If every company is using content marketing as a powerful tool to increase their reach and sales then there is tough competition in the market. In this situation, your company needs to go for content optimization so that it gets more traffic and successfully reaches the target audience more easily. Before we learn how to do content optimization for your website, first we will know what is content optimization and why is it important.

What is Content Optimization?

Content Optimization is a process of curating the materials for your website in such a way that they would be easily visible to your target customers and potential audience. When they search for a specific topic or keyword in Google, your content should be able to stay at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs). Some of the most avid rules that are included in content optimization are most importantly using proper keywords, meta tags, headings, subheadings, internal links, visual content, etc. Always remember, content optimization is a way of enhancing your existing content so that more traffic is generated on your website and new potential customers get to know about your product.

For example, nowadays content optimization is mostly reflected in blog posts as every company follows its own blog as a technique of content marketing. In this case, your SEO expert is aware of what are the keywords that are currently trending related to your product and is also aware of the content produced by your competitors, so the content for your articles and blogs are written accordingly. Your article no matter how beautifully composed should be relevant to your service. If you are providing travel service, your website is expected to have blogs about traveling, budget trips, domestic and international flights, solo tripping, etc, and not about a different domain altogether.

Need and Importance of Optimizing the Content

The prime goal of content optimization is to let your target audience discover your website easily. You may write good content for your website but unless and until it is planned strategically especially what topics are you focusing on, what will be the keywords and phrases, and who you are writing for, your blogs are incomplete. This is where an SEO expert steps in and optimizes your content.

After you create and optimize your content half of the work is still incomplete. There is no use in publishing quality content if you cannot track the audience visiting your page or if it is reaching new target customers as you expected. For this regular site, checkups are very important to see if there are any roadblocks in your website or the loading speed is slow for the landing pages and many more. If there are any existing problems, the SEO expert should find a way to resolve them and it is all part of the content marketing strategy.

When optimizing content for your website, relevance is the most important factor because you want your content to reach your target audience. The SEO expert should look both at the content relevance for potential customers as well as optimize accordingly to the ranking algorithm so that the content is both visible and relevant.

Frequency is also a very important factor when it comes down to content optimization. For example, you are publishing content once every three or four months, chances are the audience will not be back since the time span is too long. At the same time, if you are wishing to publish blogs every day, your articles should not fall down in the quality factor. So, you have to pick up a frequency rate that is best suited for your audience so that they will stay tuned and visit your page regularly for reading new blog posts.

Content Optimization Tips and Strategies

If you are new to the field of content marketing or SEO, here are a few golden rules or tips that you must always remember for optimizing content.

1. Write quality content: The first and most important step is writing very high-quality content for your website. Your article should be fully authentic or else you will be charged with plagiarism.
2. Use headings and subheadings: While writing an article doesn’t just write a single long paragraph. Make subheadings that should be bold and font size a little bigger to catch the attention of the audience.
3. Optimizing the content: There are few key elements like title tags, meta description, meta keywords, and URLs that need to be added as the search engine always looks for these factors.
4. Avoid big paragraphs: When you are writing big paragraphs, the readers get distracted or lost due to the monotony of the writing. So, make small paragraphs and try to make the article look like more of a conversation so that your audience gets a personal touch and can emotionally connect to your content.
5. Insert images: Visual arts are very impactful. So, instead of writing everything down add images in between with proper image tags. This will also bring your article in search if they are searching for images with specific tags.
6. Don’t make it too technical: In order to optimize your content, don’t write too many technical terms related to your product so that your audience doesn’t understand half of it. Overuse of keywords will have a negative impact on your articles and you will lose the audience.

These are some of the mandatory strategies that one should keep in mind while optimizing content for a website. Share it with your friends so that they don’t struggle with SEO strategies anymore. Also, if you want to optimize your website you can contact the expert team of Xornor Technologies.

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Social Media is Key.

Since everyone is now sitting at home, social media usage has visibly increased. This is an excellent time for some social media campaigns so that you reach these people effectively. Hence, social media marketing has to be a vital part of your online marketing strategy during this lockdown. Publish engaging content through your social media handles to ensure you stay relevant in the minds of your customers.

Do Good as a Part of Your Marketing.

These are challenging times for everyone, and hence, try to help out as much as possible. Not only will this do them some good, but it will also bring you good PR. Take advantage of all opportunities that enable you to help people who are struggling. Creating goodwill is the best form of marketing available, and this is an excellent opportunity to give back to your community. Several small manufacturing industries have expanded to making sanitizers and other products to help out, gaining them a lot of goodwill and credibility.

Grow Your Online Presence.

Almost everyone is online now, and hence that is where businesses need to be if they want to gain more exposure. Work on your SEO, publish informative blogs, and grow your online presence through strategic ads during this lockdown. Use the budget you have set aside for attending trade shows or organizing events to invest more heavily in online marketing methods.

Improve Your Website.

Use some resources from your marketing budget to upgrade your website and give it a more polished look. Try to incorporate changes that reflect the current demand and atmosphere. For instance, in case you are an online grocery delivery business, stock more varieties of sanitizers and masks. Ensure that you have enough inventory of home essentials, rather than buying luxury goods. Make sure you put out informational blogs that highlight government sanctions and keep the customers updated regarding your changes. Better your digital presence by working on your SEO to gain more followers. Learn more about digital marketing methods and Google algorithms so that you can rank higher on search engine results. In case your website has slow page loading speeds, work on such factors and also make sure you make the website mobile-friendly.

Leverage PPC Advertising.

The lockdown is a great time to utilize pay-per-click advertising. Since more people than ever before are online, such advertisements could fetch you great results. You will also be able to reach out to more people using such online marketing methods. All of this can gift your business a tremendous competitive advantage. Make sure that the niche your business falls in is a utility during the times before you advertise. For instance, if you deal with international shipping, it would make less sense for you to spend money on advertising now due to stringent government sanctions.

Don’t Panic or Freak Out.

While your business might be a bit tight, make sure you don’t jump head-on into bad marketing decisions out of desperation. Rest assured that things will get better, as the worst is behind us. Commerce is picking up all over the world, and most nations have now lifted lockdowns. Do not make decisions as a knee-jerk reaction, and throw your online marketing strategy off on a tangent. Also, don’t pull out of the business fearing failure, but ensure that you keep minimal digital marketing going so that you maintain your online presence. 

Adjust to Meet Customer Needs.

Keep your online marketing strategy flexible and try to adapt to changing customer preferences. For instance, due to a dip in demand for cars, Ford is putting its 3D printers to better use by helping Healthcare companies create medical equipment. Similarly, smaller businesses will have to pivot their structure to suit customer needs. For instance, you will have to add a home delivery tab to the website, start a community kitchen, or take part in community activities.

Analyse Marketing Metrics.

This is a great time to analyze your metrics and gain insights into your online marketing efforts. Keep track of all your media campaigns and social channels. Understand what works best and re-invest in it, while shutting down methods that seem to be falling on deaf ears. Also, use this time to plan future campaigns, create content, and curate a detailed social media strategy. 

While the world is facing a serious threat, it doesn’t have to be the end of your business. Make use of the above pointers and re-invest your effort into online marketing. With everything and every one going online, the COVID-19 has made the importance of digital marketing clear. Utilize this time to work on a great online marketing plan, and keep pushing online traffic to boost sales. Outrank your competitors using good SEO practices, to improve your digital presence and step into the future of online marketing!

The post Guide to boost your business with Online Marketing in Lockdown appeared first on Xornor Technologies.

Latest SEO Trends of 2020

Voice search:

In 2017, studies show that over 33 million voice searches were made by users all around the world, and statistics from 2019 show that more than 20% of queries done on mobile devices were voice searches. Hence, it is easy to say that voice searching will be one of the key aspects of 2020 as it becomes more and more popular, by the day. Another advantage of voice search is that most of such queries tend to be long-tail ones, which show that the user is in his or her consideration stage. Such users tend to convert faster and easier than other users in their awareness stage, which is characterized by short-tail queries.

Featured snippets:

Featured snippet act as a sort of summary to an answer to queries raised on search platforms and engines such as Google puts it above their organic ads on the SERP result. They have created many changes in result algorithms for search engines throughout the years, and studies have shown that such snippets get more traction than the first result itself! Almost half the questions asked on Google get their answers from the SERP itself, leading to no extra tab opening. Therefore, having specific, question-based answers will lead to higher rankings and traffic.

SEO Influencers:

Studies show that over 17% of businesses spend heavily on influencers. This shows just how integral influencer marketing campaigns are for businesses, specifically so for companies working within the fashion, e-commerce, and lifestyle industry. Since most users are now bombarded with ads, they prefer getting suggestions from people they trust and look up to. Hence, such influencers can go a long way in helping your brand build a reliable and viable brand image. Therefore, influencers help websites improve their traction, traffic, reliability, visibility, and reach.

Bi-directional Encoder Representation Transformers:

BERT helps people train their own query answering and settling system, and came to be in 2014 after Google took up the RankBrain algorithm. This system affects one out every ten searches and companies which utilize this model to improve their rankings significantly. Also, studies show that questions containing words such as ‘to’, ‘from’ and ‘on’ are most impacted by BERT.

Video content:

Google has made it clear that videos are an integral part of their ranking algorithm and hence, companies need to make sure they include this form of content in their digital marketing strategy. As per research by Forrester, video content will show up on SERP 50 times higher than plain text. Furthermore, 62% of Google searches contain some form of video content. Businesses can leverage this by embedding videos on their website to improve traffic and engagement rates.

Content length:

Different websites have different types of content, of varying length and form. The one thing that articles have in common on pages with high traffic is that they are all of high-quality. However, studies show that the top 10 search results contain a minimum or average of 2000 words. Websites with high-quality, long-form type of content seem to enjoy higher visibility and reach. But, in order for this to be true, the content on your page must specifically answer frequently asked questions comprehensively.

Better Digital Experience:

In 2020, page loading speed will become an even more important factor than before, and over 44% of companies say that they have adopted a digital-first approach to better their customer experience. With decreasing attention spans, people are less likely to wait for a page to load, in order to see what is on the page. Hence, companies need to prioritize their requirements and needs, because to build long-lasting client relationships, companies need to invest in building great customer experience.

As you can see, SEO is a complex phenomenon that depends heavily on several factors. Therefore, in order for a company to maintain a good website they need to be aware of the factors involved and follow the right trends. Since this is a very important part of any company’s growth, it is best if companies allow professionals to handle such matters. At Xornor Technologies, we have decades’ worth of experience in the field of SEO optimization and can, therefore, help you build the website of your dreams. So, let us help you grow both your website and your business.

The post Latest Trends and Challenges of SEO in 2020 appeared first on Xornor Technologies.

These days it has become common to embed the Twitter feed on to one’s WordPress website, but why people do so? The Twitter feed gets updated on your website, as soon as you post a tweet on your Twitter handle. This way, you get content updated to your website on a regular basis, which is the most necessary thing to do for the SEO of a website. Also, keeping your Twitter handle updated keeps the audience engaged and brings traffic to your website. These Twitter feed are also interactive, such that the users can directly post comments on Twitter from the Recent Tweets feed on your WordPress website.

WordPress is the most user-friendly CMS that offers numerous plugins and widgets that you can use to add new functionalities to your website. But Twitter itself provides a Recent Tweets widget that you can include to your WordPress website, in a few easy steps. There are many ways to add the Recent Tweets feed on to WordPress website, which is described below:

Adding Your Recent Tweets to Your WordPress Sidebar (same for the footer)

Follow the steps below to embed the Recent Tweets to your website:

1. Copy the URL of the profile you want to embed the recent tweets from, to your WordPress website.
2. Now, go to the widget option in the Appearance tab from the WordPress Dashboard.
3. Now search for Text widget in the search box of the Widget page. Drag and drop the widget into the Sidebar.
4. Paste the URL into the text area you had copied.
5. Save the changes.

This way, you will be able to see the recent tweets from that same profile on the website’s sidebar. Usually, people include the Recent Tweet widget in the sidebar and footer of the website. For the footer, you need to simply paste the code in the footer.

Embedding Twitter Feed in WordPress with Twitter Publish

You can get the Twitter widget from the Twitter website itself. To get the embed code and include the Recent Tweet widget to your WordPress website, follow the steps below:

1. Go to the https://publish.twitter.com/ page.
2. Here you need to search for the widget, by typing the profile URL in the “What would you like to embed?” search box.
3. The embed code will appear on your screen, which you need to copy. You can also customize the widget and change the height, width, background colour, the link colours as well as the language for the widget on the Twitter Publish page.

So this way you have got the access to the Twitter widget, now you need to embed the same into your WordPress website. For that, follow the steps below:

1. Go to appearance, and select Widget.
2. Now drag and drop the ‘Custom HTML’ widget to the Sidebar.
3. Paste the embed code you copied from the Twitter Publish page into the HTML field.

Save the settings, and you will be able to see the Tweets feed on the sidebar.

Embedding the Recent Tweets to a WordPress Blog

You can even display your recent tweets into your blog post, for that you need to follow the steps below:

1. Simply copy the Twitter Profile URL or copy the embed code from Twitter Publish as you did in the last method.
2. Go to the Posts from the Dashboard.
3. Open the post for editing you need to add the Twitter widget to.
4. Now in the section where you want to publish the Recent Tweets, add the Twitter embed block.
5. In the Twitter embed block, paste the copied Twitter Profile URL or the embed code and click the Embed button.

Save the changes, and in the preview, you will see that the Recent Tweets feed is embedded in your post.

If you do not want to use the Twitter Widget, you can simply get a plugin for embedding the Twitter feed to your WordPress Website. The most popular Twitter plugins are Another Twitter Plugin, Rotating Tweets and Twitter Feed for WordPress.

The post How to Use Twitter Widget in WordPress to Show Recent Tweets appeared first on Xornor Technologies.

After Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger is the one tool that drives most of the traffic, becoming the most trustworthy place to find leads. Since it has a user base of over 1.3 billion people, you can estimate the potential and scope of leads through this very platform.

So how Facebook Messenger marketing works? It is quite simple. Being a messenger, Facebook Messenger works as the intermediate between the marketer and the client, or we say the potential client. From the upper layer, it looks like email marketing, but it is much more than that. It is more interactive, fast, and personal than the old and detached email marketing.

Through Facebook Messenger, one can carry out several customer-related tasks, thanks to the chatbots, including carrying out a positive conversation, gathering feedback from the customers, tracking orders, scheduling appointments, providing 24 hours support, and many more.

There are several chatbots, specially designed to work with Facebook Messenger. In fact, these are built on the Facebook Messenger platforms, which can be easily embedded to a website. Facebook has developed an API that enables the chats through the chatbots. This way, all the chats done through a messenger chatbot is done on the website without leaving the page, and the chat is stored on the messenger. Use of chatbots with Facebook Messenger increases user engagement and the possibility of generating new leads.

These chatbots are better than any other chatbots as it brings the user information from Facebook to the website, such that even the chat is over you do not lose the user data or need to ask the user about their details. Also, when a user has conversated with you through messenger chatbot, you can send them follow-ups or reminder through push notifications.

The reason why Facebook messenger is the best marketing tool is that everyone is using this platform and know how it works. Also, if we use messenger or direct messages, it shows the customers that we as the service provider cares about them.

To start with Facebook Messenger marketing, you need the following:

• A Facebook Business Page: First of all, you need to create a Facebook page for your business so that you can use Facebook Messenger.
• Access to a Chatbot Builder: You need to select a chatbot builder based on your requirements and then create a chatbot for your website.
• Facebook Messenger Widget: To enable the chatbot on the website, you need to get the Facebook Messenger Widget.

Ways to use Facebook Messenger as a Marketing Tool:

Create a Chat Blast: Facebook Messenger has already got a huge user base, and hence, it has got an average of 70 to 80 per cent open rate for Chat Blast. On the other hand, it has been rarely 10-12 per cent average open rate for an email campaign, which is way lesser than the messenger Chat Blast. So creating a Chat Blast is a great way to reach more and more people, as it allows you to send a single message to your entire contact list or a segmented group, saving a lot of time and efforts.

Messenger Drip Campaigns: Though the drip campaigns have been good with emails, with messenger it is even better. The engagement rate with Facebook Messenger is four times higher. So, ditch the old email method for the drip campaign, and start doing it with Facebook Messenger. You can use a welcome message for the first interaction with the new user, and then, provide them with regular updates through the direct messages. Do not forget to include a CTA which leads the users to your original content, whether it is a blog, a video, a free consultation, a webinar or a download link on a webpage.

Comment Guard: Comment Guard by Mobile Monkey helps you create a chatbot that auto responds to the users who commented on a specific post on your website. The response to the user goes as a direct message through Facebook Messenger, and as soon the user responds to the message, he/she becomes the lead.

Click-to-Messenger Ads: The Click-to-Messenger ads are different from the traditional ads, as when a user clicks on an ad, he/she automatically receives a message over the messenger. This way, you can access their contact details, and at the same time, the user can ask questions about the services or the product the ads was representing.

But you need to be careful about the opt-ins and the opt-outs by the user. It is necessary to get the clear consent of the user for accessing their information and give them the freedom to opt-out from your services and delete their information from your database, anytime they want.

Benefits of Using Facebook Messenger for Marketing: Having a huge user base, Facebook Messenger is better than traditional e-mail marketing. The other various benefits of using Facebook Messenger for marketing are as follow:

Reach Your Target Audience One-to-one: Facebook Messenger is instant, and unlike emails, the user is actively responding to you, providing you to have a one-to-one conversation with your customer. This way, the users get to clear their doubts and you to introduce them with your services and products better.

Generate High-quality Sales Leads: Facebook Messenger offers you different tools, like sponsored messages, to re-connect with the people who contacted you previously. This way, you give them more attention and convert these people into high-quality leads.

Nurture Leads with Automated Messages: When you have already generated leads, you can engage and nurture these leads by sending personalised automated messages time-to-time. These messages may include some new offers, events, and even, coupons for them. To make the leads your permanent customers, you need to maintain the relationship with them, and for that Facebook Messenger is the best tool.

Customer Support: When using a Facebook Messenger chatbot, it becomes easier for the users to connect with you for any query they have. They are more comfortable sharing their problem and you provide them with speedy support, that too, at a personal level. Use of a chatbot for customer support also reduces a lot of money as well.

So Facebook Messenger is one of the most powerful tools for digital marketing. It can do so many things as a marketing tool, whether it is generating new leads, providing customer support, or delivering specific content to the users. Almost everything is possible with Facebook Messenger marketing.

Xornor Technology is a team of professional that provides web development and digital marketing services to its offshore clients. If you want to know more about Facebook Messenger marketing or want to hire a digital marketing team for your website, feel free to contact the team Xornor.

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But what is On-Page SEO?

On-page, SEO is a practice of optimizing every page of the website, in terms of the content of the website as well as their HTML code, in order to get high ranking in the Google searches. Since the SEO algorithms keep on changing, you need to keep up with the changing technologies and strategies of the SEO as well.

Here is the latest on-page SEO checklist for a website which you need to follow to get good results in terms of the ranking of your website:

1) Meta Tags

Meta tags are snippets or small describing elements which tells the Bot what the web page is all about. For the SEO of a page, you must include and define all the meta tags in the HTML code of the web page. These tags are not visible to the end user of the website, but to the search engine. So these are really important for the ranking of a website. The meta tags used in SEO are:

• Title tag: This is the same title tag, which appears on the browser tab, and is written in the head tag of the HTML code. The same title also appears on the SERPs. It has to be keyword-friendly, and every page should have a unique title. By default, the character length for a title is 50-60 characters (600 pixels).

• Meta Description tag: A Meta Description is the summary of your content on the web page, having a character length between 140 to 160 (920 pixels). You must write SEO-friendly and unique content for the description, having the important keywords in it.

• Meta Keywords Attribute: This attribute includes every keyword which is relevant to your content on the webpage.

• Alt tag: Alt or alternative tag is used with the images, and it is really important that you use this tag in every image on your site. The bot cannot read the images, but it can read the Alt tag. So the Alt tag helps the bot to understand the content of the image.

From the SEO point of view, the mentioned tags are the most important ones and must be included in every page of a website. There are other meta tags, including Robot Meta tag, Canonical tag, Social Media Meta Tags (Open Graph and Twitter Cards), Responsive Design Meta Tag, which are used only when required.

2) Heading Tags

The Heading Tags are used in HTML for defining different sizes of the headings on a webpage, starting from H1 (the biggest) to H6 (the smallest). While using the Heading tags, you must write content-relevant headings including the appropriate keywords, as these help the search engines to analyse what your content is all about.

3) SEO-friendly URLs

A keyword-friendly URL of a webpage helps the bots as well as the humans to understand the theme of the landing webpage and improves the site’s search visibility. The maximum URL length is 512 pixels.

4) The Content

“Content is the king”, this has been repeated millions of times, but it goes only to unique and relevant content. For better SEO of your website, you must update the content in the form of blogs or articles, regularly. Never forget to add important keywords to it and maintain the proper keyword density. Since you will be updating the content regularly, the bot will get to know about it and will crawl your website faster.

5) Optimize Your Images

Optimizing the images of a website is the most important step to be taken during the process of SEO. Image optimization includes adding a caption to the image, resizing it without compromising its quality, and most importantly, using the alt tag along with it. Like the other content, the image must also be unique and relevant to the context of the web page.

6) Speed

The speed of a website is the major factor in increasing the bounce rate. Since people have got access to the faster internet, nobody wants to wait for a website to load for too long. The average load time for a website or a webpage must be optimized to 3-4 seconds, and not more than that.

7) Mobile-Friendly

According to the latest researches, people are more active on their smartphones, and it is the only device providing maximum engagement. Mobile-friendly websites rank better in the SERPs. So make sure your website is mobile friendly and easily accessible.

8) Free Reporting Platforms

Tracking the traffic on your website is a really important part of SEO. Google has provided free reporting platforms, Google Analytics and Google Console, to track the performance of the website on the Google searches. Google Analytics helps you to track the location of a user, the page on which the user has been active, as well as which type of traffic it is, i.e., referral, organic, paid (display and search), direct, social, etc.

On the other hand, Google Console helps in tracking the source of the backlinks you get, the status of Sitemaps as well as Robots.txt, the performance of the clicks, impressions, CTR, average position of the search queries, webpages. With the help of Google Search Console, you can also track the country and the device from which the traffic is coming. It can also check the errors like the 404, blocked pages by Robots.txt and shows which page is indexed and which one has been crawled.

9) XML Sitemap

The Sitemap of a website helps the crawlers to follow all the webpages of your website through their links. So from the SEO point of view, it is important to create and update the sitemap of a website as to index your website, the Search Engine must see all your webpages.

10) Robots.txt Is accurate

A part of the robots exclusion protocol (REP), Robots.txt tells the web robots on how to crawl and index a particular webpage. It is created through the webmasters, and every time the search engine is about to visit your website, it will check the Robots.txt file.

11) Site Architecture

A better site architecture of a website helps the crawlers to move from one page to another quickly and make a copy of every page. Those copies of the web pages are stored in the index, and whenever the users search for something, the crawler checks it in the Index.

12) 404 Pages

The 404 appears when a user enters a wrong URL, or the website does not have a page with the same URL, it had given to the text, on which a user had clicked. Getting the 404 pages is not bad, as it does not always appear because of the fault of the website owner. But at the same time, it can be a turn off for the site visitors and can hurt the SEO of the website.

First of all, you need a great design for your 404 webpage. To prevent the visitors from clicking that back button on receiving the 404 error, you must add several informative links on the 404 page, such that the visitor does not leave the website. The reason being, if the visitors go back to the Google searches due to the occurrence of the 404 error, and click other links in the searches, it indicates Google that your content is not adding any value and if it happens repeatedly, your ranking is hurt badly.

13) SSL Plugins

Most of the people are not sure that the data they post on various websites is secure or not. It happened only a few years ago when Google announced HTTPS as a ranking signal. But still, only 1% of the websites have implemented this SSL certificate on to it. The HTTPS brings extra security between the browser and the server, adding an additional layer for the security of the data like the credit or the debit card information. This helps the site visitors to trust the website, and share their personal information on it.

14) Structured Data

Like the SSL, most of the marketers are not aware of Structured Data, or we say Schema.org, and only a smaller percentage of website owners are using them. With the help of Structured Data, you can control how your website, and its other entities, must appear in the SERPs. The Structured Data helps the search engine to understand the content of your website and display search results in a specific format. You can manage this result format and show the highlights, like good reviews as the snippet, for the search results. This makes the search results look richer, and this is why these richer results are also called rich results or rich snippets. Since Structured Data helps the search engines to understand your content better, it helps with the ranking of your website.

The post On-Page SEO Checklist: All You Need to Know appeared first on Xornor Technologies.

1. Google Panda Update: Google rolled out the Panda Update in February 2011. This algorithm Update has been the most powerful since the time it was introduced. This Update makes sure that any website which is already good at the SERPs, does not have any poor quality, spun or copied content. If there is any website with such flaws, Google automatically reduces the ranking of those websites. The Update also helps the website with quality content go up in the rankings. So clearly, to fight the Google Panda Update, you must get rid of the duplicate content on your website.

2. Google Penguin Update: The next major update from Google was introduced in April 2012, i.e. Google Penguin Update. Initially known as the webspam algorithm update, the Penguin Update targets the websites with low-quality and spammy backlinks and reduces their Google ranking. In this way, Google helps in the higher ranking of websites with trustworthy and relevant inbound links.

3. Google Pirate Update: The Google Pirate Update was released in August 2012. The Update deranks the website with pirated content and backlinks. This Update restricts the website that hosts the copyrighted and pirated content, like movies, music, ebooks, as well as software, or the ones which have received the copyright infringement reports under Google’s DMCA system, from ranking higher in the Google searches.

4. Google Hummingbird Update: This Update was introduced in August 2013. Like the hummingbird, this Update is responsible for faster and accurate search results. Google’s Humming Bird Update targets on providing better searches for the users by understanding the intent of the search and by not, specifically, going for the keywords. This lets the users enter the searches more naturally, and the website with the best match content and the ‘intent’ of the searches, appear up in the searches.

5. Google Pigeon Update: Google released the Pigeon Update in July 2014. The Update is crucial for the search result based on location and distance. The Update provides more accurate and more relevant searches, and ties Google’s local search algorithm to their web algorithm, more closely. In this case, SEO is used to rank local and non-local Google results.

6. Google Mobile-Friendly Update: This is a mobile-friendly ranking algorithm, which was introduced by Google in April 2015. As the name suggests, the Update helps in the better ranking of the mobile-friendly web pages, in the mobile search results. The Mobile-Friendly Update is also known by other names including mobilegeddon, mobilepocalyse, mopocalypse and mobocalypse. This is a page-level-factor, and even a single web page from a website, which is mobile friendly, can be ranked in the mobile searches.

7. Google RankBrain Algorithm: Introduced in October 2015, this Update is the machine-learning AI system, that helps Google to decipher and understand the meaning of one of the rare queries and provide relevant results. The Rank Brain Update includes a query processing as well as ranking component and is able to learn from the previous processes, improving itself for the next processes. This Update is the third most important ranking factor of Google.

8. Google Possum Update: Google’s Possum Update was launched in September 2016. The Possum Update is the name for the various changes in Google’s local ranking filter and works for the local business listings in the SERP results. The search results in the Possum Update depends on the physical location of the user. The closer the business is to the user’s physical location, the high the website will be ranked in the searches. The Possum Update also gives different results for different keywords and even includes a similar type of businesses located outside the city, in the searches.

9. Google Fred Update: Released in March 2018, Fred is Google’s Algorithm that targets at the websites which violate Google’s webmaster guidelines, and the ones having the poor quality content. The Update works to penalize the website with heavy ad monetization tactics and which are built to generate ad or affiliate revenue. To avoid hitting by this algorithm, you must ensure that your website is following the webmaster guidelines, and use quality-content while targetting the revenue through ads on the website.

So these are the major Google Updates that boost or reduces the ranking of a website. The basis for hitting by any of those Google Updates can be poor quality content, copied content, keyword stuffing, spammy backlinks, thin content, ad-centred and affiliate heavy content, etc. So make sure to update your website, accordingly, to avoid hitting by any of the mentioned Updates and help your website with better SEO.

The post Major Google Algorithm Updates in SEO History appeared first on Xornor Technologies.

Just using the images on the website does not work for the SEO, but defining the various attributes like alt text, captions, image name, etc., are the key to image SEO. Since the SE crawlers cannot see the images, these attributes help them to get all the details about the image and how it is related to the content of the website, resulting in a better ranking of the website in the searches.

So images are one of the important assets of SEO, and here are the tips that you can follow for the better image SEO:

1) High Quality & Original Images: Using high-quality images on a website makes the website look more attractive and enhances the user experience. Also when the images are original, i.e. belong to your company itself, it puts a great impact on the user of the site. Original images do not need a high-budget setup, but you can get those images by yourself using a good camera. And, for the infographics or other images, you can take the help of a good designer who can design high-quality pictures for you. Also, many website owners use stock photos on their website, which is great as they pay a good amount for those pictures. But do you know, there are other people also, who spent money on the same pictures? So to avoid any kind of duplicity, try to produce your own pictures for the website instead of taking them from any stock websites.

2) Relevant Images: Your website talks about selling clothes, but you have put the food pictures on it. Does it make any sense? No! Right? In the case of images, it is quite simple. The image must represent the context of the textual content on the web page. The images are more expressive and are helpful in simplifying the complex content into a simple form. Using wrong images on your website can turn off the visitors.

3) A Big No to the Copyright Images: The other reason to use original pictures, on your website, is to avoid the copyright conflict that can occur when you use some random pictures from the internet. Copyright claims on the images are not good for your website, and also for you, as you can get into an expensive lawsuit. The companies that own the pictures can issue a notice for not taking their permission to use the images, which is valid under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). And this is not only for the images, but the same goes for the other content on the website too.

But in any case you are unable to create relevant images for your content, you can simply search for copyright free images on Google (using the Usage Rights too in the Google search) or try to write down the credits for the pictures whenever you use them.

4) Choose the Right File Type: Choosing the right file type for the images is also another important part of Image SEO. Commonly, there are three most used file types, i.e., jpg, png and Gif. All the three types are slightly different from each other but fall in the same category. The png files render the highest resolution of all, but at the same time, they have the biggest file size too. So most of the people use the jpg format of the images, as they provide high resolution at the smaller file size. But in case of the designed graphics, both gif and png are the better choices. So try to choose the file type for the images according to the content on the website.

5) Image Size and Hosting: Another prime factor in Image SEO, is the size of an image, as the page load time for a website depends on it. The bigger size of the image is a major agent in slowing down the page load time for the website. According to the researches, on a new website, the users wait for the site to load only for ten seconds and leave the site immediately. So for better user engagement, one must maintain the page load time to its lowest. As image size plays a big role in the same, you must optimize the size of the image every time using a new image on the website. The images can be resized or compressed to an extent, using various tools, keeping the quality of the image intact.

6) Naming the Images: Naming the images might look an easy task, but then is also the most critical one. In the Image SEO, the name of the images has its own role to play. While naming the images, try to choose a name which is relevant to the content. Or you can simply use the target keyword along with the content related name of the image, making it a descriptive one. The image name is not visible to the users, but it is helpful in providing the content information to the search engines.

7) Captions & the Alt Text: Alt Text or the Alternate Text is another most important constituent in the Image SEO. Using the alt tags carefully is beneficial to the overall on-page SEO strategy. Most of the search engines are text-based, and when the image takes longer to load, or in the case, does not even display, it is the Alt text that appears on the screen, and the SE reads it. When there is no alt text given for the images, in the same situation, the screen appears as an empty space to the search engine, which affects the SEO of the website. Like the name of the image, the alt text also should be relevant to the content. You can create a descriptive alt text having SEO-friendly keywords in it.

8) Image Sitemap: For better SEO, creating a sitemap is a common thing, but did you know that Google also encourages creating a sitemap for the images used on the website for better search engine ranking? You can add the images to the sitemap, or you can create a separate sitemap for the images. It helps the search engines to add those images to the index, such that the images also show up in the searches. Using the image sitemap, the crawlers find those images and the information embedded with them, most likely. This increases the visibility of your images as well as the website on which those images have been used.

Following these tips, you can encourage your website’s load time, increase the visibility of the images in the searches, and most importantly, help in the Search Engine Optimaization of the website.

The post Important Tips for Better Images SEO appeared first on Xornor Technologies.

Lack of Well-Written Content: There is a sea of eCommerce websites on the web, and here, your content will help you make your own place. You must prepare the content after proper research on the product and highlight its main features. A well-written content may not be entirely responsible for grabbing all the traffic, but yes it definitely will make people be more attentive towards what your website is trying to sell.

Improper Keyword Research: Keyword research is one of the most crucial tasks in SEO. So not performing the same for your eCommerce business, can be a huge risk and lead you to failure. So doing proper keyword research is the prime thing to do for a good SEO ranking of your website.

Keyword Stuffing: There are a few major components of the content on the website, including the headings, meta descriptions, product descriptions, the real website content, etc. Most of the people think that more they use the keywords in those, the more the chances be that the website will be ranked higher in the SERPs. But this is completely wrong. Keywords are important, but stuffing the content with the keywords will lead to spam.

Duplicate Content: Whether it’s SEO for an eCommerce Website, or for any other website, duplicate content is never going to help you get the desired traffic. Even most of the products in a category are similar. So you need to create a distinct title as well as the description for the product, that defines the product in an attractive way. Try to write a keyword-friendly title and a keyword-friendly description for the product such that the product gets crawled higher on the Google search.

Not Using Social Media Platforms: Thanks to the Smartphones and the easily accessible internet that people spent most of their time scrolling on the various social media platforms. This habit of people has resulted in making big eCommerce companies to use the same for showcasing their products on them such that they can now reach more people with lesser efforts.

Marketing is what your eCommerce website is supposed to do, and using the various social media platforms to endorse your products and services will be an addition to your marketing strategy.

Lack of a Blog: Content is the king and what else would be the better way of getting more content onto your website than setting up a blog. The context of the blog and the articles in the blogs must be relevant to the service you are providing through your eCommerce website. The articles in it can be from your technical team or from the famous influencers, such that updating the blogs regularly will lead your website to more traffic.

Compromising the Security: The eCommerce sites hold the most sensitive data of its user, including their name, email address, address as well as the payment method and its details. So the security is the major concern you have to take notice of. If you are hosting an eCommerce website, you are bound to provide the highest of the security to data of your users.

So, you must adopt SSL security encryption, most preferably, Extended Validation SSL (EV SSL) certificate and HTTPS for your e-commerce website.

Poor Website Loading Speed: You must admit that unless it is too important, you can’t stay on a website that has a poor page loading speed. Most of the people go off the website within merely 8-10 seconds, if it does not load faster. They might wait for a while in case they really want to get the information stored on the page, or in case of an eCommerce website, there is a huge sale on it. So with a poor website load time, you cannot expect any new person to stay on the website and wait till it is loaded properly. So you must optimize your page loading speed, in order to make the shoppers stay on your website.

No Product Reviews: The user reviews are really helpful in hiking the SEO ranking. Genuine product reviews play a vital role in the success of every eCommerce website, as the reviews are the best way to ensure the authenticity of your products. The better the reviews, the more you are able to build trust among your customers. Lack of reviews may create doubts in the mind of shoppers, and there are high chances that might decide on not investing in a certain product or service on your website.

So, you must have a feedback form on your website that the buyers can fill after they punch in the successful delivery of the product, or you can send your buyers personal automated emails for the feedback.

The competition in the eCommerce industry is growing day-by-day, and there is no time to make mistakes. Even if your product is an outstanding one, you must focus on the better SEO techniques and keep yourself updated with Google’s algorithm to attain higher search engine ranking.

The post 9 SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid for the Growth of Your eCommerce Website appeared first on Xornor Technologies.

1. Yoast SEO: Yoast SEO plugin can be considered as the leading SEO plugin in WordPress, with more than 5 million downloads, till now. The plugin lets you add meta value to the homepage as well as to a single post. It also supports social media optimization i.e., image, title and description. You don’t have to install a separate plugin for creating a sitemap file as it already includes one. The plugin also incorporates the Edit robots.txt and the .htaccess Google search console integration, and control the indexing of your blog. Using Yoast SEO, you can edit display fields on Google like Descriptive tag, Title tag and the URL. It also helps in optimizing the on-page SEO by setting the focus keyword.

2. Google Analytics for WordPress: The Google Analytics plugin is a product from Google and allows the easy integration of the Google Analytics to your website. The plugin is useful for the beginners and needs zero coding knowledge of SEO. The plugin gives you the freedom to monitor the real-time stats directly through the WordPress dashboard and easily track your Google Adsense ads. It helps to track the various SEO measures, including the download tracking, event tracking, custom dimension, outbound link tracking, and performance tracking as well as the popular author, popular post, custom buttons, banner clicks and custom post tracking, etc.

3. All in one SEO Pack: This plugin contains more features than the Yoast SEO plugin, but the easy to use interface of Yoast makes it go up at the number one position in the list. Like Yoast, this plugin also supports the Google Analytics and even supports XML sitemap for Google and Bing. It also helps you to avoid the duplicate content. All in one SEO Pack automatically generates meta tags for the website pages. It also offers free SEO integration for the e-commerce websites. Another best feature of this plugin is that it is compatible with almost every WordPress plugin, including the Woocommerce.

4. The SEO FrameWork: The SEO FrameWork is an ideal plugin for the people who are new to SEO. The plugin provides the automatic SEO solution for a website, without the user having any knowledge of SEO. It acts as the part of WordPress and does not show any branding when used in the website. The plugin is customizable for every page and post on the website and can be enhanced on PHP-level. It reduces the need for a caching plugin and is helpful in increasing the speed of the website. The plugin is most helpful for the beginners, but the API is also open for the experts. The plugin supports features like local SEO, AMP integration, article enhancement, monitoring for SEO and uptime, incognito mode, as well as comment caching for spammers.

5. Broken Link Checker: The continues check on the broken links is the most required task for the SEO of a website. But, how many of us even do that when the website is complete. The main focus is always on filling the pages with keywords and making the content readable. The broken links on a website can impose a bad impression on the visitors, but using the Broken Link Checker plugin can help you solve this problem. The plugin lets you modify all the broken links on the various pages of the website directly from the home page of the plugin. It locates the broken links on the website with the help of its easy searching and filtering feature. The plugin is designed not only to check the broken links on the pages, but it also scans the comment section and custom fields. It also provides the option to prevent the search engines to follow those broken links on the site.

6. SEO Squirrly: This plugin is best suited for you, even if you are a complete beginner to SEO and even WordPress. The plugin provides you with the tools to track the SEO statistics as well as the content marketing strategies. It allows you to modify the snippet to make a better appearance of your website in the searches. The email alerts from the plugin help you find the areas that need improvements. It includes the feature named the content report, that can be used to send reports to the people in your organization, regarding the progress of the content of the website. The SEO Squirrly provides you with the complete SEO suite and takes the complete responsibility of the SEO of your website.

An SEO friendly website can help you boost your business with better SERPs, and the above-mentioned plugins are the best for the SEO of a website created on WordPress. These plugins are easy to install and implement. You can try out any of those plugins on your WordPress website and see the difference in the SEO of your website.

The post 6 WordPress Plugins to Build an SEO Friendly Website appeared first on Xornor Technologies.