Do you ever wonder why people press the back button within seconds after landing on your page? It can be frustrating when you accomplished designing a great website with all the best details. You even edited the content ten times over and believe that your pages are true masterpieces. So, why aren’t your visitors sticking around?

As one of the leading web design agencies in Phoenix, Arizona, we have compiled ten design elements that increase your website’s bounce rates:

1. Pop-ups

Pop-ups are forms of online advertising on the Internet. It is a graphical user interface (GUI) display area, usually a small window, which suddenly appears in the foreground of the visual interface. Pop-ups are a way to get your message across in the fastest, most in-your-face possible. One pop-up is usually tolerable. However, if you bombard your visitors with pop-up after pop-up, they are likely to lose their patience and leave. Always remember the very reason why a web visitor is on your page in the first place: he or she assumes that you have the answer to their search engine query. They did not go to your website to read the contents of your pop-up windows.

2. Immediate Registration Demands

If there is anything worse than a pop-up, it’s a pop-up asking web visitors to register for a newsletter or service immediately. This is especially true for first-time visitors who know nothing about your company and only clicked out of curiosity. Before asking web users to sign up for anything, allow them to browse through your homepage at the very least. Tease them a little. Timing is everything.

3. Auto sounds

There was a time back in the nineties and very early 2000s when sound or music on websites was all the rage. Today, it is incredibly unlikely for anyone to prefer automatic audio. It is unfair to assume that your visitor wants you to auto-play sounds for them. So, even if you are confident that they share the same tastes in music and video as you, it does not immediately mean that they want to hear it. In fact, it is without a doubt driving people away from your website.

4. Slow Loading Time

According to surveys conducted by Akamai and Gomez.com, nearly half of web users expect a website to load within two seconds or less, and that they tend to abandon a site that does not load within three seconds. In other words, never make your visitors wait. A lot of people pay premium prices for 50MB home and office broadband connections. If your website is taking too long to load, they will know that your site is to blame. Specifically, if a web user is only curious and has clicked your URL on impulse, they are more likely to leave.

5. Confusing Navigation

Navigation ensures your visitors that they can explore your website without having to hunt for a hidden treasure. The design of a website’s navigation has one of the most significant impacts on the success or failure of a site. It affects traffic and search engine rankings alike. Web visitors expect to find seamless, horizontal navigation across the top fold or vertical navigation down the left side of your page. Conversely, putting your navigation in standard places makes your site so much easier to use.

6. Typos

Types and poor grammar do not make you look professional. Enough said.

7. Bad Selection of Fonts

Your website and your message need to be as clear as daylight. Otherwise, your viewers will not respond to it. Having breathtaking designs with illegible typography will confuse your viewers and turn them off. Using web fonts cleverly will help you avoid all of that. To help you get started, here are the top recommended fonts from Google Web Fonts.

8. No Impact

If your overall web design is not attractive and engaging, or if your copy does not evolve with your business, it is going to come across as boring. There is nothing wrong with wanting your website to look professional, but just because it’s professional does not mean it should have the personality of a deer in headlights. The colors, font, images, and overall organizational schematic can either make or break your web design woes.

9. No “About” Page

Your “About” page delivers the most important and relevant information about your business. Most web users look for this page for a reason: It answers their question about your business, including what your contact information is, where your office is located, and how long you have been in business. Not having this basic and crucial page may impact your legitimacy as a company.

10. Lack of Clarity

When users visit your website for the first time, they need to be able to tell what your company does within seconds. If they scratch their head in confusion, you may need to consider re-conceptualizing your identity as a business. What you need is a unique selling point, which is what defines your company’s unique position in the marketplace. It is the heart of your business: the value you offer and the problem you solve. A strong USP clearly articulates a specific benefit — one that other competitors do not offer and makes you stand out. A descriptive, meaningful, plain English strapline is often key.

When you look at some of these ten factors individually, they may not seem enough to make visitors click out. However, when combined, they can give off an entirely wrong impression.

Give Your Visitors a Reason to Stick Around

It’s not always easy to create a brilliant user experience, and there is a lot of pressure knowing that every aspect of your website represents the competence of your business. In reality, even the smallest defect can significantly increase your bounce rate. If you require assistance in making online visitors stay longer, PrimeView can help develop web design strategies that fit your site’s needs, goals, and identity as a business. Call us today at 480-970-4688.

When you think of search engines, the first thing that immediately comes to mind is Google. It is synonymous with the internet, and the word itself has become a verb.

Today, instead of people saying “search for local businesses,” they say “Google local businesses.” The search engine king has dominated the World Wide Web, ruling over all that is accessible over the Internet. As the reigning monarch of search engines, Google has created a set of guidelines for every webmaster to follow — or else suffer the consequences of a penalty.

What is a Google penalty?

Over the last two decades, Google has been working hard to refine its core. Its algorithm began detecting and eliminating poor content, while elevating quality pages to the top of search engine results.

In 2012, Google rolled out one of its major algorithm changes — the Penguin update. According to Search Engine Land, the update flagged sites that “deemed to be spamming its search results.” It hit more than 1 in 10 search results overnight, wiping a few websites out of search entirely. It also blasted poor-quality content off the radar, forcing search engine optimizers to be more careful and strategic with their content marketing schemes.

Since then, Google was steadfast in releasing algorithm changes that continue to challenge the online marketing industry.

Why should you care?

Statistics show that 71 percent of small businesses have a website, with 73 percent being mobile-friendly or responsive. Additionally, a staggering 92 percent of small businesses without sites claim that they will have one by the end of 2018. These numbers prove just how significant an online presence is in the marketing industry.

If you are a small business owner, you already know the importance of developing a website. It is the online storefront of your business — an incredibly useful tool that, when done correctly, reaches beyond the local market and magnifies traffic and sales.

In aspiration of beating hundreds and thousands of online competitors, you begin investing in digital marketing strategies that catapult you on Google’s coveted first page — where every business owner wants to be. However, meeting Google’s guidelines play a crucial role in favor of your website. The main objective of Google is to give its users access to relevant, accurate, and unique information. That is why it continuously modifies its algorithms so that each website gets the exposure it rightfully deserves.

However, your primary concern is you can be penalized. If you use “illegal” or Black Hat SEO tactics to top search engine page results (SERPs), you risk getting Google penalties that impact your business. With that said, it is crucial for every SEO professional to evolve, adapt, and remain alert for Google’s plans. If not, your website may obtain a penalty that heavily impacts its traffic, sales, and overall visibility.

How do you recognize a Google penalty?

From Google’s point of view, any website that attempts to manipulate the search results is not only harming Google, but also its users, too. Google penalties are either automatic or manual. While manual penalties involve a warning, automatic penalties just happen. So, how do you know if you had been automatically penalized? Here are some clues, according to KissMetrics:

• Poor ranks.

  Is your website failing to rank even for your own brand name? How about when you use your primary keywords?

• Slipping into the back pages.

  Did your web page suddenly appear on the second or third page when it was initially in the top five of the SERPs?

• Not on Google cached results.

  Was your entire website removed from Google’s cached search results overnight?

• Cannot be found:

  Does running a site search (site:yourdomain.com keyword) show your website?

• Wrong listing

  . When you find your Google listing, was it for your homepage or another page on your site? (It should be your homepage).

If you run a few tests and notice one or more of these factors, the chances are that a penalty has affected your site.

How do you recover from a Google penalty?

The first step to recovering from a penalty is to know the cause. You must analyze your website’s links and identify all the ones that are causing your rankings to drop.

Depending on the cause of penalty, solutions may vary. But here are some of the quick fixes you can try:

• Remove bad backlinks.

  Poor-quality backlinks can hurt your rankings in many ways, which is why it’s important to get rid of them. If you don’t know where to start, read this article about How to Spring Clean Your Bad Backlinks.

• Use Google’s Disavow Tool.

  There is a way to ask Google to disregard troublesome links that are harming your website. Just keep in mind that the Google Disavow Tool is an advanced feature that must be used with caution.

In cases when the domain is tarnished, there is very little you can do to salvage or rehabilitate your website.

Can I submit a consideration request?

Once you successfully clean your backlinks, you can submit a reconsideration request. You must provide accurate information regarding the cleanup process, which should include one or more of the following:

• 
  

  An excel file of all the bad links your removed

   

• 
  

  Details of your malware cleanup activities

   

• 
  

  A list of spam comments that you deleted on your website

   

• 
  

  A thorough explanation of how will prevent the same issue from recurring

   

After submitting your request, you should receive confirmation from Google. If you had correctly diagnosed and resolve the cause, you should get another notification saying that the penalty has been lifted.

Takeaway  

Google acts much like a legislator in the digital world. Its penalties serve as rules and regulation to maintain order, as well as implement fair punishment or praise to websites residing in its community. Without proper guidelines, tactics like Black Hat SEO will continue to reign, and search engine users (which include YOU), will not get the results they seek when using Google.

Are you in need SEO services?

Just because your rank is dropping does not automatically mean that you are dealing with a Google penalty. Remember that your competition is getting tougher by the day, and like you, they are doing their best to climb the ranks of Google. You may think that you have a Google penalty, when in fact, you just need to improve your search engine optimization methods. This is where PrimeView comes in. For effective SEO strategies, call us at 480-970-4688 or complete our online form.

The holiday season is upon us, and with it is the flurry of early shoppers — and the aftermath, the last-minute shoppers. While it may be chaotic to get all orders processed and delivered by the time Christmas Eve rolls around, you need to be prepared to ensure that you maximize the holiday rush.

With the different preferences of the shoppers, your approach has to vary to ensure that you don’t alienate any of them. However, how can you balance your approach to target all groups?

While it may be impossible to please everyone, here are some foolproof tips to prepare your website for the holiday rush.

   •   Know your audience.

You should do your research before the holiday rush kicks off. You have to know your target market and get to know your consumers. A popular method is the “A day in the life of” to get to know your consumer. For example, how do your usual customers spend their day? By studying their habits, you will know when is the best time to advertise to them. Likewise, you will also know the kind of deals that would appeal to them the most.

 •    Kickstart your SEO and CRO.

If you’re just starting your SEO campaign today, you are a little late to the game and you should do better next year. A proper SEO campaign needs time to work; it has to gain traction for you to reap the rewards come the holiday season. With this, you also need to consider your conversion rate optimization program (CRO). Once the new tidbits of your website are in place, you have to ensure that all items work as they are indeed to. Which brings us to…

 •    Optimize your website.

When we say optimize your website, we don’t mean create a new website right now. You should never do that so close to the holiday season. Rather, what you should do is to work with what you have now. For starters, you can do the following:

o     Have a holiday-themed design

This is very simple and attractive, for the reason that holiday designs can get people in the mood to shop more. By showing that your website is designed for the holiday, they will get the idea that you are taking the event seriously and would, therefore, be able to provide good value for their money.

o     Have holiday-themed deals

As we mentioned above, the deals that you’re offering should add value to your customers. For instance, do not offer them deals that they’re likely to get elsewhere. Rather, play on your strengths and show them how valuable their business is to you. So if all your competitors are selling branded t-shirts, take it up a notch and sell personalized shirts.

o    Think mobile

A large percentage of online shoppers complete their transactions on mobile. In fact, Apple just sold their billionth iPhone — just imagine that number browsing on their mobile for the latest deals! That being said, it would be in your best interests to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. We’re not just talking about changing the screen resolution to fit your device’s screen – rather, this is about optimizing everything so that all the nooks and crannies of your website work on mobile. All buttons are responsive; all the choices are available. Going mobile should not be a hindrance for your customers to find you. Rather, it should be a stepping stone to them purchasing more.

•     Exhaust your server

One of the things you should do to ensure that your customers have a positive experience is to test your website thoroughly and see if your server can handle the sudden spike in traffic. There have been numerous cases of interactive websites only to fail at the last minute because it could not handle the traffic. You will need to increase the bandwidth to make sure your site can accommodate the extra shoppers, so talk to your web host about it as soon as possible.

•     Beef up your online staff

While the majority of e-commerce websites provide the live chat function, not all of them offer it 24/7. During the holiday rush, make sure that you add more people manning the live chat function so that they can help shoppers find what they need as soon as possible. Remember, the sooner a customer completes a purchase, the sooner your staff can attend to other customers. The same rule applies to online stores.

If you don’t have the budget to hire full-time staff for holiday work, then make sure that you outsource the work to a vendor you know and trust. There is nothing more infuriating for a business owner than finding out that customers are leaving the website with no items because they couldn’t find what they are looking for, or that the agents who are working the line were of no help to them at all.

•     Strengthen your security

One of the most pressing issues among online shoppers is the security of their data. You have to reassure them that shopping on your website is a safe and pleasurable experience. To do this, you have to make sure that you are affiliated with all the right merchants, such as PayPal so that they can pay with a method they recognize. Also, harp on the fact that your website has an SSL certificate. The green padlock on the browser bar right next to your URL is a telltale sign of security, too.

•     Remember deadlines – and with that, the pressure

You have to be upfront about your deadlines. Cut off shopping at a certain period if you feel that you cannot deliver the items before Christmas morning. That, or make sure that your customers know that some of the items may arrive late if they shop late. By being transparent about your limitations, you would be protecting your business from irate customers – and not to mention, the stresses of telling people why their package didn’t arrive on Christmas morning if they just ordered it the night before.

Optimizing your website for the holiday rush is not just a good thing to do — it is a necessity. With these tips, you are hopefully on your way to getting a robust holiday-themed website that can withstand the holiday rush.

Need to optimize your website for the holiday season?

Tis the season to re-optimize your website! Help your business reflect its seasonal goals and strategies with PrimeView. If you need help re-kickstarting your SEO strategies and redesigning your website for the holidays, don’t hesitate to contact us at 480-970-4688 to request a free quote.

eBooks are one of the most powerful lead generation strategies there is. They help attract potential customers and persuade them to register to a mailing list, making eBooks an extremely useful lead generation resource.

What exactly are eBooks?

eBooks are long-form pieces of content, a digital book per say, that goes into detail about a specific topic. They are accessible through desktops, tablets or smartphones, so the ideal format is a PDF, slideshow, or app.

The structure of an eBook is inherently like a book. However, it’s much shorter and visually appealing with images, graphs, diagrams, lists, and so on. Though shorter in length, the content is still as in-depth and extensive as a 500-word hardbound. But as we have short attention spans, the design and layout are prioritized just as much as the actual content since it helps readers absorb the content with ease.

How do eBooks work as a lead generator?

Think of your last trip to the grocery store; you will always come across stands that offer product samples to try, huge discounts, or bundled goodies. Little do you know that those are marketing tactics intended to persuade customers into making a purchase.

Taste tests and lower prices are ways to gain customer trust. By offering products at a discounted rate, brands convey that they have valuable goods to offer and are willing to give freebies and slash off prices just to prove it. Whether you’re selling products or services, you can use the same strategy by utilizing eBooks as a sample of your wares, or as a gateway entry into what you really have to offer.

How do eBooks help your business?

Not only can businesses control the information shared in their eBooks, but they can also define the tone. People are overwhelmed by online advertisements these days, and the traditional lead generation resources seem to be delivering less return on investment. Customers resist hard selling, especially when they feel like it’s too prowling. eBooks offer perceptive marketing that essentially allows clients to find you, instead of you finding them.

How eBooks generate leads

You spend weeks and possibly months creating an eBook. You slaved over the copy and gave the design your all. You upload it to your website, yet no one downloads it. What gives?

If you’re using eBooks to generate leads, here is how you can see results:

1. Identify your audience

You would be surprised to know as to how many businesses have a seemingly clear vision of their brand without determining their target audience. If you don’t know who your target audience is, then how did write an entire book for them? The solution is to create a buyer persona. Your buyer persona will list everything there is to know about your ideal market, and it will typically include demographics, goals and challenges, hobbies and interests, objectives, and keywords.

2. Promote, promote, promote

Failing to promote your eBook is the biggest mistake you can make. If you expect people to just stumble upon your eBook without giving it the promotion it needs, then you may as well scratch your eBook and look for other lead generation tactics.

Like the developing process, you need to exert the same or double the amount of effort into promoting your eBook. Most people immediately think of social media, emailing, blogging, and paid amplification, but after you’ve exhausted your usual promotional strategies, what do you do for further, more effective promotions? The solution is to do outreach for your eBook.

An efficient outreach strategy is the next step towards maximizing your eBook’s online visibility. Outreach is focused on utilizing different channels and working with influencers within your industry to help you give your content the push it needs. This can include:

• Publishing on an eBook marketing platform
• Sending out a press release
• Writing guest posts for high-traffic bloggers
• Working with influencers who write about similar subjects to share the eBook

It’s crucial that you only target influencers who have the same audience as you. Platforms such as BuzzSumo are effective in helping you search, analyze, and connect with the right influencers who can help you promote your eBook.

3. Ensure that your landing page is easy to find

The landing page is the vital gateway to your eBook and the reason why you’re generating leads in the first place. So you need to make sure that (1) people can find it, (2) it’s enticing enough for people to fill out their details.

Optimizing your landing page is an essential step in making sure that you have everything prepared for a guaranteed download. Following these critical tips are some of the surefire ways to make it easier to optimize your eBook’s landing page:

• Use the keywords of your eBook in the headline, meta description, URL, and in the intro copy.
• Write a brief summary of the contents of your eBook.
• Attach an image or two of your eBook.
• Add bullets and lists to highlight your eBook’s benefits.
• Avoid using too many links and remove the navigation bar.
• Avoid asking for more contact information than you actually need in the form.

Once you’ve properly optimized your landing page, your audience can omit the need to search high and low to find what they need. And by highlighting all of the benefits, readers are given a compelling feeling to download your eBook.

While other companies are wasting money on spam-laden marketing schemes, your business can get ahead by providing an informational product that, if correctly used to one’s advantage, guarantees leads. Customers are bound to have more faith in your expertise, and your competitors will be busy trying to revive their exhausted tactics.

Generate more leads today

Leads mean more revenue, and revenue means more profit. If you need help generating leads to your business, let PrimeView provide the necessary internet marketing services you need to expand your reach. Call us at 480-970-4688 to request a free quote.

With over one billion websites in the World Wide Web, it is more complicated to determine what the truth is, versus what are hoaxes. The number of fraudulent websites is on the rise as well, while scams become more convoluted and creative. Due to this, research such as for the academe and industry trends, have become complicated as well.

Today, you have to double check each reference to ensure that you are citing the right figures, and that your source is not biased towards a topic, as well as to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. How so? Think of it this way: a study that leans towards the success of a particular medicine and is published on the website of the pharmaceutical company would have some people doubt the results. However, if the same results were published by a reputable medical journal, then the findings would be accepted as credible and authentic.

You can apply the same principle with your website. There are a number of ways through which you can gain the trust of your audience, as well as become their go-to-source on topics that are relevant to your business. To do this, you must become an authority on certain topics and to turn your website into a resource page for it.

Does it sound complicated? Don’t be intimidated. Here are some tips on how you can increase your trust rating among your website visitors.

• Design Matters

  In a study published by the New York Technology Council, it has been emphasized that businesses only have six seconds to make a lasting impression on a web page visitor. That said, this means you only have six seconds to impress them with your relevance and authority. However, how can you convince them that you are the right company for the job, if you only have six seconds to convince them to stay on your website.

  The answer lies on a sophisticated and professionally done website. If your website is reeking of templates and flashy display that is oftentimes seen on scrupulous websites, then your web visitors would be quick to click the “X” icon.

  This doesn’t mean that your web design is the only thing that is up for scrutiny. Web visitors would also check out your content and see if you have anything relevant to offer them. Therefore, if you have obvious grammar or spelling mistakes, then they would be quick to leave your site as well.

  The take away on this item would be this: make sure that your website appears professional, and you have no glaring grammatical or misspellings. This way, a single browse at your website would give your visitors the impression that you are trustworthy.

• Convince Them

  After focusing on your web design and content, you need to further convince your web visitors to stay on your pages. You can do this by putting badges and testimonials on your website, or at least prominent logos of your previous clients. This way, you would be igniting a “me too” facet in every person who wants to be a part of something successful.

  Likewise, if you are offering products or services on your website, then you can put logos of your merchants and/or payment methods, such as PayPal. This would be able to reassure your viewers at a glance that you wouldn’t just run off with their money as they would be able to see a logo they easily recognize.

  Finally, try to incorporate an RSS feed on your website. This way, your visitors would be able to see that your company is also active on social media, and they would be able to see the number of fans you have on your page. Assuming that you have at least 20,000 fans on your Facebook page, then your visitors would be reassured that you’re the real deal: after all, 20,000 fans couldn’t be wrong.

• Be Showy

  This doesn’t mean flashy designs filled with marquees; rather, you need to show off your accomplishments. Aside from the testimonials and logos of your former clients, do you have any awards and certifications you can display prominently on your website? Having certifications would go a long way in convincing potential clients that you have what it takes to provide their needs.

• Be Relatable

  After showing off your professionalism and abilities with your sophisticated design, and convincing them to stay by showing off your testimonials, accomplishments, previous clients, and social media presence, then it would be time to be their friend. Visitors react positively to websites that seem to “speak” to them, in the sense that the web page seems to have the information they sorely need.

  You can do this by providing timely and authoritative content about common inquiries in your industry, as well as giving them credible content on other interesting topics. You should also put the faces of your key personnel on the website, as it would be easier for web visitors to trust a website if they can put a face to the nameless entity they are about to contact for services.

• Be Approachable

  Once you’re sure that your potential clients would have an idea of what you do, who your previous clients are, and why you are the right company for the job, you would have to be easily approachable. Provide your contact information, as well as your physical address, and your emails. If you have other platforms through which your clients can contact you, then indicate them as well.

  Providing many ways of communications would ensure your clients that your business is being run professionally, as you would have the staff to monitor all these forms of communication. This includes your social media pages – make sure that your community managers are competent enough to respond to all the concerns of your fans.

The Bottom Line

Once you follow these tips, you would hopefully be on your way to increasing your trust rating. Remember, people would only buy from businesses or entities that they are sure would be able to provide the service and would not scam them. It is therefore imperative for you to send the right impression from the get-go.

Img c/o Pixabay.

As professional web developers of one of Arizona’s Leading Web Design Agencies, we make sure our outputs are very reliable when it comes to aspects such as speed, responsiveness, and total performance. We know how these are important components of a great website and being under Primeview’s roof, we seek only the best.

The team is sharing different tools that we use, so you can see for yourself if your website passes the web standards and are very well optimized like ours. Here’s a list of our Top 5 useful tools for checking web performance.

Web Page Test

Developed by AOL, an open source tool supported by Google itself as part of its efforts to make the web faster. This tool is, according to AOL, run for the benefit of the performance community with several companies and individuals providing the testing infrastructure around the globe.

Basically how this tool works is simple, to test your website, you paste your website URL in the form at the beginning of the process and run the test. After getting the results, the data will be shown in different formats. At the top of the results page, you’ll see whether you pass the aspects of a well optimized website in the form of First Byte Time, Keep-alive Enabled, Compress Transfer, Compress Images, Cache static content, and Effective use of CDN, if the grade is from A-B, you’re good to go, if not, there must be some more optimization to do.

PageSpeed Insights

As for Google, PageSpeed Insights measures the performance of a page for mobile devices and desktop devices. It fetches the URL twice, once with a mobile user-agent, and once with a desktop-user agent. This is a great tool to see if your website is performing well, it ranges from 0-100 points, 85 above indicates a great performance. One more perk of using this tool is it tells you points on where your site needs improvement so you’ll know where to work with.

GTmetrix

This tool is another speed tester for your site, it gives you insight on how well your site loads and provides actionable recommendations on how to optimize it. GTmetrix lets you analyze your website and grade it according to its performance and gives you helpful suggestions to boost your site. It also provides a wide range of features to help you make your site faster, or as they say, “Take advantage of all the features GTmetrix has to offer and make your site the fastest it can be!”

Mobile Website Speed Testing

In comparison with PageSpeed Insights, this tool test your site’s performance from desktop to mobile, letting you know your users’ experience and gives you helpful points to work on in your website. This tool is also developed by Google that gives you a material interface that is very easy to navigate and read through, it makes analysis easier, one of the big difference of this tool is the ability to send the results directly to your email to save time and have a personal copy of the report.

Resizer

It’s better to know if your site is visually appealing on every device, especially nowadays when people browse through their phones and less frequently on their desktops. This tool lets you view your website in different viewports in desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. You can now evaluate your website’s usability in devices and see how readable it is to your users. Another helpful and effective tool developed by Google for free use.

So you set out to create an SEO strategy with the hope of boosting your rankings which will hopefully result in increased traffic, higher conversions, more leads, and business growth. As far as you’re concerned, you’re employing only the best and acceptable practices. However, you still experienced a drop in rankings.

Initially, it’s normal to get worried. But it’s important to act fast and figure what caused that ranking drop and address it from there. Typically, negative ranking changes happen for several reasons. Some can be dealt with on your end, while others are just way beyond your control.

Let’s look at 10 reasons why websites experience ranking changes and the ways on how to deal with them.

1. Links

Links leading to your domain can affect your rankings in several ways.

First, if you have an influx of new links leading to your website, you can experience a temporary drop in rankings. This usually happens when you had issues in the past regarding unnatural links.

Meanwhile, lost links can also contribute to a ranking change. This happens when there are links going to your website that has been removed or may be temporarily unavailable.

Low quality links pointing to your website is a bane of SEO, and you want to avoid them at all cost if you want to maintain good rankings. If you have a lot of poor and irrelevant links leading to your website, search engines can view that as spamming and your website can be penalized or worst, get de-indexed. If you fell victim to link buying schemes or manipulative linking practices, it’s recommended to do a link clean-up.

Track links actively and continue building up high quality links to your domain. You can do this through creating quality content that’s share-worthy, substantial, and relevant. You can also market your content and brand through participating in different platforms to share your insights and expertise.

2. Search engine penalties

Search engines can also penalize websites if they violate the practices recommended for SEO, which are ultimately geared towards improving user experience on the web.

When Google rolled out the Panda algorithm, a lot of websites suffered a huge drop in rankings because of thin and low-quality content. Meanwhile, websites who employed spammy linking techniques were greatly affected when the Penguin algorithm update rolled out.

If you have been penalized, don’t fret. It may feel like doom and gloom has set upon your website, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t recover. What you need to do is to re-assess your website, revamp your strategy, remove low quality content and links,  adhere to recommended practices moving forward, and always monitor the performance of your website.

3. Search engine changes and tests

There are cases when search engines implement changes or conducts trials, and it may affect your rankings. There’s not much you can do about these instances as they are not within your control. If you’re employing best SEO practices, you wouldn’t have to worry so much and you can expect your rankings to be back up in a few days. 

4. Slow page speed

Page speed plays a crucial role in user experience, and ultimately in your rankings. It wouldn’t matter if your website has the most comprehensive design and content if it will not load fast enough. So check your servers, and make sure that they are efficient in giving your visitors a fluid way of navigating your website. Likewise, use tools that can help track your website’s page speed and determine what elements are slowing down your pages.

5. On-page problems

Sometimes, issues within your pages cause your rankings to take a plunge. It could be due to poor internal linking and optimization of your website, incorrect robots.txt file, incorrect canonical tags, absence of index tags, slow page speed, or worst, due to a hacking incident. This further reiterates the importance of conducting website maintenance and regular monitoring of on-site elements so that you can spot errors and address them before they can affect rankings.

6. Competition

If you used to be on the first spot and you suddenly dropped one to two notches, it could be that your competitor outperformed you. While it’s important to always keep your website well-maintained and strategies in-line with acceptable marketing methods, you also need to monitor your competitors if you want to stay on top. Be aware of their recent actions so that you can stay one step ahead and devise new strategies before they do.

7. Website modifications

A decrease in rankings can also be caused by changes made on your website like a new design or updates in the code, layout, plug-ins, and other components. Make sure that all key persons involved in your internet marketing efforts are in the loop with these changes, so that you can avoid any implication on other areas of SEO and on your placement on the SERPs.

8. Changes in user behavior

User behavior is one of the reasons why SEO is dynamic and ever-changing. If your strategies are not connected with how users behave, you can experience a drop in rankings.

There are cases when the way users input queries changes, which happens when they demand for fresher results. This occurs when a particular subject becomes trending. As a result, news and more up to date pieces about the topic dominate the top of the SERPs and evergreen content are pushed down. Since that is the case, it pays to be abreast in your industry, so that you’re always in the forefront of delivering quality and up to date content to your target audience.

9. Changes in click-through rates

If your click-through rate has dropped, it could be the reason why your rankings experienced a decline. Remember that Google is all about user experience and generating results that they think is the most relevant to search queries. If you proved that your CTR is to blame for the drop in your rankings, you can work on improving your listing on the SERPs.

10. Poor content

Even if it sounds like a cliché, content is king when it comes to SEO. Poor content can drive your rankings down or worst, take you out of the SERPs altogether. Devote time in developing quality posts that your target audience would be compelled to share and cite as source. If you master the art of content marketing, traffic, links, good reputation, and high rankings will follow suit.

A strong online presence is all about providing excellent user experience. A crucial part of it is page speed, which is the amount of time a web page needs to load and display information on a user’s browser.

These days, with lifestyles more fast-paced than ever, every second counts—especially so with doing business on the web. People may have 10 seconds to spare if you want to talk to them face to face, but most just don’t have the patience to wait that long for a web page to load.

Page speed: Why you can’t ignore it

Page speed is crucial for staying ahead in the realm of web marketing, and here are the reasons why every second counts when it comes to a website’s loading time.

• Page speed is a ranking factor in Google since 2010. While it doesn’t bear much weight as the relevance of a page and its content, it’s still essential to seamless user experience—which is what you and top search engine Google are aiming at in the first

• Page speed compels people to stay or jump ship to a competitor’s website. 30% of internet users will abandon a page if it doesn’t load within six to 10 seconds, while 15% will click on the close button if a page doesn’t show up in one to five seconds. Clearly, all the effort you put in your website will all be for nothing if it’s not delivered to users in a quick and timely manner.

• Page speed affects conversions and behavior of online shoppers. A one-second delay in your page speed can result in a 7% decrease in conversions and millions of lost sales in a year. Furthermore, most online shoppers expect a retail or travel website to load in two seconds and 40% will not wait for more than three seconds before abandoning a slow loading web page.

• Page speed affects your reputation. 44% of online shoppers will let others know about a bad experience online.

Sources: Akamai, Kissmetrics, and Google

Ways to Improve Page Speed

Clearly, your website doesn’t just need to look good and provide quality content or information, it also needs to load fast to make people stay. If your web pages are not loading fast enough, here are ten workarounds you can do to boost your site speed:

1. Use tools to determine what’s causing the lag in your loading time.

Tracking your page speed is essential in detecting any delays in loading time and conducting necessary action. Tools such as PageSpeed Insight can gauge your website’s page speed and recommend appropriate solutions to help address the issue.

2. Improve server response time.

Server response time should be less than 200ms, as per Google. It refers to the amount of time that a server takes to respond each time a browser sends a request.

There are a couple of things you can do in order to speed up server response time. First, you need to look into the factors that affect how long it takes for a server to respond such as website traffic, website resource usage, website server software, and web hosting. Determine which areas need improvement or adjustment. You can just implement changes with configuration or upgrade your servers as you see fit.

There are services that can help configure your server response time and provide upgrades. However, if you don’t have the resources for paid services, you can try and do it on your own. It may require more time and work, but it can be a good way to learn the ins and outs of your server and website.

3. Clean up your code.

Every code adds up to the size of a web page, so make sure that unnecessary spaces, line breaks, and indentations are eliminated. You can also use tools that can make HTML, CSS, and JavaScript more concise.

4. Make images smaller.

Images can make your website look visually interesting and appealing, but if they’re oversized, they can slow down page speed. Avoid images that are too big for your page width and resize them prior to uploading.

The image format is also crucial. Images in JPEG formats are widely accepted. PNGs and GIFs can also be used, but they may not be suitable for older browsers or complicated images. Meanwhile, BMPs and TIFFs are not advisable for web use.

5. Streamline web design.

Each component of your website such as images, style sheets, and scripts need an HTTP request. The more HTTP requests needed, the slower your page will load. So simplify your web design and keep the elements to a minimum.

Some of the ways to make your website leaner are to use CSS instead of images, compile stylesheets into one and reduce scripts. Remember, good web design is not the one that has the most intricate elements. It’s being able to deliver all the necessary information without going over the top both in visuals and elements to the point of slowing down your site speed.

6. Compress your pages.

Large pages may take a longer time to load, especially if you’re displaying high-quality content that’s sized at 100kb or more. Compression is one of the effective ways to keep your web page from loading sluggishly. It helps reduce bandwidth and HTTP requests. One of the common tools for compressing pages is Gzip.

7. Get rid of unnecessary plug-ins.

Plug-ins can add functionality to your website, but too much of them can affect page speed, cause crashes, and result in other technical problems. Sort your plug-ins and eliminate the unnecessary ones, so that your website can function more smoothly without the unnecessary baggage of elements that are not really needed.

8. Allow browser cache.

Making your page load faster for first-time visitors is crucial, but you also need to make it show up quickly for users who are coming back. One of the effective ways to do so is through caching.

Through caching, users who are revisiting your website will not require another HTTP request to the server, which helps reduce loading times.

The cache lifetime of any component in your website will depend on what kind of element it is. Widgets and ads are usually set to last for a day, while static resources can last longer, typically for a week.

9. Index your database.

A database is a place where website information is stored. If you have any internal search feature, you need to add an index so that your database can return information faster, especially to users who inputted a query.

10. Consider Content Delivery Networks.

Content delivery networks save a copy of your website on different servers located in various parts of the globe. This way, your site will load faster regardless of where it is accessed and the proximity of the searcher from you.

For instance, you’re from New York and your website is created there. If it’s accessed by someone in downtown Manhattan, you can expect the page to load fast even if you’re using a single server, because data wouldn’t need to travel far. But if it’s accessed by someone from Europe, it would take slower to load if the data would just come from your server in America. But when your website information is stored in content delivery networks, the website will load just as fast regardless of where it is being accessed.

Page speed will boil down to user experience because if you ace that, conversions and good search engine ranking will naturally follow. Learn more about improving website performance.

Even if some SEO techniques are obsolete, some people are still practicing them. Others are simply not aware of how Google’s current algorithm works, while others are still hoping that those traditional strategies will still work today. That’s why we decided to shed light on the subject and created a list of techniques that have been effective in the past, but are no longer beneficial today.

ON-PAGE

Keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the practice of putting the same set of keywords on the page title, meta title, meta description, alt text of images, and in the body of the content. Back in the day, SEO specialists do this technique to help their website rank on the first page of Google’s search results for their target keyword. Unfortunately, that’s not the case today. Because Google is constantly updating their Panda algorithm, filling your content with keywords will not cut it if you want your website to rank. True enough, manipulative SEO will not fly in Google’s environment today. If keyword stuffing is still part of your strategy, you better start scratching it off your plan.

Instead of using the same keywords, you can use different variations of them or other synonymous terms. Let’s say you want a page to rank for the keyword “Laundromats in Phoenix, AZ”. You can still achieve your goal without having to mention the same keywords to the point that it affects the clarity of your content. What you can do to is use related keywords such as “self-service laundry in Phoenix, Arizona”, “dry cleaners in Phoenix”, or “Laundromat in Phoenix”.

Use free keyword tools to know related terms and phrases to your target keyword such as Google Keyword Planner. Meanwhile, you can simply search for your target keyword and see what’s listed on the Related Searches section at the bottom of the search results page.

Thin Low-Quality Content

Are you still publishing blog posts that are low in word count and depth just so you can say that you’re “updating your site regularly”? If so, consider creating longer, more interesting, and more comprehensive content, typically 800+ words long.

When you have engaging content, readers will tend to stay on your site and read your posts until the end. As a result, your website’s bounce rate will definitely decrease, which means that you have greater chances of getting a higher placement on Google search results page (SERPS). More so, high quality content is more likely to be share-worthy. Who knows? Maybe that 1000-word article you lost sleep over will be viral in the coming weeks.

Additional tip: High-quality content will all be for nothing if it only reaches a small audience. That’s why you need to promote it to other platforms like social media sites. You can also ask bloggers who are in the same niche to feature your content in their future posts.

Irrelevant or Illogical links within a page

Are you still using irrelevant terms when linking from an internal blog post or web page to your landing pages? If so, you need to stop doing that now.

Always remember that each time you publish an article or blog post, your goal should be to improve your website’s user experience and increase engagement. It would be confusing for visitors if they click on a hyperlinked anchor text in the body of your article only to be directed to an irrelevant page.

Use internal linking in a strategic way if you want visitors to stay longer on your website. You can add click to action links within the body of the content to offer additional and relevant information to your readers.

OFF-PAGE:

Spammy blog comments

A blog comment is spammy if:

• It has a keyword or key phrase that is hyperlinked going to one of your website’s pages.
• It doesn’t add value to the page or conversation. Example: “Thanks for sharing this post! (link)”
• It is placed in a heavily spammed page.
• The commenter’s identity is shady, or appears like he or she is not a real person.

Example:“I am having a hard time getting links for my website. This is the reason why I always comment on other blog posts to promote my website. Here is my website [URL]”

On the other hand, a blog comment will not be considered spam if:

• You interact with the author of the content through sharing your views about the topic. Dropping links are still possible. Just make sure that it doesn’t sound too promotional and make sure that it’s relevant to where you’re placing your comment.
• It is placed on high-quality and relevant content. Check the link profile of the site using the Spam Scoring System of Open Site Explorer to make sure that it is safe to link from that particular page.
• The name of a person who’s representing your website was used. This will help establish online reputation and build brand awareness for the website you’re promoting. Don’t just comment once just to increase the number of root domains linking to your site. Continue interacting with them on future posts so that you can build relationships with content authors. More than that, this can also help you gain citations from their future publications and other websites in the same niche.
• Keywords are not placed on the field designated for the name of the commenter. That field is for the name of a person, and that’s what you need to put in that section. More so, if there’s a provided field for your website, use it to link back to your site.

Forum signature with spammy anchor text links

Don’t even bother putting keywords on your forum signature and linking it going to your website. This technique is a thing of the past and it wouldn’t work today. It would be more acceptable if you use the name of the owner of the website or the authorized person representing it.

Participating in forums is an effective tactic if you know how to do it right. Make sure that you only join high-quality and relevant forums, and see to it that you provide useful and helpful information to the community. Forums related to your target niche can drive highly-targeted traffic to your website.

Social bookmarking

Because a lot of social bookmarking sites are heavily spammed, links coming from them may have little to no worth at all. Most of the time, it’s the latter. However, this can still work if you promote content on high-quality sites like Reddit. Just don’t rely on this strategy too much and use it at a minimal level.

Link directory submission

When you submit your sites to free directories that easily approve submissions, you are screwed. Directories that are low in value and don’t filter user submissions can cause danger to your site. But this doesn’t mean that link directory submission should be avoided. Just make sure to get your site listed on human-curated directories like DMOZ.com.

Article submission

In this video, Matt Cutts mentioned that you shouldn’t use article directories to build links, because this tactic has been abused and is continually being exploited. As a result, Google no longer puts value on links coming from them. Instead of this, you can do guest blogging as long as you can comply with quality guidelines.

Sitewide Links

The worth of a web page is not determined by the number of total links, but on the volume of root domains linking to it. That’s why, you’d rather have 100 domains linking back to you, rather than 1000 links coming from one just one domain.

Google is continuously improving their algorithm, and this means that you should learn how to adjust and comply with their rules so that you can stay off their radar. Prioritizing human users is the key. So just keep on striving hard, because if you keep on doing things right, all your efforts will eventually pay off.

A few days ago, we received an email from Google saying that Googlebot was unable to access CSS and JS files on some of our client’s websites. Of course it caught our attention, Google noted that this issue can result in suboptimal rankings!

via GIPHY

So, what did we do? We simply followed Google’s instructions.

First, you need to identify the blocked resources.

To do this, you must log into your Google Webmaster Dashboard and use the “Fetch as Google” tool under Crawl and Fetch and Render your URL..

After a few minutes, you will be able to access the results page that will show you a list of blocked resources.

After identifying the blocked resources, you should unblock them in your robots.txt

We found out that the blocked resources in our client’s site are located in the following folders :

/wp-content/
/wp-includes/
/fonts/

Take note that there are many ways to do this. In our client’s case, we unblocked the resources by removing the restrictions in their robots.txt. This is how their robots.txt looks now :

User-agent : *
Disallow: /wp-admin/

If you are using a CDN like we do, you’re going to have to use a custom robots.txt set up to unblock the resources from your CDN.

Login to your MaxCDN account
Click on Manage beside your site’s URL then choose SEO

Click on all check boxes and enter your custom robots.txt

The final step is to check if the resources are now unblocked. To do this, just repeat the first step.

If your result still comes back as “Partial”, you may be using blocked resources from other sites.

Don’t worry, Google won’t penalize you because those resources are no longer in the webmaster’s hands.