by gregory | Apr 20, 2020 | Uncategorised
So you want to rank higher in the search engine results, your website is built using wordpress and everyone is saying to use a plugin. But which one?
I would recommend Wordpress SEO by Yoast. Following is a guide on setting up version 1.4.7 Part 1 is below, Part 2 too follow.
Once Installed and activated then it will show in the Wordpress Admin bar on the left like so:
The 9 pages of options are:
Dashboard:
This is the WordPress SEO Dashboard, here you can start this tour or revert the WP SEO settings to default using the ‘Reset Default Settings’ button.
Tracking
This tick box allow Yoast.com to track installs of the plugin. This is used to maintain compatibility with other plugins
Security
Unchecking this box allows authors and editors to redirect posts, noindex them and do other things you might not want if you don’t trust your authors.
Webmaster Tools
You can add the verification codes for the different Webmaster Tools programs, I highly encourage you to submit to all Webmaster Tools.
Titles & Metas
This has 6 sub pages to allow deep customisation of this area.
General
Force rewrite of titles. The plugin will automatically check to see if this is needed. you can manually tick it and after each page/post if you fill in the SEO title box the plugin will use the entered data to rewrite.
Sitewide META Settings
No index pages of archives – This should be ticked. This will prevent \page2\ and further showing up in the search results. This will also stop your site from being penalised for duplicate content.
Use Meta Keywords tag?– This enable the ‘Meta Keywords’ box for each page and post. Some people say as Google have said they do not give it much credit why use it. I say that it will take you 2 minutes to fill in when creating a page or post and any extra SEO cannot be a bad thing. There is no reason not to use it so I have this ticked.
Add noodp Meta robots tag sitewide – This option stops search engines from using the ‘Open Database Project‘ description for your website. This is explained by Google here. I have this ticked as the DMOZ page descriptions could be old or out of date, this is especially true if you are updating an older site.
Add noydir Meta robots tag sitewide – This is the same as above but is only for the Yahoo bot that crawls your site and uses the Yahoo directory page title and Meta description. i.e if your Yahoo listing is not correct then tick this. I hve this unticked unless updating an older site.
Further reading about NOODP and NOYDIR can be found on SEOBOY
Clean up the <HEAD> section
Hide RSD links– leave unticked if using remote editors
Hide WLW Manifest Links – Leave unticked if you use Windows Live Writer
Hide Shortlinks for posts – This can be ticked
Hide RSS links – if you Blog then the MUST be left unticked.
Home
Homepage and front page settings:
Author Meta Data
Author Highlighting – This is used to highlight a particular Author so a picture of the author will appear in the search engine results page.
Google Publisher Page – This will link all the blog posts to the google+ account page and image, see below.
Post Types
With the same options for Posts, Pages and Media. Using the ‘Help’ tab you can automatically set up the Meta Descriptions to be generated. Above is how I have all 3 sections setup. You can still manually adjust the Meta description in the individual sections when creating new posts or pages.
Meta Robots: noindex, follow – this means do not index, but do follow the links. I leave . this unticked.
Date in Snipet Preview: Show date in snippet preview? – I have this ticked for the Posts section only.
Wordpress SEO Metabox: Hide – This hides the Meta boxes. Leave this box blank.
Taxonomies
This is like the previous page but covers catagories, Tags and formats.
This i leave alone.
The Other Tab
This tab covers the Author and archieves. As the warning mentions if you are just blogging on your own then click to tick the ‘Disable the author archives’
Help
This is a list of all the options you can use in the 3 previous pages. The main options i use are %%excerpt%% or %%excerpt_only%%.
As Social Media is a growing sector if you want to get traffic to your blog then linking your social media pages to your blog is an ideal way. This section covers Facebook and Twitter.
This adds in the facebook graph data to your page and monitors the links from your site to the facebook page and the traffic.
Twitter
This is simple to setup, tick the box then enter in your twitter name dropping the @ symbol and click save.
by gregory | Nov 17, 2019 | Uncategorised
A guide on how to take you business to the next level where you control everything.
Is it not as scary as you think.
so you have an active Facebook page or group but worry it could be shut down if someone complains. so what do you do?
why do you need a website?
what if someone complained about your page and it was shut down for 24 hours.
This is where we come in.
We will setup hosting for you, we recommend siteground and hosting is from £2.75/month ( £33 a year)
you will need to choose a domain name, with Heart Internet. then provide us with the log in details and we will build you a fantastic website. whether it is a contact page with a simple way to contact you and allow people to see all of your social media accounts and telephone number or email address or a full on forum or online store.
by gregory | Jun 21, 2019 | Website, Wordpress
Invest in Your Website
People say “I have a website but now what do I do with it?
Read on to find out why its important to invest in your website.
Having a website is a great tool for engaging with your customers and gaining new ones; which is why it’s important to keep it up to date and make sure that the contact details are correct.
We have all become accustomed to not having to wait anymore; smart phones keep us connected 24/7, Uber means we now know exactly where our taxi is and how long we’ll have to wait for it and Twitter has changed the way businesses engage with their customers.
Your customers expect to be able to contact you quickly and with little effort. Even if we know a web address we tend to rely on Google to take us where we want to go; to do this Google uses the contact information held on your website. They will also check your company name, telephone numbers, email address and links to any social media profiles you may have. Which is great – you want your customers (and potential customers) to be able to find you; which is why it’s important that you invest time in maintaining your website.
There’s nothing better than a real-life example, I’m going to take you through how the website is currently set up and detail recommendations for improvements.
The example I’m going to use is Masons Butchers located in Bournemouth; they are a small family run butchers. A search on Google returns the company website in top position, followed by directory listings (both positive);
Google has also returned a business listing display for the company on the right hand side of the page. This displays a business listing for the company, shop photos, Google map and street view; as well as reviews, business address and telephone number and the opening hours of the shop. All of this is key information for potential customers and easy for them to find.
However, there are no links to any social media sites, does this mean that the shop does not have a social media presence? There appears to be a mention of a Facebook page, but no other platform – this is a potential improvement, but more about that later….
The website “http://www.masonsbutchers.co.uk/” is a good basic site; however it is lacking some important details which we will now discuss;
Some real positives are that the opening hours are clear and easy to see, the physical address is listed on the site along with a Google map link; however this is listed below the fold meaning that visitors to the site need to scroll down to see it. It looks like it may not have been updated in a while as the annual break closure dates are 18 months (at time of writing) out of date. The favicon used for the site is just the generic version.
Moving on to the Facebook page:
It appears to have been neglected, there are no images on here, no contact information and minimal likes and visits, however all of this is easy to fix.
Join us in part 2 where we will be covering how to fix this and get more interaction with potential customers.
Want us to help your business? contact us here
Let’s Work Together
If you like what you see or want to know more please fill out the contact form.
by gregory | Jun 21, 2019 | Wordpress
This was my first industry event and was great.
It was an early start, but spending so much time in brighton i knew where I was going. looking at transport options the car park fee was the same as getting the train.
For ease I opted to get the train from Three bridges to Brighton, no changes and easy.
I got the 7:35 train to brighton. This was good, not many people on the train so I got a seat. Feeling excited, I have pre-purchased my tickets and collected them the night before so could all straight on to the plattform. Using the app i saw it was platform 5 and as luck would have it, the train pulled in as i was walking up the stairs.
The journey down was good, it got busy from Hayward Heath with school children and made me grateful i don’t have to deal with this on a daily basis. I enjoy my walk to work in th sunshine.
I arrived 45 minutes early so had a gentle stroll down the hill from the station to the sea front. I was able to take in the sunrise and also keep up my Pokemon routine hitting a few pokestops and gyms on the way. Once on the seafront I manage to catch a few Pokemon too. It was nice to sit and relax after finding where the entrance was, I picked up a bottle of water as unsure of the facilities at the conference.
Having remembered my badge {badge image } i was able to get early entry and pick up the goody bag and have a sit down to insect them before things kicked off. The exhibitors were still setting up, but were giving away freebies to people. This was great, so with it being quiet I could talk to the exhibitors.
My first stop was at {Searchpilot} who are a review service. With reviews now appearing higher in google and also being used as a strong search metric I was interested to see what they were offering. All business should have at least the free service allowing 100 reviews. if you are able to collect then quickly then consider moving up a plan. The review will let other potential customers how good your product is and you can manage the reviews too.
From here I went to {The Hoth} this was a small stand offering white label SEO services. They only work with agencies offering SEO services. With more of my clients needing this service I am not looking to see what we are able to offer. {Click call } was a newer company and have a great idea of measuring marketing for local bricks and mortar business’s. Each time a customer visits the website they are given a unique telephone number which is linked to their session in Google analytics so you can link incoming phone calls to web traffic. This is a great idea for business such as Dormans Pre-school and the franchise Kung fu schools. the unique phone numbers can also be put on marketing so you can see which marketing is driving the phone calls as before this has been a big disconnect working out with marketing prompted the phone calls. Also the calls could be recorded which for a franchise would be ideal for training.
Looking around at the other exhibitors time was ticking on and I wanted a good seat for the 1st session {sessions title} which was in the main auditorium. This was the largest hall out of 6 they had.
The first session was great, the information was delivered clear and consise with the Takeaways section easy to write down or view from the slides after.
The second section in Auditorium 2 covered Technical SEO{} this was in-depth and delivered very quickly. it was sometime a struggle to keep up. the speakers seemed nervous but the slides were great and easy to read. This session finished early allowing grey on to break for lunch.
I decided to go for Burger King… i know there are much better places in brighton but I haven’t had one in ages and it was wishing walking distance.
I at my burger on the beach enjoying the sea air, which in now familiar since my move. The sound of the waves were relaxing.
Getting back to the event i tried to find the lunchtime keynote speech, on my way I met {Kat @ Lego} she informed me that not only are they the biggest tyre manufacturer in the world but also there are more lego people on the planet than actual people. { tweet/ Facebook message link to james francis} we chatted about the event and also on security of websites and safe data storage which were topics of there talks. we chatted for a while then went to Auditorium 1 for the afternoon session to begin.
The afternoon sessions went quickly, the first was Server side SEO. this was in-depth SEO tweaks you could do on your web server to improve speed which is a big ranking factor. Also moving to HTTPS. This talk got very heavy and seeing the slides and making a plan is needed. It was interesting to hear the web server software can make a huge difference as to how far you can push the tweaking.
If anyone would like to connect please send me an e-mail on {site} or twtte me @wdexplored
