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Is It A Bad Idea To Change The URL Structure?

Many people do everything to bring traffic on their website but they fail to get something substantial. One of the questions such people ask is whether it is a good idea to change the URL structure. Well, the answer to this question is “it depends”.

If you are going to make this change in the URL, you need to be very sure about the impact of this change. It means that you need to deliberate the reasons for making this type of change very carefully.

If you are not sure whether the change in URL structure will provide you with the benefit you are looking for, it would be a better idea not to go for this change.

Nevertheless, there are scenarios in which the change becomes crucial. For instance, you will need to change the URL structure when you are rebranding your company.  Site migration, redesign, and launch of some specific products may lead you needing a change in the URL structure.

Now, the major question here is that should you need to change the URL structure. The answer is if there is any price you can pay to avoid this change, you need to pay that price.

Why it is important to maintain the URL structure?

The reasons you need to avoid changing the URL structure are quite obvious and straightforward. For example, a change in the URL structure breaks the bookmarks the users would have stored in their browsers. It means that you will lose direct relationship with your users after changing the URL structure.

Another reason the change in URL structure can be harmful is that the users will not be able to find you after seeing your website’s URL shared on different advertising channels. In this scenario, an easy way is to put 301 redirects. However, complete restructuring of the website might make it quite difficult for you put these redirects.

It would be worth mentioning that the reason you would not want to make such a change may probably be related to SEO in most of the cases. Even if you have a robust SEO strategy in place, Google will take time to rediscover your website.

If you must bring this change in the website’s URL, the first and most important thing you will need to work on is your link profile. The entire link building work tends to be of zero value when you redesign your site. However, you can avoid it by putting the redirects. You need to analyze the link profile fully and apply redirects where needed. This way, people using the old links will be directed to your site with a changed URL. And the major benefit of this approach, apart from the retained viewers, is that Google will not take much time rediscovering your website.

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Tips To Avoid SEO Misinformation

There is a lot of information about SEO available on the web. If you want to bring your website on the top on search engine page results, you need to use that information according to your needs. But the bad news is that a huge chunk of that information qualifies as bad information, or misinformation.

For instance, John Mueller recently said on twitter that there is no such thing as LSI keywords.

But Google places SEO misinformation on the top of search results

That’s where things get confusing about the Google’s approach. It is easy to for anyone to be misguided.Let’s talk about the LSI keywords. If you type LSI keywords in Google, you will find first result telling about the advantages of these keywords. And the next two search results will suggest LSI keyword generators.

Know the difference between Opinion and Fact-Based Insight

Checking whether the author is referring to the citing reference is quite important. Things like a patent, a Google statement, or a research paper can help you in forming opinions while writing content which is based on fact-based sequels.

Everything else that you write as web content is usually based on opinions or you’re a set of your own opinions. In this scenario, it doesn’t matter much if your content looks reasonable.

In this scenario, it is worth mentioning that the concept about Google putting something above search results is not true.

Statement from Google needs to be taken into consideration

It is a good habit to have diary to write important notes about anything related to your work. If you are doing SEO, you need to get to know about what Google says about SEO. Some people take Google statements and try to relate those statements with their SEO plans.

Now, fear and uncertainty in business are the important elements of any plan. That’s where people working on the plans might find Google putting forward some contradictory statements.

But according to Mueller, it’s the people who get the wrong perception from what Google says. That’s where the misinformation about SEO is formed. Even if you are able to get the right results using your understanding about Google statements, this understanding may not be helpful for the other people.

For instance, if you have seen your website sinking into the bottom of search results, you may assume that you have got a hit from Google’s new algorithmic update. But according to what Google has been doing, the reason you get your website or webpage sinking in the bottom of search results may be due to the fact that Google would have found a better information resource. Ranking of that information resource will automatically cause your website to lose rank. In this scenario, you can tell people that you have got hit from Google’s update. And that’s where you are becoming a source of misinformation.

What needs to be done?

You may ask what needs to be done in this regard. Well, we do not say that you should start reading opinions. But you need to avoid forming your opinions based on the opinions that you read. A simple way is to compare what an article is saying to what Google has said on its official portal.

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Diagnosing Technical SEO Issues

Technical SEO serves as a backbone for the promotion of your website. If you are working on SEO of your website, you may already know what technical SEO is. So let’s keep the introduction short and, instead, talk about the common technical SEO issues which can bring your website down in no time. Diagnosing these issues is very important because this is now you can get your website back on track.

Don’t be panic

Even if your website has dropped to the bottom of the ranks, you need to calm yourself. Some people try to perceive an emergency situation by creating panic for themselves. This approach is a perfect recipe for even bigger failure. When you face any problem and you find out that problem is a bigger one, you need to get up from the chair, have a cup of coffee and go out in the park for a short walk.

Understand the problem

Now after coming back to your seat, you need to open the email with detail about the problem. To understand the problem, you first need to ask yourself some questions.

  • What does the email say?
  • What is the underlying issue and what does email say about that problem?
  • What do I already know about the problem?
  • What are the symptoms surrounding the issue? (it may help in identifying root cause more effectively)
  • Do I really need to get the problem solved ASAP?

Keep in mind what Einstein said: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

Make a plan

When you have the data and you know about the problem, you can either start working on solving the issue or you can make a plan.Making a plan and working on it seems a lengthy process through which you might not be able to get the benefits of a quick fix. But the matter of fact is that a quick fix can do more harm than good.

Another major benefit of making a plan is that this process helps you is doing hypothesis – something which is quite essential in knowing about the real consequences of the problem well before the consequences start happening.

Working on the plan (analyzing)

Since technical SEO involves too many things, there might be too many factors contributing in the failure of your website. If you already know about the exact reason for the technical SEO failure and you know that solving the problem is not going to take much time and resources, you are in luck. But the major issue with the troubleshooting of on-page or off-page SEO is that any fix doesn’t make a change in the results on instant basis. You will need to wait for the search engines to do the crawling and give your website a clean chit.

The process of analysis may need you to rely on several tools and metrics. Even if there is a problem with the website structure, you might need to rely entirely on the analytics to know about the problem.

Suggest solution

After you have analyzed things well and got the complete report about the problem, now is the time to work on solution. Based on what you have discovered, you will need to make a strategy to solve the issue. Discuss it with your team and ask about their feedback. Ask for further suggestions. Once you have finalized the solution that you need to work on, you need to work on it.

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Common WordPress Mistakes

Starting a website using CMS is a great idea. We will particularly talk about WordPress here because this platform is not only easy to work with but it can help you develop websites with complicated structures without deeper knowledge about website development. Moreover, it is very easy to work on the SEO of a WordPress based website.

Nevertheless, many people still make mistakes while working with the WordPress.And if you look at those mistakes, those are pretty much of beginner level. Some of those mistakes are worth mentioning here.

Not changing permalinks properly

Once you have set a permalink for any post or page on WordPress, you have to make sure that you do not change that permalink. The reason is that once your webpage is indexed, its permalink is the only way the searchers will be able to land at your post. If the permalink is changed and the previous one is indexed, the Google will keep showing that previous version of the link. Clicking that link will lead your viewers to the infamous 404-error.

Forgetting to update

While working with the WordPress, you may know about the concept of updating the plugins in a periodic manner. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to keep track of the frequent updates released by the publishers, especially when your site works smoothly. But ignoring these updates can lead you to miss the features which could be quite beneficial for your site. Therefore, it is quite important to work on a strategy to check for the updates on regular basis.

Too many plugins

In total, there are far more than 50,000 plugins available for the WordPresswebsites; and you do not need to install all of them. The availability of plugins in this number basically means that you have got too many options to choose from; and it can be quite difficult in most of the situations. You need to pick the best plugins for your sites. And it is quite possible for you ending up in installing too many plugins which might not be quite necessary for your site. Therefore, you have to make sure that you analyze a plugin thoroughly before installing it. You will need to see if this plugin is truly beneficial for your site.

Not creating a child theme while making changes

When you install WordPress, you get a basic theme. It is highly likely that you are not going to like that theme. So replace that theme with the one which looks good. But after working on the new theme for a few minutes, you realize that the old theme is better than the new one. In that scenario, you revert back to the old theme and start over with the website. This entire practice can be quite time consuming. However, the best way to deal with this situation is to install a child theme and work on it before making changes to the main theme. This way, you will be able to test whether or not the new theme is going to work for you.

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The Rise of Rich Results

Google has done enough to bring richness to the search results. The main purpose is to provide users significant information on the SERPs.This is the reason that search results today look quite different from what used to appear on the screens a few years back. The search results we see today have extra information beneath the links of the sites. This information can be in the form of images, videos or any other visual content to elaborate the listing.

What are rich results?

First of all, it would be worth mentioning what snippets are. A snippet is basically a search results with black lines beneath the title. There is also a piece of content that explains the search result. Now, rich results are the listings that seem prominent due to their location and on-screen formatting. In most of the cases, these search results tend to catch all of the words in a search query. Those words are highlighted with bold letters.

With the help of these rich results, search engines try to provide results to the users in fastest way possible. These results also give other types of information about the listing such as product reviews and available.

One thing worth mentioning here is that rich results on mobile screens tend to provide actionable options to the users.This actionable information is displayed directly from the site.

The rich results also include rich snippets and answer boxes. Answer boxes are based on the information which Google itself knows about.This information comes from the Google’s knowledge graph.

Building blocks for rich snippets

If you want to get rich snippets, you will need to add structured data to your site. This structured data is stored in a vocabulary called Schema.org, and there are different ways to add it to your site. If you are working with CMS, adding structured data becomes a game of add-ons. Most of the add-ons use JSON-LD to add a lot of structured data to your site.

Benefits of rich snippets for SEO

With all that talking about the rich snippets, you may be surprised that these snippets do not improve the ranking of your site in a direct manner. However, the indirect benefit is so huge that you will find it to be one of the best things happening to your site. The rich snippets help your site get a prominent representation among the searchers.

Another benefit which makes all your efforts to get a rich snippet justifiable is that this representation can add significantly to your site’s credibility. The people will think of your site as an information resource which is preferred by Google. And they will think of your site to be an authentic source of information.

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Content Analysis for Rank Improvement

You may wonder if content analysis software can help you rank better in Google. The major benefit of any content analysis software is to provide information about your content. It also provides you suggestions about how to make content better.

Software also calls attention to the patterns of search results.And some programs focus on the top 20 positions in the SERPs. However, this method used by the programs can lead to incorrect conclusions. The reason is that search intent changes with every listing in the SERPs. Hence, the content may differ reasonably when you move down in the SERP. The content analysis program in this regard is not going to make the right suggestions, especially if you want to develop content from the scratch. And the content developed as a result of these suggestions is not going to be quite useful.

Correlations and patterns

One thing worth mentioning here is that the patterns exist in SERPs. And these patterns may share a statistical correlation. But this pattern might not correlate to actionable data. For instance, if a pattern is developed from the perspective of titles and tags, it wouldn’t mean that this pattern will contribute for ranking.

There are patterns everywhere. Therefore, it is a good idea not to overly rely on them especially in case of content analysis based on patterns in SERPs. Listings in the SERPs are arranged based on many other ranking factors.

Useful content that ranks

Content is king. This is what you need to keep in mind. However, you will also have to work on other factors after developing high quality content. For instance, you need to make sure that you have used high quality images along with the content and the speed of your site is also great.Moreover, you are going to have to pay attention to all of the important ranking factors.

Talking about content analysis software, it is a great tool to work with from a number of perspectives. For instance, this software can warn you about the poor use of words. You will also get warned about the poor grammar and overly complicated sentences. This way, you will be able to make the content useful. One thing that you have to keep in mind here is that the process is not going to be automatic. You will need to look at statistics and suggestions, and then make up your mind about working on those suggestions.

Grammar checking software

Good grammar and reading scores do not have direct impact on your rankings. But it can help you indirectly. For instance, the suggestions about grammatical improvements can help you develop the content which is going to be easily understandable. This way, the users are going to stick with your pages more than other pages. And so, you will get the rank of your web pages improved.

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Effective Link Building Strategies Which Are Not Spam

In the recent times, there have been more discussions about link building. Main subject of the matter is usually about making the link building approach look more natural. Most of the business and marketing agencies focus on the ways to develop something to get links from the people without asking.

While the above mentioned approach is here in the industry due to search engines asking the marketers to focus on users and this approach is surely great, the marketers need to know about the ways to actually building links (in a traditional sense) while making sure that they are not doing anything illegal.

Good news is that there are actually some ways to build links without violating the rules. And those ways are what we are going to talk about here.

Advertising

The matter of fact is that you can actually build links while advertising about your site. Here is what John Mueller has said in this regard:

“So basically on the one hand that involves some amount of self-promotion from your side like you have to get some people to come and visit your website somehow so that they can recognize that this is actually a good website.

    And there are lots of ways that you can do that. And then that also involves one of those people or some of those people going well, this is a really fantastic website and I have another website that I can link… from where I can link to your website.

    So it’s not the case that every visitor coming to your website will say it’s a fantastic website and I also have a website and let me link to your website from my website, but some of these people they can.”

In this scenario, you may wonder about the types of advertising that you can do. You can build awareness about your site with the help of PPC. In this scenario, you need to avoid entering into the deal with the advertising networks which can be prone to clickbot activity. The major disadvantage of clickbot activity is that you might end up paying for non-existent traffic.

Social media

Social media has always been considered a separate platform when it was compared with search engines. But the matter of fact is that this platform works in great association with the search engines. If your business is able to receive bigger traffic on social media, it is certainly going to benefit search engine’s ranking of your website. The reason is that you can use social media to build awareness about your business and, so, you can enhance your sales.

Podcasting

Podcasting is becoming more popular with every passing day. The reason is that it has the capability to share information in a way that the listener doesn’t have to pay attention to the text.

Thus, if a podcaster asks you to be interviewed, take it as an opportunity because you will be able to talk about your site and business. In this scenario, it doesn’t matter whether or not the podcaster shares a link to your website. You will be able to spread the word about your business and website.

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Combining UX and Holistic SEO to Market Websites

Have you ever wondered about the connection between a website’s usability and its ability to rank in search engines? Now, it is the fact that changes in a website’s design can lead to the changes in the ability of that website to rank in search engines. However, the knowledge about this connection comes after years of experience.

https://youtu.be/-nGxqk4Hb90

The fundamentals of SEO are not changed since its inception. However, the technicality of this industry has changed quite a lot. In the early years, there was no emphasis on structural and aesthetic aspects of the websites. However, the scenario has changed a lot since search engines have started paying attention to what users want.

Holistic SEO and UX

You may have heard about the holistic SEO. It is the SEO approach which focuses on every factor which can play even the tiniest role in the promotion of a website. And since search engines pay complete attention to what users want to see in the websites, the role of UX has become quite important. Hence, it can safely be said that any holistic SEO strategy essentially involves UX.

UX pitfalls that lead to poor SEO

A few factors which may indicate that your website lacks in user experience are as under.

  • Higher bounce rate
  • One webpage performing better than the other
  • Duplicated content
  • Unwanted audience
  • Reason that unwanted audience comes to your site
  • The device they use to browse through your website

Web design practices that interfere with Online Marketing Strategies

It is pertinent to note that there are certain design elements which can affect crawlability, usability, readability, accessibility, and discoverability of a website.

With these factors in mind, you can easily conclude that the SEO has become quite difficult, especially in a scenario when web design that overall user experience are not up to the mark.

Here is what Eric Wu has to say in this regard:

“Working with Product Designers and Front End devs is really understanding their motivations and working with them to solve their use cases while making elements successful for crawlers and conversions.”

Importance of a skilled web team

When we talk about a holistic approach to promote a website, we will need to talk about every aspect related to the development, maintenance and market a website. And if you look closely, you will easily figure it out that any conflict or disagreement between the web design and other factors of a website can lead to serious issues with the website. Those issues can directly impact the user experience, affecting the rank of the website ultimately.

In this scenario, it is quite important to employ a skilled team which is capable to work on all of the aspects of a website.

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The Fundamentals of Link Building

In this article, we are going to discuss why search engines use links to rank the websites and what kind of practices can be termed ideal for the effective link building of the websites. The main purpose is to talk only about the fundamentals to educate the readers about what they need to know to build links effectively.

Why search engines use links?

In the start, search engines used text to rank the webpages. Nevertheless, web publishers soon figured out the importance of keyword phrases so they started using those phrases. But not all pages built used to be relevant to the keywords used in them. As a result, the overall user experience used to be quite poor.

Then web publishers started working on the links. Now, search engines noticed that the best pages strived to gather more links. The importance of a webpage depended upon the number of links it had, i.e. the more links a website had the more important the webpage had been.

Even now, the links continue to behave like votes a website has. But the major change came into the occurrence after search engines started weighing links. It means that the quality of links has to be considered more when it comes to ranking a webpage.

Links may not always promote a page to the top rank

A webpage or website may rank on the top but this ranking may not always be a result of the links. While links still play an important role in the ranking, the extent at which the links can be helpful in the ranking of a website is still unknown.

For instance, a webpage might not rank well even with the help of a lot of high quality links. In this scenario, the webpage doesn’t probably rank due to its inability to satisfy the users.

How can links communicate the importance of a webpage?

When a webpage gets links from the important websites, it may be a sign that the webpage is capable of solving users’ problems in an effective manner. It may mean that the webpage is capable of solving the user issues and, so, the users like to share the link of that webpage. Similarly, a webpage may be considered stale if it fails to get links over certain duration of time.

What needs to be done for the links to help in the improvement of a web page?

Now, it is an important question that you need to ask yourself. if you are building links, you have to make sure that you are connecting only to those sites which are relevant to your webpage or website. Moreover, you are going to have to take the website authority into consideration before choosing any website in which you try to throw your website’s link.

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Building Links Naturally With the Help of Guest Posting

Link building and guest blogging are quite successful SEO methods to bring good traffic to the website. While there is no doubt about the fact that link building is vital, not many people are quite fond of guest blogging due to a number of unsuccessful examples. But the matter of fact is that guest blogging can be quite successful if done in the right way.

What is guest blogging?

Guest blogging is a practice of posting your content on other people’s websites. Those websites need to be related to your niche.

Now, the technique mainly involves putting a link of your website in the guest post. However, this practice of adding link is becoming more difficult because most of the website either add no-follow attribute to the added links or they do not allow the link addition at all. Still, this practice is gaining fair amount of popularity among the internet marketers due to its potential.

An easy and effective way for marketers is to collaborate with the site hosts to get their content published on their sites.

Benefits of guest posting

There are quite amazing benefits of guest blogging. Some of them are worth mentioning here.

  • The first benefit of guest blogging is that it helps you increase the brand awareness. Guest blogging is the digital example of conferences where different companies meet with each other and get an opportunity to bring their brand into a spotlight. When you publish a blog post on someone else’s website, you are essentially targeting an audience existing on that website.
  • Before you post an article, you will first need to sign up. This signup process also involves creation of your bio in which you can place a link to your landing page. You can even invite people to subscribe for your newsletters.
  • For guest blogging, it is quite essential for you to collaborate with other influential companies. This way, you will enter into a community of contributors. And so, you will be able to share and gain knowledge within your niche.
  • You will not have to wait much for the customers to come to your site, read the content and take their time to get convinced about buying your products or services. More than half of this job will be done by the guest blogs on other sites as the potential customers visiting those sites will be able know what they need to know about your brand. So, chances are they will come to your website with intent to purchase.

So, guest blogging is essentially a way to build links but it can serve a bigger purpose. Marketers are always in a search for the platforms where they can promote their business in a better way. A website, which offers guest blogging, is surely a good platform but you have to make sure that they have strong moderation system in place to allow only the high quality blog posts. Another way is to ask influencers within your niche to publish your content. In turn, you can offer them to post their content on your site.