Category: Blog

Google will be making Core Web Vitals ranking factors for search engine optimization (SEO) in May 2021. But what are they and how can you use them to improve your website? In this article, we are going to answer that and provide you with actionable steps that you can use on your website.

With over half of all online traffic coming from organic search and most of that organic traffic going through Google, it has always been important to optimise your website for Google SEO. With the upcoming changes, it is vital to use the new ranking factors to keep your SERP position or overtake your competition.

The Core Web Vitals is Google’s way of testing UX.

Google has several ranking factors that test the user experience (UX) of a website. The Core Web Vitals form part of them. This is Google’s way to determine if a website offers a good experience, no matter what device is being used. This means that if Google views your website’s pages to have a better experience, it will rank them over competitors with similar content.

This won’t replace the importance of quality content. Content is still king, so a website with great UX and poor content is not likely to outrank a website with an average experience and fantastic content.

As we just mentioned, if you have a competitor with similar content, these new ranking factors will become part of the deciding factor for who ranks higher. Since most people don’t go past the first page of Google and the top results gain much more organic traffic than the ones below, these factors can be very significant for your online success.

What are Google’s Core Web Vitals?

Google wants to measure how people feel about the speed, responsiveness and stability of your web pages. To do this, it will use these three Core Web Vitals:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• First Input Delay (FID)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

LCP times how long it takes for the largest element on your website to render on the page. Waiting for content to load can be frustrating so you ideally want the LCP to be as low as possible. For your SEO, you need an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less to fulfil this ranking factor.

FID is the amount of time it takes for the browser to respond to someone’s first interaction on your website. Again, this is something you want to be as low as possible and Google wants that too. To satisfy this ranking factor, the FID needs to be less than 0.1 seconds.

CLS is the number of unexpected layout shifts during the page loading phase. An animated loading screen is fine, but if the elements on a page shift positions while loading, Google will mark your website down. CLS is rated from 0-1 and will rank websites that get a measurement of 0.1.

It is important to take advantage of these three factors before May 2021. Right now, most websites don’t pass a Core Web Vital assessment which means, come May, you will have an advantage over your competition. There is a chance that Google will give visual indicators on the SERP to indicate that Google endorses the UX on your website and these new factors will play a part in that.

How to take advantage of the Core Web Vitals.

If you want to rank higher on Google and get more organic traffic, you need to make sure your website covers all three Core Web Vitals before May, but how can you do that? There are three steps that you can take to improving your website’s Core Web Vitals.

Step 1: Perform a UX and performance audit.

Google has made UX and performance audits easier and since it’s their ranking factors that we want to meet, it makes sense to use their tools. This tool is called the Core Web Vitals report and it will evaluate your website’s performance on all three of the new Core Web Vitals.

The report will rank each page of your website as Poor, Needs improvement or Good with a breakdown of how well it performs on different devices. It’s important to address all poor and needs improvement pages with special attention to how mobile-specific issues.

Step 2: Use CrUX to analyze your website.

Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) is a dataset from people who use Chrome. This was created by Google BigQuery as a public project that updates monthly. You can use CrUX to identify how well your website matches the expectations of FID and LCP.

By using CrUX in addition to the Core Web Vitals report, you will increase your chances of finding UX issues. Since this data comes from real people, it will also help you analyze the experience of those real people.

Step 3: Consider AMP.

Accelerated Mobile Pages is an open-source framework created by Google to optimize mobile browsing. Google naturally recommends using AMP for optimising Core Web Vitals since it creates a faster and mobile-focused version of your website.

Most websites that already use AMP already fulfil the Core Web Vitals factors and can test their website even further with AMP Page Experience Guide. This can evaluate your websites using PageSpeed Insights, Safe Browsing and the Mobile-Friendliness Test.

AMP might not be the solution you want to use. But now is a very good time to consider using it for your website.

Get ahead of the Core Web Vitals with Web2Web.

To take full advantage of the new ranking factors, you need to get your website ready before May. With Web2Web, you will have a team of SEO experts and website developers that can get you ahead of your competition on Google and claim more organic traffic on your website.

Don’t wait around for May to come. Contact us today.

Email: [email protected]
Tel: 021 551 2060

A mobile-friendly website prioritizes the browsing experience done on phones, tablets and any other mobile devices. Over the last decade, this approach to website design has become vitally important to your company’s online success.

Over 50% of all online traffic comes from mobile devices and due to the ever-evolving technology, this percentage will keep on increasing. It’s not just your audience that will benefit from the quality that comes from mobile-friendly website design, but your search engine optimization (SEO) too. We will get into that and five tips that you can use for a more mobile-friendly website below.

Why use mobile-friendly website design?

As mentioned before, over 50% of online browsing is happening from a mobile device. With this data, we would bet that many of your clients and readers are experiencing your website from their phones or tablets.

This is why optimizing the mobile browsing experience has been at the top of designer’s and developer’s best practice list for years. By adding simplicity and ease of use from the very beginning, you are making your website an enjoyable experience to browse. Companies that don’t do this can experience a huge bounce rate on their website and lose a lot of potential business.

You don’t have to sacrifice your desktop website for mobile-friendliness. With responsive design and mobile versions of your website, you can still have the same great user experience (UX) on desktop. If anything, being mobile-friendly will help your desktop traffic. Search engines like Google rank website’s that cater to mobile users higher than ones that don’t.

Five mobile-friendly website tips.

• Recommended size dimensions.
• Minimize your menu.
• Optimize for portrait mode.
• Limit forms and text input.
• Thumb-friendly design.

Recommended size dimensions.

When designing mobile-first, you need to consider the size constraints from the beginning of the design process. This will help avoid any layout and spacing problems that could pop up later on.

Mobile screens come in a variety of sizes which makes considering size restraints quite difficult. Thanks to responsive design, that won’t be as big on an issue as your website will adjust depending on the size of the screen. When considering how things look on mobile, going by the size of 360 x 640 is the general rule of thumb.

Images can be as wide as necessary, but keep in mind that landscape images will get smaller a lot quicker than portrait. When it comes to considering image size, remember that you don’t have to put the whole image on the mobile screen. Zoom in and crop out extra background details that are not necessary for your clients.

The smaller a screen gets, the more difficult the font gets to read. We recommend not going any lower than 16px for font size on a mobile-friendly website. For more help on how to use font for your website, take a look at this article: How to use typography to improve your website.

The last thing to consider for sizes is buttons. These are extremely important to get right for your mobile website because when they get too small, they become impossible for mobile users to use accurately. Keep button size between 42px and 72px.

Minimize your menu.

Navigation is a big consideration for mobile-first design. It has become standard practice to minimise menus all in one simple hamburger icon.

This symbol has become the internet standard, so your clients won’t get confused when they look for the menu. This can be used to reduce the whole website header into one space that is easy to find and click on. It would be best that the menu then sits over the whole screen with a clear way to close it again.

For very complicated menus that have options inside of options, it is best to use submenus. For the most effective submenu, it is best that the new menu replaces the older menu with a clear way to go back to the previous menu.

If this clutters your menu too much or your website contains loads of information, a search icon can help your readers easily navigate to exactly what they want.

Optimize for portrait mode.

While most mobile devices can be rotated and used in portrait mode, almost all users will browse your website in portrait mode. Think about it, how often do you use your phone in landscape mode? (Not including YouTube).

But this is not a problem. Portrait mode is perfect for single-column layouts. Have each of your elements placed one after each other from top to bottom. You can even break the monotony of centre aligned content by changing between left and right justification.

More ways to create a more appealing single-column can be to use a grid of icons or a photo carousel. The latter can even switch the way users are swiping to keep their attention. Remember to not tightly pack this content and use plenty of white space to create a better UX.

Limit forms and text input.

How many times have you felt frustrated when filling out a form on your phone? It’s too often for us. By minimising forms to their bare essentials, you will avoid a lot of this frustration.

Using auto-fill tools that help narrow down an address or provide email suffixes can take even more frustration out of the mobile experience. Chances are, your desktop users will really enjoy these features too.

When it comes to payment options for online stores, providing several third party payment methods can really help simplify the purchasing process, especially if you are using a favourite amongst your clients. It really helps to remove both finding and carefully typing in credit card details.

Be thumb-friendly.

We use our thumbs for almost all of the mobile experience (scrolling, clicking, typing). Because of this, mobile-friendly design needs to be thumb-friendly. The thumb is one of the shortest and the widest digit on our hands limiting the reach and precision.

It’s for this reason that many designers will make important buttons and other interactable elements as large as they can. In order to make these elements more reachable, many designers will also change the position of the navigation bar to the bottom of the screen. This stops readers from needing to readjust their hand to use these elements and instead get to them quicker and with more comfort.

Make your website mobile-friendly with Web2Web.

Making your company’s website mobile-friendly is essential for online success and Web2Web can help you get there. Our highly skilled team of website designers and developers create for mobile-first and update your current website to be mobile-friendly.

Don’t wait to put your brand online or let your website chase away mobile clients. Get in touch with us and let’s set your company up for digital success.

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An SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy is a vital part of your company’s online success but with over 200 ranking factors on Google alone, this can become very overwhelming. This is doubly so when you consider that search engines constantly change ranking factors and how much each one is worth.

Fortunately, some SEO ranking factors have consistently stayed strong and can become key tools in your strategy. In this article, we will go over five of those ranking factors that you need to take advantage of.

What are SEO ranking factors?

Search engines provide their users with an incredibly long list of search results when a search is made. It can very often span several pages, but these results are not randomised. Search engines crawl through every single web page that could match the search and ranks them to relevancy, authority and security.

Search engines like Google want to provide results that will best satisfy their users. To determine this, they have ranking factors that they use to determine the order in which websites will appear first. Getting Google to rank your website on the first page is incredibly important to gain organic online traffic.

You can test how important this is for yourself because chances are, you use search engines. Think, when was the last time you actually went to the second page after a search. We would bet on you saying never or hardly ever because 95% of all Google traffic doesn’t either.

If you want to rank on Google, you will need to use the SEO ranking factors to climb up the SERP (search engine results page).

5 important SEO ranking factors to add to your strategy.

To increase your websites organic traffic through search engines, you need to boost your SEO ranking factors. But what are these factors? Here are our top five that you need to add to your strategy:

• Keyword optimization.
• Backlinks.
• User search intent.
• Mobile-friendly design.
• Page load speed.

Keyword optimization.

Search engines use keywords to understand what your webpage is about and how much it relates to a person’s search. To know what keywords you want to rank for on your website, you will need to do thorough keyword research. To get you started, read our article: How to do keyword research for your website.

When you know what keywords you want to use, you are going to want to use them on the webpage you want to rank on. Use them throughout the page and the headline but don’t stuff it into every sentence. The most important part of SEO how much people want to read your content or find out about your product or service. Keyword stuffing will chase them away and chase Google away.

Backlinks.

Links from third-party websites to one of your pages is a backlink. You want each of your pages to have a few high-quality backlinks to really be competitive. Take note of the word high-quality. You do not want backlinks from spam websites.

The backlinks your get should focus on quality over quantity. Search engines love backlinks from websites that have high authority and are industry related. When Google sees this, it will think your website is a reputable one that it can definitely show to its users.

Getting backlinks from reputable and authoritative websites can be an overwhelming task, but you can start simple. Contacting writers from industry blogs and being the first to link to other websites is a great place to start.

User search intent.

Search engines have one goal, to show the most related websites to a search. To move up the SERP, your website’s pages need to answer the intent behind the search queries. If your website was ranking for a keyword that it doesn’t provide an answer to, Google will realise that and rank you lower.

Getting this ranking factor will also help you understand where your visitors are in their buyer journey. Are they looking for a solution to a problem or are they looking for more information on your product or service? This information can help aid your online marketing strategy.

Mobile-friendly design.

Around 50% of all internet traffic is through mobile devices and your clients are no exception. Mobile devices all have different screen sizes which is why responsive design is so important. If your website is not responsive, you could be chasing away most of your potential clients.

Google also ranks sites based on how mobile-friendly it is. This is a very strong ranking factor that you will need to take advantage of to climb the SERP.

Page load speed.

The amount of time your website takes to load is a factor that comes up a lot when discussing website best practises. It’s important for UX, bounce rate and also SEO ranking factors.

We don’t want to wait forever for a page to load and many of your clients will not want to wait for more than two seconds. Search engines don’t like to wait either. By making your website load faster, you will reduce your bounce rate, keep your organic traffic engaged and rank higher for it all.

Let Web2Web help you improve your website’s SEO rank.

Search engine optimisation is important for the online success of your business. If you are struggling with how you can best improve your SERP rankings on Google, then get in touch with Web2Web.

Our team of experts can help with optimizing every page on your website with every ranking factor we have mentioned above and more. We will be with you every step of the way of making your website more successful online.

A permalink is a URL for a specific webpage, image or other content that you publish online and by following its best practices, you will improve your SEO and UX. But what are these best practices and how can they improve your website? In this article, we are going to answer that.

Permalink basics.

Before we dive into making the best permalinks for your business website, let’s go over the basics. Every permalink or URL is made up of five parts, but we only need to look at two. The web domain at the beginning and the slug after the first forward slash. Here is an example:

https://www.webdomain.com/slug

Whenever your website’s URL is entered into a browser, it will take the person directly to your website.

Why permalink best practices are important.

There are two big reasons for wanting to get your permalinks correct. We mentioned them before, they are search engine optimisation (SEO) and user experience (UX).

By applying the permalink best practices, search engines link Google will rank you higher. This is not the biggest ranking factor for your website, but it’s an important one especially if you want to gain organic traffic.

A strong URL doesn’t just help Google, but it helps your clients too. A permalink can do this by giving clues to the reader about what is on the page and the path they took to get here. It also allows readers on other websites to understand what to expect when they click on a hyperlink that goes to your website.

We don’t just have to read about it though. Below are two examples of permalinks, one of which is following the best practices. Which one would you rather click on?

1. https://www.webdomain.com/index.php?page=546589
2. https://www.webdomain.com/best-hotels-cape-town

7 permalink best practices.

If you are creating a new page on your website or are reviewing its UX, run through these 7 permalink best practises to create a strong URL that will boost your performance.

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1. Make the URL unique.

No two pages should have the same URL on your website. This will cause several issues that will ruin your client’s browsing experience.

2. Include your SEO keyword research.

Whenever you create a new page on your website, you should be doing keyword research. If you want to know where to begin with that, try our guide: How to do keyword research for your website.

By using the keywords that your webpage is optimised for, you send a strong message to search engines that say your website is the best solution to people’s queries. This will help you rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP).

3. Keep your URLs simple.

Your permalink needs to be simple, relevant to the content and as accurate as possible. Limit the use of unnecessary words and only include dates that are important to the topic. This will make your URL easy to read and understand to people.

4. Be consistent.

Following the previous practice of being easy to read and understand, you need to keep your URLs consistent. They should all follow the same formula that allows users to backtrack or understand exactly where they are just by the URL alone.

5. Separate words with dashes and not underscores.

Never use underscores, spaces or any other character to separate words. You want your URL to be easy to ready and actually work. Spaces break URLs and any other character becomes difficult to read or type. For your websites best interest, only use dashes.

6. Use all lowercase.

Using uppercase characters is an easy way to confuse people and have them land on an error 404 page. People expect URLs to be lower case, so when they type it in that way, you don’t want to rely on their browser to fix that.

7. Don’t get lazy with WordPress.

When creating a new page or post on WordPress, they will often turn the heading into a slug using those exact words. Don’t just settle for this. WordPress did not do the research that you should be doing. If the slug it suggests is not optimal, change it.

Best practices to change a permalink.

While it’s in your best interest to not change a permalink, it’s not always avoidable. There can be many reasons for you to change the URL and it’s very important to get it right if you need to. If not, your website can lose the very important backlinks it gained and severely hurt your SEO.

If you find yourself in the need to change a permalink, you will need to let search engines know where to go and change the path of people using the old link. To do this, you will need to create a 301 redirect. If your website uses WordPress there are fantastic plugins for this. You can also create a .htaccess with the following text in it:

Redirect 301 / http://www.webdomain.com/slug

If the new permalink doesn’t contain ‘www’ in it, you will need to create a different .htaccess file with this text:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://webdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Update your website to perform its best with Web2Web.

When it comes time to update your business website, you want it to boost your website’s performance not hurt the SEO that you have worked so hard to get. This includes following the permalink best practises.

When you work with Web2Web to update your website, you get an expert team that will ensure that your website’s online performance will improve with its updates. Don’t wait to rank down on the SERP, talk to us and we can move your website forward in the online world.

Google Chrome, and many other browsers, are filled with loads of unique features to make your browsing experience better. However, as the most used browser, Google Chrome has added a lot of features that you may not even know about yet. In this blog, we are going to discover nine of them and how you can use them.

Before we get into them, it’s important to note that, thanks to extensions, Google Chrome has the ability to do anything a developer can want it to. You can get many of them from the Chrome Web Store too. But before you go diving into that, there may be some features that can help you right now.

Feature 1: Guest Mode.

Google syncs your browser data from device to device through your account. This is a really helpful feature for when you use multiple devices or need to migrate to a new one. It saves you all the time of having to save everything all over again.

But what is someone needs to use your device? If you keep confidential information on Google Chrome or have saved your passwords on it, the Guest Mode feature is perfect. It will create a temporary blank slate with none of your accounts details on it.

To use this Google Chrome feature, click on your profile icon at the top right corner of the browser and then click on ‘Guest’. This will open a new window in Guest Mode. Once you are done browsing in Guest Mode, closing the tab will remove all browsing history and cookies.

Feature 2: Get more with Flags.

Google Chrome has several test features that are hidden away behind a secret URL. To access them, simply type chrome://flags into the browser and you will see them all. You can search around here for features you cannot find in your standard Google Chrome browser.

Keep in mind that these features are all tests and experiments. They may be buggy and make your browsing experience more difficult. To avoid confusion on which one is the culprit, activate them one at a time. That way you will know which Flag is causing the issue.

Feature 3: Cast your browser.

In the same way that Chromecast works to play Netflix series from your phone to your TV, you can do the exact same thing with Chrome. Simply right-click anywhere on Google Chrome and click the option ‘Cast’. Just make sure you don’t click on a spot that you can type text into. A pop-up will then appear and show you the available devices.

You can also cast your browser by clicking the kebab menu at the top right corner of Chrome. It’s the three verticle dots. Then click on ‘Cast’ in the menu that pops up. This is very helpful for presentations or for watching Youtube on your TV.

Feature 4: Perform quicker Google searches.

Have you ever come across a word you don’t understand or a name of something you would like to know more about while reading a blog? This Google Chrome feature is for you.

To perform a quick Google search, simply highlight the words you wish to search, right-click on them and then select Search Google for…

When you do that, a new tab will open with the Google search for that word. You can test it on the sentence we have put below this paragraph. You won’t regret it.

Baby Pandas

Feature 5: Quickly reopen a closed tab.

If you are like us, you probably have loads of open tabs and many of them need closing but accidentally close the wrong one. You could not be like this but accidentally click close on a tab you really needed open. Google understands the frustration and that is why they made this feature in Chrome.

There are two ways you can quickly open a closed tab in Chrome. The first is to right-click the bar that the tabs appear on but not the tabs themselves. Then select ‘Reopen Closed Tabs’.

The other way to do this is by clicking on the kebab menu at the top right corner of the screen, hover the mouse over history and then choose from the list of recently closed tabs.

Feature 6: Copy-Past handwritten notes.

It could be an old family recipe or the notes that you took down in class, whatever the case may be, you do not need to type it all out. With Google Lens, you can now scan handwritten notes with your phone and past the text into your PC via Chrome.

Your phone will need a way to use Google Lens. With Andriod, you can get the Google Lens app. On iOS, you will need the Google app.

Feature 7: Pin tabs you use a lot.

This is a more commonly known Google Chrome feature, but it’s still just as useful. If you use certain tabs a lot for work or study, you can keep them open by pinning them to Chrome.

To pin a tab, right-click on the tab you want to pin and click on ‘Pin’. That tab will become an icon to the left of the tab bar. Now, when you close and reopen your browser, it will automatically be there and load for you.

Feature 8: Update autofill.

When browsing online, you will often need to fill out forms of personal details and card information. With this Google Chrome feature, you can make that all automatic.

To do this you will need to go to the settings menu un Chrome and click on ‘Auto-fill’. Now you can choose to add or edit Passwords, Payment methods and Addresses. You do not need to add information that you do not want to be saved on your Google account.

When filled in, your forms can fill themselves if you tell it too. The best part is that this works on mobile too (where long forms are the most frustrating).

Feature 9: Hard refresh and clear your cache.

If you have worked with developers to make a website or you are not seeing the updates on a website that you browse often, you may need to perform a hard refresh. This can be done very easily through Google Chrome and we will show you how to do this for Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

Windows and Linux: Hold down CTRL and click the reload button or press F5.

Mac OS: Hold down shift and click the reload button – or – Hold down command, shift and press R.

To find out how to do this on other popular browsers with this blog post: How to hard refresh your browser and clear your cache.

Get more out of your business online with Web2Web.

In today’s world, your business needs an online presence and to be successful, it needs a plan to get it there. Technology is constantly adding new features online and more expectations from your clients. When you work with Web2Web, you can set your business for online success and go beyond expectations.

If you want a team that can make that happen, contact Web2Web today. Let’s talk about how we can develop your online future.

When you know how to write a great headline, the number of views your content will receive will noticeably increase. It doesn’t matter if that content has never been done before and would change the reader’s life. A headline is what will make it successful.

Fortunately, creating a headline that catches the attention of readers is not out of your reach and there are many things that you can do to make them better. In this blog, we are going to discuss five tips that you can apply to your headlines to make them better.

Step 1: Write a headline that is informative.

If not credible, your content will get ignored. A very strong headline might grab the attention of a reader, but keeping them there is really what you want. This won’t happen if your headline does not match the content.

Write headlines that let the readers know what they will gain from your content. Readers are also more likely to positively engage with articles that answer their queries. This, again, will not happen if they were expecting something your article did not supply.

Step 2: Use numbers and data.

Numbers are a surprisingly effective way to make your headline more attractive to readers. In fact, headlines with numbers can generate more than 60% more engagements than ones that don’t. If your content has a list or a guide, use them as the number in the headline.

Here’s a quiz for you: Which headline that uses numbers gains more attention online?
(Hint: We used similar working on this blog’s headline)

• 5 ways to get fit.
• 5 steps to get fit.

Let us know your answer by messaging us on Facebook or Instagram.

Step 3: Use keywords that get attention.

To get organic traffic from search engines, you will need to target certain keywords in your content. Keywords are the terms people type into Google to find answers online. To get the keywords you want, you are going to need to do keyword research.

We have a whole article about how you can get started on keyword research:
How to do keyword research for your website.

Using keyword research will strengthen your online presence and draw in organic traffic. Once you have your keywords, you can start incorporating the, into your headlines as well.

Step 4: Write a headline in the active voice.

The active voice is more engaging and easier to understand to your readers. The goal of a headline it to be attention-grabbing and the passive voice just doesn’t cut it in comparison.

For a quick guide on how to do this, in the active voice, the subject performs the action. In the passive voice, the subject is acted upon. For a more in-depth guide, Grammarly has an amazing article called Active vs. Passive Voice.

Step 5: Create curiosity.

As people, we naturally desire the answers to questions and as content providers, we supply answers to questions. Unfortunately, the internet is filled with other things that are competing for attention, so your headline has to convince the reader that you are more worthy of that attention.

Provide just enough detail in your headline to attract your audience. Your headline should tease the information that the content provides without quite answering it. Your content will take care of the rest.

@meaningful.marketing on TikTok explains an exploit that marketers use all the time to draw the interest of clients. You can use the exact same exploit to draw more attention to your content.

@meaningful.marketing

Building Curiosity 101 ##MarketingPsychology ##MarketingTips ##Copywriting ##SmallBusinessTips_ ##SocialMediaMarketing ##AlwaysLearning

? orijinal ses – ponciklendin

Make your website content draw in more clients with Web2Web.

It’s not just enough to do keyword research and write any type of headline to get success. Writing headlines takes practice and following these steps to get better. There is even more headline writing tips that we will talk about in the future.

If you want your content to start gaining the attention it deserves, get in touch with Web2Web. Our team have been creating success online for over 12 years and we can make that happen for your website too.

Keyword research is vital to any organic online success. While Google does update its algorithm to change how important certain ranking factors are, keywords have remained very consistent. They form the foundation of your search engine optimisation (SEO), but how do you get them?

In this blog post, we are going to go over the basics, from start to finish, on how you would go about getting keywords for your website.

What is keyword research?

If keyword research is completely new to you, this section is for you. If you know what it is, but want to learn where to start, then scroll down to the next section.

Keyword research is what we do to find and analyze the search terms that people use on search engines. This data can be used when we are performing SEO on a website, planning a Google Ads campaign or for general marketing purposes. Through this guide, we are going to find the search queries potential clients use, how popular those queries are and how difficult it is to rank for them.

Another thing we want to look for is the intent behind the keywords. You can only rank well for a search term if your website has an answer to the intent.

Why keyword research is so important.

We have already discussed some important reseasons to begin doing keyword research for your website, but there is more. This research can give us great insight into your market and the kinds of topics they really care about. This is a fantastic starting point when planning the type of content that your website will include.

Since we know what people are searching for, it will also save you time and money when you know which topics are not going to get searched for. So, keywords will not just help you rank but will make your website the go-to resource for certain topics.

How to do keyword research for your website.

By now we know why we want to do keyword research and the benefits it can have on your website, but where do we start?

We are going to answer that question with five simple steps that you can apply to any type of project that would benefit from keywords. These steps are:

• Create a list of seed keywords.
• Study the keywords your competitors use.
• Make use of keyword research tools.
• Look for related search terms.
• Study your website’s niche.

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Create a list of seed keywords.

Seed keywords are the start of all keyword research projects. They lay the foundation for you to begin building a library of keywords that you can use for your website. You can also use them to help identify who your competitors are online.

Create a list of five to ten keywords that define what your website does. When making this list, think about what people would search for to find your website on Google. Then, put them into a keyword tool of your choice and list them according to search volume.

Note: Your seed keywords are not always worth targeting on your website. Seed keywords are used to create a starting point for the next four steps, so don’t pour hours into making them. Listing them should be a quick and simple process.

Study the keywords your competitors use.

A great way to begin your research is to see where the traffic is already going to. These are your competitors and it’s a good idea to know what they are trying to rank for. If you don’t know who these websites are or want to find more, refer to your seed keyword list.

Search those seed keywords with Google and see what websites rank for them. Make sure that the websites you choose to look at resemble your own or where you are trying to go with your website. If you can’t find competitors, try the suggested variations of your seed keyword in the search bar.

List your competitors and their URLs, then go over to your keyword research tool. Many have ways to look at a URL and tell you what the top keywords are on that website. With this data, we can see what keywords are sending them the most traffic and what you will have to compete for. You can also get tons of other keyword ideas that you didn’t think of before.

The last thing to look for when looking at your competitors are keyword topics that you want to rank for and they do not. If we discover that they have a high search volume in the next step, they can be good choices to try rank for on your website.

Make use of keyword research tools.

As we just discussed, there are likely keywords that you want to rank for that your competitors are not targeting. We can find and analyse these in a keyword research tool.

Our favourite examples of these tools are:

• Ahrefs
• Google Keyword Planner
• Moz
• Ubersuggest

Use these to analyse the keywords you have gathered thus far and to find new keywords related to your seed keywords. This is a process of searching keywords, looking for related searches and selecting the ones that are related to your website and can draw traffic to it.

If your website has already been running for a while, you can also put its URL into the tool and see what you already rank for. If there is a high search volume and you rank on the search engine results page (SERP), then it’s a topic worth keeping.

Look for related search terms.

If it’s become difficult to find new keywords or you are getting stuck, the related search terms that Google provides can be a great help. They appear at the bottom of the SERP. To get useful results, search a keyword or phrase and look at the related search terms for that search. This can be a very useful tip to spark inspiration and understand what other people are searching for.

Study your website’s niche.

Up until this point, we have only looked at Google and keyword research tools, but this isn’t where you should stop. Forums, online communities and Q&A websites are fantastic resources to find queries that people have online. You might find that some strong and relevant topics for discussion or questions that need answering that didn’t appear in your keyword tool.

If you notice any trends on these other resources, add them to your seed keywords and run through the process with them.

Choosing the right keywords for your website.

By following the steps that we just discussed, you will have completed your keyword research and should now have a list of keywords that would work really well on your website. That list can become too long very quickly and we need to refine our results. Here are the key factors to consider when refining your results:

• Relevance.
• Volume.
• Clicks.
• Head and long-tail keywords.

Relevance.

Google ranks your content on the relevance to the search query. So, your content will only rank on the SERP if your content is the best answer to the keyword you are targeting. Only select keywords that are most relevant to your content.

Volume.

If nobody is searching for the keyword, nobody will come to your website from searches that use it. Don’t choose keywords that don’t have a search volume.

It’s important to understand how search volume works. Keyword tools measure the average volume monthly and uses the data over the last year. What search volume won’t tell you is how much traffic you will get by ranking for that keyword. If you are at the top of the SERP for that keyword, you can only expect to get around 30% of that number if your website is doing really well.

Clicks.

Not all searches lead to clicks. In fact, some searches can have way less than 50% conversions to clicks. What causes this?

Google is a query answering machine and it aims to be the best at what it does. For some searches, Google will answer the question by itself. We are sure you have seen this from your own searches. So even though the keywords gain a huge search volume, even the top-ranking websites are not getting any traffic from them because Google did it first.

You can avoid keywords that have this problem by comparing clicks to volume in your keyword tool or even searching it yourself. If you use the latter method, look to see if Google answers the query by itself or gives you website results.

Head and long-tail keywords.

Head terms are keyword phrases that are very short and generic. These can range from one to two words. On the opposite side of the coin, long-tail keywords are longer phrases that contain three or more words. They are usually a lot more specific too.

For a strong keyword strategy, you want to add a mix of head and long-tail terms to give you a balance of quick results and the ability to reach long-term goals.

Get the organic results to meet your goals with Web2Web.

Keyword research is something you will always do and go back to if you want to rank on Google because the environment is always changing. That is why it is vital to set up your website for growth with the keywords that you choose to target. You can have that online success set when you work with Web2Web.

Our experienced website design and development team can optimise your website from the beginning or strengthen your already existing website to perform even better. We understand keywords like they are the back of our hands giving you the power to target the keywords that will bring you the organic traffic to help meet your goals.

Want to see your website grow? Contact Web2Web today.

What is the difference between JPG, GIF, PNG and SVG? They are all image files and all four can be used on your website, but they are not all the same. Some are better for certain types of images while some can do things that others cannot. Today we will discuss the difference and when to use each one.

What is a JPG?

JPG or JPEG, they are different names for the same thing, Joint Photographic Experts Group. As the name suggests, this image type is great for photograph-like images.

Photograph and artwork tend to be heavy on your website. Large file size and slow to load.  What makes JPG so useful for them is that it can compress into a smaller file size without degrading the image quality to a degree that we can notice. You can use an online tool like TinyJPG to do just that in a very quick and easy way.

There are two traits about JPG that do work against it. The first is that it will not support a transparent background. If you try to make a JPG without a background, it will automatically give it a white background. The next is that JPGs degrade if they get saved over and over again. It’s like making a copy of a photocopy.

Best uses for JPG: Photographs and artwork.

What is a GIF?

It doesn’t matter how you pronounce it, GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. This file format is a favourite for debate online but its real use is for animation. It says it in the name, Graphics Interchange. As in images that swap out with each other to create an animation.

These images are large and take up a lot more space than the other types of images. So using these can really slow your website down. Their colour palette is also limited to 256 colours, so you can’t get the best quality from them.

Best uses for GIF: Simple animations with a very limited number per page.

What is a PNG?

PNG or Portable Network Graphic are also sometimes called raster graphics or images. PNG and JPG both share a similar issue in that when you enlarge them or zoom in too far, they will start to get pixelated. So, when making a PNG, it’s important to know the correct size that it needs to be on the web page.

PNG is the ideal image type for website graphics as they can keep their image quality incredibly well and the best part is that it supports transparent backgrounds. To avoid your PNGs from slowing your website down, you can also compress the file in a similar way to a JPG. We recommend the sister site to the one we suggested before, TinyPNG.

Best uses for PNG: Transparent images, icons and graphics.

What is an SVG?

This file acronym stands for Scalable Vector Graphic but it also sometimes gets called a vector graphic for short. Unlike all the previous image files, SVG uses vectors and not pixels which allows it to give sharper images than any of the above. Here’s how:

SVG files work in a completely different way. It is actually code that gets translated into an image. This code contains mathematical equations that define the shapes, colours, and size of an image. So, they retain their quality no matter how big or small the image becomes.

So why aren’t all your website images SVGs? This file type cannot simply be uploaded to websites that use a CMS like WordPress and there is a large learning curve to generating and installing them properly. They also can’t be used for photographs.

Best uses for SVG: Logos, icons and animations.

Choose the correct JPG, GIF, PNG or SVG with Web2Web.

The images on your website are important to its success, especially when applying the best UX practices. A good image can capture the attention of a client and draw their attention to their next step. However, that all counts for nothing if those same images are slowing your website down. Clients won’t stick around for your page to load if it is slow.

This is why choosing the right image type and compressing them can be vital to your online business. With the Web2Web team, you can get the best for your website in the industry from design to development. Contact us today to find out how we can make your website perform its best.

As the year 2020 comes to a close, we at Web2Web have been as busy as Santa’s elves. With old projects finishing and new ones going into planning. We look forward to what the new year has to offer. But that doesn’t mean we have forgotten about what we have done.

As tough of a year it has been on everyone through the world, we are grateful for every little positive thing that we had in 2020. That includes you, our readers, our clients and the growing Web2Web team. Today we are taking a look at everything that we have done.

This was not the year of talking, wishing or wanting. It was the year of getting things done.

Fungayi Makoni

We welcomed four new members to Web2Web in 2020.

Despite the troubles this year has put us through, Web2Web has still managed to grow. In January we welcomed two members, Rasool Riffel (Junior Developer) and Stuart Smith (Junior Digital Communications Coordinator) into our 2020 Web2Web team. It has almost been an entire year that they have been with us now, it feels like it’s been forever.

In July we welcomed George Manyara, the latest member to our development team. Two months later, Dominique Trout became part of our team as the executive assistant. Both have improved the workflow and made our office even livelier.

We changed the negative around to positive.

When asked what was their favourite project of the year, every one of the Web2Web team had a different answer. This just goes to show how great they all were. Here are Geroge’s and Fungayi’s favourites:

Thabela. It’s a challenging project and a great opportunity to learn and develop our skill level. I personally love custom development. – George Manyara

Hire Intelligence. Because it was a big project where we rebuilt four websites for the Hire Intelligence company which differs only by country. We did a great job in migrating existing data and coding the web design exactly as provided by the client. – Fungayi Makoni

Make every moment count!

Amalia Aracena

But it wasn’t always smooth sailing. This year has had loads of obstacles that the whole world had to overcome and we can confidently say that we overcame it all. It did take a lot of work, but we learned a lot. Here are a few things that we got out of 2020:

Learnt the power of collective thinking and how important it is for the team to work together and collaborate across each portfolio. – Stefano Aracena

How to handle big websites and how to code better and more efficient. – Rasool Riffel

New CAD programmes and to focus on what I am doing instead of jumping around at every request. – Stuart Smith

We are thankful for it all.

We asked the whole team that they are thankful for this year and it sincerely warmed our hearts. This year has put us through a lot but we had each other’s backs through the thick and thin. Here is some of what we are all thankful for:

That we are all healthy to date and together working at the office in good spirit especially after the lockdown period which was a challenging time for some. – Amalia Aracena

Everyone has been cautious of the Covid-19 and taking measures to keep each other safe from contracting it. Cheers to Stuart the temperature guy. – Fungayi Makoni

I’m thankful that I still have a job, great employers and an awesome team to spend most my days building my career with. – George Manyara

But most of all, we are thankful for Stefano and Amalia Aracena. The work you two have put in to keep Web2Web both safe and active this year has been incredible. Not only did we make it through 2020 in one piece but, as we have seen, we came out even stronger than before. That was no easy task.

From everyone at Web2Web, we hope you have an amazing holiday and an even better New Year.

As we go into the holiday, we wish every single one of you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months! – Edward Payson Powell

You can increase the traffic on your website with an effective meta description. If you don’t know what this is or you want your meta descriptions to be more effective, this article has the answers for you.

What is a meta description?

It is am HTML attribute used to describe the content on a web page. It will appear in the search results as a snippet under the title tag to allow the reader more insight. This helps for faster browsing on search engines.

There’s no secret that the meta description is no longer a search engine results page (SERP) ranking factor. Search engines like Google don’t always show the meta description either, especially with long-tail searches. So why use them?

Well, an effective meta description still matters and can drive more traffic to your website. Here is why:

Why effective meta descriptions are still important.

When your meta description shows on the SERP, browser’s will scan over it to help them find what they are looking for. An effective meta description will catch their attention, ultimately driving more organic traffic to your website. That organic traffic is something that Google does notice.

Since it won’t directly affect your search engine optimisation (SEO), you shouldn’t invest loads of time creating one. But it’s still worth putting a minute or two of your time to create an effective one.

Where else is a meta description important?

Your meta description doesn’t only show up in the SERP. It will also show when you or other sources share your web pages on social media. Pay particular attention to pages you expect or plan to share or get shared.

How to write an effective meta description.

We are going to cover out four top tips writing an effective meta description. These include:

• Follow on from your title tag.
• Answer the search intent.
• Write with an active voice.
• Get to the point.

Follow on from your title tag.

When a person browses the SERP, they will first read the title tag and then scan the meta description. It makes sense to read this way, so you should write this way too. Always think about how the meta description compliments the title tag.

You don’t have to try cram keywords in here that don’t fit. Remember, Google won’t rank you for what is here. Focus on writing a meta description that gets the reader to want to click.

Answer the search intent.

Everyone comes to a search engine with a query if your website is the answer to that, then you want to reader to know. Think about the keywords that would be used to find the web page you are writing for and answer them.

To help you with this, you can do a google search with your keyword and read the meta descriptions from other websites. Look for commonalities between the top results. What they have done is a good indicator of what you should be doing.

Sometimes the results of this can be mixed and in that case, only look at the results that closely match what your web page is about.

Write with an active voice.

Not only does this improve the clarity of your meta description, but this also inspires action from the reader. Active voice addresses the reader directly and tells them what to expect and what to do. A good way to go about this is by starting with a verb.

The active voice is not always the correct way to write. One example of where you don’t want to do this is if your meta description addresses the search query with a definition.

Get to the point.

You don’t have a lot of character to work with when you write an effective meta description. Google only shows about 160 characters on desktop and 120 characters on mobile. After that, Google just uses an ellipsis (…).

It’s not just a character limitation that requires you to get to the point. Readers are only going to scan over what you wrote, text that is too long will get ignored. Do what you can to make your meta description fit the character limit.

Get the best form every part of your website with Web2Web.

Writing, designing, developing and maintaining. There are a lot of moving parts to a website, fortunately, meta descriptions are quick to get a grip on. But if you want every part of your new or existing website to perform its best, then contact Web2Web.

Our team of experienced designers, developers and writers will put your website where it needs to be in the digital world.