Website Maintenance is important to maintain the security and integrity of your Marketing Investments
94% of people make the first impression of any brand or business based on the website design. The truth is, that percentage size, being so large, can not and should not be ignored.
Having a website that is set up properly and that looks professional, can be extremely challenging. It is recommended that businesses reach out and find a professional website design company that can create the website and maintain it for your company. In almost all cases, after the website has been launched, this website will always need to be maintained and updated to keep it running at 100%. It is recommended that you keep this in mind while creating a budget for your website.
Website maintenance is one of the most important factors to keep up to date. You always want to make sure that your website is offering the best optimal experience and maintaining a secure and safe website that all customers can trust.
What is Website Support and Maintenance?
Overall, most websites require regular check-ups, and this includes custom WordPress websites. A regular check-up would include, maintaining security, checking site performance and search engine optimization health. Reliable website maintenance is an indispensable element for all websites, but even more for E-commerce businesses.
If you are operating a CMS-Driven website, you will see that your host will constantly update the Core Software necessarily to ensure that their side, is updated so servers run securely. Once the core software is completely updated, any extensions or plugins on the website will need to be updated to stay current and congruent with the core.
To work with all updates and always having your website safe is a must. Creating a schedule that ensures you follow all updates, can save your website from becoming a victim to any security issues, performance issues, and functional issues. Every website has a different approach to marketing, operation, and monthly or daily needs, and so does the business as a whole.
Staying Updated with Software Changes
Different updates impact a website in many different aspects. Updates may come from plugins used for e-commerce purposes or different extensions used, customized or enhanced functionality within web designs or your SEO. There are also always regular updates on internet browsers, search engine algorithm updates, and server-level updates from your web hosting platform that all require stable website maintenance.
Updates can occur automatically and can alter various sides of the website content and correlated digital marketing. Other updates can and may need manual intervention and cross-referencing with your website configuration before completing the update.
How to Keep Your Website Safe and Secure
If your website content needs to pay specific attention to site security and data privacy, you most likely will need assistance and support from a professional website design company. 43% of small businesses fell victim to privacy harm. Cybersecurity is extremely important in order to protect your website from hacks, privacy breaches and automated bot attacks.
Web maintenance agreements ensure that a specialized level of proactive procedures and cybersecurity are executed and avert attackers from obtaining access and producing major destruction to your brand or business.
Data Tracking & Website Analytics
No matter what your main purpose for your website may be, it is safe to say that it creates important customer data that can and will be used to improve your business. Website maintenance will also play a major role in assisting in tracking and make sense of the data monthly so you can apply the data to its full potential for your business.
This data provides doable ideas and recommendations for improving user experience, marketing, and enhancing a variety of web pages. When tracking page clicks, click-through rates, or scroll events, you can observe users’ manners with the use of powerful click-mapping instruments to increase knowledge on how well your website engages with your audience and transforming visitors into customers.
The Best User Experience
Experience is gained by numerous elements within a website. Unexpected functionality or interactions, broken internal or external links, page load times, and broken page layouts completely influence your users’ experience on every single web page. All of these measurements influence your core web vitals score and signals search engines (and humans) to determine the efficiency of your site.
Accessibility is a very essential topic in the web design field in the present day. Staying current with accessibility standards involves regular website maintenance. All websites should abide by worldwide accessibility guidelines to ensure that all site visitors are able to peruse and traverse your site efficiently.
The Importance of WordPress Updates and Maintenance
If your site utilizes WordPress, you will require more specific assistance as there are numerous ways to further enhance and improve a PHP-driven website to produce the outcomes your company will weigh on. With a dedicated WordPress maintenance agreement, personalized plugins and extensions will operate faultlessly and effectively at all times.
Website Maintenance – Do I Require a Website Assistance Agreement?
Specific duties must be completed every single week, each month, each quarter, and as well as yearly. Staying on top of each duty can easily become a full-time position for any business or brand owner to run a successful and properly maintained website for their customers and or clients.
There are various tactics for website maintenance services. Many web designers can customize maintenance plans to match the requirements of a small business.
Maintenance & Updates – Weekly
Weekly, your site should have the most important features checked over. Your web pages need to be able to load with no errors or broken links. Any contact or production forms must operate fully and convey information to the appropriate inbox.
404 Errors must be fixed the same day, if possible, as this can lead to a poor impression with customers trying to use the site and not being able to see all pages that should be offered.
Spam posts or comments on your site must be deleted if they have been included in your content database.
Content such as your business’s blog post and plugins should always be watched for updates that are required.
Maintenance and Updates – Monthly
High-level audits need to be done monthly. Establish what page content needs optimization, which post should be removed off the site, and evaluate any possible keyword cracks to plug in your digital marketing.
You need to be consistent in monitoring many elements including, Social media mentions, Security scans, Page speed and performance, A/B and multivariate testing, Search engine visibility, Usability and accessibility, Checking SSL certificates, Available or recommended security updates, Content Audit, Customer engagement and behaviour, Search engine optimization rankings. These are just some of the cloud-based SEO services or tools that can be easily added to your website by a web designer to signal any problems within your website so that you can effortlessly concentrate on and begin tackling problems before they cause sizable harm to your website and business.
Maintenance and Updates – Quarterly
Every quarter, you should review your website from top to bottom, to make sure you are able to assess the existing site’s data and take into account alterations to the user interface design and enhancements to further enhance your website and search engine visibility.
When examining your content, make sure you review your existing digital marketing and ads for the improvements to make superior use of your keywords and visual design elements. Making slight adjustments to on-page components like web forms and popups can ensue in improved conversion rates.
Maintenance and Updates – Annual
Annual website maintenance is the most time-consuming out of all types of website maintenance. It is very straightforward, but with the aspects of it, you need the time. It requires an evaluation of all site content, keyword strategies, and designs.
While studying content, go through your site and complete a deep audit for grammar, typos, accuracy, and importance as ideas and best practices could have improved since you previously published your data.
Be sure to always ensure that your SSL certificate is renewed and active so that you do not leave your website open to harmful attacks.
Check over your domain name, and make sure that it is renewed before the expiry. Make sure to check over the active email addresses, and that they work so that clients can reach you and eliminated vacant accounts to declutter your server.
Conclusion
Businesses and websites go hand in hand. The truth is, most customers will find out about your business online, by searching Google or other search engines.
Reviews, ratings, comments that are online will always be taken into account, and you want to gain more customers by having a website that allows you to do so. Website maintenance and updates are necessary to keep your website up-to-date, running smoothly, and fully active.
SEO & Google Reviews
What affect does Google Reviews have on your SEO and why?
Technology being created, and transforming into what we have, has changed the way we find businesses, and what they can offer you as the customer. Before technology, we trusted the word of mouth from others. If hearing negative things about a business, that business would not thrive as a business with positive word of mouth would.
Moving on to today, where reviews on businesses still play a major factor, but it is all digitalized. We have gone from asking family and friends, to just a few words being searched in seconds, and having tens to hundreds of reviews on a business, positive or negative in our hands.
What affect do Google Ratings have on my SEO?
As being a customer that trusts other reviews to validate your purchase, you already have half the answer. Google uses the same trust with word-of-mouth marketing. It adds up the quality and quantity of every review to evaluate a search position.
There is really no difference in the objective between users and search engines. Google wants to go through the massive web to give the user the correct information, product, and service in the best and fastest way possible, and this matches our goals as users.
When you enter a search into Google, three main factors will affect the ranking of each site on display. The three factors are Distance, Relevance, and Prominence.
The first two are self-explanatory, Google will present to you the option of service you searched, within your immediate area. Reviews fall into the area of prominence. A business with hundreds of high-rated reviews may be listed before a closer competitor if that competitor has fewer, and fewer positive reviews and ratings.
How big of an Influence Reviews have on SEO?
Reviews have a massive influence on SEO. It is one of the top five major factors in ranking a business online. Every single year, the impact of Google reviews on SEO, increases. This is because more customers yearly, use online reviews and ratings to help with the decision of purchasing items and services.
Google uses Google reviews and Google maps to work together when a customer is searching for a service. An optimized Google listing can help a business increase visibility to customers, grow a viable edge, and boost the ranking on SERPS.
Google looks at the regularity, quantity, quality, and recentness of online reviews. This means that a business that consistently receives a large number of high-rated reviews, they are more likely to be ranked higher from the search engine.
The Job of User-Generated Content
Creating and posting regular content is very important for SEO. Google uses their algorithm to find fresh content to check-over if the website is active, which is the reason that business invest in content marketing.
Staying with a constant and consistent content strategy may not be the easiest. That is where the user-generated content can help out. User-created photos, videos, Q&A, and reviews relating to the product and shared through vast social media pages, can be used as authentic and fresh content for search engines.
With User-generated content, sharing experience, opinions, and advice, the search engine will notice that the business holds a big spot in that market. Search engines pay close attention to what customers have to say, not just the business speaking on itself.
Volume of Reviews
The number of reviews plays a huge role. A business with a ton of positive reviews and high ratings is likely to rank higher on SERPS. Part of the reasoning is based on the reviews all sharing relevant keywords, especially common keywords, that people use in expressing an opinion.
Google removed the use of anonymous Reviews, and many different websites had a downrank as a result of the choice. This proved that google reviews and the volume held, directly affect a website’s ranking and that quality, as well as quantity, plays a favour too.
Online Reputation
All reviews that a business receives, influence the reputation of any brand. A business receiving updated reviews on different platforms is the mainline for SEO. And that always leads to the next question, what happens when you receive a bad review?
The thought that a negative review would affect your ranking and would cause a tumbledown on SERPS, is scary. However, that is not what happens. The Google search engine will verify the authenticity of the review before taking the next step.
One odd review will not cause a loss of position on SERPS. An example is, a review on an experience with a delayed item will not affect the reputation of a business or ranking. Although, a review with credible reports of financial wrongdoings will and can lead to a negative ranking and reputation.
Thus, it is not just the number of reviews, as the nature of the review matters to SEO as well.
Conclusion
Google reviews are important. The impact of google reviews on SEO ranking can not be forgotten. Customers, rely on reviews and ratings from others to ensure the product and business they receive is to standard. Always remember that a large number of positive, and truthful reviews will result in a higher ranking on SERPS.
Digital Marketing – The Most Important Trends for 2021
Digital Marketing in 2021
As we enter the second year of COVID-19 digital marketing has never been more important. While COVID-19 upended business activity all over the world, at Insiteful Solutions, based in Markham, Ontario, we were lucky to be in the position to pivot quickly to help all of our clients restructure their websites and make sure that they all had e-commerce capability for their businesses. As Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts we also made sure our client’s SEO programs were up to date and responsive to worldwide events.
With the complexity and strain that COVID-19 has caused, it can be easy for companies and their marketing teams to forget about the vital role SEOs and the role they play in the success of your business. But now more than ever we are encouraging all of our clients to re-dedicate energy and resources to Search Engine Optimization. Maintaining and building your company’s online presence is the most important aspect of digital marketing in 2021; by positioning your company at the top of the search engine results pages you will save marketing dollars and further your company’s brand.
Successful Search Engine Optimization programs take time and dedication, at Insiteful Solutions we are experts in SEO optimization and have helped hundreds of clients achieve superior rankings across all search engines. Every year the algorithm’s for Google and other search engines evolve and digital marketers have to keep up with these changes. At Insiteful Solutions, we design our SEO strategies based on data-driven results and make sure our clients are always at the forefront of industry trends.
For 2021 these are the main areas we are focusing on for our clients.
Mobile-First Indexing
Without a doubt, mobile-first indexing on Google is the most important thing for digital marketers to focus on. What is mobile-first indexing? Simply, Google has announced that instead of using desktop search engines to rank websites they will instead use a website’s mobile ranking. This is a massive shift in SEO’s, the original change was scheduled to take place in September of 2020 but this change has been moved to March of 2021. If you have an older website then you will 100% need to make sure it is mobile friendly. All new websites we work on are designed to work on mobile phones as well as desktops. If you have an older site and you haven’t made this change (it is estimated nearly 30% of sites aren’t ready for the March 2021 deadline), then your company may be in for a rude awakening. Even if your company is the #1 ranked site on Google for your industry – without a mobile friendly site your ranking could literally plummet overnight. Why is Google Doing This? It is estimated that by 2020 there were 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide, and the forecast for 2021 is that purchases made on mobile phones will exceed $1 trillion. The incredible global reliance on mobile phones has changed the way Google does business.
Local Google Rankings
Google has also made a pledge to improve customer service and part of that is supplying users with localized SEO results. So, if for example, you are in downtown Toronto and you are searching for a florist, Google will automatically send you results based on your geographic location. This means that it is imperative that your company make sure that you are located on Google Maps and that you optimize your listing by including all the basic information for your company (name, address, phone number etc.) making sure to include the keywords related to your business.
User Engagement
Another major change for Google will be how they gauge user engagement. Keywords have been the main way that websites can increase their ranking. In the near future that method of manipulating the algorithm, by repeating keywords over and over again in the content of your website, will no longer work. Instead, the algorithms will be looking for how you engage users to your website. Visitors clicking on embedded videos or clicking to pages within your website can help engage users and have them stay longer, this will help with the new Google SEO algorithm. Having users like, link and share parts of your website content will also assist your digital presence and SEO Google ranking.
Passages
Last October Google made the shift that instead of indexing just pages they would also index passages within the page. Previously in a 20 paragraph page, the 18th or 19th paragraph might not even register for Google’s index. But now Google is searching for more than just keywords, they are looking for meaningful passages where questions are answered and vital information is shared. This means that more attention is going to need to be paid to the written content of your website.
Artificial Intelligence for your SEO
Artificial Intelligence has been around since the 1950s and is a term that actually covers numerous technologies. In a simple definition, Artificial Intelligence allows machines to perform specific tasks on the same level or better than humans. You may not realize it but if you use Siri or Alexa you are using Artificial Intelligence. When you receive recommendations from Amazon or your favourite streaming service that is another form of Artificial Intelligence which evaluates your past activity and then with this data recommends other purchases or programs. In 2021 Artificial Intelligence will continue to influence how users engage with websites and will be used to help serve up answers to queries in the search engine of your website. Artificial Intelligence powered SEO tools will be used by companies to determine and define website content, increase search traffic and manage local and global listings.
Insiteful Solutions is dedicated to helping existing and new clients grow their business and respond to global changes, COVID-19 related or otherwise. If you haven’t prepared your company’s website for Google’s upcoming mobile indexing change we highly recommend you get in touch with us to do this as soon as possible. Insiteful Solutions can help you with all of your Digital Marketing and SEO and website needs – get in touch today so we can get started. 905-947-8235 or you can use our Contact Us Form
