attracted a penalty, clean up your website, follow the Webmaster Guidelines and you should be able to fix your website.
When you’re looking at your websites analytics, you’ll often come across the term ‘conversion rate’. For those who aren’t used to interpreting data, it can be confusing to know what it means and how to interpret the numbers.
So what is a conversion rate anyway?
Qualaroo defines conversion as “when a visitor to your website takes an action you want them to take.” This action varies depending on your end goal. The action could be signing up for an email, creating an account, purchasing an item or downloading an app.
Your conversion rate will vary depending on what you are trying to achieve, what type of product you sell and the niche you’re in. If you’re looking at the numbers, the average ecommerce add-to-cart conversion rate is 8.7% globally. However, this changes even when you’re measuring AdWords. The median conversion rate for AdWords is 2.35%, with ¼ of all accounts having less than 1%. Again, you will get different results depending on the industry you’re in.
It’s important to know the average in your industry to know how your competitors are tracking. However, there is no need to panic if you find your business has a low conversion rate. In this instance, instead of focusing on the competitors, focus on finding the cause of your conversion rate and what you can do to improve your score.
What causes a low conversion score?
Website design
Conversion rate is all about the consumer taking an action. If it’s not clear what action they should be taking, then you could end up with a low conversion score. Check to see if your call-to-action is clearly displayed and the customer knows they should be taking it. For example, if you’re running an ecommerce website with a checkout process, you want to ensure you’ve got a prominent “add to cart” button.
Whatever your call-to-action is, make sure that it stands out. Consider using eye-catching or bright colours, and place the call-to-action in a place that is easy to see. This is particularly important if your website has just been redesigned - double check your call-to-action is just as easy to access to avoid having a lower conversion rate.
Competition
If you’re in an industry where customers tend to do a lot of comparison shopping, any changes to the competition could drastically change your conversion rate. Similarly, if you or your competitor alters your price, it will have an impact, whether negative or positive. If you suddenly have the most expensive items in the market, chances are you will see a dip in conversion rates.
Seasonality
For some industries, sales revolve around the seasons. Unfortunately, sales often can’t be strong all year round, and will often consistently dip and rise at the same times every year.
Vertical Measures posted an example of an ecommerce retailer whose conversion rate suffered as a result of seasonality. While there was a small peak in Spring, there were declines throughout Summer and Autumn, with a last peak in Winter before a drop off during the holiday season.
If you know your business suffers from seasonality, it’s important to know when to predict rises and falls in conversion rates. Compare data from previous years and note if there is a consistent pattern. If there is, chances are it’s because of seasonality.
Copy
Sometimes, one of the culprits of your low conversion rate is your website copy. Your copy conveys your brand to your customers. You need to make sure this is consistent on your landing page, across your website and in your ads.
To have the best possible copy on your website, consider your buyer persona. This means your website and your copy can be completely targeted to your audience. After all, a customer isn’t going to want to visit or make a purchase from a website that doesn’t speak to them.
Make sure your copy evokes emotion. People make purchases based on their emotions. It doesn’t matter what emotion you’re trying to evoke, just make sure it’s one that your audience is going to identify with and use it throughout your website’s copy.
Tracking
It may sound obvious - but sometimes the culprit for your low conversion rate can be the tracking itself. If you’ve suddenly got an unexplained drop in conversions, make sure to check if your tracking is set up correctly. Running a quick tracking test can save you time agonising over why your rate has suddenly dropped.
Make sure to consistently run an analytics test, as this will allow you to see if there are any drops in conversion rate and to be able to quickly put in place a solution to fix it. If you’re using AdWords, it’s important to setup conversion tracking. This means you’ll be able to monitor how your campaigns are progressing and can make any necessary alterations.
How can I improve my conversion rate?
If you’ve got a low conversion rate, and it’s not a tracking error, there are a few strategies you can implement to improve your conversions. These include:
Using specific keywords: these will have a higher conversion rate than general keywords. Think about specific terms people would search to find your website, and use those keywords.
Use negative keywords: this is particularly important for those who are using AdWords. Using negative keywords means your ad won’t display for people searching a particular keyword or phrase. This means you can exclude people searching for specific terms that you know won’t lead to a sale.
Include prices: for those who have an ecommerce website, it’s a good idea to include the prices of your products or services in your ads. This will help you to get more relevant traffic. If you display the price and a customer clicks on your ad, you know they’re interested.
A/B Testing: use A/B testing for your website or your ads. This allows you to compare two versions of your web page or ad to see which one performs better. This way you can see how you need to correctly optimise your website or ad, and what will lead to more sales.
Following these tips will help to not only understand why your conversion rate is low, but how you can avoid a low rate and what changes you can make to see improvements.
Yoast SEO can be one of the most valuable plugins you will install on WordPress. It helps people to make their website as user-friendly as possible. For those who have a self-hosted WordPress website, you can use Yoast SEO to control meta descriptions and titles, target keywords and track them and manage sitemaps, to name a few of the features.
The plugin helps you to make your page more SEO friendly by presenting users with green circles. The colours work the same way as traffic lights - green is good, orange is average, and red is bad. After each coloured circle there is a description of the task, and if it is not green, what you can do to improve it.
However, it can become addictive to try and get all green circles on Yoast SEO. This can result in people using the plugin but wasting their time.
Cheating Yoast SEO
You may end up with all green circles, but is it really an achievement if you’re cheating? If your goal is to have all green circles, no matter how you achieve this, then you’re probably missing the point of the tool.
An easy way to misuse the page analysis tool is by writing content, and then inserting your focus keywords into the already finished content. This should make all of the Yoast circles turn green. But what is the point of doing that? Instead, consider inserting an infographic or even a video into your content. This will not only make the page more appealing for the readers, but is sure to please Yoast as well.
Keyword Focus
It’s easy to think about changing your keyword focus in order to receive all green circles on Yoast SEO.
However, when writing your content it’s important to not only keep your keywords in mind, but also remember your audience. Changing your keyword focus doesn’t change the searching habits of the consumers. If the original keyword didn’t give you all green circles - don’t worry! People will still be searching this term.
Remember to always focus on writing content that is interesting, original and helpful to the readers. This will ensure you will get more traffic and social shares, even if some of the Yoast SEO circles are red or orange. If you’re doing this, as well as implementing a well researched keyword strategy, then you will greatly improve your organic SEO.
It’s also important to note that Yoast will only detect exact keyword matches. You may have just finished a blog post, make sure you used your keyword, and found red circles at the end. Sometimes, having a red circle is nothing to worry about. Yoast does not pick up the difference in words such as “Consultant” and “Consulting”. If you’re using the right keywords but still getting a red light, then you probably don’t need to consider changing your content.
Brand voice
When you’re writing content, always remember to keep your company’s brand voice in mind. You run the risk of losing your brand voice by trying to get all green circles on Yoast SEO. Maintaining a consistent brand voice is far more important than obtaining all green circles.
When using Yoast SEO it’s important to remember one crucial detail: SEO takes time. You can’t make changes to your website all at once and expect to see results the next day. To know how long it will take to see results, you have to consider:
How long the website has been around: the longer the website has been around, the more authority it will have and will be able to drive more traffic than a brand new website.
How functional the website is: if it’s an old website but has had no SEO work done on it and is not appropriate optimised, results will take longer.
How much content the website has: search engines will crawl a website for indexing. By scanning the content, crawlers will be able to determine what the website is about and give it a search engine ranking. Having fresh content consistently published on your blog will help with traffic flow and rankings.
While Yoast SEO is an extremely helpful tool, it can become easy to obsess over it. Remember to know what keyword focus you have, produce high quality, helpful content and always keep in mind your brand voice. Don’t waste your time cheating the tool to gain all green circles. These factors are far more important than achieving all green circles on Yoast SEO.
When you’re trying to get your website to rank on search engines, there’s a number of strategies you have to consider and put in place. Having the right keywords on your website is one of the vital strategies.
Why are keywords so important?
Both search engines and users depend on keywords to find your website. A web crawler browses sites on the internet for the purposes of indexing. Crawlers find information off web pages and follow links on those pages. The index then includes information about words and their locations. When users enter search terms on a search engine, they will then be presented with the most appropriate pages. To ensure your website ranks on search engines, it’s important to optimise your website and use the right keywords and phrases.
You don’t want to bombard your website with all the keywords you think might rank. Instead, you want to make sure you are using the right keywords. How do you find out which keywords are the right choice for your website? You have to consider what terms people are using to search for your website. It’s also important to consider which keywords have a high search volume and low competition.
To help choose the right keywords, you can use Google AdWords Keyword Planner. This tool will provide you with keyword ideas, as well as traffic estimates. Using this data you will be able to build a thorough keyword list.
You can also consider using Google Trends. Using this tool, you can enter keywords and filter by location, search history, and category. The results will give you information such as the interest surrounding that keyword, why there is interest (such as if they keyword has been newsworthy) and where traffic is coming from. This tool is useful to gauge how popular certain keywords will be, and whether or not you should use them in your keyword strategy.
Where should the keywords be used?
Once you have a list of keywords you’re going to use, you then need to place the keywords in the correct places on your website. You shouldn’t just randomly place keywords throughout your website. There are far more effective strategies.
When search engines crawl websites, they will be looking at specific site areas. This gives the crawlers information about what content is on each page. To help improve your SEO, you need to make sure your keywords are used in the correct pages.
Ensure your keywords are used as:
Title tag: you’re going to want to make sure your most important keywords are using in the title. Title tags not only help the user determine what the page is about, but is used by search engines as well. The title tag is the text that will appear on search engine results pages. Because of how much text Google displays, you want to make sure your titles are under 60 characters long.
Anchor text: anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. It’s important to make sure this clickable text is relevant to the page you’re linking to. Don’t just make the anchor text a random word or phrase. Anchor text helps search engines determine the ranking for that particular page. Just like you want to avoid keyword stuffing, you shouldn’t engage in excessive anchor text. If your page has too much anchor text, you could end up with a Google penalty.
Header tags: use H1 and H2 tags to let both search engines and users know the header is important. H1 tags are used around the main title for the page, and convey what the page is about.
Website content: throughout the main body of your website content, you’re going to want to include your keywords once or twice. Make sure each page revolves around one keyword, rather than as many keywords possible.
Meta description: this is the blurb of information that appears under the title on a search result page. This should accurately tell the user what the page is about.
Alt tags: you don’t only want to think about titles and the body of your text, you want to consider images as well. To help your rankings, you want to include your keyword in every image description. Use the keyword in alt tags, descriptions, captions and image file name.
URL: use your keyword in the URL, but only if it helps to describe the contents of the page and is helpful to the users’ navigation.
Blog posts: frequently publishing content on your blog is a great way to increase traffic to your website. It also provides web crawlers with fresh content. Because blog posts are often longer than the body of content on your website, it’s a great area to place keywords. If you’re using long-tail keywords they can very easily be incorporated into blog posts. The more frequently you post and publish posts that are keyword heavy, the more often your site will get crawled for indexing.
When starting out your keyword strategy, it’s important to remember to only use relevant keywords, don’t stuff your pages with too many keywords, and always place your keywords in the correct places throughout your website. These tips will help you to improve your SEO and increase traffic to your website.
Content is king is the cliche that is often stated in the SEO world. It has been stated time and time again ever since Bill Gates penned an essay with the same title back in 1996. So why is it such a popular phrase? After all, content is a large contributor to traffic flow to a website, and gives you extra pages to rank on search engines.
However, it’s important to remember that content isn’t the be all and end all. There are other important factors that should be included in your SEO strategy.
Consider what is in the content
Before you do anything else to drive traffic, you first have to look at your content. Why would people want to share this post? Is it original? Does the reader learn something from it? Does it stand out from the competition? If you’re answering no to these questions, then it’s best to rework your content to make people want to share it.
To drive traffic, a few things you should include within your blog posts include:
Links: you’ll want to find who is influential in your niche and posts links to their blog within your articles. This will not only give your blog post more authority and credibility, but also inspire the person you’ve linked to to share your post.
Quote experts: people love being mentioned within blog posts, and will be more likely to share a post if they are mentioned.
Images: no one wants to read a post that is just a wall of text. Images not only make a blog post look more aesthetically pleasing, it can also help when reading the post. In fact, if a relevant image is paired with your information, people are 65% more likely to retain that information three days later.
Content alone is not enough
It’s great if you have the time to produce lots of high quality, informative blog posts for your website. But what difference does that make if you’re not invested in promoting that content? If your content isn’t being adequately promoted, it will not receive any traffic or social shares, and it won’t be a sound investment of your time.
Social media: social media is a free and easy way to promote your blog to your followers. This will not only help you increase traffic to your website, but also increase your engagement on social media. Use tools such as Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule your posts. These tools will help ensure you’re posting frequently enough, as well as posting at the right times of day.
Paid ads: the problem with social media is it’s often hard to be seen. There is often so much being posted to News Feeds and Timelines that if your audience isn’t online at the right time, they will miss your post. If you really want to ensure your audience sees what you’re posting, you should consider paid ads, such as Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads or even Google AdWords.
Outreach: network with the authorities in your niche. If you’re sharing their content and linking to them, chances are they may return the favour and share your content.
Emails: does your business send emails to its customers? Consider including a link to the blog post within the emails to receive more traffic.
Use old content
If you’re struggling for time to always come up with new ideas and produce blog posts, then this could be the perfect strategy.
So why should you bother updating old content? Because they have been published for a longer amount of time, older blog posts will often have more views. To take advantage of this, look at your most popular blog posts. What can be updated, or can it be repurposed, such as making it into an infographic instead?
Updating old content while keeping the same URL means you’ll still maintain the SEO value of that page, while being able to add new content and promote it to a potentially new audience who haven’t seen the post previously.
Content is still important
So content may not be the king, but it is still a hugely important factor. If you’re going to have a successful content marketing strategy, it’s important to remember:
Who you’re writing for: don’t just promote your business within your blog posts. Readers want to be able to learn from your blog posts.
Ask: sometimes if you want something, the best thing to do is just ask. If you’re wanting increased traffic, ask your followers to share your post. Complete outreach and ask influencers to share your post.
Quality: always produce high quality, interesting and original content. Make sure you’re not posting duplicate content. It may not hurt your credibility, but it won’t rank and therefore won’t have high traffic. Make sure your content is long enough, around 800 to 1000 words. Longer posts will get more social shares and traffic from Google.
Mobile friendly: the use of mobile phones is becoming increasingly popular. It’s important to make sure your website is optimised to be mobile-friendly so people can easily read your blog posts from any device.
Do you agree that content is king? Let us know in the comments.
For owners of local businesses, having a local SEO strategy is crucial. After all, you want to make sure your customers can find you online and you stand out from the competition.
For local businesses struggling with their SEO strategy, or can see it needs improvement, there are a few crucial steps that can be implemented.
1. Third Party Websites
One sure way to improve your local rankings is to claim online company profiles. The most important to secure is Google My Business. Once you secure your page, you need to ensure all your information is up to date. This includes business name, URL, contact number, and if appropriate physical address and opening hours. Customers will be frustrated if it is difficult to access your website or contact your business.
You should also make an effort to be mentioned on websites with local listings, such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, TripAdvisor or Expedia. Even consider listing your business in local directories. Having a link to your website on these pages will expand your reach and make it easier for customers and tourists to find your website or visit your store.
2. Keyword research
To outrank your competition, you’re going to want to undertake keyword research. You want to be looking for the right keywords that will drive traffic to your website.
To know which keywords to use, you have to know who your audience is and what they will be searching. When people are searching for a local business, they generally include the geographical location in the search term.
Tools that will help with keyword research include:
You want to ensure that your website is appropriately optimised for local SEO. Make sure your pages, in particular the title, includes your geographical description. This means the location will appear in search results. You can use tools such as Yoast SEO Snippet Preview to view what your site will look like when it’s shown in search results.
Optimising your website goes beyond having the correct text. You want people to stay on your website and navigate through other pages. If not, you will end up with a high bounce rate, which can lower search engine rankings. Make sure your website is designed well and is aesthetically pleasing. If you have a physical store, you can include high-quality photographs or videos of the exterior and interior of your store on your website.
4. Social Media
Any business that is serious about standing out from the competition will have social media accounts. This is a great way for any local business to expand their following and gain new customers. Businesses don’t just have to rely on customers using search engines to find their business. It also opens up another platform for advertising. Businesses can invest in Facebook Ads or Twitter Ads. If targeted correctly, social media advertising can be a great way to gain more customers and make more profit. Instagram also offers a great way for businesses to visually promote their products or services to potential new clients.
5. Write Local Content
People love reading about something that is in their area. The trick here is to writing good, interesting, local content. Otherwise, people simply won’t read it and it won’t be worthwhile writing it.
Consider who your audience is and what they would be interested in reading. While you want your content to be relevant to your niche, you don’t want to be self-promoting. People want to read something that is helpful, not just an ad for your business. If you’re an athletic store, you’re going to want to look at local events occurring and write content around that, for example, “Essential Items Needed to Complete the Bridge to Brisbane.” Next, promote your content through your social media channels. If you are using paid ads, you can target a new audience by their interests, as well as location and age.
Hows does this help SEO? The more content you generate, the more traffic will be flowing into your website. It also gives you more opportunities to post new content to your social media pages. You will be able to see an increase in not only organic and social traffic, but direct traffic as well.
Following these five steps will make you not only stand out from the competition, but increase traffic and conversions to your website, as well as improve your search engine ranking.
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