Do Keywords Still Matter in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
What keywords are you ranking for?You want your website to rank for words and phrases that your ideal customers are using in their search queries.Some online marketers still advocate for a high percentage of the words on any page containing the key words or phrases you are attempting to rank for. Other online marketers are touting a new era of interconnected topical and contextual ranking methods that utilize keywords more deftly.This has led many businesses (and organizations) to question whether or not keywords still matter in their SEO strategies. Psst! Keywords still matter for SEO... but shouldn't be used quite like they were in the 2000s. https://www.youtube.com/embed/lNk7n_V3uqM What's a keyword anyway? A "keyword" or "key phrase" contains the idea or topic your content is about. If, for example, you run a cleaning business and you write a post about best window cleaning methods some of the natural keywords for that content may be "clean", "windows", "wash", "how to", and others. Hopefully, if your content is well written, many of these keywords would show up in close proximity to one another within the same sentence to make up a few "key phrases" or "long tail keywords". If your content is naturally using keywords that your target market is searching for you have a higher chance of driving organic search traffic over time. Effective keywords are, essentially, the topics and ideas on the minds (and screens) of both your business and your ideal customers. The obsession with keywords Search engines still primarily crawl text when determining what your webpage is about. (That's why lengthy well-written content still matters online). Consequently, at one time, the most important part of your SEO strategy was…
Why Reliable Web Hosting Matters for Your Business
Your business needs reliable web hosting so that you (and your visitors) can depend on your website today (and tomorrow). Every website is hosted somewhere. Hosting is the service that gives your website a location in the Web. Every website has hosting - including yours. Minimal web hosting provides your business with server space for your website's files. Yet hosting can also include additional features and services that increases available memory to handle spikes in traffic, protects your website from possible security breaches, backs up your website when changes are made, and more. It is these additional features and services that can make some web hosting services more reliable than others. Your business needs reliable web hosting so that your contact information, listed services, menu, or e-commerce portal is always available to your visitors. So what makes web hosting reliable? Look for these factors when shopping for web hosting and if you have had a poor web hosting experience so far, consider moving to a more reliable host. Reliable web hosting is... Dependable Nearly every web host today reports "100% uptime" - meaning that the websites they host are never down unexpectedly. Yet such claims do not mean that your website will always be online. These claims do not include "scheduled downtime" that may occur due to server maintenance. They also do not include downtime that may be accidentally caused by your developer or yourself. Sometimes... web hosts just lie. One of our WordPress maintenance and support clients host their website through a small upstart hosting company. They claim 100% uptime. Yet during our first two months with this client we submitted multiple tickets for unschedule and unexplained downtime that…
The Mobile Trend
Online browsing habits have changed greatly over the last decade. No longer are users relying on their PCs for opening your emails, searching for your services, or purchasing your products. The majority of hours spent, search queries made, and emails opened are now from mobile devices. The smartphone trend has changed and will continue to change the Web. A slew of new smartphones are expected in 2018 including new iPhones (likely a total of three new handsets), new Google Pixels, and the LG G7. Innovation in mobile has slowed but not stopped with manufacturers now releasing handsets with always listening voice assistants, multiple cameras to detect depth, facial recognition, and processors faster than most office PCs. Thankfully your website can look beautiful on these mobile devices. You may not even need to completely rebuild your website to accomplish this. There are multiple solutions to mobile optimize your website including separate mobile URLs, adaptive design, and responsive design. Regardless of which method you choose to optimize your site the statistics show that your website must be mobile optimized to continue to generate traffic and convert visitors. An outstanding website is mobile optimized. Sales In 2016 the CEO of Intel, Brian Krzanich, stated that the upgrade cycle for PCs was slowing from an average of four years to an average of five to six years. He stated that "Right now, it's easier to move your phone to a new phone than your PC to a new PC". This comparison is telling. Buyers are using their phones to replace some of what their PCs do and PC sales are suffering. At the close of 2016 smartphone buyers were upgrading their devices at an…
How to Create a Search Engine Optimized Company Timeline Using HTML and CSS
In this post we are going to demo how to create a search engine optimized company timeline using HTML and CSS. Company timelines are a common feature of business website about pages. Some visitors want to know where your organization has come from (and where it is going). And, let's be honest, most businesses like to show their growth over the years. Some companies design their timelines as a simple list - like Starbucks: Other companies design interactive timelines with accompanying media - like Ford: In this post you will learn how to create a company timeline using HTML and CSS that looks beautiful but stays simple. This method also maintains proper HTML heading structure so that search engines can easily index your timeline. You can use this method yourself on nearly any website. Our timeline will be stylized but simple. When we are finished we will have something that looks like this: [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] Step 1: Write Your Timeline's Content Before you get to any HTML or CSS go ahead and write up your timeline. Here's ours: Rystedt Creative Origins Timeline 1994 - Gabrielle picks up a blue crayon and writes her name - a writer is born. 2002 - Joshua builds a PC and checks out some books on HTML from the library. 2005 - Joshua begins regular web maintenance for a display product retailer. 2007 - Joshua begins offering web-development consultation to organizations as a young word of mouth freelancer. 2013 - Gabrielle graduates college with a BS in business administration. Joshua and Gabrielle get married but don't…
Introduction to Structured Metadata
Your website should help search engines and social networks understand it. Your content is designed and written for your visitors. Typically website owners expect Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others to just understand that content and display it logically. That usually works. Search engine crawlers have become quite advanced and social networks can often just pull an image and a text snippet. But what if you could ensure which title, description, and image show on Google, Facebook, Twitter, and beyond? Well you can with structured metadata! Help search engines understand your website Structured metadata is important content but it isn't visible to your visitors. Metadata is content written specifically for search engines and social networks.Structured metadata can be used to inform search engines what title and description to use for a page, what your hours are, what your logo is, who wrote an article, what a recipe's content is, and more. Structured metadata can also be used to tell Facebook and Twitter what titles, descriptions, and images to use. With different metadata styles you can even force your pages to appear differently on different platforms.Metadata doesn't directly improve your search rankings. However, it does eliminate the element of chance in how your links display. Usually if you can define how your links appear you can increase your click through rate. You know, perhaps better than anyone else, what your audience is looking for. Make sure that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others are displaying your site the way you want them to.Structured metadata is quickly transcending its once exclusive purpose as a search engine tool. If you send a link to an iPhone user they now see a preview of the webpage…
Quick and Dirty Guide to Estimating Your Web-Development Costs
So you need a new website. How much should you budget? Should you expect to pay $1,000 or $10,000? Estimating your web-development costs can be difficult due to the range of firms and freelancers available to do the work. In our previous article we broke down the main factors that contribute to web-development cost including your time, knowledge, and money and whether you hire a firm, freelancer, or friend. Whether you pay low or high pricing is largely determined by what you are paying for and how experienced and knowledgable your developer is. [button id="c54861b7a5309c95ee6d9d602379f687" text="Read part 1 here" url="https://www.rystedtcreative.com/tech-talks/hire-a-web-developer-expected-cost/" target="_blank" alignment="center" alignment_mobile="default" image="" icon="ti-book" icon_alignment="left" style="1" size="medium" radius="0" border_size="2" shadow="simple" full="false" tale="none" margin="0px 0px 15px 0px" text_color="#ffffff" text_hover_color="" background_color="#1f78e6" background_hover_color="#6ba2e5" border_color="" border_hover_color="" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="29e04c67583cc78b1272d1b8436e36a0" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/button]Now that you know the main factors that contribute to a web-development hiring decision you need to research actual pricing. What products and services are you paying for? What are the price ranges for these items? Answering these questions with actual figures will get you an estimated web-development cost to budget for. Design Web design and development are often considered two different pieces of the web building process. Web design includes colors, typography, and layout. A web designer will often deliver a mockup of the site's design or at least a design direction for his client before actual development begins. Whether or not you are paying for web design is an important question to answer when determining how much you should budget for a new website. You generally have three design options available to you. You can pay for a predesigned template, a customized template design, or a custom and unique design. Predesigned…
How to Secure Your WordPress Website
Security is a hot topic in tech and WordPress is no exception. It seems that no one is safe from the risk of being hacked. Governments, banks, retailers, bloggers, and virtually everyone else has reported being hacked at some point. And these are just the successful hacks we are aware of. Perhaps you have already experienced the frustration of being a hacking victim. Most Americans have had payment info stolen or their email or social media accounts hacked. Don't let your WordPress site be next. Most hackers leverage simple and easily patchable vulnerabilities to hack into your site. Here are some simple ways you can make your WordPress website more secure today. Update Security patches are one of the primary reasons for updating software. Keeping your WordPress install and plugins up to date is one of the easiest ways to keep your website secure. By default WordPress automatically installs minor security updates. However, major updates are not installed automatically. You should be regularly checking your website and installing available WordPress and plugin updates. If you are letting those updates pile up you are probably missing some essential security patches. Let the developers behind this software keep you secure - install their updates. Use Strong Usernames and Passcodes Weak login credentials are to blame for most hacks. According to one study conducted by Verizon in 2016, “63% of confirmed data breaches involved leveraging weak, stolen or default passwords.” There are three ways to make your WordPress login more secure: 1) Use a Unique Username That is, don't use "admin". Many WordPress beginners install their site with "admin" as the admin's username. Hackers can leverage this to hack into your site because…
Should I hire a web-developer? (And how much should I pay?)
This post is part one of a series on hiring a web-developer. Read part two, the Guide to Estimating Your Web-Development Costs, here. [button id="c54861b7a5309c95ee6d9d602379f687" text="Read part 2 here" url="https://www.rystedtcreative.com/tech-talks/guide-estimating-web-development-cost/" target="_blank" alignment="center" alignment_mobile="default" image="" icon="ti-book" icon_alignment="left" style="1" size="medium" radius="0" border_size="2" shadow="simple" full="false" tale="none" margin="0px 0px 15px 0px" text_color="#ffffff" text_hover_color="" background_color="#1f78e6" background_hover_color="#6ba2e5" border_color="" border_hover_color="" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" _fw_coder="aggressive" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="29e04c67583cc78b1272d1b8436e36a0"][/button]You're considering hiring a web-developer because you either want to launch a website or update your existing one. After determining what you want developed, updated, or fixed you must figure out how you will accomplish this and who will do the work. So, should you hire a web-developer? Let's consider the factors. Time, Knowledge, and Money Like any service, whether or not you need a web-developer is determined by a few factors. If you have plenty of time; knowledge of web-development, hosting, and search engine optimization; and some money you can do the work yourself. If you lack one or two of these factors you may need to hire someone. For example: You may have called a plumber after your pipes burst because you did not have the knowledge to fix the damage yourself. Or perhaps you merely lacked the time to get the work done. Either way, a knowledgable, skilled, and trustworthy plumber was part of the solution. If you had the knowledge, time, and money to do it yourself you would have. Whether or not to hire a web-developer is no different. Where your gap is in the Time, Knowledge, and Money Equation will determine whether or not hiring a web-developer is the right choice for you. I have time and knowledge but not much money If you have time on your…
What is SEO? (And Why Should You Care?)
SEO is a hot buzzword when it comes to online business and advertising. But what is SEO exactly? And why does it matter? In short, SEO - or search engine optimization, as the term is properly named - is: “the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.” This is still a fairly broad concept, with nearly endless interpretations. And indeed, many people do interpret SEO in very different ways. The problem with open interpretation of SEO is that it’s simply not a factor that’s open to individual interpretation. Not yours. Not that of your web developer. Not that of your college web marketing professor. Sure, each of these people might have some right information regarding SEO. But most people haven’t the foggiest idea what they’re talking about. If you’re a blogger and are a little clueless about SEO, that’s alright. But if you’re a web developer who’s “proficient in the latest web technologies and SEO”, then you’d better darn well know the right way to interpret - and implement - SEO. This post examines some of the specifics of SEO and how making slight tweaks to your website can drastically improve your site’s rankings and save you from making rookie mistakes that damage your search engine performance. Reaching Customers Through SEO While SEO may seem like a somewhat obscure topic - after all, who can really understand what a search engine “thinks”? - it’s critically important for the main thing your website exists for: reaching new customers. Think about your last few Google searches. Were you looking for a…