The unreliable other - 3rd-party dependencies
Sometimes, in life, things we rely on don't work out as expected. It's the same with your website, especially with external services that your website relies on. However, there are ways of managing these 3rd-party dependencies so that they don't cause too much trouble. The external dependencies are, for example, fonts, videos, ads, reviews, analytics. The worst case scenario is that, if one of these services fails, it prevents your web pages from loading. I strongly suggest doing an audit of the external services your website uses and find ways of managing these so that if one does fail (or loads very slowly), it doesn't affect the load time of your web pages. Fast loading web pages are important to your users and important to search engines so worth getting to grips with this issue. Find out more here.
Read moreA quick guide to Search Intent and what it means for your website
Achieving good search engine rankings for pages of your website is not straightforward, especially in the face of so much competition and changes in how the search engines choose to prioritise search results. Along with effectivce keywod research, content creators now need to understand the concept of search intent and how to use this knowledge when creating content. The search phrase is the 'what' but the search intent is the 'why' behind the search. This is implied rather than being stated explicitly. However, if you can identify the serach intent, then you can create pages that match the 'why' and so improve the changes that the search engines will rank your pages higher as they better meet the searchers' needs. This article goes into more detail about identifying the search intent and how to write content that take account of this.
Read moreThe most important SEO ranking factors
It's pointless having a great site that doesn't get traffic from search engines because it's not been optimised for SEO. In this article I'll discuss the 3 main ranking factors - high quality content, relevant backlinks and a great user experience. All of these need your ongoing attention and I will go into more detail on each one in the article. If you focus your website efforts on these 3 factors, I'm confident that your web pages will start to rank higher in the search engines and that your site will get more visits as a result.
Read moreEverything you need to know about external links and SEO
It is very difficult to achieve a decent search engine ranking for a web page without having incoming links from other websites. The search engines need to know that your page is relevant to others and incoming links prove that. In a way, it's like a popularity contest, however, with search engines it's not just the number ofincoming links that matter, it's the quality of those links and quality is about relevance and authority. Links from poor quality or questionable websites will actually damage your rankings. In this article we'll look into links in more detail and see how to acquire valuable ones that help build your search presence.
Read moreSEO or PPC? Which is better for your business?
If you want your business to get noticed in the search engines, there are 2 main approaches. Firstly, SEO (search engine optimisation) which aims to improve the position that pages from your site achieve within the 'organic' or free listings. The other approach is to use a form of digital advertising (called PPC or Pay Per Click) to place ads for your site at the top of the search engine listings. As the name implies, you pay for each click on your ad. Both of these approaches have pros and cons and which one you use will depend on your circumstances (or you may chose to use a combination of both). This article goes into some more detail about the advantages and disadvantages of each approach so you can make an informed decision about which to use.
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