Anyone involved in SEO knows that backlinking is a SERP factor. Many years ago backlinking farms set up to try and gain favour with the algorithms, with the promise that if everyone kept linking up, it would benefit the ratings. Even then I didn’t go for black hat SEO tactics, but I recall anyone with a website in the 90’s suggesting they ‘swap’ links, e.g. suppliers and customers of the business. These were seen as more relevant, they were links with recommendations.

We know today that backlinking farms are penalised and sites participating in them will not find favour. It comes down to common sense when backlinking and it has recently been clarified.

During the Google Google Search Central SEO hangout recorded Feb 19th, a site owner submits the following question to Mueller: “What matters most? The number of unique referring backlink domains or the total number of backlinks?”

According to sources Mueller isn’t always upfront and forthcoming when it comes to what is looking for.

Mueller advises companies not to focus on how many links you can get to your site, but rather focus on the quality.

Here is what he said:

“I don’t think we differentiate like that in our systems. From my point of view, I would tend not to focus on the total number of links to your site, or the total number of domain links to your website, because we look at links in a very different way.”

So very clearly you can see no matter how many links you try and gain, the number isn’t a factor.   If your SEO agency or in-house webmaster is spending a lot of time getting people to backlink, you need to ask them to stop and point out to them that Google COULD just ignore them all.

“We try to understand what is relevant for a website, how much should we weigh these individual links, and the total number of links doesn’t matter at all. Because you could go off and create millions of links across millions of websites if you wanted to, and we could just ignore them all.”

Then ask them to consider the following statement from the live event:

“Or there could be one really good link from one website out there that is, for us, a really important sign that we should treat this website as something that is relevant because it has that one link. I don’t know, maybe from like a big news site’s home page, for example. So the total number essentially is completely irrelevant.”

This couldn’t be clearer, a site of high importance is a factor that could score far higher than a site with many links that could just be ignored.

However, there is also another factor that also needs to be built in.  A site of high authority, that is ranked as ‘important’ that is relevant to your website will also be well considered.

The nub of the matter
1.  Don’t go for quantity of quality
2.  Look for quality and authority
3.  Add in relevance (e.g. if your site is a food related site and your link comes from a highly rated site also in the food industry, or with sections relating to food) it adds.

You need to a strategy.  Identify sites that you want to obtain backlinks from, identify competition and see who they get links from, list ones that are at a higher level and have more relevance and then develop a strategy to get links back to your site.

youtube id=”zCV6tEt3w0k” title_attribute=”YouTube Video John Mueller from Google on Backlinks” video_desc=”Look at the insights as to why backlinking can help your SEO and why Google can, well, ignore it all! Watch to gain the insights.”

Contact Our Team Now To Learn More About Backlink Success.

The post Googles John Mueller Comments About Backlinking Show Policy Intent appeared first on LifeTools Digital.

It was the best of speeds, it was the worst of speeds.  Not a tale of two cities, but a tale of two websites.

One has been optimised for speed.  The owner sorted out a good, effective, efficient and fast server with all of the best support available.  The owner sorted out a designer who knew about good design, design that included the brand look and feel, design that included good navigation over desktop, tablet and mobile, design that included SEO compliant structure (speed, content & structure).

One has been done on a budget.  The owner went for the lowest priced hosting package around, the site worked and showed.  They went for a budget site built off a template without knowing fully how to optimise it, they just updated some images and text to give it a look and feel.  They applied no SEO techniques.  Overall, the site showed their product / business but it loaded slow and had a high bounce rate.

Both sites operated in a market place that had reasonable competition but it wasn’t crowded.  One site got visibility on the search results which led to sales and paid off the investment in the better hosting package and website design.  One site didn’t.  It was done on a budget, but without any serious attempt to get ahead of the competition – and that was what happened.

However, wherever you are on the spectrum there are measures you can put into place today.  Load speed ranks very high in Googles factors that it builds into it’s SERPs algorithm.  So if you need to get your site more effective, let us look at 5 factors you can implement today to get your site faster.

#1 – Optimise How You Are Seen On A Mobile

Mobile devices account for around 50% of internet traffic, in some countries websites were developed for mobile traffic only due to late internet infrastructure development; balance that off with the USA having around 40% of internet traffic being browsed on a mobile.

The numbers are vast, yet website designers start off with a design using a desktop view.  This is a starting point because visually you can get the site look, feel, navigation, structure and brand easier on a larger screen.  To then think the navigation and message work just as well on a mobile is an error.  Images, headers on image backgrounds, menu navigation, sidebars all look and respond differently.

Have a look at the following example from this site!

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#2 – Optimise Your Images

However your website is built, you need to examine your images.  Ensure your images are fit for purpose, don’t put a .png up where a .jpeg will do, as they tend to take up more loading time on a website page.  We have examined that the longer it takes a page to load, the higher the bounce rate and the lower the SEO score.  In addition we have found that sites that have fewer images tend to get a higher response rate from users by conversion.

Once you have selected the images that reflect what you want to say, run them through a compression site (there are several around).  You upload your image, it can compress them by 30-75% and the image loss is barely noticeable, but the files are much smaller.  You can see from this example below with a live test it was compressed by 77%.

Good images play a part in a visually attractive site that draws the eye of a user browsing, but just putting them up randomly to have as many banners, large images, background images can hit your page rankings on search engines.

#3 – Use Video Listings With Strategy

Video watching is hugely popular, it provides the visitor with a reason to stay longer on a page, this increases page engagement and ticks and SEO box.  It also, gives your visitor a reason to like your page, you are giving them an additional reason, visual moving feedback as opposed to the static text and images.  If it is a teaching/how-to video then that makes it better.

Now you can self host a video or have it hosted elsewhere, popularly on YouTube or Vimeo.  Self hosting a video gives you far greater security control if the video is intended to be limited in use (e.g. it may be a training video for a paid membership program); you can control who sees your video, put it behind a log in membership area or apply changes to the server .htaccess file (other options are available).

The problem with self hosting, it can increase your page load time and put a heavier strain on your traffic (some hosting packages limit how much ‘traffic’ you can have – a bit like a ‘data’ package with a mobile phone which can be exceeded and your data stops).

You can use YouTube and if you don’t want it to be found by people on YouTube, set it to ‘unlisted’.  It won’t be found by anyone searching on YouTube but you can embed it on your website.  That means when your page is loading, you are allowing YouTube servers to deal with the load.  Vimeo is another video hosting platform that works well and has free video listings as well a paid.  A disadvantage of YouTube (for your average small business) as when the video has finished playing, other options show of other views that may not be related or connected and user may start video browsing and not continue with your page!

TIP.  If you want to upload a video, to help decrease the video size and make loading faster and reduce bandwidth; put your video through a video compressor.  Handbrake is one app you may want to download and run your video through.

A final consideration is saving your video to an MP4 of WebM, most browsers will play them both.

#4 – Watch Out For Your Scripts & Files

Websites & their pages are made up of elements and these elements are generally HTML/PHP, CSS or JavaScript controlled.  Each time an element is loaded in the page, there is a HTTP request to the server to grab each element.  If your page has 40 elements to load, then there are 40 requests between the users browser and the hosting company.  If your page has 20 elements then only 20 requests are made.  If both page elements are similar then one site will be much slower than the other.  We have published in other articles that a site with less elements, will not only load faster (reducing the risk of the bounce rate), it also has a higher conversion rate (when you want an action (selling site, sign up page etc)).

If you want to see what and how many HTTP requests are being made from the page you are on, to the server,  you can use the Network Panel in Google Chrome to see what requests are being made.  Other browsers also have development tools of some capacity.

Aside from ‘designing’ your page(s) for speed, you can also look at combining scripts so less HTTP requests are being made.  If you don’t know how to do this, some WordPress plugins can do this, and some themes on WordPress have it built in.  You can see this screen shot from a theme performance panel, it has CSS compiling, JS (JavaScript) compiling and other options to help speed up your site/page loading time. This saves you on needing to get a plug in, which in itself adds extra pressure.

At the end of the day, test, test and test. Look at the Network Panel, turn some features and plugins on and off (activate/deactivate) and see what difference it makes to the number of requests.

#5 – Follow Page Size Guides

Ultimately you may have a specialist site, where your pages need to be heavy, your visitors don’t mind waiting a little (especially if it’s a private membership area, supplier ordering area), but there is a general principle

The average website page is around 2 MB but Google recommends having them around 500 KB, so have a look at the totality of the above, look at the guide sizes and see what is necessary and what is ‘dressing’. If you do have videos, look at hosting speed. If you do have heavy images (e.g. a single large image could be 2 MB, but compressed to far less), then look at considering a CDN (Content Delivery Network). If you want to read more, just look at our tags for CDN.

A good server with a fast delivery also helps. It comes down to some basics. Good hosting, good thought through design, keeping it simple, watching ‘elements’ and compressing what you can or having it sit somewhere else (CDN, YouTube). If you have any questions, you can use the contact form below.

Any questions you have about your site load time, please feel free to ask.

The post How To Speed Up Your Website Load Speed – 5 Tips For SEO Success appeared first on LifeTools Digital.

Soon Google Chrome will be removing 3rd party cookies from websites and others will follow, like Safari. This will render your pixels ineffective if you haven’t got them set up correctly.

In your pixel account you have the option of setting your cookies as 1st party or 3rd party. If it is on 3rd party you will find the pixel code being blocked, go to your pixel setting

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Facebook, by default has first party cookies set to on now for new accounts, but anyone with old accounts need to check their settings; just in case the role out didn’t take effect. What you should now be seeing is this:

https://lifetoolsdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/LifeTools-Digital-Facebook-Pixel-Setting.jpg

Facebook Pixel Automatic Advanced Matching

This is a setting on Facebook Pixels that will give you far greater marketing reach. When you have this turned on, as well as tracking the user, Facebook will also match on this microdata.

You may ask why. Well, when you go to the marketing aspect of targeting users, you can use microdata, as well as a host of other parameters to narrow down your target audience for your advert. If your campaign is successful, you can then ask Facebook to find new people that match your chosen options. This is where the power comes in and your advertising reach can go out much further and bring in more revenue.

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Do You Want Help With Anything Mentioned Above?

These are some of the key areas mentioned above, if you have any questions, please use the chatbot, social media contact (footer) or form below:

Setting up Facebook Pixels?

Checking your Facebook Pixel settings?

Creating a Facebook Pixel marketing campaign?

Checking my website to see if I have Facebook Pixels installed correctly?

Contact Our Team Now For Facebook Pixel Support.

The post Facebook Cookies Pixel Settings Warning appeared first on LifeTools Digital.

Google Maps is a powerful marketing tool to get both your business embedded deeper into the Google system. Google likes business that have many touch points (registered site, Analytics, You Tube, Maps & more). All of the touch points are free to created and allow Google to know you are a genuine business and not just someone trying ‘black hat’ techniques to trick the search engine.

The other feature is Google will register your product for the area, so you are much more likely to be found by local searches (if you want to know more about local marketing in more details, look at our site tags). However, being found locally doesn’t guarantee how it will rank in the local listings.

As you can see from the above, the searches are shown in an order and if you are searching for a subject with a lot of listings (local take-away shops for instance), then you may not even show. So how do you rank higher? You give yourself the best chance by integrating your business into the database of Google (other factors are at play, but you cannot control all of them).

Is It Important To Rank Higher on Google Maps?

]There are four very good reason why you should ensure your business integrates fully with Google Maps:

1. Research shows that Google Maps is the navigation choice of majority of consumers, and those who are passing through always tend to select the top listings due to time constraints.

2. Research shows that users on Google Maps tend to look for a solution based keyword and not business name. So anyone travelling through an area in need of fuel, B&B, parking, cafe) will type the word in. Locals who know a business name, e.g. Cake & Pie Cafe, are more likely to type the business name in (maybe to find an opening time or phone number). So you need to ensure you think about search words based on benefit, what a consumer will type in if they are not sure (in both broad and narrow terms).

3. A local consumer who is after a local supplier (e.g. home user may be after a gardening service, local garage may be after decorator to repaint the buildings). Whatever the service, some rely on word of mouth, others look on Google Maps to see who is near and can come and quote.

4. You drastically increase the ability for a standard Google search to bring your site up at a relevant level; esp as Google can target your IP address to a locality and show you more relevant searches. This means, a local user on Google, looking for a supplier of flowers in a locality are much more likely to have a Google Maps listing come back, as per the image.

1. Get a free Google My Business account.

Once you set this up, you can pull up Google Maps and search for your business.  Having a Google My Business accounts gives you so much control over the whole process of your Google Maps listings.

2. List your business on Google maps & claim it.

Go to Google Maps, search for your business name and, if it doesn’t appear select ‘add a missing place’ and if it does; try and select ownership. Google sometimes lists businesses for information, but without any ownership; you go through the claim ownership process so you can follow the other steps.  Having set up your account in the prior step, this makes this process fast, easy and effective.

3. Fill our your Google Maps profile.

This is where you can start to give some flesh.  You can fill out your business information in the manner it will show to people browsing.  Go go your Google My Business account and then on our dashboard you will see a list of items on the left hand side.

You can see options on the left to add in information about your business and, centrally, it shows you details on visitors, quick starts to create adverts, updating key areas and so much more.

]

Minor Points To Note:

1. Use a Genuine Phone number, local numbers that tie in with the area.

2. Ensure your address is always filled out with consistency, e.g. full street names and that this matches other profiles where your account is (e.g. Facebook, Shopping Platforms

3. Keep your hours updates, especially during COVID-19, Google My Business sends out regular reminders to keep your information relevant and updated.  If you are showing open when you are closed and someone makes a trip out to you, they are more likely to leave a negative review – this will hit your ranking.

4. Get a good business description, this aligns in with your goals and lets anyone browsing know exactly what your business is about; giving them a reason to respond – or not respond and avoid disappointment and negative feedback.

4. Images! Google loves Images and Visitors Do.

Google loves images. Customers respond to images. Without images, you are left with more generic placeholders that do not wholly reflect on your business. If your business has a range of products/services, get some good images that reflect these.

Keeping this refreshed by regular updating (as you would also on your social media & website), keeps your listing refreshed as being actively updated (another ‘tick’ for Google). SEO note: remember to name them properly so Google Images also can sort them properly.

5. Reviews Help and Google Loves Them.

Reviews are loved by Google, it is one tool that helps Google know if your site, service & products are relevant and fit the brief as to what the user was looking for.

At the heart of Google is the objective of ensuring content is relevant to what your expectation of a search result is.

Getting good reviews is a key part in helping to grow your business, good feedback = better listings. Good feedback = more trust & recommendations.

Whoever runs your marketing, should have this in the portfolio of your business activity. Once set up, it doesn’t take much time to then manage.

6. Regular Updates & Regular Reviews.

The person, Agency or yourself, should be aware that if you do content repurposing (if you are unsure about this, just ask one of our team – it’s a separate subject).   Logging on frequently to update images, videos, post new content is also an ideal opportunity to examine what you have up there.  Cast your eye over it, ensure it is still relevant, your times are still current, articles are not dated with content that has moved on and more.

This way your site is updated, renewed, relevant and will engage your visitors.

7. Website Integration.

Integrating Google Maps back into your website is a very useful way of creating a marketing & SEO feedback loop! If you don’t have a website, but you have a local business (e.g. a local cafe, registered on Google My Business to show you are local and on Google Maps) but without a website; you should consider one.

There are 3 more things you can do today with a website (essentially targeting it more for local searches):

1. Add a Google Map onto your website. This reinforces with Google that your business is where you say it is and it can be a good way for people to share your business on Social Media pages with a recommendation!

2. Ensure your site has keywords. On your website ensure your locality, service and ‘benefits’ (we spoke about earlier on) all match up with the words on Google My Business. This allows the search engine looking for relevant content to link your site with My Business in the search results; as well as having your site registered on My Business.

3. Ensure your site is SEO Compliant. Google has a whole range of indicators that need to be met for a site to rank high (or if not met, to keep it buried beyond your competition). Ensuring your site meets the indicators plays a key role in ensuring your site is fully compliant.

When you match a website to your Google My Business account makes both your Maps and Website much more powerful in terms of being an effective communication and marketing weapon.

These are some of the key areas mentioned above, if you have any questions, please use the chatbot, social media contact (footer) or form below:

Setting up a Google My Business Account?

Having a business website?

Learning more about SEO?

Learn about Google website compliance?

Content repurposing?

Customer feedback?

Contact Our Team Now For Support.

The post Rank Higher On Google Maps In 7 Steps appeared first on LifeTools Digital.

Facebook is a wonderful advertising platform.  It is established, has a wide audience, very flexible targeting and the ability to focus clearly on your target audience.

Saying that, Facebook isn’t a miracle working platform, you cannot just run a marketing campaign, set of ads and results will come.  Facebook needs a strategy, like all advertising.  Larger businesses can run awareness campaigns, they don’t need an immediate return, they are reminding people ‘they are there’; however, most small businesses need a much faster return on their advertising and marketing.  That is the reason why good strategic marketing can help and avoiding common mistakes can help maximise your profit.

Why leave money on the table for someone else to pick up?  Avoid these common 5 mistakes when planning your campaign.

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#1 Mistake. Boosting A Post.

If you have a page on Facebook and have done a page post, straight away you will have noticed an invite from Facebook to Boost your post, it may come with a recommendation along the lines of ‘boosting your post may reach x number of new people’. A lot of people use this, especially those without a marketing strategy. It’s quick, easy, low cost and when you see the number of people you can reach, it pulls you in. However, if you are serious about your business page, you will have an advertising strategy.

Your posts will be designed for a variety of reasons.

1. Designed to educate & update. You may have an interesting piece of information for your page followers, it maybe a product or service update. It’s there primarily to inform.

2. Designed to gain traction. You want more followers and engagement, so you create a post that is designed to draw in a response and encourage your followers to share and get others to ‘like’ your page.

3. Designed to be used as an advert. You have a product or service that you want to sell. You create a page post which has copy designed to draw a response, helping peoples needs, solving a problem.

All 3 options will trigger the ‘Boost’, but don’t be tempted by boosting your post. It generally does not get as much traction as a well thought out and planned advertising strategy.

#2 Mistake. Not creating a funnel to go with your advert.

Not having an advertising strategy to go with your advert can lead to leakage, lost money in advertising by not capturing and following up with your leads.  A great advertising strategy is the key to maximising your advertising revenue.  A bad advertising strategy is either using the boost button or having a great advert with no follow up capacity.

When you start an advertising campaign it will ask you what you want to pull through from your business page; it could be a video, image carousel, or a post you have done.  If you remember option 3 from above, it wasn’t just an advertising post to your followers, you are now going to ‘target’ new people interested in your product.  So you spent a lot of time creating a brilliant advert, you now are spending some thought in creating your ‘marketing campaign’.  [You can read about creating a marketing campaign in another article or ask our team for a facebook marketing checklist using the form blow].

You now set your budget, allow Facebook to run your campaign and ‘bill’ you for advertising, and guess what, some people respond!  A campaign with a laser focus on the targeting will likely bring in a much bigger response (audience targeting is one of the keys to having a successful campaign).  How they respond depends upon what you set in your campaign, it could be a phone call, visit a website page, respond via Facebook Messenger and more.

Now how do you follow up on visitors?  How do you respond to people on messenger?   How do you deal with the influx of phone calls?  You need a ‘funnel’, essentially, a system designed to capture their information and then follow up with different touch points (email, phone call, page/group post).  If you are directing people to a page because you want them to sign up for an item, buy a product, how do you follow up with page visitors who don’t sign up?  If people go to your shopping cart but don’t buy, how do you follow up with them?  If someone manages to sign up for a ‘free offer/trial’ how do you follow up with a system of communications encouraging them to ‘buy’ what it is you want to guide them to.

There are tried and tested systems of following up, capturing visitors and engaging with your prospects and encouraging them to become customers.

By not having a system into place you will loose the traction and potential sales that you wanted by spending advertising money in the first place.

Now you are busy, you have worked hard in creating an advert on your page with a slick video and posted it out to your members. You have created a well thought though marketing campaign on Facebook. Wisely you have developed a good funnel with the help of our funnel building guide. Now, you can leave your campaign to run and get back to focusing on the work of your business, hoping that this campaign will bring new business in for the tomorrow and on wards.

Wrong. If you leave an ad just to run without regular reviews it will suffer from ad fatigue, this is where a regular constant exposure to an ad, may keep your brand presence in front of your target audience, but the response rate drops. This term is know as ROAS ‘Return On Ad Spend‘ and this starts off with your campaign, it can grow as the ad becomes more effective and then fatigue hits and it drops, you then get a lower ROAS and each conversion (sale, client, positive response) starts to cost more as a portion of your advertising cost.

So, you need to be watching your adverts on a semi-regular basis, look at your statistics at the quality ranking, conversion ranking or landing page ranking; monitor them and when you start to see a downturn, act.

You don’t need to turn off your advert, maybe change the image/text, video, differentiate the offer (especially if you didn’t A/B test first) or change your audience.

Can you leave it to run, yes. Should you let it run without reviewing regularly, not unless you want to loose financial effectiveness.

#4 Mistake. Ignore Facebooks Marketing Tools.

Facebook has a number of marketing tools available to advertisers and marketeers. To not take advantage is to loose sales opportunities for both re-marketing, targeting profitable audiences and far more.

Re-targeting

You can place adverts right in front of users who have visited your website, landing page or offer. You can put up reminder adverts, reminding a visitor why they visited you, by putting your brand again in front of them with a different offer. Testimonial adverts, work very well, quoting others who have used your service/product and how it helped them and how good you are! A good marketing agency will run these in a strategic campaign over a period of time and measure effectiveness.

There are other tools you can use that can create highly effective campaigns. You can contact our team using the form below to ask for the Facebook Ads Checklist.

Setting up Facebook Pixels is a key marketing tool that no business owner should ignore. Anyone with a business and no website is missing out on the opportunity to capture more sales.

When you register for a Facebook Business Manager account you can generate a bit of code from Facebook which goes onto your website (a bit like putting Google Analytics on your site). Anyone with a Facebook account who then visits your website can then be tracked

Wrapping Things Up

Facebook is a powerful marketing tools, in other articles we look at 5 more mistakes people can make with their Facebook marketing activities and other ones with 5 insights into making a Facebook marketing campaign effective!

Sign up on the right to get new features, search the tags for Facebook if you want to read about other reports with a Facebook element.

Do You Want Help With Anything Mentioned Above?

These are some of the key areas mentioned above, if you have any questions, please use the chatbot, social media contact (footer) or form below:

Facebook pixels?

How to target your audience?

Prospect re-targeting?

Funnel building tips?

Facebook marketing checklist?

Contact Our Team Now For Facebook Ad Support.

The post 5 Facebook Ad Mistakes That Cost You Money appeared first on LifeTools Digital.