More often, website maintenance ends up as one of the important tasks that get overlooked by many business owners. They think that once the website is done, the work ends there, but not. A website should be regularly maintained to avoid malicious virus attacks that may cause breached of private data and your website be taken down by your hosting company.

A well-maintained website helps attract and retain customers, maintain your search engine rankings and provide seamless user experience to your website visitors that can overall affect your site’s conversion rate. Website’s security and maintenance should be on the website owner’s to-do list if it isn’t already.

HOW WEBSITE MAINTENANCE IS DONE?

Here are 6 website maintenance tips to make your website run like a well-oiled machine.

• 1. REGULARLY BACK UP YOUR SITE.

  It’s happened to all of us: you work on a project all day long, and then something goes wrong with your computer and you lose your entire project.
  Backing up your website is very important and something that should be carried out with your website maintenance at least once a month. If a hacker does somehow get through and wipe out all of your data ,you’re going to be hugely grateful to have a backup to rely on.

• 2. CHECK FOR SECURITY UPDATES AND BUG FIXES

  Keeping your website secure has to be a major priority for anyone that runs a website especially those who deals with customer’s private data like E-commerce website. 

  Keeping your plugins, scripts and server technology up-to-date is the most important of our website maintenance and security tips. These updates are usually to improve the security or patch up a vulnerability found by the developers.

  Failure to keep your website updated may make your website vulnerable to an attack.

• 3. TEST YOUR WEBSITE AFTER ANY UPDATES.

  Do not forget to thoroughly review all pages of the website after the updates. Cases are you may find broken links, broken images and features that don’t work or areas that can use improvement.

  Make sure to also test all calls to action and points of contact/sale, such as “Contact Us” forms and the checkout process on your website. You don’t want to discover that your contact forms stopped working after a website update which was done a couple of months ago. If so, you’ve lost business opportunities due to this flaw.

• 4. CHECK BACKUPS (ANNUALLY). 

  Be sure that your entire website is backed up regularly ( at least once a month ). Ask the developer of your website to thoroughly check the backups to make sure they are working and that all important data are retrievable.

• 5. RENEW YOUR DOMAIN NAMES (ANNUALLY). 

  Make sure to renew your domain and hosting in a timely manner. Your website’s domain name is very important. Allowing it to expire can mean catastrophe.

• 6. TEST FOR BROWSER COMPATIBILITY. 

  As time passes, your website, the plugins and the scripts used may become incompatible with new browsers. Regularly review and test your website in different browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari. 

CONCLUSION

Just like any other business tool, your website needs to be regularly checked and maintained. Failing to address your website’s ongoing requirements can have devastating consequences for your business’ reputation and financial outlook.

If you need a little help in keeping your website secure, Go2designlab is your “Go to” company for any digital services. We deal with website design & development, mobile app development, website optimization, maintenance and security every day of the year.

Contact us and let’s set up a monthly maintenance plan to keep your website functioning 24/7 all year round. We can be reached through a phone call (032) 410-6528 or you may email us at [email protected].

You may have already heard or read SEO experts talking about pandas, penguins, and hummingbirds and think to your yourself why are these experts talking about animals? Well, You if you did, then that makes the two of us ( only early days as an SEO specialist though ).

Ladies and gentlemen, these exotic line-up of creatures are actually the names given to major updates to Google’s ranking algorithm. Each is created to improve the relevancy of the search results to make sure the most relevant websites rank highest in search engines.

So, who’s who and which is which?

Source: https://www.link-assistant.com/news/key-google-updates.html

Hummingbird – is made to understand the meaning of a search query given by users to provide more accurate search results.

Panda – It measures the quality of “content” on a site. Panda offers better rank to high-quality sites while demote those low-quality ones.

Penguin – This measures “ Backlink Quality”. It’s job is to reduce the unnatural backlinks which are illegally created ( Black Hat SEO ) to improve a website’s ranking.

OPTIMIZING CONTENT FOR PANDA, PENGUIN AND HUMMINGBIRD

Here’s a few tips to make sure your website stays on the right track (effective and absolutely safe) whatever new updates Google rolls out.

EFFECTIVE CONTENT STRATEGY

Google likes content. This is not a newfound idea, but it is one that is often neglected. You have to be dedicated to developing high-quality, original content.

PANDA

Panda considers multiple factors in identifying your site’s quality. Two of the most important are:

• Duplicate Content
• Short content pieces

AVOID LOW-QUALITY AND DUPLICATE CONTENT:

Panda has huge emphasis over duplicate contents. If Panda detects any duplicate contents on your website ( could be contents you have copy pasted on other websites. ) you’re likely to be punished by the panda by making your page invisible in search results.

• Focus on producing your own, high-quality unique and fresh content
• Make sure all of your pages have unique titles and meta descriptions

CREATE LONG AND HIGH-QUALITY CONTENT

The longer your content the better, because longer content equals better search rankings if it’s relevant. Create rich media content (like videos, images, etc.), and make sure your non-textual content is formatted in a way search engines can see it.

PENGUIN

One of the issues Penguin is trying to targets regarding your site’s content ( which by the way is no longer working after the release of the Penguin ) is keyword stuffing.
Keyword stuffing is the practice of shoving as many SEO keywords onto a page as possible. Nowadays, because of Penguin, keyword stuffing on a page will hurt your search engine ranking.

AVOID KEYWORD STUFFING

If you want your website to be a Penguin-friendly, the you should:

• Avoid repeating the same keywords. The optimal repetition of a keyword should be 1x in title, 1x in headline, 2-3x in content and 1x in meta description. – moz https://moz.com/blog/how-much-keyword-repetition-is-optimal-whiteboard-friday.
• Avoid over optimizing H1. Fit keywords into these tags if it makes sense.
• Avoid alone-standing keywords in the alt tags of images. Use a descriptive alt tag or none at all.

HUMMINGBIRD

CONVERSATIONAL SEARCH + RELEVANT CONTENT

Hummingbird is intended to make search engines more directed toward conversational search rather than keyword-based search and gives results catching up the meaning with content strategy. The goal here is to give out results that are accurate and relevant.

Here’s what you should do to help Google’s hummingbird easily understand your content.

Create Content Covers The 3 Types Of Search Query

Create different types of content for different query types (informational, navigational and transactional).

3 TYPES OF SEARCH QUERY

Informational search queries

These are queries that cover a broad topic. This type of query may return answers like background information, how-to-guides, or specific information about a topic or product without having the intention to purchase.

Examples:

“Tips in search engine optimization”, “Search Engine Optimization” ( which will return the definition of Search Engine Optimization ).

Navigational Search Queries

A search query entered with the intent of finding a particular website or webpage with no intent to purchase or make any transaction.

Example:

When you want to visit a particular website and uses the search engine to navigate there instead of using the URL box.

Transactional Search Queries

A transactional search query is a query that indicates an intent to make a transaction, such as making a purchase or reservation.

Example:

Book a flight to Thailand

Also look for long-tail keywords, these are four or more keyword phrases which people are likely to use when searching for products or services.

EXPAND YOUR KEYWORD RESEARCH

Google also shows search results not only for the exact phrase the user typed in but also for other related keywords. Pay attention to related keywords, acronyms or spelling variants of your keywords. You can also look into Google Suggest, in “People also Ask” section and in “Searches related to” section for other relevant keywords.

LINK BUILDING

Since 2013, link building has changed like never before. Numerous older methods just don’t work any longer. Spammy links and links coming from poor domains are the targets of Google’s Algorithm updates.

PANDA

HIGH-QUALITY LINKS

Panda, in some way, affects your link building too. In order to provide users with the best user experience as possible, it shifts your link building focus to quality over quantity.

• Focused on high quality link sources
• Create highest quality content

PENGUIN

KEEP BACKLINK PROFILE NATURAL AND CHECK FOR NEGATIVE SEO

Links work like a recommendation: a recommendation that increases your rank. And people sometimes manipulate ranking by creating links by themselves to improve their ranking.
Now the work of Penguin is to chase these websites that have created their own links and punish them by decreasing their rank.

MAKE YOUR BACKLINK-PROFILE LOOK NATURAL AND HIGH-QUALITY

Penguin chases websites with backlinks that:

• come from websites that were created (Black Hat technique) for the purpose of SEO.
• Use overly-optimized anchor text.
• Come from adult or other “bad neighborhood” websites.
• Come from sites that are irrelevant to your own.

Build links from high-quality, relevant websites and keep your anchor-texts diverse and natural.

BEWARE OF COMPETITORS’ NEGATIVE SEO

Negative SEO refers to the practice of using black hat techniques to sabotage a competitor, like pointing spammy links to your competitor sites to push them down the SERPs. 
So make sure to keep an eye on all new sites that linked to your website.

HUMMINGBIRD

STRIVE FOR CO-CITATION

Co-citation is when one website or brand is mentioned (not linked) by two or more sources. Each time your brand or website is mentioned alongside with your competitors or similar web resources, this gives Google a hint that your firm and those other companies are related.

How can you use co-citation effectively?

Identify your top competitors and make sure your brand gets mentioned alongside with them.

Perform a Google search for “Top 10 [ your company’s field of expertise ] of 2019”. If your business isn’t mentioned, reach out to the publisher and ask them to put you on the list. The more citations the better.

TAKEAWAYS:

• Avoid thin pages ( page having few contents which are likely to be not useful ).
• Duplicate content is another large contributor as Google can recognize content taken from other websites. If you have duplicate pages problem, you can solve it with canonical tags.
• Quality remains to be the best way to rank high. Create content that answers people’s questions.
• Identify unnatural links to your website and remove them.
• Beware to Competitor’s Negative SEO
• Make sure your brand gets mentioned alongside with your top competitors.

E-commerce platforms are the easiest, low-cost and fastest way to build an online store. The good thing about this is that you don’t need lots of money, time or technical knowledge to build an online store. Because, in your case we will do it for you, all you have to do is to set back, relax and wait.

What Ecommerce can do to your Business?

Ecommerce will play a big role in your online business particularly in today’s generation where most of the people are internet users. Most of them may choose to visit your website to find out about your products and services, instead of visiting your store.

Here are some of the benefits of Ecommerce to your business:

• Costumers can access your business 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.
  The internet will let your costumer access your site for further information of the specific products and place orders, anytime and anywhere.
•  Can improved your clients service and satisfaction.
  The internet allows to answer questions and solve costumer problems without taking so much of your time. Also, you can provide a better service to your costumer. Your costumers might need more information before buying a specific product.
•  Faster transactions of your products.
  You can easily process, orders and inquiries through your website without taking so much of your time.You can just one click away from your store and you can accept orders, payments and receive directly to your inbox.
• You have the opportunity to access your business anywhere you want.
  Even if you area having your holiday vacation your business won’t stop. With the help of the internet you can access your business anywhere in the world.

Managing an Ecommerce depend on what products you want to sell online. Thus, you may be able to use the internet for:

• Running an online shop

Taking your business online gives you the ability to have time freedom so you can live and work anywhere you want.

•  Managing your supplies

The internet allows you to manage your proposals, purchase orders, order information quickly and instantly to your clients

•  Get feedbacks to your costumers

With the help of internet you can give them the information that they need and solve their problems, where you can provide a better service.

• For reservations and appointments

Having an Ecommerce website, your clients can easily read about your products and place orders anytime.

Today, high-quality content and backlinks aren‘t enough for search rankings. Your website needs to be indexed by search engines like Google. In this article, we will be dealing with two key factors to shape your SEO – crawlability and indexability.

If you have read my article just before this one, you will now that:

Crawlability describes the search engine’s ability to access and crawl content on a page. And

Indexability refers to the search engine’s ability to analyze and add a page to its index.

And on that same article, we have talked about the Foundation of Search Engine Optimization ( Technical SEO ) and briefly I’ve tackled about IMPROVING YOUR SITE’S INDEXING AND CRAWLABILITY.

In today’s article, we will dig deeper on that topic and let’s start by understanding how Google Crawls websites.

HOW DOES GOOGLE CRAWL WEBSITES?

Google follows three basic steps to generate results from web pages, The first step is:

CRAWLING

Search Engines like Google has this bots or spider as they call it that crawl every website online. It follows each link, then follows the links on newly discovered web pages, and so on and so forth. The crawler then brings new content back to Google’s database for cataloging called indexing.

INDEXING

After a page is discovered, Google analyzes the content of the page, catalogs images and video files embedded on the page. This information is stored in the Google index, a huge database stored in many computers. After Indexing comes:

RANKING

When a user types a query, Google tries to find the most relevant answer from its index based on the highest quality answers, user experience and also it considering things such as the user’s location, language, and device (desktop or phone).

HOW TO IMPROVE CRAWLING AND INDEXING

Now that you know how Google Search works, you know have a better idea how important it is to improve your site’s crawlability and indexability in order for your website to appear on Search Engine Results Page.

Now, let’s discuss how we can improve your website’s crawlability and indexability.

• PROPER INTERNAL LINKING

  Search engine bots crawl through the web by following links through the web. They only find pages which are linked appropriately, it is very important that pages of your website are well-connected and that each page should be linked to one another. Doing so will help Google understand your content.

• A SHALLOW SITE STRUCTURE IS BEST.

  A good website structure gives you a higher chance to rank well in search engine result pages. The spider should be able to access any page in your website within 1-3 clicks.

  A good site structure looks like a pyramid. At the very top, you’ll find the homepage, right below that are the main sections or categories, possibly followed by subcategories. On the ground are all the individual posts and pages.

  A poor structure on the website sends bots to dead ends resulting in crawlers missing out on content.

• FIX BROKEN LINKS

  No one likes to load a page that leads to an error. Broken links are always a bad experience for your users, but also for the crawlers. The moment they detect broken pages, they do not crawl your website content causing your search rankings to lower.

• IMPROVE PAGE LOAD SPEED

  Faster loading websites not only yield a better user experience but it also improves the bots crawling rate. Every resource on the web has been allocated time in which crawlers have to go through the website. If your website is slow, the time elapses before all your resources have loaded, making them not crawl your site in entirety. If your site is not crawled frequently, it may not rank as high as you would want it to.

• UPDATE YOUR XML SITEMAP REGULARLY

  Submitting the sitemap regularly makes search engine bot aware of new additions. The sitemap also gives valuable metadata like last page update.

  Also, make sure to keep your sitemaps organized and crawlable by:

  • Updating your XML sitemap regularly
  • Eliminating duplicate pages
  • Redirecting pages properly (when moving or renaming)
  • Ensuring canonicalized pages
  • Using consistent, search engine friendly URLs
  • Using a UTF-8 encoded sitemap 
  • Checking for sitemap errors regularly

  For WordPress users, SEO plugins like Yoast and All In One SEO Pack usually taker of updating your XML regularly, the UTF-8 encoded sitemap, ensuring canonicalized pages and redirecting pages properly.

  You can use Google search Console for checking duplicate pages and sitemap errors.

• AVOID DUPLICATING CONTENT

  Spiders detect duplicates really fast since they have already crawled similar content. If your website has duplicated content from other websites, the crawlers do not bother to crawl through your website as they assume that the content has already been crawled. The worst case scenario is your pages might not be crawled making it hard for them to rank appropriately.

• FIX CRAWL ERRORS

  Regularly crawl your site and look for any crawl errors using Google’s Search Console (Google Webmaster) and want to fix them right away.

ESSENTIAL GOOGLE SEO TOOLS

Here some of the Google SEO Tools that will help you along the way of improving your site’s crawlability:

• PageSpeedInsights to analyze pages for speed and usability improvement suggestions.
• Mobile-Friendly Test is another great tool to show mobile performance.
• Google Search Console provides rich insights into your site‘s crawlability and indexing. You can submit your XML sitemap through Google Search Console. There are lots of power features Google console has that will help you in improving your site crawlability.

Every SEO expert’s main objective in starting an SEO project is to create an efficient site setting to influence the spiders’ ability to crawl your site. Great contents and high-quality links are useless if your website’s pages are not indexed by the search engine especially Google.

If you are looking for an SEO expert to help build a great SEO foundation for your website, look no further. Go2designlab is the best SEO expert in Cebu, Philippines, we were able to make our website appear on the top of search engine result page and we will surely be able to do the same to yours too. You may contact us at (032) 410-6528 or email us at [email protected].

Great content, check

Quality links, check

Rank on SERP, not on the top 50. Why? Is there anything wrong?

Well, just like in engineering, the foundation is very important, same with Search Engine Optimization. If your website has a poor foundation in Search Engine Optimization, technical problems will arise and it can negatively affect your rankings and traffic.

How can a website rank well on a search engine result pages if the pages are not even indexed?

In this checklist, I will run you through all the technical SEO fundamentals that you need to optimize on your website for better ranking.

• 1. INSTALL ESSENTIAL TOOLS

  Here are some of the important tools that you need to install and familiarize for technical SEO:

  • Google Analytics: It tracks website traffic and gives insights on how your visitors are behaving on your site.

  • Google Search Console: Measures sites performance and help identify errors. If you’re targeting a large number of audience particularly the US, you might as well sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools.

  • ALL IN ONE SEO plugin (for WordPress): This plugin will help WordPress users to optimize their content much easier ( adding Meta tags ). You can also use YOAST SEO.

  • An SEO auditing tool: We are using SEO Powersuite’s WebSite Auditor.

  • Rank Tracker [SEO Powersuite’s tool ]: When tracking a website’s ranking on different search engines, we uses SEO Powersuite’s Rank Tracker. Rank Tracker is an advances search engines position tracking tool that will let you monitor your rankings in all major SEs like Google, Yahoo!, Bing and more. So far the results are almost 100% accurate.

• 2. IMPROVE INDEXING AND CRAWLABILITY

  Crawlability describes the search engine’s ability to access and crawl content on a page. Crawl your site and look for any crawl errors. To improve your site’s crawlability, start by removing broken links to your site.

  Indexability refers to the search engine’s ability to analyze and add a page to its index.

  Ideally, you want your total indexed pages as close to your total number of pages as possible.

  

  You can use Google Search Console to test the crawlability and indexabiltiy of your website.

• 3. HAVE AN OPTIMIZED XML SITEMAP

  XML sitemaps tell search engines about your site structure and what page to index. Optimizing your XML sitemap can help boost your crawlability.

  Your XML sitemap should be:

  • Not more than 50,000 URLs. Google limits a single sitemap to 10MB (uncompressed) and 50,000 URLs. If your site has more URLs, you must have multiple XML sitemaps to maximize your crawl budget.
  • Should only have 200-status URLs.
  • Up to date: Whenever you add content to your site, update your XML sitemap and submit it to Google.
  • Uncluttered: Remove all the noncanonical URLs, redirects, 400-level pages, and blocked pages from your sitemap.

  Exclude the following from the XML sitemap:

  • URLs with parameters
  • URLs that are 301 redirecting or contain canonical or no-index tags
  • URLs with 4xx or 5xx status codes
  • Duplicated contents

  You can check your sitemap for errors by clicking Crawl > Sitemaps in your Google Search Console.

• 4. HAVE AN OPTIMIZED ROBOTS.TXT FILE

  Robots.txt serves as a checklist for the search engine robots on what pages to crawl and not to crawl on your website.

  It is very important to make sure that your robots.txt file isn’t blocking the page want to be indexed. Manually reviewing your robots.txt will help you discover what your robots.txt file is blocking that should not be.

  URLs that your robots.txt file should block for indexing:

  • Temporary files
  • Admin pages
  • Cart & checkout pages
  • Search-related pages
  • URLs that contain parameters
  • Your XML sitemap’s location in the robots.txt file. 

• 5. OPTIMIZE METADATA

  Review your HTML code and improve your meta descriptions and title tags wherever they’re missing. Here are some general guidelines that you can follow:

  Title Tags

  • Should be 60 – 71 characters for desktop and 55-60 characters to 78 characters for mobile.
  • Should be about your content.
  • Should start with your main keyword, but don’t keyword-stuff.
  • Should contain your company’s name at the end of your title tags.
  • Avoid duplicate title tags across multiple pages.

  Meta Descriptions

  • Should be 200 characters for desktop and 170-172 characters for mobile.
  • Brief, readable, and unique description of your content.

• 6. FIX BROKEN LINKS AND REDIRECTS

  Fixing redirect chains and broken links are among the best bits of technical SEO you can perform. Redirects and broken links eat up valuable crawl budgets, it can slow down your page, which can result in poorer user experience, and may ultimately devalue your page.

  Google may stop crawling if it discovers broken links.

• 7. USE RICH SNIPPETS AND STRUCTURED DATA

  Schema markup gives users a glimpse of your content before they click on the page. It is where they can see the thumbnail images, star ratings, and additional product details before directing to the topic.

  

  Rich snippets help build consumer trust and often encourage click-throughs.

  If you’re using WordPress for a website, then utilizing schema markup will be extremely easy for you.

  There are plugins that you can use to create structured data for each of your webpages. In our websites, we are using Schema App Structured Data plugin. But, if you’re not using WordPress, another method of adding structured data will be through Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.

• 8. OPTIMIZE SITE SPEED FOR MOBILE AND WEB

  Site speed has always been one of the most important ranking signals in Google algorithm, and it’s one of the most important technical SEO elements as it greatly affects your user’s experience and your site’s ability to convert visitors into buyers or into leads.

  Research shows that a one-second delay in page load time yields:

  • 11% fewer page views
  • 16% decrease in customer satisfaction
  • 7% loss in conversions

  If you have an E-commerce website, you better check your site’s page loading time and seek professional help to optimize it for faster site speed. There are plenty of tools to help you check your site’s speed, Google PageSpeed Insights is the best tool for this.

  To get insightful tips on how to optimize your website for a fast page load time, read this article.

  SEO: 9 EFFECTIVE WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE’S PERFORMANCE

• 9. GENERATE READABLE URLs

  Google has been very clear about this: “A site’s URL structure should be as simple as possible.”. The easier a URL is to read for humans, the better it is for search engines

  Make sure to make your URL readable like this:

  https://animehauz.com/product/fab-kids-pokemon-pikachu-16-school-rolling-bag/

  Not like this:

  http://www.example.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_query=tpb&search_sort=relevance&search_category=25

  Whenever possible, shorten your URLs by trimming the unnecessary parameters.

   

  Those are just a few out of many technical SEO fundamentals that you need to learn and implement to your website for better indexing and ranking on SERP’s. If you know other technical SEO fundamentals that should have been in the checklist, please let us know in the comment section below.

  And if you need professional help in optimizing your website, we are the best SEO experts in Cebu, Philippines you can rely on. Contact us at (032) 410-6528 or email us at [email protected].

  ]]> https://www.go2designlab.com/technical-seo-checklist-for-2019/feed/ 0 https://www.go2designlab.com/7-tips-to-win-googles-answer-box/ Tue, 19 Mar 2019 02:50:55 +0000 https://www.go2designlab.com/?p=5661

  In order to give users a quick and accurate answer to their search query, Google introduced a new rich featured snippet to their SERP results: THE ANSWER BOX. It has been around for a while but is now becoming more prominent for quick answers, event listings, recipes, maps, and more.

  WHAT IS GOOGLE’s ANSWER BOX?

  Google answer box or featured snippet provides quick and easy answers to questions that a user can quickly read without having to scroll through a lengthy article. This featured snippet is typically displayed at the top of the results page, but below ads.

  This is Google’s way to directly answer your questions or queries without clicking a SERP result and reading the entire article.

  WHY DOES THE ANSWER BOX MATTER?

  Well, aside from it will help increase your desktop visitor, appearing on Google’s answer box will also help you target those mobile users. Digital personal assistants like Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Google’s assistant pull their voice search results from answer boxes.

  Optimizing your content answer boxes is the best way to start preparing for voice search.

  Here is an example of Google’s Answer box:

  

  Getting content to the very top of Google search results is the single most important task of a digital marketer. And to get to the top of Google search results you’d be a fool to ignore the only target more elusive than ranking #1: THE ANSWER BOX.

  HOW TO WIN GOOGLE’S ANSWER BOX?

  So how does Google choose which content to appear in its Answer Boxes, and how can you optimize your content to appear in Google’s Answer Box?
  Here are seven effective SEO tips to make it to Google’s Answer box or the “zero position”:

  • IDENTIFY QUERIES

    When carrying out keyword research, look for questions that you will be able to answer in great depth.

    A good way to find queries around a certain keyword or phrase is to look at other suggestions that Google suggests when searching for a term. Take a look at the image below:

    

    You can also use the queries in the “Related Searches” box at the bottom of your search results:

    

    You may see a “People also ask” box for some queries:

    

  • DIRECTLY ANSWER THE QUESTION

    Whether you are providing a definition for a certain term or answering a question or query, you need to be clear cut with your content and don’t beat around the bush. Answer the question clearly, quickly, and in under 100 words or no more than 3-4 sentences.

    Make sure to place the answer near the top or at the very top of your content. Start by using the query or key phrase in your headline, then explicitly answer the question somewhere in your content.

    The biggest secret to winning answer boxes is to get straight to the point.

  • CONSIDER USER EXPERIENCE

    User experience is always important to Google. So, make sure there are no roadblocks on your site that may cause a user to bounce off your content, and that everything in your content is clear and consistent. Structure your content using H tags, paragraphs, and images, and use bullet-points and tables if needed.

    The way your website is structured and how your content is formatted can be beneficial for Google, for the users, of course to you also.

  • INCLUDE SEO BEST PRACTICES

    Before publishing your content, make sure to implement all the basic SEO techniques to ensure your content has the best chance of ranking and of being featured in Google’s Rich Answer Box. Include your keywords, meta description, alt tags, and URL structures.

  • INCLUDE ORDERED OR UNORDERED LISTS

    Ordered and unordered lists can help your content land at the top of Google search results. They are very common in answer boxes especially for a keyword or queries that begin with “How”.

    When including a list in your content, use a heading tag with the keyword on it and place it just above the list. That way, Google knows exactly what the list is all about.

    For example:

    

  • CREATE A TABLE OR GRAPH

    Google also really loves to include tabular data. Why? Because tabled data will help Google provide the best information to the searchers especially when the question requires different pieces of information to fully answer a query. Oftentimes keywords like salaries, research, or data, will feature tables in their answer boxes.

    

  • MAKE A HIGH_QUALITY CONTENT

    The Featured snippet in the answer box may only display 100 words, Google wants to give its users the best content and thus having quality content is very important to win the “zero position”. Create a content that is relevant, useful and informative, credible and engaging.

    If you find your content a little plain, enhance your piece of content with additional information related to your answer box target. You can find ideas for related information from the People Also Ask box and the related searches listed at the bottom of the SERP as shown earlier. And the longer your content, the better.

  WRAP UP

  With these effective tips, you are now ready to win some answer boxes!

  If you need help in optimizing your content or optimizing your entire website, go2designlab is the best team for that job. We are a digital marketing agency that specializes in web design and development, Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) and online marketing. Contact us now!

  ]]> https://www.go2designlab.com/9-ways-to-repurpose-content/ Thu, 14 Mar 2019 00:34:43 +0000 https://www.go2designlab.com/?p=5621

  Creating high-quality content is a highly important aspect in Search Engine Optimization and can sometimes be difficult as it is a resource-consuming process.

  Let’s assume that you’ve already created a tons contents. After publishing the content, what do you do with all the blog posts and videos that you’ve worked so hard for? Just letting them sit there and hoping for the best?

  Don’t let them wither away. Why not get the best out of your contents that you’ve invested effort and time? Breathe new life into your old contents and continue to gain and reach new audience by presenting it in a different way. In Search Engine Optimization, we call it “REPURPOSING”.

  BENEFITS OF REPURPOSING CONTENT

  Repurposing content has a lot of benefits, some are as follows: 

  SAVE TIME

  Repurposing content saves content creator in the content creation process. With this strategy, you don’t have to create a content day in and day out. You just have to work on promoting the content you already have in different ways. In repurposing content, you CREATE LESS, PROMOTE MORE.

  GET AN SEO BOOST

  Repurposing is a super hack with benefits for Search Engine Optimization. One blog post can lead to dozens of pieces of content which that gives you the opportunity to target the desired keyword. Plus, if you take your repurposed content outside your site, like sharing it on social media, sending it to your newsletter subscribers, you can receive quality links back to your site that will positively affect your SEO ranking.

  REACH NEW AUDIENCE

  In many cases, your original piece of content may have only made a splash with one group of people. They are people who prefer visual infographics over text statistics. Some choose podcasts over ebooks. Some prefer videos over text.

  Giving your content a new look for different mediums allows you to meet an audience where they are.

  REINFORCE YOUR MESSAGE

  Marketing’s Rule of 7 states that:

  a consumer needs to “hear” your message at least seven times before they’ll take action to buy your product or service

  Repetition, through repurposing your content, can be an essential part of sending a message that sinks in.

  GAIN EXTRA AUTHORITY

  Publishing quality content in a variety of places on a single topic can help raise your profile in the industry and teach others to consider you as an expert. 

   

  10 WAYS TO REPURPOSE CONTENT

  Good content deserves to be repurposed. And so here are some of the many ways to repurpose your content.

  1. TURN BLOG POSTS INTO PRESENTATIONS 

  Turning your old contents into a presentation is a great way to maximize the mileage of your efforts. Presentations are more engaging than a paper and more interactive than a video. Sharing these slides to a social site can provide additional opportunities for engagement. SlideShare is an awesome place to share your presentation.

  2. BUILD AN INFOGRAPHIC

  Infographic is the summary of the content of your post in a visual outline. If you have a lot of data in your story, infographics are a super way to break up an article into just the major talking points. An infographic is 30 times more likely to be read than a blog post.

  In creating a good infographic you need to make sure that it will catch the attention of the casual viewer by being both original and good-looking. A well-crafted infographic will be shared, liked, commented, shared and included in mainstream publications.

  3. CREATE A PINTEREST INSTRUCTOGRAPHIC

  Instructographics have a very similar look and feel of Infographics but focuses more on the how-to aspect. Instructographics is a combination of the words of instructions and graphics, so clearly there should be a teaching element to the design.

  How can this help you with repurposing content?

  Let’s say that you have a quite complex, well documented “how to guide” in your blog post. A long and complicated content like that will just be ignored by the people on social media. You need the content to be easy to visualize and of course shareable. An instructographic might do the trick.

  Any how-to posts in your archives would be good opportunities to try an instructographic.

  5. REFRESH AND REPUBLISH OLD POSTS

  Everyone needs a little cleaning now and then. The same is true for your content marketing. A blog post with 100% accuracy a few months back might not ring true today. Repurposing your old contents is not about recycling, it is about bringing things back into relevance, with a new, more insightful look at them. Updating and republishing your old contents is a proven effective SEO technique to boost your search engine traffic.

  Read this article ” Update Old Content For Search Engine Optimization “ to know more about updating old content, its benefits and how it affects your SEO score.

  6. CRAFT A DAILY EMAIL SERIES

  Some content—either a single, in-depth article or a series of posts on the same topic—lends itself well to bite-sized chunks, which can be ideal for a daily email series.

  For instance, let’s say that you are a pro in digital marketing and you write weekly content on a blog about the latest news, tendencies or strategy in digital marketing. Instead of letting those old posts go to waste, you can create an email series of “tips and tricks” in digital marketing out from those posts. You can email these series to your readers or post it on your blog and use it as an opportunity to collect new leads and subscribers.

  7. CREATE A PODCAST OR VIDEO SERIES

  Different people, different preferences. Some of your audience prefers content they don’t have to read. In cases like this, podcasts and videos could be one of the most important repurposing methods. They open up a whole new way to connect with others allowing you to gain more audience.

  8. CONVERT YOUR OLD BLOG POSTS INTO HANDS ON GUIDES
   

  After having published a blog post of a specific topic for a while, you eventually start to assemble enough information and expertise to be able to train someone in the field (at least at a basic level). With all those collected information, so why not use all that knowledge to create a guide on how to do something like how the basic things to do in Search Engine Optimization, How to set up and read Google Analytics.

  9. HOST A WEBINAR

  The next step in audio-video content is a webinar, which allows you to both presents on a topic and engages your audience in conversation.

  Throughout your blog you’ve probably discovered what topic your audience is most interested in. If yes, why not repurposing that topic into a conversion-driving event, like a webinar? Is not only a great way to repurpose content but also to generate leads.

  Your existing content can be a great starting point for a webinar, or you can use a series of blogs as research for your final presentation.

  WRAP UP

  Content repurposing doesn’t just mean that you reuse an old piece of content over and over. True repurposing requires alteration of the content to make it fresh and appealing to a new audience.

  If you know some more other great ways of repurposing content, just let us know in the comments.

  ]]> https://www.go2designlab.com/why-do-you-need-a-website/ Tue, 26 Feb 2019 21:13:31 +0000 https://www.go2designlab.com/?p=208

  

  In this digital era, having a strong online presence is very crucial to the success of a business. Your online presence, through your website, helps you in your marketing campaigns, your 24/7 customer service, helps you build relationship with your clients, and most importantly it helps increase brand recognition. But sadly, despite its benefits, there are still business owners who still do not realize the importance of the website to their business.

  A recent survey showed that 55% of small-to-medium sized businesses still don’t have a website. That is an astonishing number nowadays. We live in an internet world, and many still don’t see the benefits of having a website, or even so, don’t have the time to commit to it.

  To help you see and understand the importance of a website to you and your business, here are some of the benefits of having one :

  Benefits of Having a Website For Your Business

  • Online Visibility

  The internet has opened up a whole new world of marketing that didn’t exist before. A website is the most efficient and low-cost marketing tool you could have today, it helps you be heard and seen in this digital era. Without a website for your business, nobody knows your business exists when they search you online or any services and products related to your business. It’s almost similar to not choose to be listed in the phonebook in the olden days.

  • Your 24/7 and 365 Days Salesperson

  Even when the office hours is over, your website still runs 24/7 without any supervision or need to lock it up. When your salesperson is not available, your website will be the one promoting your business to potential customers anytime, day or night. By having a website, you can always be there for your customers.

  • Most Economical Form of Advertising

  If you are considering to spend some marketing dollars? A website should be an initial one-time investment that can cost you less than your daily latte to upkeep. Considering the cost of a print ad from a newspaper and mailers, having a website delivers a favorable cost to benefit ratio and a great return on investment and the ability to update constantly it.

  • Your Advertising Tool

  By updating your website to list new products or services, pricing, product availability, inventories, and answer frequently asked questions by customers. You can also collect current and potential customers close with targeted offers, coupons, and sales and promotion.

  • Show Your Business Authenticity

  Since a lot of businesses have a website nowadays and people are accustomed to checking everything online for a product or services, having no website for your business means your business is not legitimate, tricky, not legal, or even unreliable. But by having a professional website you can easily build credibility with your target market. You can provide them the ultimate proof that you are, in fact, legitimate, legal and reliable.

  WEBSITE DESIGNER & DEVELOPER IN CEBU

  Go2designlab is a Digital Marketing Agency in Cebu, we specialize in Website Designing and Development and Search Engine Optimization. We build different types of websites according to our client needs. Go2DesignLab caters to small businesses, individuals who wanted to express themselves such as having a blog, having an online store for their products or services, and to corporate clients who wanted to have an affordable online presence yet effective in presenting their messages to their website visitors.

  WHY CHOOSE GO2DESIGNLAB

  We have extensive experience in designing for small businesses, corporate, realtors, E-commerce online stores websites. We love to create a distinct design for your business, to get you noticed and to gain a better customer engagement, interaction and profitable outcome.

  So if you have come to realize how important a website is for your business, then it’s time to build one. If you need help in building a professional website, Go2designlab is just around the corner and ready to help you be heard and seen online. You can reach us via phone call at (032) 410-6528 / (032) 415-5536. or you may email us at [email protected].

  We are always ready to help become visible to the online world.  

  We can help. Contact us for We Can Build a Reliable Website For You.

  We are your Online Presence and Web Marketing Solution.

  Affordable and Reliable and We will listen to all Needs.

  www.go2designlab.com

  

  ]]> https://www.go2designlab.com/white-label-digital-partner-in-cebu/ Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:23:24 +0000 https://www.go2designlab.com/?p=5318 As a digital agency owner, you get to a point where you can’t do everything you’d like to. Website development, social media marketing, branding, Search Engine Optimization — how do you keep pace with all these services when they’re constantly evolving at breakneck speed?

  The new marketing stack that local businesses need in the digital age is constantly growing, and it’s hard to keep up with the kinds of marketing solutions your clients want, need, and demand.
  As a company providing services to businesses, you should focus on your core competencies or on what you do best and do it better than anyone else. If your company’s specialty is social media marketing, focus on that and deliver 10x social media experience to clients. However, there may be clients that may ask for additional services that are way out of your areas of expertise and it can be tough to say no when you don’t have time. That’s where white-label and private label software, products, and services come into the picture to fill in your gaps and help you become a full-service agency.

  WHAT IS WHITE LABEL?

  White labeling is when a product or service removes their brand and logo from the end product and instead uses the branding requested by the purchaser. White label products are often produced via mass production.  The producer can increase sales by allowing other company to sell a version of their products. The company paying the white label of the product, gains by adding another service to its brand.

  WHITE LABEL SERVICES

  White labeled services offer expertise in specific areas of marketing, like digital branding, SEO, search engine marketing, website development, link building, mobile design and many more.
  Businesses, use white label services such as credit card when they do not have such services in-house. The product appears as though it has been produced by the buyer. The benefit for the producer and the buyer is that the producer can concentrate on making the product, and the buyer can invest in marketing and selling the product.

  Websites are using white-label to make a successful brand to offer a service.

  HOW DOES WHITE LABELING WORKS?

  In white labeling, you are buying the product from a manufacturer to sell it as your own with your brand on it at any price you want.

  The products are sold under his/her brand’s name – not under the brand name of the manufacturer/developer. You are marketing the products exclusively as your own.
  This goes for white label services as well. Outsourced service is usually less expensive.

  WHAT ARE BENEFITS OF WHITE LABELING?

  Save time and money. One of the most obvious reasons is the fact that by using white labeled marketing services, you save money time. Many companies offered white labeling for their products have already completed, which means you can start with a finished product rather than take the time to develop it in yourself.

  Personalized your white labeled product. This allows the buyer to create his/her own platform, set his/her own pricing, and advertise his/her products — exactly how you want them — all without spending any time on development!

  Add new revenue stream. Since you now have a new offering, you’re able to give more your customers and get more in return. Additionally, you’re attracting new customers who are interested in the white labeled product.

  White labeling allows you to take advantage of works. The developers have the focus to make a product you can pay them and enjoy change your brand name on their quality work.
  It’s quick and easy to brand. The White label can offer advantages if you’re trying to add new features to your business websites.You can add your own branding, logo, and identity, and get back to business websites.

  PROS AND CONS OF THE WHITE LABELING

  White labeling provides faster solutions. It can save your business time and money by taking advantage of already developed products. It also allows you to continue doing what you are best at – being creative and marketing your brand.

  You don’t have to spend nearly as much time or money marketing your own brand, as your success rests on the shoulders of your partner. You get to spend most of your time doing what you’re best at, while likely receiving orders and projects you wouldn’t get on your own.

  The other side of white labeling falls more to the manufacturer. Manufacturers don’t get credit for their products. Similar service businesses don’t typically get credit for their work.

  GO2DESIGNLAB AS YOUR WHITE LABEL DIGITAL PARTNER

  Go2designlab is here as your white label digital marketing partner. Our white label digital marketing service includes:

  • Web Development
  • Website Design
  • Graphics Design
  • Mobile App Development
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
  • Social Media Marketing (SMM)

  Go2designlab also offers expertise in specific areas of marketing, such as digital branding, Pay-per-Click Management, link building and so on. We provide professional and quality services and products at competitive rates that would surely satisfy you and your target clients. Contact us for more information.

  ]]> https://www.go2designlab.com/what-it-takes-to-be-an-seo-expert/ Tue, 12 Feb 2019 06:27:04 +0000 https://www.go2designlab.com/?p=5195

  Do you want to learn how to increase your traffic and achieve higher rankings for the keywords that can generate more sales and revenue for your website? Then you should learn everything there is to know about SEO and become an SEO Expert.

  In digital marketing, organic search is the heart of marketing because of its focus on and understanding of user intent, making an SEO specialist or expert a highly important marketing role. SEO experts are responsible for more than half the traffic on an average website. An SEO expert is someone that knows how SEO works and how to apply SEO to increase the rankings of a website in Search Engines.

  Earning those SEO specialists and expert spots, however, generally requires a strong understanding of SEO, including how to do it, the latest best practices, and how to measure your results. The idea of becoming an SEO expert can seem overwhelming to many.

  Doing SEO also requires practitioners to have a good idea about how to run metrics and analyze sites so they can see the results of their efforts. It is no wonder why many people unfamiliar with SEO feel intimidated by the prospect.

  Here are some steps on how to become an SEO specialist or an expert.

  • Understand how search engines work
  • Get to know The Basic Search Engine Marketing Concepts
  • Understand what is really is an SEO
  • Train yourself in basic HTML editing, especially meta-tagging, H1, H2, and Href commands–it only will take a few hours;
  • Find a web site you can work on freely, many local businesses, like dentists and chiropractors, will welcome the help;
  • Train yourself on the major CMS platforms;
  • Subscribe to and read SEO blogs;
  • Attend SEO industry conferences;
  • Write a post about SEO in your LinkedIn profile or an SEO related group;
  • Get SEO certified

  Becoming an SEO Expert is not easy but it’s not difficult either. The process includes a lot of reading, practicing and testing. Rather than becoming overwhelmed by the wealth of information, find a few valuable resources that you can use to gain the knowledge you need to succeed. There are many ways to master SEO, and in the end, it’ll pay off. So, think about the best way for you to learn SEO, and go for it!

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