Small and medium-sized businesses need SEO services to gain recognition in their industry, but there are a lot of companies that promise excellent ranking results and don’t deliver. RankPay, the California-based SEO service company has pretty much changed the SEO service stakes and has tackled this problem head-on with its pay for performance approach. What makes it different from most other SEO services companies is that RankPay only charges you when your business starts appearing on search engine results – so if you don’t rank, you don’t pay.

Since there are different approaches to achieve high visibility and ranking on Google and other major Search Engine Optimization, RankPay offers more than one service. These services are aimed to tackle issues such as updating listings and posting on social media. There’s a lot that goes into each service, so we’ll go over what they are and what they are supposed to include.

RankPay Services

• General SEO
• Local Citations
• Social Marketing
• Blog Management
• Website Maintenance
• Content Optimization.

How Can RankPay’s Services Benefit my Business?

The different services and approaches that RankPay has are pretty much geared towards getting your company ranked from every angle possible. Good SEO practices are comprehensive, and not only tackle one aspect of the website.

General SEO Services

To date, RankPay has ranked 5,000 business on the first page of Google. RankPay does not disclose how it does so, but it does mention that it focuses on local results for the business allowing them to rank similar clients in the top search engine results based on their location. In terms of its SEO Services, RankPay allows users to sign up for free and gives them the average pricing based on tiers, or group of result positions. There are five position tiers:

• Tier 1 > Positions 21-30 (Lowest)
• Tier 2 > Positions 11-20
• Tier 3 > Positions 7-10
• Tier 4 > Positions 4-6
• Tier 5 > Positions 1-3 (Highest)

How much you’ll pay is determined on keyword competition but RankPay provides upfront pricing, so you know what you’ll be paying as an average before you commit. Business owners are able to search for the best keywords that can help them rank their business with their free account, and business owners will only be asked to pay if RankPay makes their rank score better than what it was before a client signs up. So let’s say a business ranks at #10 already on Google. If RankPay won’t change it to rank higher, it doesn’t charge the client.

Local Citation Builder

When it comes to SEO ranking, the information that exists online about your business not only has to be consistent, but it must be updated continuously. Problems happen when the information about your business isn’t available in directories, is duplicated or if its inconsistent, because that can confuses search engines.

With the local citation builder, RankPay updates your online business listings if they exist, and they also submit business profile citations to over 150 local business directories. These directories are hand-picked to ensure credibility, an important factor when it comes to major search engines indexing your site.

RankPay aligns your listings with white-hat SEO practices, and updates them manually so an actual RankPay employee will be updating your information as opposed to software which is prone to glitches and mistakes and may not be able to fill all fields appropriately. RankPay also scours the web for duplicate listings and actually contacts those directories to remove your information if it is harmful for your ranking score.

Social Marketing

RankPay acts as your own personal social media management system, and its social media team take building an audience and posting on your behalf to a new level.

Rank Pay publishes and schedules social media posts on your behalf, and even creates a social presence for you free of charge if you don’t have one. All the material must be approved by you, and social media management is executed by professional marketing writers that spend a lot of time getting to know you and your business in order for them to provide the most authentic experience possible for your audience.

RankPay’s writers work with you to determine the voice of your business and create a social media strategy that it geared towards increased shares, mentions, and comments that engage your audience.

RankPay has three social media plans:

Blog Management

RankPay helps businesses generate a content marketing strategy and this involves setting up, running and optimizing your business blog. Blogs may seem to be too much work and take a lot of time, but their results have proved invaluable to business owners due to their effect on visitors and traffic. Websites with good blogs have on average, 55% more traffic than those that don’t. The best proof of RankPay’s blog expertise is its own well-managed blog. It’s engaging and frequently updated, has a great voice and style, and it gives its readers value.

RankPay helps businesses with their blogs and they have teams of writers that are dedicated to each business and create unique content strategies based on your business and industry. You’ll work with a one-on-one writer that studies your business and works with you to determine the best tone and approach to take for your blog.

RankPay updates your blog monthly with relevant content and publish scheduled posts based on your timeline and preference.

Website Maintenance

Every successful SEO strategy relies on establishing, running, and maintaining a solid website that is search engine readable and SEO optimized.

Rank Pay is serious about site security, page speed, and SSL certification. Many websites are vulnerable to security attacks and this can have a profound impact on your online business strategy. If your website loading time and page speed is slow due to errors that can easily be fixed, your bounce rate increases and search engines sink your website lower in in search results.

RankPay focuses on what search engines look for and how they read your site. Then, its developers make sure to fix and resolve any errors that may be affecting your website’s performance, and continue to maintain it for you to make sure that it complies with all new algorithm updates.

RankPay also provides site hosting services and offers different pricing plans based on your website maintenance needs. They start at $99 and do not require long-term contracts.

Content Optimization

RankPay stresses on content, and for good reason because major search engines like Google reward and rank valuable, fresh and engaging content higher. Even if your website already has good content, keeping it the same over extended periods of time can result in lower ranking.

RankPay’s Content Optimization service basically updates your website and generates fresh, engaging content that’s SEO-focused. Their content strategy relies on not only generating this content for readers, but doing so in a way that’s optimized for crawler readability.

You have full control of the content being posted so if there are changes made to your content that you don’t like, it won’t be published. Everything is run by you to make sure you’re completely satisfied with the changes.

Our Verdict

RankPay seems to lean more towards SEO-centric content strategies and link building. It’s more geared towards small and medium size business and can deliver great results. You can choose their degree of involvement in your online SEO strategy and RankPay doesn’t force you into financial obligations with long-term contracts. It’s absolutely risk-free to try them out, and with RankPay’s pay when you rank option, you don’t have to worry about spending money on bogus results.

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SEO PowerSuite of SEO tools that helps you stay on top of your SEO game

SEO Powersuite is a software bundle of Link Assistant’s most robust SEO tools that helps companies understand how to work with and implement solid SEO practices. Download SEO Power-suite for free.

PowerSuite comes with Rank Tracker, WebSite Auditor, SEO SpyGlass, and Link Assistant. These tools you to control and monitor your SEO practices in different ways, such as understanding keyword ranking and comparing how well you’re doing versus your competitors.

There are tons of features included in each software tool, so investing some time in getting to understand PowerSuite’s many features can lead to great bottom-line results and could even change the way your business broadcasts its message out there.

We’ve used PowerSuite for years and it’s a great bundle of tools that we definitely recommend for improving your SEO practices. That sentiment is shared by major industry giants who use it, like Mastercard, Microsoft, Nestle, IBM and HP. PowerSuite is so popular because it’s comprehensive, easy-to-use, and most importantly demystifies the ever-changing maze of Search Engine Optimization.

Here’s a breakdown of the software included in the bundle, and what you can do using PowerSuite for SEO.

What’s included in SEO PowerSuite

1. Rank Tracker
2. Website Auditor
3. SEO SpyGlass
4. Link Assistant

Rank Tracker

Rank Tracker is PowerSuite’s ranking software tool that searches for and compares ranking information from over 400 search engines, giving businesses invaluable insight from a wide net of sources.

Users can see how their use of keywords or keyword phrases affects their traffic by predicting how many people are likely to visit their site. It integrates the most popular keyword tools that you may already be using, such as Google Adwords Keyword Planner and Google Analytics. You can also track your competitors using Rank Tracker, so that you can compare your performance and make the adjustments needed to keep you ahead.

Rank Tracker also allows unlimited keyword tracking, so you don’t have to worry about paying extra when you reach your keyword limit. This tool can be as in-depth as you need it to be with its Geo-specific features, allowing you to track keywords in particular regions and even addresses through their advanced search settings.

The reporting feature in Rank Tracker is customizable and very easy to interpret. If you’re working for a client, you can schedule recurring monthly, weekly or daily ranking reports so that they can see the progress that’s being made on their site.

Website Auditor

SEO PowerSuite’s WebSite Auditor “sees” your website like a search engine does, and it lets you know what you need to fix.

It crawls your entire site and reports issues that can potentially harm your rankings which usually stem from HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and media issues.

You can generate a report of the analysis and schedule to-do tasks to get them done in chunks, with the program letting you know once you’ve completed a task and checks it off for you. Better yet, if you’re not sure how you need to fix a particular issue, the program gives you detailed instructions on how to do it yourself.

WebSite Auditor is more than simply a reporting tool, it allows users to perform in-app optimization functions and edit titles and meta description tags in separate tabs. WebSite Auditor also allows you to generate XML sitemaps and robot.txt files, and it’s pretty thorough giving you a comprehensive understanding of how your site is performing and its search engine strength.

SEO SpyGlass

SEO SpyGlass is a backlink database tool that shows you all the backlinks to your site and tells you whether they’re helping or harming your rankings. Even one link can mean a penalty from Google, making this a pretty useful tool that helps you weed out bad links and remain in good standing with search engines.

One of its useful features is that SEO SpyGlass gives its users the contact information of webmasters so that you’re able to rectify issues that come from bad links or request to take them down altogether.

SEO SypGlass can also be used to “spy” on the backlinks of competitors because it discloses their backlink structure and allows businesses to compare strategies and even see where their backlinks intersect. SpyGlass also provides recommendations with fully customizable and automated reporting.  

Link Assistant

Link Assistant is a great tool for building relevant links to your site, and it does all of the brunt work for you.

Based on the goals that you’ve set for your campaign or strategy, you’ll be able to sort your link prospects through tools that allow you to see their Alexa ranking, their domain authority or shares on social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter to target them.

Often, the hardest part about this process if you’re doing it manually is reaching out to prospects. Link Assistant has you covered in that aspect because it actually provides you with tools like email templates and allows you to contact your prospects directly from the app, which makes it easy to manage. You can even see how many times you’ve contacted a prospect and move them through different lists if needed.

Just like all of PowerSuite Seo’s other tools, You can access and generate analysis reports for your clients and schedule them all in one click.

SEO PowerSuite User Group

Join SEO PowerSuite User Group

Would you like to learn some insider SEO PowerSuite hacks and news? Join SEO PowerSuite User Group to get help, find partners, and learn all the good stuff related to SEO and online marketing.

Our Verdict

We definitely believe that SEO PowerSuite can help your business because it’s a comprehensive bundle of programs that can make your life easier and save you lots of time and money.

You can choose one of three versions, the Free version, a Professional License that costs a one-time payment of $299, or the Enterprise License that costs $699. You do need to pay the Algo Update fee of $29 / month, which is extremely fair as Link Assistant does update regularly to keep you up to date.

Give SEO PowerSuite a try for thirty days free! We’re certain you’ll see great results and improvement in your site rankings and SEO strategy.

Disclaimer: This article contains referral links which means that if you click on the link and purchase SEO Powersuite, we receive a commission (at no cost to you). We always use and test anything we review before recommending it to our readers, so if we don’t love it, we would never recommend it!

The post SEO PowerSuite Review appeared first on Hamza Shatela.

Understanding Google’s Local 3-Pack

When Google changed its local listing layout from a 7-pack to a 3-pack format called the Snack Pack, there were concerns about how this change would affect local businesses. Google removed the last four listings in local results because they weren’t getting a lot of traffic, but the main purpose was to make the listings look and function better on mobile. Google is aware of the devices that are being used to search for businesses, and since mobile dominates in that field, it would naturally want to stay ahead of the game and give users a good experience.

Since the 2016 update, businesses have adjusted to the Snack Pack and use a variety of methods to stay ahead through factors that affect their local SERP rankings. Below, you’ll find a full guide to understanding Google’s local 3-pack, and how to feature your business on local search displays.

Why Did Google Change to the 3-Pack Display?

Since Google is increasingly focused the mobile user experience, the 7 Pack needed to be more helpful and visually pleasing. As you can see below, the old format was too large to fit onto one page on mobile devices. With the new format, the results are now much clearer and look better, with a map that shows users where the business is located.

The new pack also looks consistent regardless of device, and as shown below, is just enough to function as the first page in a SERP for someone performing a local search on a smartphone.

Rather than highlighting business mobile numbers, what you see now are business hours and addresses. There’s also a mobile tap button (the call button) that can be directly used that’s replaced previously only seeing the number. There are a few broader changes that have been made as well, like Google+ no longer factoring into page rank. The SERPs may still display ratings from reviews on Google+ pages, but having an active account isn’t necessary anymore. Algorithms are increasingly geared towards favoring activity on local search directories.

How to Feature Your business Website on the Google Local 3-Pack

Make Sure Your Information is Accurate and Consistent

Featuring your business on one of the three coveted local listing spots is doable, and not as hard as some people might think it is. The first thing you need to consider is the consistency of your business information throughout the web. Your business name, address, phone number, and email are a great way to start. Google places a lot of emphasis on accuracy and consistency when it comes to delivering information to the end user.

Be Active on Local Listings and Directories

Being active on local listings sites and directories is a key factor that determines your visibility in local search results. The higher your Domain Authority listing is, the more likely it is that Google will trust your business and make it visible. Google is as successful as it is because it’s the main purpose is to give users the most relevant results to their queries. Google rewards websites that adhere to its ever-changing standards. The higher your Domain Authority is, the better it will be for your website.

Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-responsive

Mobile-responsive websites are a requirement today for businesses to be relevant both to users and search engines. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re going to lose business and exposure so responsiveness is a must in your efforts to be recognized by Google algorithms. The “Mobilegeddon” update by Google tweaked rankings so that responsive pages were pushed to the top of mobile search results. If your website is responsive, then you’ll have a better chance of being featured in Google’s local 3-pack.

Local search and mobility are two aspects of SEO work that take their cue from Google’s overall strategy. To have a better chance of showing up in 3-pack listings, start adjusting your website and making sure your website has a responsive design. Always keep an eye out for any future algorithm updates and adjust as you go along. You can stay ahead of your competitors by monitoring their websites and finding the keywords that they use to rank (use Seo Powersuite, Rankpay and SEOrush for that).

Regardless of how you choose to approach them, Google algorithm updates and layout changes are done for a reason and the more flexible you can be in adjusting to them, the less time you’ll spend panicking over how an update may affect your business and more time learning how to make sure you use that update to your advantage.

The post A Full Guide to Understanding Google’s Local 3-Pack appeared first on Hamza Shatela.

Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP

Google AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, and as its name suggests, makes mobile pages load in an accelerated way. Since Google is a customer-oriented company, one of its primary goals is to give its users a positive user experience. This is why the search engine giant constantly updates its sophisticated algorithms, and releases programs that help users like Google AMP, Google Grantee program, and Google My Business.

In this article, we’re going to go over the Accelerated Mobile Pages program from Google, what it is, and how you can use it to impact your SEO and marketing strategy.

1. What is Google AMP?
2. How does Google AMP work?
3. The positive impact of AMP on SEO and marketing
4. How AMP impacts SEO & online marketing negatively

1. What is Google AMP?

The Google AMP Project is an open-source program that fast-tracks content to mobile devices. It’s different from the usual method of serving mobile content because its goal is to render content based on a specific form of HTML, called AMP HTML. This simplifies how the page is presented on a screen.

This is what an Accelerated Mobile Page looks like on mobile and desktop. With AMP, Mobile users navigate pages with basic text and images, but that content loads at least 10x faster as opposed to traditional HTML content.

2. How does Google AMP work?

To understand how AMP works, you need to learn the three parts to Google AMP:

• HTML
• JavaScript
• Cache

AMP HTML has a strictly defined set of pre-processing tags. Amp-ad, amp-embed, amp-img, amp-pixel, and amp-video are limited to text formatting and image embedding tags.

AMP JS is a limited Javascript file that loads all external resources in the background. Its job is preventing render blocking from interfering with screen loading time.  AMP JS can also predict which DNS resources and connections it will need, and will subsequently download and size the images beforehand.

The AMP Content Delivery Network (CDN), is a system of servers which was designed to position your latest content in servers throughout the globe. This makes it easier for people who request your page and live in different countries or continents to access your content quicker thanks to a pre-rendered, optimized copy of the AMP page on a server near the country the user is from. Every time new content is updated, it refreshes the Content Delivery Network (CDN) as well.

3. The Positive Impact of AMP on SEO and Marketing

Speed is an important factor in building trust and a relationship with your clients, and you get rewarded for it by search engines. With AMP, pages are much quicker and that’s a boost for your SEO score in general. When people enjoy the experience of being on your site, you’ll be able to sell them through advertising and your bounce rate decreases.

1. Accelerated Mobile Pages -increase SERPs, leading to higher search engine rankings
2. You may see an improvement in your page search impressions
3. Performance can be monitored through Analytics
4. Improvement in Click Through Rate and decrease of Bounce Rate

4. How Does AMP impact SEO & online marketing negatively?

1. There is no form submission in AMP content.
2. AMP doesn’t solve the problem of page speed SEO for non-publisher sites.
3. The number of paid search result item impressions might decrease.
4. Your Domain Authority may suffer.
5. Inline ad content display changes
6. Budgeting for content development will increase.

With organizations like the Washington Post using Google AMP, it may be worth looking into if the nature of your content requires that users access it immediately. In all cases, improving page speed options never hurts, because speed is a main key to improving your rankings and SEO strategy regardless of how you do it.

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What is google Guarantee Program (Home Service Ads Program)

Google has come up with a new advertising program added to it’s Google tools, which will effect a lot of local businesses and could change the way of how local businesses have to think about advertising. The new approach to advertisement is called Google’s Home Services, or Google Guarantee Program. This program is designed to connect users with home-service providers. Couple of years ago the Beta Version was released for some Professions in limited Locations around USA such as (California: San Francisco, San Diego, San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento and Stockton, check recent introduced cities). In this article I will highlight:

1. What changed?
2. How Will “Google Guarantee” Effect User experience
3. How does it work?
4. How “Google Guarantee Program” Effects SEO
5. How Will “Google Guarantee” Effect Local Business
6. How to Prepare Your Online Business for “Google Guarantee Program”
7. Business effected by Google “Home Service Ads Program”
8. Why is google changing its Marketing Strategy and How Will Google Benefit?

1. What Changed?

If we make a simple search for the term “plumber in San Francisco” we will find a google guaranteed badge next to the listing on google, this new badge tend to attract more leads because Google guarantee this provider.

What’s interesting is that if you click on google guaranteed icon, google will redirect you to a new type of search, where you can find more qualified guaranteed service providers for the requested job. Not only you get a list of all the guaranteed local business in the area, additional you’ll find a google guarantee snip-it which reads “Providers with this badge are pre-screened and insured. Get the job done right or your money back”.

To be part of the Google Guarantee Program, Google requires all guaranteed providers to undergo a series of screening procedures and meet a certain criteria, including background checks, verification of insurance and licenses, online reputation audits, and interviews, to the extent permitted by applicable law.

Those with the “Google Guaranteed” badge have been carefully screened and have paid Google to appear in these search results. Those without the badge may have been less extensively screened and haven’t paid Google to appear”.

Home Service ads experience on mobile (as shown in the image above). Just like desktop, the mobile search ads dominate the top of the results page. Google My Business and organic listings are pushed down the page and even requires scrolling reach the organic listing section.

2. How Will Google Guarantee” Effect User experience

If a user booked a service through Local Service with a Google Guaranteed Vendor, and the user ended up not satisfied with the quality of service, Google covers claims up to the cost of the initial service, with a lifetime cap of $2,000.

3. How does it work?

After the user submit a search query, Google will offer several businesses simultaneously (as shown in image 1), If the user clicked on the service provider title, then google will redirect them to a page with additional details about this business were they can check the reviews, description, business hours and more (as shown in image 4 & 5). If the users click on Google Grantee badge then Google wil provider a list of more ‘plumbers’, they’ll be redirected to a page that encourages them to request quotes from 3 different service providers. This program is essentially Google’s answer to sites like Craigslist List and Angie’s List, creating an environment where users have access to a variety of pre-qualified service providers, free of charge.

Once the user has selected their three potential service providers, they’ll be redirected to a form to help simplify the quote process between the user and the provider by answering questions like “What needs to be done?”, “The Scope of the Word” and “What are the requirements?” etc.

4. How Google Guarantee Program Effects SEO

• Google Guarantee Area

You will notice the Green Check with “Google Guaranteed”, you cannot miss it, this will be the first impression on the user, and this means two things.

1. No one without this guarantee will be shown.
2. No matter how good you’re on-site SEO is… it won’t get you verified or listed.

• Google Ads Section

The paid ads section which used to be on the top of each search page, now dropped under the Google Guaranteed ads section to be positioned second based to the new google search results alignment.

• The 3-Pack Section

As you can see in the picture above, the 3-pack on google search page didn’t change, it was moved down a bit. Google is still maintaining the 3 organic ranking potions on the Google local 3 pack section on it’s first page, in addition the paid ads section. Keep in mind that these two sections are managed from different locations, Google My Business is use to manage your presence on google 3-pack while on Google Ad-words Express which host “Google Guarantee Program” allow you to adjust your listings on Google Guarantee Program section . Learn more about Google 3-pack and how you can utilize it to increase traffic to your website.

• The organic Listing Area

The Listing section has been pushed down as well, due to the additional space occupied by Google Guarantee Program section, which makes the organic results fall out of the above the fold section.

5. How Google Guarantee Will Effect Local Business

No doubt that Google will succeed in connecting high-quality service providers with potential clients as google rolls this program to different locations. Apparently from the reviews that I’ve read, the Businesses who have got a Google Guaranteed certification have got about 1800% growth in leads. As compared to other vendors who are just advertising normally, but on the other hand Google now charges for the click and lead based to Google also charges for leads.

• With Home Service ads, Businesses now will charge for leads from customers that choose your business.
• Businesses can set a cap budget that limits the total number of leads per week.
• Read more on Local Service by Google Terms and Conditions

With Google not being shy on putting the full focus on the CTR (click through rate) of your ads, every small business owner needs to focus on preparing their online business for the Home Services program.

6. How to Prepare Your Online Business for Google Guarantee Program

If you are a small businesses owner and you want to be ready for the global Google Home Services Ads Program release, you’ll need to re-assess your online presence and your business relation with Google search engine. Here is a list that will get you started.

• Enhance AMP Pages

The Google AMP Project is a way of fast-tracking content to mobile devices. We all know by now, that Google is focused on the user experience on mobile devices, and google will not ignore the mobile devices any time soon as it it will play a big role in the future of digital media marketing worldwide. Enhancing Amp pages will increase the speed and mobile-readiness of your website which are high-quality ranking distinctions that determine the placement of a site’s content link in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The faster a site is, and the more it caters to mobile devices, the more likely it is to be seen and clicked on by Google search users.

• Make sure Google My Business is Claimed

Before you question yourself what does Google My Business has to do with Google Home Services Ads Program, rest assure there is no relation, but if you managed to run both you’ll have the benefit of appearing on both Home Service section and Maps which is a Win-win situation and dual ways to increase traffic to your website.

• Paid Search

If you are using paid search with Google Ads, or Google Ad-words Express, start making the necessary adjustments before the Home Services program was initiated nationwide. Here is a list that will walk you through what you need to take into consideration.

1. What is your online business reputation?
2. How many online reviews do you have?
3. How well optimized is your website for local business?
4. What CRM (customer relationship management) software do you have in place to respond to customer quotes rapidly?
5. Search for competitor in your area and check their status

• Focus on your Brand Identity and Niche

• Sign up for Google Guaranteed Today!

7. Business effected by Google Guarantee Program

Home Service Ads Program is currently limited to a very few categories of business, currently this program works only for:

• Auto glass services
• Carpet cleaning services
• Cleaning services
• Electricians
• General contractors
• Garage door services
• HVAC (heating or air conditioning)
• Handymen
• Locksmiths
• Painters
• Plumbers
• Roadside assistance
• Tutors

8. Why is google changing it’s Marketing Strategy and How Will Google Benefit?

In a fast industry were rapid and continuous changes keep on happening, this behaviors from google is expected. If you are a long time Google tools user, you will not be surprised with this change, and you know by now when it comes to google, change is more than just inevitable — it’s a core strategy to keep up with in the user service industry.

• Google will now be sharing for Clicks and leads
• Google can charge for all 3 leads simultaneously
• The Google Home Services Ads Program expands Ads Landscape space on google search page

Google “Home Service Ads Program” Service Areas (updated 11/28/2017)

• Arizona: Phoenix
• California: Los Angeles, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose
• Florida: Miami
• Georgia: Atlanta
• Illinois: Chicago
• Massachusetts: Boston
• Michigan: Detroit
• New York: New York
• Pennsylvania: Philadelphia
• Texas: Dallas
• Washington: Seattle
• Washington, D.C.

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Grow Your Website with Google business tools

We all know that Google is a great search engine, Google owns Youtube, Wayz App, Google Earth, and a lot more. Some of us use Google to watch, listen and play, others use it to organize stuff and work smarter, and business people utilize Google tools to grow their business. Not to mention that G-mail is a great resource and that it comes first in the Top 10 Best Free Email Service Providers, but there is a lot more into Google, did you know that Google has over 21 powerful marketing analytics solutions for companies of all shapes and sizes. In this article, I will discuss some tools which are related to the digital wold and can only be used by Bloggers and website managers.

1. Google Analytics
2. Google Tag Manager
3. Google Optimize
4. Google Data Studio
5. Google Survey
6. Google Attribution
7. Google Audience Center
8. Google My business
9. Google Ads
10. Google Plus
11. Google Console
12. Google Trends
13. Google Alerts
14. Google Predictive search
15. Google Consumer Insights
16. Diagnostic Tools & Industry Bench marks
17. Think With Google

1. Google Analytics

Google analytics provide you with stronger results across all your site and offline channels. With Google Analytics you will be able to better understand your visitors, their behavior, and their preferences. You can Customizable reports, determine which advertising campaign is performing better, and even monitor real-time visitor. I think Google Analytics is the best and the most popular digital analytics software in the world.

For more advance insights Google also has, Google Analytics 360 Suite, a set of integrated data and marketing analytics products designed for the needs of marketers in the world’s largest companies and corporations. To create a Google Analytics account:

2. Google Tag Manager

A tag, is a snippet of code that is embedded in your website core code, and sends information to a third party, such as Google. Google Tag Manager is a tag management system that allows you to  easily and quickly update tags and code snippets on your website or mobile app, such as those intended for traffic analysis and marketing optimization. To setup Google Tag Manager on your website and start managing tags

• Go to tagmanager.google.com to create an account (or sign in with your existing account).
• Create a container for your site in the account.
• Add the container snippet to your site.
• Migrate any hardcoded tags (such as AdWords or DoubleClick tags) from your site’s source code into Tag Manager.

3. Google Optimize

Test, adapt, personalize sum-sup Google optimize. Learn more about your audience, discover the most engaging user experiences with Google Optimize. Test different variations of your website and then tailor it to deliver a personalized experience that works best for each user and for your business.

4. Google Data Studio

Data Studio lets you create dynamic, visually appealing reports and dashboards (A Google account is not required to view reports).

To start creating reports and data sources in Data Studio, you need:

• To be signed into a Google account
• To be in one of the supported countries (see below)
• Have Google Drive

5. Google Survey

Google Surveys is a market research tool that gathers data from survey questions. Users answer survey questions in order to access high-quality content around the web. In return, content publishers get paid as their users answer. Google then aggregates and analyzes responses through a simple online interface. Google Surveys are priced on a price per completed response basis, visit the pricing page.

6. Google Attribution

Google Attribute is a free solution can pull data from Google Analytics, AdWords, tags or DoubleClick Search to provide a more holistic view of conversion actions across channels and devices for attribution modeling and bidding information. In other words this tools help you to easily measure and optimize marketing spends across multiple channels and across multiple devices to uncover insights, understand the impact of your marketing on the customer journey, and improve ROI.

7. Google Audience Center

Google Audience or Google Audience Center 360, a data management platform, collects and organizes all your data sources — enabling you to find, expand, and reach your most valuable audiences with the right message at just the right moment. Audience Center 360 has the features you need to simplify the challenge of organizing your customer data, analyzing it for insights, and using these audience insights to take action.

8. Google My Business

Google My Business is a free tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence on Google platform, including Search and Maps. To setup your Google My Business Account, visit Get started at google.com/business. Once you complete your registration, google will send you a Location verification code through mail. The mail will be sent to the location you registered for to claim it as your business location.

9. Google Ads

Google ads is a great tools that provides plenty of ways to reach your target customer such as, Youtube, Internet browser, email, search engine results, and on mobile apps. Google’s ad network consists of Google services, like Search, YouTube, and Gmail, as well as 2+ million non-Google websites and apps that partner with Google to show ads. AdWords pricing is meant to work within your budget. You won’t be charged for displaying ads. Instead, you pay only when someone clicks your ad, views your video on YouTube, or calls your business. You can as well use this feature to increase your website passive income and add ad on your post/page to generate revenue.

10. Google Plus

Google Plus (also known as Google+) is a social networking service from Google. Google Plus is part Twitter, part Facebook and part linked-in. It gives you new ways to build a social network and share information with other people.

11. Google Console

Google console, or Google webmaster tools is a free service by Google that helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search results. To learn about Search Engine Optimization, read SEO for WordPress: Quick Start Guide. This guide will help of Google console will help you optimize your website.

12. Google Trends

13. Google Alerts

Stay alerted with Google Alerts, Go to google.com/alerts to set up separate alerts so you can keep track of what’s happening in your category.

14. Google Predictive search

15. Google Consumer Insights

16. Diagnostic Tools & Industry Bench marks

Measure your brand’s site and campaign performance and get tips on improving key metrics, recommended tools:

• Test my website
• Speed scorecard

17. Think With Google

Google suite of marketing tools can help you strengthen your digital marketing strategies, these tools are designed to help improve your digital marketing, web performance, analysis, digital experience, and many more. To take advantage of Think With Google program make sure you subscribe to receive email update straight to your inbox.

The post Get the Most Out of Google Tools to Grow a Website appeared first on Hamza Shatela.

1. Article Title

The title of your article is the first impression that you make on the reader, and is used for both grabbing attention and SEO.  Never underestimate the power of an excellent article title and featured image, because they determine what the next step of the user will be. Put some thought into the title and make it interesting (think: to get the user clicking), add keywords, and try to convey the main idea of your message in five words. For example, adding teasers would be a good idea to get people interested, but don’t go overboard and turn them off.

Article title: How your reader sees the title of the post on your website.

2. Article Meta Title

The article meta title is the title tag that appears in search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The meta title must be crafted with care, must make sense to the reader, and must have the main keywords of your article included in it so that users know what your article is about and click on it if it’s what they are looking for.

Post meta title: How search engines show your post in search results.

3. Subtitle

Your article’s subtitle is as important as the heading of your post. For subtitles, you can use an H2 and even an H3 heading based on your article’s structure to feature important points in your article and allows users to skim through it. Subtitles also help you add more keywords and focused-SEO to your content, which draws the attention of search engines.

4. Post image

The visual content of your blog post, and especially your featured image is an important part of your blog and should not, under any circumstances be downplayed or chosen at random. Yes, your content is what’s going to be ultimately valuable to your readers but the featured image represents the idea, mood, or theme of your post.  Posts and articles can have one or more featured images, and several tools can hep you enhance the visual presentation of your blog. Keep in mind that real images and infographics have a higher Click Through Rate (CTR) than stock images do.

5. Image description

The image description field tells the story behind the picture, how it was taken, and can convey any idea that you want about the image itself. Here’s a secret for image descriptions in WordPress. If you add text to the description field, it’s stored as “post content” for the attachment post. This means if someone lands on the image’s attachment post page, they will see the long description of that image. However, not all themes support this function.

6. Image Alt text or (Alt Tag)

This denotes how Google recognizes your image or how it can “know” what this image is. The term “ALT tag” is a common shorthand term used to refer to the ALT attribute within in the Image tag. Any time you use an image, be sure to include an ALT tag or ALT text within the IMG tag.

• Keep the ALT text concise and descriptive
• Write alt text for readers, and not for search engines. Readers use contextual descriptions to understand the idea behind the image.

7. Image title

Your image title should always be proper, and never an auto-generated number such as image73.jpg, the image title should align with your post title and also include keywords. To ensure that search engines pick up on what an image is about, always use a proper image Title. There are several plugins in the market that will auto-fill your Image title, I would recommend that image title and image Alt text be completed manually, as Search Engines can easily pick spammy content which is generated by most of these plugins. 

8. Breadcrumbs

“Breadcrumb” (or “breadcrumb trail”) is a type of secondary navigation scheme that reveals the user’s location in a website or Web application. Most importantly, “Breadcrumb” allow users to track their path from the page they are currently viewing to the home page of your website. If you are using a word press website, and your theme provider doesn’t provide “Breadcrumb” feature, you can add a plugin such as ( Breadcrumb by pickplugins, or Breadcrumb NavXT by John Halvic)

9. Headings

In general, heading are used to highlight the main idea of the article and the emphasized ideas in your blog posts. H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 Headings are different headings you can use to  structure the hierarchy of content in your article By default, in any SEO-optimized theme, the post title uses an H1 heading tag . So for the next sub-heading, you can use an H2 heading, and then an H3 heading, and so on.

10. Article

Generally speaking, the body of an article should be between 500 to 1,600 words. Try to aim for 7 minute read, which comes up to around 1,600 words. Regardless of the length of your article however, make sure it never falls below 200 words which search engines classify as “thin content”. This is penalized by most search engines and is usually demoted because it is seen as not useful.

Don’t keep an eye on word count when you write. Find a balance where you can write valuable content and make it SEO-friendly. Nowadays, search engines are focused entirely on the quality of your post and the search experience of the end user. If it takes you 1,000 words to fully convey your message, by all means that’s great. But if you can say it all in 600, that’s even better. Here is a checklist to help you go over all the elements which you need to consider when writing your article.

• Have I mentioned everything about this topic?
• Does my article give value to the reader?
• Did I answer all the questions I can about this topic?
• Have I showcased the product or service I am using to make money?
• Is the keyword use correct and relevant?
• Does the post encourage users to take action?
• Is my next step clear?

11. Spell Check

Running a spell check on your article is a must, even great writers make typos. You can install the Grammarly tool on your browser for accessible, instant auto check.

12. Article Meta description

The article Meta Description is a 156-letter section that is found below your article’s link on search engines. Meta descriptions give information on what this link is about. Usually, this is the 2nd thing that the user looks at before making a decision to click after reading your title when looking for something in a search engine. Make sure you add details and attention-grabbers that attracts your audience to your message.

13. Meta keywords

The meta keywords are the keywords that you want your page to rank for, so that when people search for that keyword, they’ll find you. For blog posts, you should aim for long-tail keywords (phrases that contain multiple words). Once you have found a long-tail search term you want people to find you by, you can use Google Trends to see whether there are a lot of people looking for it and adjust it if need be.

14. Focused keyword

The focused keyword is the main keyword that you would like your article to rank for. Coming up with a random keyword for your article will not be effective and takes a lot of thought, so you should build a strategy around the keywords that you want to use to drive traffic to your blog. You can also use tools like Keyword Planner from Google Ad Words.

15. Long-tail key word

After choosing a focused keyword, it’s the time to support it by generating long tail keywords which are specific to what you are selling. Long-tail keywords are more specific and less competitive than generic keyword terms, and they help your rankings when people use the long tail keyword instead of the core keyword which the article holds. Long-tail keywords usually contain at least three words.

16. Font Style (italics-bold-underline)

Bold, Italics, and underlined font styles can be used to highlight, denote and to add emphasis to your content. Bold is used to highlight the text and capture attention, Underline is used to denote what one is discussing and Italics are used in the conversational type of sentences, dialogues, and names.

Bold or strong

• Important sentences.
• Highlighting keywords.
• Important terms.

Italics or emphasis

• Highlight phrases or thoughts
• Names of books, blogs, newspapers, etc.
• Conversation or dialogues
• Imagination or story
• Highlighting keywords

Underline

• Definition (SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, is…)
• Linking
• Highlighting keywords

17. Internal links

An internal link is a hyperlink on a webpage to another page or resource, such as an image or document, on the same website or domain. These internal links can either help readers understand a concept by linking to another resource you provided previously, and can be used to gain more views. Use internal hyperlinks to keep your audience on your website by connecting your pages with links.

18. External links

External Links are hyperlinks that point at (target) any domain other than the domain the link exists on (source). To make sure you audience does’t bounce of your website, make sure to wrap all your external hyper links with a “Target=_blank”, so that the link opens in a new windows.

19. Anchor text

Anchor text is the clickable text that redirects a user to another webpage once clicked. Anchor text is relevant to the page you’re linking to, rather than generic text. Anchor text has several types such as (Exact match, Partial match, branded, naked link, generic and Image anchor)

20. Permalink

The permalink is usually detected from the title of the page and is automatically implemented into your post. Always double-check your permalink before you publish your post and remove any stop words like (“To” “a“ “I’D“ “adj“ and “etc“) (For a comprehensive list of stop words check Link Assistant ). You cannot control the anchor text in your website which links to other blogs, and you often don’t have any control over the anchor text that other sites use to link back to your own content.

Note: Never change your post permalink once the post is published.

21. Tags

A tag addresses items you discuss on a particular blog post, and is only a word or two that reflects the keywords or points of your article. Tags are used to link several articles that discuss the same subject and include them all in under one category. Finally, Tags can help the user find a particular subject to read about on your blog if they are not interested in other types of articles you write.

22. Social Optimization (Titles and Image)

To optimize your article on social media, we’ll need to work with each platform independently. In other words, Facebook is different from Instagram and Twitter is different than Pinterest.

For Facebook, we can use Facebook’s OpenGraph. In a few pieces of metadata you declare:

• What type of content you have
• What the locale is
• What the canonical URL of the page is
• The site name and title page
• What the page is about
• Which image / images should be shown when this post or page is shared on Facebook

Twitter has something similar in its Twitter Cards. Twitter Values are:

• The type of content / type of card
• Image
• Description
• The twitter account of the site / publisher
• The twitter account of the author
• The “name” for the domain to show in a Twitter card

23. Author info

If you are an author, and you want to highlight this on your website, you might want to consider adding an Author card in the side bar and include a short description about you (The Author) and links to your social media platforms. WordPress provides a user section where you can input that information, but if you would like to take this to the next level, free plugins like ( Download WP Author Info By Ghuwad, or WP Author Bio By penguininitiatives) can help you add creative Author cards to your blog.

24. Schema tags

Schema tags are how google and other search engines identify your article and categorize it as news articles, piece of investigative reporting, recipes, services, or if it’s an “How to article”. To learn more about Scheme properties and extensions that you can utilize, visit Schema.org.

Conclusion

After you have completed all the steps, click “Save Draft,” and then click “Preview”to see how your article looks like. Once you are completely satisfied with the results, you can “schedule post”, or post it immediately. To see how your schema markup is looking, use Google structure data marking tool.

Note: In this article I have completed a small section of On-page optimization. Implementing everything mentioned above is very important if you are considering to rank on Search Engines, but this work alone is not enough as ranking your website consists of several stages other than page optimization strategies, which will be covered in other posts.

The post How To Write Perfect SEO Articles in WordPress appeared first on Hamza Shatela.

Fix the Leverage Browser Caching Warning in WordPress

If you have ever run your WordPress website through Google PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom, then you’re probably familiar with the infamous Leverage Browser Caching warning. That may also be the reason why you’ve stumbled upon this post. Today, I’m going to dissect this warning and talk about its elements; what it means, what it affects, and what your options are as it pertains to your WordPress site.

What is the Leverage Browser Caching Warning?

The leverage browser caching warning, as shown below in the screenshot, refers to your browser cache. Whenever you visit a website, it downloads assets, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and images into your browser’s local cache. This way, it doesn’t have to retrieve them on every page load. The warning returns when your web server or a third-party server doesn’t have the correct HTTP cache headers implemented. Otherwise, your headers might exist, but the cache time is set too short.

You might also see this warning in the new “think with Google” website speed test, which is powered by Google PageSpeed Insights. This was designed to be a kind of marketing tool by Google, but clients are now increasingly sending these error reports to their webmasters to deal with instead.

Fix the Leverage Browser Caching Warning in WordPress

When it comes to fixing the leverage browser caching warning there are a couple of different scenarios that are usually encountered by WordPress users. Obviously, the most common one is that your web server is not correctly configured. The second one is that the Google Analytic’s script gives the warning. Third-party scripts also return the warning.

1. Leverage Browser Caching on Server
2. Leverage Browser Caching and Google Analytics
3. What About Other 3rd Party Scripts?
4. URL fingerprinting

1. Leverage Browser Caching on Server

The most common reason why the chache warning comes up us when the server doesn’t have the right headers in place. In the screenshot below in Google PageSpeed Insights, you will see the reason is because the Expires header wasn’t specified. When it comes to caching, there are two primary methods which are used, Cache-Control headers and Expires headers. While the Cache-Control header turns on client-side caching and sets the max-age of a resource, the Expires header determines a specific point in time that the resource will no longer be valid for.

Adding headers to your web server can be done by using Cache-Control nowadays, although some web performance tools like GTmetrix still check for Expires headers.

Adding Cache-Control Header in Nginx

You can add Cache-Control headers in Nginx by adding the following to your server config’s server location or block.

location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ {
 expires 30d;
 add_header Cache-Control "public, no-transform";
}

So what exactly is the code above doing? Basically, it is telling the server that the file types are not going to change for at least one month. So instead of having to download the resource every time, it caches it on your computer. This way it is faster for return visits.

Adding Expires Headers in Nginx

You can add Expires headers in Nginx by adding the following to your server block. In this example, you can see how to specify different expire times based on file types.

    location ~*  \.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png)$ {
        expires 365d;
    }

    location ~*  \.(pdf|css|html|js|swf)$ {
        expires 2d;
    }

Adding Cache-Control Headers in Apache

You can add Cache-Control headers in Apache by adding the following to your .htaccess file.

<filesMatch ".(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=84600, public"
</filesMatch>

Adding Expires Headers in Apache

You can add Expires headers in Apache by adding the following to your .htaccess file.

## EXPIRES HEADER CACHING ##
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/png "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/pdf "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 year"
ExpiresDefault "access 2 days"
</IfModule>
## EXPIRES HEADER CACHING ##

If you are a Kinsta client you don’t have to worry about adding these headers. These are already in place on all of our Nginx servers. And remember, if you use CDN provider like KeyCDN, these headers are most likely already being set on your assets.

2. Leverage Browser Caching and Google Analytics

The second most common leverage browser caching warning can come from Google Analytics.  The issue is that they set a low 2 hour cache time on their asset, as seen in the screenshot below. They do this because if they want to modify something, they want all users to get the changes as fast as possible.  However there is a way to get around this, and that is by hosting Google Analytics script on your own server. Please be aware though that this is not supported by Google.

There is a great free little plugin called Complete Analytics Optimization Suite, created and developed by Daan van den Bergh, which allows you to host Google Analytics locally on your WordPress website.

You can download Complete Analytics Optimization Suite from the WordPress repository or by searching for it under “Add New” plugins in your WordPress dashboard. The plugin allows you to host your Google Analytics JavaScript file (analytics.js) locally and keep it updated using wp_cron(). Other features include being able to easily anonymize the IP address of your visitors, set an adjusted bounce rate, and placement of the script (header or footer).

Some additional benefits to hosting your analytics script locally is that you reduce your external HTTP requests to Google from 2 to 1, and you now have full control over the caching of the file.

Just install the plugin, enter your Google Analytics Tracking ID, and the plugin adds the necessary tracking code for Google Analytics to your WordPress website. It downloads and saves the analytics.js file to your server and keeps it updated using a scheduled script in wp_cron(). I recommend also setting it to load in the footer. Note: This plugin won’t work with other Google Analytics WordPress plugins.

3. What About Other 3rd Party Scripts?

If you are running a business on your WordPress website, most likely you have additional 3rd party scripts running to track conversions, A/B tests, etc. This might include scripts like Facebook conversion pixels, Twitter, CrazyEgg, Hotjar, etc. Unfortunately, since you can’t host those locally there is nothing much that can be done as you don’t have control over the caching of those 3rd party assets. But for many smaller sites and bloggers, you most likely can get rid of that leverage browser caching warning altogether by following the recommendations above.

4.URL fingerprinting

Getting a fresh file resource is possible by having a unique name. An example would be if our css file was named “main.css” we could name it “main_1.css” instead. The next time we change it we can call it “main_2.css”. This is useful for files that change occasionally.

Common caching issue

If you list your html and images to be cached for one year or some other long time period, remember that this can mean if you make a change to your pages they may not be seen by all users. This is because the users will look to cached files rather than the live ones. If you have file that you tweak occasionally (example – a CSS file) you can overcome the cache issue by using URL fingerprinting.

Conclusion

There are a lot of options that can help you get rid of those annoying leverage browser caching warnings on your WordPress site. Remember, these website performance tools should be used as guidelines. Try not to worry about the scores too much; it’s not that big of a deal, but it never hurts to fix issues that can be resolved quickly and that can help your page load faster.

The post Leverage Browser Caching appeared first on Hamza Shatela.

Search Engine Optimization

If you are the owner of a website, then you will eventually have to learn about Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. This guide will help you optimize your website for ON-Site SEO, so that it can rank higher on major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.

1. Pretty URLs
2. Robots.txt
3. HTTPS
4. XML sitemap
5. Site speed
6. Broken links
7. Schema Markup
8. AMP Pages
9. Free themes
10. Site structure
11. Pagination and crawling
12. Comments
13. Duplicate content

1. Pretty URLs

Earlier WordPress versions had what they call “ugly” URLs that had too many numbers. For example, a blog post used to have a URL like this http://mydomain.com/?p=3455543241354.

The latest versions use “pretty” URLs by default in the “date+name” format, e.g. http://mydomain.com/2016/02/28/sample-post/.

While this looks so much better, you might want to consider taking the date off your URLs. In this case, your older posts with great and still useful content don’t seem to be irrelevant because they were written in the past.

In order to adjust URL settings, go to Settings > Permalinks in your Admin panel.

Note: In order to enable pretty URLs, WordPress should have write access to the .htaccess file, if you run your WordPress website on an Apache web server (most likely this is the case).

2. Robots.txt

WordPress does not create a physical, permanent robots.txt file on the server. The CMS generates it on the spot, when a client requests it via http://mydomain.com/robots.txt. However, if you manually create a robots.txt file in the WordPress root directory, it will override the default settings.

If you stick with a dynamically generated robots.txt file, you have two options to manage it:

• Use WordPress plugin like Multipart robots.txt editor. The plugin lets you include the following records in robots.txt: WordPress core records (it will include the /wp-adminfolder), plugin and theme generated records, the list of ‘bad bots’ (maintained by the plugin developers), and your custom records.
• Edit the do_robots() function in /wp-includes/functions.php and customize it up to your requirements using the $output variable. See the code below.

In most cases, you wouldn’t need to make changes to robots.txt often, so it’s more reasonable to use a static robots.txt file. This way you’ll be able to easily access it via FTP anytime to make changes.

3. HTTPS

In 2014, Google added HTTPS to the list of ranking factors. It’s not among the top important ranking signals, but going HTTPS may still give you a slight ranking boost.

Here’s how you can set up HTTPS on your WordPress site.

• 1. Get a dedicated IP address for your website.
• 2. Obtain SSL certificate.
• 3. Configure your web server to use the SSL certificate.
• 4. The easiest part: go to Settings > General in the WordPress Admin panel. In the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) fields, fill in your website home page URL with https in it.

4. XML sitemap

WordPress doesn’t generate XML sitemaps out of the box. You may use one of the plugins to add this functionality. Google XML Sitemaps is probably the most widely used and reliable solution. When choosing an XML generator plugin, make sure it lets you do the following things:

• Include/exclude user-defined URLs
• Include/exclude WordPress taxonomies
• Set crawling priority
• Change crawling frequency.

Once installed and activated, Google XML Sitemaps automatically generates the sitemap and notifies the search engines about it. The default plugin settings will meet the requirements of most users. The plugin generates the sitemap on the fly, when a client requests it, so there is no physical XML file on the server.

5. Site speed

Site speed is one of the most important “technical” ranking factors that is used by search engines. It is important that you always work on improving your site’s load time. There are a few easy solutions to help you improve your WordPress website’s speed.

• 1. Easy on the Plugins. Plugins are useful, but they slow the site down. I would recommend only installing plugins that provide real value. Check the plugins before installing them to the production website, and test your website speed both before and after installing them.
• 2. Clean up your WordPress theme from data base calls, functions, and Java scripts.
• 3. Install a caching plugin. These plugins create HTML versions of the dynamic pages and return them when requested by a client. This reduces server load time and speeds the website up. There are two leading caching plugins available- W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache. W3 Total Cache can be customized and is full of great features, but you have to have have a solid understanding of web technologies to use it appropriately. WP Super Cache is easy to use and is designed to meet the typical requirements of the average user – you just switch it on and it works.

6. Broken links

Checking and fixing broken links is time consuming, so I would recommend using the Broken Link Checker plugin a try. It scans your website for broken links  in both post pages and comments, and then sends an email that logs the results of the check. All the broken links are listed in the spreadsheet.

7. Schema Markup

Schema markup is a special data format that is used to convert the data into the structured data. The term “structured data” stands for the meaningful information.

Search engines always try to improve their results and stay relevant. For example, Google’s search result pages are “enhanced” with a lot of additional information, including recipes, flight information, rating stars, etc. The snippets with enhancements normally have a higher click-through-rate and get more traffic than plain snippets. These enhancements or content type features appear in search only if Google understands the data on the source websites. Since search engines don’t fully understand your page content as a human would, you have to help it by including data that search engines can navigate.

There is the Schema syntax that adds essential mark ups to your blog. It adds article schema to each blog post in JSON-LD (the syntax that is recommended by Google). Optionally, you can include Breadcrumbs, Comments, Audio-/Video-object schemas, as well as the information about your organization and authors.

8. AMP Pages

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. Its function is to speed up the load time of the webpages on the mobile devices. AMP technology strips a lot of HTML tags, JavaScript and CSS; plus, it leverages server-side caching. AMP pages look lean and lack the fancy styling of ordinary webpages.

AMP is not likely to have the direct effect on the website rankings, it’s more about user experience and load speed.

WordPress comes with a default AMP plugin. The only thing you should care about is the compatibility with other plugins. In particular, make sure that all SEO meta-data is correctly passed from ordinary pages to the AMP pages.

9. Free themes

I do NOT recommend installing free themes that don’t come from the official WordPress directory. A “free” theme from an unverified source may contain malicious or unwanted pieces of code.

Very often “free” themes have some outgoing links included in the footer or sidebar. These links typically have commercial anchors and they have nothing to do with the developer of the theme. The license agreement of such themes usually prohibits you from removing the links. It’s up to you to decide how to deal with them, but at least don’t forget to add a “nofollow” tag.

Always scan the theme files for the obfuscated pieces of code (it may look like this: aGVsbG8gcGVvcGxlIHRoaXMgYW4gZW5jb2RlZCBzdHJpbmc= ); if you come across such strings, I would highly recommend that you select an alternative theme.

Also, pay attention to the usage of third-party JavaScript in the theme. Check out the theme’s functions.php file. It may contain some undesirable code too.

10. Site structure

When you mold the structure of your WordPress website, you may adopt either of the two approaches or their combination:

• 1. Use Page as the core element. This lets you set a parent-child relationship among the pages to arrange your content into groups.This structure is handy if you’re building a simple website for your business. The logical hierarchical arrangement of Pages will then allow you to insert breadcrumbs, nested menus, etc. easier.

As you can see above, this structure is purely hierarchical: there is only one primary way, or path, to any given page.

• 2. Use Post as the core element. The content is then structured using Category and/or Tagtaxonomies. Unlike Tags, Categories are hierarchical.This is the best choice for blogs, product catalogues, directories, and similar websites. Category or Tag pages list all the posts that belong to them, while Page only displays its content.

11. Pagination and crawling

Blog Category and Tag pages normally list multiple posts and consist of a series of pages. By default, the navigation across the series of pages is implemented with two links: “Newer posts” and “Older posts”. However, this solution is not always optimal for a number of reasons:

• It’s not user friendly (What if I want to skip to page No. 9 in the series?)
• It’s harder to reach the paginated content for the search engines’ crawlers.

WP-PageNavi fixes these issues. The plugin replaces the standard pagination with “Previous 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – … Next” kind.

12. Comments

Enable comments only if you feel you have enough resources to moderate them and follow up on them, otherwise the comments section will be chock-full of spam. The few steps below will make your life easier.

• 1. Automatically close comments after a certain period of time since the post was published. In the WordPress Admin Panel, go to Settings > Discussion. Check the Automatically close comments on articles older than box and enter the number of days you’d like comments to be open for.
• 2. Activate the Akismet plugin. Akismet is included in WordPress by default. You should visit the Akismet website and get the API key to use the plugin. Akismet is free for personal use. If you run a commercial website, you can get the paid API key. Keep in mind, it does make mistakes and you’d still need to review the comments.
• 3. Give WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam a try. In this scenario, the user wanting to leave a comment would need JavaScript and cookies to be enabled in their browser. WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam also sets the minimal comment length and commenting speed. As a result, it stops primitive spam bots pretty well.

13. Duplicate content

External duplication:

Content of a WordPress site is normally available in RSS format. This makes your posts easy to scrape and re-publish for blogs and platforms that live off scraping content. Google’s pretty strict about content uniqueness and may not be able to tell between the original and the scraped version; so it’s in your best interest to make your website harder to scrape.

In the WordPress Admin Panel, go to Settings > Reading. Select For each article in a feed, show: Summary. You can also reduce the number of items shown in syndication feeds.

Internal duplication:

By default, WordPress generates a lot of duplicate content. It has Archive, Author, Category, and Tag pages, and there may be hundreds of tags and categories. The same page may belong to all of these groups, and be listed dozens of times across the website. Here’s how to deal with the problem.

• 1. Use the minimal required number of categories and tags, and develop guidelines for the website contributors on how to use them. For example, consider if it is useful to populate the sidebar of your blog with Calendar, Categories, and Tag Cloud simultaneously? Will it provide value to the user? Will the user benefit if there are 42 tags attached to a blog post?
• 2. Use the canonical tag. There are several plugins to help you do this, e.g. Yoast SEO.
• 3. Implement rel=next/previous tags for paginated content.
• 4. Create an excerpt for each post you publish. It will appear both in RSS feeds and on Category, Tag, Author, and Archive pages (depending on the theme settings). As a result, your original content will stay on the page where it belongs, and the excerpt will be duplicated on other pages.
  If the excerpt doesn’t appear on Archive or Category pages in your theme by default, you’d have to create custom page templates. The detailed the_excerpt() function reference and the full guide on WordPress Templates will come in handy if you are going to cope with this task yourself.
• 5. Create meaningful descriptions for tags and categories. Thus, each category or tag page will have unique content above the list of posts or excerpts.

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