Month: June 2017

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How to Use AMP on Your Blog for Google Part Two

We Are a Google Partner Specializing in Search Marketing
We Are a Google Partner Specializing in Search Marketing and Now Mobile Too.

Continued from Monday.

Once you use AMP on WordPress, and if you want to use AMP pages on your regular HTML site, you’ll need to do a little research. There are lots of sites and information from Google on how to set up and how to validate your new AMP pages.

This is what I have learned in the process of working on my own website pages.

The original and new AMP page need to be pointed to each other. The AMP page points to the original page using a canonical reference telling Google that the non-AMP page is the original. The non-AMP page then points to the AMP page so that Google can discover it using a special meta tag amp reference.

There are specialized AMP image references and specialized CSS references. Additionally, Google will require that the viewport be set in the page head section to validate the page.

It is not complicated to set up these static AMP pages, but it is complicated to get them to validate. That being said, the future for Google is all about AMP and mobile. With a little effort you can make your blog and website more attractive for Google to index (and cache) in this new “Mobile First” world.

Visit our website to find out more about our services and how we can help you be more visible on Google.

 

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How to Use AMP on Your Blog for Google Part One

Man having an idea!
Mobile has shaken the world of search.

Use AMP or Accelerated Mobile Page for Google on your WordPress blog or WordPress website and you may just see your organic placement improve.

In the world of Google content is King and pagespeed is Queen. Google is really pushing implementation of AMP pages as they will cache them and deliver them to mobile devices instantly.

So how can you get in on this action and AMP up your site?

I use two plugins to create AMP pages for my blog and I manually hard code AMP pages for my PHP website.

For WordPress use these two together to get the best results.

Yoast SEO
Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP

I’ve found that validation of AMP is still quirky and questionable even with these plugins, meaning you will still see errors in the Google Search Console when you implement this, but the technology is getting better over time.

AMP pages will be striped down versions and nearly only text or in some cases, typically when you hard code them, use images that are responsive based on device.

Google is even testing AdWords and AMP as a beta right now and taking names for early implementation.

Check back on Wednesday for more information about AMP and your website.

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Want More Sales – What’s Your Polish Look Like?

Be on target to assure you make the right impression with your website.
Be on target to assure you make the right impression with your website.

Your website is all about more sales! That’s the reason you’ve hung out your shingle, but are you hurting leads and sales by having a website that’s not polished enough?

Polish is not about having fashion models in your content photos, although attractive people in your pics will not hurt, it is about the details.

These details communicate visually your professionalism and instill confidence in prospects when they visit. It’s the look and feel and you’ve got 10 seconds to make a favorable impression!

Here are my top polish points to check out on your own site.

Content blocks on the home page
These just must be the same word count and line up horizontally. When you have three different sized boxes it just looks bad.

Blog post excerpts in your footer
Control the word count! There are plugins you can use to assure your excerpt stays the same word count. Make sure to use them so you do not have giant blocks of blog content making the bottom of your website page look like jagged teeth.

Photos with no smiles
Staff photos where everyone looks grim or the business owner is frowning should be updated. Look approachable, you don’t have to be a model, but a pleasant look on your face is important.

Photos where the clothing is too casual
Owner and staff photos are important. If you work in a professional arena like a dentist or doctor – wear a white coat, lawyers – wear a suit, business owners – the higher dollar figure your sale, the more dressed up you should be. Polo shirts and super casual wear is great for your photo if your customers and competitors will be wearing those types of clothes. Careful – what you wear impacts your site’s polish and communicates professionalism.

Blog posts that are off topic that don’t match what you sell
If you blog yourself for your own website, make sure that you create and stick to a content strategy that works to build keyword density and authority  for your website.  Keep the your website’s polish going by being on topic.  Blogging is not your online journal, but rather a way to build authority with search engines and provide new fodder for search engine robots.

If you need help polishing your site, we provide consulting services to help your site improve in appearance and polish. Find out more today.

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GoDaddy Takes Another Hit with Network Protect

GoDaddy Network Protect Got You Offline?
GoDaddy Network Protect Got You Offline?

GoDaddy Network Protect? What’s that? That’s what GoDaddy calls it when they take your site offline due to a high number of hack attacks on your shared server. Our client has now been down two days. GoDaddy says it will allow the website to be seen when the hack attacks stop and they can turn off the GoDaddy Network Protect.

Wow, that is bad. Could your business afford to be offline two+ days with no end in site? I just have to challenge the type of network protection that GoDaddy has in place if they are constant targets of hackers. Either they are not policing their customers or not properly securing their shared hosting environments. You would think that they would have security in place to protect their business.

If you are hosted at GoDaddy, you can remediate this issue when your website is blocked due to a Network Protect action by buying a dedicated IP address. I just did that for our client who was under a Network Protect and could see his site online in about two hours.

I do have to say that after one of my domains was blacklisted due to a hacked site on my GoDaddy shared hosting environment server and now this situation with a customer, I will only recommend using GoDaddy as your host if you do not want to move or if you get a dedicated IP address for about $75 a year on top of your hosting.

Better yet, consider a different web host who takes security more seriously than GoDaddy.