When Is It Too Late to Begin SEO?
If you haven’t started to use search engine optimization for your website, you don’t need to fear. It’s not too late to get started. Even when you see your competitors sitting at the top of the listings and you know that people looking for a company in your industry are finding them and giving them a call, you can still compete in the marketplace. It’s never too late to get started, and right now is the perfect time to start using SEO techniques on your website. Head-To-Head with Your Competition There are probably some companies that have been using SEO for quite a while in your field, but you really have nothing to worry about. There is a lot of valuable real estate available for websites, and you aren’t going to face a lot of competition on all keywords. You don’t have to fight with your competition on the major keywords right away. You can get a step ahead of them in the game by focusing on a number of opportunities available with longtail keywords. It will be easier to rank for them and many present what is called “buying keywords” where the customer is ready to make a purchase right away. After you have built up some recognition on the search engines this way, you can start targeting the major keywords to appear on page 1 for them. Page 1 Listings You don’t have to get to the top of page 1 in your field in order to see a difference in your revenue. It is important, however, to get to the first page since most people won’t make it to page 2 on a search query. Instead of concentrating on making it ahead of your competitors, it’s more important to focus on getting to the first page and then work on attracting the attention of the people that are on the page. With the right word combinations, consumers will visit your website first even if it isn’t in the top position. SEO Isn’t Going Anywhere Some people believe that the days of SEO are long gone and that it’s a passing fad that will go away sometime soon. This has been a myth that has been passed around for many years now, and every year the need for SEO becomes stronger. Perhaps this myth is being passed around by your competitors! SEO right now, especially for mobile devices, will drive a lot more business to your company. People are looking online to find local businesses and if you aren’t showing up on the first page of the listings, you are literally handing customers over to your competition. Learn more about SEO and how it pertains to you in 2017 and moving forward into 2018 by visiting our site at qodemedia.com or by giving us a call at 416-208-0157. Never has it been more important to apply SEO strategies to your website than it is...
read moreHow to Find the Best Website Designer
When it’s time to put together a website for your company or time to update a site, you’ll need to find the best designer available. All websites are not created equally and if you deal with a designer that does not know the ins and outs of SEO, you’ll be wasting your money. A site designer nowadays must be up-to-date with the latest SEO techniques available and all of the best practices. It’s not enough to slap together a quick website any longer. Your site must be optimized in order to rank well in the search engines. Search Engine Optimization When your site is being put together, it needs to follow the rules of the search engines and be made according to the latest algorithm updates. The content on the site must be relevant and contain the necessary keywords that will help your site in terms of search inquiries. If you have too many keywords stuffed into your content, or not enough keywords present, the search engines simply won’t be able to tell what your site is all about. A good site design incorporates great content into it so that your site puts its best foot forward right from the beginning. Technical Details There are a lot of technical details that also need to be taken into account. Your site should be AMP enabled so that it can load quickly. Google is now penalizing websites that load too slowly and even social media sites are starting to show links at the top that lead back to fast loading sites. If you have a slow site you’ll have a difficult time being found both on computers and laptops at home and on mobile devices. Site Design Your business deserves much more than a regular cookie-cutter site design that does nothing to enhance your products or services. You need a well-designed site that focuses on what you have to offer and presents it in the best way possible according to your specific niche. You need to find a designer that captures the essence of your company and can lay it out in a well-formatted and easy-to-navigate website. At Qode Media we design websites that are SEO friendly and can also help you with your SEO requirements once your site is up and functioning. Find out more about your choice of design possibilities by visiting qodemedia.com or call us today at 416-208-0157 to speak to a design...
read moreSEO and Blogging Form the Perfect Relationship
A large part of your marketing strategy should involve building engagement with your visitors. While you’ll definitely want to be ranking high on the search engines, it’s just as important to have your site able to convert sales once visitors land on it. Blogging gives you the opportunity to build your reputation and brand while also adding more content to your site for SEO purposes. Google loves to see fresh content added to sites, and when you do this on a regular basis, you’ll be rewarded. Site updates show that your website is staying current and relevant in today’s marketplace and offers a better experience for users. While you are writing your blog you can also incorporate some important keywords into your topic, but at the same time, you’ll want to avoid overusing keywords. Blogs give you the chance to use the type of wording that will relate best to your customers with a natural tone and voice. Your content will naturally use words that are related to your field so that you can pick up traffic from various search queries on the Internet. As you continue to write for your blog your website will grow in size as the number of pages increases. This gives you the chance to rank for more keywords and to reach more potential customers. You’ll also be increasing the number of links on your site and will naturally encourage more back linking from other websites. When you have a blog you can stay current and answer the questions that your targeted audience would most likely have. You can reach out to them and engage with them through your blog to gain trust and credibility. It’s important to keep up with your blogging once you get started, however, in order to keep the content fresh. A stale blog won’t be enticing to visitors so make sure that you’re adding at least one blog post per month at a bare minimum. Blogs do require maintenance and management, but they are well worth the effort. In order to see your site ranking well and to form better relationships with your potential customers, take the time to set up a blog on your site today. If you need help putting a blog together or need help maintaining it, please contact Qode Media today at 416-208-0157. You may also want to look through our website at qodemedia.com to see the wide range of SEO and website design services we...
read moreHow to Interpret Your SEO Data
SEO begins with the acquisition of data to figure out exactly how your company is doing and how to make it do better. While you are amassing this data, you also need to know how to interpret it properly in order to see success. Here are some of the basics involved with analyzing the information you have collected so that you can use it to your advantage. Your ROI Your results really don’t mean anything if your ROI isn’t increasing. If you are getting more visitors to your site or you are ranking higher on the search engines but your revenue isn’t rising at the same time, you still have a major hurdle to overcome. Look at the data in terms of ROI to really see the true picture. Look at All of the Metrics Don’t get stuck on one metric alone when you’re examining the data. There are a number of different factors involved and you need to look at all of the metrics to make sure that they are aligning. Don’t Get Stuck on Your Keywords When you first started working on your SEO you chose some keywords to target, and are probably still using them today. Some of the best revenue surprises, however, come from keywords that are related semantically and you’ll need to constantly test new keywords to find those gold nuggets. Take a Neutral Approach As a webmaster or a business owner it’s hard to examine the data without some type of emotional bias involved. Perhaps you have been working on a project with high expectations and have been disappointed at the outcome. Instead of scrapping the project altogether you may try to come up with new and varied ways to make it work. Hiring a neutral third party to really crunch the numbers and have them tell the story is what every company needs in order to see the fastest expansion. If you have been collecting SEO data for your website and aren’t sure how to interpret it correctly please give us a call at Qode Media today. We are the specialists in data management for SEO and one of our experienced consultants can help you go through the numbers to discover both areas of weakness and future opportunities for growth. Contact us through our site at qodemedia.com or call 416-208-0157 for more...
read moreWhy Your Page Speed Dictates Your SEO Success
It’s more important now than it ever has been before to make sure that all of the pages on your site are loading quickly. It’s not enough to simply check your site to make sure that the homepage comes up fast. Every page is analyzed separately, so each one must be diagnosed on its own merits. Using diagnostic tools, we’ll be able to determine your time to first byte, which measures the time it takes a visitor to receive the first byte of information and the DOM load, which tells us how long it takes the server to send the HTML tag, JavaScript and CSS from the page. Other diagnostics include time to render the full page, the critical render path and more. It’s also important to take into account the time averages for different types of devices such as smart phones and androids and the 3G versus 4G loading times. Google is most concerned about the critical render path and the time to first byte since they determine page loading times in real time. It’s important to get well-optimized in these areas first in order to see a boost in your SEO rankings. With faster loading speeds, your bounce rate will go down automatically, since many people will click off a site when it doesn’t load quickly enough. This is especially true when it comes to accessing the Internet on mobile devices. If people are clicking on your site and then heading back to Google right away due to a slow-loading site, this information is recorded in the engine’s algorithm. This affects your SEO performance significantly. Even a matter of a few milliseconds can make a difference in regards to users not waiting for the site to load and to your SEO rankings. Getting your site optimized for page speed is one of the most important things you can do right now in terms of SEO. Find out more about your page load speeds so that any problems can be addressed as soon as possible. This will give you the edge against your competition and help you rise up the ranks where you belong. To learn more about page loading speeds and how to obtain a diagnosis of your site’s speed please contact Qode Media at 416-208-0157 or through our website at...
read moreWhat Is a Guestographic and How Can It Help Your Business?
SEO experts use a guestographic in order to build more authentic and authoritative links back to a website. Google loves these types of links since they are naturally occurring due to the interest they generate. The term guestographic is a combination of the words “guest post” and “infographic” and they are just that – an infographic used for guest posts. In order to succeed with this method, however, you’ll need to create totally original infographics that resonate with the viewers of the site. These can be created with a designer and it is well worth the cost. The results can include an improvement in your site’s ranking and more traffic back to your website. Guestographic Benefits It’s easier to grab the attention of a visitor with an infographic than it is with simple text alone. The content, images and colour they display are all focused on intriguing the visitor and inviting a click to a site for more information. They are also more likely to become viral since they can be shared easily on social media sites, websites and blogs. Guestographics are also a great way to brand your product or company since they can be made to fit the tone of your brand and match its colours. People will remember the infographic much more than they would simple text. As you continue to send out these guestographics your brand will become well-known amongst your current and potential customers. Sharing Guest posts are not commonly shared with others while guestographics are. They are a great way to boost your rankings through legitimate back links and to generate more visitors to your site. While they are time-consuming to produce, the payback can be fantastic especially when you have created a high-quality graphic that others feel is worth sharing. Learn more about guestographics by visiting qodemedia.com or give us a call at 416-208-0157. Back-linking is an important part of your SEO efforts and must be done the right way to be properly recognized by Google and the other search...
read moreAMP Pages Have Now Made Their Way into Google Feed
Accelerated Mobile Pages commonly known as AMPs first hit the market in February 2016 and since that time it has become more critical than ever to use them on your site. A website should generate these types of pages to take advantage of their various benefits. They load quickly and Google recognizes that this is especially necessary for mobile users that are using their devices to access the Internet. When AMP was first introduced it was only supported by Google Mobile search results but as time went by the Google+ app amongst others embraced it. Now, Google Feed is adding AMP links as well and you can tell these links apart from the other ones with the lightning bolts you see as a small badge beside them. Android users have been waiting for quite a while to be able to access AMP pages on their Google Feed and now the wait is over. Google Feed is your go-to resource when you are looking for stories that are news-related and for articles. When you see these listings along with the lightning bolt icon you’ll know that the link will lead you to an Accelerated Mobile Page. This icon is quite big and it is illuminated so even users of Android devices that are quite small will be able to notice it right away. The advantage of clicking on these AMP pages is they load faster so users won’t have to use up as much data to access them. As well, quite obviously, this is a timesaver and this is an important point to consider. People that are using their mobile devices to access the Internet are usually on the go and don’t have a minute or even precious seconds to waste. When time is of the essence, users will choose to access these faster-loading pages versus traditional pages that just can’t load as fast. If you have a website that is mobile-friendly but you haven’t yet incorporated AMP Pages into your marketing plans, it’s time to do so now. These fast-loading pages will help increase your bottom line by enticing more viewers to click on their links. Find out more about increasing your mobile visibility by visiting qodemedia.com. If you are ready now to take the step forward into the future and increase the revenue for your business please contact us today at 416-208-0157 to speak to one of our experienced AMP...
read moreHow SEO Audits Have Evolved in 2017
How SEO Audits Have Evolved in 2017 Due to the changes that have occurred in search engine optimization in 2017 in the form of mobile indexing, JavaScript crawling and the new release of AMP, SEO audits must be updated in order to reflect these advancements. In order to stay on top of the game, any business should have a new SEO audit performed to stay up to date to recent trends. A variety of SEO tools are used to make sure that your mobile site can be crawled effectively by search engines. They will check for blocked resources, redirects and errors, and will make sure that visitors to the mobile site can access content easily. Other tools are used to test the crawlability of JavaScript (which should only appear on mobile sites when necessary). JavaScript crawling indexing must also be examined across the site to make sure that all of the resources are appearing correctly and that the content is showing properly. A new SEO audit will also show the SERP features that can enhance the visibility of your site on the result pages and recognize the impact they have on your traffic. AMP (accelerated mobile pages) has been recently introduced, and provides a better overall user experience on mobile devices. It is now considered to be a must-have feature for media blogs and websites and for any site that is experiencing speed issues on mobile devices. An audit will determine whether the implementation of AMP on your site complies with the search result requirements by Google. An up-to-date SEO audit from Qode Media can show how well your site is being indexed and crawled in order to maximize your visibility in the search results. It will also divulge the most critical issues as well as opportunities available for your site in this mobile age. Find out more about the most recent SEO audit changes by contacting us today or by filling out our contact...
read moreSearch Engine Optimization for Hotels
Hotels have a different set of SEO requirements than many other businesses. They were, in fact, the first types of companies to adopt SEO methods back in 2003. Things were certainly very different in those days when it was easier to rank a hotel and now these establishments should be working with RankBrain, which is Google’s artificial intelligence that determines how sites are ranked. SEO Tips for Hotels It is common practice in this day and age to attach a social media widget to the homepage so that potential customers can look at your social media site. This can be damaging on a hotel site, however, since you aren’t looking to brand your name on your website but rather want to give people an easy way to book their rooms. If people start heading to your social sites, they will get distracted and may end up booking a room somewhere else. While they are on your site give them exactly what they need – a quick way to book a room. User-Friendly No matter where your site is showing on the rankings, if it isn’t user-friendly viewers will leave it in a heartbeat. Your potential guests want a user-friendly experience and if they find that it’s too difficult to book a room on your site they will definitely look elsewhere. While many other companies can get away with a bit of complexity and confusion on their sites, people that are booking a hotel want to do it quickly. If you can’t offer that, no amount of SEO will do your site justice. Internal Linking Structure You are going to be offering viewers the chance to see your hotel, the rooms and the features it provides. At the same time, you must always have a prominent link available so that people can go back to the booking page in one click of the button. No matter how you structure your linking internally on your site, this is the most important component of the structure. While the structure can be funnelled in a variety of different ways, this one link must appear on every page. Social Media Counts With VRBO and Airbnb offering affordable options to travelers, hotels must maintain their branding efforts in order to remain in the game. It’s more important now than it ever has been to connect with potential guests with transparency. Hotels must also be genuine with their branding efforts on social sites and show people why they offer the best holiday experiences without any sales type. At Qode Media we offer SEO and social media management for all types of businesses including hotels. If you’d like to speak to us more about your business and how it can be moved forward in this age of new technology, please contact us through our website at qodemedia.com or call us today at 416-208-0157 to receive a free website...
read moreHow To Write An Effective Blog Post
How To Write An Effective Blog Post Keeping up with a blog requires consistency, determination and some effort on your part. It’s like a diary – you should be contributing to it on a regular basis. Outsourcing content from a third party is also common, but you should consider what should go into writing an effective blog post for your business. The Content Blog posts should be interesting and deliver value to the reader. It’s not absolutely necessary to load the post with keywords – you are writing for the person that is reading the post, so comprehension is the most important factor. Your content should be interesting and provide useful information regarding your niche. Think like a Customer The best way to connect with the reader is to try to get inside their head and determine what they need to know. Pretend you are a customer and try to determine the questions they would be asking. Usually the questions are very simple, so you should keep your answers simple as well. Overly complicated blog posts will leave readers scratching their heads and wandering over to a competitor’s site to find more simple solutions to their problems. Technically Speaking The meta-descriptions, headers and page titles should directly reflect the content that you have written. The meta-description is the portion of text that shows up below the title of the post in search results and gives readers a quick preview of your post. You will also need to make sure that your title shows up as the blog title, rather than dates or the URL – if you don’t have a clean, engaging title, your result will typically be glossed over. Have Fun A blog post should be treated like a conversation with your reader – you should be using a conversational tone and keeping content light and friendly. If you are enjoying the task of writing your blog, it will be reflected in your final product. If, on the other hand, you’re writing the post simply to add more content to your site and can’t wait to be done with it, it’s time to call in outside resources for help. If you need some help with your blog posts, Qode Media has your writing solutions. We can manage your blog for you and add interesting, user-friendly posts that can engage your audience. Contact us online or by phone today and learn more about how you can improve your...
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