Is Your Website Ready for the Search Engines?

Let's be clear. When it comes to search engines, keep in mind that SEO is an experiment, there are no rules. The algorithms changes regularly (estimated 400 times a year) and Google doesn’t share specifics on those changes except general guidelines on their site. That being said, there are some best practices to help improve the rank of the website. We can't cover all of them here, but there are some obvious ones.

This applies to the majority of search engines, so don't feel like you need to cater to each one individually.

Most of all, if this is greek to you, consider hiring someone to handle your SEO. Also, if they make promises of specific results, run far away. SEO is a slow, continuous process.

Make Your Content Clear

According to Google, they want to "see your page the same way the user does". That being said, when you see a search engine entry, you notice the title and a brief description. These are placed are placed in the "head" section of the HTML. The title can provide more information than just your business name. It can have a brief few words or a phrase such as "McAllister Park Design - Web Design and Hosting Services". Your description needs to be an accurate summary. Avoid default words like "Page 1" or Untitled".

Mobile Friendly

Your website needs to be mobile friendly. That means it is responsive and can resize to accommodate the various cell phone screens, tablets and laptop or desktop computer. You can check how mobile friendly your website is by visiting Google's mobile friendly test area.

Your website also needs to load FAST. How fast? Well, Google doesn't say, but most agree with less than 2 seconds. The reason? People leave the website if it doesn't load quickly. They might feel it isn't working or that they don't have time.

Maile Ohye, states in a Google Webmaster video, that “2 seconds is the threshold for e-commerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half-second.”

SSL Certificate

Your website must be secure, even if you aren't selling anything. Many hosting companies provide free certificates, so consider this when looking at hosting. I recommend WebHostPython for shared hosting and yes, this is an affiliate link. I have been with them for years and they provide great support and have dealt with various issues promptly and with grace, even when I messed up! They aren't my only hosting company as I have various options for my clients and their needs but for shared hosting, I recommend them.

Organize Your Website

Just like your cabinets, keeping things organized makes it easier to locate for you and anyone using your kitchen! This applies to your website as well. Keep topics together, Use headers appropriately with H1 at the top and reduce down with subtopics using H2 and below. This also benefits accessibility.

Google also recommends using breadcrumbs, a way of providing navigation in addition to the menu.

Most of all avoid complex web of navigation links as well as going overboard by "slicing and dicing your content" so it takes a large amount of clicks to get to the information.

Know What Your Readers Want

Provide fresh content with proper spelling and grammar, If you have difficulties with this, Grammarly is your friend. Make your content and writing user friendly to fit your visitor's needs. The days have passed for keyword stuffing or hiding text from users, making it only available to the search engine bots.

Cultivate Trust

Most of all, your site needs to be trustworthy.You are the expert and you provide quality in your product and/or service. Your pages need to reflect this good practice.

There are many other "Do's and Don'ts, but like Googles SEO Basics documentation is about 50 pages. I will most likely address more in the future.

And let me remind you...
SEO is an experiment, there are no rules...
just a good website that caters to its audience with quality content that loads quickly.

Digital Marketing for the Small Business

OutMarket has put out in interesting white paper on " 15 Ideas to Grow with Digital Marketing ". Online marketing is not just for the big guys but is easily available for small businesses and you need to take advantage of that opportunity to level the playing field in your industry. The article provides some of the first steps in developing your online marketing plan and well worth reading. Some small business owners want to save funds and do it themselves but you might want to consider hiring this out to an online marketing specialist so you can focus on YOUR business. Twitter, Facebook, Google Analytics and social media monitoring can monopolize your time, taking you away from running your business. Shameless plug, McAllister Park Design can help you with your online marketing and increase your exposure online to potential clients. We will work with you as a consultant to help you develop a plan or as your regular marketing guru, your choice.

Google: Now you know!

Google has released clear information on how to perform better in search engines. Provide useful, legitimate content! This update is called the " Helpful Content Update " and it is clear that original, informative information is king. A new sitewide ranking system is being added which awards people with good quality content. Now, this isn't really new, but it clarifies that your ranking can be impacted and if you are a subject matter expert in your field or business, make it shine! Utilize your website as informational, not just a short brochure or a business card. Show your knowledge and experience and make it work for your organically.

How Do We Prepare Students for a Global Knowledge Economy?

I recently participated in a discussion regarding the direction of our community here in Northwest Georgia. Although many candidates for our county commission would like to see more manufacturing jobs, I truly feel that we are not preparing our students to be part of the 'global economy'. Why are we happy with more retail jobs at minimum wage or warehouse jobs for $10 per hour? In our community we can strive to provide a better education geared toward the future. We can also improve our local economy with drawing technology related businesses that are required to have access to highways and won't require more truck routes into our area. We, as a community, aren't preparing our students to strive for better jobs. We, as a community need to move into the 21st century before its too late. Check out this seminar on preparing our students for a global knowledge economy. I hope you will consider the need to prepare your children for the world with soft skills such as d

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