Ever worked with a lead management marketing system? There are many out there, for a monthly fee, you get a website complete with a choice of landing pages, auto-responders (often prewritten for you) and a contact management system. They work well with online advertising; where your banner, PPC ads drive traffic directly to your pre-built landing pages, generating leads for you.
So what about setting up your own domain and pointing it to your marketing system? Not a problem, for $10 or so, you buy a domain and then forward it to your marketing system URL.
This won’t cause any SEO problems for my new domain, right? Well, “it depends”.
Little did I know that when I wrote those words in 2011 I would get a flood of questions about Domains, SEO and redirects! This expanded post will help answer them!
Since my SEO review of WiX attracted a lot of attention, today I’m doing another review of another popular website builder, Squarespace.
As with WiX, Squarespace also offers beautiful templates that makes it easy to create a professional looking website without paying big bucks to a developer to create it for you.
The flip side with any of these website builders is that you lose the ability to completely customize your site, including in some cases, the ability to fine tune certain on page SEO factors.
But when it comes to Squarespace, we aren’t talking about a big brand with an equally big budget looking to capitalize on every competitive SEO edge possible. The typical Squarespace user is a small business that needs “good enough” SEO.
So the question is, is Squarespace “good enough” and what are some of the “must knows” when it comes to SEO and Squarespace?
I had the great privilege to have coffee with Gary Illyes (@methode), a Google webmaster trends analyst dedicated to creating a better search experience for users. Well known in the SEO industry, Gary often speaks at search conferences and is frequently interviewed and quoted in the major SEO blogs.
Most interviews with Gary focus on big changes at Google, such as mobile first indexing (which yes, is still coming). These are important but tend to be a higher level conversation. I wanted to ask Gary more tactical questions related to current issues I’m seeing in the daily work I do as a SEO. So the below dialog covers JavaScript, International SEO, GSC URL parameters, a potential change to robots.txt and more. If you have an interest in technical SEO, there should definitely be a nugget or two of interest. So keep reading!
One thing I do want to make clear is that the Q and A below is not an exact transcription. It was derived from the gist of our conversation and I’ve paraphased, but I’ve done my best to accurately reflect his comments.
On January 8, 2018, Google announced that the new Google Search Console will be rolling out to all users. This new version has been in beta for a few months, soon it will be available to everyone.
One very exciting aspect of the new GSC is that keyword and ranking data will be available for up to 16 months! A big improvement over the old limited 90 days of data that we used to get.
Keep an eye out for an email from Google with the subject “Introducing the new Google Search Console” that will notify you when you have access.
I have a client that has access so I took a tour and have screenshots to share with you in this post.
Having a perfectly optimized site for SEO is a beautiful thing.
The search engines have no problem crawling it
Your site has no baggage like duplicate content or missing title tags
Your pages are ranking for the right keywords
And your users are not leaving in frustration because your site renders quickly on a mobile device.
So why aren’t more visitors flocking to your site?
One possible overlooked reason is that you are just not getting the click.
Is your front door scaring visitors away?
There is a reason that realtors like to see a nice front door for the house they are selling. It sets the tone for the rest of the house and leaves a lasting first impression.
A ugly front door? Not a great first impression.
A freshly painted door that has a nice design? The potential buyer starts dreaming of living there even before opening the door.
Each of your site’s web pages has a front door. Called snippets, these are the listings in the search engine results pages.
If you are familiar with SEO, you know that, that in most cases, the snippets are created from the title tag and meta description tag.
You also probably know that it’s important to have your keywords in both of these tags. While the meta description tag doesn’t help you rank, when it comes to your title tag it is the most important element of your HTML for ranking.
Neither the title tag or the meta description actually show up on the page. They live in the “HEAD” section of your html along with other meta information that describe the page and its characteristics.
You can see your title tag in your browser tab just like in the screenshot below.
As a SEO consultant I work everyday with clients to help their sites get more organic traffic by ranking highly in the search engine results pages. I’m often surprised at how often my clients don’t look at their “front doors” for their site.
It’s like dressing up the bathrooms with pretty towels but not doing anything about your dingy front door. If your prospective buyer drives by your house and crosses it off the list due to poor curb appeal, then those pretty towels haven’t helped you make your sale one bit.
Seeing a list of your “front doors”
Both Google and Bing have a handy command you can use with search to get a list of your pages snippets.
Simply add “site:” in front of your domain name and you should see a list of your website’s pages. If you have a larger site you likely won’t get a full list but you’ll see a sample.
The first thing to check is to make sure you have keywords in your snippets.
The second thing is to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal prospect and for each of your important pages ask yourself the question:
“Would I click on this?”
If the answer is “no” or “maybe” then you have some work to do.
What does it take to successfully launch and grow a niche ecommerce business?
We find out when I interview Elisabeth Halvorson, founder of Cowbells.com who turned an childhood dream into a niche ecommerce success story.
Why did you start a business selling cowbells?
When I was 7, I wanted to be in the Olympics. A few careers later, I was able to catch up with that dream by delivering cowbells to cheer on athletes during the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Winter Games…. hey, mittens don’t clap. It was a RINGING success! We medaled in souvenir sales as the #2 most popular item behind the Roots beret. Since then, we’ve added more cowbell styles and a “s” to our name….
