seo Archives - Page 5 of 9 - Unwired Web Solutions

How To Retain Your SEO Ranking After A Website Redesign

October 5, 2021 by David Henderson

As the eCommerce market changes, it may be necessary to change your website to stay competitive in your industry. For most websites, it is best to overhaul your entire site every few years rather than make small changes here and there. However, there is often hesitation about opting for the redesign because it could cause problems with all the hard work you have done on your SEO. At Unwired Web Solutions, our experts offer search engine optimization services for websites that have been redesigned. Just because you have a new website doesn’t mean you should lose your placement within search rankings.

Maintain the Website URL Structure

When redesigning a website, all existing website URLs should be kept as is. This is especially true for pages that are ranking organically. Retaining this structure means that the web design team can upgrade the design and content of the page, but the website address will stay the same.

If you have spent time building up links and rankings for the page, changing the URL could run the risk of losing the SEO value of that page. To avoid losing any SEO ranking, audit your existing sitemap before starting a redesign. This can avoid any problems when linking new pages together, making adjustments to the navigation, or changing page names.

Be Careful with 301 Redirects

Many people find that at some point in the redesign process of their website, they will need to delete a page or change its URL address. If this is done, a 301 redirect must be set up correctly. If these redirects are not in place, visitors and search engines will receive a 404 error, stating that the page cannot be found. This will not only deter potential customers but can also negatively impact your SEO rankings.

Improve Your Web Content

A site redesign is a perfect opportunity to improve your website content. Most businesses don’t update their website content outside of a web project, so this is a perfect time to edit descriptions of your products and services while considering specific cues for the search engines, such as relevant headings and keywords. This is also the perfect opportunity to revisit blog posts that are not performing well and update the content.

However, if you have pages that rank very well for a specific keyword, avoid drastically changing or deleting many critical headlines. The H1 and H2 tags on a web page are vital for SEO.

Closely Monitor Site

It is crucial to monitor a website for the first couple of months after the redesign. Even with the best quality control process, some website issues are very difficult to detect before launch.

Using Google’s search console can help to detect indexing errors, mobile functionality errors automatically, and crawl errors for your website. With Google being the most popular search engine globally, fixing errors related to their indexing is paramount.

After your new website has launched, run several speed tests and watch for slow load times, especially on the home page. With Google’s latest rollout, this is one function of a website that plays a significant role in SEO rankings.

A Long-Term Strategy

SEO is a long-term marketing strategy that is constantly changing. Search engines are consistently running updates and finding ways to improve indexing and their understanding of web content. When doing a redesign, the best way to keep your site ranking is to draw on the SEO progress you have already have in place.

Our experts at Unwired Web Solutions are happy to help with any search engine optimization services when doing a redesign. Don’t lose out on all the hard work you have already put into a website. Contact our team today to learn how we can keep your site on the top rankings.

How Well Is Your Content Performing Across All Audiences

September 29, 2021 by David Henderson

Optimized content marketing is about making your content as useful, easy to find, and easy to read as much as possible. But, like clothes, content marketing isn’t one size fits all. Just as you should wear clothes that fit the appropriate situation, all content should fit the audience you are trying to appeal to.

The 5 Audiences

There are five primary audiences that your content should be optimized for. These include:

Customers
Social Media
Search
Influencers
Your business

By transforming your content to appeal to these five target audiences, you can improve your distribution results. Optimized content stands can easily stand out to your audience because you’ve tailored it to be contextually relevant to them.

Customers

Keeping your content relevant to customers, it should be easy to read and not too challenging to consume. The best place to start is by creating marketing personas to determine your audience’s needs and wants. Start by adding an attractive title followed by an enticing image to stop readers. People see pictures 60,000 times faster than text, so it is vital to get the photo right. Think about your customer reading this content and use legible fonts, 12 point type or larger, and select an easy colour on the eyes.

Social Media

Integrate social sharing into your content by adding buttons for social media platforms your audience can easily use. Make photos pinnable for Pinterest, and incorporate reformatted text for Twitter. Think about each platform and how your content will be shared. Many experts suggest focusing on social media sharing in the first three days post-publication.

One area that many businesses overlook is the comment section on social media. Reward people who engage by responding to each and every comment. This will build relationships with your customers and show that you are a reliable, professional business.

By creating content that can transform across each social media platform, your customers will appreciate the ease and quality of the content you are providing.

Search

All content should be developed with SEO in mind. In creating content for your website, it should include keywords that will help you rank in Google when people search for what your business offers. Content should also include links to credible outside sources to increase trustworthiness.

Images should also be optimized with alt tags. Your site will gain a better ranking by describing the image for search engines and visually impaired visitors.

Influencers

A relatively new idea in digital marketing, influencers can help you advertise your business. By referencing specific thought leaders in your content, you can add credibility to your brand. Bringing influencers to your business can help distribute your content across multiple platforms.

Your Business

Don’t overlook the optimization of content to ensure visitors engage with your brand. Include a relevant call to action on each page to make it easier for your customers to know what the next step should be. Adding links to relevant products where appropriate can help customers shop easier. You can also keep up your customer’s purchasing power by adding bestsellers into the right-hand column of your site.

You must make it easy for your readers to contact you by including your physical address, phone number, and email on every page. Having a separate contact us page is also highly recommended.

Take All Audiences into Consideration

Successful, optimized content marketing should consider all audiences. For more information on content marketing, contact our experts today. At Unwired Web Solutions, we understand the complexities of reaching your target audience through content.

How To Grow Your Blog

August 30, 2021 by David Henderson

Having a blog could be essential for your business. Many experts agree that it is vital for website content optimization. But when you put time and effort into a blog, you want people to read it. So how do you grow your blog and not only make it enjoyable and informative to your readers but to increase your number of visitors?

Should You Spend Time Writing Blog?

When starting a business, you may wonder if you should spend time building a blog and crafting content. While it may seem like a time-consuming job, having a business blog can be beneficial. One of the most important reasons to have a blog is to help drive traffic to your products, upping your customer numbers. Continual content using specific SEO keywords can help with ranking in Google. Aside from using keywords, inbound links and backlinks are a Google ranking factor that can be placed within blog content.

Blogs can also position you as an expert in your industry. It is a place where you can inform your consumers about your products and/or services. The more information you can share, the more it will inspire trust in your consumers and turn traffic into leads.

Make it User-Friendly

One of the most important things to remember when creating a blog is making it a user-friendly experience. Customers do not want to read articles on a website that is difficult to navigate, so make sure your blog and website as a whole are easy to use. Navigation should be simple, and a search box should be included so your customers can easily find what they are looking for.

Page speed is essential so your customers don’t get impatient, but it is now something that Google considers when ranking websites. Ensure your blog is running at top speed to ensure your potential customers can find you in a search.

The Importance of Social Media

If you have a blog, social media should be an integral part of the marketing behind it. By promoting your blog on social media profiles, you reach more potential customers by driving more traffic to your website. Utilize all social media platforms available from Twitter to Pinterest and Facebook.

Social media platforms are not only a place to share your blog content, but they can also be a way for your readers to share your content as well. This is just another way for your content to reach more people. While it may sound simple, crafting engaging content that provides readers with a value they want to share with others involves taking time and marketing skills.

An SEO Strategy

Writing for a blog requires a particular skill set, and part of this skill is knowing how to incorporate search engine optimization within the content. An SEO strategy within a blog can help users discover your content. Using keywords as part of your SEO strategy will enable web browsers to find your blog.

Another challenge in creating a blog is making sure your readers come back each time you publish an article. Tools that enable readers to subscribe to an email list are a great way to help ensure those people will return to your blog again. Interactive pop-ups are a crucial component in helping to gather potential customer information.

Nurture Your Blog

Growing a blog can take a lot of nurturing. This means building engagement by replying to comments. If a reader has taken the time out to leave a comment, a proper response should be made. By building a rapport with the commenter, they’re more likely to return to your blog in the future.

It is essential to know the many ways to help grow a blog, or you may find yourself writing to an empty audience. Our team at Unwired Web Solutions can help to grow your blog and ensure that it benefits your business, converting readers into customers. Contact us today to learn more about our services, including website content optimization

How Backlinks Affect SEO

August 6, 2021 by David Henderson

For those trying to build a website and get traction in SEO, backlinks may be an important part of your strategy. This may be why you have been doing link-building outreach, guest blogging, or producing data-driven content, hoping that other sources will cite. After all, getting more backlinks has been an SEO tactic since the early days. But are they still necessary?

SEO services have long provided backlink strategies for companies looking to gain higher site rankings. So, surely with the number of backlinks that websites have racked up over the years, they must have impacted the SEO, right? Google says, not necessarily. According to John Mueller, a webmaster trends analyst at Google, the total number of backlinks on a website doesn’t matter at all. In fact, it isn’t even something that a search algorithm looks at.

Quality Vs. Quantity

In the link-building world, quantity is now out, and quality is where you should be putting your focus. Just one good link from a high-authority website can be more impactful than thousands of low-quality links. Google really only looks at how relevant each link is to the website that it is pointing to. Mueller suggests that even a page has only one high-quality link from a major news site, that signal would be enough for Google to categorize it as a quality page.

High-quality backlinks have always been the ultimate SEO trump card, so this should not come as a surprise to some people. It seems that many business owners get carried away in practices that only focused on getting more links. SEO experts agree that time and effort should be put into producing content that people will want to link to. Although it is not easy, it will prove to be much more valuable to Google and its user experience-focused future. Google’s page experience update is currently being rolled out, and user experience should now be your top priority as a business owner.

Internal Links

Internal links are also important for the SEO of your website. Unlike backlinks which go from an external website to your site, an internal link points to content within the same domain which can help the user navigate a website. These internal links can help Google index the website’s structure. They help to organize content and will tell search engine “crawlers” to discover and archive more relevant pages. This will help benefit the site’s SEO.

While there is no right or wrong in how many internal links you should have on your site, it should make sense where you are directing your customers. For example, many “FAQ” pages have direct links to a “contact page.” It makes sense for the customer to be directed to one page after the other.

SEO Services

If you require SEO services, our experts at Unwired Web Solutions can help with backlinks or any other concerns you may have about your site. As Google rolls out its new user experience-focused requirements, it is vital to have your site ready for the new changes. This includes ensuring your backlink and internal links are creating a user-friendly experience for your customer. Contact us today to learn how we can make sure you stay high in Google rankings. Click here to learn more about our services.

How Multiple Product Pages Can Impact SEO

July 14, 2021 by David Henderson

For eCommerce websites, it can be confusing to know how many pages should be used for multiple products in the same family. Our search engine optimization Waterloo experts dive into the subject and explain when and when not to use multiple pages.

This is actually more of a common question than you may think. Many sellers have single products offered in different sizes or colours and are unsure of how to categorize them. Today we will discuss the issue using t-shirts as an example of a product.

Single Product

Experts advise using a single product page when selling a single product. For example, shoppers do not need individual pages such as material, size, and colour. If your shop only carries one t-shirt and no others, it will only have one product page but will have canonical links to point back to it. These links will be applied to all parameters and variants and let search engine optimization know the “preferred” web page version.

Sizes do not generally have enough uniqueness to justify having individual product pages. However, colours may be separated out by having their own page. This can help shoppers, for example, who are only looking for red t-shirts or black crew-neck shirts.

Even if you only carry one product, by separating them out on dedicated pages for specific colours, you can benefit your consumers, and better describe the printing options and styling options. All size options would have a canonical back to the original colour option.

Another point to consider is if this is the only version of the product you will carry. In other words, you will never carry, manufacture, upgrade or release new versions. It is only in this instance that you will want to try and optimize unique pages for variants. If you do go this route, you need to build a solid site structure and make sure your copy is 100% unique for each version. SEO can penalize sites that have the same content on multiple pages.

Exceptions to the Rule

There will always be exceptions to the rule. However, the general rule of thumb is if there is no need for individual variant pages and no actual benefit to the end-user, use a single page and apply canonical links to the variants.

Our search engine optimization Waterloo team at Unwired Web Solutions takes pride in helping businesses set up their eCommerce sites to increase conversations. Contact us today and learn more about how we can positively impact your website and ensure your products and variations are set up effectively and efficiently.