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Mobile First Update forcing WordPress & Google to Work Together

by Tom Bowen
written by Tom Bowen

Google has always focused on providing accurate search results, giving users the information they need and improving the user experience. In the past few years, the company has made a concerted effort to improve search speed and encourage web application developers, open-source communities, and other such contributors to focus on speed as well. Google’s primary goal is to help develop a healthy and flourishing internet landscape and the company has partnered with WordPress to get closer to that goal.

What is WordPress and why is it important?

WordPress is a highly popular open-source content management system that commands around 59% of the industry market share. The platform is based on the PHP framework and makes it easier for people to create comprehensive and efficient websites. It is feature-rich, SEO and user-friendly, and has a large number of active users.

According to TechRepublic, WordPress powers 27% of the web, which makes it a powerful presence on the Internet. As this CMS is an industry leader, changes in WP operations, coding, and the platform will encourage others to follow. And so it makes sense for Google to focus on this platform first.

Focus on speed and mobile

In 2015, Google launched the AMP project with the goal of making the web experience better for everyone, especially on the mobile platform. The company has worked with developers in the open-source community. They have also encouraged adoption of mobile-friendly technology, but progress has been slow.

Research suggests that less than 0.1% of websites have adopted AMP and 79.9% primarily use HTML. Analysis also indicates that most high-traffic websites use AMP while low-traffic sites use XHTML and HTML. With the intent of pushing adoption even further, Google is expected to roll out the Speed Update in 2018 and will focus on Mobile First. This means websites with better load times, speed and performance on the mobile platform might gain a higher ranking on the SERPs.

Post the update, marketers and website owners won’t be able to rely on their desktop website performance to rank higher on mobile SERPs. As mobile search volume has exceeded desktop volume, they will have to optimize for mobile if they want good visibility and higher organic traffic.

Google and WordPress

Google’s team will work to bring the WordPress eco-system up to current standards by using the latest technology like PWA or progressive web apps. It will work on all the components of the system such as plug-ins, themes, core coding, tools, and infrastructure, etc. which will improve the WordPress experience across the board.

Currently, websites based on WordPress are lagging behind sites built on other platforms. It shows poor performance on aspects like the number of requests going to the server, resource bites loaded, visual speed index, and content load times. The partnership between WordPress and Google might help the CMS platform shed the excess bloat in its coding and make it more streamlined. This will improve load speeds and overall website performance.

With better integration of modern technologies, WordPress performance will improve and that will impact the performance of all websites on this platform.

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Small Business Checklist – Three Ways to Improve Rankings

by Pythagoras Matko
written by Pythagoras Matko

Search engine optimization (SEO) is never easy for any company. With so many metrics involved, it can be truly challenging to secure measurable results for any new or existing brand. Similarly, digital marketing can be complicated for clients with limited time, money and resources. This is why it’s pivotal to have a seasoned and reputable company handle all your online advertising needs.  For small to medium-sized businesses, there are several ways to improve your visibility and Google rankings. In fact, here are some key points to address on any business SEO checklist:

  • What to address in your online SEO marketing campaign?
  • Why is SEO important for any new or existing company?
  • Which tools will help you secure higher visibility, page rankings, and client – customer patronage?
  • How much time commitment is involved for improving my business rankings and industry ratings?

If these are some of the questions you have, it’s important to know that great organic (natural) rankings do not happen overnight. In fact, it’s a comprehensive, cohesive and ongoing process that requires you to have patience across the board. Similarly, a sound and effective SEO package reflect all the current and burgeoning trends. This includes mobile optimization for pages, along with social media integration and captivating and compelling content. With this in mind, here are three ways that have been proven to improve rankings for small and mid-sized businesses across the nation.

1. Understand What your Customers are Looking For

Before you venture into SEO, you need to know what your customers are looking for. For example specific products, tailor-made services, or quick responses to customer questions and concerns. Analyzing and assessing your small business needs is a specialty of any seasoned and reputable SEO agency. In fact, they can provide timely solutions for the following:

  • Optimizing your websites and blogs to reflect the latest changes in Google algorithms. Creating gripping websites that attract and engage your geo-specific or core customer bases.
  • Incorporating mobile optimization to secure higher visibility on Google Maps, local search results, and business listings. This is a crucial way to build a strong mobile presence while promoting your brands to new clients and consumers.
  • Ensuring your sites, blogs and online stores are fully compatible with desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. SEO experts take into account page loading times, which is important in reducing bounce rates and keeping potential customers on your pages longer.
  • Making sure your content is easy to scan and digest with industry-specific keywords, relevant text, and social media links (embedded and visible).
  • Promoting your business on Google, Yahoo, Yelp, Bing, and all social – mobile – and business platforms and directories.

2. Fix your Technical Issues

Another important aspect of small business SEO is fixing technical issues. While you may a great looking website, an SEO audit is the only way to ensure complete optimization across your pages. In fact, the way you present your pages are just as important as your business offerings and content. With this in mind, here are some of the technical issues SEO professionals address and resolve:

  • Speed and page download times. Long gone are the days of lengthy content and flash intros that would take forever to load.
  • Checking for duplicate content on the Web. This is important since duplicate content can seriously impact your rankings, ratings, and web-traffic.
  • Repairing broken links to ensure customers link back to the products, services, and information they seek. Broken links can prompt users and visitors to leave your sites and go elsewhere. Similarly, Google can penalize your pages for promoting misleading, false, or incorrect content and links.
  • Making sure all your pages are fully optimized for SEO. This allows search engines to properly crawl and index you web-pages on their listings and user searches.
  • Enhancing the strong areas of your pages, while improving the weaker and non-optimized areas of your website.

3. Optimizing your Pages

SEO on-page optimization is much more than just placing strategic keywords on pages. In fact, your content must also be streamlined, centralized and properly structured across your pages. Similarly, you must have keywords (preferably long-tailed) that effectively target your specific customer and client bases. With SEO content specialists, you are able to tap into important ranking signals and non-spammy keywords and links. Local experts will also optimize the following for optimal results:

  • Website, blog and online store titles and sub-titles.
  • Meta descriptions with back-links to your sites and pages. The correct form of preview content that can be accessed by users – by simply hovering their computer mouses over the content and links.
  • Body content – easy to scan content that is precise, concise and gets your messages across to users.

These are some of the ways to improve your small-business visibility on Google. However, you need a dedicated SEO company to cover all bases and take your brands to new heights in any industry.

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