Category: Google

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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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Introducing Our Summer Intern, William McCord

William McCord, Our Summer Intern
William McCord, Our Summer Intern

William McCord, my 20 year old son, has joined the firm for the summer in a Computer Science internship.

William is a rising Junior in Computer Science with an interest in programming, GIS, and cyber security at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

With a passion for computer programming, he is already helping to implement and tweak complex scripts for AdWords account management as well as fine-tuning his HTML and CSS skills for website design.

This summer, he will be focusing on WordPress management, site design customization, website security, mobile-friendly e-newsletters, and AdWords script programming.

He is a incredibly fast learner, innovative, and a hard worker. We are excited to welcome him into our office.

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What to Do About a High Bounce Rate Part Two

High Bounce Rate – Continued from Monday April 3, 2017.

Google Partner Badge
McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

Dealing with a high bounce rate on your website? Here are my recommendations for what to do to try to solve the problem.

 

First, don’t get spun up. Not every page needs to have a low bounce rate of 40% to 65%. I have found that blog posts and informational articles, which may be driving traffic to your website, may also have a high bounce rate.

If this is the case, I recommend the following actions:

Put the page to work for you. Feature your newsletter subscription link, video links, and even AdSense advertising ads on those high traffic, yet high bounce rate pages. Understand that they are doorways into your site and work to market your own site on these pages with banners, icons, and interactivity like video embeds.

Second, if you have content and service pages that are really meaningful to your business and they have a bounce rate in the high 70%’s, I would tag them for a content review.

If this is the case, I recommend the following actions:

Review your meta tags, you may be getting traffic that is not targeted to your page content. Review your meta title and meta description tags. Do they make sense based on the content of the page? Should they be updated to be more reflective of what the reader will find when they click in?

Review your page content with a careful eye for detail. Are you supplying content that is engaging or just supplying information. Do you have a call to action on the page, do you have links to your contact form, are you using an app like Drift to get the person online chatting with you, are you addressing a pain point and supplying solutions with related information on other pages drawing the reader in farther to your content?

Are you driving untargeted Google AdWords traffic to your page and paying for a click where what you are offering on your page does not match keywords that are being triggered? As AdWords experts find out more about our programs to solve this issue.

We offer professional by the hour content consulting and website content writing services. I invite you to visit my website to learn more about how we can help you to lower a high bounce rate on your website.