Website traffic is a vital driver of overall business growth, so it’s important to learn multiple methods to increase your website traffic. Traffic allows you to measure marketing methods, improve search engine credibility, gather audience insights, and the most important benefit, gain more customers. Yet when searching for how to increase traffic to your website, you’ll quickly realize there are countless methods and ideologies out there. Where do you even begin?
In this article, we will focus on leveraging search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and social media marketing in increasing traffic to your website. These three techniques might be different in concepts, but they become more effective when combined.
In short, integrating these three techniques enables a digital marketing flywheel that lets you enjoy the best of both worlds and can potentially double your website traffic when done right. Read on to find out how you can increase organic traffic to your website using these three techniques.
While SEO is generally about befriending search engines, it’s also crucial that you optimize your website around the behavior of people you want to reach. The key is in developing a keyword strategy around search data from your audience. How do you do it? Consider how people are making searches on Google today – it could be through specific keywords, an open-ended question on the search bar, or through a voice assistant.
Having said this, try being more human when approaching SEO. Heavily incorporating two to three keywords on your website copy, blogs, and metadata is now considered too “robotic” and could negatively affect your rankings on search pages. Instead, you may use long-tail keywords that will identify your website as a destination for a particular topic.
This blog post, for example, is intended for those who want to get more traffic to their website. Using the keyword ‘how to increase organic traffic to my website’ would be more effective than just ‘website traffic’ because of its similarity to the way a user would make a search. Optimize for search engines, but remember real-life behavior, too.
Optimizing for the search engines is useless if you’re not driving profitable customer or client actions. This is where content marketing comes into action; it connects with your readers and influences them in making purchasing decisions.
To ensure you entice them until the decision stage, create content pieces that fit your buyer personas—fictional yet realistic representations of your target customers. If you haven’t created your audience personas, here are a few tips that may help you in designing them:
• Check your existing customers and social audience. Gather information, such as age, location, language, spending power and patterns, interests, challenges, and more.
• Learn why they love your products or services. Tapping on social media listening is one way to find out customer experiences.
• Identify customer goals. Are they only researching, looking for reviews, or are they ready to buy?
Once you have buyer personas in place, you can deliver content that will be most relevant and valuable to your audience. The easiest way to use your audience personas is to cater your content to them.
Below are the three (3) stages of the buyer’s journey along with their ideal content formats:
• Awareness Stage. Where personas are experiencing that need to be fixed. Blog posts, social media posts, and explainer videos are ideal pieces of content targeting this stage.
• Consideration Stage. Where personas are considering solutions to their pain points. The best content pieces to offer for this stage are product comparison guides, case studies, and free samples.
• Decision Stage. Where personas have decided on their solution or turned into buyers. Examples of ideal content formats for the decision stage are product descriptions, free trials and demos, reviews and customer testimonials.
Here’s another link between SEO and content marketing: when you update your old web content or blog posts, you get Google to crawl your site more frequently. It’s like technical SEO, where search engine spiders crawl your website, but without coding—just upgrading.
Having fresh content is critical for your website because Google favors frequently updated content. If you frequently update your website or articles, Google finds it easier to search for your web pages and add them to the index.
Frequent updates can help you have a better chance of ranking on the search engines. While a higher post frequency doesn’t necessarily increase your overall website rankings, it can increase organic traffic to your website.
Here are some of the best practices for content updates:
• The key is quality, not more content. If your blogs are only 300-word long, bumping up the wordcount is a good idea. However, adding paragraphs just for the sake of updating can’t guarantee you good results. It’s necessary to keep your content standards high and write around what your readers want.
• Incorporate valuable, targeted keywords. Keywords are a vital part of SEO. Optimize your content for a more relevant keyword. Targeting new keywords can expand your search visibility and help you bring more traffic.
• Add new or update old links. Like keywords, internal and external links also play important SEO roles. Interlinking your web pages and linking your blog posts to your website can positively affect your SEO.
Creating evergreen content doesn’t only increase organic traffic to your website, but it also keeps driving regular traffic to your web pages for as long as you want it. The reason behind this is simple—such content doesn’t go out of date.
Not only does evergreen content stay fresh for readers, but it also remains popular in search engines. Google will find your content relevant, allowing you to become more visible and rank higher in search results pages. Here are a few tips:
• Choose evergreen topics. Keyword tools like Ahrefs can help you look for popular, consistently searched topics. Use such tools to see what keywords have positive trends and build your content around these keywords.
When writing blogs around evergreen topics, avoid using terms with a short lifespan, such as this month, last year, yesterday, and more. If you’re thinking about writing for a relevant year, for example, ‘content marketing best practices in 2021’, update the content every year or ensure the content will remain valid over time.
• Update content when necessary. As discussed in the previous point, Google recognizes web pages with fresh content. You should refresh your content as often as necessary to ensure its evergreen and increase its chances of driving traffic or attracting leads and shares.
• Build high-quality backlinks. The good thing about evergreen content or regularly updated content is that it can generate consistent leads, establish a brand reputation, and above all—give higher search engine rankings.
To ensure your business reaps these benefits, build links to your fresh content, encourage sharing on social media, and consider doing guest posting.
Did you know that an optimized social media profile has high chances of driving organic website traffic? Social media optimization follows the concept of SEO, where relevant keywords are included in bio sections to make the profiles searchable.
When writing social media copy, be sure to make it keyword-rich. Add relevant keywords naturally, so your target audience can find you in the search. Doing this not only increases your discoverability, but also helps increase organic traffic to your website.
Aside from creating keyword-rich descriptions, you can also boost your organic social media reach by doing the following:
• Upload a high-quality picture. Your profile picture puts a face to your brand, so it must reflect that. It should also be recognizable; avoid using an image that has nothing to do with your business.
• Add links to your website. Take advantage of social media’s ability to build brand awareness. Include links in your bio section to lead target customers directly to your website.
• Use hashtags sparingly. Hashtags are like keywords that categorize the content. Consider adding hashtags, but only relevant ones, to promote your business and boost your visibility.
Search engine optimization, content marketing, and social media marketing are equally essential in helping you increase organic traffic to your website.
One doesn’t perform better than the other as all techniques can help bring your business in front of searchers, build an audience, and ultimately—convert prospects to customers. Instead of treating them as separate, different practices, why not integrate your SEO into your content and social media marketing strategy, or vice versa?
If you’re up for this idea, NFT would be happy help you get started. Our team of industry experts will draw your target audience to your website through on-page and off-page SEO, engaging content and by improving your social media presence.
Building an effective website is essential for running any type of business; no matter what field you are in. Your company’s website is where customers interact with you most frequently: either through email correspondence or direct contact with the company itself via social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
While you may want to prioritize website attractiveness and functionality, it’s critical to also take into account SEO factors that contribute to your site’s visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs). After all, a beautiful website won’t benefit your business if your target customers are unable to find it.
If you’re embarking on a new web development project, read on to learn 6 web development tips you should know to ensure an end-product that is effective and profitable.
Get High-Quality Hosting
Choosing a quality web host is an important decision which could affect the success or failure of your website. The hosting provider you choose plays a great role in ensuring a fast, reliable, and secure online storefront. Outages in this context can include slow page loading times or connection disruptions due to maintenance or server overloads.
Choose a high-quality managed service provider that provides scalable hosting services that ensures availability and security. Some of the best web hosting providers in 2022 include BlueHost, SiteGround, Hostinger, and WPEngine.
For businesses that expect a significant amount of traffic at any moment, it would be wise to avoid shared hosting setups as server resources such as processor and memory are divided among users this way, causing slow and buggy websites.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A Content Delivery Network or CDN consists of several servers distributed in different locations worldwide. Its function is to shorten the physical distance by serving the content from the nearest server to the user, improving the time it takes to complete requests made through a website.
A few of the most trusted CDNs out today include Azure, Cloudflare, Fastly and Google Cloud. CDN service providers may vary in pricing, so it’s best to take a look at your budget and requirements before choosing one. More servers mean better performance but also higher pricing. If you’re on a budget, or if this is your first time implementing a CDN, you can opt for a service provider with less servers but have good coverage in locations where your customers are mostly located.
Minimize HTTP Requests
The fewer HTTP requests a website has to make, the faster the site can load. HTTP requests are made for elements such as embedded videos, external links, ads, and images. It is best to keep HTTP request density in mind when designing your website as too much of it can cause delays and ultimately turn visitors away.
If you already have a website in place, you can use Google Chrome's Network Panel to check how many HTTP requests each of your website pages make, and what files are taking the longest to load.
Optimize File Sizes
A large volume of unoptimized images is usually the most common reason behind poor website performance. Files are not limited to images – other elements contributing to slow page speeds may include heavy JavaScript, CSS, and HTML code density.
Optimizing file sizes makes sure all devices can access your content while using less memory on their systems or internet browsers. Keeping your files small improves page load times and makes your website more stable. In addition to reducing server load, minifying also makes development easier since you don’t need to watch for technical issues with large scripts.
To ensure your website files are optimized, compress your files before you upload them to your website. You can also hop into your page builder and scale down images to adjust to modern screen resolutions. By combining compression with resizing, you can reduce image file sizes drastically and speed up your website simultaneously.
Minify JavaScript, CSS, and HTML Files
Minification is the process of minimizing code and markup in your web pages and script files. It’s one of the main methods used to reduce load times and bandwidth usage on websites. Minification dramatically improves site accessibility, directly translating into a better user experience.
To minify JS, CSS and HTML files, comments and extra spaces need to be removed, as well as crunch variable names to minimize code and reduce file size. The minified file version provides the same functionality while reducing the bandwidth of network requests.
Regularly Monitor Website Speed
Page speed is arguably the SEO factor businesses should pay most attention to, because addressing loading times improves your rankings, the user experience you deliver, and ultimately, your conversion rate. A poor conversion rate usually translates to a website that needs improvement in many aspects.
There are various online tools that your business can leverage to see how your website stacks up to SEO standards. While some of them are free, you may also want to invest in paid tools to monitor other factors and stay on top of Google’s ever-changing algorithm.
One free tool to do this is Google PageSpeed Insights, which helps you find and fix issues slowing down your web application. It aggregates your website performance score based on various factors, and the scores are categorized into Good, Needs Improvement, or Poor. You can toggle between the desktop and mobile versions of the report, which is helpful when optimizing the user experience. Any score above 90 is considered good. However, it shouldn’t be the only performance testing tool in your repertoire.
Wrapping Up
NFT is an outsourcing service provider that can help businesses build a website and keep it updated and running. NFT has the expertise to design, develop and maintain websites using the latest technologies and best practices.
If you have an idea to launch a website and you want to get a web design or web development project started, NFT can help. With NFT, you can get the help of experienced developers and designers right away and approach the web development process correctly.
The importance of search engine optimisation (SEO) in digital marketing has been hammered into your head, no doubt hundreds of times. To what extent, though, do you understand search engine optimisation? Even if you have a general idea of what it is, you might not fully understand its importance and what it can bring to your business.
Search engine optimisation is important if you want to build long-term brand awareness, reach more people, and make more profit. For each business with a website, SEO is a necessity, regardless of how much or how little competition there is. If you are a startup, investing in SEO would also be helpful because it is difficult for new businesses to gain brand recognition and visibility in their first few years.
So, search engine optimisation is vital to your website and we, at Net Fusion Technology, give you a clear breakdown of its key importance.
One of the most significant roles of SEO is improving visibility, which means making it simpler for prospects to find you when they search for anything you have to offer. Your ranking is directly linked to how visible you are. Research has shown that out of the top five results that appear in the search engine are most likely to be selected. SEO helps you rank higher in the search engines and get more visibility online. This makes potential customers more likely to visit your site and buy something from you.
It's important to improve your organic page ranking because the higher you rank on a search engine results page (SERP), the more likely it is that people will see you and click through to your site.
SEO is essential to the growth of your brand. When a website is optimised properly, it increases its chances of getting visitors and, ultimately, earning income. After discovering your website via a search engine, people are more likely to talk about it on other social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and the likes.
The usability of your website may be improved by investing a lot of time and effort into producing excellent content and optimising it for search engines on each page of your website, which is another reason why SEO is so important. Because of this, the experience that the customer has is streamlined and satisfying. For instance, the more time your website takes to load, the more people leave your website and the less money you make.
Search engines place a higher value on pages with high Page Authority (PA) scores because of the growing importance of user experience on the web. If your website has authority, it is likely reliable, of high quality, relevant, and useful. Higher scores indicate greater credibility; scores range from 1 to 100.
One of the main aims of SEO is to boost website traffic, and this is achieved by improving a site's visibility and rating. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving a website's visibility in search results so that it appears higher on the search engine's results page—ideally, at the top. In addition, it is likely that users will spend more time browsing your website if it contains relevant and useful material that corresponds to the searcher's intent. This, in turn, may result in an increased number of conversions and an increased return on investment (ROI).
Yes, really! Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an analytical, planned strategy to improve your company's online marketing and its overall online presence. In the long run, investing in SEO will benefit your company, so it's time well spent to learn more about it. Optimization for search engines requires extensive thought and planning. It's a tricky procedure that's always evolving.
There is no way to succeed in digital marketing without a solid SEO team behind you. Get in touch with us right away if you have any inquiries regarding search engine optimisation (SEO) and how it may help your business thrive.
If you're ready to get started on your SEO, you can reach us at +61 2 9089 8875 or use our contact form.
We're excited to be a part of your company's future success!
As technology evolves, new business opportunities show up every day. Even though technology simplifies many processes, it can be challenging for businesses to take advantage of opportunities if they lack expertise with the relevant technologies. This is the situation that businesses are in when they don't know much about web design or development. Website development services have changed how businesses work.
The establishment of a strong web presence is absolutely necessary to ensure the continued growth of a business. No matter how active you are on your business’ social media accounts, if people aren't drawn in by your website, all of your digital marketing efforts will be for nought. Future-minded businesses see these opportunities and are boosting their investment in web development to better serve their customers' needs.
We no longer need to ask if website development is necessary since we know it is. The question that needs to be answered is why is your company losing money just because you're not considering web development.
Unprofessional web design loses visitors' trust. People won't trust your site if it has an unprofessional design or appears to be out of date. People may form a negative impression of your business due to your outdated website design.
Consider a customer who wants to make a large purchase from a manufacturer. They're shelling out a lot of cash, so if they don't feel comfortable placing an order on your manufacturing website, they'll go elsewhere.
On the other hand, if your website looks professional, visitors will be more likely to trust you. They will have faith in your company and be willing to explore it further. If you want them to stick around on your site, you need to earn their trust. When people spend more time on your site, you increase your odds of converting them into leads.
A website that looks professional will bring in more customers. This, along with quick page loads and straightforward navigation, is what keeps people coming back. When visitors can access your site in a matter of seconds, you have a better chance of persuading them to give your goods and services a try.
However, if your website is of poor quality, badly designed, or takes too long to load, the visitor may leave before they even see your landing page.
If you need a big reason why web development is important, here's a big one: Your competitors are already utilising it. You need to implement web development if you want to keep up with the competition.
A chance to differentiate your company from the competition is in the design and how your website works. When competing with other businesses, you usually offer the same services and charge about the same prices. To succeed in business, you need to find a way to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Your website's goal should be to attract attention and be remembered. If your website is old, out of date, and of low quality, your competitors' sites will rank higher than yours. Their well-designed website will work better than yours. This implies you’ll lose leads to your competition because their page is more appealing. Therefore, it will bring in more leads.
Your website should be able to give you an advantage over your competitors.
You can highlight your company's strengths and attract new customers with a professionally designed website. Make it clear to your target market why choosing your business is the best option.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an important aspect of website development that should be considered. There are now millions of websites competing for the top spot on search engine results pages.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) increases traffic to your website and streamlines its usability for current visitors. You can do more as a business than just create a website. You can also keep visitors to your website. Your code should be optimised for search engines, which can sound complicated if you're not familiar with web development.
Working with a web design company that includes SEO services as part of their package is the best way to ensure that your website is constructed appropriately and can be found by search engines.
Web development and web design are two methods for moving a website up the results. If you want your website to be at the top of the search results, you'll need to adhere to the search engine's criteria. Load speed, ease of navigation, keywords, picture optimisation, and a variety of other factors are all considered.
As a result, your website will receive more organic traffic.
A well-designed, user-friendly, and mobile-friendly website is essential for any company looking to make an impression in the digital world. All of the material on the website should be simple to read and navigate.
A decent website provides a visitor with more options for simpler navigating. This includes a search box where customers can type in what they want and be taken to the section fast, as well as sticky features like a sticky header or a sticky menu to further simplify and optimise your website's navigation.
To do this, online pages should have lightning-fast loading rates set by the web development process. A website that loads quickly is more responsive and easier to use. This is accomplished through excellent web design and the website building process.
After the website developer has completed the website, it is recommended that they test the web pages on a regular basis to ensure that the ease of navigation is maintained at all times. This aids in the resolution or elimination of bugs that impede web page loading. Increased organic traffic is guaranteed for a website with easy navigation.
Website is one of the most important factors in the success of any online marketing campaign. Building a website that compels visitors to learn more about your company is a significant investment. If you want to see positive results for your business, we, the web development team at Net Fusion Technology, have extensive experience in the field.
Net Fusion Technology is the company to go to if you want to see real results.
If you're ready to get started on your ideal website, you can reach us at +61 2 9089 8875 or use our contact form.
We're excited to be a part of your company's future success!
A website is the face of your business online and a long-term investment as well. Getting your money’s worth is important and so is building a user-friendly and attractive website. If this goes wrong it could result in monetary losses and injure the brand image of the company. This makes hiring a web developer to build your website a rather tricky business.
There are many things you should consider and look out for in your search for a web developer, the skills of the developer, and what they can do alongside the factors listed below can help in making that decision
If you own a small business that works only online and the website is the point of contact between you and your customer, building a top-notch website with budgetary constraints becomes necessary. Larger organizations might have a larger budget but it is necessary to spend this in the correct place.
It is difficult for developers to give a fixed price as there are constant changes and variables involved, However, most companies will be willing to give you a quote of the approximate amount. This price along with other factors will help you come to a decision.
Freelancers may be able to do it for cheaper and be easier to coordinate with, however, they come with disadvantages related to overall project management but a company with a good-sized team and skilled team members can help protect against unpredictable situations.
Finding developers who can work within your time frames and according to your requirements is important. If a project is not fulfilled within the time frame it can also lead to losses, to most businesses time is money.
Working within time frames can be difficult for freelance web developers who already have ongoing projects and no other team members.
Exploring the portfolios of the developers you are considering is very important, this process will help you see if they have worked on projects that are similar to what you are expecting, judge the quality of their work, how successful the websites they have created are, and also judge how good they are at creating user experiences.
Contacting their previous clients, especially the ones relevant to you, and asking for their comments and reviews can be a good course of action.
The customer service standard of the developers you are considering is also important. Most of the time the relationship between the developers and the business is a long-term one. Their ability to help in case of emergencies, the rapport you building with the developers and members of the organization, the level of support they can provide, whether or not you have access to your source code and servers becomes important when considering the longevity of the relationship
The make-or-break element of picking a developer is your unique requirement. The developer may be perfect according to all the previous factors but if they cannot meet your requirements it becomes meaningless.
If you have a detailed project that requires creating unique elements, then it is necessary for your developers to have a good idea about all the basic coding, and having a team consisting of both front-end and back-end developers becomes necessary to handle the workload but if this is not the case then a full stack freelancer may be the better option.
If your project is more of a revamp design project then a front-end developer with HTML, CSS, and graphic design knowledge can do the job for you.
Considering all of the listed factors will help you come to the best decision. We hope this post has been useful in helping solve some of your dilemmas in picking web developers. Our talented team of developers and designers at Net Fusion Technology is always ready to assist you in your website-related concerns. Contact us for further details.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud platform that boasts over 1,000,000 users across 190 nations all around the globe. Amazon launched the AWS cloud in 2004, which included the infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service. Growing steadily by 30% the past quarters, AWS is now seen as the frontrunner in cloud computing platforms when being compared to other competitors, such as Microsoft Azure.
To put it simply in case you didn’t understand from the intro, AWS comprises of different cloud computing products and services. Each can be configured in various ways based in real time based on the needs of the user. Since it is an open source, users can also see the configurations and the individual server maps that are available in the AWS service.
Even though there are other cloud services that other providers offer in the market, Amazon prides itself in handling some of the biggest business organizations today. Some of them include Dow Jones, Adobe, PBS and others. Through the use of AWS, development teams can now enable businesses that are in the technology industry to access marketplaces with limited initial investment. It also allows software developers to use subscription models if they choose to scale their IT infrastructure.
There are also other various benefits of AWS such as:
The way that AWS is designed, it allows providers an easier way to build applications, ISVs and businesses secure quickly and host all their applications - whether old or new.
Experts around the world have said that Amazon Web Services not only provides competitive pricing but is highly committed to innovation and deep learning. Though they may have competitors like Microsoft and Google, it is said that there is no other cloud service provider that can compete with what Amazon Web Services can provide.
Companies with AWS backing their cloud computing are shown to exclude obligations and their dangers when containing their interior IT framework. Furthermore, using AWS, it lessens requirements for your IT support staff, which in turn spares your organization time and expenses you may experience in the long haul.
Safe-guarding your companies businesses information from potential leaks and hacks is one of the things that AWS takes pride in. They utilize end-to end to make sure that your information is secure hardening their infrastructure which not only includes digital but also physical, operational and software measures.
Whether you are a start-up or a huge venture business, it is always a struggle whether to economize services that your business needs. With AWS, that is not a concern as you can do that once you are sure you can leverage the services you require. This is because AWS offers economical pricing that is affordable as there is no long term contracts or any up front commitments when compared to other on-premises service costs available.
At the end of the day, it is clear to see that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a big deal today. Businesses are no longer asking the question “Why use AWS?” rather “Why not use AWS?.” AWS provides companies their freedom of using the AWS capabilities to their full extent, whether using it for their websites, game development, big data, cloud storage or more. It is clear that the market share of Amazon is vast and it is time that business whether small or big should get into this before they get left behind in the race.
As Jeff Bezos once said - “What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.”
If you are interested to learn about AWS and how it can be used in your business, have a chat with our expert on Amazon Web Services to learn how you can use this affordable but mighty solution right now.
If you have a business and you plan to create your own website or redesign your existing website, keep in mind that the decision should be made strategically. It can be rough, even risky. Especially with many freelance designers out there promising an instant online presence and number one rankings.
Luckily, we are here to help with suggestions on what to look for when you are in the market for an agency.
This is the very first thing that needs to be done when you look for a web design agency. A well established trusted agency has impressive client website designs that you can look at and even browse through. An agency that is proud to share their portfolio shows confidence in their success and ensures that they can complete your website if you choose to go with them for your website.
In today’s digital age there are plenty of good web design agencies out there. However, not all agencies have the skill sets or the expertise to match your business needs and requirements. Set a goal to find an agency that has many expertises in various areas in website design and development, SEO and in digital marketing.
Set an appointment with agencies that you think fits what you are looking for and gauge their levels of expertises on important areas that you think your website needs. Whether it be an online store or just a redesign to make your current website more responsive.
With the world full of businesses competing to grow their own business, checking out a website’s credibility is important. From testimonials, certifications, awards and recognitions is one way of checking out the credibility of a web design company.
Before making the final decision, spend time consulting some of these elements, not being afraid of getting references from their previous clients. You will need to know their experience working with companies like yours, and if their customers are happy with their professional website, providing highly recommended testimonials about their experience.
This is the part where other website design companies fail, as they do not properly explain what their design process is. Ask your desired design company how their design process entails, if they know how to incorporate the design to be a responsive website, and if it is easy to connect it to your social media channels.
One of the things to ask when choosing your website design and development website is how they support and maintain their websites once they have been designed and launched. A website should never be stagnant. They should be able to keep up to date with the different trends in digital marketing, such as making the website responsive for other devices and how they expect to increase the loading time of the website.
Make sure that whatever website design and development agency you decide on, they will help you grow your business and provide any support and maintenance you require.
Lastly, one of the most important factors to consider that all business owners should look out for is the pricing of the website design agency. Take your time comparing website design and web development agencies to see the differences in pricing, inclusions and payment plans that they provide. Some agencies provide 50% down payment while others prefer end of project payment releasing your website only after the payment has been confirmed.
If you are down to your last two agencies and one is cheaper than the other, look at why the price is lower. There is a lot to consider when it comes to selecting the right agency, so you don’t want to make a decision on a rush without all the necessary information. When you take your time and take note of all the factors, including the pricing, you will be able to make an informed decision that is the best for you and your business.
A 301 redirect is simply a code of date telling website spiders where you have moved your old web pages permanently to or where they can find similar information. It may seem to be an irrelevant task for websites that have less than 10 pages, however, these lines of codes can make or break a site with thousands of pages migrating to a new design.
While information on the internet is movable and thus temporary, it is critical to make sure that information that you previously published is easily found by search engines especially if you have renamed the URL. Changing any url without proper redirection will render the current URL “dead” or 404 does not exist.
Losing old links to a 404 (not found page) code is like demolishing a well-established bridge to a town without giving commuters due notice or even alternative avenues to reach their destination.
While the main reasons why organisations often move to a new site are founded in the hope of creating growth in their market share, migration can instead be a reason for them to lose more traffic overnight. A brand’s following may not actually diminish but the number of visitors you get to your web pages through specific website signals can get disrupted as you change over to a new website.
Below are some technical tips on 301 redirections that can help you transition smoothly to a new website without losing relevant traffic:
Make sure to audit the structure of your site. Take note all your internal and external links before you move over. Use tools like screaming frog to get a comprehensive list of your existing pages, images and links as well as all the meta information of your pages.
Once you have a comprehensive record of how your site is crawled by search engines, you will have 2 methods of structuring your new site.
Option 1 - You can use the existing URIs as the basis of your current site structure and mirror the url structure on your new site.
This means that you need to keep your pages and URIs one is to one with no alterations to the way URLS are written. For example, if you have a “website.com/about-us”, your new page will be “website.com/about-us” not “website.com/about” or website.com/aboutus”.
Option 2 - Use the current structure as a guide to match your new pages.
Most of the time, there is a necessity to alter the current URLS. This often happens if you want to alter the way information is ordered on your site or if you happen to have a new domain altogether. In this scenario, you will need to match the current urls with your new set of urls by using 301 redirections.
For example, if you have a blog entry about “how to buy cars” using a URL carscars.com/how-to-buy-cars, you will need to 301 redirect this page to your new url “carscars.com/a-guide-on-buying-cars” or to your new domain “carbuyer.com/how-to-buy-cars” otherwise your visitors will not be able to find the page with the old link.
It can be tempting to shortcut this step by redirecting old links to the new home page. It seems like an easy fix to do but doing this will make your site both confusing to the web spiders and, most importantly, frustrating to your users.
If you do not have an apple to apples match of new pages with old pages, you can still 301 redirect pages to similar pages that may have the same kind of info as the previously existing page. However, accuracy in matching information is important. You do not want to send users and website spiders to page on shoes for men if your old was all about shoes for women.
Instead of just simply providing a generic notice use the opportunity to provide similar links or a search bar that they can use to find similar information on your site. Aim to create a 404 page that can turn a missing page into a user satisfaction opportunity.
Afterthoughts:
After you have implemented your 301 redirects on your new site, make sure to take note of 404 links through Google analytics and to re-crawl your site for 404 pages that may appear in the future. It will be guide practice to keep 404 pages to a minimum whether you are migrating to a new site or not.
More info on 301 redirects
More info on 404 pages
The internet is a galaxy of web pages which are dominated by WordPress sites. Like Coca-Cola, it is a household name in Content Management Sites. Reports claim that WordPress takes up about 60% of the CMS websites and these sites run about 30 percent of the entire internet. While these sites are made to be easy for use, they can slow down as you continue to build and add new content. Real world page speed is an important metric both for usability and SEO so it is critical to routinely make adjustments on your site.
Below is a process that can help you improve your WordPress site page speed:
Get a baseline number
It will be hard for you to track improvement if you do not have a starting point. While You can use the following tools to find that number you will improve on.
https://tools.pingdom.com/
https://gtmetrix.com/
Check your engines
Make sure you have the latest updates on your WP Core and all your plugins. While this is more of a web security task, updates are often created to not only prevent vulnerabilities but to also patch some code issues. Your site will undoubtedly benefit from this activity.
Although unrelated to patching updates, it is likewise important that you install SSL on your sites. Google has started to force sites to use SSL this as a basic security feature. Adding encryption will prevent your site to be tagged “unsafe” by Google.
Serve Small Images
Images are the most common reasons a site slows down. Audit your images and see if you can resize them. Often, image dimensions are larger than needed. If the dimension size is not the issue, sift through your images and review their file sizes. High-quality images often mean larger file sizes, but this can affect load speed. Fortunately, there are a number of tools (Tinypng.com and others) that can still provide you with high-quality images without degrading display quality.
Implement Browser caching
Browser caching is often one of the most recommended items by Google PageSpeed insights. Enabling browser caching will allow you to tell your visitors how long they should keep specific resources on their computers. This will make sites load faster as many of the resources will be simply referenced from their own devices. For example, you can set a limit of cache for 2 weeks for images, and longer periods for other items like style sheets that do not change often. Your developer can do this by setting it up directly on the .htacces filer or via a plugin like W3 Total Cache
Go Mini
Extra lines of code, even blanks, can add bytes to files. These added bytes also add some time to load. Minify your HTML code, CSS style sheets, and JavaScripts to further speed up your site. This is a technical task that competent developers can accomplish easily. It is very important to review all pages after minification to ensure that they are functioning properly.
Some parting notes:
There is a balance between speed and display or functionality. It would be great to have both but if you must choose, in some cases, it is better to sacrifice a bit of page speed for higher quality images and functionality. A simple HTML site will load faster than a sophisticated image-heavy site, but it may not fulfill the needs of the customer.
Our team at NFT provides page speed updates with our website maintenance services. Contact us today to learn more.
To set up your own small business online, you need a web hosting service. While there are many platforms available today with many features and add-ons, choosing the best service will not only get you up and running in no time but cater to your requirements for the long term.
Here are 10 features to look for in a web hosting service to help you make an informed decision and find the right service that you can rely on for years.
For most websites, downtime means loss of revenue. That is something every business owner must avoid. So when critical issues arise, you would need accessible and reliable support to fix those issues in the fastest time possible. An example of the use of this function can serve sites of uk online casinos, for which the attendance of players is very important. This feature provides round-the-clock support to players and helps to resolve contentious issues. Go for a web hosting service that offers 24/7 support.
Your data is critical to your operations. Just think about the awful feeling of accidentally closing a word document and losing pages and pages of content you didn’t save. For your website, this will be ten times worse.
Look for a web hosting service that will provide adequate backup. A reliable hosting must have a good disaster recovery plan to ensure your data is secure.
While cheap hosting rates can entice you to sign up for the service right away, make sure you first to take the time to learn about the features included and NOT included. Why? Well, you may pay a small price for the basic service but have to pay more for every little add-on feature or tool you will require. You might as well pay for the reasonable price that includes the requirements you are after. So check the fine print and read the details to avoid being misled by cheap offers.
For a small start-up website, bandwidth is not an immediate concern. However, once you build your website and gain considerable amount of traffic, bandwidth becomes a priority.
You may be getting 1,000 visits per month in the first year but need to upgrade when you start hitting 10,000 visits per month. You need a host that can easily accommodate the amount of traffic and bandwidth your site is getting.
A web hosting should be scalable for the future of your website. Find one that has easy upgrade options to support your growing requirements.
If you are setting up an online store, you will need the necessary shopping carts and e-commerce tools to support your operations. Most hosting companies will offer single integrated shopping cart application but look for hosts that offer more options and e-commerce features and flexibility to third-party programs.
As mentioned earlier, downtime can cost you money. Nothing is more important than making sure your website is running 24/7. That is why you need a hosting service that can guarantee uptime of 99%. Always go for a hosting service that has a 99.5% or higher uptime score to ensure stable network connectivity.
Owning one or more domain names is common nowadays. You may own almost all versions of your company names including .com, .net, and .org domain names.
Most hosting services will allow at least 25 domain names in one account. It is more efficient to have multiple domain names in one control panel for management purposes. When considering hosting services, so check for domain capacity.
Whether you’re an HTML master or a beginner, having an integrated control panel will make your life easier. You can manage all administrative options in a single location.
If you want to easily manage and control each aspect of your website and easily locate features, tools, and logs, go for a hosting that includes a user-friendly control panel.
When in doubt, always get more information before you sign up for a hosting service for your new website. If you have family, friends or colleagues who have experience setting up a website, chat them up to get good advice. These will help you choose the best service for your needs.
