Displaying items by Blog Tag: #SEO

Most of the website design mistakes people talk about are the obvious ones. Slow load times, a site that's impossible to use on a phone, a contact form that doesn't send anywhere. We covered the obvious five here, and if any of those sound familiar, start there.

But here's what I've noticed after working on hundreds of small business websites: the sites I get called about aren't usually broken. They load fine. They look decent. Nothing is on fire. They're just not producing calls or inquiries, and the owner can't figure out why.

You Do Not Need to Understand Everything in Google Analytics

If you have ever logged into Google Analytics and felt immediately lost, you are not alone. Website analytics tools have become more powerful over the years, but that power comes with complexity that most small business owners do not need.

Why Google Cares About Fresh Content

Google wants to show searchers the most relevant, accurate results. When your website hasn't been updated in 2 years, it signals that the information may be outdated. Fresh content is one of the most practical SEO levers a small business can pull. It tells Google your site is active, maintained, and worth crawling regularly.

What Is Local SEO and Why Does It Matter?

Local SEO is the process of optimizing your online presence so your business shows up when people in your area search for the services you offer. When someone in Santa Cruz searches "plumber near me" or "best electrician in Capitola," Google uses local SEO signals to decide which businesses to show.

Google recently announced it has started to use HTTPS as a ranking signal in order to “make the Internet safer more broadly.” HTTPS is a language code that secures the information being passed back and forth between web servers and clients.

Many websites are accessed by HTTP, which means that these websites are talking to your browser using the regular 'unsecure' language. In other words, it is possible for someone to "eavesdrop" on your computer's conversation with these websites that are served via HTTP. This is why you would never want to enter personal or financial information into a website unless you notice that the web address begins with https://.

First off, what is a top-level domain (TLD) or generic top-level domain (gTLD)? These are website suffixes such as .com, .net, .org. These top-level domains are managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which is run by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). We are all familiar with the few suffixes we see every day, but there are hundreds more out there, and new suffixes being applied for all the time.

When you are searching for a domain for your business or blog, you will want to use your company name and/or most relevant key terms in your domain name. But what if your ideal name has already been registered with the .com suffix? Will choosing a .net or .guru TLD hinder you within Google’s search results?

Everyone has been waiting in rapt anticipation, in some cases paralyzing fear, to learn of the fallout of Google’s April 21^st rollout of their mobile friendly algorithm changes. So has all the buzz been warranted? In many cases, absolutely.

In a few studies we looked at, the results are not surprising. Mobile friendly websites kept moving up in the search engine results pages (SERPs), while websites that have not been made mobile friendly are slowing dropping. Some industries seem to be getting hit harder than others. According to some sources, many law firm websites have not updated to being mobile friendly and are therefore dropping in the rankings, possibly more so than some other industries as a whole.

Google has recently announced significant changes to its search algorithm for the ranking of mobile search results. This change will take effect on April 21, 2015. Whether your website has certain mobile friendly elements will now hold more weight in Google’s search engine algorithm. How much will mobile rankings be impacted?

During a March 2015 Search Marketing Expo in Munich Google said that this 4/21/15 change will be bigger than the Panda and Penguin updates (1). As the number of people using mobile devices to access the internet continues to grow, this update is designed to help users discover more mobile-friendly content.

As a business and website owner you are most likely inundated with companies trying to sell SEO (search engine optimization) services via email and telemarketing. In this post we dissect the two sets of users who are trying to find your business online and summarize the importance of SEO for each case, helping you decide what is right for your business website.

There are two distinct sets of user groups who use search engines like Google to find out more about you and your business. As a business owner it’s important that your website places well in Google for searches performed by both user groups in order to retain current clients and to capture new business leads and sales.