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Google to Add Mobile-Friendly Factors to it’s Ranking Algorithm

By responsive design, SEO, web design

In a post on Google’s official blog, Google announced the addition of mobile-friendly factors to their ranking algorithm. How will this change affect the rankings of your web pages and what do you have to do to benefit from this change?

What exactly has Google announced?

Starting on 21 April 2015, Google will be using mobile friendly factors in the ranking algorithm for mobile search results. The official post reads:

“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.

Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”

In addition, Google has started to use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed. As a result, Google may now surface content from indexed apps more prominently in search.

What do you have to do now?

It is important to make sure that your web pages are mobile-friendly. Fortunately, Google has made this a bit easier as they have created a tool for this that is available here. Just enter the URL of your website (website address) and click the “Analyze” button. If your website passes the test, you will see something like this:

responsive test

If your website fails the test then you have to adjust the design of your web pages. Instead of creating a separate website for mobile devices, which has little to recommend it, you could use responsive web design for your web pages.

Being mobile-friendly alone is not the answer to SEO

A website that currently does not have high search rankings won’t get high rankings just because it is mobile-friendly. There are many more things that Google wants to find on your web pages, all of which we can help you with.

Call us today on 01273 328877, or leave a comment below to find out more about our responsive web design and SEO services.

7 Security Tips for WordPress

7 Fundamental Security Tips for WordPress

By Website, Wordpress

WordPress has become the most popular Content Management System or CMS in the world. However, they’re not stopping there.

WordPress is an incredibly powerful tool for web design because it gives clients a sample of what their website will look like (theme previews). They allow clients to edit content themselves with relative ease. But most importantly they considerably reduce the costs to build websites by significantly shortening the time needed to build them.

That said, WordPress’ biggest weakness currently is security. Fortunately, most security mishaps related to WordPress are due to errors made by the user, and are easily avoidable – here’s how.

7 Security Tips for WordPress:

1. Overall Desktop Security

You can’t expect any of your online profiles to be safe when your computer’s security itself has been compromised. This isn’t just relevant to WordPress it’s a must for anyone valuing their online privacy.

So make sure that you have solid antivirus software, firewall protection and scan for malware often. If you have a laptop or a tablet I’d recommend getting a highly secure, positive password from Mantra Password too.

2. Secure web Hosting

Another frequent issue with WordPress security which isn’t actually relevant to WordPress itself is insecure servers. The only way to really know whether a host will be secure is by checking out reviews and perhaps getting in contact with some of the clients.

Remember servers will always be compromised at some point, sometimes it’s better to judge who to get hosted with based on how providers have dealt with the issue.

3. Keep WordPress up to date

The more time a hacker has to attempt breaking into your website the more likely they are to succeed. By regularly updating WordPress, your theme and all of your plugins you can avoid the majority of issues.

Sometimes this may mean investing in a new theme, as they will only be updated for so long before developers move on to newer themes.

4. Use only the most popular tools and themes

Firstly, WordPress themes and tools become popular for a reason – they don’t just look great, but they are versatile and easy to use.

Another benefit of using a popular theme is that developers will continue to invest in them for a longer period of time. This means that your theme will be updated frequently, giving you access to new features – but more importantly, your latest security needs.

5. Delete unused plugins, tools and themes

Just because a plugin or theme isn’t activated doesn’t mean that it can be used to breach your WordPress security. Don’t risk your website over a plugin which you don’t even use. Get rid of it, now!

6. Protect your Login

A secure password is a given. We’re talking numbers, a mix of upper and lower case and most of all a phrase which is unrelated to you as an individual.

I’d highly recommend using a phrase you can remember and purposely placing numbers in the place of characters which look somewhat similar.

For example: 4NgryAppl3 = AngryApple.

However you shouldn’t stop there, a secure password will only get you so far. The Login LockDown plugin can make your login more secure by locking for a set period after your password is repeatedly typed incorrectly.

The Captcha plugin can allow you to add a captcha to your WordPress login this will increase your security considerably.

7. Keep your WordPress website backed up

If your using these tips your WordPress website should be highly secure. However accidents sometimes happen and nothing is certain. Backing up your website can if nothing else give you peace of mind – if something does occur, however likely you can always just back up.

Pantone Colour of the Year

By Design

For the more ‘arty’ people out there, the world-renowned authority on color and provider of color systems (Pantone) has decided on the Colour of the Year 2014.

And the winner is Marsala

Colour in design is very subjective. What evokes one reaction in one person may evoke a very different reaction in someone else.  For what it is worth, this is what Marsala means to us:

  • The darker shades of red can be powerful and elegant
  • There is a hint of blood in the colour and so it can denote feelings such as passion or alarm
  • Dark red, when combined with white and gray, gives a very elegant and professional impression
  • Use shades of red to grab attention and to get people to take action.

For companies, the key is to consider how the colour you choose for your company will be perceived by your target market rather than the colour your business stakeholders like.

TCmarketing SEO

Another Google Panda Update Announced

By SEO News

Google Panda UpdateIn a post on Google+, Google’s Pierre Far announced the latest version of Google’s Panda update. How will this update affect the rankings of your web pages on Google? What can you do to make sure that your web pages get better rankings?

What is Google’s Panda update?

Google’s ‘Panda’ algorithm is a filter that Google designed to penalize web pages with thin or poor content. If the content of a website has been copied from other web pages, or if the content has very low quality, it won’t rank well on Google.

What’s new in the latest Panda update?

Here’s Pierre Far’s official announcement:

“Earlier this week, we started a slow rollout of an improved Panda algorithm, and we expect to have everything done sometime next week.

Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.

Depending on the locale, around 3-5% of queries are affected.”

What does this mean for your website?

If your website has been penalized in the recent past:

If your website was penalised by the last Panda update, your rankings might recover if you have changed your web page content in the meantime.

If your rankings have recovered by recovered by October 5th, then you made the right changes. If not, you have to improve the content of your web pages to regain your former Google rankings.

If your website has not been penalised before:

If your website analytics show a significant traffic drop from Google, or organic search traffic in general, it might be that Google’s new algorithm has determined that your website content is not good enough – in terms of value added to the reader and relevancy.

In that case, you have to improve the content of your web pages to get better rankings.

Google’s Panda algorithm targets websites with low quality content. If you have a real website with real content that is totally relevant and adds value to your visitors, you won’t have to worry about this update.

If you would like to hear more about of SEO Services for Brighton & Hove businesses please leave a comment below or call us on 01273 328877

Bing Explains How They Detect, Process and Filter Out Spam

By SEO

Bing LogoA few days ago Igor Rondel, Principal Development Manager, Bing Index Quality, published a blog post about the way Bing treats web spam.

His post explains how Bing detects, processes and filters out search spam from their search index.

Web page elements that help Bing to detect spam:

Firstly, Bing tries to understand the spammer’s motivation. As most spammers want to make money, Bing analyzes the following:

1. Quality of content

According to Igor Rondel, spammers generate content targeted at search engines and their algorithms, whereas legitimate SEOs generate content for their customers and prospects.
In most cases, spam pages have inadequate content with limited value to the user. “There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of signals used to make this assessment, ranging from simple things like number of words on the page to more complex concepts of content uniqueness and utility.”

2. Presence of ads

Presence of ads doesn’t make a page bad. Bing’s algorithms check how many ads appear on the page, the type of ads (e.g. banner, grey-overs, pop-ups), and how intrusive/disruptive they are.

3. Positional & layout information

Where is the main content located? Where are the ads located? Do the ads take up the prime real estate or are they neatly separated away from the main content (e.g. in the header/ footer or side pane)? Is it easy for users to mentally separate content from ads?

Popular spam techniques that Bing does not like

Igor Rondel listed some spam techniques that Bing does not like. For example, Bing considers the following spam:

• stuffing page body/url/anchors with keywords

• performing link manipulation via link farms, link networks, forum post abuse

• including hidden content on the page not meant for human consumption.

These are the same things that Google does not like. If you want to avoid a penalty, better avoid these methods and do ‘white hat’ SEO instead..

How spammers create content

According to Bing’s Igor Rondel, there are many content generation methods that spammers use:

• copying other’s content (either entirely or with minor tweaks)

• using programs to automatically generate page content

• using external APIs to populate their pages with non-unique content.

Bing’s algorithms try detect these and similar mechanisms. To amplify this, they also develop creative clustering algorithms (using things like page layout, ads, domain names and Whois-type information) that in a way act as force-multipliers to help identify large clusters of these mass produced pages/ sites.

Do not use spam techniques if you want to get high rankings that last. Bing and Google have big anti-spam departments and your website will be penalized if you use spam techniques.  Contact us if you need help putting an effective SEO strategy in place.

How will Google’s ‘Near Match’ change affect your Google Adwords Campaigns?

By Paid Search, SEO

Paid Search Marketing from Tyler ConsultantsGoogle recently announced the your ‘exact match’ and ‘phrase match’ keyword phrases in Google Adwords paid search platform will be matched with ‘variation’ or ‘near match’ keyword phrases starting in September 2014.  In this post we will look at what this means and how it will affect your Google Adwords campaigns.

So What exactly is being changed by Google?

In a recent blog post Google announced that from next month it will no longer be possible to bid on exact match and phrase match keyword phrases without including other very similar keyword phrases.

In their post, Google advised that more than 7% of all Google searches contain a misspelling.  The example they used was:

if you advertise for the exact match keyword “kid scooters”, Google will show your add for the search terms “kid scooters”, “kid’s scooter”, or “kids scooters”.

Currently ‘exact match’ means that if you had the keyword phrase ‘kid scooters’ your ad would only appear if the searcher keyed in ‘kid scooters’ and not for any variation.

So is the change good news or bad news?

As expected the official Google statement is positioning the change as great news for their advertisers as they can expect many more clicks as a result of their ad being triggered by more search phrases.  It also means more money for Google of course and as yet it is unclear whether the variation keywords will have the same conversion rate as the original keyword.

What seems clear to us is that the change is undoubtedly good news for Google but it might not be beneficial to their advertisers.

The change affects both exact match and phrase match keyword phrases

As we explained above Google will be showing your  exact match ad’s and your phrase match ad’s for more keyword phrases as a result of the change.  As an example if you were bidding a phrase match keyword phrase ‘black shoes’ then your ad will be shown in all searched containing the phrase ‘black shoes’ such as ‘buy black shoes’, ‘mens black shoes’, ‘black shoes for sale’ which is fine if you are selling black shoes but your ad will also trigger for non productive searches such as ‘my black shoes hurt’, ‘my girlfriend hit me with her black shoes’ which are still going to cost you money but are unlikely to produce any income for you.

From September when Google activates the new ‘near match’ change  your ad will be triggered by many more variations which means your click costs are likely to increased or your budget will be used up more quickly.

Unfortunately there is not much that advertisers can do about it as Google have made the decision to implement the change.  What you can do however is review your Paid Search campaign and look to see if you can change any of your current phrase match keyword phrases to exact match keyword phrases.  You can also make use of negative keywords to try and make best use of your budget.

If you would like to know more about our paid search services or any aspect of search marketing please call us on 01273 328877

Why Social Media is so Important for Your Business

By Marketing, Social Media

From increased brand exposure to improved search rankings, businesses today have realised how much of a positive impact social media has.

But if you’re a small business that has yet to venture past your optimised website and your occasional e-newsletters into the world of social media, here are a few reasons why you should.

Your customers are already using it

According to the UK Online Measurement company, the average UK surfer spends 22 hours and 15 minutes on the net each month. This means there is a high chance that your target audience is already using social media websites and blogs. So to reach them, you have to join them – by using social media you can reach more potential customers and send out your marketing message on a platform they are confident with.

Increase personal communication

Forget one-way marketing channels. With the help of social media, you can reach out to potential customers and atually have a conversation with them. Answering their personal queries and responding to their posts about your business will make them feel like they are being heard and apart of a community – increasing their loyalty and trust.

Competitive advantage

Your competitors may be racing ahead of you and building up a strong online consumer relationship. So it is important to include social media into your marketing strategy – you don’t want to be falling behind.
However if your competitors are still using traditional marketing methods and have avoided social media, then what are you waiting for? Get a leg up and venture in before them. Utilise this marketing channel before they do.

Cost effective

Instead of running a paid ad or mailing out thousands of leaflets; it is much more cost effective to send a tweet or post a message on Facebook – much quicker too. Marketing campaigns can also be demographic-specific, allowing marketing messages to be targeted to a specific audience, for instance through the use of Google+ Circles.

Increase your ranking on Google search

Having your website linked to your various social media profiles (Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) will help to increase the validity of your website and boost your google authority; essentially opening up more routes for potential consumers to reach your website.
Of course having updated and compelling content on your website will help to entice other websites to find your content and link to it.

Below is an infographic which shows just how many millions of users are using social media.
If you need any more advice, contact us now.

By Lucy Bone

Can Google+ Benefit Your Business?

By Marketing, Social Media

Although Google+ is still in its infancy, it may be wise to hop on the bandwagon before you miss opportunities.
It is the fastest growing social networking site, having attracted 20 million users within the first 3 weeks of it being launched, and since then has grown to 540 million monthly active users – an audience your business cannot ignore.

So how can you use the features of google+ to your advantage?

Segment with circles

Circles is used by Google+ to help group people together. You can create as many circles as you want and name them accordingly to the different demographics your business targets. This effectively divides up your audience enabling you to advertise to a specific target market. For instance, if you’re having a sale on men’s bow ties, you can send a message only to men (if that is a chosen circle) and create a message which appeals to them.

However it must be noted that your business page cannot place someone in a circle until they have added the page, so therefore it is very important to make your page enticing for people to follow, with a lively stream of relevant posts and frequent conversations for them to engage with.

+1 Button

Similar to Facebook’s Like button, Google+ has a ‘+1’ button to allow people to recommend sites and parts of sites they found insightful, amusing or just wanted to share amongst their friends. There is positive correlation between the amount of +1s a website has and its Google search ranking.

So to bump yourself up on Google’s organic search list, get posting and commenting with relevant information to attract and entice users to press the +1 button on your page – give them a +1 and often they will reciprocate.

Google Authorship

Once you link your Google+ profile with other content you have written and published, that content is given a Google authorship mark-up. This means that when it is searched in Google, the result will display your Google+ profile picture. Chances are users will be drawn to the search result displaying your picture – even if it isn’t the number 1 result.

Increasing traffic to your website and also potentially leading to users adding you to their Google+ circles so they can comment on your posts or further enquire on your business.

Integration with other platforms

Linking with your other social media profiles such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc. helps to boost your google authority and essentially opens up more routes for potential consumers to reach your website.

Get face-to-face with consumers

Hangouts are a unique feature which allow a free live video stream of up to 10 people. You can stream and record conversations for playback later using Hangouts On Air.

  • Question and Answer
    Through a live question and answer session, you can engage and inform consumers in a unique and fun way. Also finding out what they love and what they think you can improve upon, whilst generating further interest and stimulating conversation.

  • Crowdsourcing
    Another way Google+ Hangouts can be utilised is through crowdsourcing, as it is an ideal forum to share ideas for new products, services, and even your own knowledge to a wider audience. Providing expert and valuable advice to potential customers often leads them to becoming actual customers. A community of users discussing their interest in your product and the experience they have had using it could potentially be formed. This will most certainly increase the number of users adding your business page.

  • Behind the scenes
    Help make customers feel like they are apart of your business and get the full experience by pulling back the curtains, show them what happens behind the scenes and provide them with more information about how your company runs.

 

So jump on the bandwagon and start building relationships now – while you can still be easily heard.

By Lucy Bone

TCmarketing SEO

Another Google Algorithm Update – Coo!

By SEO, SEO News

link building imageLast week Google released a new algorithm update to intended to provide more useful, relevant and accurate local search results that are tied more closely to their traditional web search ranking signals. The changes will be visible within the Google Maps (Google My Business) search results and Google Web search results.

Google have not yet given this latest algorithm a name but ‘Search Engine Land have called it  the “Pigeon Update”   The name Pigeon was used because this a local search update and pigeons tend to fly back home!

The core changes are behind the scenes and full details are not known, but it does impact local search results rankings and some local businesses may notice an increase or decrease in web site referrals, leads and business from the change.

Google advised that the new local search algorithm ties deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more.

In addition, Google said that this new algorithm improves their distance and location ranking parameters.

The new algorithm is currently rolling out for US English results and aims to provide a more useful and relevant experience for searchers seeking local results. Google didn’t share any details about if and when the update would roll out more widely in other countries and languages, but it is always good to be up to date with what is happening in the world of SEO

Google has not commented on the percent of queries impacted by this algorithm update, nor if certain web spam algorithms were deployed in this update.

If you have any comments please let us know or call us on 01273 328877.

TCmarketing Marketing Icon

5 Tips for Email Marketing Success

By Email Marketing

Email Marketing From Tyler ConsultantsEmail is still very much an important and effective marketing tool and should be a central part of any online marketing campaign. When used alongside social media and SEO it can provide a comprehensive approach to lead generation and also help build brand and customer loyalty.

However, as with any marketing campaign, to achieve email marketing success you must spend time doing your research and planning your campaign.

Here are 5 best practice tips to help you achieve email marketing success:

1. Make it easy for your readers to subscribe:
Any email marketing campaign is dependent upon the quality of your mailing list. Collect new data at every opportunity and if you have a sign up facility on your website, keep it very simple. If your email marketing is targeted effectively, it is more likely that your emails will be opened, read and any links within it clicked on.

2. Craft your email title carefully
The first thing a new contact sees on your emails is the ‘from’ address and subject line which is the title of your email. Make sure it grabs their attention and gives them an incentive to open your email. Getting the right frequency of emails and having a good subject line will increase engagement with your business and encourage subscribers to open and read your mail.

3. Give your subscribers the information they are looking for.

Building your own opted in subscriber list gives you the opportunity to use the data effectively. You can segment your subscribers into different groups as required and make sure you send the right messages to the right people at the right time in their buying cycle. You can also use the data to help you analyse the effectiveness of your campaigns and to improve the open rate of future ones.

4. Make use of graphics with care
What works well on a website doesn’t necessarily work well on an email. A good email template design should use graphics, if required, simply to reinforce your brand or email message. Make sure any graphics used do not impede the upload time or opening time of the email and bear in mind that many email management programs such as MS Outlook do not open images by default.

5. Show you care by respecting your reader’s choices
Make your unsubscribe process clear and simple. This shows your subscribers that you value them and respect their choices. It also shows that you care about the quality and integrity of your email marketing mailings.

Using these best practice tips will allow you to achieve email marketing success in a cost effective way while creating new business and building social engagement – which will also boost your SEO ranking.

If you would like help with your email marketing, get in touch with Tyler Consultants.