SEO

Although WordPress isn’t a tool we commonly use for building websites, we feel that a lot of its users would benefit from understanding how to effectively optimise their websites for SEO.

A quick overview
• Permalinks – WordPress’ tool for customising blog links
• Meta descriptions – the description of your website/post that appears in the search engine results page
• Optimise your images – allow search engines to index your images
• Keywords – These are select words or phrases that describe what the page/post is about
• Use heading – the correct heading structure will greatly improve your SEO

How to use permalinks to optimise your WordPress website

WordPress allows you to set your links however you want them to look. You can do this by going to the administrative area in WordPress and then go to Settings –> Permalinks. On this page you can choose from several predefined options or use a custom structure for your links.

How to optimise your meta descriptions

Your meta descriptions should always contain relevant information to the page/post you’re describing. The search engines will use this as a factor in ranking you depending on how relevant the description is to the information in the post. So, if your page is about website design, don’t write a meta description about the football results. Also, include relevant keywords in your meta description.

How to optimise your images

It is very important to have the title and alt tags specified for every image you use across your entire website. By doing this, the search engine knows what the image is supposed to be. You should use a description with keywords if possible, but if not don’t worry.

How to use headings in WordPress

You should only use the <h1> tag for titles in your site, any sub headings should use <h2> and the rest of your heading should use <h3>. This allows the search engines to understand what the important information on the site is. You should never have a page that uses only <h2> or <h3> tags.

Making the case for mobile

It’s easy to see how pervasive mobile technology has become. Take a look around and you’ll see people with their faces buried in their mobile phones. Mobile is everywhere…in our hands, on our nightstands and desks, on the news…everywhere. Mobile is at the intersection of all the most important aspects of our lives – family, work, socialisation, fun, and business.

If you need more convincing, here are a few statistics that will make the case. eMarketer estimates the number of U.S. consumers with a smartphone will more than double from 93.1 million at the end of 2011 to 192.4 million by 2016, when 58.5 percent of the total U.S. population will have a smart phone.

55 percent of adult phone owners now use their phones to go online, and 17 percent do most of their online browsing on their phone rather than on a computer or other device. Most do so for convenience, but for some, their phone is their only option for online access. (Source: Pew Internet).
Research has also shown that more people have mobile phones than toothbrushes worldwide (Source: The 60 Second Marketer).

What does this use of mobile mean for your small business?

The way consumers find and choose restaurants, contractors, spas, stores, and entertainment has evolved dramatically.

In addition to search engines like Google or Bing, consumers use city guides like Citysearch, review websites like Yelp, and other mobile apps to discover new businesses.

They use websites and apps like these to help them make decisions in the moment while their purchase intent is incredibly high.

Consider the following:
• 75 percent used a mobile device to get real-time location-based information. (Pew Internet)
• 90 percent of mobile searches lead to an action. (Source: searchengineland.com)
• 70 percent who ran a local search via mobile acted within an hour (Source: CMO Council)

We live in a mobile society. Potential customers are making decisions based on their mobile behavior. If you don’t capitalise on this behavior, you may lose business to your competitors who have embraced this new reality.

Digital marketing expert Croydon

We are a digital marketing agency based in South London working with small businesses, as well as those in accountancy and the construction sector to help get them noticed online. Drop us an email at Saymoo@smart-cow.com or give us a call on 020 3137 1826. 

Recently, Google replaced its newest major update to its mobile search algorithm. Some are calling this “Mobilegeddon” or the “Mobilepocolypse”.

This major update will boost the ranking of mobile-friendly pages (responsive website design). There are five things that you need to know about how this update could affect the future of your sites SEO.

The update only affects mobile searches: This is a mobile first update and will only affect results from mobile queries.

The update does impact all languages: This is a global release so companies that manage websites across locations should take note.

This is one dimension for Google ranking a mobile query: This update raises the importance of a mobile friendly experience but isn’t the only factor being considered.

Strong content can (for now) overcome: User intent based on the query is still an important factor. If the content on your site is still the most relevant, it will still rank highly, for now.

We would strongly suggest that you take the steps into making your site mobile friendly.

With more and more people using smartphones and tablets every day, it’s becoming increasingly important to have a responsive website design (RWD) that will function across multiple platforms.

To explain it simply, a responsive design means a website’s pages reformat themselves depending on which device they are being displayed on, to create the most user-friendly experience. This is a huge difference from the past, as the solution would have been to create a whole new website for a mobile device.

When it comes to SEO, does a responsive design actually improve your results in the Search Engine Response Pages (SERPs)? Well I’m going to tell you now that the answer is YES! Keep reading to find out why!

Google loves responsive

As Google is the primary search engine 90% of internet users browse the web with, you’re probably going to want to try and impress it. Google recommends RWD as the best way to interact with mobile users, but also favours mobile optimised sites when presenting results for searches made on a mobile device.

From an SEO perspective, it is definitely a better choice to have a responsive website design rather than having two separate sites. This is because the responsive design will have one URL and one set of files for the search engines to crawl and index.

One website, one URL

Having a responsive website means that all of your previous SEO efforts are still going to apply to all devices, instead of having to start from scratch if you built a new website. This means that all your external links will still point to one URL (as opposed to one mobile website and one desktop site), giving your responsive website a boost in the SERPs. The same thing applies to your site being shared socially.

Responsive helps combat a high bounce rate

Even if your website is ranking high at the top of search results, if it doesn’t work effectively for mobile or tablet, your bounce rate will greatly increase. Google will take this high bounce rate as a sign that your website isn’t offering helpful and useful information for the users, and then, is likely to rank you lower in the search engines.

User experience is enhanced

Websites are essentially a tool for sharing content. A user-friendly site makes it easier for visitors to find, learn and share the content to others. Google makes responsive websites and user experience a big ranking factor, so it’s a no brainer to have a responsive website design.