What do you know about the SEO of page builders for WordPress?

WordPress is an option when building a new website

Recently, the ‘next big thing’ in web development has been a graphic design layer that enables drag’n’drop editing to your new WordPress site. These software layers or ‘page builders’ go by a lot of different names: Visual Composer, Divi and many more.

What does this all mean to you?

Everyone wants a great looking site. But the reality is that if the pages take too long to load prospects will leave without seeing anything. Google has a tool that will estimate what percentage will leave based on their test of the performance of your site. Achieving a great looking site that is slow will cost you prospects (and your SEO).
The developer that builds your site will not be around forever. You, as the owner of your site, should have everything documented so that any transition for any reason will be straightforward. Page builder setups can be very complex.
Your developer is responsible for demonstrating the ability to restore your site from the regular backups that he or she is making. Something is very wrong otherwise.
One of WordPress’ great strengths is the ability to update its look while keeping all of your content completely intact. If a developer says that they need to start completely over it will damage your SEO. This is only necessary if the previous developer damaged your site or that the new developer is not sufficiently trained.

sem[c] has been asked to optimize a number of different varieties of page builders recently and they all had speed-of-performance issues that needed to be addressed. More specifically, we were engaged to work on a site that we found to be using a suite of plug-ins called Pagelines. Like each of the other page builders it has its adherents but the sheer number of plugins that it uses sent up a red flag from our SEO point of view. The unfortunate part of this story is that the developer was tasked by the client to move this WordPress website into the Visual Composer page builder. Without saying why, this developer used Pagelines instead but didn’t inform the client. In addition, the developer used paid licenses that belonged to his company NOT the client’s. This meant that when he was removed as the administrator the site stopped working. Completely.

It’s not feasible or cost-effective for most business owners to study web development to the level of detail that has been discussed above. That fact should suggest that having a separate SEO consultant on board in conjunction with site development is a good idea. It is.

For more good ideas contact us or call 773.769.7362.

July 18, 2017July 19, 2017

Do you know these seven things about your website?

Why you need to know:

After a particularly difficult SEO setup it occurred to me that I spend a lot of time cleaning up after web developers… especially those who mistakenly claim that they are “SEO experts”. This assignment brought to mind the definition of “expert” as being made up of “X, the unknown” and “spurt, a short burst”. In this project the developer had seemingly done everything he could to tie the client to his company’s accounts. The WordPress website was dependent on paid plugins that belonged to the developer, NOT to the client. When the developer was removed as administrator his company’s plugins disappeared and crippled the site. Even the Google Analytics was his account, not the client’s. The website was almost perfectly booby-trapped.

This kind of behavior by a developer represents a conundrum for me because web developers that don’t claim to be SEO experts are the absolutely best fit with sem[c] as alliance partners. Virtually every business website will benefit from professional SEO. Many SEO clients will, sooner or later, want or need a new website design. While a deep understanding of web development is critical to the successful practice of SEO the two areas are really quite different.

One of the biggest differences is in the area of graphic design. Recently new designer interfaces like Divi, PageLines and others have become popular for the freedom and ease that they offer graphic designers to create visually elaborate websites. This graphical freedom comes at a cost. By injecting additional code into every page these design layers dilute the optimization of every page and can slow site performance. From an SEO point of view the graphic design of a typical site is only part of the user experience and can impress nobody unless there is traffic to the site. Graphic design does not drive traffic to most websites. On the other hand, graphic design that loads a webpage too slowly or is confusing will quickly drive visitors away before they take any action that benefits the business that owns the website.

sem[c] has tested and implemented highly technical accommodations to mitigate a lot of the SEO problems introduced by easy-design software tools–but not every design can be fully corrected.

There are a few things that you should talk about with your web developer:

Is your site developed in WordPress? If not, how is it built?
Does your site rely on any paid subscriptions that are not in your name?
What is your site’s result at https://tools.pingdom.com/ and what can be done if the result is poor?

In addition, you should have the administrative usernames and passwords for:

Your domain name(s) registrar. This is where your domain is controlled and the fees are paid. Any and all domains should all be in your name not the developer’s.
Your web hosting accounting. This should also be in your company’s name
Your Google account that is the owner of your Google Analytics.
Your paid advertising accounts. sem[c] always create these in your name. Many other companies do placement under their accounts. Their self-serving practice prevents you from directly accessing important information about your advertising.

If you or anyone you know needs assistance sem[c] has a long and successful history of solving problems related to websites. Visit searchenginemarketingchicago.com for more information or just contact us now.

December 5, 2016April 27, 2017

The SEO of Speed and Security

“What is SEO?” I ask, rhetorically.

The most common answer: “You know, keywords and stuff…”

SEO in 2017 will involve much more than keywords, although they are still definitely part of the mix. Google has been penalizing sites that don’t render properly on small screens like phones for some time. Part of that usability standard is the speed with which the site loads. You really don’t want to see this for your site:

As in most optimization items this is something that you probably already react to when you visit a site. How long do you stick around if the site doesn’t load right away? A couple of seconds? Five? Would you wait for 10 seconds? You know that if it takes too long you will decide at some point that it’s not working and leave. Google’s algorithms work the same way.

Fixing a slow site can be a complicated process. First, you need to acquire some hard facts about your website. A site like pingdom.com can help. Here are the results from sem[c]’s site:

As you can see the site has been highly optimized and is more loading quickly that 98% of tested sites. Our site was created in WordPress which has become a very popular website authoring environment. It has not been noted in the past for its speed, however. There are many adjustments that are necessary to get the site to load this quickly:

The WordPress theme is designed for speed
The site is hosted on a managed WordPress server
The site is behind a combination firewall and Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Numerous tweaks to code and content have been implemented

One adjustment that will be implemented next on our site is the security certificate. According to this article from WordPress an SSL security certificate will become necessary to even use aspects of WordPress beginning in 2017: https://wordpress.org/news/2016/12/moving-toward-ssl/

In addition, the Chrome browser will begin warning users in January when they request a non-SSL site: https://security.googleblog.com/2016/09/moving-towards-more-secure-web.html

Please note that each of the above two links are secured by SSL. Both of these sources are practicing what they preach about SSL and that leaves no doubt of its effect on SEO.

Achieving high quality SEO is a constantly changing target. It is not simply a matter of you picking a few keywords that you think might work. We can help you get your website the SEO speed and security that will benefit your business.

Get ready for the new year by contacting sem[c] today for an audit of your website’s SEO or to start a program to make it faster and safer.

April 27, 2016April 27, 2017

It’s “your” website… really?

What do you mean by “your” website? A typical website consists of files on a server that can be reached on the Internet by means of a domain name. Unless you own the webserver you can only edit “your” files by using the correct username and password to access your website’s hosting provider. You may not even know in which country the server is located.

Another thing that you might not know about your website is the type of server software that’s making it appear on the Internet. You might not know software named Apache and IIS. There are even smaller divisions of specialties in this area. One of our clients got hacked because their (former) web hosting provider had not updated it’s PHP software. You have likely been licensed to use this software under your terms of agreement with your hosting provider.

Without a properly configured domain name your website’s address will be a string of numbers. This may require another username and password depending on your domain name registrar. We have had clients that only think they know who might know these usernames and passwords. We have had clients whose names are not part of their domain name registration.

Like many websites, yours might use a content management system (CMS) for convenience and ease of use. A typical CMS like WordPress supports plugins to offer specialized functionality. Both the CMS and the plugins are software written by someone (usually not you) and your use of them is under the terms of a license agreement about which you may know nothing. One of our clients licensed a proprietary CMS but didn’t receive the source code. This resulted in there being no way to change anything about the front page of the website without paying the developer to make the change.

Other websites might think so highly of your website that they “borrow” from it without crediting you. There are tools like Grammerly and CopyScape that can help you find your content if it gets expropriated.

You should also have information about usernames and passwords should anything happen to you so that whomever is entitled can access the website when you no longer can.

All of these items will be very helpful to know in case a problem arises. For example, if your website gets hacked someone will need to know everything above to find a solution. When this happens it’s very difficult to claim ownership of “your” website since someone else has proven himself to be in control. Having quick access will help minimize the duration of the problem. We have helped clients recover from hacks and Google provides us with a number of resources that are useful in crafting a solution.
Contact us for more information from sem[c]

December 4, 2015April 27, 2017

Site hacked? Completely replacing it might not be enough…

When your site gets hacked completely replacing it might not be enough.

Your website is under attack every day. Unfortunately, everyone with a website is at risk for getting hacked.

sem[c] was brought in to help when a site that had previously been hacked and fixed but it seemed to have been hacked again. The client reported that a number of site visitors had complained that the site had infected them with malware.

There are a number of things that need to be evaluated in a situation like this. In order to evaluate it’s necessary to see the problem in action. First a reading of the on-site scan showed no evidence of a hack. This made sense since the entire site had been restored from backup and the security had been tightened months earlier. At the same time this strongly suggested that the site had NOT been hacked again.

Checking the results of a Google search was the next step. When using the Chrome browser on a Mac clicking on what should have been the company’s front page brought up a full-screen red warning which informed that the link led to a site known to disseminate malware.

Screenshot 2015-11-24 11.54.36 — Google’s warning of a hacked site

It is important to note that the URL mentioned in the warning (via.7od.pw) was not the company’s address but was a kind of “man-in-the-middle’ that redirected to spam sites. Tests with other browsers did not bring up the red interstitial warning page and brought up random spam pages including those attempting to install malware.

Our conclusion? Google’s index itself was corrupted. This helped to explain why Google was listing nearly twenty thousand crawl errors. It also explained why both the Google and Bing bots were constantly requesting non-existent pages from the site. It’s important to note here that it’s been long discussed that Bing uses the Google index in its algorithm.

The very negative SEO implications should be obvious here. Visitors using Google to search were at best being warned from visiting the company’s site and at worse being exposed to malware. The company website’s performance risked degradation due to the thousands of requests for non-existent page. These problems led to a very serious trust issue with the site’s visitors.

The solution was not quite so obvious. One approach would be to use webmaster tools to individually remove each of the twenty thousand spurious sites on at a time. Instead, sem[c] was able to communicate to Google that it’s index had errors and needed to be updated.

June 16, 2015April 27, 2017

On being an “expert witness”* in CMS and Google image search

The technology you used to read this is complex. When you need to use this technology to promote and support your business you need to make good decisions even though it’s difficult to know what the important parts to that decision might be. I firmly believe that it’s my job, when working on your behalf, to help you make the best possible decision given all the known circumstances. The following is a story on how this approach played out in an actual copyright case.

I was privileged to work with one of Chicago’s foremost copyright attorneys to act as an opinion witness on behalf of a photographer who was concerned about how his work had been used without his permission. His work had been downloaded as a result of a Google search and posted to a blog created in the WordPress CMS. This particular blog had a contract to provide its content to a national network owned by one of the world’s largest media organizations. If that weren’t interesting enough the photograph itself is instantly recognizable as iconic by a large group of people of a certain age who are Chicago sports fans.

Beyond the details of the case there are the principles it represents and the process by which these matters are sorted out.

Copyright was first implemented to protect artists’ ownership of their own work. “Copyright came about with the invention of the printing press and with wider literacy. As a legal concept, its origins in Britain were from a reaction to printers’ monopolies at the beginning of the 18th century.”

Google informs its users in the results of all images searches that the images “may be subject to copyright”.

But what does that mean? Because of the Internet it now seems that the principle of copyright is less understood by the general population than ever before. “Most jurisdictions recognize copyright limitations, allowing “fair” exceptions to the creator’s exclusivity of copyright and giving users certain rights. The development of digital media and computer network technologies have prompted reinterpretation of these exceptions, introduced new difficulties in enforcing copyright, and inspired additional challenges to copyright law’s philosophic basis.” Certainly the mass infringement suits against music uploaders made the news frequently. The “David vs. Goliath” nature of these added to the confusion. It may be that the definition of “fair use” is starting to become broader.

In my years as a professional photographer I resorted to bringing suit against infringers of my copyright several times. It was this familiarity, in part, that qualified me to have an informed opinion about the facts of this case. In my current role as a search engine optimization consultant I have the extensive knowledge of how Google and the other search engines function regarding the search returns of images.

It is the process of describing the highly technical aspects of every step of how and where this image (likely) showed up on the Internet to the judge in a legally articulate way that has broader implications for my SEO practice. This process was a collaboration between the attorney and myself. Collaboration is a part of every one of my projects. When I begin I know much less about the business at hand than my client. By working together we create a synthesis between our areas of expertise that moves the project forward. In this case I articulated an argument that the defendant likely had a copy of the infringing material on their servers. In fact, their statement that it had never resided there contradicted their own terms of service. This kind of indeterminacy illustrates the difficulty that business decision makers must also deal with whenever making decisions regarding the use of technology. It was my responsibility in this case to help the judge make a good decision just like I do with all my business clients.

Timing and budget are parts of both the judicial and business processes. However, the judiciary has a distinctively different rhythm. Only there can either side request extensions but the judge determines how much time will be allotted. Also unlike in business, the judge as the decision maker does not have to pay for the cost of the extensions.

The judge made a decision with which we disagreed. But, in his statement he addressed the points that we raised carefully one by one. Although he ultimately decided that the display of our client’s photo was “fair use”, he clearly took our arguments very seriously. Even though the decision didn’t go our way the needs of our client were served properly given all the circumstances.

You can make the decision to read more articles like this on our website:

https://searchenginemarketingchicago.com

You can also decide to contact me directly @GarySigman

“expert witness”* = opinion witness within the legal profession

October 8, 2014April 27, 2017

Online security? – if you are using WordPress maybe not so much…

Online security is a relative thing.

With more and more news of huge hacks of companies’ financials you really should wonder about your own website. Especially if it is based on WordPress.

From time to time we are brought in to evaluate the effectiveness of SEO provided by others. Recently we were asked to audit a site that had enjoyed excellent search engine return placement (SERP) for a number of relevant search terms but had dropped well off the front page for all of them. We found a lot of problems that likely contributed to the decline. We did not, however, see any evidence that they had installed security plug-ins in WordPress.

Could compromised security have contributed to their problem? Absolutely! No way to know for sure without installing the appropriate software. That software was not present in this case.

spam from hack — This text block appeared in the header of all pages on the site. Something to be proud of isn’t it?

In another case, hackers attempted to break into one of our client’s WordPress sites. If they had prevailed, the site would have forever displayed spam ads for a changing carousel of usual suspects: payday loans, cheap Viagra…

If we hadn’t quickly identified and corrected the problem, the site would have been a strong candidate for de-listing by Google and other search engines. This is the area where online security and SEO intersect.

The interesting news showed up post-hack. There are a number of new security upgrades that track and dissuade hack attempts. We installed the most highly rated. These plug-ins guide you past the basics of never using the default administrator name and easy passwords. The tracking was the real surprise. One of our client’s sites had over 60 attempted fake logins per day.

60 failed attempts in one day — The aftermath of robotic attempts to login to a WordPress site.

Others were experiencing fast flurries of attempts several times a day. By arming ourselves with the best security software, we had the earliest possible indication of the scope of attacks on all of our individual client’s WordPress sites.

How can you protect your website? If your webmaster hasn’t protected you or if you don’t even know maybe it’s time to bring in someone to help.

Contact sem[c] – we make your website a more effective business tool.

January 7, 2013October 31, 2016

If your website breaks, SEO is NOT going to fix it!

Even if you have the best SEO in the world (we can help you with that) your website won’t help you if it’s broken. Websites break for all kinds of different reasons. The important point here is “Who is going to fix it?” This sounds simple but very often turns out to be anything but.

A lot has changed since a website was simply a collection of HTML files on a Web server. Many people have found that the ease of content update offered by a content management system (CMS) is very desirable. Since fresh content is essential to the success of a site’s search visibility CMS can be good for SEO as well.

The hidden cost of a CMS is discovered when it breaks. A current client had their site fail. The hosting company had a policy of NOT updated an unlying software utility because of the possibility of an update breaking the functionality of websites. However, since a lot of updates address security problems it was only a matter of time before a very serious security breach occurred. My clients were forced to change everything. Their site was converted to WordPress and placed on an offshore hosted server. There were many problems after the move that we started to resolve. Google had delisted the site for starters. No updates had been performed in over a year. The email form didn’t work.

The ecommerce plugin for WordPress had a major security update that needed to be implemented. When applied it was no longer possible to take payment for anything. Believe it or not there is nothing special this so far. The real problem became apparent when the hosting company insisted that a restore from backup was the only possible course of action and that they would have to be instrumental in the process. Instrumental but not responsible. Three different types of restore from three different backups were attempted. We got the last one to work… barely and without the interference of the hosting company. The process with this “support team” was dreadful. The host’s “support” consisted of frequently bad advice delivered through an antiquated bulletin board system. As a result of their actions the site will be moved to a different host with a useful approach to support.

Another recent story came from a contact on LinkedIn whose site “disappeared”. I still don’t know all the details but both his Web developer and marketing agency suggested using a different ISP for hosting. It was clear that the original hosting ISP had fallen very, very short in support.

Another client found that the website he listed on his business card no longer showed his information but did offer “his” domain name for sale.

What a month!

How can these problems be avoided? You need to be clear about who is responsible for the maintenance of your site and what that maintenance entails. If you are going to have to interact with support of any kind I recommend that you make sure that phone support is available to you.

You site is of no use if no one can see it.

September 28, 2012October 31, 2016

A cautionary tale on WordPress security and SEO

WordPress security and SEO: a cautionary tale

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way to be very clear about what your business does. The opposite of SEO is being confusing instead of clear. What could be more confusing than advertising someone else’s business instead of your own?

This is what neglecting your WordPress update can lead to:
This example is part of what a client’s website looked like after it was hacked. The website had nothing to do with any kind of financial service least of all “payday loans”. Everything about it had been modified crudely.

If being hacked this way wasn’t bad enough Google tacked a “This site may be compromised” warning on search results that showed the website with the “new” commercial offerings:

Since there were a number of facility websites within the hacked company website Google picked up and showed the hacked results instead of the actual company information for all ten businesses:

These WordPress hacks happen. Unfortunately they can happen in many different ways. As a result they can be very difficult to completely correct because in some cases code has been hidden within the website files that will rewrite the unwanted text over and over until it is found and eliminated.

In this example a developer had modified a theme to give the site a unique look. He cautioned the business to NOT update WordPress because the updating process could break the look of the site. This turned out to be very bad advice. One of the most important reasons to update both WordPress and your plugins is to improve your website’s security to make it less likely that it might be hacked.

How your website looks in Google and other search engines is an important part of your business marketing. Once people are credibly warned to not visit your website it is less likely that they will return.

WordPress is a powerful tool for getting your message out to the world. It’s up to you to properly care for it.

August 27, 2012October 31, 2016

Redirects, soft 404s and their effect on SEO

Redirects are what happens when you try to go to a page and you go somewhere else or are “redirected” to a different page. There are a lot of reasons that this might occur. The page may have been removed. It could have been incorporated into a different page. The domain name might have changed. There’s a long list of legitimate things cause this. Most web servers will redirect to a “Page Not Found” or a “404”. This happens and doesn’t have major SEO consequences although it’s not the best for user experience.

The dark of side of redirect is why it is of concern to search engines and can have a negative effect on your SEO. Spammers took advantage of a type of redirect that used javascript to send a visitor from one site to another (and either spam or malware ridden) site. This type of redirect was inadvertently added into one of our client’s site by a graphic designer for what he thought was a great idea but it wasn’t. Google delisted the site entirely for all of the search terms that they had previously been on the first page in first position for.

According to Wikipedia: “The practice of employing fake 404 errors as a means to conceal censorship has also been reported in Thailand^[11] and Tunisia.^[12] In Tunisia, where censorship is reportedly severe, people have become aware of the nature of the fake 404 errors and have created an imaginary character named “Ammar 404” who represents “the invisible censor”.^[13] “

Another type of redirect that has negative consequences is a “soft 404”. This can happen when the web server doesn’t send you to the page you requested and sends you not to the designated 404 page but to some other page which still isn’t what you requested. Our client’s custom ecommerce storefront created nearly 500 of these “soft 404” errors that Google reported. Needless to say their movement towards optimization was slowed until this problem was solved.