Tag: seo

  • Every Conversion Counts: Here’s How to Organize Your Site’s Hierarchy in the Best Way

    Every Conversion Counts: Here’s How to Organize Your Site’s Hierarchy in the Best Way

    In this text, we’ll explain what the structure of your website should have and why it’s important. Your website represents you, more precisely your business, and therefore should present you in the best light as well as possible. The design, i.e. appearance itself, is very important but there are things that are more important than just a design – and these are things that are related to the concept of a website hierarchy.

    Before we dig into the story of hierarchy, let’s say something about web hosting. It isn’t related to the website structure but setting up a hierarchy of your online presence without having a quality server to accompany it would mean that all the job you’ve done in web design and web development is in vain.

    The moment you start looking at web hosting options, you’ll see that most providers offer things like free domain names, SSL certificates, unlimited disk space and bandwidth, etc. Sure, that’s important but how about paying attention to some other stuff that hosting, such as MySQL hosting, offers. Picking a solution based on uptime, scalability, and data security are the best criteria for opting for a specific host. In addition, MySQL hosting providers will put you at your disposal a few more tools with which your website might skyrocket, and these are: ease of use and plan customizability in accordance with your resources and performance requirements, infrastructure reliability and uptime, and backup and restoration services.

    Understand How Search Engines Use URLs

    Search engines need a unique URL per piece of content to be able to crawl and index that content and direct users to it. Different content (for example, different in-store products), as well as modified content (for example, translations or regional variations), must use separate URLs to be displayed appropriately in search.

    URLs are generally divided into several different sections: protocol://hostname/path/filename?query#fragment

    Google recommends that all websites use this protocol – https:// – whenever possible. The path, file name, and query string determine which content is being accessed from your server. These three parts are case sensitive, so the FILE URL will be different from the file. The name and protocol of the host aren’t case sensitive; the upper or lower layer wouldn’t play any role there.

    The fragment (in this case #info) generally identifies which part of the page the browser is coming to. Search engines usually ignore any fragment used given that the content itself is usually the same regardless of the snippet.

    When referring to the home page, the slash behind the hostname is optional because it leads to the same content (https://example.com/ is the same as https://example.com). For the path and file name, the slash will appear as a different URL (signaling the file or directory), for example, https://example.com/food isn’t the same as https://example.com/food/.

    Navigation Is Important for Search Engines

    Website navigation is important because it helps visitors quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what content the webmaster considers important.

    While Google search results are provided at the page level, Google also likes to have a sense of what role the page plays in the broader image of the website.

    Plan Your Navigation Based on Your Homepage

    All websites have a homepage (root URL), which is usually the page most often found on the website, and a place to navigate for many visitors. If your website doesn’t have just a few pages, you should consider how visitors will switch from your home page to a page that contains more specific content. It’s very important for driving traffic.

    Do you have enough pages in a specific topic area to make sense to create a page that describes these related pages (for example, homepage -> related topic list -> specific topic)? Do you have hundreds of different products that need to be grouped into multiple pages and subcategory pages?

    Using the “Breadcrumb Trail”

    Breadcrumb, or breadcrumb trail, is a series of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly jump to the previous section or home page.

    Many breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the root URL) as the first, far left link, and list specific parts on the right. Actually, the breadcrumb is a type of secondary navigation scheme. To be clear, it reveals the user’s location on a website or web app.

    Create a Simple Navigation Page for Users

    A navigation page is a simple page on your website that shows the structure of your webpage and usually consists of a hierarchical list of pages on your website.

    Visitors can visit this page if they have trouble finding pages on your site. Although search engines will also “visit” this page and thus get good page coverage on your website, it’s mostly intended for human visitors.

    Create a Hierarchy That “Flows” Naturally

    Make it as easy as possible for users to move from general content to more specific content they want on your website. Add navigation pages when it makes sense and also incorporate them effectively into your internal link structure.

    Make sure that all pages on your website are accessible via links and don’t require internal “search” functionality. Link to reference pages wherever possible to allow users to discover similar content.

    Avoid:

    • creating complex navigation websites (for example, linking every page on your website to every other page).
    • cutting your content too much (because it will take a few clicks to get from the homepage, which is too much).

    Use Text to Navigate

    Controlling most page-to-page navigation on your website through text links makes it easier for search engines to search and understand your website.

    When using JavaScript to create a page, use “a” elements with URLs as “href” attribute values, and generate all menu items when loading the page instead of waiting for user interaction.

    Avoid:

    • having navigation entirely based on images or animations.
    • requiring the handling of script-based events or navigation plugins.

    Create Navigation Page and Sitemap

    Include a simple navigation page for the entire page (or the most important pages, if you have hundreds) for users. Create an XML sitemap file to ensure that search engines discover new and updated pages on your website, listing all relevant URLs along with the most recent primary content modification dates.

    Avoid:

    • leaving your navigation page obsolete with broken links.
    • creating a navigation page that simply displays pages without organizing (for example by topic).

    Show Useful 404 Pages

    Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn’t exist on your website, either if they follow a broken link or type in the wrong URL. In regard to this, what can significantly improve the user experience is having a custom 404 page on a page that kindly guides users to the work page on your website.

    Your 404 page should probably have a link to your home page and may also provide links to popular or related content on your website. You can use the Google Search Console to find sources of URLs that cause “not found” errors.

    Avoid:

    • allowing indexing of your 404 pages in browsers (check if your web server is set to give HTTP status code 404 or – in the case of JavaScript-based websites – includes a meta tag of robotic files “noindex” when non-existent pages are requested).
    • blocking 404 page searches through the robots.txt file.
    • giving only vague messages such as “Not found”, “404” or “no 404 page” at all.
    • using a 404 page design that isn’t consistent with the rest of your website.

    Simple URLs Convey Content Information

    Creating descriptive categories and file names for documents on your website not only helps you better maintain your website but can also create simpler “friendly” URLs for those who want to link to your content.

    Visitors can be intimidated with extremely long and enigmatic URLs that contain few recognizable words.

    URLs Appear in Search Results

    Remember that the URL of a document is usually displayed in Google search results, just below the title of the document. Even if URL structures are quite complex, Google won’t have any problems with searching all kinds of them, so spending time simplifying URLs is a good practice.

    Use words in URLs

    If you want to make it easy for visitors to view your site, use URLs with words that are relevant to the content and structure of your website.

    Avoid:

    • using long URLs with unnecessary parameters and session ID.
    • selecting generic page names such as page1.html.
    • using excessive keywords like football-balls-football-balls-football-balls.html.

    Create a Simple Directory Structure

    Your visitors must easily find where the content is on your website. To help them with this, use a directory structure that organizes that content well. Try using your directory structure to specify the type of content found in that URL.

    Avoid:

    • having deep insertion in subdirectories such as … / dir1 / dir2 / dir3 / dir4 / dir5 / dir6 / page.html.
    • using directory names that have nothing to do with the content in them.

    Provide One Version of the URL to Access the Document

    Focus on using and referring to one URL in the structure and linking your pages internally. That way, you’ll prevent users from linking to one version of the URL and others to another because this could split the reputation of that content between URLs.

    Setting a redirect 301 from unwanted URLs to a dominant URL is a good solution if you realize that people are accessing the same content through multiple URLs. You can also use a canonical URL or use the link element rel =“canonical” if you can’t redirect with redirection.

    Conclusion

    A hierarchical organization is a virtual necessity. The success of your website pretty much depends on the hierarchy. This means that every little piece of information has to be ranked in importance and organized by relevance to one of the major categories.

    Once you have determined a logical set of priorities and relations in your website content and its outlines, you can build the marketing and SEO strategy because you have the most important, general concepts established which go down to the most specific or detailed topics or pages.

  • How Can SEO Help With Online Casino?

    How Can SEO Help With Online Casino?

    When investors establish an online casino, two important questions linger in their minds. The first is how long it will take before the casino attracts customers. The second one pertains to how they can make the platform more competitive. Unlike conventional casinos that attract customers from advertising through traditional methods like TV, radio, and print media, a casino that is based on the web should invest in search engine optimization and PPC.

    Investing in SEO is a better way of generating leads to your website compared to other methods like pay per click (PPC) ads and advertisements on social media. With PPC, you can end up spending a lot of money but get poor results. For a PPC account like Google AdWords to generate a lot of traffic, the account has to be managed well by experienced personnel. On the other hand, do not expect to get quality leads from social media platforms on the Internet. Quality leads are those that can convert into sales when a user lands on your website or online casino thereof.

    With a well-managed SEO campaign, you can rest reassured that you will get the desired results. These can be described as a higher rank on the first Search Engine Results Page of Google and other popular search engines.

    The secret of performing well in SEO is to make your pages more attractive than those of other websites. Your first step should be to closely link your keywords with the geographical area that you intend to target. For instance, these days, many people in Malaysia are choosing to play casino games online. You can include a keyword like online casino Malaysia if your target audience lives in this nation. This way, people searching for an online casino that can serve the needs of people in Malaysia can easily find yours. Take time to learn how to select keywords. 

    Some tips for how to choose effective keywords for your online SEO content include:

    • Examine your online gaming website as if you are a customer who wants to buy items on it. This will help you pick good keywords that are closely linked with what internet users type into their search engine boxes when they want to look for an online casino.
    • You should also include long-tail keywords that have three to five words only. A few good examples are online casinos in Malaysia, the convenience of online gambling, and the best casino games online. Long-tail keywords have a better probability of being clicked and indexed by search engines because they are more specific and friendly to search engines.
    • Use some tools like Google Search Console and Moz keyword Explorer that do an excellent job of researching the best keywords for your website. For instance, if many websites already rank for a particular keyword, these tools will suggest new keywords. These tools are not only useful for searching for words but also come in handy when you want to look for or investigate your rank in search engines. This will help you track changes that your strategies have brought about. As you might have guessed already, monitoring your SEO campaign will help you determine the strategies that work and those that do not.

    The following are some of the benefits of SEO for online casinos:

    Ranking higher on search engine results pages

    The casino industry is highly competitive, and your competitors are also fighting for the top rank on search engines. You should also compete for high rankings. Research shows that 60 percent of internet users click one of the top 3 search results. Make sure you earn one of the top three positions so you can increase organic traffic to your site. Organic search results enable a business to gain reputability and credibility. By using SEO services, you can capture the attention of people ready to play and increase revenue.

    Improving user experience

    Excellent SEO also aims to enhance the user experience. It can provide your audience with easy to navigate web pages, relevant information, related videos, or photos to support text and a website configuration that is mobile friendly.

    Higher conversion rates

    When your website ranks high on search engines, you can get higher conversion rates. Your target audience will know more about your casino when you maintain your top position. As customers become familiar with your brand and their knowledge about your services increases, there is a higher chance that they will want to sign up and play games on your casino.

    Lowers advertising costs

    According to a report by the Search Engine Journal, inbound links can reduce the expense of lead generation by 61 percent. The way search engine optimization reduces advertising costs is straightforward. When your website ranks high on search engines, you do not need to advertise it. You will continue to remain above the other search results as Internet users click your search links repeatedly. Some activities that pertain to inbound lead generation include social media management, search engine optimization, referrals, and blogging, which do not cost much. Outbound lead generation strategies include visiting clients, making cold calls, and direct selling.

    Builds the credibility of a brand

    When your website ranks first, second, or third in search engine results pages, your customers may have the impression that you are a leading player in the industry. High rankings show that your online casino is popular and many users have researched about it. On the other hand, if your casino appears at the bottom of search results, customers might think you are not yet well known, or that you do not have the budget to improve your rankings.

    Establish brand awareness

    This is the extent to which your target audience recognizes your brand. As stated by Investopedia, creating brand awareness is a significant step in marketing any product. With SEO, search engines can easily index your online casino through organic and regular searches. When you remain on top of the rankings, people looking for online casinos will be able to see your site often. Therefore, there is a higher likelihood that people will click your link and end up on your website.

    Gain market share

    When your site is on top of the search list, Internet users can find it quickly, and you can consider them as your leads. After the leads visit your website and find the information they need, they can turn into customers. They can sign up to become members, and your conversion rate will increase. When this happens, your online casino will gain a share of the market.

    SEO can help you achieve higher rankings in search results, and this can enhance brand awareness. With effective SEO, your website can gain qualitative and quantitative visits. Therefore, it is time to use SEO to your advantage. Nonetheless, remember that the efforts you make towards improving your site’s rank on search engines may not reap the fruit immediately. This and the fact that you might not have such a profound experience in optimizing websites makes outsourcing SEO services viable. Look for service providers who have a good reputation and use the latest techniques to optimize your website for excellent rankings.

  • Does the Accessibility of Your Site Improve Your SEO?

    Does the Accessibility of Your Site Improve Your SEO?

    Accessibility has become an integral part of web development. It refers to making websites accessible for people with disabilities who may need an assistive device to browse the site and interact with its content. Any Website Accessibility Consultant will tell you that a key to good accessibility is implementing its techniques correctly. It will help you avoid, for example, illogical and confusing descriptions for screen reader users.

    Meanwhile, SEO – Search Engine Optimization – is based on improving the site’s usability and content to enhance crawling and users’ experience simultaneously. It covers many elements, from keywords and headings to the speed of a website.

    Do they overlap? Short answer: Yes. But let’s take a closer look at what you can do to gain a double benefit from it.

    Alt Attributes

    Alternative text is one of the most common practices in accessibility as it allows screen readers to decipher images on a page for those with visual impairments. Make sure you create precise descriptions for alt attributes instead of marking them just as “image.”

    Search engine bots cannot see images on your website, so adding the alt text helps them see more content, and your technical SEO can benefit from it. It may be very tempting just to put a bunch of targeted keywords there, but you should remember that you write it for people in the first place. To create the perfect alt text, keep it short (about 125 characters), descriptive, avoid keyword stuffing, and write naturally.

    Headings

    Use headings to bring a hierarchical structure to a web page, making it easy to scan and increase user experience. It makes nesting one topic in another less confusing and more readable, allowing users to focus on interesting points and skip the excessive details for them. Headings help people with visual impairments or cognitive disabilities get a precise impression of a web page, making navigation easier for their assistive devices.

    At the same time, a good structure allows your website to aim for featured snippets. When creating content, ensure you do not use more than one H1 heading because it will break the smooth navigation, and use the following headings only to divide content into logical parts in a particular order.

    Video Transcripts

    Content represented as video becomes a commonly used tendency for providing users with specialized information because it allows explaining anything along with illustrative examples. It may be impossible for people with hearing impairments or foreign language speakers to receive any information this way, so it would be better to provide them with transcripts.

    The simplest solution is subtitles – YouTube will even supply your video with automated ones (although they may need some editing). Still, you may want to put some time and effort into creating a text transcription of the whole video to be placed on the same page below. Since search engines are text-based, it will help them understand the video’s content and index it.

    Remember not to stuff your captions with keywords hoping that no one except search engine bots will notice them. It may significantly lower the overall user experience for people who rely on screen readers and those who prefer reading to watching. Write an exact transcription of the information contained in the video naturally.

    Sitemaps

    First of all, sitemaps are useful for quick and easy navigation and provide an overall picture of the site. HTML sitemaps with links to your website’s primary pages allow the user to get direct and immediate access to a page they are interested in the most.

    Second of all, sitemaps help search engines find hard-to-reach pages, index your website entirely, and better understand its content. It is crucial to keep your sitemap updated with new licks regularly.

    Conclusion

    As accessibility impacts a website’s general usability, it affects your SEO, too. It’s that simple. However, using accessibility techniques to stuff your website with “hidden” keywords can be a disastrous mistake.

    If you are aiming to improve your SEO by implementing accessibility solutions – it is a good start. But it is essential to remember that you introduce those changes to help people in the first place, not search engines. It is better to add keywords only when they are organic and relevant to your content and focus on conveying the information in as many alternative ways as possible.

    Ensure that accessibility techniques you choose are universal and compatible with assistive technologies and do not lower user experience by breaking the site’s structure. Making it work for everyone will always increase your traffic and ranking.

  • Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs SEO

    Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs SEO

    Consumer behaviors have evolved along with the technological advancements that allow them to make such changes. One example is the evolutions of smartphones and fast speed internet. Today, seventy-seven percent of mobile phone users in the United States are using smartphones and going online. This doesn’t count the conventional desktop users who are mostly connected to the internet. This tells you how often your potential customers are going online in their daily lives.

    Why Small Businesses Need It?

    Combining consumer behavior and the current trend of businesses today, there are enough motivators why SEO is no longer just an option to give your small business a boost in the market be it eCommerce or a conventional store. Below are detailed explanations of how SEO is a requirement for your budding endeavor:

    1. Gives You Visibility

    When I discussed the percentages of users and shoppers, it wasn’t percentages for thousands of people, I was talking about over a million users and shoppers. With those numbers, you can be sure that sites vying for their attention are also in the millions. When users go online and do a search and hit on words or phrases related to your businesses, wouldn’t you want your store’s name to come out on top of the results page? I’m sure you do, that’s how SEO basically works, and that’s how you’re going to gain visibility.

    What you see in a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is the result of SEO experts working with the search engine’s algorithm to maximize their chances of being on top of the first page. Long ago, when you search Sacramento SEO, you’ll find a different results page than what you see today (meaning other sites were claiming the top of the SERP). You, too, can have words or phrases that will put you on top of the results page. This is the advantage of having your site optimized, you’ll get first dibs of potential customers looking for information which most probably you can help them with. 

    2. It’s Your Loss If You Don’t

    When I asked, “wouldn’t you want to be the first site they’ll see when they do an online search about your business?” you could’ve just said no. But I’ll tell you why you can’t say no. I mentioned SERP and being on top of the first page, so what if you’re not on top of the first page, what’s wrong with the second page? The second, third, fourth page, and so on are like graveyards of forgotten sites.

    Here’s the figure, in recent years, over ninety percent of clicks are on the first SERP, while the second only gets a measly six percent, and the rest shares two percent of the traffic clicks.

    And to add injury to an insult, if you’re not on top, then most probably, your competitors are. That’ll just hurt your chances of growth.

    3. It’s Gonna Be Here Awhile

    SEO is evolving, it’s not like what it was ten years ago, and it’s going to change to match user preference and behavior. Also, it’s already ingrained in the digital universe. It’s an order to the chaos of how to best show users what they’re looking for. So if you think it’s just a fad, think again.

    4. Customers Like Optimized Sites

    Part of having an optimized site is to make your site highly efficient, with a smooth transition and low latency along with usability across all devices. This will make your site attractive for visitors, and they’ll surely want to come back again if your site is well-built and the content you have has value to them.

    The goal here is to gain an edge over your competitors. Small businesses need to be more engaging and personal with their customers because it should convey a feeling of familiarity and community. This way you’ll be able to make connections and engagements with your potential customers efficiently and fast. Gaining more ground here is going to make your business not so “small” anymore.