You’ve done it. After weeks of planning and countless discussions with your design team, you’ve finally got the green light. You’re ready to launch your beautiful brand new website to the world!
But although you might be tempted to push the ‘live’ button right away, it’s really important to test a few vital elements of the site before you start showing off the fruits of your labour to your potential customers.
Carrying out the ten final checks below will give you extra peace of mind that your new platform will perform at its very best after launch (and have a great chance of ranking well in the search engines, too!).
Before launch, go back to basics. Review and proofread all the content on your website to make sure it’s free from typos, poor grammar and duplicate copy.
This is essential for two reasons. Firstly, poorly written content won’t leave the best impression on your users. You only have five seconds or so to capture their attention and encourage them to explore everything your company can offer, so the last thing you want is for them to head straight over to a competitor’s site because they’ve been turned off by sub-standard writing.
And secondly, the major search engines such as Google will take your syntax into consideration when deciding whether or not to rank your web page in their organic listings. Bad content is less likely to rank well.
Pretend you’re a potential customer. Work your way through your site pathways to see if your new platform offers a simple, seamless experience.
Are your instructions clear? Is your main call to action displayed prominently on each page? Does your contact form return that reassuring ‘thank you’ message once it’s been completed? If you’re finding it difficult to get from A to B, or you’re encountering needless hurdles along the way, you need to address these flow and usability issues before you unleash your site to a wider audience.
It’s a simple check, but it often gets overlooked by webmasters who are keen to launch sooner rather than later. The load time of your pages will have a big impact on the user’s experience (and you’re probably already aware that slow load speeds can have an adverse effect on your SEO, too).
As we mentioned in a previous blog post How Important Is Site Speed For SEO, there are plenty of tools out there that can help you assess and improve your page load speed. Google’s PageSpeed Insights will give you plenty of food for thought, but other alternatives such as WebPageTest, GTmetrix and Pingdom will also return useful feedback.
This is a big one. More of us than ever before are using smartphones and tablets to navigate the web, so any new website must be able to render correctly on mobile browsers.
The best way to make sure your site is mobile responsive is to test it on as many devices as possible. If you spot any glitches, or you find that some or all of your content is displaying incorrectly, let your developers know so they can fix the problem before launch.
Again, there are tonnes of tools out there that can help you test responsive websites. Google Search Console’s Mobile-Friendly Test will show you exactly how your page is being displayed on a typical smartphone screen and will provide you with a site-wide mobile usability report that highlights any major concerns. Elsewhere on the web, you could use Responsinator, mobiReady or MobileTest.me to gauge the responsiveness of your latest creation.
If you want to improve your SEO rankings, you need a winning link building campaign.
Link building is a form of off-page SEO that helps to improve the credibility of your website. Getting links to your site placed on other reputable sites establishes your authenticity and boosts your rankings.
While the premise behind link building sounds simple enough, a successful campaign can be tricky to execute. If you want to get on the first page of Google, take a look at this step by step guide and start building your link building strategy today…
These small but mighty directives are often used by web designers while they’re creating your new website in a test platform. The noindex directive stops the search engines from being able to access the test site’s content while it’s still in development; the nofollow tag prevents Google from following links between pages.
As you can imagine, launching a website with noindex and nofollow tags is far from ideal if you want your pages to be found – so make sure they’re taken off the code when everything’s ready to go.
These handy tags let you control what content shows up when one of our web pages is shared on Facebook. They’re also recognised by Twitter and LinkedIn.
Needless to say, if you don’t have the right Open Graph tags in place, you won’t have any say in what copy is displayed when somebody shares your page or post on social media. Set up and customise these vital pieces of code as soon as you can (or ask your developer to do this for you).
If a user requests a page that doesn’t actually exist, your site will return what’s called a 404 error page. This page can play a key part in keeping the potential customer on the website if they’ve reached a dead end; an empty template will confuse them and, in the worst-case scenario, encourage them to jump ship.
Test your existing 404 pages to see if it follows the same design theme and contains visible links back to the homepage or other resource pages that might be of interest. If it doesn’t, get your developer to improve it ASAP.
Every website should contain two sitemaps: one written in HTML, and one in XML. The HTML sitemap is a more user-friendly version that’s easy for human eyes to follow, whereas the XML addition is designed specifically to help the search engine bots find and index your website’s pages.
Make sure your developer creates an accurate XML sitemap file, then uploads it to your root directory so it can be found at www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.
We’ve seen it time and time again. An organisation has created a flawless website – its design is impeccable, its UX is incredible, and its content adds that extra je ne sais quoi to the whole platform. But several weeks after launch, there’s not been one single enquiry… or so it seems.
In reality, plenty of people have tried to inquire about the company. But the contact form hasn’t been working properly, so all attempts at communication have been bouncing straight back to their potential customers.
Before you open up your website for business, make sure that your contact portal is set up to send your enquiries straight to the email address of your choice (and isn’t pinging correspondence to your developer, who may have used their own email to test the form during the development phase).
As we all know, the work doesn’t end with the launch of a website. If you really want to make a splash online, you’ll need to invest in an ongoing search engine optimisation campaign that will increase your reach and exposure over time.
To make sure you’re able to monitor your online performance, set up a Google Analytics account and link it to your website’s header to start tracking your site data from day one. The data generated by the software will give you valuable insight into where your traffic is coming from, how users are interacting with your pages, and how people are converting into genuine leads.
We all know just how important backlinks are to an SEO campaign. What remains unclear though is just how many backlinks you need to have on your website.
Today, we’ll be seeking to answer the age-old question of quality vs. quantity. To some degree, both these options offer valid reasons as to why you need to back them.
However, for the sake of clarity, we’ll be imploring further into the topic in today’s discussion.
Backlinks are essentially the hyperlinks from your site to other sites. If you happen to be an authority in your industry, then, it’s not uncommon to find websites linking to yours for the sake of credibility.
Those who are renowned for achievements in their industry are oft-referenced in articles by others. The more backlinks you receive, the better your odds of registering increased traffic and seeing a boost in search engine rankings.
Search engines love backlinks since they serve as an indication that other people love your website. Aware of this stance, there are some unscrupulous entrepreneurs who seek to use underhand methods to rank highly.
Such back hat practices usually involve the payment of money for links to your website across various other sites. While this may see you gain some ground over your competition, in the long term, Google and other search engines are bound to discover your exploits. This usually happens because when backlinks are purchased, some emphasis is usually placed on the quantity aspect. The poor sources where your links originate from usually sound the warning bells for Google to respond.
To avoid getting penalised by Google, try steering away from such link schemes. In the worst case scenario, your website may be de-indexed. When this happens, search engines may choose not to display your website completely in search results.
Age plays a key role in determining just how many backlinks you need.
New websites typically little link building activity. Instead, most of the work needs to go into building branded links. If you’re working on local SEO, you need to put more emphasis on developing your social profiles, local citations and branded web 2.0s.
Ideally, you need to wait at least a month building your social profiles and setting up content for your site. Once the groundwork is done, it easy for you to justify just why you’re doing link building.
There’s some wiggle room for you to flex here. You can come up with as many links as you’d wish in this scenario. Having said that, it’s best to wait for a while for the content you post to simmer. Once sufficient traffic is recorded, you can get back to building backlinks. A good waiting period is about a week’s time.
You can play with your options on such websites. The fact that you can come up with as many backlinks as you want however doesn’t mean that you can compromise on the quality.
Setting backlink targets is not the most prudent thing. The best ways to go about is to build steadily and naturally go into building links.
Rather than being an instantaneous activity, link building needs to happen on a consistent basis. As an ongoing process, it doesn’t make sense to include targets and deadlines into the mix. A steady development is the only sure fire way for you to have an edge over your competition.
You should not stop pursuing your SEO targets even once you manage to break into the first page of search results, monthly link building services are offered by multiple companies for a reason.. its an ongoing task and is not a one off thing.
Many people make the mistake of focusing on the number of backlinks instead of quality. 1 high-quality backlink can be just as effective as 100 low-quality backlinks. As such, it’s not a pure numbers game.
You need to strike a perfect balance between the number of backlinks you generate and their quality. If you’re unsure how to do this, you need to ensure that the backlinks you create conform to at least half of these qualities:
You require fewer backlinks if you’ve done due diligence and properly optimised your website. If you have a poorly optimised site, the odds are that the backlinks you share will have zero effect on your audience. This is because you don’t have grounds for prospects to trust your website and regard you as an authority in your field.
Some recommended optimisation steps are:
As you look into your competition, be sure to take note of how many links are pointing to each of their pages on search engine results. While at it, be sure to ignore the numbers from the webpage containing the most backlinks and the webpage with least number of backlinks.
Once you have the numbers right, ensure that you develop high-quality content (whitepapers, infographics, blog posts, and landing pages). Providing in-depth coverage about your industry is likely going to put you in good books with your audience.
With the content sorted out, it’s necessary to come up with smart sharing initiatives, not just to your audience, but also to other industry titans. Striking a rapport with some of the top brass in your field may be a masterstroke on your part since you’ll be able to promote your business on a person-to-person basis.
Site speed is just one of those important metrics that increasingly becoming harder to ignore. Especially in 2019.
Visitors to your website probably don’t have all the time in the world to wait as your page loads. A slow website is not something you want to have, especially if you’re looking to achieve top tier status when it comes to SEO rankings.
While it’s true that search engine optimisation relies heavily on keywords and backlinks, there are other small conditions that need to be fulfilled in order for a website to rank.
Today, Google’s algorithm is built to consider loading time as an important attribute when determining how your website ranks in search results. Once you’re able to identify the weaknesses in your page and make enhancements to bolster your site speed, there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to achieve that top spot you’ve always fancied.
Some of the factors affecting site speed include file sizes, plugins, and slow servers. Before we dive into the nitty-gritty, here’s a quick brush of things you need to know.
It takes about 400 milliseconds for an eye to blink. If you can able optimise your page to be just as fast, then, you stand a good chance of tiding the masses over to your side.
Slow site speeds usually negatively impact SEO strategies. This is because targeted customers tend to become frustrated with slow load time and may decide to bounce off your website. According to Google statistics, it takes about 0.4 seconds of load time before users decide to look elsewhere for content.
Essentially, this means that the slower the load speed, the more likely visitors to your page will deem your content irrelevant. With the opposite being true, it makes absolute sense why Google decided to introduce site speed into its algorithm.
While hiring the services of a cheap web host seems like a grand idea, there’s also the downside of slow load time. This arises because such deals usually involve the sharing of servers. When this happens, space and resources that would have been dedicated to your website become spread out to a bunch of other websites.
If you’re looking to achieve fast site speed, then, it’s worth reconsidering your current strategy and adapting better suiting hosts that are capable of handling your business needs.
Always check for new updates on your content management system, be it Drupal, WordPress, or Wix. In most situations, updates usually resolve common errors and bugs in the system. When this happens, you usually notice a considerable bump in site speed.
Gone are the days when dial-up internet dictated the times. Today, users get frustrated whenever websites take forever to load.
Since larger images are certainly going to take longer periods to load, you need to optimise the images that you upload on your platform.
Making tweaks to things like the size of images uploaded and the format can make all the difference. Generally, browsers usually load PNG, JPG, and GIF images super fast. On the other hand, formats like BMP and TIFF are typically heavy which means that they usually cause slow site speed.
If you’ve ever dabbled in coding using either HTML, CSS, or Javascript, then, you’re well aware that there’s usually plenty of coding that happens before a website comes to life.
To ensure that your site speed is not affected by lengthy lines of code, you need to ensure to the backend of your site is not clogged up with redundant code. Else, you may find yourself having to pay the consequences.
If you’re using WordPress for your site, then the odds are you’ve got a number of plugins installed. While plugins are great in terms of functionality, you need not have too many hanging around. This is because every plugin usually makes a file request. The more requests generated, the slower your site speed is going to be.
Think about it, when you’re visiting a new city and want to ask directions, wouldn’t you rather ask a source who points you to a direct location? Exactly.
The same concept applies to websites. Nobody likes being redirected to a whole different page. In a way, it’s like telling visitors to your page to hold on the line as you process something else. Unless you really have to do it, avoid doing it since it may negatively impact your SEO goals.
Search engines are responsible for plenty of traffic on most websites. Given just how key a role they play, it’s necessary for you to acquaint yourself with the best SEO tips and plugins that will enhance the reception of your website to the masses.
In today’s article, we’ll be looking to share some of the best WordPress Plugins for SEO.
People love the plugin because it provides them with a comprehensive solution for all their on-site SEO needs. Using it, you can add an SEO title, a relevant meta description, and slot in some meta keywords for every post on your pages.
The plugin is robust enough to allow for the customisation of titles for your main site, archives, and tag pages. If you’re looking to play around with your content, you’ll love the fact that the plugin includes Open Graph meta data, Sitemaps, Twitter Cards, and the power to ping search engines whenever you make changes tour website.
Some of the standout features of the plugin are:
The page analysis is a definite gem because it ensures that you’re always on the right track. Its intuitive interface further adds to the allure.
This particular plugin offers stiff competition to Yoast SEO. If you’re looking to test out its features, you can opt to begin with the free plugin before you decide to pay for some premium services.
On the premium version, you get access to real-time customer support, plus the ability to join support forums and video screencasts.
If you’re charged with the running of an e-commerce store, you definitely need to try out the advanced WooCommerce support. There, you’ll get plenty of insights about how to better manage your business.
Some of the other amazing attributes are:
This plugin is ideal for those who want to work with a powerful plugin that is able to function without any disturbing ads or upsells running in the background.
The plugin design is simplistic since the developers spent most of their time developing a plugin that is able to meet your website needs. SEO Framework is a great choice if you’re looking to maintain highs speeds on your site without having to spend plenty of time perusing complex SEO articles.
Despite having mentioned that the interface is simplistic in nature, the API is open for advanced users to play around. Having started as a project in the WPMUDEV community, it has morphed through the years to become freely available to all and sundry.
Some other cool features are:
Notably, even the free version doesn’t have footprints. Using it, you can swiftly manage all your meta descriptions and titles with ease.
You can also come up with XML and HTML sitemaps, monitor what your visitors are doing with Google Analytics, and make some optimisations to your tags using Open Graph and Twitter Cards for easy sharing on social media platforms.
In the free version, you also have access to content analysis which is a shining attribute among webmasters. Using it, most of them are able to develop better SEO optimised posts. If you’re a developer, you’ll love the fact that you can make use of more than 75 hooks to tailor the plugin as you’d like.
Some of the features on the premium version include:
This great plugin is quite comprehensive. It’s robust enough to allow you to quickly transform your SEO strategy.
Rank Math is able to utilise the functionality of multiple plugins on your WordPress website and streamlines all of them into a single easy-to-manage plugin that is not bulky.
The plugin enables you to easily manage on-page SEO of your posts, products, pages, and a range of other taxonomies. As a webmaster, you also have access to no archive meta tags in a number of other pages.
The beauty of Rank Math lies in the fact that it seamlessly integrates with Google Search Console to bring you all the necessary information you need right inside your WordPress dashboard. Crucial information like keywords to rank for, the search impressions of your website, and errors on your page are all accessible from the admin console.
Other awesome features are:
It’s not uncommon to hear beginners to SEO inquiring about the essence of title tags and Meta descriptions.
While we could dive straight into explaining just how important they are in modern SEO practices, a little definition of terms is necessary.
When users search for content on the web, title tags and Meta descriptions are what usually load up on the search engine results. To gain more clicks, it’s is therefore imperative that you invest some time to develop compelling meta tags that prompt more users to check out your website once the search results roll in.
This is the title section of a webpage which briefly summarises what’s contained in a page. They are usually found in three main places, on search engine results, browsers and on external platforms like social media pages.
To rank, search engines require websites to have title tags to include relevant keywords and phrases that accurately describe what’s contained in the page. As such, if you find yourself straying away from the agenda of your page, you may be forcing Google’s hand to display some other title instead.
Since this is not something you want to happen, it’s best to really craft meaningful title tags. There’s plenty of opportunities for you to lure prospects to click through your site by having a relevant title tag. A great way to capture some of this information is by providing accurate, concise, and compelling narratives of your page.
Here’s an example of how the HTML code looks like:
Meta descriptions are meant to convey a summary of all the content contained on a webpage. As you can already tell, it has some similarity to the previously mentioned title tag. The key difference here is that Meta descriptions allow you some ample breathing space.
You have the freedom to flex your wordplay with plenty more space as you let visitors to your site know what you’re offering. If well utilised, you can grab hold of a significant portion of the population.
Here’s how Meta descriptions usually look like:
<head>
<meta name=”description” content=” This is where you insert your Meta description. Write something interesting.”>
</head>
A great way to do this is by monitoring the click-through rates in Google Search Console. Using the tool, you can locate pages with reasonable volume but low click-through rates. To practice, you can try optimising the pages as per the highlighted steps above.
If you really want to push your website as the best out there, don’t make the mistake of neglecting Metadata. The best way to keep abreast with the times is by constantly monitoring the happenings of this section.
Having said that, we caution you against making too many changes in a short span of time. This is because it usually takes some time before adjustments made come into effect and cause an impact. In light of this, you need to hold out for a while in order to track what’s actually working
Importantly, you also need to consider the average time visitors spend on your site. While CTR is a great metric to monitor, it’s not the be-all and end-all of success.
If a significant portion of visitors is spending fewer amounts of time on your page, that could be an indicator that your metadata is not appealing enough or your webpage isn’t living up to the standards people expect. When this happens, it may indicate that your website is built on the foundations of clickbait, something you want to avoid.
As the saying goes, “Content is King”.
While it’s true that scintillating content is key to enhancing your website’s reception and reputation, you may find your traffic numbers suffering if there are some technical issues behind the scenes.
During the early years of search, marketers and developers focused on their tasks without bothering to learn about what lay at the other end of the fence.
Today, things are different. Marketers need to have an understanding of all the various technical concepts. At the same time, developers also need to know the ins and outs of digital marketing.
An understanding of both technical and creative aspects is needed.
These traits are what make on an effective digital marketer. Once you’re able to recognise the technical faults in a system and all the right buttons to press in case calamity strikes, you have better odds of seeing your website take off.
In a bid to enlighten you on all the key points you need to be conversant with, we’ve prepared this technical SEO checklist.
To check the robots.txt file, you need to follow:
Google Search Console> Crawl> robots.txt Tester
This robots.txt play an important role. It provides a directive to search engines and all websites need to have one somewhere in their root directory.
For proper functioning, you need to ensure that it is properly formatted. This means that it should only restrict files or directories that you don’t want to see indexed. While at it, ensure that it is included in your XML sitemap layout.
If you’d love to learn more about the workings of the robot.txt file, you can acquaint yourself with some Google recommendations.
Having been in the industry for a while now, one of the errors we’ve encountered one, two, many times usually happens during a website redesign. The dev site frequently gets blocked in robots.txt after the disallow:/ command is used. To avert this and avoid taking your website out of the index, you need to ensure that the disallow rule is done away before your launch the redesigned platform.
It’s not uncommon for website owners to come up with different URLs that come up with similar content. Since this is not a good thing, you can make use of canonical link elements to ensure that a website remains unique.
Often times, canonical link elements are used to ensure that the preferred version of a page remains indexed at all times.
When working with them, there are some guidelines that you need to follow. Ideally, you want them to reference a URL that does not redirect and is indexed. At the same time, the URL also needs to be in the full path, something like http://www.example.com/
A canonical tag that fits this would be”
<link rel=”canonical” href= http://www.example.com/product.php?item=foo987/>
To check this, you can use a platform like Screaming Frog.
With redirects, you can effectively let search engines know that your webpage has permanently relocated to a new location. This comes in handy when there’s a URL change or if a page is deleted.
While there are different types of redirects, we favour a 301 redirect because of SEO purposes. This usually notifies search engines that a page has permanently shifted house.
The best way to handle redirects is by having them redirect to the final destination. Having looping redirect chains is not advisable, if possible, ensure that you minimise the number of redirects.
You can use Screaming Frog and redirect-checker.org to check.
According to Google, duplicate content is that which can be replicated on your website or on various other web domains.
Whenever pages are duplicated, Google automatically filters such content away from search results. By doing so, they ensure that only distinct information is visible.
Having plenty of duplicate content can harm your organic traffic. Since most instances of duplicate content are unintentional, you can try to create a sense of originality by using canonical link elements.
To verify the status of your website, you can use a platform like siteliner.com.
In contemporary times, it’s crucially important for websites to consider the mobile-friendliness aspect. This becomes all the more necessary once you factor in Google’s mobile-first index.
For the smooth running of operations, you want visitors to your website to have a great experience irrespective of the device they are checking out the content from.
Directory listings are basically niche/general directories. Their main purpose is to function as an online phonebook for the storage of important information like NAP data (name, address, and phone number), map listing, and website address.
Notably, some directory listings are customised to allow you to share photos of your business, the hours of operation, and other valid data.
It’s also worth documenting that there are various other directory listing types out there which are dependent on how long you’d like your listing to remain active.
You have the option of having your business permanently listed in the directory listing, or over a short period like 1 year. Thanks to the options available in the market, you can choose to use directory listings free of charge or part with a small fee. ClickDo offers a local citation service which will get your business listed on the top 100 directories in the UK, we’ve personally used this service ourselves and highly recommend it to any local business owner in the UK.
Having pointed this out, the onus is therefore on your to ensure that your business is listed on at least a couple of directory listing on the web. By doing so, you’ll be helping your business take that next leap forward.
If you want to learn the ropes on directory listings, there’s a couple of websites that you can’t ignore.
These 10 directory listings serve as a great example of the options in the market. Acquainting yourself with them will help you comprehend the nature of directory listings and delve further into the field.
All the directories are structured differently. As you sample each of them, you may find yourself ranking higher in search engines and build trust with your clientele.
That said, it’s of the essence to comprehend that not all directory listings are created equal. Some of them can give you an edge over the rest. As such, it’s important that you carefully evaluate the nature of your business before zoning in on one.
The one trait you need to check out in when reviewing the quality of directory is whether the directory is monitored by a human, or if it has an open submission.
Human monitoring usually has an edge over open submission because there’s some cross-checking of submitted content. To stand out, you want to avoid having your information paired up with plenty of other spam listings.
As a rule of thumb, it’s important to stay away from directories that have a keyword anchor text, directories containing the text “add your link” or “suggest a site”, and low domain authorities.
The more accessible your business is online, the more likely people will be exposed to your product offering. As a consequence of this, you’re likely to realise that more people will be making utility of your services and willing to buy the items you’re selling. Brand Development plays a key role in your marketing strategy
On the flip side, if people are unable to locate your website or track it down over the web, there’s a very low chance that you’ll be able to unlock new clients.
Importantly, directory listings also serve as great tools to reach out to specific audiences and capture their imaginations. Who doesn’t want that?
With directory listings, you can choose to concentrate your efforts on a specific state, town, city, or zip code. Alternatively, you can decide to go big and advertise your products and services internationally. To get the most of your efforts, tools like Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Yellow Pages, and Yelp Advertising, are recommended.
Using these tools, you’ll be able to target specific prospects. Some of these platforms have mass appeal among entrepreneurs due to the fact that they offer free advertising capabilities.
Directory listings and SEO are a match made in heaven. Because listings get plenty of hits, it’s easy for businesses to rank higher on search engines. The backlinks from online directories are also high quality since they originate from recognised sources.
Having your business on the lips of everyone is no mean feat. For this to happen, you need to put the word out there in a number of listing directories, social platforms, review sites, and search engines.
The net result? Enhanced odds of customers finding your products and services on the web. Truthfully, there are hundreds of directory listings out there, this means that it may take an eternity for you to go solo. As such, we recommend hiring the services of an established company like ClickSlice to help you with your efforts.
Interestingly, you can have your business listed on a number of search engines, directories, review sites, and social platforms at no charge.
Before you commit to having your information displayed on such platforms, we advise that you first work on bolstering your profile. Once that is done, you’ll find it easy to make it to the top of search lists when people are seeking specific services and products.
A well-crafted strategy can effectively help you avoid annoying ad pop-ups and keep competitors looking for a slice of your business at bay.
If you want to have your business listed, you can do so for free. Since there’s a greater risk of getting things wrong with this approach, you need to carefully scan the information you provide to weed out the errors. Having a single dashboard from where you can review all the listings you’ve created is also recommended because it facilitates easy management.
Embracing a DIY approach sometimes leaves you vulnerable. In a bid to come up with an excel spreadsheet that lists out all the usernames and passwords of the various search engines, social media platforms, review sites and directories that you’ve come up with, you may find that the information is not accurate.
Having a single dashboard is a safer option because you can keep track of all the changes you make along the way without necessarily having to constantly perform password resets.
Google Ads – previously known as Google AdWords – is the search engine’s own Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising platform. It’s responsible for over 97% of Google’s revenue, and it’s been a real game-changer for users who want to get quick, easy exposure for their company online.
Businesses use the program to bid for advertising space above the organic listings. Via their Ads account, they can tell Google to display their ads for keywords that are relevant to their products or services, then use these ads to direct potential customers back to a particular page on their website.
They do not need to pay to appear in the search results, but they will be charged a fee every time a user clicks on their link.
As you can imagine, Google Ads provides marketing-savvy organisations with a quick, easy and incredibly effective way of boosting their website traffic and generating more leads or enquiries. The only downside is, these companies need to pay for the privilege – and costs can escalate pretty quickly if the account isn’t being managed correctly.
Many people think that Google Ads is only suitable for larger companies with big budgets. Trust us – that’s not true.
If you’re in a particularly competitive industry sector, you may need to pay a higher price for ad clicks, because there will be a higher demand for ad space. But we believe that every company can benefit from running a paid search campaign, as long as their account is well-optimised, and they are making the right first impression on the people who are finding their ads.
A successful PPC campaign relies on two things:
There are certain tools and settings you can use within Google Ads to maximise your chances of appearing in search whilst paying as little as possible for the exposure.
Here, we’ve listed five tactics that will help you manage your click spend budget and ensure you’re getting the best possible return on investment from your marketing efforts.
Keyword selection is an essential part of the process because the key phrases you choose to appear for will ultimately determine who is going to see your ad.
To find the right keywords for your campaign, you’ll first need to think about your user’s intent. Will they be looking for information on a specific topic, perhaps to research a purchase? Or do they want to buy something online? The intentions behind the search will affect the queries they use.
Next, use Google’s Keyword Planner tool to determine how many people are searching for a particular keyword on a monthly basis. The software can be used to generate ideas for your campaign, but crucially, it will also call upon an archive of search data to give you each term’s monthly search volume.
If the search volume is low, your ad will be seen by fewer people. But by the same token, if the key phrase is specific to what you’re offering, you may have a better chance of converting the user into a paying customer.
Pro Tip: Use exact match keywords.
Exact match keyword targeting enables you to reach customers who are searching with a specific keyword (or a close variant of it).
When you set your keywords to ‘exact match’ in Google Ads, you’re making sure that your ads are only appearing for searches that are 100% relevant to the search term you have chosen. You won’t reach as many people using this keyword strategy, but you will only pay for clicks that are more likely to convert into real business. It’s a much more cost-effective way of managing a campaign if money is tight.
If you only supply your products or services to a particular town, county or region, make sure this is reflected in your targeting settings.
You can tell the platform to only display your ads if the user is based in a place that’s of interest to you. This stops you from wasting your click budget on people who live in areas that you don’t currently service.
In the same way that you can restrict where your ads are shown, you can also make sure they are only displayed at certain times of the day.
If you’re a B2B provider that receives most of your enquiries between 9am and 5pm, you can ask Google to list your ad during these times. If you’re an online retailer, and you know that most of your customers are going to be searching for your products after normal working hours, you can change your settings so that your ads only appear in the evening.
And if you have no idea when your customers would normally be searching for companies like yours, you can experiment by testing different ad schedules, then monitoring the data to see which approach has generated the most clicks.
The copy used within your ad is what’s going to hook your customers in and convince them to click through to your site. It needs to pack a punch, sure – but it also needs to meet Google Ads’ guidelines if it’s going to be considered for inclusion in the listings.
You can find lots of information on how to write winning PPC ad copy here, but in a nutshell, you need to make sure your content highlights what makes you unique; contains one of your targeted keywords; and tells your audience exactly what they need to do in order to either get in touch with you or complete their purchase (depending on your goals for the campaign).
Thanks to Google’s recently expanded text ads, you now have even more space to fill. You can also add a range of ad extensions to your listing to make it really stand out. Click here for a closer look at the different types of ad extensions now available from Google Ads.
The best way to prevent overspending is to set an average daily budget for each Google Ads campaign. It’s important to choose a budget that’s sustainable and affordable for your business – but you’ll also need to consider whether this amount will be enough to get you enough clicks to make the campaign viable.
It’s a tough balancing act. If you’re struggling to work out how much you should be spending for the best ROI, we’d recommend asking a specialist PPC manager for help.
Need further help?
The tips listed above should go some way to helping you achieve a better return from your Google Ads campaign. However, there’s so much involved in running a successful PPC account, it would be impossible for us to list all our recommendations in one blog post!
For more advice and expert guidance, contact the team here at ClickSlice. We’ll use our decades of combined experience in using Google Ads to produce a campaign that delivers on all fronts.
From a business perspective, SEO is one of the best investments you could make. It’s something that you shouldn’t avoid. By embracing it, you’ll be broadening your horizons to experience something surreal.
Over the last couple of years, there have been many changes in the SEO world. Google has many a time revamped the search console with new crawl limits whilst ensuring that they were able to improve upon a couple of their products.
These updates to their algorithms and other ranking factors have only gone ahead to bolster the quality of their service dispensation.
In our guide today, we’ compiled a handy guide that lists out 5 key reasons why you need to put more focus on SEO going forward.
To reap the full benefits of SEO, you need to think of it as a long-term strategy. Once you embrace this kind of thinking, you’re bound to realise considerable advancements in your business.
Many people who are new to SEO usually wonder about the length of time necessary for them to rank number one based the keywords used.
Constantly worrying about this one statistic is not the best way to go. Instead of getting exasperated about the lack of changing tides within a month or two, it’s best to be patient for soon enough, the results will speak for themselves.
When starting a new website, you need to be prepared to wait about 6-12 months before you start seeing results. While this may seem like a lifetime, when it’s done correctly, you will be able to maintain your website on SERP which may have a long-lasting impact on your success. The main reason for the duration is because you have to build backlinks to your website to help it rank higher in Google, unfortunately, you can do build 1000+ backlinks overnight. It might be done gradually over time.
If you’re currently running a business, we’re certain you’re already aware of the benefits of having a portfolio to generate conversions. With better search visibility, it becomes easier for you to market your wares to all and sundry. SEO guarantees that you have visibility in SERP, later on, you’ll reap the full monetary results.
Provided you have a healthy budget and are actively engaged in marketing your products and/or services, SEO will ensure that you have a great return on investment.
That said, it’s not wise to set unrealistic goals. Instead, you need to budget for about 6-12 months of SEO, else, you might end up losing money. Since you want to benefit rather than lose investments that would have been better spent elsewhere, it’s important that you wait it out. Simply forking cash for a couple of months is not enough to realise the kind of results you want to see.
There’s good data showing that about 40% of revenue is usually sourced from organic traffic. In light of this, it’s best that you put in the work to capture these organic searches. This is quite important when you consider that a significant 18% of local smartphone searches also resulted in a purchase within the day.
Organic search plays a central role in generating a website’s traffic. Numerous studies conducted show that businesses need to put more emphasis on strengthening organic search. One finding revealed that about 51% of website traffic usually emanates from organic search. Interestingly, only 10% of the net traffic usually arises from paid search, 5% from social media channels and the remainder 34% typically arises from other sources.
In light of this info, it’s evident that search visibility is an integral part of the equation. Google seems to like websites that are trusted by a majority of the population. To ensure that you’re in good books with the search engine behemoth, it’s necessary to conduct frequent website optimisation operations. Doing so only serves to boost your ranking on the first page of search engine results.
When you consider the long-time investment in SEO, it’s considerably for you to promote your business using SEO than other paid search tactics.
True, you may have to pump plenty of cash in the initial stage than most paid advertising strategies. Still, the overall benefits still outweigh paid methods which usually require you to keep handing out money every other month to ensure that you keep receiving traffic on your website.
Compared to SEO, paid search marketing usually has a shorter lifespan in terms of making conversions. Results are only present for as long as you keep making payments. On the flip side, SEO is more a long-ball tactic which puts it as the safer option.
With SEO, you can get insights into how your business is fairing from the analytics on your website. The only challenge you’re likely to face is getting the data yourself and deciding the avenues which need improvements.
If you’re a newbie, comprehension of the data may be hard. It’s highly likely that you’ll have to invest plenty of time breaking down the data into tinier digestible pieces before taking a course of action. Experienced SEO analysts usually start things by separating the wheat from the chaff.
Notably, there exists a suite of tools in the market which can help you monitor the performance of your website. ClickSlice recommends Google Analytics as it can easily help you learn more about your audience and their preferences, your major sources of traffic, and how your content is consumed.
It’s always nice to change up every once in a while. Maybe you’ve tried out other content management systems like Joomla or Drupal when you were just starting out. Inevitably, you outgrew these options. If you’re looking for more functionality and a whole new toolbox to play with, then it’s time for a CMS upgrade.
When it comes to CMS solutions, WordPress is up there with the best of them. While other platforms like Drupal get lauded for their active community, Expression Engine is favoured by the technically gifted, and Alfresco quickly converts files into webpages, WordPress still has a charm about it.
If you’re intrigued about what WordPress can offer for your business, take a quick look at the top 3 reasons we you need to embrace WordPress as your CMS.
WordPress made its way into the scene back in 2003, before anyone really knew what blogging or CMS was.
During its early years, the platform was largely a resourceful tool for bloggers. However, as the years rolled on, WordPress remarkably gathered no moss. It’s now become synonymous as the go-to platform for all kinds of businesses.
WordPress is just as popular among programmers as it is for those who aren’t too tech savvy. Interestingly, one stat shows that with each passing day, about 500 new websites are developed using WordPress.
As a platform, WordPress has attracted plenty of people looking to bring their websites up to par. With an impeccable development team driving its progress, WordPress has not slouched in any sense since it came into being.
If you’re in the market for a plugin that will stitch-up and enhances your SEO strategy, WordPress is the way to go. If you’re looking for a unique theme that makes your business stand out, WordPress is all it takes.
In essence, WordPress has you covered in almost every department you can think of. There are a ton of third parties on the platform which have come up with fantastic themes, plugins, and widgets which have quickly become fan favourites.
Compared to its contemporaries like Joomla and Drupal, WordPress has a very intuitive interface. All the features they have on offer are quite easy to use. This makes it the perfect platform for noobs in the industry to start out.
Even the most complicated of tasks are heavily simplified for enhanced user experience. This simplicity has really endeared the platform to many users over the years. This WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) concept has been fantastic to their bottom line.
By eliminating the need to code, WordPress successfully tapped into a market that many other platforms hadn’t envisioned. Businesses have been drawn en masse because of this attribute since they are able to save on time and monies that would have otherwise been spent hiring on-staff programmers and web designers. It’s a real treat.
Having divulged all this, it’s quite easy for one to think that WordPress is not robust enough because of the simplification of tasks. In truth, nothing could be further from the truth.
Aside from the powerful functionality, WordPress has a thriving online community who actively engage to provide solutions to issues encountered. It is through such forums that users concerns get answered and development proceeds without a hitch.
Wait, did we mention that WordPress is free? Well, it is!
While many other CMS platforms require their users to cough up the dough in advance, WordPress gets availed to users absolutely free. This zero-dollar price tag has been quite effective in attracting so many enterprises looking to make their mark in the market.
That said, it’s worth noting that some of the competition offers free packages, but, most of the plugins that they offer come with a price tag. While it’s true that some WordPress plugins are also available at a price, most of them are free or have an attached freemium version for users to test the waters with.
The fact that you can literally do anything you want with WordPress is also a bonus feature. While the platform was all about blogging during the nascent years, it’s taken in plenty of web developers within its wingspan over the years.
Enterprises love WordPress because anyone with some IT knowledge can update them. Excitingly, it doesn’t take a web development guru to implement a couple of changes to the content.
As a plus, businesses are able to save plenty with WordPress. Instead of having two platforms, one for website creation and another for blogging, WordPress is able to combine both functionalities without the need to outsource elsewhere.
As its evidently clear, WordPress is your best bet if you’re looking for a friendly CMS that will ease your workload. There are also tons of security plugins you can install on your site too to help prevent your site from being hacked by hackers.
Try it out today!
ClickSlice is an SEO agency in London, who specialise in boosting the search engine rankings of company websites. We take an individualistic approach to SEO and work with businesses to develop a plan that works best for their specific situation.
For more information on how we transform businesses through the power of organic internet traffic, contact ClickSlice today on 020 3287 3638 or email us at hello@clickslice.co.uk.
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