First and foremost, search engine optimization amplifies your online presence by increasing visibility. SEO provides numerous paybacks, including:

• Offers an avenue for free and far-reaching marketing campaigns
• Helps build integrity and brand authenticity
• Showcases your products in an eye-catching manner crucial for keeping visitors in the loop
• Ensures easy site navigation and management

Although an essential e-commerce component, understanding the dynamics of SEO can seem overwhelming to amateurs. There are dozens of intricate factors to consider in order for your website to attain the anticipated Google ranking.

Top 3 Reasons Why You Should Not Do Your Own SEO

For beginners, black hat SEO and white hat SEO practices may seem deceptively identical. Your blog is an invaluable asset and you don’t want to go ahead experimenting and accidentally getting blacklisted. Low budgets, overconfidence, and ignorance are the main factors that force many website owners to consider doing their own SEO. Rather than messing around with something so critical to the overall health of your blog, it is advisable to consider hiring an SEO professional with experience in the field.

But why exactly is doing your own SEO a bad idea? Actually, there are dozens of reasons, and the most common ones include:

1. Limited experience and expertise

The main and the most sensible motive against this seemingly cost-effective practice is that you are an amateur and probably don’t quite understand the exact SEO your site needs. Most of the techniques and tools engaged by SEO specialists are unfamiliar to regular content developers.

Although you may have remarkable content development skills and seamless Internet navigation capabilities, for a specific SEO strategy to bear fruit involves keeping up with the tides of the ever-fluctuating ocean of Google algorithms. According to a recent post by Google, in order to get your hands on the best search engine optimization practices, you may need to subscribe to numerous online courses which may not be possible for most site owners with more demanding tasks under their belts.

Essentially, if you are looking for perfection, efficiency and results complete with proper advice on how to boost your site’s SEO, consider hiring expert personnel or a certified SEO company. Honestly speaking you will get a good value of your money!

2. Poor analysis and reporting

We can all agree that SEO is a tremendously important element to the success of any e-commerce platform. It covers a wide scope and for you to know if you are on the right track and ensure an impactful SEO strategy, proper analytics and reporting are exceptionally crucial as it helps identify acquisition conduits and determine conversion rates, among other aspects.

For an average Joe, this may sound like rocket science! It could be overwhelming and tiresome if you don’t have the patience to handle large data and the skills to analyze it. While website optimization reports and analysis is not a one-time thing but an ongoing process crucial for ranking and generating action plans, entrusting your SEO operations to an expert would be a nice idea. Besides saving you the excruciating mental pain and grueling hours in the office trying to make sense of the voluminous data, avoiding doing your own SEO will guarantee better results, professional advice, proper reports, and in-depth analysis.

3. May not be accommodative

Actually, you may have all the necessary skills, knowledge and experience needed for proper SEO operations. While this may be a green light as the ultimate custodian in other disciplines, when it comes to optimizing a website this may not be the case.

Remember your website is an open source platform and it should accommodate each and every visitor. There is no supremacy of ideas, and relying solely on your intuition may seriously limit the potential of your website. For example, a certain theme may seem perfectly nice and easy to navigate but feel cumbersome and confusing to another party. Avoiding doing your own SEO presents an exclusive opportunity where you can get a second opinion and exchange ideas, thus settling for the most accommodative and fruitful strategy.

Conclusion

Launching a website is a major step into venturing into the digital world. However, without good online visibility, achieving your site’s primary goal may be a dream. Search engine optimization is one of the most popular and reliable techniques to improve websites traffic and boost overall sales. While there are numerous cost-effective approaches you can easily employ, some techniques are not recommended and doing your own SEO is one of them.

Although cheap, this practice provides poor SEO reports, analysis and deprives you professional advice. In summation, doing your own SEO is not a good idea and should be avoided at all costs.

The post 3 Reasons Why Doing Your Own SEO Is a BAD Idea appeared first on Shane Strong.

Finding a Web Design Company

The first step is knowing exactly what you want. You know your business better than anyone else. You know your competitors, and you know what makes you different from them. Keep that in mind while you decide if you want a beautiful corporate website, an e-Commerce store, and/or a blog. Think about whether you want a simple design or a very complicated one. Write it down and move to the next step.

Now you know what you want, so it’s time to browse the web design companies’ websites. Look at their portfolios, but don’t just look at the pictures of past jobs. Instead, open their customers’ websites, see if any of them fit your interests, and try to understand if the skills of the designers are enough for your project.

You should also take the time to investigate the companies themselves, see how long they have been on the market, what other services they have you might need for your website, what kinds of customers they work with, etc. You will be looking for a well-established company with an updated and diverse portfolio. It’s important that you know they can be versatile and do different kinds of websites.

At this point, start contacting some of the companies and set up meetings with them. A good website can sometimes make or break the image of a company, and this is not something you can do with a simple email or contact form. It’s time consuming, but it’s well worth the search.

These meetings are an opportunity for you to propose your ideas for the website and investigate the way they work.

Questions to Ask a Web Design Company

Here is a list of important things to ask during these meetings and what to look out for.

• Are you capable of doing this project?
• What kind of technologies will you implement? (Things like responsive design and compatibility to any computer or mobile device, Search engine optimization or SEO, latest trends in CSS or HTML coding, etc.)
• Will you use an existing CMS (Content Management System), or create one?
• If so, will you use a pre-made theme or design one from scratch?
• How long will it take to complete, and what will happen if it’s not completed on time?
• How will you keep me up-to-date on the project?
• Do I have a contact person to keep me updated and to answer my questions?
• Will you do everything in-house or outsource any part of this project? If so, who will do what, and what are the references of this third party supplier? 
• What is the price for the entire project, and what is the payment structure?
• What will this price include?
• What kind of information or content do you need from my end?
• If I want something extra during or after the process, how much will it cost?
• How many revisions, if any, are included after the website is live?
• What will be the cost of revisions?
• Will I have a back end I can access to add or edit the web content myself?
• What kind of guarantees can you give me in terms of numbers, such as visitor increase or an increase in conversion rates based on your past experiences?
• How will you analyze these numbers after the website is live in order to provide me a full report?
• Will I have access to that analytic program at any time?
• Are you familiar with the World Wide Web Consortium Accessibility Standards and accessible web design?
• Is web hosting and domain registration included in this price? If so, for how long?
• Will you host the website on your own servers or on third party servers?
• Will I have the credentials to access the web hosting and domain admin?
• How long after the website is live do I have warranty for you to solve any problems or bugs that may occur?
• Will you give me any kind of training on how to use the website’s back end and administrative functions?

Red Flags to Avoid

Now, here’s a list of things you should run away from while searching for your web design company.

• The company does not assign a direct contact to someone in charge of your project.
• During the brainstorming session to define the project, the company either agrees with everything you propose or in any way tries to change everything to their own interests. It should be a healthy exchange of ideas and opinions, not a showdown of who can impose their own ideas.
• Make sure your relationship doesn’t end the day your website goes live. You need to know exactly what they offer in terms of after-sales support.
• Prices can vary tremendously. Make sure you know exactly what you are paying for. Good things take time and cost money, but you have to be reasonable
• Be suspicious of extremely low prices.

This is very important: make sure you have the domain registered to your name and that you have access to all the passwords, admin functions and web server. No one wants to be held hostage to a web design company that requires you to contact or pay them any time you need to adjust something. In the worst case scenario, the company disappears or closes activity, and you are stuck in a dead end without access to your own website.

With all this in mind, it should be a bit easier to make your decisions. It is a complicated and time-consuming process, that can also be very expensive. But if done right, this investment in the future of your company can translate to a dramatic increase in your business sales and corporate image. This website has to be the fruit of a good compatibility between you and the webdesign company of your choice.

The post What to Look For in a Web Design Company appeared first on Shane Strong.

www.brailleworks.com, May 2017

Section 508 is an amendment that was made to the 1973 Workforce Rehabilitation Act. Section 508 states that all federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funding are required by law to ensure that their webpages are fully accessible to everyone.

A common misconception about Section 508 is that it only applies to websites that are owned and operated by the federal government. But this turns out to not be true. Any company that works directly with or for the federal government is also required by this amendment to ensure that their online content is accessible to everyone. Even if you are not federally required to have Section 508 compliance, there are state laws that may affect you along with institutional laws and grant requirements.

In the United States of America, Section 508 is not the only regulation that governs the way that website content is formatted. In total, there are three laws:

●     Section 508

●     The Americans With Disabilities Act: The ADA states that all businesses, state and local governments, and nonprofit organizations need to ensure that accommodations for disabled individuals are made so that they can access the same services as able-bodied consumers.

●     Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG is a set of guidelines put forth by the ADA, centered around how to make your website content accessible to everyone. Even though this is not technically a law, WCAG does have a higher level of standards than Section 508.

There are also two other laws that directly correspond with Section 508:

●     Section 255 of The Communications Act: This requires that all telecommunication products and services be accessible to all.

●     The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010: This act requires that all advanced communications services and products be accessible to people with disabilities.

Now, even though you may not be directly related to or working with the federal government, it is a good idea to make sure that your website is fully accessible to everyone. Not being accessible means missing out on a large population of people that could be potential customers, subscribers, etc.

So what can being ADA and Section 508 compliant do for you, your website, and your audience?

1. ADA/Section 508 compliance means a better overall website: Just complying with the set rules and guidelines will give your website a more user-friendly and easy-to-search webpage. This will not only benefit your disabled patrons, but all of your patrons. No one likes searching through a difficult-to-look-at webpage, and most end up getting frustrated and backing out of a website if they can’t find what they are looking for quickly.
2. ADA/Section 508 compliance may improve your reputation: If your business is seen as one that cares about every individual that uses your services, then you will be recommended to other people. Even in our digital times, word of mouth is still a huge traffic-driver. If you are unintentionally excluding people from being able to use your website and services, this can end up negatively affecting your reputation.
3. ADA/Section 508 compliance can increase your target audience: It has been shown that 15-20% of the United States’ population is affected by some form of disability. So if your website is not fully accessible, you could potentially be missing out on up to 57 million people’s interactions.That is a huge amount of potential business and interaction that could be missed out on!
4. ADA/Section 508 compliance can make you more search engine optimization (SEO) friendly: Since being compliant means being more descriptive, adding tags, having subtitles, and all around more text added to your site, this ultimately makes you more searchable and SEO-friendly. For example, when being Section 508 compliant, a hyperlink can not simply be labeled as “Click here” or “Learn more.” The link needs to have a complete description, like “Click here to learn more about being Section 508 compliant”.

In conclusion, even if you are not required to be Section 508 or ADA compliant, it’s definitely beneficial to be. Having an easy-to-navigate, accessible website is an all-around best practice. Unintentionally excluding people from your content and services is not what anyone wants to do, and is easily avoidable. And once you have reached compliance, it is easy to maintain, meaning that you will increase your potential viewing audience for years to come.

The post Have You Heard of Section 508? Make Sure Your Site Is Legal appeared first on Shane Strong.

The answer is simple: assess your bandwidth, compatibility, reliability and security requirements. Share your requirements with multiple services providers and select the one who offers the most competitive price. In this article, we’ll name the best web hosting companies of 2019.

But before we start, don’t forget that once you choose a host, you still have a lot of work to do. Consider fully managed hosting for WordPress to ensure you have all the backups you need, the plugins that make your site run smoothly, and more.

1. Bluehost

Starting their operations in 1996, Bluehost is one of the oldest web hosting companies. Over the years, the company has emerged as a well-known brand associated with web hosting. With a $2.95/ mo. offer, Bluehost also features $200 in free marketing offers. Pros and experts have rated their services 9.8 out of 10 and labeled them as an “Outstanding” hosting company. With Bluehost, slow speed is not even a possibility. They will also provide you with 24/7 customer care service.

2. iPage

Founded back in 1998, almost over 1 million websites are powered by iPage. With $100 credit for Bing & Google AdWords, iPage is ranked as the second most popular web hosting company. Users have rated iPage’s services 9.5 out of 10. With 24/7 customer support service, iPlus will offer 99.9% uptime and 1-click WordPress install. If you are looking for web hosting services, iPlus is another good option for you.

3. HostGator

People have rated HostGator’s services 9.3 out 10. This is one of the most fantastic web hosting service provider companies. Since 2007 to now, HostGator has powered almost 8 million websites. HostGator also offers 40% to 60% off on different hosting services. A 1-click WordPress installation system, 99.9% uptime assurance, high speed and 24/7 customer service make HostGator head and shoulders above the rest.

4.GoDaddy

GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain registrar company. They provide the lightning fast speed, extra secure services, and absolutely error-free, highly integrated WordPress hosting services at a very affordable rate. GoDaddy’s services will also provide you with luxuries like click relocation, daily backups, surplus firewalls, malware protection, DDoS protection and automatic WordPress updates. All these features are enough for you to go for GoDaddy’s services. GoDaddy’s services are rated 8.2 out of 10.

5. SiteGround

SiteGround is another wonderful web hosting company. It will provide you with a load time of 368ms, 99.98% uptime and 24/7 live chat services. SiteGround is an exceptionally solid and stable web facilitating supplier. They also give extremely knowledgeable help.

6. A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting offers the perfect WordPress hosting solutions for your business. They also offer three different fine-tuned and blazing-fast packages. Their Lite package starts at $3.92, the Swift package starts at $4.90, and the Turbo package starts at $9.31. Customers have rated A2 Hosting’s wonderful services 8.4 out of 10. A2 Hosting has a referral program with monetary rewards. The company was founded back in 2002, and now millions of websites are powered by A2 Hosting.

7. HostPapa

HostPapa is famous because of their affordable prices and unique hosting features equipped with renewable green energy. They offer multiple hosting plans and easy-to-use devices that allow amateurs to quickly create a professional website without wasting money. Your site has a lot of space to develop with HostPapa’s ultra quick plans. HostPapa guarantees a 99.9% uptime. They additionally offer a 30-day money back guarantee so you can give their award-winning hosting services at least a chance.

8. DreamHost

For the past 20 years, DreamHost has been making web hosting easy for professionals. They also provide a custom-made dashboard, 1-click WordPress install system, 24/7 customer service, automatic WordPress updates, limitless space, limitless bandwidth and free SSDs, which make your site 200% faster. Almost over 600,000 WordPress blogs and websites are powered by DreamHost. You will not pay a single penny for setup, and you also get a free domain.

9. InMotion Hosting

The InMotion hosting company is another well-known industry brand with consistent performance for business class hosting. With a 5-star ranking and an award-winning technical support service, they have stood head and shoulders above the rest. With 99.9% uptime, they are a user favorite. InMotion Hosting’s WordPress Hosting is highly integrated and created for active bloggers, and it also provides great scalability for your blog’s growth. Now it comes with Free SSL!

10. WP Engine

This luxurious web hosting company provides VIP hosting services for your website and WordPress. Their fast services and highly integrated servers have the capacity to stand against hazardous elements. They will provide you with hacker-proof security, and their highly ethical customer service will make you feel like a king. They will offer you multiple competitive advantages like security updates, daily backups, one-click restore points, automatic caching, top-tier security, one-click staging area, and more. Some of the world’s most exclusive and well-known brands like HTC, FourSquare, SoundCloud, Balsamiq, and many others use WPEngine for their WordPress hosting.

The post The 10 Best Web Hosting Companies of 2019 appeared first on Shane Strong.

Local Search Engine Optimization involves the provision of search results which are relevant to various searchers based on their current location. Local SEO helps to promote your products and services to local customers. It offers varieties of strategies including – ranking your websites on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing Places for Business, online reviews, use of localized content, and on directories such as Yelp, Superpages, Yellowbook, Foursquare and many others. A vast number of customers make use of search engines find the best local businesses in their neighborhood. Making effective use of Local SEO can help you get increased exposure through a listing in the Google Maps section as well as increase your chances of your products being found among the search result by potential customers.

Local SEO Services

Local Search Engine Optimization services features online marketing approach to target potential customers based on their location.  It enables you to place your products and services on different digital marketing platforms and search engines. This will guarantee a growing business in the process. These services are available in vast arrays.
Here are solid Local SEO services that can help to rank your business higher for local search terms.

Title and Meta Tag Description

Title and metatag description are customizable HTML elements that can help you to show your web page contents. These titles and description tags are displayed in search results which is why you need to regard them as “mini-ads”. The generally acceptable character length for title tags is 50 to 60 characters and description tags should be between 160 to 200 characters long. This space must be used wisely and the tag should be catchy to increase traffic. This means that your title tags and description tags must be unique, descriptive, compelling, and impactful. Consider the following tips;

• Do not waste space on page names that does not supply useful information,
• To be able to reach potential local customers include the location of your local business,
• Create keyword from the point of view of your targeted customers to increase your chances of being spotted.

Remember that as soon as you are spotted in search result, you have a high probability of being viewed by your targeted customers.

Use Online Directories and Citations

Enlist your business with respectable local directories online. Such local directories include Merchant Circle, Citysearch and Yelp. Also, search for keywords such as “your city” directories to find the ones at your localities. According to Google, out of five local customers, approximately four make use of search engines to carry out their local business searches. This makes it more important for your business’s name and contact information (NAP) to be on major citation data aggregators including Neustar, Infogroup, Acxiom, and Factual. Also check for errors such as misspellings, lack of suite number, abbreviation and wrong phone number which can reduce your chances of being shown in search results.

Claim and Optimize using Google My Business

You can optimize your local business by claiming your Google My Business page by visiting business.google.com. This involves verification process where you will be sent a Google post Card down to your physical business location. It contains a PIN which will simply allow you log in to verify your business. Such verification processes are very important to ascertain that your business is legitimate and that you are the business owner.

GMB (Google My Business) is a directory and it is very important for local business to claim their GMB page. It is totally free and can give you incredible exposure in your business locally.
Other successful optimization factors for your GMB listing include: writing a solid description of your business, attachment of business hours, specifying type of payment, uploading your business logo and pictures relating to your business. Try as much as possible to populate each section for a complete listing. In addition, there is a page for local businesses named Bing Places for Business and is like Google My Business.

Online Reviews

On local packs, reviews can also factor into higher ranking on search engines. Try to focus on getting reviews on the leading social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. There are a handful of reputable marketing software tool options that can be used to track, get, and as manage reviews such as the Reputation Loop, Trust Pilot, Get Five Star, and Vandasta.
In addition, several social media platforms such as Tiny Torch and Hootsuite can help you to monitor and get alerts whenever your brand or product is mentioned. Whenever you get an alert about such reviews, try as much as possible to respond on time so as show other users that you care about customer’s thoughts.

Local Structured Data Markup

Structured data markup also known as “schema markup” helps to provide search engines with information about your holdings such as your products, offered services, and reviews obtained. This can be appropriately added to your website’s code to provide higher ranking among search results. According to recent survey, about 31 percent of website owners make use of this markup on their website. Therefore, an effective uptake of local structured data markup will enable your local business to stand out among contemporaries.

Google also encourage local structured data markup usage as it allows their spiders to be able to determine what your website is all about. As a result, Google offers reputable structured data testing tools which will enable you to properly check if there is proper markup implementation.

Conclusion:

Implementing these local SEO strategies will enable you to go a long way to top rank your business competitors locally in search engine results and allow your business to grow as anticipated. Get started today!

The post A Deep Dive into Local SEO Tactics appeared first on Shane Strong.

But a common complaint from people who’ve tried it is that working remotely DOESN’T WORK. They try working from home, only to find that the productivity they thought would be all around them has vanished. They don’t get anything done. They mope about. They get a little lonely and decide that maybe traditional office life exists for a reason. This is the inevitable result for a newly mobile worker who doesn’t understand his or her own tendencies. Fortunately, there are ways to make working on the run successful.

1. Make Sure Communication Stays Strong. One of the ways the mobile workers fail is to lose touch with boss or client. This is death to productivity. Whether you are working from your living room or the other side of the world, it’s important to make sure you’re communicating clearly and often. This is especially true if you are overseas or in a different timezone. Nobelcom has some of the world’s best international communication resources, whether you’re calling from England or the United Arab Emirates. Whether you primarily use email, Skype, traditional phone, or any other method, make absolutely sure you keep your people in the loop. Their expectations will help you keep working.
2. Focus on Fun. If you feel yourself wasting time, focus on things that are fun and interesting. If you feel that you’ve taken the time to have an amazing time, your subconscious mind will likely feel like it has to keep up its end of the bargain. This is how it works for a lot of people. Without focusing on our own interests, we feel burned out, cheated out of what we actually want to do.
3. Be Desperate. One of the best ways to stay productive is to make sure that your lifestyle depends on the work that you can accomplish. If you are having fun in the meantime, your hours spent working will have to be productive. People who feel that they are working for a reason (in this case, the funding of a better lifestyle) find that motivation is theirs. People don’t work when they feel they have no reason to work.

Working remotely is a great perk, but you’ve got to make it yours if you want it to last. Freedom isn’t free. Sound familiar? Maybe the office life isn’t for you, but without making yourself productive, you’ll be back there soon enough.

The post Working Remotely and Still Getting Things Accomplished appeared first on Shane Strong.

Have you ever dreamed of taking control over your kids’ Internet activities? Or just imagine how cool it would be if you could be able to make your teamwork even more effective without looking over the shoulders of every employee? Indeed, in today’s world of rapidly developing technologies, spy apps for Android can be a great solution that will enable you to do things like that.

In fact, you may be wowed a lot. Well, that’s OK. Take a deep breath and let’s consider 8 top reasons why more and more people tend to rely on keylogger and sms tracker applications and how these apps can help you solve various issues in your daily life. Here are 8 cases when such a kind of software will take your worries away from you:

1. You want to know more about your kids’ friends and the way the hangout.
2. You would like to know in what way your company’s resources (company-issued mobile phones, Internet, etc.) are used by your employees.
3. You need to boost the productivity and efficiency of your team without annoying your employees too much.
4. You are not sure what sites your kids usually browse on the Web and want to take it under your control without bothering your head.
5. You do not trust your spouse and want to check whether everything is OK.
6. Academic performance of your child is not as good as you want it to be.
7. You want to make sure that the friends of your kids are not involved in taking drugs or alcohol.
8. You would like to minimize the risk of your mobile to be stolen or lost.

All the things listed above can be easily checked with the help of keylogger for Android. Well, there are so many spy apps for Android on the Web. At first glance, they may seem to be all the same. Indeed, they are not. If you want to feel the difference, try HoverWatch. This is the choice of thousands of Android users all over the globe.

The post 8 Top Reasons Why You May Want To Use Free Android Spy appeared first on Shane Strong.

Aurora

HDR photography can be very challenging as it is, but with Aurora the job gets a little bit easier. Some might consider Photoshop as another option, but instead of that Aurora is all-in-one. Whereas Adobe offers several different products that need to be used in compilation to take true mastery to the HDR photography realm. Though for those who still wish to use HDR in Photoshop. Aurora offers a tutorial on how to make the most of HDR photo editing in Photoshop in great detail.

As can be seen in the pictures above, there are several options, features, and settings that can be used to make the best of a photo editing experience and the best of the photo itself.

HDR for Beginners

In addition to the already excellent features of Aurora, educational resources are also offered on the site in the form of user manuals, video tutorials, and more. Within just the video tutorials Aurora offers a UI overview, a video on how to use presets, and another called Interior Photos and Aurora HDR. Those are just a few videos that are offered.

Inspiration

Mostly, at one point or another, photographers find themselves in a rut. A solution is available at the Aurora website, as well. The section of the website offers photos taken by Aurora masters that could inspire you with an idea or two. Perhaps a location to do a shoot at or at least someone from whom you might get ideas from.

Affiliates

The affiliate program offers excellent rates starting at 20% commission and moving upwards with better performance over time. The ads are available in text link and banner ad formats, and daily reporting offered for all of that ads used whether it be on a website, in an email, on a forum, or etc.

The post Aurora HDR Photography appeared first on Shane Strong.

Obtaining good organic ranking in Google is highly significant to any business, no matter the industry or landscape. If your domain has good ranking, then the products or services you provide will receive more traffic and subsequent conversions. Google is home to vast amounts of potential customers – being front and center in front of these customers is the key to generating more business. So, what’s a great stop to help optimize your website? Look no further than Yoast’s SEO plugin for WordPress as your first port of call to optimizing your page. Here are a few reasons why using Yoast is the best option for improving your SEO and Google rankings.

1. When applying Meta information, the Yoast plugin will display a Google search result snippet preview allowing you to see how the content of your page will look when someone searches for it in Google.
2. It has the capacity to get you verified Google Authorship for your domain. This allows you to link content from your page with a Google+ profile, meaning you can promote blog posts or news regarding your company and its products or services.
3. Yoast will rank your SEO rating on a page to page basis from Bad, Poor, Ok, to Good. Subsequently, it will give you advice and recommendations on how to improve pages with a Bad and Poor status, to that of Good. It counts the keyword density, how often your focus keyword is present on the page title, in the Meta description and also within the content on a specific page and/or post.
4. When linked with Google Webmaster tools, it has the capacity to notify search engines automatically once content on your website is published.
5. Yoast will also provide an automatically generated XML sitemap, in where you can list the web pages of your domain – informing Google of your site content and what pages to view for specific information.

We’ve only touched on a few, but Yoast boasts a number of reasons to use it as an SEO plugin for your domain. WordPress domains that utilize Yoast put themselves in the position to gain rankings for their site effectively. Ignoring any chance to improve visibility in search engines for your website could prove costly, driving potential business into the pockets of your competitors.

The post WordPress SEO for Developers – Get the most from Yoast appeared first on Shane Strong.

Think about your questions and what you really want to know. This is important. What you need to do is come up with a series of questions that will engage your audience and help you to understand what it is that will hook them.

It is essential that you set out the clear objectives for the survey and ensure that the results will be acted on. Too many surveys take place and the findings are simply discarded – this is a waste of time for all parties involved, and a wasted opportunity to develop your business.

Once you’ve done your research then think about what you need to know, who you need to ask and the purpose of the survey. This is when you’ll get the opportunity to really uncover what is happening out there in your chosen market. Hopefully you will get some interesting and perhaps enlightening results.

Next you need to pick your partner tool to create your survey. Google Forms is 100% free and offers much more than any other free survey tool. If your emphasis is on aesthetics, check out Typeform, and if you want some intense analytic action, consider Client Heartbeat.

Whichever survey client you use, there are some key tools you should be looking for:

• Survey logic – this is where answers to previous questions will inform which questions are asked next. As an example: If the user answered ‘no’ to ‘do you have any dependent children?’, the survey would skip asking what age the children are.
• Export data – check whether you have to pay extra for this capability.
• Custom logo – some survey clients allow you to swap their default logo for your own, to add personality to your survey.
• Question options – you want some variety here, and most creators will give you options to add multiple choice questions, rating scales and the like. Paid versions may offer an even larger assortment.

Hopefully you now understand the importance of surveys, but also how vital it is that you add maximum input to get the actionable results you’re looking for.

The post Surveys: Are They Worth It? appeared first on Shane Strong.