Your Website Is Your Megaphone, Use It!
21 Jun 2019 2 Comments
in Marketing TIPS, Tutorial Series, Web, Web@Work
Yes, Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising is a proven method to in reaching your target audience, but what if I told you your website alone can help you reach some of this demographic for free? In fact, Search Engine Optimization involves thinking about the whole picture, not just PPC. While paid advertising is considered as the “quick and dirty” method, there’s also the “slow and steady” path you can take. Best of all, you’re allowed to and should take both directions!
You might ask, “Why is this important?”
When you stop paying for advertising and forgot to invest time into Organic SEO (your website and your content), most of your traffic to your website could disappear! You have no other choice, but to keep paying for advertising. Let’s be honest, having only one option isn’t really an option.
Make Friends With Googlebot
I’m going to give you a small glimpse into Technical SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by providing a few easy methods you should start implementing right now!
Part of my job in web development is to know how to build websites that will be heard and seen across the internet as best as possible. Website is not a static brochure, but a powerfully constructed megaphone waiting to be used for bringing traffic and revenue to your business.
In a previous article, “Don’t Be Your Librarian’s Worst Nightmare,” I explained how Googlebot is very much like a librarian who sorts websites and the content of its pages into “books” for users to be lead to the correct information. Not only is it good to let Googlebot know of your website and where the specific locations of your pages are, but it’s also essential to give some context of what your content is about.
Page Titles & Page Descriptions
Googlebot isn’t human like you and me. It only cares if you go by its rules and demands from you to meet its requirements or else it will ignore your content. When Googlebot indexes your website, one of the first things it pulls is the Title and Description of each individual page. In HTML code (the skeleton of your website), there is a Title Tag and a Meta Tag for a description. Below are screenshots of what Googlebot sees:
BUT JAKE, I DON’T KNOW HOW TO CODE!
Not to worry! We have already programmed inside all of our client websites an easier way to alter these tags.
- Login to your website (www.yourwebsite.com/admin) and use your username and password
- On the top left, under Content, go to Content Manager
- Select which Page you want to alter.
- In the Main tab, locate the Title field and SEO Description field.
- Click Apply at the top before exiting
What to Write In the Title of Your Page
For titles, use descriptive keywords instead of a generic name for the page. As an example, let’s take a look at the homepage of Print & Copy Factory’s website:
In this Title tag, we have a few keywords Googlebot can pull from:
Print, Copy, Web, Bellingham, Marketing, and Resource
See how this is so much better than using “Home” or “Homepage”?
What to Write In the SEO Description of Your Page
For Meta description tags, effectively state the solution to the problem within the first sentence. Keep it concise, around 150 characters and use keywords for robots to notice. Here’s what Print and Copy’s homepage description reads:
Keywords in this description: Bellingham, Washington, Whatcom County, Business, Printer, Commercial, Printshop, Digital Press, Copiers, Color Printers
How Googlebot Uses These Tags
So after implementing the changes, I will say it takes a while for Googlebot to notice, but eventually, it will update its database. Here’s what happens when I search for “printing bellingham” in Google Search Engine. As you can see in the screenshot below, we have the correct Title Tag as well as the correct description we gave to the homepage.
Bonus: Give Descriptions for All Media Content
The best part about this method is, it can be applied to everything including images, videos, buttons, etc. For example, if you want to give a description for an image, click on the image to highlight it. On the text editor’s toolbar, click the Image Icon and Insert/edit image box will appear. Write a description in the Image Description field. Click OK. Most importantly, click Apply before exiting.
Again, here’s what Googlebot will pick up:
Do’s & Don’ts of Giving Descriptions
To wrap this up, here’s a guideline of how to write great descriptions for your website.
Do:
- Do use effective and rich keywords to describe your product
- Do try to be concise and make the first sentence as your hook
- Do give descriptions for everything including pages and content
- Do provide unique descriptions for all pages and content
Don’t:
- Don’t copy/paste the same description for everything
- Don’t use generic descriptions for your pages and media content
- Don’t use irrelevant keywords that have nothing to do with the content
- Don’t “stuff” keywords as a substitute for writing full sentences
Don’t Be Your Librarian’s Worst Nightmare
30 Mar 2019 1 Comment
in Tutorial Series, Web, Web@Work
And by Librarian, I mean Gogglebot…
It’s crucial to routinely give an update to the Search Engines they are aware of all of the exciting changes on your website, whenever you are about to launch a brand new website with PCFWebsolutions or simply making changes to your content or renaming any URLs to your pages.
You might not think these small changes are anything significant, but if have ever seen an annoying “404” (error) page you might want to read more. It’s possible customers are seeing YOUR 404 page. Embarrassing…
You might ask, “What’s the harm in changing www.supercoolsite.com/index.php?page=pogosticks to https://supercoolsite.com/pogosticks?”
After all, you believe it’s obvious where the new location of your page is on your site, but not for Googlebot. This robot occasionally scans all of your pages as well as the content contained in each page to later reference this information as a solution to a question someone might be searching for.
Say for instance someone was searching online for a Pogostick.
Very much like approaching a local librarian to ask if there are any books about Pogosticks. Our internet’s librarian, known as ‘Googlebot’, immediately responds, “Oh yes! I know where you can read about pogo sticks!” They will then ask the user to follow them as they walk through the library (the internet) to locate their book (a page on your website). And much like a book, labeled and categorized to sit at a particular spot on a particular shelf, Googlebot will expect to find this “book” (webpage) exactly where it should belong. You think “Hey, that’s awesome!” You’ve written about pogo sticks and even sell them! They’re going to go straight to your website, right?
However, as soon as your audience arrived on this page, IT’S GONE! Your audience becomes confused, perhaps even frustrated, as they wish to exit and bounce out of your site and instead pick up a different “book” (your competitor’s website: https://lesscoolwebsite.com/pogosticks).
Googlebot is also confused and assumes it’s lost. After this occurrence repeats itself a few more times, Googlebot will have no choice, but to drop this page from its records and consequently DROP YOUR SEO YOU’VE BEEN BUILDING FOR YEARS!
“But my pages aren’t missing, there’s just on another “shelf” not too far…”
It doesn’t matter.
The customer already got what they needed but from someone else. NOT YOU! What a sad story… but no fear! We can prevent this awful scenario altogether by letting Googlebot know where all of these “missing” pages are, by redirecting these old links to the new links! This practice is how you can maintain your SEO value.
Of course, there are multiple ways to redirect pages, but to be safe, a “301” redirect is preferable over other redirects such as “302” and “307”.
This sounds a lot like gibberish, but let me explain: “301” indicates merely to web browsers and search engine bots (Googlebot isn’t the only one out there) that the page has moved PERMANENTLY. That means not only has the page changed location but that the content—or an updated version of it—can be found at the new URL! A “301” passes between 90-99% of link equity (ranking power) to the redirected page.
Here at Print & Copy Factory, we can communicate with Search Engine Bots and see what pages they might be looking for, but can’t seem to track down and help guide them to the new locations of these pages. New customers are buying your pogo sticks. No sad stories!
So if you’re making changes on your own or may feel that you might want us to look into Indexing and Redirection for you, don’t hesitate to contact us!
You don’t want your SEO to drop. On top of this, we also provide SEO services to boost our client’s website’s Search Ranking and convert prospects into customers!
Hi, my name is Jake and I’m the Web Administrator, Front-end Developer, and go-to web guru for all of the technical questions you may have. We host over 130 websites and provide all kinds of web services to our clients including newsletter email campaigns, engineering new websites, monthly backups, contact form building, etc… you name it – I’ve got a solution!
You can contact me by emailing to support@pcfwebsolutions.com
Easily Resize Pictures with Image Resizers
01 Dec 2015 3 Comments
in Marketing TIPS, Tutorial Series, Web
Easily Resize Pictures with Image Resizers
If you need a hand editing images for professional use, we’re here to help.
Our team of printing experts is here to lend a helping hand anytime you need us, but we know you like to have control as well, so we thought we would share this list of image resizers out there that you can research.
Just as the popularity of emailing and uploading images to websites has increased, so have image file sizes. Many photos are difficult to email or upload because of their large size. In addition, they take a long time to download and often get caught up in email filters due to size limits. Here are a few examples of handy image resizers that can help you conveniently resize photos:
- Photo Magician – Provides several options on how and where to resize photos, including the option to overwrite existing files.
- Resizr – A free online image resizer and picture crop website with lots of extras to convert, crop, rotate, or edit images quickly and easily.
- Free Sizer – An easy to use tool to quickly create resized copies of your pictures that can be sent by email or uploaded to the web – comes pre-configured for most popular uses.
- Batch Photo Resizer – Is a is full-featured software for converting and resizing the graphic files of well known formats.
- ShrinkPic – Automatically reduce the size of photos for email, IM, blogging and web galleries without changing the original image.
- Shrink Pictures – This site was created out of frustration of users asking questions like How do I resize images? How do I make images smaller? Etc.
- Easy Photo Uploader – allows you to resize and upload your photos to Facebook, and log into your Facebook account directly from the program’s interface.
- QuickResizer – Allows you to resize your pictures in a few seconds. Also supports batch resizing, so you can resize multiple files at once.
- Picture Resize Genius – Resize pictures, add watermarks, rename picture files, and change their extensions.
- Fotosizer – An online tool that crops images “intelligently,” preserving the visually interesting parts of the image during the crop.
- Cropp – An easy way to crop images in your browser without requiring any software.
Are You Using Keywords Correctly?
07 Oct 2014 Leave a Comment
in Tutorial Series, Web Tags: Keywords
Selecting the keywords
When choosing keywords, think about the words customers are commonly searching for online. Monitor the number of searches that are done for different keywords, and then choose a few you’d like to target. These should be keywords directly related to your business, so you can use them naturally throughout your website and blog.
When selecting keywords, make the subtle distinction between keywords you and other professionals in your industry are likely to use and those your customers are likely to use. Your keywords won’t do you any good if your site ends up just attracting competitors. They’re not looking to buy from you! You want to use language and keywords that reflect your customers’ priorities and their language. This will ensure you bring the right people to your site. This is also helpful for selecting vocabulary words to use on all your marketing materials, including your outbound direct mail and newspaper advertisements.
Using the keywords appropriately
Make sure you use the keywords a few times in content. This will let your visitor know they’ve found a page with the information they were looking for. If done naturally, using the keywords in the opening paragraph can be a good practice for this reason.
Don’t use your keywords excessively, though. Generally, aim to keep the keywords in mind when you write, and use them whenever the opportunity naturally arises rather than assigning yourself the task of fitting them in as often as possible. Using this system will help you improve the flow of your writing and make it sound much more compelling and natural, rather than a trap designed to bring visitors to your website.
The reason blogging and keeping your website up-to-date are so fantastic for marketing is that both of these practices allow you to naturally incorporate keywords into your content. Keywords should be thought of as subjects that you want to write about. They’re terms your potential customers are searching for because they’re interested in learning more. Be the source of information for them, so they will turn to you as a source of authority.
Keywords can be very helpful in developing websites to attract and retain visitors. Capitalizing on their value, however, requires understanding what customers and search engines are and aren’t looking for. Keeping these guidelines in mind should help you use your keywords to your advantage. If you’re ready to take your marketing campaign to the next level, let us know. We’d be happy to help get you started!
Web@Work Tutorial Series: 01. Your Website and Basic Terminology
23 Apr 2013 Leave a Comment
by Scott Prindle
Introduction
This is the beginning of an article series that is focused on teaching you how to use the backend of our websites. We’ll be starting out with the simple tasks of editing content and moving to more advanced tasks as the series moves forward as part of the educational process. If you’d like to subscribe to these articles, please sign up for our Web@Work newsletter.
Some of the topics may address newer aspects of our websites such as responsive design layouts and content templates. Not all of our websites are capable of some of the newer fancy features and I’ll make note of this in each article so that you don’t needlessly read something that doesn’t pertain to your website.
If you’ve made a website with us in the past year or so, however, most likely all of these features will be available on your site. If a specific feature isn’t available with your site’s version, we’d love to discuss updating your CMS with the latest and greatest that our platform allows.
Our first article will be focused on introducing you to the basics of our websites and some of the terminology that as a web geeks use.
Your website and gaining access to under the hood
Your website is built on a content management system (CMS for short), a platform that allows non-technical users to manage a website and its content without the needing coding/programming knowledge. It operates much like a program on a computer does, but operates entirely in the browser from your website’s server and has features that make content editing easier for the layman.
When using a content management system, there will be a separation between what the public sees of the website and what you, the website manager, will see. This is what we term as the frontend and backend of a website.
The frontend of your website is any part of the website that is publicly viewable. Your website pages, blog articles, etc are all part of the front end of the website.
The backend of the website is the centralized part of the website where you manage it. It is not a publicly viewable area of the site, and is password protected in almost all cases. This term also refers to more of the backend that most clients don’t see (the server, the database, etc.), but whenever I’m referring to it, I’ll be referring to the behind-the-curtain application of the CMS.
Most of the time the backend can be accessed by going to a specific address in your browser (such as www.yourdomain.com/admin) and logging in using the account access information for your website. This will be specific to your website, and you can refer to your website records for this.
WYSIWYG Editors
Most content creation/editing on our platform will be made in what is called a WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG stands for “What You See Is What You Get”, and these editors purpose is to interpret how you interact with its interface and output it as best it can into code that will display as if you’d written the code yourself.
TinyMCE is the specific editor that our sites use and most of our articles will be focused on teaching you how to adequately use this feature, as most of a client’s time will be spent working in it.
Conclusion
On our next lesson, we’ll introduce you a little more on the backend of the websites, what the different sections of the backend are, what they do, and how you can utilize them. This is a beginning series, so if you have any suggestions for things you’d like explained, please feel free to email me, and I’ll make sure to incorporate your feedback into explaining things down the road as this series flourishes.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next installment.
