Are you ready to learn more about the latest updates in this SEO arena and see what Core Web Vitals means for web creators and users alike? If you’re a WordPress site owner, it’s time to sit up and take notes.

Understanding Core Web Vitals: The Basics

Google’s Core Web Vitals are the latest criteria the search engine giant uses to measure user experience on your website. Essentially, these vitals focus on three essential pillars:

1. Loading Performance (Largest Contentful Paint [LCP]): This determines how long it takes for the largest content element on your page to load. For example, let’s say you have a vibrant banner image on your homepage. If it takes too long to load, your LCP score may dip, potentially affecting your site’s ranking.
2. Interactivity (First Input Delay [FID]): This measures the time it takes for a user to interact with your site after landing on it. Recall when you clicked on or tapped a button, and it took ages to respond. That’s a high FID score you want to avoid.
3. Visual Stability (Cumulative Layout Shift [CLS]): This focuses on any unexpected layout shifts on your page. Picture reading a riveting article, and suddenly, an ad pops up, pushing the content downwards. Annoying, right? That’s a high CLS in action.

Over the years, Google has introduced exciting enhancements to the Core Web Vitals. For WordPress enthusiasts, the ripple effects of these changes are monumental.

Emphasis on Mobile Experience: The World’s on the Move

With the prevalence of smartphones and tablets, Google knows the importance of a great mobile experience. Hence, Core Web Vitals places importance on optimizing for mobile devices. Remember when you tried to click on a link on your phone, and the page layout suddenly shifted, making you click on an ad instead? With Google’s emphasis on mobile metrics, such experiences have been drastically reduced. It’s not just about looking good on a mobile screen; it’s about functioning seamlessly, too.

Incorporating Real-World User Experience Data

One of the significant shifts Google made to Core Web Vitals was the transition from lab data (controlled environment tests) to field data (real-world user experiences). By tapping into tools like the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), website developers can now access real-world measurements, ensuring their optimizations genuinely benefit the end-user.

For instance, an eCommerce website, noticing a higher LCP, discovered that users in a particular region faced slower load times due to larger-than-average product images. This real-world insight allowed them to make the necessary adjustments, thus improving the shopping experience for users in that region.

Core Web Vitals and SEO: A Loving Marriage

As of 2021, Google made it official: Core Web Vitals became a ranking factor for search results. This integration underscores the weightage of user experience in the realm of SEO.

Websites optimized for a better user experience, adhering to Core Web Vitals guidelines, retained users, and favorably positioned in search results. Think of it as a restaurant: great ambiance and prompt service (user experience) can be just as crucial as the food (content) in getting repeat customers and recommendations.

WordPress & Core Web Vitals: Making the Connection

WordPress powers a significant chunk of the web, so its themes and plugins play a crucial role in these metrics. A poorly-coded theme or a heavy plugin can drastically affect your LCP. Similarly, intrusive ads or pop-ups can impact your CLS.

Anecdote: I once stumbled upon a beautifully designed WordPress site selling handmade crafts. However, whenever I tried selecting a product, a pop-up survey would appear, causing the page to shift. The result? I left without purchasing. This is a classic case of poor CLS affecting business.

Ideas for Improvement

Improving CLS on a WordPress website involves optimizing various elements to ensure smoother user interactions and page stability. Here are some recommendations:

1. Opt for lightweight themes and plugins: Choose themes and plugins that prioritize performance and adhere to best coding practices. This reduces the likelihood of elements causing layout shifts.
2. Minimize or eliminate intrusive elements: Evaluate the necessity of pop-ups, ads, or other elements that could disrupt the user experience. If they’re essential, consider implementing them in a non-intrusive manner or at least ensure they don’t cause sudden layout shifts.
3. Optimize images and media: Large images or videos can contribute to layout shifts as they load. Compress images, lazy-load media, and consider using responsive design techniques to prevent unexpected resizing.
4. Prioritize content loading: Load critical content and interactive elements first to minimize the impact of late-loading resources on layout stability. Utilize techniques like lazy-loading and asynchronous loading to achieve this.
5. Test and monitor: Regularly monitor your website’s performance using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse. Identify and address any CLS issues promptly to maintain a positive user experience.

Ultimately, optimizing CLS requires a combination of technical expertise and ongoing maintenance. Consider consulting with a web development or performance optimization expert to ensure your WordPress website delivers a smooth and stable browsing experience for users. You’ll want to work with someone who is intimately familiar with using Core Web Vitals to make a WordPress website Google-friendly.

Conclusion

In the vast ocean of the internet, ensuring your WordPress site is Google-friendly is like equipping it with a compass, ensuring it sails smoothly toward visibility and success. Remember, a satisfied visitor today could be a loyal customer tomorrow.

Google’s Core Web Vitals initiative has continually evolved to ensure the web remains user-friendly. By setting clear metrics, emphasizing mobile experience, incorporating real-world data, and integrating with SEO, Google has sent a clear message to web developers worldwide: the user is royalty.

But as technology and user needs evolve, how will Core Web Vitals adapt in the future? Will we see more metrics added, or will the focus shift entirely? One can only wonder, but one thing’s for certain: the journey of enhancing web experiences is far from over.

If you think the future of your WordPress website must include the incorporation of Core Web Vitals into your strategy for making your WordPress website Google-friendly, contact WebDevStudios. Our team is equipped to ensure your site passes all the metrics.

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What Is SEO and Why Is It Important?

Search engine optimization is the strategic practice of optimizing a website to enhance its visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). The primary goal of SEO is to improve the website’s organic (non-paid) traffic by making it more relevant and attractive to search engines like Google. This involves various techniques such as optimizing content, utilizing relevant keywords, improving website structure, and enhancing user experience.

The importance of SEO to your website cannot be overstated. In a vast digital landscape where millions of websites compete for attention, SEO is the beacon that guides search engines to recognize and prioritize your content. When your website appears higher in search results, it is more likely to attract organic traffic, increasing visibility, credibility, and potential conversions.

Essentially, SEO is the cornerstone of online success, offering a roadmap for your website to navigate the complex algorithms of search engines and connect with your target audience effectively. It is a fundamental tool that ensures your digital presence is not just a website but a discoverable and influential entity in the vast online ecosystem.

Safeguard Your SEO Efforts or Be Doomed

Safeguarding SEO efforts during the migration to WordPress is paramount due to the potential impact on a website’s visibility and ranking in search engine results. There is a risk of disruption when transitioning to a new platform like WordPress. Here are some common concerns website owners have and issues to watch out for:

• Loss of traffic: Improper redirects, broken links, and URL changes can confuse search engines and users. This can lead to a drop in traffic and visibility.
• Damage to search rankings: Poorly executed migration can negatively impact your search engine ranking, requiring time and effort to recover.
• Duplicate content: Migration processes can sometimes create duplicate content, which is penalized by search engines.
• Website structure: Changes in your website structure and content can affect your keyword rankings and your position in the search engines.
• Broken features and functionality: Not everything might migrate smoothly, leading to broken features, forms, or payment gateways.
• Mobile responsiveness issues: Ensure the new site is optimized for all devices, as mobile usage is increasingly dominant.
• Inconsistent design and user experience: Maintaining a consistent look and feel across the new site is crucial for user trust and navigation.
• Downtime and inaccessibility: Migration can temporarily take your site offline, impacting user experience and potential sales.
• Data loss and security vulnerabilities: Data loss during migration can be disastrous. Ensure proper backups and security measures are in place.
• Performance issues: The new platform or hosting might not handle traffic like the old one, leading to slow loading times.
• Communication and stakeholder management: Keeping everyone informed and involved throughout the process is crucial to avoid surprises and disruptions.
• Unexpected challenges: Unexpected issues can inevitably arise, so flexibility and adaptability are key.

But There’s Hope

By understanding these common concerns and taking proactive steps, website owners can significantly increase their chances of a smooth and successful website migration. Failing to address these intricacies can result in a loss of link authority, diminished keyword relevance, and a decline in organic traffic.

WordPress, as a robust content management system, offers numerous advantages for website management. However, a seamless migration is crucial to preserve and enhance SEO rankings. The transition may introduce broken links and missing pages without careful consideration and strategic implementation. Additionally, inconsistencies could negatively affect the website’s performance in search engine algorithms.

By prioritizing safeguarding SEO efforts during migration, businesses ensure a smooth transition, maintaining their hard-earned search engine visibility and safeguarding the integrity of their online presence. This proactive approach not only protects against potential setbacks but also sets the stage for continued SEO success in the evolving digital landscape.

Keep reading to understand how our WordPress agency successfully protects your SEO during a WordPress migration.

Seamless Redirection Strategy

Setting up permanent 301 redirects in migration is crucial, especially for SEO. Imagine your website as a bustling city with intricate streets and alleys. When it undergoes a revamp, ensuring a smooth transition for both users and search engines becomes paramount. WebDevStudios employs a Seamless Redirection Strategy, using 301 redirects to guide visitors from older URLs to new ones. This maintains your website’s link authority and safeguards its rankings in the digital landscape.

Conserved Content Integrity

As the digital migration journey unfolds, WebDevStudios meticulously upholds the content integrity of your website. Content, URL structures, and internal linking are carefully conserved, ensuring that vital keywords and metadata retain their prominence. This meticulous preservation is not just a process; it’s a commitment to maintaining the SEO integrity that defines your online identity.

Enhanced Sitemap Submission

Search engines act as explorers in the vast terrain of the internet, seeking out new content to index. Crawlers understand your sitemap’s relationships. It helps bots index your pages better. As such, it is essential for SEO purposes that Google has an updated version of your new domain. WebDevStudios understands the importance of aiding this discovery process. Through the creation and submission of an updated XML sitemap, the experts ensure that search engines efficiently find and index the new pages on your revamped website.

Vigilant Error Monitoring

Even the most well-executed plans can encounter unexpected hiccups. WebDevStudios remains vigilant post-migration, monitoring for broken links, missing pages, and any anomalies that could adversely impact your SEO. This proactive approach ensures swift resolution, preventing potential pitfalls in the journey to maintaining and enhancing your website’s SEO standing.

Rigorous Testing Protocols

A meticulous eye for detail is the hallmark of WebDevStudios’ approach. Comprehensive testing procedures are in place to verify the correct implementation and functionality of essential SEO elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, and structured data. This commitment to quality ensures that every facet of your website aligns with SEO best practices.

Critical Crawl and Index Checks

WebDevStudios recognizes the importance of checkpoints in the SEO journey. Verifying search engine crawl and indexation of the new website pages is critical. Supported by tools like Google Search Console, this ongoing monitoring process keeps a finger on the pulse of your website’s progress in the digital realm.

Backlinks

Next, we recommend that you contact your content partners about updating old links to the new domain. This includes links from guest posts, partnerships, and directories. Doing this will ensure that the valuable backlinks you have acquired over time point to the correct pages on your website.

Transparent Timeline Management

How long should an SEO migration take? It depends on how big your website is, how much content you’re moving, and how many audits you need to do pre- and post-migration. In general, a 100-page website will take a lot less time than a 1,000-page website, which will take a lot less time than a 50,000-page website. It’s key to give yourself enough time to plan, develop a staging site, QA and audit, and then implement. At WebDevStudios, we encourage transparency and open communication about the timeline of your project so everyone is on the same page and has the same expectations.

Performance Boost and Speed Optimization

In the fast-paced world of the internet, speed is of the essence. WebDevStudios goes beyond the surface to enhance website performance on the new platform. By optimizing speed, the user experience is elevated, indirectly contributing to improved SEO rankings. Our experts leverage tools like Core Web Vitals to ensure this task is executed precisely.

More Than a Migration

A content migration isn’t just a content migration. It’s more than that, and our WordPress agency knows this. A content migration should be viewed as an opportunity for improvements and optimization, such as:

• Format and accessibility overhaul: Content can be migrated into more accessible formats and optimized for different devices. Also, the content can be restructured for improved clarity and user experience.
• Taxonomy and metadata upgrade: A migration can be an opportunity to create a more robust and efficient taxonomy and enrich content with meaningful metadata for better discoverability and organization.
• Workflow and collaboration improvements: A migration can be used to streamline content workflows. This is also a chance to integrate workflows with other systems. In the end, this could improve collaboration between content creators and editors.
• Compliance and security enhancement: New systems can offer tighter control over access, permissions, and content management. This improves security and compliance.
• Data-driven insights and optimization: New platforms can provide richer data analytics for understanding user behavior and optimizing content performance for continuous improvement.

Contact WebDevStudios to Safeguard Your SEO Efforts

In the intricate dance of website migration and SEO maintenance, WebDevStudios emerges as the guiding partner. Our team ensures that every step taken in your website content migration leads to an enhanced online presence. From seamless redirections and content integrity to vigilant monitoring and performance optimization, our commitment to safeguarding your SEO rankings is unwavering.

Trust WebDevStudios to navigate the complexities and elevate your website’s visibility in the digital landscape. Contact us to talk about your upcoming WordPress migration. We’ll use our expertise to protect your SEO during your WordPress migration.

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In short: no.

Although it may be able to transform how we go about digital marketing strategies like content creation and search engine optimization. Here’s a look at what the future of content creation may hold, ChatGPT and all.

1. SEO and Content Marketing Will Remain Vital

Despite fears that ChatGPT will make Google Search (thus SEO) irrelevant, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. For starters, ChatGPT and similar tools like Google Bard were not built as search engines.

Even Google Bard works as a companion tool to Google search, giving you the option to run your question through Google search to find citable sources.

Similarly, content marketing is not going anywhere anytime soon — 93% of B2B marketers either have a content marketing strategy or plan to implement one in the next 12 months.

SEO and content marketing work in tandem to help companies build, maintain, and nurture healthy sales pipelines. Perhaps the way content looks may change — we may see more investment in areas such as video, but the content itself won’t go away.

2. The Use of Generative AI for Content Creation Will Continue To Be Experimental

In a survey by AuthorityHacker, 75% of the surveyed marketers stated they already use AI-powered tools in their day-to-day work.

So far, marketers have leveraged AI to create workflow efficiencies by streamlining more manual processes and supporting tasks like brainstorming ideas for video content, creating outlines for blog posts, and writing short-form content like social media posts.

Given the high proportion of early adopters, it’s likely that we’ll see a percentage of companies experimenting with generative AI to create new content.

The main benefit is that AI enables brands to generate a lot of content quickly. However, a few problems with AI-generated content prevent it from being a sustainable way to create engaging content.

First and foremost, there’s the price of paying for quantity by sacrificing content quality. When looking at content quality, inaccuracies in AI content remain a top concern, listed by 56% of companies as a relevant risk.

Having a large library of content on your website will do little to attract an audience and keep them engaged if your readers can’t trust the reliability of the information you provide.

Not to mention, with SEO remaining a relevant marketing strategy, using AI for content production also brings up uniqueness and plagiarism issues.

Using AI tools to generate content results in generic writing similar to any other brand using the same tool trained on the same data. Any benefits teams may gain from speed will be greatly outweighed by the content’s inability to rank on search engines and resonate with readers.

3. Full-Funnel Content Will Become More Important

Many brands are realizing that while SEO is a cost-efficient and effective way to bring leads into the sales funnel, it shouldn’t be their content marketing team’s sole focus. Once potential customers have discovered your brand, content plays a significant role in their eventual purchasing decision.

A study backs that up, showing that 84% of B2B consumers said the winning vendor’s content positively impacted buying decisions.

The importance of mid and low-funnel content only seems to be growing, as 55% of B2B buyers say they rely more on content to inform their research and decision-making when choosing vendors.

Brands wanting to keep leads engaged need to meet changing buyers’ needs by providing relevant content at all sales funnel stages.

For instance, adding clear and specific details about your product can improve your chances of converting leads. In particular, 72% of B2B buyers say they’re more likely to buy when the vendor has transparent pricing information on the website.

Beyond product specifications, brands need to focus on creating the types of content that showcase how their product is relevant for different customer segments. That can be done by sharing assets like case studies, webinars, and ebooks that illustrate your product’s functionality, use cases, and impact.

4. Brand Building Will Still Require Human Connection

Despite the many applicable uses and opportunities AI writing tools present, they also have limitations. When it comes to brand building, AI doesn’t have the empathy required to build strong connections with your target audience.

Brands need content creators who can establish a unique voice and tone to set themselves apart and build relationships with customers. AI, by nature, delivers generic responses that make it difficult to use them to create high-quality content that can set your brand apart from the competition.

You still need humans at the wheel, steering your brand in the right direction and taking the temperature of your target audience to know if you’re succeeding.

Final Thoughts: The Future of Content Creation for Businesses

The recent advancements in AI will no doubt shape the future of marketing and content creation. AI has the power to make teams more efficient, but it can’t replace the essence of content marketing, which is about connecting with an audience.

That need will always stay the same, and it will always require humans. New technology might just change the how: how we work, how our content looks, and how audiences connect with brands.

At The Blogsmith, we’re committed to staying at the forefront of content marketing and SEO growth so we can help our clients navigate the opportunities and pitfalls of transformative tools like AI. If you’re interested in working with a partner who can help you create a successful and sustainable content strategy, get in touch with The Blogsmith today.

About the Author

Maddy Osman is the bestselling author of Writing for Humans and Robots: The New Rules of Content Style. She’s a digital native with a decade-long devotion to creating engaging, accessible, and relevant content and the founder of The Blogsmith content marketing & SEO agency. Her experience earned her a spot in Semrush’s and BuzzSumo’s Top 100 Content Marketers and The Write Life’s 100 Best Websites for Writers.

The post The Future of Content Marketing: 4 Key Trends To Know appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Educating a client is rewarding, and fun. At WebDevStudios, we take the time to walk clients through our processes and their new website, never abandoning them after launch.

Here are five things all WordPress website owners should understand. Comprehension of these concepts makes it easier for the discovery and strategy process of their website project.

1. Process vs Plugin

When you install a plugin that has the features you need, it is a small part of the process. Let me explain further with some examples.

SEO is a process, not a plugin.

One thing WordPress website owners should understand and accept now is that SEO plugins cannot magically improve your search engine rankings and get you more traffic by themselves.

Let’s take a look at the SEO process:

SEO Audit

This step includes auditing the whole website and content. Without this step, website owners cannot understand how to find and fix technical errors or flaws in the content strategy.

Technical SEO

Checking, creating, or fixing the following is a part of technical SEO: sitemaps, faster load times, internal links, 301 redirects, broken links, indexing status, and crawl errors.

Keyword Research

This is a significant step in SEO. Research the costs for keyword research software and services, and you can see this step is an industry itself.

Know your audience, then you can find what they are looking for online. The general rule is to choose long-tail keywords with high search volume and low competition ratio. But you can also choose competitive keywords and their related keywords.

If your competitors have long-form articles and rank high for a keyword, you can create videos. This gives you the edge over them.

Content Strategy

Once you have keywords, you should come up with a clear content strategy. This helps you create content related to each topic and is also valuable to your website’s visitors.

WordPress website owners should understand that there are many critical factors involved in SEO. You can’t predict the search engine algorithms, but you can control the quality and relevancy of your content and user experience.

There are a few popular SEO plugins out there, well documented and maintained. You might be using one of them, but SEO doesn’t stop there.

If you are not sure about which plugin to use, our UX designer Jennifer Cooley’s comparison of the top SEO plugins should be helpful.

Security is a process, not a plugin.

A security plugin or combination of plugins can let you set up a Web Application Firewall, IP-based restriction, etc. However, a security plugin alone can’t stop cybersecurity attacks.

Your hosting provider plays a crucial role in keeping the environment safe. You should keep the plugins and themes and core WordPress version updated.

Google / Harris Poll 2019 found that 24% of Americans used common passwords or some variation like Password, abc123, iloveyou, Welcome, etc.

WordPress introduced a password strength indicator in 2013, to encourage the use of strong passwords. But many users go with predictable passwords, even today.

Use two-factor authentication to add another layer of security to your website. DDoS, butte force and XSS attacks could be prevented with a combination of SSL, CDN, and following The Open Web Application Security Project’s best practices.

Security plugins play a part in the security process. You can keep your site secure with a combination of plugins, server configuration, and automated backups. For better understanding, watch this WordCamp London 2108 talk by Thomas Vitale.

Accessibility is a process, not a plugin.

Accessibility should be included in the development process. All WordPress website owners should understand that each component of the website should be accessible.

Allow your website development partner to take time and implement accessibility and audit the website in each sprint. Many website owners assume that installing an accessibility plugin at the last minute is good enough, which is not true!

2. Performance Scores vs User Experience

A performance optimization plugin is not the magic pill for performance issues. A popular myth among website owners is that a good performance score alone can bring more traffic.

The main idea behind core web vitals (CVW) is to offer a good user experience. You should not just rely on the CVW scores. Delight your website visitors with relevant content, clear navigation, faster load times, and follow best practices.

The content has to be relevant and worth reading and sharing with others, if not users might bounce off the page. This in turn increases the bounce rate which signals search engines that the content is not the best for the search query.

For further reading on CVW, dive into this piece from the Search Engine Journal.

3. Rebuild vs Redesign

Every website deserves a fresh look. No one likes the outdated design. This brings up the question, does your website needs a redesign or a rebuild?

Redesign refers to changing the look and feel of the website, and retaining the same content and features. Rebuild means you are changing the website structure, adding or removing features, and even migrating content from one website to another.

• When you change your brand’s colors or messaging, a redesign can help.
• If you want to introduce new features like memberships, shopping carts, etc., you need to rebuild the website.

Further reading: Dev Shortie: Rules For Your Redesign

4. You need to test before you update.

Updating plugins and themes and also core WordPress is always recommended. However, every major update needs to be tested on a development or staging site before going to the live site.

If you know that certain plugins are customized, then it is a must to test the new version before updating it to the live site. Take a look at the change log and see what has changed between the new version and the current version that your site has.

Fields, HTML markup, CSS class names other new features, or bug fixes might be introduced in the new version. Often newer versions require a database update too.

So you have to have a complete backup of files and database before the plugin, theme, or core updates go into the live site. If something goes wrong you can restore the backup.

Do you need auto-updates?

Since WordPress 3.7, you can allow automatic updates for maintenance and security releases. While this is good and saves time, it is not recommended for websites with a lot of customization. In most cases you will not get any critical errors or conflicts, so test it on a development environment, then update the live site.

Further reading: How to Test New WordPress Releases to Avoid Problems

5. Choosing the right approach for you.

When we say competition, we compare our products and services with the competitors on the market. It is common and unavoidable to compare, but you don’t have to go with the same tech stack that your competitors are using.

Choose the right plugins, themes, hosting, and other stack related to your website based on what works for you. Discuss with the web design agency and discover the available options. This will help you narrow down and decide well.

Don’t go with the trend just because someone is using it. Every website is unique in its own way. WebDevStudios is committed to delivering the best services to every client, as our mission statement goes, “Your success is our mission.”

Have an enterprise project in mind? Let us build and launch it together, contact us now!

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Today we’re going to take a look at some of the leading SEO plugins and compare them based on five criteria:

• Setup
• Dashboard
• Keyword analysis
• Pricing
• User experience

We’ll compare three of the most popular plugins: Yoast, Rank Math, and SEOPress. By the end of this piece, you’ll know which SEO plugin is right for your website.

Setup

Each of the plugins we’re reviewing has an excellent setup wizard that helps guide the user through the process of getting up and running in just a handful of guided steps. Walking through the setup for each plugin, we discovered a handful of features were either automatically set by the plugin, allowing users to let the plugin handle the heavy lifting while others required a more thorough understanding of SEO and web practices with the ability to handle redirects and import information from other plugins. Let’s take a look at what we found.

Yoast

The easiest configuration of the three, Yoast uses an “SEO Workout” to get you set up quickly. It doesn’t require you to set up things like redirects and setting up an xml sitemap, but collects the basic necessary information and uses default formatting for everything else.

The one downside I found with this setup is that I couldn’t use it on a non-production site, which meant I couldn’t get it installed and set up in my sandbox and had to use my personal site to create this article. In the setup wizard, you will configure:

• Basic sitewide schema data
• Whether or not to index your site
• SEO title templates

Yoast also offers a lot of tips and suggestions which can benefit users who are less familiar with WordPress and SEO in general.

Rank Math

From a user experience standpoint, the Rank Math configuration wizard was clean, modern, and easy to use. It walked me through all the steps necessary with helpful tips and tricks aimed to make setup quick and easy.

You can also add further customization by linking your free Rank Math account. In the setup wizard you will configure:

• Basic schema information
• Google Analytics and Google Search Console integrations
• XML sitemap.
• Other basic settings, like whether to noindex empty category and tag archives.

Options like role managers, 404 error monitoring, redirection, and more detailed schema markup are items you’ll have the option to set up after you complete the initial setup wizard configuration.

SEOPress

Another clean and simple configuration wizard, SEOPress was the only plugin I found that allowed you to import your data from Yoast to skip having to do it all manually. This is really helpful if you’ve been looking for a new SEO plugin but daunted by the monumental task of migrating from Yoast.

There is a very heavy emphasis on upgrading to the paid version of the plugin to the point where some users might find it confusing but you can skip through them without upgrading.

In the setup wizard you will configure:

• Basic sitewide schema data
• Whether or not to index your site
• SEO title templates
• Redirects

All in all, each of the plugins is quick and easy to set up and there’s no really clear preference in this category.

Dashboard

Outside of having a solid on-page SEO user experience, having quick access to the customization options of your SEO plugin is essential to success. All three of the plugins we reviewed had some version of a dashboard that allows you to customize your plugin to better set yourself up for SEO success.

Yoast

The most familiar dashboard of the three, Yoast utilizes a simple series of tabs to house the major components of its plugin including integrations, features, and webmaster tools as well as a quick glance of your site’s overall SEO health and tips and tricks to improve it.

Rank Math

Rank Math has a great dashboard that shows all the available customization modules available and gives a quick explanation of what they do. One of my favorites is the ability to set up a generic preference that will automatically generate on any image used that is missing an alt or title tag. This feature is a really good catch-all when you have content creators who aren’t always able to keep SEO top of mind.

SEOPress

SEOPress has a clean and modern-looking dashboard that lists tips for improving site SEO as well as any current issues. There’s also a nice section for news items to keep you updated with things like improvements from the company.

Keyword Analysis

Each of the plugins uses the same basic concept for their keyword analysis. You enter keyword(s) and you’ll see a score for the keyword and a list of specific tips and whether or not you’ve met them.

The differentiation here lies mainly in the number of keywords you’re allowed on a free version of the plugin versus a paid one.

Yoast

Allows only a single keyword for each piece of content. You can upgrade to Yoast Premium to allow for multiple keyword searches.

Rank Math

Rank Math allows you up to five keywords in their free version.

SEOPress

Much like Rank Math, you can analyze up to five keywords in their free version.

Pricing

Yoast

• Free – Personal websites with no keyword tracking
• Premium ($89) – Single site with discounts for multisite licenses
• Other add-on pricing:
  • Video SEO for WordPress (from $79 for a single site)
  • Local SEO for WordPress (from $79 for a single site)
  • News SEO for WordPress (from $79 for a single site)
  • Yoast WooCommerce SEO (from $79 for a single site)

Rank Math

• Free – Personal websites with no keyword tracking
• Pro – ($59) Unlimited personal websites, track up to 1,000 keywords
• Business – ($199) Unlimited personal and client websites, track up to 20,000 keywords

SEO Press

• Free – Personal websites with no keyword tracking
• Pro – ($39 annually) Unlimited site usage
• Other Add-on Pricing:
  • SEOPress Insights Plan – ($99 per site) Option to track keyword positions in Google, monitor backlinks, and integration with Google Trends

User Experience / UI

Yoast

There are two ways to set up SEO information on a page with Yoast. The meta box under the editor or, if you’re using the block editor, a sidebar option in the toolbar.

If you’re using the meta box you’ll access:

• SEO – Set titles/descriptions, view keyword analysis, and control advanced settings such as robots tags and canonical links.
• Readability – View the readability analysis tips.
• Schema – Choose a schema type for this piece of content.
• Social – Set up open graph information for Facebook and Twitter.

If you’re using the block editor, you’ll get the same options, but they’ll be listed in a single column in the sidebar.

Rank Math

If you’re using Gutenberg, Rank Math fully integrates into the block editor so you won’t have the “meta box” approach you get with the classic editor.

The settings, accessed by the icon in the toolbar, give you access to the following:

• General – Edit the snippet details, set a focus keyword, and view analysis.
• Advanced – Configure robots meta information, such as adding a noindex tag.
• Schema – Set up schema markup/structured data.
• Social – Set up social graph information for Facebook and Twitter.

SEOPress

SEOPress has the same meta box approach that Yoast does, but there is currently no sidebar option with the block editor.

In the meta box you’ll access:

• SEO – Set titles/descriptions, view keyword analysis, and control advanced settings such as robots tags and canonical links.
• Mobile Preview – Lets you toggle between desktop and mobile views for your meta data.
• Readability – View the readability analysis tips.
• Schema – Choose a schema type for this piece of content.
• Social – Set up open graph information for Facebook and Twitter.

A Handy, Helpful Comparison Chart

In Conclusion

Each one of these plugins is a great way to build SEO-friendly content that will help improve your site’s google rank, and there’s no real clear winner. Rank Math has some really great feature offerings in its free version, while Yoast SEO’s familiar UI and simplified setup can be a great plugin for the user who doesn’t want to be bogged down with all the minute details. SEOPress offers a clean and modern UI with lots of great features.

It really comes down to preferences and requirements, but if you’re ready to launch a new website and want a team to help you make the decision, contact us. We’re experienced with building enterprise-level websites and guiding our clients on which SEO plugin is right for their project.

The post Which SEO Plugin Is Right for You? appeared first on WebDevStudios.

But before we talk about whether or not to use Multisite, let’s discuss whether or not you need multiple websites at all.

Use Cases for Deploying Multiple Websites

There are several reasons to build and manage multiple websites for one business, including:

• Companies that have more than one physical location
• Global organizations with divisions in multiple countries that require content in multiple languages
• Franchises
• Large companies that have separate divisions or subsidiaries for separate purposes and audiences
• Educational institutions with multiple campuses and/or different schools within one university network
• Companies that acquired another company, yet want to maintain separate brands
• Companies that want to deploy a microsite strategy for either SEO or building brand reputation for a specialization

Sometimes the decision of whether or not to deploy and start managing multiple websites is a simple one. In cases where the branding needs to be totally different amongst divisions, multiple websites are certainly warranted. However, in other cases, the decision is less clear.

Considerations for Undertaking the Management of Multiple Websites

If it’s possible for your organization to deliver content through a single website, but you’re considering deploying separate sites, take into consideration the following:

• Effort involved in basic maintenance of multiple websites (design changes, security updates, backups, etc.)
• Costs of maintaining separate websites (hosting, premium plugins, security subscriptions, etc.)
• Effort involved in building up SEO reputation of multiple websites

I want to expand on that last one, as I think this is one of the most overlooked considerations when a business is deciding whether or not to deploy and start managing multiple websites. SEO is HARD. It takes A LOT of work. It involves keeping up with Google’s latest technical requirements, pushing out a ton of high quality and well-keyword-optimized content on a regular basis, acquiring quality inbound links for the domain, constantly monitoring performance, and consulting with or hiring an SEO expert or agency on a regular basis.

Even a very small business can end up needing to lay out thousands of dollars (and/or dozens of labor hours) per month on web development, copywriting, public relations or social media efforts for link building, and consulting fees—just to build and maintain an SEO reputation for their website. This five-to-six figure per year expense immediately gets doubled the moment you deploy a second website.

SEO Benefits of Having Multiple Websites

With the above warning having been said, there are indeed potential SEO benefits to having multiple websites.

• Opportunity to claim more than one spot on Page 1 of search results
• Opportunity to show search engines that each site is clearly focused on one topic or geographical location, making each individual site more likely to rank for its topic or within its target region
• Opportunity to incorporate desirable keywords in each domain name—this “exact match domain” SEO tactic doesn’t carry the weight that it used to in the past, but it certainly does still carry some weight.

If you want to try to realize some of these potential SEO benefits, and are certain that you can handle the additional workload and budgetary investment required for optimizing multiple sites, then your next decision is how to deploy and start managing your multiple websites. That’s where WordPress Multisite comes in.

Using Multisite to Manage Multiple WordPress Sites

WordPress Multisite allows you to run multiple WordPress websites from one WordPress installation. This has some clear benefits, including:

• Only having to maintain one WordPress installation versus several. This means that things like core updates, plugin updates, backups, etc. only have to be done in one place.
• Technical SEO optimizations can be deployed across multiple sites at once. Google is always adding to the already-long list of things it wants site owners to implement, such as AMP, Schema markup, page speed optimizations, etc. Some of these can be very cumbersome to apply to a single WordPress installation, let alone several.
• Multiple sites can share a single theme in a Multisite network, making it easy to deploy design changes across several sites at once.
• Multiple sites can share plugins, making it easy to deploy new functionality across several sites at once.
• Multisite offers very granular control of user access rights. You can grant access to just one site, several sites, or all sites to a single user , and give them different access levels on each site.

Of course, these very same benefits of streamlined site management can present some downsides as well. Having multiple sites share the same theme can present design limitations for each individual site. Additionally, if a single plugin is shared across multiple sites, and something goes wrong with that plugin, all sites utilizing that plugin will be affected.

Despite potential downsides, many site owners believe that the benefits of Multisite outweigh possible limitations and issues. If you’ve decided that Multisite is right for you, you have one more major decision to make—whether to use separate domain names, subdomains, or subdirectories for the individual sites. Multisite networks support any/all of these configurations.

Choosing the Right Multisite Structure for SEO: Multiple Domains vs Subdirectories vs Subdomains

Multiple Domains

SEO-wise, using entirely different domain names can provide the “exact match domain” benefit mentioned above; however, this approach also means that you have to build up domain authority for each domain completely separately. Getting reputable inbound links is not easy, and it simply must be done completely naturally in order to adhere to Google’s strict Webmaster Guidelines. This means that a public relations strategy and/or very strong social media and influencer marketing strategies must be in place for each and every domain.

For global organizations that need a strong search engine presence in multiple different countries, a multi-domain approach with different country code top-level domains (aka ccTLDs), i.e. maindomain.au for Australia and maindomain.es for Spain, can be of particular benefit. These organizations typically have staff based in each region that handle their own local marketing efforts in each country. So, the challenge of building up inbound links for each domain can be significantly less cumbersome in this scenario than it would be for a smaller organization.

Subdirectories

Using subdirectories, i.e. maindomain.com/site1, maindomain.com/site2, etc., eliminates the issue of having to acquire high quality links on multiple domains. It does not offer the benefit of having various “exact match domain” names, but in many cases, the streamlined link acquisition efforts is a benefit that can more than make up for having a variety of keywords in various domain names.

For an organization that has limited resources for public relations and social media efforts, the subdirectory approach can make more sense than having separate domain names—since search engines will see all the content as belonging to a single site.

However, this same benefit of multiple sites being perceived as one means that search engines won’t see each individual site as ONLY specializing content about one topic. So for a microsite strategy that intends to rank for keywords about a niche area of expertise, it may be better to go the multiple domain route to demonstrate tightly-themed topical relevance on each site.

Subdomains

Using subdomains, i.e. site1.maindomain.com, site2.maindomain.com, etc. is sort of a middle ground between the above two approaches. It offers the opportunity to use keywords in the subdomain name, yet have all sites share a main domain and therefore somewhat share inbound link equity across the network. However, search engines are aware that subdomains can be used to point to entirely different servers that host entirely different types of content, so domain authority still needs to be built up separately for each subdomain by acquiring reputable inbound links for each.

This can be a good fit for franchises or companies with multiple physical locations, where each individual location will be doing its own marketing efforts for its own site.

No Single Right Answer

As you can see, there’s no single best approach here. Different approaches make sense for different businesses. And the decision on how to set up your Multisite network gets even more complicated if there’s already separate domains or subdomains in existence. The decision of whether to maintain that structure, or whether to use the transition to WordPress Multisite as an opportunity to consolidate or change the structure, must take into account how long the separate domains or subdomains have been in existence, how much inbound link equity each has, and how much the keywords in the domains or subdomains seem to be having an impact on rankings.

Consider consulting with both an SEO expert and a web development expert before finalizing your decision on whether to create or continue to manage multiple websites, and whether or not WordPress Multisite is right for you. Each will be able to give educated perspectives on the web development and SEO considerations that apply to your own unique situation. The importance of SEO cannot be overemphasized, so investing in a little consulting up front can provide great benefit down the road.

About the Author

Pam Ann Aungst, M.B.A., President of Pam Ann Marketing, LLC and founder of Stealth Search and Analytics, is widely recognized as an expert in search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC), and digital analytics.

A self-proclaimed “geek,” Pam began studying computer programming at 6 years old, started creating websites in 1997 and has been working professionally in the field of e-commerce since 2005. Referred to by Sprout Social as a “Twitter Success Story,” she harnessed the power of social media to launch her own agency in 2011.

Pam has been interviewed by publications such as Internet Retailer magazine and CBS Small Business Pulse. She guest-lectures at prestigious universities such as NYU and frequently travels around the country giving talks at industry conferences. Pam has been honored with several awards for her small business leadership and non-profit advocacy work, including being named one of “Jersey’s Best Marcom Professionals Under 40.”

Pam holds an M.B.A. in Marketing from Regis University, where she learned the cornerstones of traditional marketing strategy. She now combines that with her more than 12 years of professional experience to help established companies and “household name” brands take their traffic-driving and analytics strategies to the next level.

The post SEO Considerations for Managing Multiple Websites appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Please note: no one solution is perfect for every type of client. It’s why we have a few hosts in particular that we choose to work with depending on the project. But as a customer, you should know that you have options, too, whether your concerns are financial, performance, or purely based on up-time monitoring and support.

Support

One of the most critical things to consider is support for your website. The purpose of your website and its goals, whether it’s just for informational purposes or fuels your business, will affect how much support you need. For example, available support hours and type of support offered will vary from host to host and could even vary plan to plan. So, if your business is purely digital and your team is distributed across the nation or even the globe, then ensuring you have access to human support 24/7 is probably critical. You don’t want to be left out in the cold when trying to get a hold of someone at 3 a.m. should your site go down.

Alternatively, maybe hours of support isn’t your concern, but rather how you communicate. Some hosts offer chat support, while others offer a ticket-based service, which operates a little bit slower, like emailing back and forth. There may even be options for phone support, but that varies from host to host. If those are things that are important to you, you should find a host that will support you in the way that you need it the most.

SLA

In the same vein as support, a service level agreement (SLA), is going to indicate what type of guarantee you receive from your host to stay online. Often times, it fluctuates from host to host; so you need to ensure that your SLA covers what is most important to you. Be mindful of whether or not the SLA covers network availability, is an infrastructure guarantee, or if it’s on the hardware. It’s possible that the SLA could cover all, or just some of those. But again, it’s important for you to know what type of SLA your host operates under, so you know what is and isn’t covered by the agreement.

Technology

Most often than not, your hosting provider is purchasing their technology (aka infrastructure) from someone else. In the case of purchasing hosting directly from Rackspace or Amazon Web Services, for example, you’re purchasing directly from the source. However, most managed hosting companies are just reselling infrastructure with their own tools and optimizations built on top of it. This is totally acceptable. That’s the trade-off when you go direct to the infrastructure; you don’t generally get as many tools or platform-specific (WordPress) support. But certain technologies provide certain features that will vary depending on the type of service you need.

Let’s say that you need highly scalable architecture, ensuring that the technology behind your host (aside from SLA, customer support, etc.) is able to sustain the amount of traffic and load that your site requires from their technology. Most hosts these days disclose who their technology provider is, but if they don’t, it doesn’t hurt to ask. From there, you can better identify what type of infrastructure will be powering your site.

Performance

This goes hand-in-hand with the technology but also includes the unique optimizations that your host might build on top of that tech infrastructure. For example, a lot of the hosts that we partner with have their own mix for performance and optimization, which is why they’ve become so successful as brands.

It’s no secret that SEO is important for your site to succeed, and the easier it is for someone to get to your site and get the information they need, whether it’s a human or a bot, is going to net you better rankings. Fast sites historically perform better. So if having a good user experience and ranking higher on Google is a concern for you, then looking into the performance of the host is going to be of major importance.

There are also statistics that prove that the longer it takes for your site to load, the more likely someone is going to abandon your site and get their information elsewhere. And with hundreds of thousands of sites sharing similar content, we’re conditioned to getting information as quickly as possible. If you want to keep readers and visitors on your site, looking for a highly performant host is critical.

Backup

Backups are pretty standard these days, but be mindful of how long those backups exist and how easy it is for you to access them. Just because your host is taking a backup doesn’t mean it will be helpful for you if you need to implement it, which plays into the support angle. When you need to retrieve a backup, it’s usually at a critical point. It’s one thing to know you have a backup, but another thing to actually restore a backup.

Backups come in handy for a number of cases—just keeping a running copy of your site if you have to revert for any reason, especially when WordPress and plugin updates are released. Some hosts even remind you to perform a backup before every update you make to your site. Imagine drafting a bunch of blog posts only to find that a WordPress update broke your site! If you hadn’t made a backup, you would have lost all of those draft blog posts. Backups are there to do just that: backup your site and act as a safety net. So finding a host whose backup policy works for you, or even just being more mindful of what type of backup support you need, can set you up for success.

Dev Tools

Depending on what type of site you’re operating, you may or may not care about developer tools. But if you have a team of devs, or even a singular developer, the tools that a hosting provider offers can make a difference.

Staging sites, analytic tools to help you understand how your site and content are performing, or even things like more complex things like GIT integration can affect development workflow. Some hosts can be pretty restrictive with code reviews or force you to use their workflow. We try to recommend hosts that we’ve had great experiences with ourselves, so we’re not throwing you into the deep end with anything unverified.

Control Panel

One of the most underrated but simplest things to keep in mind is the control panel. Again, its importance depends on how much time you plan to actually spend on your site, but the experience could be dramatically different if you have only one website versus managing 10. How easy is it to get support, to the resources that you need, to access the tools, or even have the visibility over the performance of your accounts?

Having a control panel is like having the best navigation system for your car. A basic one will get you from point A to point B, but a souped-up one is going to give you more insight, more knowledge, and more tools to do more with your site.

To reiterate, there are a lot of variables to consider, which means that no one host is a perfect for no one client. Thankfully, our team works with the best of the best to provide you a great recommendation based on your needs. Consider what we outlined, think about your unique site needs and whether or not your current hosting solution is supporting you in the way in which you prefer to be supported. If it isn’t, our team is always happy to help talk you through options and point you in the right direction. Contact us today.

The post Things to Consider When Searching for a Website Host appeared first on WebDevStudios.

That’s why I want to talk about the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) as it pertains to web design projects.

The Importance of SEO: 3 Important Things To Consider

My goal in this article is to convince you that paying attention to, and investing in, good web design alone will not serve your business well.

I will cover several arguments for incorporating SEO into a website design project from the beginning, including:

• How “good” design (by itself) can actually hurt you
• Why it is more expensive to “SEO” a site later
• What the “element of intent” is and why it is so important

So let’s get to it!

Reason #1: “Good” Design (By Itself) Can Hurt You

You might think, “I’m sure my web designer will build my new site according to SEO best practices. Why wouldn’t they?”  Sadly, that is NOT a safe assumption to make. More often than not, web designers are focused on the very thing that defines their craft—design. And nothing more.

At Pam Ann Marketing, we are frequently hired to evaluate the SEO-friendliness of a website that was created by a design agency. All too often, we find that the design team completely turned a blind eye to SEO best practices when designing the site.

Some Web Designers Truly Do NOT Care About SEO

Opinions certainly differ amongst designers about the importance of SEO. We have actually heard some web design studios state quite bluntly that, “We here at ‘X Design Firm’ are not interested in designing for Google.” But do they let their clients know that? Of course not.

We often encounter homepage designs that have… wait for it… NO WORDS. It does not take a seasoned SEO expert to know that search engines like words! Below is an actual mockup we received for a homepage that had nearly no words on it.

How would a search engine know what that site was about? It is crucial to include a text heading and at least a few sentences on the homepage of a site so that search engines like Google can understand what the site has to offer.

You can see on the right how we suggested editing this design so that it had at least a few of those handy little things we call “words.” It really did not take much to marry the SEO and design goals in this case.

Designer Apathy Can Really Hurt You

Even worse, as horrifying as this is, we frequently see designers launch a new site with a line of code that specifically prohibits search engines from indexing the site! This causes the client’s search traffic to nearly completely disappear almost overnight.

While it is appropriate to include such a tag on the draft copy of a new site while it is under construction, a designer who understands the importance of SEO would never forget to take that tag off prior to launch.

With the number of times we have seen this specific mistake happen, we can say with statistical certainty that most web designers are NOT paying attention to SEO best practices.

If You Don’t See Something, Say Something

If you do not see language about SEO in your web design contract, do not make the very unsafe assumption that “of course” the designer will create an SEO-friendly design. That assumption could put you in a position where your new site, that you just invested a lot of money in, is even LESS likely to get found online than the prior version. Perhaps unable to be found at all!

At the very least, have a conversation with your web design firm about the importance of SEO, and ask them to include some language in their contract about incorporating SEO best practices into the project. Also consider hiring an SEO company or consultant as a separate, objective third party to participate in the project and ensure that the new site is built as search-engine-friendly as possible.

Reason #2: It’s Expensive to “SEO It” Later

A website build or redesign is an intense process. For many business owners, it can be both expensive and exhausting. For budgetary (and sanity) reasons, it may be tempting to put off SEO efforts for later. We often hear clients say, “We just want to get this new website finished. We can ‘SEO it’ later.”

Assuming that the designer does not make major blunders like the ones noted above, it may technically be true that you have the option to “SEO it” later; however, that could lead to a lot more incurred cost in the long run than if SEO was “baked in” to the new site from the get-go.

Building a website is like building a house. You would not say, “Let’s just get this house built and then we will call the architect in afterward to design it correctly later.” If you did do that, you would end up spending a lot of time and money tearing down walls and rebuilding things in a different way—things that could have just been built that way in the first place. The importance of SEO to web design is akin to the importance of having an architect properly design the structure of a house prior to the house being built.

If you intend to spend money on SEO eventually, you might as well spend it now. It will save you in the long run, and you will start to benefit from that investment right away, instead of at some undetermined point in time later.

Reason #3: The Element of Intent

I truly believe that there is no channel in digital marketing as powerful as the search engine. When a user opens up a search engine and types something in, they are performing that search because they want or need something now or soon. A search engine user typically has a “high intent to buy,” as compared to users that are just hanging out on other platforms or websites.

While other forms of digital marketing such as Facebook ads or banner ads have incredibly effective targeting methods, those targeting options only make sure that you get in front of the right person. It is not necessarily the right TIME that they need your product or service. When you get in front of users on search engines, you are getting in front of the right person at the right time. The importance of SEO usually becomes pretty clear when I explain the element of intent to business owners in that way.

If you are investing in a new website design, why not extend that investment a bit and take advantage of the most powerful digital marketing channel available to you? A website build or redesign is the absolute perfect opportunity to add some SEO-friendliness to your site and get in front of those people that are looking for your products and services right now!

Are You Convinced Yet of the Importance of SEO?

The TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) version of this article is that although good design is indeed important, if you focus ONLY on design, you can end up wasting (a lot of) money and missing out on opportunities to capture users that are actively looking to buy your products or services. The importance of SEO for website and business success is too great to turn a blind eye to during the website design process.

About the Author

Pam Ann Aungst, M.B.A., President of Pam Ann Marketing, LLC and founder of Stealth Search and Analytics, is widely recognized as an expert in search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC), and digital analytics.

A self-proclaimed “geek,” Pam began studying computer programming at 6 years old, started creating websites in 1997 and has been working professionally in the field of e-commerce since 2005. Referred to by Sprout Social as a “Twitter Success Story,” she harnessed the power of social media to launch her own agency in 2011.

Pam has been interviewed by publications such as Internet Retailer magazine and CBS Small Business Pulse. She guest-lectures at prestigious universities such as NYU and frequently travels around the country giving talks at industry conferences. Pam has been honored with several awards for her small business leadership and non-profit advocacy work, including being named one of “Jersey’s Best Marcom Professionals Under 40.”

Pam holds an M.B.A. in Marketing from Regis University, where she learned the cornerstones of traditional marketing strategy. She now combines that with her more than 12 years of professional experience to help established companies and “household name” brands take their traffic-driving and analytics strategies to the next level.

The post The Importance of SEO: 3 Reasons Why Good Design Is Not Enough appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Start with a self-audit

The first step in any SEO process is auditing what you currently have. Review your website and read each and every page. Follow every link and track any blatant errors: broken pages or images, poor grammar, out-of-date information and/or links. Resolve those problems first.

Next, search yourself, your business, and your industry. Where are you ranking in those searches? If you sell vintage cars, and your business name is not appearing in the search engine results for the key phrases “vintage cars” or “classic cars,” then you know for sure you need to strengthen the SEO of your website.

Get secured

Is your website still HTTP? You need to change that ASAP. It’s a fact. Beginning in July, Google Chrome will clearly mark all HTTP websites as ‘not secure.’ And let’s face it when internet users see a warning like that, that makes them feel uneasy. ‘Not secure’ means ‘not safe’ to the average consumer. If you don’t want to scare website visitors away, get your Secure Sockets Layer certificate and encrypt your site immediately.

Blog, blog, blog. Then blog some more.

Regular, consistent blogging is an invitation for automated search engine bots to crawl your site and index your amazing content, which can boost your search engine results. Here’s an easy tip: brainstorm the most asked customer/website visitor questions, and then write blog posts that address those questions.

For example, let’s go back to that vintage cars website. Customers and potential customers probably ask questions such as, “How do I tell the difference between an authentic classic car and a counterfeit,” “How do I maintain the mint condition of my vintage car,” and, “How do I keep my family safe when we’re driving in my classic car?” By creating blog posts that address each of those questions, you’re practicing good SEO and increasing your odds of coming up at the top of search engine results.

Opt for optimization

Search engines love fast websites and will reward them with better search engine rankings. Compress your images and ensure that the design of your site is responsive on all devices. Additionally, keep your site accessible by all. Accessibility matters. It’s not only a smart move, it’s just the right thing to do. By optimizing your site for speed, responsiveness, and accessibility, you will see an improvement in your search engine rankings.

Stay social

Set up social media profiles, remain active on them daily, and use them to share your blog posts, page content, services, and contact information. Not every social media share or post should be self-promotional. Share related content and news from others in your industry, but take advantage of the opportunity to pepper in some self-promotional content, too. Social media is a great and easy way to drive traffic from another channel back to your website.

Collaborate with partners

Invite leaders in your industry to guest write on your blog. Volunteer to be a guest on industry-related podcasts or webinars. There is a community built around your industry. Get involved with it. Identify key thought leaders and formulate partnerships and then collaborate on content.

Get on the list

Free online directories are opportunities for backlinks. Do some research and find the most reputable online business directories in your industry. Register and create a listing. Again, it’s just another avenue for sending traffic to your site.

Bonus tip: offline promotion

While digital marketing strategies are an important aspect of getting the word out about your business and website, there is still a lot to be said about the impact of offline marketing. Go to networking events. Teach a class or seminar at a local meetup or conference. Pitch reporters, editors, and broadcast producers. Introduce yourself and your business, and offer to comment on stories that showcase your expertise and knowledge. Position yourself as a reputable leader in your industry and benefit from the free exposure. Dedicated offline promotion could easily influence others to think of you and your business website first when they need a source of information.

The habitual and strategic use of SEO tactics can produce an increase in the quantity and quality of website traffic. While paid advertising is still a viable form of marketing, using the recommendations above can help to support all of your marketing efforts, including increasing organic traffic. Give these SEO tips a try today, and if you find yourself in need of a serious website audit or help with speeding up your site, contact us.

The post SEO Tips for Increasing Website Traffic appeared first on WebDevStudios.

A large majority of the sites we build are for clients migrating from another open source platform or a proprietary content management system (CMS) over to WordPress. One of the many reasons for this, aside from the opportunity to work with our amazing team at WDS, is that clients have heard WordPress is easy to manage and that it’s really great for SEO–both of which are completely true. However, there is very much a right and wrong way to go about getting started with SEO and WordPress (spoiler: it’s a bit more work than just hitting the Staples Easy Button in the Dashboard!).

Select a Plugin

My first recommendation is to install one of two plugins depending on your needs. Both of these are tremendous, and when used correctly will help get your site to the level you desire with time, dedication, and patience. There are others that might be worth exploring, but these two are the most popular, and the ones I recommend:

• All in One SEO Pack
• Yoast SEO

NOTE: Do not activate both plugins at the same time! There is no added benefit to running both, and I’d venture to guess that it would only cause for headaches and confusion.

Again, both of these are excellent options and have been around for quite some time. You’ll find a lot of people have a lot of opinions on these two plugins, but it comes down to what works best for you and fits with the needs of your site (which means it is worth a little time to explore both options). Both plugins have additional upgrades and options to extend their functionality further; we’re just going to cover the basics of getting started here, but I highly recommend you look into the potential options beyond the basics as well.

After you’ve installed and activated one of these two options on your site, it’s time to get to work! Remember there’s no magic easy button–despite what you may have heard from that friend who has a WordPress site. The reality is that content is still king, and that will likely never change, so the first thing you’ll have to do is commit to providing and writing excellent content that is useful and enjoyable to your audience. Without them, who’s stopping by your site after all, right?

Both All in One SEO and Yoast SEO have pretty comprehensive guides for getting started with their respective plugins, so here are two good resources depending on which you choose to go with for your site:

• All in One SEO: http://semperplugins.com/documentation/
• Yoast SEO: https://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/

First Steps

The first thing we should do before digging into these settings is to configure our Permalinks to Post Name (or something else–just don’t leave the default settings in place). If your site is new, then you’re all set. If you have an existing site and you’re changing them, consider reviewing this article on changing your permalink structure as it’s a little bit more of a process for established sites.

Rather than go into major details on how to use each of these, I’m going to cover some top level things to keep in mind for setting up your site. Both plugins have a general settings page that you’ll find in your Dashboard.

Both plugins will have a number of sections you’ll want to review and fill out accordingly. They also both have their own tours and links to click to further explain a particular field or setting in more detail.

General Setting and Homepage Setup

Some highlights shared by both plugins is of course to make sure to setup the homepage title (max 60 characters) and description (around 156 characters). You’ll also want to review the format for pages, posts, and any custom post types you have, in addition to archive pages. You can find some more details on setting titles and related formatting on the Yoast site. Lastly, in terms of General Setup, you’ll want to add any Google/Bing webmaster tools settings and other related verification settings (if your site isn’t already verified). We’ll touch on these a little more later in the post.

Interior Pages

Now that we’ve got the overall setup covered including the homepage, it’s time to work on the interior pages of our site. There is definitely an art to titles and descriptions. You might be tempted to load up keywords into the title and description, but try to avoid that in all seriousness. Natural, readable and not spammy looking is really the goal here. Google and other search engines are pretty sophisticated and believe in trying to provide the best possible results to the users that are searching, so they’ll see right through the “keyword stuffing”. Also, make sure your focus keyword is relevant and unique for the particular page. A page all about turkey with a focus keyword of chicken doesn’t make much sense, right?

Depending on your industry, focusing on specific keywords may be more beneficial than more general terms. For example, if you own a residential cleaning company, you’ll likely have a lot of competition for the keyword “residential cleaning company.” Trying to rank for more niche cleaning services may end up providing you with more success. Perhaps you specialize in deep cleaning, so consider using that as a specific keyword. A combination of broad and specific focus keywords is going to be super helpful when you’re just starting out.

Both are similar in nature, but organized slightly differently. They have the settings on individual posts and pages right below your content editor in the dashboard.

There is one major difference worth noting: Yoast has a page analysis tool, while All in One SEO does not. This is something to consider if you feel you’d need that feature. Lastly, you may have heard of meta keywords and feel compelled to use them, but before you decide to forge ahead with keywords, you might want to read over this article before making that commitment.

This is really only scratching the surface of SEO, but it does cover the basics to get you started! Here are a couple guides to reference that continue to cover some of the basics from Google and Bing:

• Google’s Getting Started Guide
• Bing

Additional Optimization Tips

Before we wrap up this post, I want to discuss some additional things to keep in mind that may not seem directly related to SEO, but can certainly have an impact.

Site Speed

Overall site speed for both mobile and desktop can have a huge impact. People won’t wait all day for a site to load. Page speed can make a big difference both in terms of SEO and overall site performance. In a WordPress site, page load times can be affected by lots of things–from the theme you’re using to your favorite plugins or site images.

The code in your theme and plugins should follow best practices and standards when possible. When using third party plugins, you’ll want to do some research on the plugin author–read relevant reviews, etc., to make sure it doesn’t affect your site negatively. As far as images go, you’ll want to make sure they’re optimized for the web. If you’re using images that could fill a billboard for a tiny thumbnail in post, you may need to optimize your images in Photoshop or consider some other tools to help compress images depending on your comfort level. There are even some plugins that will help with this, but before running them, I’d recommend backing up your site.

Responsive Design

Having a responsive website also helps for a variety of reasons for both SEO and user experience. The search engines love responsive websites because all content is on one URL (in most cases). Responsive design also helps cut down the bounce rate for people searching from mobile and tablet, which means the users wont click back out of your site quite as quickly(in most cases) if it’s optimized and responsive to their particular devices.

Adding SSL

Although it’s relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, you might also want to consider switching over from stand http:// to https:// for your site. Some search engines will give a slight bump to SSL protected sites over one without it. SSL certificates have dropped significantly in prices over the years, so pretty affordable to the large majority of website owners these days.

Social Media

Social media is sometimes overlooked, but is intertwined with SEO. Engaging your community on social networks will help you share and grow your audience. It’s a great way to interact with your followers, clients, etc. It’s also the best way to share all your amazing content and blog posts as well. Although, again, it’s important not to overdo it here; you don’t want to turn people off to your brand either by oversharing great stuff. The balance here will vary depending on your industry.

Adding Analytics and Webmaster Tools

After all this hard work, you’re going to want a way to track and measure progress over time. It will take some time for all of this to start working, but over time, if you keep at it, you will see a positive response. There are lots of great tools and analytics software out there for measuring progress. Google Analytics is likely one of, if not the most popular overall, but I recommend investigating some others as well, like Kissmetrics or Mixpanel. They all have similar features, but depending on your needs, one may stand out to you above the others. The important part is that you have something to track the work you’re putting into your SEO.

Analytics will provide solid insight in what’s working and what you may need to change. Analytics provide a wide range of data that includes the regions of your visitors, which pages are the most popular, and even what type of traffic you’re getting (desktop vs. mobile), and so much more . It’s pretty amazing how far these services have come and the amount of data that can be provided to you should you need it.

Google, Bing and other search engines also have a webmaster tools which you should also link your site up to and get verified as I mentioned earlier in the post. This is good for a number of reasons, one they know you’re site is real and that they should start returning it in search results, but also it helps keep track of the overall health of your websites, and when things aren’t right they’ll be sure to let you know, which is always a great thing.

Google Webmaster Tools
Bing Webmaster Tools

Hopefully you’ve gained some insight throughout this post, and if you’ve learned a few things, it’s that search engine optimization is not a one click, easy button process. Slow and steady definitely wins this race and patience is crucial. Doing things the right way can help build your sites reputation overtime and help increase your presence in the results. Taking the time to do some of the extra optimization and connecting on social media will also help as well. Just remember SEO is a process and like anything takes time to learn and get comfortable with, but over time hopefully you’ll find these tips helpful and that they are a starting point for success.

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