Trust Marks That’ll Boost Your Site’s Credibility

Building trust marks for your website is the sure way to boost its credibility. Yes! Establishing credibility of your website is as important as your product or services. Customers need to feel confident and trust your online interface enough to consider buying from you. Most companies offering development services would recommend this so you can reap optimum results from your website.

So, what are these trust marks? Many would say that security is the utmost sign of trust. Agreed! Any website offering products or services must be equipped with security so customers do not hesitate to transact. However, security is not the only thing. Let’s look at the website from wholistic point of view. A survey carried out by a consultancy concluded that factors such as security trust marks, professional looking website, fast loading pages, easy navigation, well displayed contact details, referrals from family or friends, etc. are all crucial to establishing credibility of a website. There are various trust marks that can help boost your website credibility. Here’s few to consider –

1) Security Seals
Security seals are the foremost thing you can think of when you talk of trust marks. Customers who share their information, whether credit card or personal, are but obviously wary of doing so unless they feel they can trust the website. Putting up security seals like Verisign, McAfee SECURE or PayPal badges would establish credibility for your website. No matter how you plan to make your website secure, your customers would want to know the facts. And security seals can build their confidence. You can take help of your web developer to plan and put it there.

2) SSL Certificate
SSL certificate is another important trust seal any business website would need. It has a corresponding web address which can be seen as https, signifying a secured website. You may check out Jenni McKinnon’s post on SSL certificate authorities to understand this better.

3) Third Party Logos
Whether or not to use third party logos on your website has always been debatable. Do not think of them as distracters but rather attracters. Yes! Third party logo provides a proof that you are associated with that brand. It offers transparency and builds confidence. Use logos of your clients so your prospective customers see which credible brands you have worked with. This will make it easy for them to trust your services.

4) Awards & Certifications
Displaying your awards and certifications on your website is a sure shot way to ensure your customers trust in your services. If your services or products or your website has earned a certification or an award for its professionalism or accomplishment, go ahead and put it on the website for your customers to see it.

5) Customer Reviews
Online users want to validate every aspect of your service and that’s exactly the reason why you should provide them all the important trust marks. Exhibiting social proof of your service on your website would make it easy for them to decide. Yes! We are talking about customer reviews. Positive reviews from your customers act as trust boosters. About 74% of the customers are more likely to trust your brand based on that. So, include customer reviews and rating widgets from Yelp like sites and make it a straight forward way for your customers.

6) Customer Testimonials
A better word about your services or products from your customers and you has topped your cake with the delicious icing. Yes! It works as a delight. Customer wants to know how your other customers have been serviced. Quoting their testimonials on your website would be a powerful trust mark for your website. Even case studies act as powerful tool, although putting together the details of the same can be time consuming.

7) Social Media Widget
Social media integration with your website is known to be one of the best practices today. Besides providing users engagement, it offers to serve as a trust mark, allowing your users to connect with your brand on various social media platform. Include all the social media links and widgets to show that your brand is actively involved on the online media.

8) About Page
About Page information is crucial and important too. Customers want to know all about the company – how it was founded, founders, directors, presence, etc. This helps them to determine the credibility of the company and hence act as one of the greatest trust mark for your WordPress website.

9) Multi-Channel Contact
Websites must be customer friendly and allow you customers to reach you in the easiest possible way. Establish multiple channels of contact on your website whether its email, contact number, contact and enquiry form or live chat. Enable your customers to reach you faster. They serve the purpose of building the trust.

10) Terms of Use Statements
The final one, terms of use statements stands as a crucial trust mark for couple of reasons. It offers complete transparency to the visitors of your website. They get to understand how their personal information will be managed or used by your company. The terms of use statements must include –

• If you are collecting email addresses or using remarketing pixels, privacy policy is important and must be published
• Guarantee of service statements
• Rules and regulations pertaining to payment, penalties or refund

You can also publish your internal policies on your website under these terms of use statements. This allows you to protect your intellectual properties and hold your customers’ responsible if need be.

To conclude – enhance your website credibility with these great trust marks and you will see the difference already. If possible, take help of a professional WordPress development service provider for suggestions.

Website Maintenance – Necessity or a Luxury?!!!

Website maintenance is something that most companies have been putting on their strategy list as a last priority. For many companies, it’s not even on the list. Consider this! You buy a Lamborghini and expect it to serve you luxury ride lifetime without having to spend a penny on it. Not possible, right? How do you expect your website to give your business a boost by just putting it up on the web?
Website is one of the vital business marketing tools and its maintenance is crucial to retain your customer interest and allure the new ones. Here’s why you must seriously consider engaging a website maintenance company for the upkeep of your website –

Search Engine Friendly
If you want your website to be liked by search engines, website maintenance is must. If your website has not been updated for a while, Google may cease looking at it and it may lose ranking for important keywords.

Saving From Hacker Attacks
Whether you are using a CMS based website (most preferred, of course!), or using a software programming on your website, you must know that updating security patches for these is must. This is something you mustn’t ignore, else, your website may fall prey to the hands of hackers who thrive on websites which are not so secured.

Customer Interest
No matter how big or small your business is, customer retention is an important aspect. You don’t want customer to land on your webpage and find a news or a blog which is dated 6 months back, do you? That’s exactly the reason you need to look at updating your website information on a regular basis. This will also help in creating a new customer base.

Fixing Broken Links
You may not realize this but for reason unknown (sometimes), you may have internal or external broken links. It’s important to scan your website to scan for these and fix them. So, your visitors do not end up seeing error pages.

Content Quality
Checking and rechecking content quality is a part of website maintenance. Companies that offer website maintenance services advise you to create content which is free of plagiarism. Which means, no duplicate content. Use right keywords effectively. Another aspect to look into is spelling mistakes. Yes! This is most of the times, ignored. How would you feel to visit your potential vendor’s website and read the content which has grammatical errors or spelling mistakes?! Not a good impression, right? That’s what you should be worried about too.
Website maintenance is not a luxury investment but a necessity. It would be a wise business decision to include it in your marketing budget. Website maintenance costs charged by service providers are usually annual and pretty reasonable. It’s a nominal investment that will reap you good returns.

Pros & Cons of Using Magento as Your E-commerce Platform

Whether you are planning to roll out a new online store or already have one as your core business, Magento is one of the best ecommerce platform to have work for you. It is for sure the first preference of the companies offering ecommerce website development services. With a total market share of 29.1% (as per a research), Magento is clearly dominating other ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Prestashop and many others. Why most Magento website development companies opt for this wonderful platform? There are more reasons than you can think of. Let’s look at the pros –

Open Source Platform
For those who are just starting and those who wish to explore, Magento is the best ecommerce platform available that uses open source and programming. The good news is that the community edition of Magento is available for free. Loaded with all the necessary features, for starters, it’s nothing less than a sweet delight. And to top it up, it is backed by community support of veteran Magento developers who have made their instrumental contributions through development of new extensions and offering their support to the users.

Feature Rich Platform
Magento website development turns out to be more lucrative option because of its rich features too. Unlike other platforms, Magento ecommerce platform is packed with great functionality and features. Some of these features include multi language, multi store functionality and multi-currency support. The platform is also search engine friendly and has designs that are mobile compatible.

User Friendly Admin Panel
This is of course the best treat your website admin can get. Who would want to manage a backend which is too complex?! This is also one of the reasons why an ecommerce development company would pick Magento over other platforms – user friendly admin panel loaded with easy to use features offers great experience to the admin and make it all easy.

Scalable & Customizable Platform
Being an open source platform, Magento is a fully scalable platform which can be used for ecommerce website development. This is great when you are expanding, you would certainly need dedicated servers for better efficiency of your website. Magento also allows you to customize your store as you wish. With theme structural designs, you can have you store the way to want it to be. With complete control over the codes, you will be able to modify any feature you like. While there are more reasons why ecommerce website development provider would choose to go with Magento, it’s better to look at the other side too. No harm in knowing the cons part. Let’s peep into it –

Costly Talent Hire
Magento community edition may be free. However, Magento developers come at a very good price. Reason being, comprehending the complexities of Magento is a challenging task for novices and hence if you must, you need to look at only skilled developers for your ecommerce website development. And this would cost you quite a handsome amount.

Higher Investment on Enterprise Version
Unless the online store is your core business, going for an enterprise version may not make sense for your business. That’s because it’s quiet and investment which starts at $14420 annually.

Hosting Charges
Most Magento ecommerce development companies would advise you to go for dedicated servers for your online stores as Magento is a very large system. Having a shared server may lead to reduced speed and efficiency of your website.

High Time Investment in Customization
Magento website development is time consuming. Magento is fantastic when it comes to customization. However, as compared to other platforms, it takes longer time to build the functionality.

All in all, Magento ecommerce platform remains a great choice for business that intends to sell online. With great functionality and features and high scalability, it is a lucrative option in the long run.

50 Reasons – Google Can Be Penalize Your Website

SEO experts know getting a ranking on Google is not a cakewalk. And Google certainly operates in the most unbending ways. Google tweaks and fine tunes its algorithms so any webpage that deserves to be ranked on the top gets its ranking.

However, with putting the best at the top comes the penalty for those who do not meet the standards. Yes! Google penalizes too!!! And most of the times, this penalty is well deserved.

Let’s look at what’s Google Penalty:
Since the year 2000, there’s been constant change in the ranking algorithms of Google. We witnessed the very growth of SEO industry which is largely defined by those norms. As Google continued to roll out novel and improved algorithms, we saw the elimination of content which was of poor quality. And at the same time, the good quality content got the perks of being ranked higher.

Google penalty is evident in the Penguin update which came in 2012. When it hit, more than 1 in 10 websites were completely wiped out from Google search results overnight because of the quality issue. This is when SEO professionals began to take content strategy seriously.

How to identify Google Penalty?
Automatic or manual, Google penalty is not good for your brand. While in manual one, you may be informed, automatic is caused by the evolved algorithms. And most of the times, it can strike with surprise.

Look for these clues to know the algorithmic penalties by Google –

1) You are not getting a good ranking for your brand website. SEO expert says if not all, your website must earn brownie points and get ranked at least for 1 select keyword.

2) Your webpage which was ranking at one suddenly sees a dip to second or third position in due course on its own

3) You see your website being wiped out completely from Google cache, just overnight

4) You look for your listing on Google and find it as a webpage of your site but not homepage

If you have observed any of these factors on Google for your website, then you are surely facing penalty.

So why Google has penalized you?
Google continually keep on updating its content indexing system through tweaks and revisions. However, there’s no way you can completely understand how these tweaked algorithms work, making it all the more difficult to understand the reason behind the penalty imposed upon your website. Our SEO experts however have put together some 50 common reasons why Google will penalize your website. Here they are –

1. Duplicate Content
Plagiarism is illegitimate and punishable offence. So, duplicate content is obviously a big NO. And as far as Google is concerned, it considers duplicate content as useless. So, when you are drafting that content for your website, ensure you keep it unique. There are some good tools like CopyGator and Copyscape available online to check if there’s any duplication in your content.

2. Buying Backlinks
Most of us have a strategy of buying links which is a part of SEO. Many even state that buying backlinks has nothing to do with Google penalty. It may not be completely true though. Google may see this as a manipulation strategy to gain PageRank. Point is – you may end up being caught in some vicious cycle of buying bad links and you will have to pay for it.

3. Excessive Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal link was initially used as a good marketing strategy. However, eventually many started to overuse and soon became an abuse. So, it may happen that your swapping of links with your clients may be seen as a manipulation, if you are overdoing it that is.

4. Internal 404s
The one thing that Google hates the most is internal errors and problems on the website. So ensure that there are no 404 errors on your website, else you be prepared to be penalized.

5. Overuse of H1 Hashtags
H1 hashtags are used so Google could recognize the page content. However, an overuse of H1 Hashtags could mean trying to boost a listing for a keyword and that could land you in a soup.

6. Linking to site of different language
You may think this should not matter. However, what Google counts is the usefulness of links and your website. If you are linking your website to another site that has content in different language, it may really not be of any use to the users. This automatically downs your points.

7. Footer Links
Footer links must be planned well. It’s not just space to fill in. Consider user experience. Usually, footer has non-important SEO links. Some may put the links for navigation purpose too.

8. Content stuffed with Keywords
You may read many rules about acceptable keyword density in the content. Remember not to fill you content with too many keywords. Overuse of keywords means a red flag for your webpage and you may be penalized for that.

9. Missing sitemap data
Your website structure is analyzed by Google using XML sitemap. So ensure that it is available and you have updated and submitted in your account of Webmaster tools.

10. Broken external links
Be vigilant about your external links. Have them updated regularly. Make sure all the external links are working and users do not end up with 404s error. Else Google may take it as a careless approach towards your website and user experience.

11. Hidden Links
Don’t try and make your links subtle or hide them. That can raise a question of suspicion. Ensure they are clearly visible.

12. Hidden Content
This is one of the most unethical technique used for SEO. Text is disguised in order to manipulate the keyword weightage or the theme. Certainly, you are up for a penalty of you follow this.

13. Scraped content
Pulling content from other website to bulk your pages may seem pretty innocent; however it is seen as duplication by Google. So, if you have done this, it’s time to replace it with your original and unique content.

14. Overuse of Anchor Text
SEO experts used to link keywords to emphasize their authority. However, when the Penguin update rolled out in 2012, it discouraged the overuse of anchor text linking pretty strongly. So, ensure that you remove all the forced and irrelevant keywords and replace them with the ones that are relevant and phrased well in apt English.

15. Website Timeout or Down
Make sure that your website is up and running fine. If your website doesn’t load or shows timeout, your users get irritated and Google certainly does not like that. It may well remove your website from the index rather than letting your users get irritated for long. So be vigilant about it.

16. Neglecting hreflang
You cannot neglect this one. If you happen to publish any content intentionally that’s duplicate, it notifies Google and that’s certainly not good.

17. Keyword domains
Using keyword domains can be tricky. If you keep linking the anchor text to your keyword domain, it might look like a manipulation to Google. So if you still wish to go ahead with a domain that matches your keyword exactly, then you better have a lot of good and relevant content to go with it.

18. Using blog networks
Blog networks are considered as SERP manipulation by Google now. That’s the reason most of the blog network users have either shut down or deleted their incoming links. That’s exactly what you must do as well.

19. Rented Links
Rented links are believed to be useful by SEO experts; paid for on monthly basis. They keep changing them infrequently. No matter what, they are still paid links.

20. Overuse of meta keywords
Meta keywords are easy to manipulate and hence have been a matter of debate amongst SEOs. Ensure you do not use more than 5 meta keywords on one page.

21. Site-wide links
Remember, Google is watching your website page navigation links as well and it really doesn’t like any unnatural link on your website like the one on the footer giving credit to the web developer. Remove it now!

22. Too many affiliate links
Affiliates links are ok to use provided you don’t stuff your website with too many of them. Overuse can raise a red flag and Google might identify your website content as not up to the mark. Many use redirect strategy for affiliate links to mask them. However, Google is smart to find that out too.

23. Slow speeds
Hosting speed is affected by many reasons than you know. So, it’s difficult to detect where the issue lies. So we recommend using CDN or caching plugin for your website.

24. Comment Spam
It’s good to have comment section on your website. It’s great way to let your users communicate with you. However, it’s better you keep a check on it as there may be many spam comments too that get through, despite commenting system having an automated spam detection system. So keep a close watch and don’t let it pile up.

25. Spun Content
Content spinning is a theft. If you have paid peanuts for good chunk of articles, chances are you have bought spun content. If Google penalty recognizes this, it would be too bad for your website.

26. Black Hat SEO advice
Isn’t this one obvious? Writing about black hat SEO is promoting unethical ways which of course, Google doesn’t like. Publish about SERP manipulation using black hat SEO and be ready to be penalized.

27. Hacked Content
Hacked websites are immediately removed from SERPs by Google. So be vigilant and quick to act on this.

28. Spam Reports
Google allows you to report spam sites through online form for spam site reporting. If you website gets submitted as a spam, then Google may penalize you.

29. Speedy Link Building
This is the biggest mistake you can make to boost your SEO. While you are very enthusiastic about ranking your website quickly, but overlinking is a bad idea. That indicates automation. So, go slow and think long term.

30. Forum Linking
While forum linking is widely used by all of us, too much can make your actual post lose its identity. So while using forum link, make sure you use good content and the good practices of linking.

31. Robots.txt flaws
Robots.txt files help search engines deal with your site. Maybe you are excluding some pages from this for genuine reasons, but excessive blocking may lead to penalty.

32. Hiding Sponsors
If you have sponsors, it’s ok to show them. However, adhere to the rules, avoid sponsors links at all costs.

33. Links to suspicious website
Avoid associating with website that are into illegal practices or dubious work. Also keep a check whether the site you are linked to has been penalized by Google in the past or not. If yes, then you better dissociate.

34. Over Optimization
Don’t become overly obsessed with optimization for your website. Google doesn’t like it and recognizes as an effort to eradicate your competition from SEO list. So, check your strategy. Go slow. Be content oriented, which means publish some good and natural content.

35. Landing pages
Creating multiple landing pages to improve your site position on SERPs can be a bad idea. Many companies try to accelerate their ranking process by creating one page websites focused on single keyword and try and filter their users through these sites. As per Google this is not a good practice.

36. Advertorials
Advertorial pages are used pretty aggressively to manipulate search results. These pages usually have content filled with paid links. These can be good reason for your penalty.

37. Redirection
Redirecting your site using 301 redirect can transfer your penalty to a new location. However, once you remove the redirect, you will still have the penalty.

38. Excessive Outbound Links
Too much of swapping links with other websites which are not related to your website can be seen as attempt for mutual SEO gain. While using outbound links, keep it relevant and natural.

39. Error Codes
Google hates error codes, whether 302, 404, 500 or any. So, if your website page shows any of these errors, deal with it right away.

40. Malicious backlinks
You should be watchful about this one as this may be an attempt to bring down your website from SERP listing through Google penalty. It may be because of malicious backlink campaign.

41. Duplicate metadata
Metadata gets duplicated unintentionally through some of the blogging tools and CMS platforms. It may indicate that you have duplicate content on your website. Hence not preferable.

42. Targeted Keywords
There are some keywords which are abusively used and hence considered as spam. Such keywords appear very frequently on spam sites. One fine example is ‘PayDay’. You don’t want to be thrown out of SERP list because of your target keyword, right? So choose carefully.

43. Poor mobile websites
If you have a poorly designed mobile website, Google may not be able to detect the link between your website and your mobile website. Make sure you website is mobile friendly.

44. Smuggled Links
You can’t fool Google by smuggling links into script files. Google is smart to analyze them and identify those weird and misplaced links.

45. Bad reputation domain
Be careful while buying a domain name. if you pick up a domain name that had a bad reputation or a penalty in the past, most likely you would not succeed in getting your website to rank using the same. Rather go for another one.

46. Few outbound links
Outbound links are great for your SEO. Google checks your content in reference to similar ones on the web. Not putting outbound links or having fewer may look like you are just trying to pull the traffic to your door unusually.

47. Prominent Ads
Filling your pages with Ads subdues the main content. So make sure your balance it out and not let the ads dominate the page.

48. Content theft
This is a serious offence and most difficult to deal with too. You may have to file DCMA takedown notices orpursue in the court to get the content removed. Request Google to remove the stolen content if you penalized for that.

49. Quick Fixes
There are many who would claim to put your website on the top of SERP list quickly. That’s a red flag. You rather do some ground work and have a long term strategy.

50. Use of Content Farm
Content farming is largely used in the industry. Here the farm is a term used for sites with shallow or low-quality content. Low quality content is a big No in Google’s book. So, if you have such content, it’s better to get it redone by a professional.

Dealing with Google Penalty
If you are facing Google penalty, worry not. Most of it can be fixed. However, solution to all may not be the same. But here’s what you can do –

1) Compose yourself and identify the reason behind the penalty.

2) It’s time to look into all those troublesome links which has caused this. Just disown them.

3) If the penalty was manually imposed, ask for a reconsideration

4) And while you do all the legwork and realigning, wait patiently for Google to revert and take action

In many cases, it may not be possible to remove the penalty. If you are into such situation, you rather focus on rebuilding another site then fighting the penalty.

Tips to Generate SEO-friendly Content

If you are writing content for your website, then definitely you want it to reach to the target audience. That’s precisely why your content should be SEO friendly. Here are some tips to generate SEO friendly content:

1) Create informative, interesting content
The content that you create should be of high quality and interesting enough to engage your audience. If your content is not unique or is just stuffed with keywords, search engines will penalize your website on one hand and on the other your visitors will definitely go away from your website, never to return again. So, the first tip is to create informative, interesting and easy to understand unique content.To find if your content is 100% unique, there are several plagiarism tools available. Copyscape is one such tool where you can check the originality of your content.Only if the content is unique, you can get a better rank in SERPs.

2) Captivating Headings and Sub headings
A captivating heading can capture your visitor’s attention and convince them to stay on your website. Brainstorm your headline and try to fit in within 55 to 60 characters as this is precisely what Google displays on the SERP.

Content that has heading and subheadings along with the relevant keywords gets more weightage by the search engines. As such, Google ranks such content higher and your website will enjoy better page rank. Another advantage of using headings and subheadings is that it makes for an easy read. When people like what they read, they are more likely to share it on social media. For this, you may use the structure of H1 to H6 or insert H2 and H3 headings at the relevant places in the article body.

3) Links
Linking your website with some of the authority websites will have a positive impact on your website. So, create outbound links with authority websites. Creating outbound links with authority websites gives an impression that you have a sound understanding of what you are writing and that you are going one step further to support your content. It also adds to the transparency and trust. However, you must avoid using anchor texts such as “here” as it does not do any good to your website ranking.

4) Article Length
While Google loves longer article, it must be understood that the span of reader’s interest is quite limited. Therefore, you need to strike a balance in your content. It should neither be too short nor be too long. While the minimal length of the article stands at 300 words, there’s no upper limit. However, an article that’s around 700 to 800 words would be perfect.

5) Keywords and Keyword density
Before you write an article for your website, find out the keywords that you should be targeting. The keywords should be placed in the article title, headings, subheadings, and in the first and the last para of your article. The key here is not to overdo it. Maintaining 1% keyword density is good for search engine. Also, try to use variations of the keyword in the article for optimal results.

6) Pictures speak volumes
Add images to your article to make it attractive to your visitors. Optimize the image and tag it with the keyword for SEO. The key would be to make the image smaller, without compromising on the visibility. Adding images with bigger file sizes will slow down your page loading speed and may shoo away the visitors. Also, add alt text or title to your image. Think from a user’s perspective when you name the images.

7) Share your content 
If people read something they really like, they readily share it on social media. So, to make people share your content, give them the option to do so. You can “AddThis” or “Sharethis” website to add the social media buttons to your website. If the content goes viral, your website will automatically be ranked higher.
Apart from these simple techniques, you can hire SEO Company for advanced SEO Services and get higher page ranks in the search engines.

How to Make your Brand's Content Stand Out in 2017

Content is King. No matter how cliché it sounds, the content game online is gearing up and beaming with heat for sure. Digital agencies playing with loads of content online day in and day out know how important it is to differentiate your content from the rest. With more than 211 million rounds of content getting published online everyday (including articles, blogs, Facebook posts, Twitter, etc.), it’s time to roll up your sleeves and understand how best you can make your content visible and likeable in the huge pool.

As a veteran SEO company, we recommend a few things to consider if you want your content to stand out and be picked by your audience online –

Have your Unique Voice – 
Communication is the key to connect with your audience. So, make your voice sound different, make it unique. Understand and answer simple questions about your brand – How you are different? Why someone should listen to you or buy your brand? No abstract values like reliable or honest but rather focus on why reliable and honest part. Of course, this is only an example. You know your brand well and you are the best to understand what will appeal your online audience.

Differentiate from competitors – 
Most digital marketing agencies would ask you to do this. However, even before that, understanding whom you are competing with is also very crucial to your online content success. You are really not competing with those 211 million pieces of content online. You need to identify your competitors / collaborators and see what they are doing. We are not saying copy them because that will defeat the purpose of standing out. But here’s what you can do –

• Study the online content trends from your competition
• Identifying what ideas are working and what are not
• Look for loop holes – See what they are not doing
• Create your own concept with that as a base

It’s like tapping blue oceans in the vast oceans of online content. Research from digital marketing company indicates proven success of brands that adapted to this alley.

Make visually appealing and trendy content
It’s a scientifically proven fact that a human brain is more likely to respond to visuals. Spend good amount of time building your online piece. This goes for both, the content and the visuals. Remember,

• Keep your content relevant to your brand and audience
• Keep in engaging and trendy (Research will help you here)
• Add good and relevant pictures from free stock images (you can even have your own photos shoot)
• Videos which are relevant to your content can jazz up your piece

Whether or not you are using visuals, have your content structured and organized with proper headings, bullets, etc.

Building a great content is the foremost step to your online brand success. As an experienced digital agency in the industry, we recommend you invest time in the process and success will follow.

Most Trending Mobile SEO Ranking Factors

Mobile SEO certainly have gained momentum. And it all happened after the desktop and mobile websites were indexed distinctly by Google. With smartphone wave hitting the marketing and increasing likeability amongst the users, mobile SEO underwent a revolutionary change. Having said that, today it is imperative for a website to be mobile friendly. So, what does it mean to have a mobile friendly website?

Of course, we talk about Google ranking here as well. However, there a few more factors which cannot be overlooked in mobile SEO. Here are a some of the most trending mobile SEO ranking factors most digital marketing provider would agree upon –

Technical Factors

1. Site Speed
Site speed is the site loading time on mobile. According to a Mobile Ranking Factors study by Searchmetrics, the ideal site speed must be under 1. 2 seconds. On an average, amongst the top 10 highest ranking mobile websites have a speed of 1.10 seconds. If it gets lower to 1.17 seconds, then the ranking falls to top 30. If the loading time is more than 3 seconds, the users do not wait and just switch to another app.

2. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)
AMP helps to load your webpages 30 times faster than the regular ones. This has direct and positive implication on your ranking, click-through rates and offers best experience to the users

3. Flash Content
Flash technology is a big NO if we are looking at great mobile ranking website. The very reason being most of the browsers used in mobile do not support flash and hence would not display the content.

4. Technical Errors
Technical errors are not at all good for your SEO. 404 errors and faulty redirects are pretty frustrating for users and must be fixed immediately. Check your website for technical errors at least once a week.

User Experience Factors

1. Unordered Lists
An unordered list for your mobile compatible website is certainly a part of good SEO. As compared to desktop sites, Google seems to like mobile websites that have unordered lists. So, go for structured text and use 9 bullets strategy for mobile websites.

2. Images
Optimizing the image size and dimensions is an important aspect of mobile SEO services and can do wonders in user experience. Restrict to 4 images for a single mobile page.

3. Intrusive Interstitials
This is not good for the health of your mobile website ranking. Yes! Pop ups can block your website content on a small mobile screen making it a frustrating experience for the users.

4. Font Size Legibility
No one wants to see a website with fonts smaller as if meant to be read by ants. So, remember to have at least the recommended font value of 16 above the fold for your mobile websites. It’s where the headlines are placed and it would be strategic thing to do to get your users attention.

5. Small Touch Elements
Having caught up playing with small touch elements is like living a bad dream repetitively. Yes! Small check boxes or buttons adds to the agony of the users when they are not able to click using their fingers. Just imagine placing such small elements close to each other on your website – too bad for users and even worst for your SEO ranking.

6. Internal Links
This is very important considering the limitation on size and content for mobile website for better UX. That’s the reason why mobile pages have 75% lesser links that desktop pages. Avoid placing internal links too close on the mobile pages as it may lead the user to slip the important links.

Content Factors

1. Keywords and Related Phrases in the Body
While keywords are good for ranking, do not go overboard with them. Consider the fact that mobile sites have lesser or shorter texts and overuse of keywords and related phrases may disturb the natural flow of content and may end up sound absurd in many cases. Keep a health ratio of keywords for text used.

2. Keywords in External Links
External links or backlinks are important for SEO. If your objective is to gain ranking on Google for a particular keyword, it wouldn’t be wise to put them into anchor text that links out to other websites. This may mislead Google into interpreting the link with your potential keyword as more relevant source to the topic of the page than your own website. Remember, anchor texts are for you to work. Don’t make them work for your competitors.

3. Count Length
Remember to consider the screen size while putting your words there. For desktop sites, it would be different. As far as mobile sites are concerned, 700 – 1000 words are good enough.

Additional Factors

1. Social Media
With the rich social engagement of social media can give a boost to your ranking. Research shows that on an average, a user spends about 30 minutes on social media like Facebook. More than 77% of the content shared on social media is through mobile vide various platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. So, have an engaging strategy involving newsletters, ad targets, invitations etc. on these platforms.

2. Local SEO
Local SEO is very important to tap your users from your locale. Considering the fact that mobile phones are used by almost everyone and are easy to carry and mostly used to track locations like shops, mobile SEO makes a lot of sense in building a strong presence for your website on the web.