Consumers lose trust in businesses with inaccurate NAP

Over the years we’ve seen the importance of the humble business listing change. While citations were once considered key link sources and their accuracy a contributing ranking factor for local search, today their impact has waned somewhat.

However, as Moz’s most recent Local Search Ranking Factors survey found, NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) details in business listings and online directories are still considered fourth most important for ranking in the local pack and fifth most important in localized organic rankings.

But not everything is about rankings: accurate citations are still a foundation tactic for any business, as they increase online visibility by placing businesses in the listings and directories in which potential customers are looking for them.

That’s if they are accurate. What happens if they’re not?

Recent research by BrightLocal, in the Local Citations Trust Report 2018, sought to answer this question by polling 1000 US consumers on how they feel and behave when they come across inaccurate business information online.

Consumers lose trust in businesses with incorrect or inconsistent NAP information

Today, trust in business and institutions in the US is at an all-time low, and it’s the responsibility of every business owner to make a difference in any way they can – even if it’s something as seemingly small as ensuring business name, location, and contact number information are reliable and consistent online.

According to the BrightLocal research, 80% of respondents felt that seeing incorrect or inconsistent contact details and/or business names online would make them lose trust in a business. With consumer trust in business being such a critical part of the buyer’s journey, this is obviously of great concern.

Of course, this is only an issue if businesses are actually uploading inaccurate information to online directories.

Thirty percent found inaccurate business information online

If you thought inaccurate citation data wasn’t a problem, think again. Not only have 30% of consumers found inaccurate business information online in the last 12 months, but a shocking 36% have also ended up calling incorrect phone numbers for businesses as a result of this inaccurate information. Add to this the fact that 22% of respondents went to the trouble of visiting a business only to find it was not located where online information suggested it was, and you start to see a troubling picture of lost business.

These experiences aren’t just confined to incorrect NAP, though. Nearly one quarter of consumers have visited a business too early or too late owing to incorrect opening times displayed online. Ultimately, this means that businesses with inaccurate citation data are likely to be missing out on a great deal of custom.

Let’s say a consumer has found a business’ address online and gone to that location, only to find the business is nowhere to be seen. What happens next?

Forty-one percent would not use a business if they couldn’t find it straight away

Although it’s encouraging to see that 59% of people would persist in their search for a business if they couldn’t find it – either by calling or looking elsewhere online for the address, many aren’t quite so patient.

Almost one third (29%) of consumers said they would try to find another business online or nearby, and 12% would give up completely. Obviously, the likelihood of the latter, more extreme reaction is down to how necessary the need for the business was, and also how far the consumer had to travel, but this data still suggests that businesses with inaccurate citations data online risk losing out.

As the research found, 22% have visited an incorrect address, and with only 29% of these people seeking out an alternative business, we can get an idea of how much business is being lost to competitors as a result of inaccurate location data.

Just imagine: you do all that great work and spend all your marketing budget encouraging someone to use your business, and you succeed, only to lose out to a local rival owing to something as simple as inaccurate citation data. Marketers tend to be very good at looking at the big picture, but it’s little details like this that result in lost business, even when marketing activity has otherwise succeeded.

It’s worth pointing out, too, that men answering this question seemed to be far more likely to give up their search for a business completely. Eighteen percent of those who identified as male in the survey said they would abandon their search. We live in a far more fast-paced world than ever before and immediate gratification is paramount, so I’d strongly recommend that businesses with a primarily male customer base get their citations in order, lest they face the lost custom of a frustrated customer.

Ninety-three percent of consumers are frustrated to find incorrect information in online directories

Frustration is an unpredictable emotion that can result in a range of reactions depending on the state and personality of the person experiencing it. As we’ve seen, once frustrated by incorrect business information, consumers could calmly persist with contacting the business (providing the contact number is accurate), look for another business, or quit their search entirely.

The BrightLocal research found that a huge 93% of consumers agree that finding incorrect information in online directories “frustrates” them. These are consumers with a strong intent to buy, as they’ve already searched for a business like yours and picked yours due to any number of factors. Even if they do choose to use your business after all, their first experience with it involves frustration. If you’re providing incorrect or inaccurate information online, you’re going to have to hope that your product or service is spectacular to avoid an overall negative experience.

Sixty-eight percent of consumers would stop using a local business after finding incorrect information online

After ploughing through incorrect information and coming up empty-handed, almost 70% of consumers said they would stop using a business as a result. This includes the quite literal cessation of business use due to not being able to find or call them, as well as deciding not to use a business because of diminished trust caused by inaccurate online information.

Businesses must have accurate and consistent citations to avoid losing customers

If you run a business or manage a client with incorrect business listings information, you are at high risk of missing out on swathes of new customers.

All your marketing, visibility, and brand awareness efforts are for naught if potential customers can’t find your business. You risk frustrating them, and in some cases completely wasting their time. First impressions are paramount, and creating accurate citations is one of the most important ways to ensure you’re building consumer trust from the off. If not, then I’m sure your competitor in the next neighborhood would be happy to take the business.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/30/consumers-lose-trust-in-businesses-with-inaccurate-nap/

Google’s mobile-first index: six actions to identify risks and maximize ranking opportunities

Google’s mobile-first index is here, causing fresh uncertainty about potential SEO impacts – but there are a number of proactive steps to take to manage risk and maximize ranking opportunities.

Rather than passively wait to feel the impact of the shift to mobile-first indexation, we advise companies to take six specific actions to prepare for opportunities and protect site performance as the mobile-first index is rolled out throughout 2018.

Brands that have been prioritizing mobile performance shouldn’t experience a negative impact from the mobile-first index, but an honest and systematic re-evaluation is required. Companies who have allowed the mobile and desktop experience to diverge over the years will likely experience change – rankings could be lost (or gained) as a result of the switch.

Before diving in and making changes to prepare for the mobile-first index, we recommend running a full audit of current desktop and mobile rankings in all the regions your company does business in, along with top performing pages.

 

Tracking this performance over time, any losses or gains in keyword visibility should be clear to see – along with potential causes. Across the six actions below the common thread is Google’s determination to provide accurate answers to users, in the channel that is used most frequently – mobile.

Keeping that at the heart of your SEO strategy and things should be fine – but having a plan certainly helps.

Identify risks

• Action one – go mobile-responsive

Even today, too few marketers and SEO professionals meaningfully differentiate between responsive, mobile-friendly and standalone mobile sites – but that difference will become especially important in 2018.
A responsive website adjusts (or responds) based on user activity and the device used. Typical features of a responsive site include minimal navigation, images optimized for mobile and content that shifts seamlessly according to the size of the display.

In comparison, a mobile-friendly design is often anything-but mobile-friendly, attempting to show content on a mobile device as they do on a desktop, and so give users the frustrating experience of having to manually zoom in, or squint at small fonts.

Finally, some brands still operate standalone mobile sites, completely separate from the desktop experience. With responsive and mobile-friendly sites, there shouldn’t be any difference in content from a desktop version of a site.

However, a mobile-friendly site may be disproportionately skewed towards the desktop experience with an impact on factors like mobile site speed, navigation and general usability – and these are all areas of concern when considering how Google evaluates quality in 2018.

With a separate mobile site, marketers need to make sure that the mobile version contains everything (useful) that your desktop site does which could be a lot of work depending on your mobile strategy so far.

For some brands still lingering with standalone mobile sites, the shift to the mobile-first index may be the nudge needed to move to a fully responsive approach to the site.

Whether you operate responsive, mobile-friendly or a standalone mobile site, the first action we recommend is to identify any differences and either add to or completely overhaul the mobile sites you manage.

While desktop site continue will factor into rankings as a secondary consideration (and it is vanishingly unlikely that longstanding sites with many well-earned rankings will be wiped off the SERPS) making sure the mobile experience contains all the relevant content of the desktop experience – including all structured data/meta description/alt text/schema –  is an important protective step.

• Action two – optimize site speed versus competitors

The mobile-first index flips previous logic – when 80% of evaluations about rankings were based on desktop crawling and indexing, site speed considerations were less of a concern.

However, as Google crawls mobile sites while mimicking (a not-very-good) mobile connection, slow performance, elements that struggle to load and broken links will quickly use up crawl equity and indicate that your site is less efficient at delivering the answers that users want relative to your competitors.

In addition to Google tools, we regularly use platforms like GTMetrix, Pingdom, DareBoost and WebPageTest.org to get a complete view of speed issues.

Particularly for international sites, testing mobile speed from different locations and comparing these measurements to those of your key competitors will help establish practical targets to aim for. Although Google frequently mentions a target page speed of under three seconds as being ideal, in practical reality and SEO terms, aiming to be better than your competitors should be enough.

Like with SEO in general, speed optimization is similar to an old joke –  ‘you don’t have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you.’

As ever, the quickest wins in terms of speed are usually to be found in reducing image and video size, managing JavaScript and other moving elements, minimizing tracking codes and scripts and doing what you can to reduce any slowdown caused by bolt-ons like booking and payment platforms.

The challenge for SEO professionals is to identify elements like these that can be improved without too much damage to the brand experience or taking away content useful for users.

• Action three – optimize the customer journey

Understanding the intent of site visitors and reducing barriers from their first click in the SERPS to the information they are looking for should result in positive user experiences – and minimize the risk that comes from a site experience that causes confusion, fruitless clicking around and pushes customers away.

Although there’s some fuzziness about quite how Google interprets the quality of a user’s visit – and how it rewards that quality in terms of rankings – we advise researching the different types of mobile journeys your customers take in a systematic way and making them more efficient.

Though much ‘best practice’ SEO advice has in the past been based around engagement and keeping visitors on the site, we all know that site visitors often stick around because they’re being frustrated by unclear navigation and a poor approach to customer journey planning.

Users are more impatient of poor customer journeys on mobile – and we must anticipate that Google will feel the same too. Though helping visitors to get the answers they seek more quickly may actually decrease dwell time, we’re confident that Google and other search engines will differentiate between a short visit and a swift return to the SERPS, and a short visit that successfully ends the user’s search.

Evaluating bounce rates and the success of the mobile user journey using heat-mapping tools like Hotjar or user research panels like Peek User Testing will bring in objective data to answer whether your visitors are engaged and loving your content, or hitting barriers and getting increasingly annoyed.

In the mobile-index era, we predict that this annoyance will have a greater impact on rankings – and so is a risk to be managed carefully.

Maximising opportunities

While taking steps to understand your assets and protect your rankings is important, the shift to the mobile-first index is also a big opportunity to get ahead of competitors who are less prepared. Knowing that others will be slow to react really gives an extra incentive to put real effort into SEO strategies that will positively differentiate your brand from competitors.

• Action four – prioritize content formatting that excels on mobile.

A lot of content marketing (such as infographics, interactive microsites, mega pages and even video, depending on the platform) produced by brands still display poorly on mobile devices.

Taking a mobile-first mindset and prioritizing everyday content and content marketing assets that work particularly well on mobile devices will resonate best with both customers and search engines. Fortunately, there are a lot of methodologies that can be used to provide depth of content that is engaging and easily navigable on mobile.

One of the biggest changes is the resurgence of expandable content areas like tabs, accordions and other filters. Use filters to hide content not relevant to a visitor’s specific query, tabs that reveal further information when clicked and accordions that expand the page are all familiar to site visitors – and allow for a single web page to be seamlessly used in multiple ways by multiple audiences.

While these have been seen by Google and other search engines as a potentially sneaky way to cram in content to a page, Google is on record as stating that content that is hidden to make a mobile site more efficient and speedier to explore will be taken into full consideration.

While competitors may have a responsive or mobile-friendly site and feel that this is enough preparation, many will likely still take a desktop-first mindset, creating overloaded pages that are tedious to wade through on mobile devices.

Thinking with a customer and mobile-first mindset to arrange content that can be skimmed easily through logical headings, bolding of main points and pull-out quotes, numbered lists, bullet-points and more will support mobile visitors and and differentiate from competitors while allowing search engine bots to crawl effectively.

• Action five – evaluate AMP and progressive web apps

Again capitalizing on the slowness of competitors, the move to the mobile-first index means a re-evaluation of progressive web apps and accelerated mobile pages could bring up big opportunities.

As a recap, Accelerated Mobile Pages allow web pages to load especially quickly by loading page elements asynchronously and removing out elements of JavaScript that cause delays.

AMP templates are easily applied in the code with well-established procedures to provide the speedy AMP version to search engines, with the slower (but perhaps more visual) non-AMP still being recognized for ranking purposes with a canonical tag.

Progressive Web Apps use browser feature detection to give a fast, app-like experience that can be loaded from a mobile home screen or simply visited with a direct link. Websites that have a lot of moving parts and a lot of returning traffic, for example in e-commerce or other transactional sites, are the most well suited for Progressive Web Apps as they can massively streamline the user experience.

In both cases, although implementation is comparatively straightforward, you can bet that a minority of companies in your industry will have a systematic approach to using these technologies.

Being fast, being relevant and being right are key watchwords for future mobile-first SEO and using technologies that help speed, indexation and the user experience is a positive and proactive step.

Action six –  identify competitors to beat

As discussed, not every competitor will be thinking systematically about the mobile-first index, or the changing nature of SEO in general. That opens up the possibility that by being faster and more focused, some previously difficult to rank for keywords will become more obtainable.

Using your business and industry knowledge, we advise clients to identify competitors who have rankings ahead of your own that may be less responsive to change, and underprepared for the mobile-first index.

Building these target keywords into your mobile strategy and wider SEO strategy – including off-site SEO and link earning – should result in some strong opportunities.

Conclusion – manage risk, capitalize on opportunities

For some, the mobile-first index won’t result in anything transformational – if you’ve been following best practice for years and your main competitors have been doing likewise there probably won’t be any game-changing shifts.

However, in any period of uncertainty there are opportunities to take advantage of and risks to manage – and in competitive SEO niches, taking every chance to get ahead is important.

Whatever your starting point – the mobile-first index is the new normal in SEO, and now is the time to get to grips with the challenge – and potential.

 

 

 

 

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/27/googles-mobile-first-index-six-actions-to-identify-risks-and-maximize-ranking-opportunities/

Why campaign structure is the killer competitive advantage

When pitching to new clients, business is rarely won based on the ability to tactically execute. It’s usually talking about how we will use data, or be able to deliver better than our competitors with whatever the latest thing might be.

There is nothing wrong with that approach, as you would expect that any agency worth their salt would know best practices. However, all too often best practices are overlooked. The most effective change that can be made when taking over a new campaign–and even after managing for a while–is revisiting campaign structure. This might be the most basic detail of all, but it is critically important.

Google rewards relevancy

As you know, Google changed the game when it introduced Quality Score into the bidding equation, and this remains a huge factor today. If you consider that you can’t control the number of advertisers in the auction, and you can’t stop someone from having deeper pockets than you, then how can you beat them? Quality Score.

Quality Score is heavily tied to campaign structure. The way in which keywords in the same ad groups are related to one another and follow a common structure is paramount. This may feel like a lot of extra work to create more ad groups when the differences do not seem substantial, but the pay-off is worth it. For example, if you are a retailer and you are putting all shirts in one ad group, you should consider breaking them down into specific types (sweatshirts, t-shirts, tank tops, etc.). Also, by sending keywords to their specific landing pages, you also increase relevancy, which is rewarded with higher quality scores.

Ad copy and ad extensions

Linked with relevancy is the ability to write ad copy that is clearly linked to the keywords in the ad groups. Again, this might seem obvious, but it is something that many don’t take the time to appreciate. Ad copy that is more directly related to your keywords will increase relevancy and consumer response rates (i.e. CTR).

In addition, a number of ad extensions can be impacted by campaign structure. AdWords decides when these show based on 2 factors:

• When the extension is expected to improve your performance
• Your ad’s position and Ad Rank is high enough for extensions to show.

Ad Rank has a big ad quality component that substantiates the value of a strong campaign structure.

Campaign structure determines how settings are used

As a result of the way in which AdWords is set-up, there are certain decisions that can be made at each of the three levels (campaign, ad group, keyword). For example, geo-targeting and budgets can only be controlled at the campaign level. Ad copy is uniquely controlled at the ad group level. These levers are critical to success, and campaign structure is the way in which you ensure success can be capitalized on. For example, if you have a keyword that is high volume in an ad group with lower volume keywords, it is possible that high volume keywords are suffocating those smaller volume keywords and limiting their exposure within the campaign. A key campaign structure decision in this instance might be to break these out into their own campaigns so you can more easily control the budget.

Conclusions: you’re never done

Campaign structure is something that should be revisited again and again over time. The people who are managing a campaign change, consumer behavior changes, websites change, and AdWords evolves their policies. All these factors and many others require that the structure is revisited. I recommend that you have a strategic campaign structure review annually and ensure that it aligns with your performance and strategy.

You will of course have the urge to not spend any time thinking about campaign structure, because it can be tedious and you will assume you did a good job at the outset. However, over the course of time you will add and delete keywords, and update and test ad copy/landing pages. These decisions erode the original intent behind your strategy. Revisiting the structure will ensure that best practices are followed and, even if you don’t make any changes, reaffirm the decisions you have historically made. Campaign structure is the secret weapon that will help you beat your competition–without having to increase bids or your total budget.

 

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/26/why-campaign-structure-is-the-killer-competitive-advantage/

GDPR: ensuring your website is secure

In the run up to the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), new data shows that 86.5% of WordPress websites in the UK are vulnerable to known hackable exploits.

With GDPR now only a month away, businesses across Europe are gearing up for what will potentially be one of the biggest shifts in data privacy laws since the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act.

Businesses will face fines of up to €20 million if they do not comply with new legislation and processes, that ultimately put users in control of who, how, and where their personal data is stored.

A key part of GDPR is the business’ responsibility to secure customer data and websites to prevent data breaches, phishing, and other forms of malicious online activity.

Estimates show that WordPress is used by 25–40% of the internet, depending on which source you read, and given its widespread popularity and usage, it is a prime target for hackers.

A recent research study conducted by cybersecurity monitoring platform CyberScanner, they scanned 93,930 WordPress websites and 9834 WooCommerce websites based in the UK and found that on average 80.7% contained at least one known, hackable exploit that can be deemed as a severe security risk.

Some of the most common known vulnerabilities scanned for included cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and SSL certificate problems.

The worst offending WordPress website had a total of 23 separate high-risk known vulnerabilities, among other medium and low risk classified exploits.

Securing your WordPress website

There are more than 100,000 known vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers to extract customer data, plant crypto-mining software, or even setup hidden form fields to steal credit card information users have saved in their browsers.

There is no blanket solution to securing your WordPress website, but there are steps that all WordPress webmasters can take to secure commonly exploited areas of the platform.

Brute force attacks

Brute force attacks are a method used by hackers to obtain login information to websites, such as usernames, passwords and PINs. Typically conducted using automated software, a brute force attack generates a high volume of consecutive guesses to both the login and password field.

While having a strong password is always encouraged, it alone may not be enough to prevent a brute force attack. There are some things that you can do, however, to minimize your risk.

Customize login page URLs

Generally, the login page URL for a WordPress website is /wp-login.php or /wp-admin/, and an automated piece of software can guess this. By renaming the URL to something more unique, automated software may not be able to find the page to begin the attack in the first place.

Limit login attempts

A common feature of WordPress websites (and all websites), is the limitation of login attempts.

A number of free plugins exist (such as WP Limit Login Attempts) that enable easy implementation for webmasters and can go some way to protecting your site.

Enable two-step authentication

This is becoming more common across all web applications that require a password, and can be implemented with relative ease on a WordPress website (and through a plugin such as Google Authenticator – Two Factor Authentication).

This requires the user to install an application on their phone, and when they go to login on the website they will need to go to the app to get a randomly generated code to input to complete the login process.

Use SSL to encrypt data in transit

While SSL and TLS don’t wholly secure a website, they do secure user data as it travels between the user’s browser and the website server.

Again, this can be installed with relative ease through Cloudflare’s WordPress integration and its SSL offering.

Google also sees HTTPS as a basic security step that websites must take in order to protect users, and in the Chrome 70 browser websites not on HTTPS will be flagged as not secure by standard.

Securing your database

No matter how secure a website is, keeping and maintaining regular database back-ups is an essential best practice that should be part of any webmaster’s processes.

There are a number of free and premium solutions ranging from VaultPress, BlogVault, and Backup Buddy, all of which are viable options, and the chosen solution should be adequate to the business needs.

Regular housekeeping and updates

Themes and plugins are the backbone of any WordPress website, but they can easily become security threats if they’re not updated and maintained regularly.

Not updating your themes and plugins can mean serious trouble. Many hackers rely on the mere fact that people can’t be bothered to update their plugins and themes. More often than not, those hackers exploit bugs that have already been fixed.

Not updating your theme and plugins can lead to easy backdoors and exploits, as many hackers rely on the fact and look out for webmasters being lax and not updating their assets.

It’s also advised that you remove your WordPress version number, as it’s publicly visible within your source code. Some historic WordPress versions have developed a larger number of vulnerabilities than others, so this could be an advertisement for hackers to attempt a number of already known security challenges. Sururi offer a free plugin to remove the version number from your site.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/25/gdpr-ensuring-your-website-is-secure/

How to select the best caching solution for WordPress

There is no denying that the existence of an appropriate website is justified primarily by its loading speed: the faster, the better. Forty-seven percent of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, which is quite a task to accomplish as a new website owner.

Interestingly, even a single second of delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions, and Google’s algorithms favour fast-loading websites in the form of search engine rankings. With so much at stake with regard to your website’s loading time, the pain is real. So, how does one make sure that WordPress websites are fast to load?

Caching is an efficient solution

Caching serves the purpose of creating and keeping a static version of your website and serving it to a requesting visitor when they access your website for the second time or more. It enhances your site’s user experience by swiftly presenting the static version without any delay.

This delay, otherwise, is simply caused when a visitor is trying to access a website from their browser and all the website elements such as the posts, slider, headers, CSS files, JavaScript, images, videos, etc., take their own time to get downloaded on the browser. When caching is in place, your website is ever-ready to deliver a cached/static version – quickly.

If you are new to website creation, how do you implement Caching on your website? What are the ways and means? Are their tools that can help you do it?

To start, you must test your website for its speed monitoring using tools such as:

• Pingdom
• StatusCake
• Monitis
• Uptime Robot.

These tools are a great way to figure out anything that might not be going well on your website’s backend when it comes to its loading time and similar issues. Since WordPress websites have their own share of down time owing to a number of factors, you cannot always act laid back when it comes to the performance and WordPress security of your digital property. If you would like to learn about striking a balance with your WordPress site’s security apart from its performance, you can read more here.

Broadly divided into two, WordPress Caching can be determined as:

1. Browser Caching: Reducing the load on the server is a great way of optimizing your website’s speed and that is what Browser Caching does. It reduces the number of requests per page, resulting in the superpower where your website loads faster.

2. Server Caching: Used by websites that have spiked traffic rates, Server Caching is largely about when data is cached on the server itself, helping with the loading revisions.

The best plugins to incorporate caching onto your WordPress site

You can choose from the following list of plugins to manage caching on your WordPress website.

1. WP Super Cache

Total number of downloads: 2+ million

One of the best caching plugins in the WordPress repository, WP Super Cache is a great cache management plugin. Generating static HTML files for your WordPress website, the plugin serves cached files in three ways, which are based on speed. It employs methods like Apache mod_rewrite and a modification of your .htaccess file to serve supercached static HTML files.

 

2. W3 Total Cache

Total number of downloads: 1+ million

Highly recommended by web hosts and developers, this plugin has continued to reign the WordPress caching market for a number of years. By employing browser caching, it renders pages quickly, which results in reduced page load time, and further garners more page views and increased time on site.

A great plugin in itself, W3 Total Cache contributes to improvement in your site’s SEO, offers content delivery network (CDN) integration, and overall user-experience on the WordPress site.

3. WP Fastest Cache

Total number of downloads: 600,000+

The plugin serves the usual caching functions, offers SSL and CDN support, allows Cache Timeout for specific pages, enable/disable cache option for mobile devices and for logged-in users. Available in over 18 languages, the plugin does not require the user to modify the .htacces file and is pretty simple to set up. However, it does not currently support WordPress Multisite, but it is hoped that the plugin developers are working towards introducing this. Also, their premium version has much more to offer.

4. Cache Enabler

Total number of downloads: 40,000+

Working its way to improving the performance of your website, the Cache enabler plugin offers WordPress multisite support. Its disk cache engine is efficient and fast and the plugin can be easily setup. One of the unique features of this plugin is its ability to create two cached files: plain HTML one and gzipped (pre-compressed files). It also offers the features of clearing the cache in either a manual or an automated manner.

5. Hummingbird Page Speed Optimization

Total number of downloads: 10,000+

A great speed optimization caching plugin by WPMU Dev, the Hummingbird plugin features file compression, minification and full-page, browser and Gravatar caching. It also provides performance reports for your WordPress site so that you can maintain its speed. Its scanning feature keeps a check on files that might be slowing your site and provides probable fixes.

NOTE: While caching is great, you will also need to implement other efforts if you really want to increase your website’s speed. Some of the things that you can easily do are:

• Invest in a reliable web hosting service and go with a hosting plan that suits the size of your business website
• Getting a CDN service is a great way to cater to your site visitors from various geographical locations without having them to wait up a bit too long for the server to fetch your site data
• Declutter your website’s database, uninstall plugins and themes that you no longer need
• Always use a WordPress theme that has been optimized for speed.

Conclusions

Website speed matters, and caching is one of the easiest ways out there to accomplish a fast loading site. Since your site’s speed has a direct relationship with user experience and the traffic it drives in, it follows that search engine optimization also slides in. Therefore, you must direct all your efforts into making sure that your website is capable of impressing its visitors with an unmatched speed.

Lucy Barret is an experienced Web Developer and passionate blogger, currently working at WPCodingDev. 

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/24/how-to-select-the-best-caching-solution-for-wordpress/

How to use CRO as a power boost for paid search, social ads and SEO

If you are doing paid search, paid social or SEO, and are not optimizing your conversions, you might be leaving money on the table.

Here is a true story shared by Momoko Price, partner at Kantan Designs: a company was investing thousands of dollars a month into PPC campaigns but wasn’t optimizing or even tracking on-site conversions. The AdWords department was focusing on getting clicks without any insight into whether or not they were getting leads. Back-of-the-napkin calculations showed that the average cost per acquisition (CPA) was $1,100. The estimated customer lifetime value was $1200. You can do the math.

This is an extreme case, but the truth is, if you don’t have a page that converts, you end up just paying for clicks instead of conversions. CRO can help you get more from your advertising dollars.

How to get a higher return on paid search with CRO

1. Use CRO to improve the landing page experience and turn more visitors into customers

When we make the landing page more compelling and user-friendly, it lifts conversions and starts an upward spiral of success: higher conversions > lower CPA > higher return on ad spend (ROAS) > increased ad budget > increased overall revenue and profit.

It may take a few tests to get a strong lift in conversions; it depends on how much research goes into building your test hypotheses. A legal services firm saw the positive impact of CRO in the very first test they ran on their paid search landing pages. Originally, the value proposition above the fold was not scannable and not easy to understand quickly. The CRO team at 3Q Digital created a variation that described the benefits the firm’s services clearly and concisely using the headline and a bulleted list. As a result, lead form submissions went up by 24% at 95% statistical significance.

Control:

Variation:

 

2. Use CRO to determine the best landing pages for paid traffic

When dedicated landing pages for search ads are not available, a lot of companies drive paid traffic to the homepage. Chris Goward’s “scent trail” metaphor shows why this might be hurting their results. Imagine: the ad promises a solution to a specific need the customer has – the “prey scent” is very strong. The customer clicks the ad and lands on the homepage that offers multiple products or services – the “scent trail” became much weaker. The customer now has to figure out how to get to the product or service they were originally interested in. This creates friction, and the risk of a bounce is very high.

CRO can help map out an effective customer journey from ad to conversion. The good news is, you don’t always have to create new landing pages from scratch. Simply redirecting paid traffic to a different page on the website can increase conversion rates. Here is how a regional bank reaped the benefits of this approach.

The bank was looking for a way to get more website visitors to submit a loan application. Paid search campaigns were driving people to the homepage. However, Google Analytics and Hotjar data showed that after landing on the homepage, many users instantly clicked the ‘loans’ tab in the top navigation. Our CRO team hypothesized that sending paid traffic directly to the loans page would better match the high motivation of the users and would increase conversions. It worked – with loans page as the new landing page for paid traffic, there was 51% lift in loan application submissions.

Control – homepage:

 

Variation – loans page:

 

 

If you do have custom landing pages for search campaigns, make sure to track their post-click performance. A story shared by Momoko Price shows why it matters:

“A client shared their PPC landing page metrics with me but hadn’t actually calculated which landing page variants were performing best past the click (they were only looking at impression-to-ad CTR, but not the landing page conversions-per-PPC click rate). After looking into it, I discovered that the highest-performing PPC ad-group was driving traffic to a *sub-optimal* landing page variant. By directing that traffic to the highest performing landing page variant, we were able to substantially lower the overall CPA.”

3. Use CRO to increase lead quality

With CRO, you can make informed changes to the landing pages that drive not only initial conversions, but also deeper metrics, such as sales, LTV, and ultimately profit.

Steven Shyne, senior CX strategist at 6D Global shares a story about an experiment that impacted both conversions and lead quality:

“Our client, a telecom solutions provider, was debating whether or not to show pricing on the landing page. On the one hand, there was pressure from internal stakeholders and competitors to list the prices. On the other hand, the company provides customized quotes to its customers based on their business needs, and showing boilerplate pricing would go against this core value proposition. Our hypothesis was that removing pricing from the landing page would encourage prospective customers to fill out the form and request a precise quote. This would increase engagement with the sales team and improve metrics all the way through the sales funnel.

“The variation with the pricing information removed showed a 47% increase in qualified leads. Our client is continuing to see very strong performance and we are continuing to test/optimize when, where, and if at all we show pricing, all the way from ad unit to landing page to lead qualification page.”

 

Control:

 

Variation:

 

In summary, the connection between paid search and CRO is natural and profitable.

 

Miguel Madrigal, search account lead at 3Q Digital sees CRO as a big value multiplier: “As performance marketers, there is only so much we can do on the front end. We can take the search queries, match them to keywords and ad copy, then mirror the ad copy on the landing page. If we tie these pieces together, we have done everything in our power. Working in tandem with CRO, always iterating, we can use the engagement and traffic we already have to drive better results.”

How to get more from social ads with CRO

There is a lot of pressure on social ads and landing pages to be both relevant and engaging. CRO can provide a valuable boost and help beat cat videos in the battle for customer attention.

Here’s how you can use CRO to make your social ad campaigns more effective.

1. Use CRO to create compelling ad copy and landing page copy

Conversion research can help identify the customers’ biggest pain points, desires and objections and translate them into effective copy. Customer interviews, surveys, Exit Intent Polls, customer reviews mining, etc., are great sources of powerful messaging that speaks to customers in their own language and drives action.

Talia Wolf, CEO at GetUplift, always uses in-depth conversion research to inform Facebook Ad and landing page copy:

“We use our emotional targeting research to optimize every step in the funnel, including social ads and social content. During a project with Fiverr last year, we worked to identify the prospects’ stage of awareness and their emotional drivers. We discovered where the customer was emotionally in the buyer journey. These insights helped us write new Facebook ad copy, choose new hero images and craft a new landing page strategy which got a 17% increase in conversion rates.”

2. Use CRO to optimize the landing page experience for the visitors coming from social media

Scott Olivares, growth and conversion director at Nabler, shares a story about how tailoring the landing page to social traffic helped boost engagement:

“Our client, an online university, invests heavily in social media advertising. All of the visitors from their campaigns go to landing pages made specifically for those campaigns. The lead acquisition rate was pretty bad, which made the cost per lead very high.

“In our research, we discovered that desktop visitors had a much higher conversion rate than mobile visitors – at least double. However, mobile visitors made up about 80% of all traffic. When we looked at the landing pages, we saw that they were very text-heavy and obviously designed with desktop in mind. We came up with a new experience designed specifically for mobile visitors referred by a social media site – people who are looking for a quick endorphin boost from something funny or interesting, that doesn’t take too much effort to consume. Our new experience condensed all the content into about five single lines listing the excuses that people usually have for not going back to school. The excuses were crossed out with a plus sign next to them. Clicking the plus sign revealed why that particular excuse was no longer valid at this university.

“This had a tremendous impact and many more mobile visitors began down the lead path. The lead start rate increased by 19% with 95% statistical significance.”

 

                           Control:                                                                      Variation:

                                                

 

CRO can help you make the most of your investment in paid traffic – both search and social. If your focus is organic traffic, CRO can help on this front as well.

How to get more from SEO with CRO

First, the burning question: does CRO help or hurt SEO?

Rand Fishkin from Moz has the answer:

“The truth is, there is no conflict between the two. Here are the broad elements that factor into the page’s ranking ability:

• keywords and on-page (content and HTML source code)
• content quality
• user and usage data
• domain authority
• page authority (individual shares and links)
• SPAM analysis

Changes made to the page with CRO affect just the first three factors. Nothing you’re going to do with CRO is going to have a negative effect on your domain authority, your page authority or SPAM analysis. If you are doing high-quality CRO and your conversion rate is rising, you are positively impacting two of the factors: your content quality signals and your user and usage data (with improved user experience, more people are spending time on the page, more people are engaging, Google ranks the page higher). The only factor we need to worry about is keywords and on-page. Here you just need to stick to some basic principles:

1. Put the words and phrases you are trying to rank for into HTML page title – you probably won’t be messing with your HTML page title when you are doing CRO anyway
2. Use your target words and phrases in the URL (URL doesn’t matter much for CRO)
3. Use your target words and phrases in the headline – headline does matter for CRO, but you almost certainly want to have the terms and phrases you are going after in your headline for SEO as well as CRO.

Long story short – there is no CRO requirement that would interfere with getting your SEO right.”

The goal of SEO pages is providing information, building awareness and authority; however, it doesn’t mean they can’t have commercial value and generate conversions. You can use CRO to turn SEO pages into additional funnel entry points.

Harrison DeSantis, SEO account manager at 3Q Digital, firmly believes in optimizing SEO pages for conversions: “I wish I could use CRO on every SEO account! We are putting in effort to drive traffic to these pages; I want to make sure we don’t squander it. Since SEO pages are top of the funnel, most visitors might not become customers right away, but then there are those organic visitors who are ready to convert. We want to make it as easy as possible for them to take action. Not everyone is going to do it, but everyone needs to know that they have the option to take the next step – the end game they can go back to when they are ready.”

Here is an example of how a company used this approach and saw substantial lifts in conversions on SEO pages:

A platform for getting psychic advice has a dozen high-ranking SEO pages. However, in the past these pages generated very few registrations – most visitors left immediately after reading the content. Conversion research showed that the next steps on SEO pages were not obvious, the visitors were not engaging with the call to action on the right rail, possibly because of “banner blindness”.

Our CRO team ran a test placing a call to action into the body of the article, directly in the line of sight of the reader. The goal was to create interest and provide an easy opportunity to take action. The experiment was successful – the variation showed a 94% lift in registrations at 99% statistical significance.

 

Control:

 

 

Variation:

 

In the follow-up test, the team focused on improving the mobile experience on SEO pages by adding a “sticky” drawer CTA with an offer relevant to the article content. The variation provided the page visitors an opportunity to enter the funnel easily at any point during their session. The variation showed a 349% lift in registrations at 99% statistical significance.

   Control:                                                                            Variation:

                                            

 

Conclusion

CRO is a superpower that can help you amplify results from paid search, paid social, and SEO, and position your business to scale effectively online.

Here is a checklist of how you can use CRO to make the most of your user acquisition dollars:

• Use CRO to improve relevance and clarity and ease of landing page experiences for paid search campaigns.
• Use CRO value proposition testing to create winning ad campaign copy.
• Use CRO to determine the best pages to drive paid traffic to.
• Use CRO to increase lead quality.
• Use CRO to inform ad and landing page copy for paid social campaigns.
• Use CRO to tailor landing page experience for social traffic.
• Use CRO to drive conversions from SEO traffic.

 

Svitlana Graves is CRO specialist at 3Q Digital. 

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/23/how-to-use-cro-as-a-power-boost-for-paid-search-social-ads-and-seo/

How to force Google to recrawl your website

If you have launched a new website, updated a single page on your existing domain, or altered many pages and/or the structure of your site, you will likely want Google to display your latest content in its SERPs.

Google’s crawlers are pretty good at their job. If you think of a new article on a big domain, for example, the search engine will crawl and index any changes pretty quickly thanks to the natural traffic and links from around the web which will alert its algorithms to this new content.

For most sites, however, it is good practice to give Google a little assistance with its indexing job.

Each of the following official Google tools can achieve this. And each are more or less suitable depending on whether you want Google to recrawl a single or page or more of your site.

It is also important to note two things before we start:

1. None of these tools can force Google to start indexing your site immediately. You do have to be patient
2. Quicker and more comprehensive indexing of your site will occur if your content is fresh, original, useful, easy to navigate, and being linked to from elsewhere on the web. These tools can’t guarantee Google will deem your site indexable. And they shouldn’t be used as an alternative to publishing content which is adding value to the internet ecosystem.

Fetch as Google

Google’s Fetch tool is the most logical starting point for getting your great new site or content indexed.

First, you need to have a Google account in order to have a Google Webmaster account – from there you will be prompted to ‘add a property’ which you will then have to verify. This is all very straightforward if you have not yet done this.

Once you have the relevant property listed in your Webmaster Tools account, you can then ‘perform a fetch’ on any URL related to that property. If your site is fetchable (you can also check if it is displaying correctly) you can then submit for it to be added to Google’s index.

This tool also allows you to submit a single URL (‘Crawl only this URL’) or the selected URL and any pages it links to directly (‘Crawl this URL and its direct links’). Although both of these requests come with their own limits; 10 for the former option and 2 for the latter.

Add URL

You might also have heard of Google’s Add URL tool.

 

Think of this as a simpler version of the above Fetch tool. It is a slower, simpler tool without the functionality and versatility of Fetch. But it still exists, so – it seems – still worth adding your URL to if you can.

You can also use Add URL with just a Google account, rather than adding and verifying a property to Webmaster Tools. Simply add your URL and click to assure the service you aren’t a robot!

Add a Sitemap

If you have amended many pages on a domain or changed the structure of the site, adding a sitemap to Google is the best option.

Like Fetch As Google, you need to add a sitemap via the Webmaster search console.

[See our post Sitemaps & SEO: An introductory guide if you are in the dark about what sitemaps are].

Once you have generated or built a sitemap: on Webmaster Tools select the domain on which it appears, select ‘crawl’/’sitemaps’/’add/test sitemap’, type in its URL (or, as you can see, the domain URL appended with sitemap.xml) and ‘submit’.

As I pointed out in the introduction to this post…

Google is pretty good at crawling and indexing the web but giving the spiders as much assistance with their job as possible makes for quicker and cleaner SEO.

Simply having your property added to Webmaster Tools, running Google Analytics, and then using the above tools are the foundation for getting your site noticed by the search giant.

But good, useful content on a well-designed usable site really gets you visible – by Google and most importantly humans.

 

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/20/how-to-force-google-to-recrawl-your-website/

How to integrate SEO into the translation process to maximize global success

When expanding internationally, there is common misconception that SEO, and in particular technical SEO, should be done once the website has been built. However, by implementing any SEO recommendations after a website has been translated, there could be extensive rework which will delay a website launch and impact on budgets. There are also some aspects in a site’s infrastructure that are essential to optimize in advance to avoid extensive rework later. So, how do you go about building this into the translation process?

The old approach to translation

For a while now, companies have been aware of the need for a local language website when targeting new global markets. Back in 2014 a Common Sense Advisory report stated “75% [of web visitors] prefer to buy products in their native language. In addition, 60% rarely or never buy from English-only websites.” Competing in global markets with a non-translated website is no longer seen as a viable option if a company wants to compete against local business.

The traditional approach has been to focus on translation only, with the key debate being around whether you should use a human translator or machine translation, such as Google Translate.

This approach is now shifting as companies have begun to realize the benefits of localizing their content and website for their target markets. Instead of a single piece of content being translated word for word, companies are now adapting the content to resonate and engage, allowing them to compete more effectively against local competitors. This is known as transcreation, where marketing messages are adapted to different cultures and languages whilst maintaining the original context and intent of the messaging.

However, localization and transcreation are still not enough to succeed globally. Customers need to be able to find your website and the only way to do that is to increase your online visibility. This is where integrating SEO into translation workflows comes in.

A new approach to succeeding globally

To succeed in new markets, you need to maximize the visibility of your products or services. To do this SEO needs to be woven into the translation process, but it needs to be adapted to different markets. The key elements to consider are localized keyword research, site structure and hreflang implementation.

Localized keyword research

Many companies simply translate domestic keywords in the hopes of ranking well in new markets. The problem with this strategy is it doesn’t take account of the search volume in different markets or country-unique keywords that may have high search volume but no domestic equivalent terminology.

The only way to ensure you are targeting the right relevant keywords is to use a vendor with native linguists who also understand the process of keyword research. However, many believe keyword research is enough to help you rank in new markets. This process needs to occur alongside technical SEO, two elements of which we will now discuss.

Site structure – which domain?

When it comes to site structure, it is important to consider future expansion plans and ensure the option you pick is future proofed for your needs.

There are three main options to consider:

1. ccTLD – Country Code Top-Level domain (example.fr)

In general, this is the preferred domain option when expanding internationally. By using the ccTLD you’re not only sending a strong signal to search engines that you are targeting a specific country, but you are also establishing trust with the user, which will result in a better click-through rate from the SERPs. For example, users in France are notoriously swayed by .FR websites and will be more likely to click on these than generic domains such as .com

The downside to ccTLD is there is no sharing of link authority from any parent top-level domain. In essence, you’re building up the link authority of these sites from scratch, which can make it harder to rank. There is also the potential for your domain to be unavailable in new markets.

2. Sub-folder (example.com/fr)

The main benefit of using the sub-folder approach is the shared link authority of the top-level domain. Any links built across all the country sites will benefit each subsequent site because that link authority is held within the top-level domain. This can have a real ranking benefit for all your regional sites, even if they are relatively new.

The downside is it creates less trust than using a ccTLD structure and as a result, this may impact on the click-through rate. It is also a weaker location signal to search engines compared to ccTLD and using a sub-domain structure.

3. Sub-domain (fr.example.com)

This approach sits between the other two in terms of pros and cons. Firstly, there is a degree of location signal given to search engines because you can host separate sub-domains in separate countries, which could potentially give you a ranking boost in that country. There is also some sharing of the authority of the main domain, but certainly not as much as you would see with the sub-folder approach.

The downside is that there will still be some linking activity required because you won’t benefit from all of the link authority of the ccTLD. The location signal is also not as strong as you would get with a unique ccTLD.

It is important to choose a domain structure that is right for your business and future expansion plans. ccTLD is the ideal structure but for some companies it may not be possible, or you may decide the sharing of link authority is more important and opt for a sub-folder structure. Whichever option you chose, it is important to consider site structure before building a website, not after.

Implenting hreflang

Hreflang is an HTML tag that you can add directly to the source code of a page when you have duplicate content in multiple languages. It helps search engines understand the language of a piece of content and therefore help ensure it’s served to the right users in the right market. Correct implementation of hreflang is essential to ensure your localized websites are ranked correctly.

A key element to consider is how to implement hreflang correctly for two bits of same-language content that target two different countries e.g. French for France versus French for Canada. By incorrectly implementing the hreflang code you could not only affect your chances of ranking organically in an entire market but also affect the original and other connected sites.

One vendor or two?

When it comes to integrating SEO and translation into one workflow, a big consideration is whether to have one vendor who specializes in search engine-optimized website translation or two vendors, one an SEO specialist and the other a professional translation company.

If you already have agency support for SEO as part of your integrated digital marketing strategy, deciding to just outsource the translation element may seem like the easiest option. However, managing two vendors can become a tricky task and it is difficult to weave the SEO into the translation process this way. Also, some digital agencies may be experts in SEO but they may not have the same expertise when it comes to international site structures or international keyword research. Finally, every time you update content, there is also a potential for previous SEO work to be overwritten and this can lead to large costs as previous SEO work will have to be redone having implications not only on project costs but also search traffic to your site.

Having one vendor allows you to manage the process much more easily. The workflows of the language service provider should be refined to weave SEO in throughout and there should be one upfront cost for the SEO work, which should save you money in the long run. Having one vendor also helps with ensuring keyword research has been carried out that is relevant to the new market rather than a simple translation of domestic keywords.

So, what next?

The translation industry has changed a lot in the last few years, moving from just accurately translated content to localizing content to resonate and now optimizing on a local level for increased organic visibility. Whilst incorporating SEO is a big step in the right direction, there is still more that can be done to increase the chances of success in new markets. The next step for companies is to consider the cultural elements when they expand internationally. This includes the best payment methods, delivery options and trust signals for those markets. By incorporating this with SEO, you will improve your online visibility, conversion rates and ultimately your overall ROI.

 

Nicola Carmyllie is the managing director of Translation Laboratory, an optimized website translation company.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/19/how-to-integrate-seo-into-the-translation-process-to-maximize-global-success/

Six Hreflang tag pitfalls to watch out for on e-commerce websites

When taking a website international, one of the most important technical SEO elements to get right is the Hreflang tag. When you add into this process the unique challenges of managing an e-commerce website such as seasonal changes of products and stock availability this process can increase in complexity. At this month’s BrightonSEO I’ll be covering this in more detail but here’s a teaser of what I’ll be talking about.

Why are Hreflang tags so important?

Hreflang tags help search engines understand which version of your content to show to which audience.

Google has been moving away from relying on ccTLDs as the main indicator of location. Instead it is making decisions on serving content, based on user settings of location and language, thus increasing the importance of the Hreflang tag.

Anyone who has taken a well-established brand international will have tales of the original high authority site appearing in the search results in their new international market.

What are the most common issues with Hreflang tags?

Over the years we’ve reviewed thousands of Hreflang tags, and time and again we’ve seen the same types of errors occurring. Hopefully, after reading this you’ll know what to avoid.

Incorrect codes

One of the most common issues is the use of made up language or country codes. Often, the official codes are different for the language and the country, so your tags are different.

Good examples of this include:

• Swedish – not SE-SE but SV-SE. SV standing for Svenska, the name of the Swedish language
• Japanese – not JP-JP but JA-JP for Japanese
• The UK – The official country code for the UK is GB not UK so the correct code is EN-GB not EN-UK.

You don’t have to remember these codes, as you can easily find a list of the two types of code online:

• Language codes can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes
• Country codes are here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2

Incorrect coding of the Hreflang tag

Another area that can result in issues with Hreflang tags is the way in which these are coded.

For e-commerce websites we recommend adding the Hreflang tags to the sitemap of your website, as these are dynamic and so it’s easier to keep up with stock available and product changes.

The use of the syntax is one of the most common things we see as an issue with either on-page Hreflang tags or those implemented in the sitemap.

There are three simple rules to help with this:

1. The language code always goes first
2. Language and country codes must be separated by a hyphen not an underscore or any other mark
3. A website can target a language only (so for example ES for Spanish speakers anywhere in the world). A website cannot target a country only (as you have to identify the language you are presenting your content in).

Missing self-referencing Hreflang tag

When listing all the Hreflang tags, whether it’s on-page or in the sitemap file, make sure that you include a tag for the current language. So, if you are providing Hreflang tags from a German page or sitemap make sure that there is a German Hreflang as well as the other markets.

Conflicts with canonical tags

Make sure that the self-referencing tag uses the same URL as the canonical tag on the page when adding Hreflang tags. If the two tags conflict it will just confuse the search engines.

Hreflang tag URLs which aren’t correct

This might be a URL which redirects or a page which isn’t live any more. The best example of this we’ve ever seen was a website using a translation proxy which was creating Hreflang tags for the original English page names. All of these tags, site wide, then redirected. An example would be something like this:

English URL www.example.co.uk/womens

German URL www.example.de/damen

Hreflang tags

<link rel=”alternate” href=”https://www.example.co.uk/womens” hreflang=”en-gb” />

<link rel=”alternate” href=”https://www.example.de/womens” hreflang=”de-de” />

However, www.example.de/womens redirects to www.example.de/damen so the tag is ignored.

No return errors in Google Search Console

These errors are created when the pages listed in the tags don’t link to each other reciprocally. If you only put the Hreflang tags on the UK version of your website and not on the French version, this will cause this error. It can also be the result of pages being mapped incorrectly, an issue such as the above redirecting URL problem, or because the pages just don’t match.

How can e-commerce websites get their Hreflang tags right?

As mentioned, the most successful way of delivering Hreflang tags for e-commerce websites is in the sitemap.xml files.

As your site will have regular changes to products, owing to new products arriving or old ones being discontinued, or have stock availability differences from market to market, it’s considerably easier to keep Hreflang tags up to date when you do this in the sitemap.xml file. These files are mostly generated automatically now, so this means that they are more likely to be able to see the most up to date stock availability from market to market.

Getting your Hreflang tags right can cause some headaches, but it’s not that hard when you know what you are looking for.

Join my talk at BrightonSEO on April 27^th at 10.00am, Auditorium 2, to find out how you can correct your Hreflang tags.

Emily Mace is Head of International SEO at Oban International.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/18/six-hreflang-tag-pitfalls-to-watch-out-for-on-e-commerce-websites/

SEO basics: The top 8 mistakes that rookies (and new businesses) make

SEO mistakes can be easy to make, especially when you’re just starting out – either as a new SEO, or as a fledgling business.

By being keenly aware of specific pitfalls that new businesses and SEO rookies can fall into when attempting to optimize their site and their content, you can steer clear of the most common mistakes and oversights, implement best practices, and fast track your search visibility success.

Here are eight missteps you’ll want to avoid:

1) Not starting SEO sooner

Businesses can (and too often do) invest years creating compelling content that is exactly what its target audience is looking for. However, even the best content won’t do much good if its intended audience can’t find it or doesn’t know it exists.

Engaging in SEO to ensure that content is visible and prominent – not buried beneath other search results – can be as critical to success as the content itself. Smaller businesses in particular tend to prioritize content creation over SEO strategy, but the two really need to go hand-in-hand. The best time to begin SEO is earlier than many companies think.

2) Not choosing low-competition keywords

Emerging websites are not likely to have enough pull to earn high search rankings on competitive terms. Expect this to remain true for some time, even if following every best practice in the book; starting out in any new endeavor means working your way up, and this certainly rings true for SEO.

Unfortunately, many new businesses make the mistake of focusing exclusively on high competition keywords out of the gate and fail to achieve results as far as how they rank in results.

A better strategy is to begin by finding and focusing on low-competition keywords. Doing so makes it more feasible to climb the rankings and grow the site’s traffic and reputation. That, in turn and with a little time, will help fuel success on those more competitive keywords.

3) Not understanding the audience and their search intent

There’s a misconception that SEO success is all about fooling the algorithms. In reality, the single most important SEO best practice is to create content that is compelling to your audience.

Any tactics that address the needs of search engines should come second – and in many cases practices that satisfy searchers and search engines are one in the same. The key is to understand your audience’s search intent: what are people trying to accomplish when they search on certain terms? They may want information, or to find or buy something specific.

When the content on your webpages fulfills that search intent, both your audience and search engines will reward your site. What’s good for the audience is almost always what’s good for the algorithms.

4) Targeting broad search terms instead of the long-tail

SEO beginners may believe that focusing on broad and basic search terms is the natural place to start. Conversely, more specific and detailed long-tail terms usually prove much more advantageous.

When someone inputs a broad term into their search engine of choice, a couple assumptions can be made.

One, they are probably early in the process of learning about a subject on which they don’t yet have a lot of knowledge. Two, even if the terms clearly relate to a specific product or service, those searchers are oftentimes not yet ready to make a purchase.

Also, broad search terms are usually high competition keywords, as discussed above. Search engine results pages for broad terms also tend to have more ads at the top, pushing organic listings down (generally making them less valuable as a consequence).

5) Forgetting about “under the hood” webpage details

For many getting started in SEO, it can be all too easy to forget about the SEO-enhancing details that must be added to every webpage on your site – page titles, meta descriptions, image file names and alt text, URLs, etc. – because they aren’t visible on the surface of your content.

However, these elements are essential in shaping how search engines – and therefore the audience you’re seeking – view your pages. The title tag, slug (page URL), and meta description for a webpage control the text that is displayed on a search engine results page and when shared on social media.

Though invisible on the pages themselves, this text serves as a kind of ad for your site where it does appear. SEO beginners also shouldn’t be shy with continual testing to determine what text yields the best click-through rates.

A few under-the-hood components to pay attention to

6) Thinking that keyword stuffing will help

Keyword stuffing is the practice of using as many keywords as possible on a page to win favor with search engines. The result is awkward content that creates a bad user experience.

While many beginners think keyword stuffing will be a shortcut to ranking, search engines frown on this practice. The algorithms are too clever to be fooled by keyword stuffing, and search engines are increasingly finding and penalizing sites that try to do it.

Again, producing content that legitimately satisfies an audience’s search intent is the best and most successful SEO technique.

7) Forgetting to build out internal links

Once you’ve succeeded in bringing someone to your site, you want to keep them there – both for SEO and, of course, your own business purposes. Give your audience easy access to other pieces of content that logically flow from the page they are on.

8) Not measuring results

Finally, SEO newcomers are most likely to implement new practices without properly tracking results to inform whether they are effective or not. SEO is a highly data-driven endeavor, and the analytics tools to keep track of SEO success are readily available and need to be used early on.

Example showing the aggregated organic share of voice of a set of competitive sites, which helps show how SEO strategy (in its entirety) is doing relative to competitors. You’ll also want to track and measure this on a keyword-by-keyword basis.

Kim Kosaka is the Director of Marketing at Alexa.com, whose tools provide insight into digital behavior that marketers use to better understand and win over their audience.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/04/17/seo-basics-the-top-8-mistakes-that-rookies-and-new-businesses-make/