One of the most important ranking factors has been Google Page Rank, a number assigned to each Web page as per its robustness in terms of quality as well as the number of incoming links. It is a link analysis algorithm that rates a page on a scale of 0-10, of which 10 means the highest rank. Usually, Google shows this number in its browser toolbar after which several SEO tools began utilizing it as a relevant measure to assess the Google Juice of a page.

What happened after the advent of PageRank?

The increasing importance of Google page rank triggered almost an obsession amongst a majority of Webmasters and SEO experts. This resulted in black practices such as selling links and demanding more money for getting links from a blog or site having a higher Page Rank (PR). Obviously, this is something that Google never supports. Further, because of time gap between the two updates,  there is also a mismatch between the Google generated and the publicly available PR.

The final outcome…

Traditionally, Google updated the much-heralded page rank algorithm approximately after every three months. However, since the beginning of 2013, there has been no update. While PR is one of the more reliable metrics for evaluating the site’s quality when in service, it now seems to have taken a permanent retreat.

Since 2009, the support for PR has been dropped, starting with the withdrawal from the Webmaster Tools. Google has never introduced its own toolbar or add-on for Chrome to show PR values. In 2011, it took back the support from Firefox; while Internet Explorer was the last browser to continue with the Google’s PR display.

The PR update happened in December 2012 but was not completely intentional. According to Google, the team was fixing a back-end service along with which a PR update occurred. The data flowing into the toolbar has not seen any update even in 2013.

The absence of any update in 2013 made many experts to believe that there might be some problem in the algorithm. Well, there was no problem with the algorithm. To this, the search spam head of Google Matt Cutts said, “The ‘pipeline’ to send rank updates to the toolbar is broken,” which indicates that the PR in the bar will not update automatically.”

He further explained that the team knew about the ‘no update’ decision in the Google Toolbar and that there is a good reason behind it. According to Google, several people obsess over this metric even though it is not a vital one anymore, due to which it is not a priority to fix it. This indicates that the PageRank meter, formerly designed to assist the visitors judge the quality of a Web page, now has data that is obsolete. Recently, Google’s John Mueller conveyed in a Google+ hangout video that Google would perhaps not update the Google Toolbar Page Rank anytime in future.

But Google might not remove forever

Yes! You heard it right. In early 2013, Google asserted that PR in the toolbar would not be going away as long as the users continue to use it. Cutts clarified that the consumers still consider PR as a useful metric. This is perhaps because anyone still having the toolbar obviously sends back the data to Google about what they are viewing, which persuades Google to retain the value for that particular page for further assessment. This means the last saved page rank values, although not latest because they are not updated, will be still in use by Google for allotting the position of Web pages on the search result pages.

Stop being obsessed about PR because…

Seriously speaking, PR is just a temporary influencer in fulfilling the objectives such as attract more readers, make more money, and have more leads. Considering PR as a success metric works only if one assumes that a higher PR is essential for better ranking, driving more traffic, and having more leads. Only those who believe this would consider giving importance to the page rank metric. However, Google does not believe in this assumption, which is evident in its ‘no update’ approach since more than two years.

One must remember that although the page rank is not updated, the SEO value of sites engaged in black or spammy practices are bound to go down; all thanks to the regular Penguin updates. So, why give importance to a page rank value when you can directly measure with the latest metrics that Penguin focuses on?

Still not convinced? Here are top 5 reasons why PR should not be a focal metric:

• Discrepancy between the displayed and generated rank
• No correlation with organic SEO ranking, as sites with 0 PR has considerable traffic for competitive search terms
• Irrelevant for social media results and real time search, for example, real time news and status updates having a PR 0 are shown up quickly in the search results
• Not a result-inclined metric because PR is not associated with any real results or with stuff that links directly to other Google-liked metrics
• Held insignificant by Google

So, What’s next in the metric list

Well, right now, it is hard to say what Google shall give importance to in its metric list. However, it is easy for a Webmaster to find the metrics directly related to meaningful gains or business goals for the site instead of just focusing on the page rank, says Susan Moskwa who is Webmaster Trends Analyst.

Moreover, it is worth considering metrics that are updated at fixed intervals instead of only a few times a year, as the latter is too gradual to know about the changes reliably. Susan suggests focusing on conversion rate, bounce rate, and clickthrough rate (CTR) through services such as Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics, which are the more critical metrics than page rank.

So, don’t you think it is time to leave behind the page rank metric?

The key to survival in today’s crushing eCommerce environment is to outpace the competition by being adaptable to sticky situations. This is only possible by having a farsighted approach for readily accepting changes that may seem insignificant at first glance, but are beneficial for the long run of your business.

With every passing day, thousands of new websites are born on the internet; behind these websites are those companies who are waging an endless war to outdo each other. To be able to dominate online is the ultimo-motive of most eCommerce businesses and to do this they need to have adaptability. Every once in a while it is a good idea to re-design and give your website a new look so that it is always unique to look at and offers something more to new and returning customers. There are quite a few steps to be followed when getting involved in website re-designing, however, if these steps are poorly executed there is a high chance that your initiative will do more harm than good for your website.This is the digital age, an age where your website is the most critical marketing tool at your disposal. It is very important to look after the needs of your website in a manner that is beneficial for your business.

To do this, it’s essential to identify that redesigning is not all about the aesthetic appeal of your website. While such adjustments may seem the most significant, a beautifully designed website will lose its purpose if the pages are not well optimized. The chief motive should never be forgotten – the idea to attract and retain customers, enhance the user experience while they browse through the web pages and last and foremost, to give them something in return for their actions.The goals which we outline in the Extreme Checklist of Website Re-design 2014 will affect the behavior of your visitors during their stay at your website.

By the time you are done with this checklist, you will know the following: 

• Does your website need a re-design?
• What is the plan of action if your website needs re-designing?

#1 – Measure Your Ground

Before making any initial decisions or defining goals, it is always a good idea to measure the current standings of your website. Best option here would be to analyze the performance of your website over the past few years, by determining:

1. Number of repeat / unique visitors
2. Bounce rate of visitors
3. Average / Total time spent on the website
4. Current standing of unique keywords in Google
5. Domain authority
6. Number of unique leads / new form submissions
7. Total / Average sales generated over the period

If obtaining this information seems like a difficult task for you, we recommend using Google Analytics, to track these changes and statistics to retrieve the past and current performance of your website.

#2 – Define Your Goals and Objectives

After collecting all the necessary data about the past performance of your website, it is time to draw the line and mark milestones which will be your ultimate aim. By defining these goals, not only will it help to consolidate your efforts, but it will help you in determining whether you really need to redesign your website.

Facts such as “The current website looks drab” or “Because they are doing it” are not a powerful fuel for driving such major endeavors. To recap, redesigning is not about how visually appealing your website is, but more so, about how it functions.

 Here is a check-list of general ideas to define as your rock solid goals:

1. Increase traffic to your website
2. Increasing traffic from specific sources / driving targeted traffic
3. Increasing Conversion Rate
4. Decreasing Bounce Rate
5. Increasing / Decreasing Click-through-rate
6. Increasing Domain authority
7. Increase the number of new leads / form submissions
8. Increasing rank of your competitive keywords

It is vital to spend considerable time in chalking out these goals as they will determine the course of action you will be taking in near the future for increasing your website’s performance. From this step, there is no looking back; the only place you stop for breath is when you reach the end of this checklist.

#3 – Circumvent Dangers by Safeguarding Assets

 With your objectives / goals defined, it is time to check your inventory and protect your assets before revamping your website. Considering the fact that your website has been running for quite a long time, it is likely that you have assimilated quite a few assets which you would definitely like to safeguard before moving forward.Website assets may include things like:

• Noteworthy or High Performing Content
• Current Keyword Rankings
• Inbound Links and
• Conversion Tools

To initiate this process, start by conducting and in-depth audit of your website and interlinked pages and create a record of the most valuable of your assets. The following checklist will enable smooth-run of this process:

• Total number of pages in your website
• Which pages are most significant?
• Number of Inbound Links to your website
• Sources of these Inbound Links
• Which Inbound Links are most significant?
• Current ranking of your unique keywords
• Which Keywords are the most effective?
•  Your most shared content / viewed content

 It is mandatory to complete this step to maintain the firm ground your business presently stands on. Losing such valuable assets will negatively affect your website redesign, it will be more like building your website from scratch and deleting all the progress you have made so far.

#4 – Scrutinize Your competition

The best way to beat the heat is to outpace the competition in the areas that they are adept at. We highly recommend using our  Prime One Global Analyzer to analyze your competition. The tool will tell you how you fare as compared to your competitors. Run the Prime One Global Website Analyzer to get the current standing of your website and this will help you develop an idea about their strengths and weaknesses. Look around their website and make note of things that are praiseworthy and things that could be bettered. This information is not for cloning on your website, but for understanding how the same things can be implemented on your site in a superior manner and learning from their mistakes.

After your analysis is complete, make a list of things that you would like to do for your website and things that could be implemented differently for higher performance.

#5 – Create a Blueprint and Customize Your Homepage 

Homepage is the area of your website which will be receiving the most traffic, thus, it is essential to customize your homepage in a manner that makes it an ‘attention-magnet.’ Choosing to not optimize your homepage can be a grievous mistake as this page forms the first bonding between your website and a potential customer. An average visitor scans a website for 3 seconds before he decides to prolong his stay at the website or chooses to hit the ‘x’ button. It is crucial to optimize the visitors’ experience in such a way that is not only attractive but also retaining, so that he always chooses the former option.

The mistake most entrepreneurs make today is by stuffing too much information on the first page of their website. People do not want to be sprayed by information when they land on your website. There are specific areas for everything, and they will eventually go to such areas if you can hold their attention long enough.

The key idea behind a successful homepage is Clarity and Simplicity. If the design looks neat and the homepage is welcoming, there is no way the visitor is running away any time soon. Considerable time should also be spent into optimizing the keywords for your homepage so that it is easily reachable.

Provided below is a checklist for Home Page Customization:

1. Your website homepage should radiate brand image and corporate colour schema (Have a personality)
2. Connect your homepage with your visitors emotionally using Social media channels and realistic visuals
3. Provide only most significant information about your brand in the homepage and avoid bias words
4. See that all areas and menus of your website are easily accessible through the homepage
5. Limit the number of choices the visitors can make and give proper guidelines like Tool tips and road map
6. Define and integrate the most significant brand and commercial  keywords for your webpages
7. Implement content marketing strategy and Integrate social media links and blog posts into your homepage
8. Avoid heavy images , Javascript and sales pitch from your home page, Pay attention for Text contents
9. Use Testimonial, recommended trust seals and Legal pages to make your site compliance with site architecture process
10. Make sure install Google Analytics or piwik analytic for track your site visitors behavior and traffic sources

The homepage should be designed from the viewpoint of the consumer, to cater to his needs and requirements. If he has taken the initiative to come to your website, there is a reason driving his visit, and your homepage should be the fuel to determine his next course of actions.

#6 – Be Content – Centric 

The more fresh content you have, the better it is for your website. Google and other search engines love websites with fresh and useful content, as much as consumers. Thus, it is very important to have a content-centric action plan for your website.There is a wide assortment of mediums that can help you produce content for your website like:

• eBooks
• Press Releases
• White Papers
• Info-graphics and
• Images, etc.

Here is a checklist of Content Marketing routes for your website:

1. Blogging – It is by far the most successful content marketing strategy that can be employed by any business. Does your website have a blog?
2. Press Releases – Post press releases as and when necessary for increased traffic
3. Outsource Work – Define agencies or authors for your content marketing strategies and let the experts take control of the situation. They will keep your website updated regularly, beneficially.

The Blog is the most powerful tool for tapping your targeted audience. It serves as a way for consumers to interact with your business and drives them through the initial Inbound Marketing drill of your company.

#7 – Identify and Integrate Solid Call to Actions 

The entire idea behind optimizing and redesigning your webpage is to convert visitors into consumers. Any step from your website a visitor may take, that pushes him closer to being a consumer is known as conversion. Two things drive the conversion ratio of your online enterprise:

• Calls-to-action
• Landing Pages

CTA’s are those elements of your website, which induce visitors to take a series of actions. This can be anything from asking to download an eBook to requesting form submission.Every page of your website requires a Call-to-action, but it is vital to ensure the call is relevant to the content provided in the web-page.After clicking the CTA, visitors will be re-directed to a landing page. This page will host a simple form which the user might have to submit in order to get something in return (mostly the deal offered through the call-to-action).

Though this looks fairly simple, here are a few things that should be taken into consideration when designing a landing page:

• Landing pages should not have website navigation (to avoid distracting customers)
• The description of the offer should be clear and simple to the visitor
• Social sharing buttons should be included for obvious reasons
• The deal or offer should be beneficial to the visitor (Important)
• Include the company logo
• Make use of your most powerful keywords to get found on search engines

Landing pages are most powerful tools for generating leads. It’s highly likely that these are not in your present goals, but it is a good idea to inculcate them as soon as possible.

#8 – Use Semantic Markup and Make your Website Responsive 

Deciding to redesign your website and forgetting to make it optimized for better viewing on Tablets and Smartphone’s can be a mistake, you will never forget. Over 65% of today’s demographics use mobile or tablet platforms to surf the internet. If your website is not responsive, then you are far away from tapping into this traffic base- don’t make this wrong decision.

The most favored way of transitioning into mobile platforms is by making responsive websites. What these websites basically do is, adapt themselves according to the resolution of the screen of the device being used to access them.

Here is the quick checklist for developing a responsive website:

• Determine the source of mobile traffic
• Define the framework of your responsive theme
• Design your website’s layout appearance for portrait (smartphones) and landscape (tablet) viewing.

Choosing to ignore the mobile market is not an option your business should consider. When the entire world is obsessed with their mobile devices, so should your business be.

#9 – Optimize for Search Engines – But don’t Do the Same Mistakes.

My company Prime One Global LLC describe SEO as ‘The Science of Synergy’ – Everything that we have talked about in this Extreme Checklist is somehow interrelated, and one is not possible without the other.All the above things that you have done so far will be in vain if your website cannot be found online. It is most important to be found online – make your website reachable. How can you aim to increase the leads, and convert sales if your website has no visitors?

Here is our checklist for Search Engine Optimization:

Use latent Semantic Keyword Indexing Strategy :  By now you have a fair idea of which pages in your current website obtain most rank in search engines – the pages with most traffic, number of inbound links, highest keyword rankings. Proper 301 re-direct pages need to be created to preserve the value of these pages. However, do not use old school  style Keyword stuffing or link building with your commercial keywords. use proper keyword strategy like Brand keyword 40%, Commercial keyword 25%. Generic & Long tail Keywords 35% for avoid keyword stuffing or content penalty issues.

Making a 301 Redirect Strategy: The most efficient way is to create a spreadsheet record of your old significant / important pages along with their old links. Then create a separate 301 redirect for each of them to avoid skipping out any links. But , do not link any link profile that totally irrelevant for your niche and don’t forget to use proper pagination and inbound link strategies. Focus on choosing 1-2 keywords for every page. Once you have finalized the keywords, it’s vital to use on-Page SEO tactics to further optimize your webpage.

#10 – Recap – Time to Take a Break / Note 

So we have come to the end of our extensive drill, and it is time to take a break. Sit back and observe – Has the entire process of website redesign been effective for you? For obvious reasons, it is essential to measure your ‘Returns-on-Investment’ for your redesign.Here is our last, but not the least checklist to measure ROI of website redesign:

Measure Visitors

• Number of new visitors to the website?
• What sources are they coming from?

Lead Generation

• How many visitors converted into leads?
• What instigated them to convert?

Sales Conversion

• Number of leads converted into actual sales.
• Number of Unique visitors per day,week,month

While conversion ratio of your website will be your primary concern, other metrics to consider will be the objectives that you set for yourself in the second step of the redesign. The detailed analysis of these measurements will help you understand the sectors which are working well for your website and the sectors which need improvements in your website.A website redesign does not offer immediate results.  It is a process that takes place over a span of time and requires small adjustments and tweaks to be made to your strategies every now and then to achieve the primary goals of your business. In order to reach these milestones, it is essential to constantly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your website and plan your next set of actions accordingly.

Final Verdict

There is more to website redesign than meets the eye. The initiative to invest time and money into such a venture involves more of doing your homework, before you design that beautiful and visually appealing website. The website needs to be result-oriented in such a manner that is affiliated with the best ethics of inbound marketing. Following this curve will not only insure that your website is ‘reachable’ but that you are able to convert and retain customers once they enter your domain – Literally!

Don’t treat your website like you would treat the attic in your house. A website is sophisticated, yet the most powerful marketing tool of your company. It should be integrated with all functions like Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Management, Online Reputation Management and Conversion Rate Optimization. Making these decisions will decide the future of your brand and help you turn your website into a flourishing inbound marketing platform.Make use of the opportunity while you have it. Follow this checklist to your success.

I hope you had a good time 🙂

The Extreme WordPress SEO Checklist of 2014

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a plan of actions that can be used to improve the search engine ranking of a website. The key element of SEO is to increase organic traffic (target specific traffic from search engines) to your website / blog. WordPress is one of THE most authoritative content management systems your website can ever have when it comes to SEO. It is essential to spend considerable time on your WordPress SEO as choosing to ignore such a valuable tool may lead to negative rankings on the search engines.If you are choosing to optimize your website for the best user experience and increased traffic, it always helps to have a checklist or a strategy to follow in order to attain the most benefits out of your valuable time.

It is the reason i have created the Extreme Top 50 WordPress SEO Checklist of 2014. This checklist is beneficial for people who are starting a new website, or want to optimize a live website.This checklist follows a step-by-step list of things that need to be accomplished, in order to create the best infrastructure for your website.

[highlight background=”red” color=””]NOTE: It is worth mentioning before jumping into the nitty-gritty’s of website optimization that on-page SEO tasks yield diminishing returns. In simple terms, there will be lots of quick benefits from fixing the easy and obvious mistakes at the start. As you delve further into the checklist, situations may get a bit tough to tackle and more technical (as problems become less obvious).The benefits for the same are not very noteworthy in the short term.[/highlight]

Extreme WordPress SEO Checklist of 2014 

Before we start, it is important that you analyze your current website’s SEO rankings in order to understand the changes at the end of the checklist. Get a detailed report from Analyze about the present SEO rankings of your website and save it to a PDF for future reference. It will help you in measuring the results later on.I would suggest reading the whole thing and applying as much of this checklist to your website as you can. By following all the parts of this detailed checklist, you will not only understand the concept of the entire picture but will have a deeper understanding of how the web works. – SEO is the Science of Synergy

ON PAGE SEO CHECKLIST

The front-end of your website (Content) and the back-end of your website (HTML) are easily the most accessible and controllable SEO elements. They serve as the best pivot for starting your SEO measures. The idea is to make all the pages in your website Search Engine and Human friendly by making use of all contents and tools, available at your disposal.

For SEO purposes, it is best to strategize one or two target keywords for every page in your website. If you are considering focusing every page with more than two keywords, it might be the right time to step back and understand that a page with so many keywords might just lose its focus. Plan and divide all your crucial keywords into separate pages to maintain Page POV. Ready? Let’s go! Start by optimizing the On-Page elements of your website through the checklist provided below.

1) Creating The Perfect Title Tag

The title of your website is most important for your ‘on-page’ SEO success. Always try to integrate a title that is appropriate for the search engines and looks user-friendly too. There has to be a balance between ‘just’ stuffing keywords into your title and making it rhyme for your visitors. You might have observed that whenever you search in Google for a particular keyword, websites with those keywords loaded at the front of their Title Tags always appear first. If you are using Yoast SEO, All in one SEO or any other SEO Plugin then you don’t need to worry about the word count. You will get great help from plugin tool tips and hint section.

For Example: Let’s assume you are looking to rank the keywords “good habits” and you are having problems deciding between the following Title Tags:

NOTE: It is clearly visible from the above screens that Google has opted to show those websites that have the keywords at the starting of their Title Tags . Spend considerable time in making Title Tags beautiful; these are easily the most important yet overlooked element of On-Page SEO.

2) Make the URL Search Engine and Human Friendly

URL’s play a significant role in defining the action of search engines for your website – both humans and search engines choose websites that have an easy to read/find URL. The URL’s of a website should be optimized in such a way that the ‘words’ mirror the content of specific pages of that website. URL’s should contain easy to understand words, keywords for individual pages and must never contain illegal characters like ‘underscores’ ‘percentage symbols,’ etc. Your page URL may not be long like this, but it is still important to fix the URL structure – to make it search engine friendly. You must be wondering how an URL will help the SEO of your page.

It’s simple, just like the Title Tags of your page; Google uses your ‘page URL’ to decipher what your page is all about. Thus, it is a good idea to include your important keywords for the page in the ‘page URL.’ Google will choose to trust those pages which have easier to read URL and the URL’s are keyword intensive.

TIP: Don’t forget to remove all unnecessary dates and categories from the URL structure to make it clean and easy to spot.

 

3. USE MULTIMEDIA EFFECTIVELY TO RANK

 

Multimedia is that part of your website which helps in retaining the attention of your visitors. Multimedia aids in giving a better explanation to your website content and websites with properly optimized images are loved by search engines as well as the visitors, who show their gratitude by sharing your content across social media platforms.

However, without proper optimization, multimedia can do more harm than good for your website.

Here is a checklist to certify that you are on the path to salvation, when it comes to using multimedia effectively for your SEO campaigns.

Multimedia also increases the superficial value of post or article. Content with higher superficial value has more chances of ranking on Google.

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Make it a point to include at least one multimedia element (video, audio, images and lists) in every post to increase its SEO value.

4. OUTBOUND LINKS HAVE GREAT EFFECT ON SEO

 

Sharing is caring. Google respects all websites who respect their page ranks as well as the page rank of other websites. The Internet is a socializing platform and Google wants to see you as a dynamic part of this platform.

Don’t be selfish. Always link to external sources (Outbound links). If you choose to ‘no follow’ outbound links from your website, Google will take it as a mere act of selfishness.

 

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Remember to include at least 2 outbound links to external websites (famous blogs or news portals) in every piece of content you broadcast.

5. DON’T IGNORE META DESCRIPTION

It is possibly the most disregarded aspect when it comes to SEO for your website. It is noteworthy to mention that some websites choose completely to ignore the use of Meta Descriptions – You should not make this mistake.

Meta description can be defined as that phrase which tags along with your website link in the search engines. It is essential to fabricate a unique and keyword intensive Meta description for all the important pages of your website. Choosing to ignore so may lead to users completely ignoring your website link when it pops-up in the search engines.

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Creating a Meta description should be made a part of your post creation routines, so that you never overlook this seemingly insignificant and ‘easy to forget’ aspect of SEO.

6. KEYWORD RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Integrating Keywords (keyword research) can be done through in-depth keyword researching, analyzing and choosing the best keywords that will drive organic traffic from search engines to your webpage.

It is the most important aspect while doing SEO for your website and if not done correctly can result in all your efforts going down the drain. Use the Google Adword Keyword Tool to research and find out the best working keywords for your website, before inculcating them in your posts and titles.

NOTE: It is also important to include your main keywords at the beginning of your blog posts.

Why you ask? Because Google pays utmost attention to the placement of the keywords in your articles – If a keyword appears on the first few lines of an article, Google will understand that the article is relevant to that particular keyword as it is mentioned at the start.

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Always include the target keyword in the first few lines of the Article / Blog Post

7. THE IMPORTANCE OF H1 TAG IN SEO

The H1 Tag of your page is like the sub-heading of your page.

Normally all websites have one H1 Tag (Which should be user-friendly and search-engine-friendly), but some WP themes default to two tags and use H2 as the page header)

Check if your page has a proper H1 tag by looking at the page source and spotting the following code. If it is there, then your job is done, if it is not there, insert a H1 Tag into your page source.

Make sure all your pages have a H1 Tag

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The blog post title should always be in a H1 Tag.

8. WEBSITE SPEED AND PERFORMANCE

You may not be aware of this, but Google pays very little attention to website speed as a ranking factor (about 1%). This may seem insignificant, but for humans, optimizing website for speed and performance is the main thing otherwise you will tend to lose valuable visitors.

The Users love websites that are responsive in nature and have a fast load time. Statistics shows that many users hit the ‘X’ button even when a website is loading, due to its slow loading time.

 

Providing a fast experience for users is mandatory to boost the conversions of your website along with a slight boost in SEO rankings.

You can easily evaluate the speed of your website by using the Google Website Speed Tool.

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Remember to address all the issues of slow page load for the best user experience in your website. WordPress Plugins – W3 Total Cache Tool and WP Smush It can help you in delivering faster load speed.

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9. TITLE TAG MODIFIERS ARE NIFTY TRICKS OF THE TRADE

 

Sometimes people search for really long set of keywords. Owing to the unpredictable nature of these keywords and their varying lengths it is impossible to optimize your page according to these keywords.

What can be a possible fix to this situation?

Such long keywords can also be ranked by using Title Tag Modifiers to your website.

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Try putting words like “Best” “Guide” “Review” “2014” “Top” etc. as Title Tag Modifiers for your webpages.

 

1. NEVER FORGET THE SOCIAL SHARING BUTTONS

If your article has useful content for the readers, they are bound to like and share them in the social networks. You can speed up this process by inculcating Social Sharing Buttons into your website.

Check whether your social sharing buttons are attractively displayed in your blog post. There are many free plugins out there to choose from.

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Ensure that the Social Sharing Buttons Appear at the Top and Bottom of your Blog Posts.

 

 

1. CONTENT IS EVERYTHING

 

Our researches indicate that Google chooses to display those links in the first 10 search results which have 1500+ words of Content.

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Make it a point to write at least 1500+ words of your most competitive words that you are trying to rank in Google.

 

2. DON’T LET THAT TRAFFIC BOUNCE

Google simply hates websites with high bounce rates. If people seem to be continuously bouncing from your website in search results, it will be a clear signal to Google that your website is not hosting quality content. Once your website gets flagged for inappropriate content or low-quality content, Google will push your website down the rank drain – trust us when we say this, it’s quite a hard way up from the rank drain and you should avoid this at all costs.

One of the best solutions to slashing the bounce rates of your website is by using Internal Links at the starting of your posts. Visitors are much more click-savvy when they come to your website, than they are half way through your article.

 

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Wikipedia is one of the best examples of websites with Internal Links at the starting of their article.

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Insert as many Internal Links as you can at the starting of your article, without cashing on the overall quality of the article.

 

 

 

 

 

3. LATENT SEMANTIC INDEXING KEYWORDS TO THE RESCUE

 

You may have observed that when you type a particular word into the search box in Google, a lot of optional words are displayed in a list by Google along with your target keyword. Those optional words are LSI Keywords.

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For Examples if you are writing about “Good habits” then you would probably want to mention words like “for kinds, “bad” “healthy” “personal” etc.

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The above words in Italics are LSI keywords for your target Word.

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Finding LSI Keywords for your target keywords is very easy:

1. Search for your target keyword in Google.com
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the result page
3. There is a list of highlighted words under “Searches related to your keyword”
4. Those are the LSI keywords.

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Make sure all your articles have at least 1-2 LSI Keywords.

 

 

WAY TO GO! YOU MADE IT THROUGH THE ON-PAGE CHECKLIST. ARE YOU READY TO DRINK THE OFF-PAGE SEO JUICE?

 

OFF-PAGE SEO

1. SPEND CONSIDERABLE TIME IN MAKING BACKLINKS

 

Backlinks serve as a crucial factor in manipulating the search engine ranking of your website. Significant amount of time should be taken to build Backlinks for your website.

There are multiple factors that should be taken into consideration for making Backlinks:

1. Quality: The position of your backlink and the authenticity of the content of the backlink play a significant role in portraying the quality of your backlink to search engines. Try to place your links in high authority websites with great Page Rank. Always optimize the Meta Tag Description for every back link to your website.
2. Text: When you are making text backlinks, ensure that the text you link your website to is directly related to your services. If you add vague or unimportant words to your website, this will hurt the SEO of your website than help it.

• Number: This is all but a number game – the more quality backlinks point to your website, the higher are its chances to rank in search engines. Make an excel sheet with all the present backlinks to your website and spend time in scrutinizing each of them for best results. Use all that you have learnt about content development to create the best backlinks.

 

Remember, 1 Quality backlink is better than 10 Low Quality backlinks.

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Create new backlinks from time to time for higher visibility of your website in search engines.

Use our Extreme Guide to Creating Backlinks to in-depth knowledge of link creation.

 

 

2. MAKE YOUR WEBSITE TRUSTED BY GOOGLE

 

Your website should be connected to all your social media accounts. If it is used in combination with your Authorship and Geo Tags – Google will understand that the website is run by a human and not a Bot – this adds ranking to your website.

Some factors that are highly regarded when it comes to trust monitoring are:

1. Authority: The best way to establish an authority online is to connect your website with your Social Media Accounts, Add HTML GEO tags and Author Tags. Make best use of all SEO techniques learnt to create quality content and get links from others. Post frequently on your website.

1. History: Websites that have a domain registered for 3+ years are highly regarded by Google as trusted websites. Always pay for the .com registration of your website well in advance to add some weight to your webpage.

• Identity: Try to link your identity with as many places as you can online. This has a positive effect on the overall weight of your website.

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Make sure your website is linked to all your social media accounts, Add HTML GEO tag and Author Tags to your website.

3. NEGATIVE SEO STACKS UP AGAINST YOUR RANKINGS

 

There are no black hat tricks to online fame. If you have ever indulged into such activities that are listed below, it is advisable to undo all that you can to dodge the penalty if your website has not been flagged by Google already.

1. Back Link Abuse: Remove all paid backlinks to your website, if any. Backlinks can only be earned over time. There are no shortcuts here.
2. Spam: Never ever ever ever (and if there is any ever after ever) hire a blog spammer to spam your links into various websites. Doing so does not help your websites reputation in any way. Always use the power of content to win love of your readers and deliver only those things / services to the people that they can vouch on and share with others.

• Piracy: Don’t ever add unauthentic or unauthorized content to your website. They could be in the form of video, music, photos, text or anything else. Posting cool freebies is definitely a good idea, but always give credit to the source for your share and check if your share is not against the policies of the source.

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Ensure that your website is not linked to any illegal activity or content.

 

AWESOME! LOOKS LIKE YOU MANAGED TO WADE THROUGH THE OFF-PAGE SEO LIKE A PRO. ARE YOU READY TO START WITH CORE CODING CONCEPTS OF SEO YET?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CORE CODING AND CONCEPTS

1. SITE MAP

 

A sitemap is that page of your website which categorizes and stores all the pages of your website in a list format. Your website should also have a HTML Sitemap which links to every page. It should be there in every page, normally in the footer. You should also create an XML sitemap for search engines.

<Insert image of a HTML sitemap here>

2. DISABLE JAVASCRIPT / FLASH NAVIGATION

JavaScript / Flash Navigation should be disabled in a website so that the website is easily crawlable by search engine spiders. Ensure that you have text navigation links at the bottom of every page if there are no navigation links at the top of the page.

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3. THE ROBOTS.TXT FILE

This file should always be there; even if it has to be left empty it should be there. It is a file created by webmasters to tell search engine robots how to index the pages of your website.

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4. STATIC PAGE INDEX

If your website is such that the content on your homepage constantly keeps changing, it is a good idea to have a set of Static Content on the page to not confuse the search engines.

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5. WWW RESOLVE

Make sure the website with and without the www in the address bar reaches the same position.

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6. SETUP NECESSARY 301 RE-DIRECTS

In case you are migrating from an old website to a new one, it is necessary to setup all the mandatory 301 re-directs so as to not lose the valuable traffic from the old website.

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7. GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Setup an account with Google Analytics if you haven’t done already. It will give you crucial information on all the SEO related statistics of your website.

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8. GOOGLE WEBMASTERS TOOLS

The XML Sitemap needs to be submitted in the Google Webmasters Tools. Create an account if you don’t have one already.

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9. 404-ERROR PAGE

The 404-Error Page, also known as the ‘Page not found’ is displayed whenever a person asks for a page linked to your website, which is not available. There can be many explanations for such errors but, mostly they happen due to careless linking or dead pages which have been removed from your website but the backlinks have remained.

Creating a custom 404-Error Page for your website is a great idea, so that visitors are not greeted with the boring and customary 404-error pages which look very dispelling and unattractive.

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Make a custom 404 Error Page for your website if you don’t have already.

1. WORDPRESS AND LANGUAGE

Declare the language of your website and try to get it converted into as many languages as possible to increase the reach of your website.

Ensure that your website has the latest version of WordPress installed for best experience.

1. CLAIM YOUR VANITY ULRs

Though it may look insignificant, but claiming your Vanity URL on major networks is vital, not only for the future SEO of your website, but also to monitor its online reputation. It ensures that no one else can take your brand name on other network accounts. Websites with the most numbers of networking presence have higher chances of dominating the search results in search engines

Claim your vanity URL for all the networking websites listed below.

A typical example of your Vanity URL would be: www.xyznetwork.com

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List of obtainable Vanity URLs are as follows:

• hxxp://www.twitter.com/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.facebook.com/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.yelp.com/biz/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.youtube.com/user/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.linkedin.com/in/your-company-name
• hxxp://your-company-name.wordpress.com/
• hxxp://your-company-name.tumblr.com/
• hxxp://pinterest.com/your-company-name/
• hxxp://www.hulu.com/profiles/your-company-name
• hxxp://technorati.com/people/your-company-name
• hxxp://about.me/your-company-name
• hxxp://your-company-name.posterous.com/
• hxxp://profile.typepad.com/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.etsy.com/people/your-company-name
• hxxp://en.gravatar.com/your-company-name
• hxxp://www.scribd.com/your-company-name
• hxxp://your-company-name.livejournal.com/
• hxxp://your-company-name.hubpages.com/
• hxxp://www.flickr.com/photos/your-company-name/
• hxxp://photobucket.com/user/your-company-name/profile/

2. RESPONSIVE WEBSITE

Ensure that your website theme is responsive so that it can be accessed via smartphones and tablets as well. Choose a responsive theme for your website, if you have not done it already.

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EUREKA! YOU HAVE NOW GAINED THE PARAMOUNT KNOWLEDGE OF EXTREME SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. ARE YOU READY TO EVALUATE YOUR PROGRESS?

PROGRESS REPORT

Not only does powerful SEO depend on the implementation of changes but also on the measure of the impact, and those changes have on your website over a period. Seeing and experimenting with keywords, tracking their statistics to understand what is best suited for your website’s needs – these don’t come in one day. It requires years of practice and an in-depth understanding of the SEO landscape.

However, we have reached the conclusion of our ‘Extreme WordPress SEO Checklist of 2014,’ and we can safely say that you have been able to do most of these things, if not all from our Extreme Checklist.

At the beginning of the checklist, we had asked you to create an Analysis of your website’s SEO ranking. Now, it is time to equate it with the ranking of your website after you have implemented these changes. Again visit Analyze to generate the present SEO report of your website and compare it with the previous report. The results will speak for themselves.

I hope you enjoyed the read.

 

There are lots of questions, expert advice, and tips about Digital marketing strategies and eCommerce sales conversion optimization techniques. However, most of the tips from the writer are assumptions and ideas, not from their own experience. As a practical Digital marketing consultant, I hear the same questions from my clients and friends. Therefore, I’m going to write a few simple, easy-to-implement tips about eCommerce SEO and how to implement this to your website.

In today’s day and age, we have become dependent on modern communication gadgets & online activities. Consequently, the number of purchases from online stores is rising with each year. According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), in 2013, 72% of adults bought goods or services online in 2013

Unlike business websites, eCommerce websites have their own set of distinctive challenges and opportunities. Companies need to take advantage of every opportunity to effectively meet these challenges. This assures a positive impact on your traffic and revenue rate. To have a gorgeous well designed and attractive website could be one part of productive sales; but are you certain that having one will increase output? If you wish to get recognized by top search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo to attract shoppers to your site, SEO is the answer. In order to improve search engine rankings, you need to ensure the website is search engine friendly.

Maximize your eCommerce Sales Conversion

SEO is an acronym for “Search Engine Optimization”. It is someone who understands how search engines work and optimizes web pages to rank highly within the search results. SEO directly plays a significant role in defining how much traffic an eCommerce store makes. Most of the online shopping sites struggle with implementing the correct SEO strategies and action plans to boost their sales conversion, and many eCommerce portals use the automated product and inventory systems that have the advantage of handling instant product page creation and sales automation through third-party applications.

However, unlike the conventional techniques that marketers use to handle web promotions (blogs, forums, etc.), for websites, optimizing online web stores is quite different. The significance of eCommerce SEO under a business plan is obvious, but on the other hand, formulating the perfect digital marketing strategies for an eCommerce website is a challenging task for business owners. Here I’m going to share the best eCommerce sales conversion optimization tips that will help you to fully optimize your online site.

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#1. Turn on Search Engine friendly URL’s

The core of every positive and effectively augmented eCommerce website is a well-versed and planned architecture. Organizing the site to make it user-friendly is truly significant. Search engines give better results when they search your website. If you have a site with many categories of products, they need to be indexed properly. Users will have an improved experience and can find what they are looking for. In search results, this helps boost a site’s visibility.

URLs make a lot of sense when they are easy to understand by humans “human-readable” and are easily understood by search engines “search engine friendly (SEF)” or pretty URL’s. Likewise, they are just as important as the description for search engine ranking and optimization and page title. URLs have a direct impact on how you rank for keywords. One of these SEO techniques is to make sure the specific keyword of interest appears in your URL. However, experts believe that having keywords in the URL is a vital share of the equation.

Best URL Rewriting Practice:

1. Consider using the product name, a category in your product page URLs
2. Avoid using too many stop words  and unnecessary special characters in your product title
3. Avoid using many .htaccess or page redirection conflict
4. Implement 301 Domain Redirection and Page, IP Canonicalization for avoiding duplicate  content issues
5. If you use Tracking parameters or session IDs, simply tell search engines to ignore this via the Google webmaster tool

 

#2. Ultimate Keyword Research Tips

Keywords are the search words and phrases that people use in their online searches. Finding the right keyword,s or you can call it the “Money Keywords”, can trigger sales. Keyword research is one of the most valuable, important, and high return activities in the eCommerce search engine optimization strategies. Using wrong or ineffective keywords can lower your site’s effectiveness drastically. For accurate research, keywords and information, you need to put in your time, using a series of relevant keywords related to the services and products is of vivacious importance. In case the keywords chosen are too common, the search results will simply not show up. And this is one of the reasons for hitting back and lower buying attributes. If your product list is the same as available on your competitor’s sites then you need to come up with quality keywords. Long-tail keyword phrases consist of three to five words that users use for explicit searches. This attracts more quality traffic, leading to more conversions.

Best keyword research & implementation strategies for eCommerce websites :

• Identify your target market and segmented audience interest via Google keyword planner or Google Trend
• Enable keyword suggestion, Ad group and traffic estimation fields to identify users monthly search volume
• Categorize high, low and average competitive keywords based on your business and product niche
• Create a list of long tail keywords, commercial keywords , generic keywords that related to your brand keywords
• Integrate keywords within your meta tags, web contents, images, and Hyperlinks, and balance your minimum keyword density
• Avoid an over-optimization issue by using a series of main commercial keywords in multiple outbound link profiles
• Generate multiple “relevant”  keywords from Google related search for your off-page link acquisition purpose
• Use long-tail keywords for image name, Alt tags, and Hyperlink title to maintain better keyword proximity

 

 #3. Craft Perfect Title for your Page

The most important SEO component on paper is the “Page Title” Tag. In order to grab online visitors’ attention and better search engine visibility, use well-planned intriguing, search engine-friendly page titles. Carefully crafted page titles always improve search engine visibility and user interaction. However, there is a standard for writing, high converting search engine friendly title tags are essential for specific product pages and static web pages.

Perfect Title tag :

• Replicating same page titles on your website is not a good idea, you need to write a unique title for each product page manually
• Keep the length no longer than 55 – 69 characters and also avoid stop words, as well as unnecessary special characters
• Brand keyword  and commercial keywords must be perfectly blended within the title tag to generate SEF title and vanity URL
• For separators, avoid underscores and instead use spaces, dashes, commas, or pipe for better search engine benefit
• Always start with brand name, product name +  product title to maintain recommended Semantic pagination structure

 

#4. Use actual Product Descriptions 

Online stores are often crowded with inventory and low on product descriptions. Writing quality and actual descriptions encourage more site traffic and provide better chances of selling. For e-commerce sites, each and every product is an opportunity to add useful content. Competitive advantages, consumer reviews, and feedback are the fruits obtained from accurately describing products, but it is essential to avoid keyword stuffing. Users’ preference and trust in your site against competitors is of vital importance. Adding SEO content and keywords for effective product descriptions are modern-day practices. It allows customers to comment on the usability of your product and thus maintains a healthy customer relationship.

How to write an Effective product description:

• Write compelling meta description blend with your main keyword and brand keyword
• Limit your meta description characters to no more than 155 characters and no less than 120 characters
• Avoid capital words, special characters, and stop words from your meta descriptions
• Try to write multiple variations and split test your title impressions, CTA using Kissmetrics or Google analytic’s
• Do not use the same meta descriptions for other pages and make sure all product pages have unique meta descriptions

 

#5.  Craft compelling, Informative Copy

Without any doubt, we are all aware that copywriting is one of the undeniably most important tasks when you talk about online business. In addition, the content needs to be distinctive to obtain better search engine rankings and convert readers as potential buyers. Therefore, you need to pay more attention to writing very informative, persuasive web content and sales copy for your eCommerce website. It is really important NOT to use the standard manufacturing product or service descriptions. Of course, copying a manufacturer’s product descriptions from other websites might save you time, but in the long run, it only generates a haphazard and the search engine will penalize your page and domain for duplicate content issues.  Avoid putting your lovely business in trouble by having a descriptive and compelling sales copy or web content for your eCommerce website and product pages, because “Content is the King”.

Simple copywriting Techniques:

• Perform in-depth research about your industry growth, product demands and identify trending product names
• Write a keyword-rich ( use long-tail keywords ) Call-to-action based magnetic headlines and subheadings
• Avoid self-promotion and biased words rather than writing users benefits and quality of your product and services
• Follow the content writing standards and craft your content exclusively for your specific product/service page
• Use the latent Semantic indexing copywriting method to manage your website resource and reference pages
• Use secondary keywords, and commercial keywords in your subheadings to rank your page well in search engines
• Add your client’s testimonials, case studies, and review links for proof to the reader about your value proposition
• Balance your commercial keywords or main keywords density and ensure it is less than 40% from your page and codes

 

#6.  Optimize Your landing page Visuals

Optimization of an image is a skill that you wish to learn. Image optimization is an imperative part of structuring a fruitful eCommerce business. 98% of eCommerce businesses always trying to display their products and services using visual explanations and video commercials. This is because people don’t have time to read an entire sales pitch and your full company history, and it’s natural for buyers to look for the best value for their investment. Therefore, you need to pay attention to optimizing your landing pages visuals such as images, videos and site architecture to deliver a better user experience to your visitors and of course to the search engines. The “Alt Tag” attributes to adding better SEO results to your online store. It achieves better rankings in search engines by correlating keywords with images. In actuality, an Alt Tag is the ideal technique to sell and popularize your eCommerce products. However, there are some advanced tweaks available for eCommerce sites.

E-commerce Landing page visual Tips: 

• Always use less weight compressed images using any online image compressor or Photoshop save for web device option
• Use a search engine friendly image name, Longtail ALT tag, better product description for image  and video caption
• Use CDN (Content Delivery Network ) or Jquery Lazy load features to make your landing page codes and  images load faster
• Create better resolution visuals and provide dimension, Angles, and right position to make your visuals are appear in the right place
• Know your right image types such as JPG, PNG, GIF and learn how to intelligently handle thumbnail images and videos
• Don’t forget to use image  and video sitemap to index your visuals via search engines to generate organic traffic
• Use OpenGraph, Twitter hCard, Google schema markup for displaying your visuals perfectly on Search engines and social media

 

#7. Hunt and Fix Broken Links, Error pages

Broken Links, pages, images and 404’s hurt SEO and affect search engines rankings. Having useless hyperlinks on sites is not just irritating; in fact, their existence may root some real impairment to your online business as well as to your reputation on the Internet. Users prefer to reach the product in the minimum quantity of clicks. Thus, it is really important to analyze and fix your eCommerce site’s Broken links, Coding errors, and browser compatibility issues to make your site compliant with search engine guidelines, as well as to provide a better user experience to your site visitors and customers. These tools can easily give a breakdown of any broken links that you might have.

Best Tools ever :

1. Broken link Checker
2. W3C Markup Validator 
3. CSS Validator
4. Google Webmaster Tool
5. Browser Compatibility Test

 

#8. Use Google Rich schema markup

User-generated content (UGC) is regularly ignored by eCommerce site owners. If organized suitably, it can have encouraging results for SEO. Statistically speaking there are many convincing factors to consider when adding User reviews on your web store. The latest and most powerful form of development in SEO is Schema Markup. The search engine result pages (SERPs) can enhance the website after active use of Schema markup. It is recorded to have a third of rich snippets and extra bits of information in Google search results.

Advantages & Statistics:

• A dramatic 4.6% increase in sales is said to take place if 50 or more reviews per product are achieved
• Sites with user reviews can attract 63% more customers to shop online
• There is a 105% probability of potential buyers purchasing who intermingle with reviews and online QA sessions
• These visitors spend 11% more than those users who do not interact with reviews
• User reviews are 12 times more trusted than the actual product descriptions marked by manufacturers
• An average of 18% uplift in sales can be gained by the single factor of “reviews”

 

Conclusion:

I’m a big fan of digital marketing and eCommerce optimization strategies! There is no doubt there are hundreds of ways to growth hack your eCommerce business website sales conversion online. However, I wrote these tips based on my experience rather than writing an idea. 🙂  Now, it’s your turn! What is the best eCommerce SEO strategy that you have implemented on your eCommerce website? Let me know your tricks in the comment box below.