As of this writing, the current Google algorithm, “Page Experience”, will be rolling out in August 2021. Some of the updates are: 

• Core Web Vitals are used to measure user experience. There are three specific page speed and user interaction measurements that include: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), visual stability with Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and interactivity with First Input Delay (FID). Here are some tools that can help you measure and monitor Core Web Vitals. 
• The page needs to be mobile-friendly. If you want to check to make sure your page is, use this Mobile-Friendly Test. 
• Making sure your page is set on safe browsing. This means the page doesn’t contain malicious (for example, malware) or deceptive (for example, embedded content to trick visitors) content. To check to make sure your site does not have safe-browsing issues use the Security Issues report. 
• The page is to be served over HTTPS. Make sure to check if your site’s connection is secure. If the page is not served over HTTPS, you can learn how to secure your site with HTTPS. 
• Consumers have easy access to the content on the page. Learn how interstitials can make content less accessible for the user. 

With this new algorithm rolling out, Google will begin to use page experience as a part of its ranking systems in August 2021. 

This is very important for your SEO, and web speed does hurt the user’s experience. With Google’s updated speed requirements going from three to four-second load to two seconds, the slower the page loads, the more user experience goes down. 

A study has also proven that 5 million desktop and mobile pages found that the average time it takes to load a web page for desktop entirely is 10.3 seconds and 27.3 seconds on mobile. Back in 2019, mobile minutes accounted for 77% of consumers’ time spent online in the United States. Mobile, as well, has more problems with loading pages than desktops do for consumers. 

With one of the new updates in Page Experience being mobile-friendly, optimizing your mobile website design is imperative as it is the preferred method by consumers. Your mobile speed time slower than desktop will have a negative effect on your Google rankings.  

Here are some reasons why your website speed might be high:

• Server delays, which are the response time on serves, should be under 200ms. Different potential factors could slow down the server response, but there are three main categories: slow application logic, insufficient hardware resources, and slow network connection. 
• Unnecessary redirects make your visitor face additional time waiting for an HTTP request-response cycle to be complete, which is the complete opposite you want for your customers. 
• Having any CSS, HTML, or JavaScript that are larger than 150 bytes will cause a slower response time for your website. 
• Having heavy images and fancy animated effects. The smaller amount of bytes a browser has to download, the faster that browser will download and render content on the screen. This is very crucial for mobile users because images can still cause delays on mobile devices. 

Improving your website’s speed will upgrade user experience and conversions. First, you will need to measure the website’s current pace, which there are other online site tolls like GTmetric and Pingdom, to name a few that will help measure. As mentioned above, slow or overloaded servers usually cannot load graphics and elements on a page quickly as consumers would expect. 

When it comes to assessing user experience, you will want to run a UX audit to see how well your site is performing as users click from page to page as well as asking these questions:

• Do desktop and mobile load the same? Is it easier or harder to navigate on mobile? 
• Does your navigation load quickly?
• Did enough content load in the first two seconds to get engagement from visitors?
• Can users interact with the page within 2 seconds of loading?
• Are interactions smooth and fast with no lag?

After asking these questions and running the audit, things you can do to improve the speed consist of reducing the number of landing page redirects, plugins, and link shorteners. Another thing is to reduce/compress the image sizes and optimize smaller file sizes to lessen the mobile rendering time without destroying visual quality. In addition, you can remove render-blocking JavaScript and redundant data that is taking up space. Lastly, using asynchronous scripts to streamline page render time can help, just like using a script to adjust the content to match slower connections and devices dynamically. 

If you are unsure how to fix some of these things and are interested in improving your website’s speed and SEO, contact Fisher Design and Advertising at info@fisherdesignandadvertising.com. 

The post Optimize Your Website’s Load Speed For Higher Google Ranking appeared first on Fisher Agency.

2019 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist

• Set up Google Analytics. www.analytics.google.com
• Set up Google Tag Manager. Install tag on website.
• Set up Google Search Console (previously known as Google Webmaster Tools).
• Set up Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Perform keyword research. https://ads.google.com/intl/en_in/home/tools/keyword-planner/
• Install Yoast to your WordPress Website.
• Metadata: Add keyword phrases into page title, meta description, H1 header and throughout copy. If your business is city specific, add the main cities in each.
• Program keyword into URL, if possible.
• Have only one H1 header per page. (This is the main headline)
• Make sure you have at last 100 words per page; 500+ is best. Use keyword at least 3 times.
• Optimize your site for audible search. Answer questions people may ask Alexa or Siri: who is the best…
• Use synonyms in your copy, for example, lawyer and attorney.
• Add alt tags to all images.
• Add photo captions with keywords to as many images as possible.
• Name photos using good keywords.
• Cross link your pages to other pages within your website, from SEO-rich anchor text. Cross link bulleted list of services from home to other pages.
• Evaluate your competitor’s ranking and back links. https://www.semrush.com/features/backlinks/
• Regularly update your website copy and blogs.
• Contribute articles on other websites relevant to your business.
• Check Google Search console for bad links, crawl errors or 302 redirect errors.
• Make sure you don’t have duplicate copy or duplicate meta data. Never duplicate copy from another website.
• Make sure your website is mobile friendly
• Make sure your site is ADA compliant. www.Wave.webaim.org
• Use Schema markup.
• Check site’s load speed on mobile and desktop versions. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/testmysite/ and install caching software plug-in
• Create sitemap and submit to Google and Bing.
• Create robots.txt file and submit to Google console.
• Make sure your site does not have noindex or nofollow codes on pages you want Google to see.
• Set up as many social media channels as possible with links to your website.
• Set up as many directories as possible with links to your website. Yext is good for this. For example: Yelp, White pages, Yellow pages, trade organizations like thejomm.com, Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce, Women Business Owners
• Optimize your Google My Business Listing and update often. Ask your clients to give you five star reviews and send them the link to do so. Would you mind leaving me a good review? (you will need a gmail account to do this)

The post 2019 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist appeared first on Fisher Agency.

The main metadata components are:

Page title

Meta description

H1 header

Keyword

Alt tags

Page title:

Page title is probably the most important element for SEO. Adding the right title to your pages can still have a direct influence on your ranking. Make sure to include the main keyword phrase at the beginning. If your business is regional, include the city. Some people include the name of the business and some people don’t. I might include it on the home page, if the domain name is different from the business name. If your URL is the name of the business, I would argue that it is not needed in the title.

I craft my page title like this if it is a regional business:

main keyword phrase + city, secondary keyword phrase

For example: “sports medicine doctor Jacksonville FL, Stephen Lucie MD”.
I have polled a lot of people. Most put the city name in the search, and most put the city name at the end of the phrase not at the beginning.

The preferred length is approximately 55-70 characters and spaces. Some people use pipes to separate phases in a title. That is the vertical bar that might replace a comma. I like a comma because it only takes two spaces, while a pipe takes three. (SPACE PIPE SPACE)

Google actually shows 60 pixels. Yes you heard that right. So, if you are using a page title full of capital letters, especially wide ones, even fewer characters will be shown. If you use more characters and spaces, then Google only shows ellipses at the end.

About | Dr Stephen Lucie

While this is a technically correct page title, it doesn’t have enough keyword phrases in it. So, it is poorly optimized.

It might rank for “about Dr Stephen Lucie”.

There has been some discussion about whether to use spaces after the commas in the page title. You actually don’t have to use spaces. But it is harder to read for visitors. I prefer spaces.

For example:

<title>High blood pressure,Hypertension</title>

Actually, Google may not show what your page title is in your search.
It may substitute what it shows with something else it thinks is more relevant to your search phrase. If you search the name of the business, instead of what the business does, Google may show you the name of the page title as the business name.

For example, page title shown when searching the name of the business

Mary Fisher Design

Actual page title:

Website design Jacksonville FL, graphic design, healthcare marketing …

Meta description:

If you do a Google or Bing search, it is the short paragraph of copy shown after the page title

In December 2017, Google updated the number of characters (and spaces) in the meta description from 140 to 320. Then in March 2018, it changed the number of characters and spaces to 160 for desktop. And the character count view on phones is 130. We don’t see that you are penalized for having more than the suggested number. And in fact, I believe that Google still sees it, but doesn’t show it.

The meta description should describe what that webpage is about. While there has been some debate on whether the keyword phrases in the description help the website actually rank, we do know that it helps to get the viewer to click on your website. The meta description must accurately describe what the page is about. If your website copy is about marketing in Jacksonville but the meta description is about website design in Jacksonville, Google may choose not to show your meta description. Google may actually show the first paragraph of copy of the website on the search page. In fact, Yoast says Google tends to show the first paragraph most of the time.

With this in mind, we must craft our meta data carefully. Make it compelling and relevant. Remember the meta description should work in conjunction with the page title and copy on the page.

H1 headers

This is your headline on the page, above the body copy. The visitor will see this.

Keep your h1 headers short and include keyword phrases. Only one h1 header per page. You can also have h2 and h3 headers (subheads) with good keywords.

Keywords:

Google no longer finds the meta keywords useful. Bing and Yahoo both say they give very little ranking importance. They have said if there is a lot of keyword stuffing, then they may have negative effects on ranking. In fact, Yoast doesn’t even have a place to put meta keywords any more. Yoast is a free WordPress SEO plug in has a “focus keyword”, which is different. It grades you on how well your page will rank on that keyword that you have chosen on the page. It is not always correct though.

Alt tags:

I see more emphasis on ranking recently with alt tags. Originally written for the sight impaired, alt tags are now also created to help website rankings. An alt tag is written for each graphic or photo on a website. So, make sure you name your graphic something with keywords and also give it an alt tag that includes key word phrases. Alt tags have no spaces. Instead words are separated by hyphens

Photo caption:

While photo captions are not technically metadata, they are increasing in importance in helping a website rank

Copy:

While copy is not part of the metadata, it is very important that the copy includes keyword phrases that match your metadata, preferably in the first paragraph. The more your copy matches, the higher that page will rank. Remember each page can rank independently for different keyword phrases.

Below is an example of page title, meta description and H1 header for www.drstephenlucie.com

Page title:

Orthopedic Doctor regenerative medicine Jacksonville FL, Stem cell therapy Steve Lucie

Meta description:

Jacksonville FL’s JOI orthopedic doctor offering regenerative medicine. Stephen Lucie offers total joint replacement, sports medicine and stem cell therapy

H1 header:

1. Stephen Lucie, M.D. Orthopedic Doctor at Jacksonville Orthopaedic Institute

Alt tag:

“orthopaedic doctor Jacksonville fl”

This is the metadata you see in a Google search for Dr. Stephen Lucie: 

Did you know you can see your competitors’ metadata?

You can view the source code of the page and see it there.

Or you can also install MOZbar from MOZ on your Chrome browser. It will identify the page title, meta description and H1 header from each page.

To download your MOZbar here:

http://moz.com/help/guides/research-tools/mozbar

The post 2018 Search Engine Optimization Update: Mastering Metadata appeared first on Fisher Agency.

Chrome browser on Mac is implementing this rule and you may see this label on your Apple browser (Safari) too.

What is an SSL Certificate?

First you need to talk with your hosting and purchase an SSL Certificate and let them to install it. Some hosting companies may give you this for free or they may charge you an annual fee. If you have cheap hosting, you will certainly not get it for free. After having it installed on your host, then you need to contact your webmaster and have him/her change all html references from http to https because the site can not have mixed protocols, otherwise you will still get an error. I usually do a search and replace to the entire database, then I recreate a new xml site map and submit to the search engines so they will catalog the new urls. If you are working with Fisher Design we will handle this for you.

What will I get?

Google will give you a small Google and Bing website ranking boost, but more imporantly you will get trust of your audience visiting your site!

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1) First you need to have a gmail email. If you don't have it, you can setup one here https://accounts.google.com/SignUp. 

2) Go to this page https://www.google.com/analytics/ and login with your email and password

3) Once you sign-in with your Gmail account, you will be prompted to a screen like the one below. This is where you will sign up for Google analytics with your Gmail account.

4) On the next screen, you will be given choice to choose between website or mobile app. Make sure website is selected.

5) Rest of the information required on the page are quite self-explanatory. You enter your Website’s URL, Account name (it can be anything that you like), country, and the time zone.

6) Now you will be presented with Google Analytics tracking code. Copy this tracking code and send to us so we can add into your website.

7) Click on the admin top button. In the next page, from the Property column click User Management 

8) From this page, add the email analytics@maryfisherdesign.com and check all permissions from the drop menu. This will allow us to manage your google analytics account and setup weekly report without login with your personal gmail account.

9) That's it. Does it sound too complicated? Then let us access your gmail email for 5 minutes, you can change your passwords after the installation is complete or you can create a new gmail account just for this purpose. You won't need to use it for email. 

10) We will schedule a simple weekly report to your main email, but if you want to see more reports you can log in into https://www.google.com/analytics/ using your email and password. We can customize your analytics report for you too. 

The post SEO: How to setup Google Analytics in 10 easy steps appeared first on Fisher Agency.