Category: SEO

Posted on

Helping Clients How to Stay on Schedule for SEO

Get professional writing for your website.
Get professional writing for your website.

Placing organically is all about building quality content on a regular schedule. My clients understand the value of content, but some do not understand the value of building out content on a schedule.

The sites that we’ve had the very best success with in moving up in organic placement have been those that embrace the following scheduled strategies.

Blogging a minimum of twice a week
We post on either Monday and Wednesday at 3:00 am or Tuesday and Thursday at 3:00 am. By having something written and posted the same day and time, you can build a following and search engine spiders when they visit will always find something new and come back more frequently.

Newsletters one a week or once a month
We recommend for most clients a once a month newsletter and usually for it to go out on the same day each month. If a client will decide on topics early, we have enough time to order, finesse, and schedule a newsletter proof, and finished version all sent out without rushing for a deadline.

Website content one new page once a month
Although for many clients we are creating and building out pages more frequently than once a month, it makes sense for you to think about having your website be a work in progress, not a once built it is done project. Many of our clients have invested in having us create a site architecture and content plan. Then we simply choose together what we will build out that month based on a review of what is happening in Google Analytics in regards to traffic and pages per session.

Now the hard part, helping the client to stay on schedule…
I am persistent in regards to follow-up once we know a client really wants to be on schedule but may just be busy. I personally keep a task panel open of all responses I need from clients so I know does this client still need to approve content for 1/3/17, does this other client need to approve a January newsletter topic?

As I get too close to a deadline to assure I have time to create content or newsletter, I will send an email with a priority notice in the subject line like – “need a response on newsletter topic by Friday 12/23”. I have also found that some clients will respond best to a text and others to a phone call.

Many of our clients will say they really appreciate our helping them to stay on schedule. They are just busy and forget we have a deadline to make things happen for them. But the benefits of regular content creation are huge, more search activity, greater visibility, and a better website visitor experience.

Find out how we can help you too to be on schedule with content, blogging, newsletters, and social media today.

 

Posted on

Google Starts Testing on Mobile First Search Index – Explained

Googlespeak can be confusing for those not in the industry, so this post will help business owners understand what Google means when it states the following:

“To make our results more useful, we’ve begun experiments to make our index mobile-first.”  Doantam Phan, Google product manager

Google Partner Badge
McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

This is the bottom-line. Google is testing and will most likely rollout a huge change to its indexing algorithm that is used to rack and stack websites in the organic or unpaid results of search pages.

The algorithm will now review and base the ranking index across all devices based on what the Googlebot spider reads in the content of a mobile version website. This is incredibly big news and the ramifications are huge.

Here’s why:

  1. If you have a responsive website, you do not need to worry. You are totally covered for this update.

2. If you have a mobile adaptive website, you need to start making changes. A mobile adaptive site means that the content for your mobile site is different and sometimes lacks the content that you have in your desktop and tablet version site. You may have dropped content, streamlined content on pages, or not developed content for some pages. In other words the mobile site is different by design and desire from your desktop site.

3. If you do not have a mobile site it is time to get busy and move to a responsive website design. Although Google says that it will still spider your site with its mobile searchbot, I would expect in the future to see tags in the index stating your site is not mobile friendly and possible demotions.

Google means business on mobile as attested by the following quote.

“Although our search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, our algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our results.” Doantam Phan, Google product manager

 If you need help with a responsive website, now’s the time to check in with the McCord Web Services team. Our focus is to implement affordable, SEO-focused responsive websites that bring you customers.

Posted on

Google’s Mobile First Becomes Your Top Priority

Nancy McCord
“Just Nancy” – My Point of View for Today.

Just this last week Google announced that it’s mobile search index would become its primary index and that it would be spinning off its tablet and desktop index into a separate index. Additionally Google stated that it would not be updating the desktop and tablet index with the same frequency as that of the mobile index.

For some, this statement did not register as important, but for those in my industry, this was very important news.

How so?

Business owners must take heed when Google makes statements like this. If your website is not mobile-friendly, you have an old website that looks like your desktop on the small screen of mobile devices, and you are not using a workaround like DudaMobile, you may be in trouble. What kind of trouble? You may drop placement organically, pages you add may not be indexed frequently, and Google may even not show your website in the mobile index. With mobile searches driving over 60% of the traffic on Google.com that’s a big drop for you.

Google is focused on speed for mobile, are you?

The next big hurdle if your site is mobile friendly is to try to speed up the delivery of your pages. Google is boosting the Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) initiatives to deliver AMP’ed up content to mobile devices nearly instantaneously. Be prepared for keeping an eye on this. Google has mentioned that it likes AMP pages and has tested even saying it may provide better placement for pages and sites that are AMP’ed.

For now the key is to assure that your site can be considered by Google as mobile-friendly and mobile-fast.

We have options when it comes to mobile, from a DudaMobile script “Bandaid” to a new mobile responsive site or WordPress site with mobile responsive theme. Just ask us for help!

Posted on

Domain Masking or 301 Redirect?

Hit the mark with a strategy for visibility.
Hit the mark with a strategy for visibility.

It’s important to know as a website owner for SEO purposes what is happening with your site and server set up.  Although you may want to trust your SEO consultant, there are a few things that you need to know just to keep them in check.

Domain Masking

If you have multiple website properties, I find it better to point domains versus setting up domain masking.  I think it is important to have a parent domain clearly defined by having your website files reside there.  Although others may love domain masking, I think it confuses visitors. I recommend keeping your brand clear to search engines and visitors.

301 Redirects

For some larger sites and those that are managed properties, multiple domains may be controlled with A Name Records and use 301 redirects. Before your SEO consultants starts recommending tactics, make sure that they are clear on how your site is set up. If you don’t know, ask them to call your tech support provider or review your web hosting control panel.

Although you as a business owner don’t want to or need to be bogged down in details. It is important to have at least a working knowledge of what will be done to your site in an effort to improve placement.

Looking for a savvy consultant to help position your site and boost online visibility? I invite you to visit our website to learn more about our services.