Category: Search engine marketing services

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

WordPress is an option when building a new website

WordPress

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.

Visual Composer

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.

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It’s “your” website… really?

homepageWhat 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.

asf_logoAnother 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.

Screenshot 2016-04-27 09.39.35Like 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] 

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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.

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Optimizing your website for your market

What does Search Engine Optimization really mean?

SEO seems to mean different things to different people. You may think that it has something to do with being on the first page of Google search returns. While that’s true the strokes that paint that picture are too broad. In the phrase “search engine optimization” what’s truly important is the word “optimization”. Search engines give us an excellent tool to determine how people in your market are looking not only for you but for what you are selling. Instead of guessing you can actually know the words being used to search for what it is that you are selling. But that’s only the first step. Once you’ve determined the correct search phrases you need to align your ads, your links and everything else in your online presence to answer any likely prospect only question: “What’s in it for me?”.

Here is a case study in how we reorganized the Samurai Business Group’s sales training website. SBG had a website with the very typical first person presentation of “We do this and we do that”. Their extensive collection of testimonial videos were listed on only two pages of their site and were simply categorized as “Testimonials”. Since I sell SEO services I wanted to know if they had worked with anyone in my business but there was no way to know.

The sem[c] reorg of the site features a very simple and responsive design. The central theme now revolves around the video testimonials which recursively illustrates their central theme of sales training which is “this is not about us, it’s about you”. The testimonials are now categorized into vertical markets. Their website is now optimized for their market. Visit them at http://samuraibizgrp.com

Samurai Business Group sales training

Your website can be optimized too, contact us to find out how.

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What the scourge of referrer spam means to you

Referrer spam must be stopped

For a long time it was true that the more traffic that your website got the better.  No more.  Not exactly. Coders have been spoofing Google Analytics accounts to make it appear that visits are coming from what seems to be a never-ending list of websites. These “visits” are fake. No one is visiting your site from these “sites”. These fake visits provide no benefit to you. We’ve seen statistics in which the fake visits outnumber legitimate ones by a factor of ten to one. This type of activity is known as “referrer spam”. It is done by malicious hackers to game the link-counting algorithms that search engines use to create rankings.

What’s the harm is this?

It wouldn’t be called “spam” if it were something that you wanted. Just like with email spam there are a number of costs that you will likely pay for these fake visits:

  • Your site may run slower
  • Google may lower your search rankings
  • It is possible that some of this traffic represents probes for WordPress vulnerabilities
  • It is a complete waste of your time

While there are a number of techniques to mitigate the effect of referrer spam none of them is a complete solution. Like so many threats to the security of your website, keeping referrer spam under control requires monitoring and an advanced understanding of Google Analytics and the underlying structure of your website.

It might be helpful for you to think of maintaining the “health” of your website. There are a number of components to this:

  • A technically contemporary and secure website platform
  • Fresh, relevant content
  • Active (not dead) links to and from well-regarded sites (not referrer spam) that are pertinent to your business
  • A workable social media presence

Google has a short article about the importance of the above items called “Steps to a Google-friendly site”. The SEO practices followed by sem[c] have always conformed to the guidelines set by Google. Contact us if you have any questions about your website and how it’s looking in Search. We can help you make your website healthier.

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If you’re not clicking on AdWords ads, who is?

The short answer is “Lot’s of people”. Online advertising has overwhelmingly proven its value to businesses of all types. Yet it seems as though most clients that are new to pay per click (PPC) like Google’s AdWords say that they don’t click on ads.

Why is this?

It could be that people don’t know how they are clicking on an ad in search results.  This article cites research that in early 2014 36% of people didn’t know they were clicking on an ad when it appeared in a Google search return.

Screenshot 2015-01-08 15.28.53

Perhaps this (or a court case in the EU) prompted AdWords to begin including little yellow “Ad” icons in their search results:

Screenshot 2015-01-08 15.18.34

It’s still a little confusing in the right hand column, isn’t it?

The above screen grab is of the entire screen on a laptop but doesn’t show a single organic result for the search term “ppc advertising”. From a marketing standpoint that confusion makes PPC more attractive not less since it’s been conclusively proved that people more frequently click on search returns toward the top of the first page.

There may be a very big difference in the effectiveness of PPC when a buyer is ready to purchase something.  Marketing firm Wordstream claimed in 2012 “Clicks on paid search listings beat out organic clicks by nearly a 2:1 margin for keywords with high commercial intent in the US. In other words, 64.6% of people click on Google Ads when they are looking to buy an item online!” But how many knew or cared that they were clicking on an ad? The same article also states that organic results still get many more clicks overall than PPC.

Search Engine Watch cited numbers in the dominance of organic over PPC results (2012)

Screenshot 2015-01-08 15.55.40

Danny Goodwin also pointed out that there were large differences between branded and non-branded searches.

This difference led the Harvard Business Review to write a very dramatic headline question:

Screenshot 2015-01-08 15.59.27

The answer to which is, in a word, “NO”. This article shows eBay proving that they don’t benefit from paying for clicks from a search for the branded phrase “eBay” which really isn’t a surprise since a company like eBay is so well known as a brand name and appears organically right at the top of any search including its name. The article goes on to underscore the importance of non-branded PPC search phrases like “used les paul guitar” to eBay.

It’s this importance of PPC for non-branded phrases that make it so valuable for nearly any business. PPC makes it possible for any business to appear in a wide variety of non-branded searches. There are still a lot of examples of business’ ads appearing absurdly when they are irrelevant to a search. This problem is caused by improper configuration and testing of the advertising campaign. It’s really easy to goof this up but it doesn’t have to happen to you. In order to avoid this problem businesses should always use an experienced PPC firm like Search Engine Marketing Chicago, Inc.

Contact us for more information.

 

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SEO snake oil

SEO-snake-oilRarely does a day go by without my receiving at least one email pitching the benefits of getting my site to the front page of Google.

For example:

“My name is David. I am a SEO and Internet Marketing expert. I am in this profession from since last 4 years.

I will be happy to promote your website and bring this on the top page of Google. My plan of action is to promote your website through local Google and your website to be promoted in the combination of Geo location with your selected keywords.”

How many things has David got wrong in just four sentences? Let’s begin at the end of his statement and work our way to the beginning.

      1. 1. The idea of “your selected keywords” being the basis of his promotion is an ineffective approach to SEO. When sem[c] begins a promotion we discover which keywords are being most frequently used by a business’ best prospects. These keywords are frequently not obvious. Figuring this out is our job NOT our clients.
      2. 2. The importance of “Geo location” is determined by the nature of the business and is not appropriate for businesses that might be limited by that kind of perception. Recently an sem[c] client in Iowa was approached by two prospects in Ireland and several in China. Their physical location was not important in the least. What would have been the benefit to them of localizing to Iowa?
      3. 3. Does it matter to you that he would “be happy to promote your website”? Of course he would be happy to take your money. How happy will you be?
      4. 4. Does his being “in this profession from since last 4 years” impress you? This sounds like it was written in fractured grammar by someone who is not a native American English speaker. The importance of understanding how people use language to find what they are looking for is of the absolutely highest importance not only in finding the right keywords but also in eliciting buying action from them.
      5. 5. He writes that “I am a SEO and Internet Marketing expert”. I am skipping yet another grammatical error here only to ask the question this begs: In whose opinion? He is writing to me hoping to promote http://SearchEngineMarketingChicago.com on my behalf. It should be obvious to him that my site is about Internet marketing. He completely missed that point.

His targeting is so wildly inappropriate that he brings to mind the old joke: “The word ‘expert’ consists of two parts, ‘X’ which is ‘the unknown’ and ‘spurt’ meaning ‘a short burst’.”

In the spirit of that joke is this guy’s name even ‘David’? The the reply-to email address belongs to ‘Bob’ at Gmail.com.