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Tag: search engine optimization

Why Your Website Page Speed Matters?

 

Website Page Speed — In this age of digital transformation, time is of the essence for all. What considers the best experience for most of the people is being able to do what needs to be done in the quickest time possible. And that holds true for most things, especially on the internet.

Websites these days are not just about design and functionality; it is also about the page loading speed. No matter how well designed and informative your website is, if it takes almost a minute to load a single page, then you are lagging behind your competitor’s websites who loads faster than yours.

There are more to your website loading time than what you’ve probably thought before. Below are the two crucial points that compel website owners like you to optimize your website’s loading time.

It matters to Users.

A website that loads fast leaves a good impression to the users. Aside from that, online users have a growing rate of declining attention span. According to an article of Timothy Egan posted on New York Times online, a survey of media consumption by Microsoft concluded that the average attention span of humans had fallen to eight (8) seconds from twelve (12) in the year 2000.

It is a crucial point showing that as technology improves, the attention span declines. Optimizing your website to meet this emerging user behavior will surely improve its performance.

And it matters to Google too.

Google puts user experience at the core of its technology and business. And what matters to the users, also matters to Google. It is the behavior and preferences of the online users that became the basis of all improvements applied to the search engine.

According to Google, the average loading time of a mobile landing page to fully load all elements is at 22 seconds. However, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load. And that where the problem lies. While most websites take 22 seconds to load, the users’ attention span is only at 8 seconds – at the most.

Below are the critical points Google shared to webmasters.

 

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In the same way, a slow page loading time might affect your website’s search engine ranking. Since Google prioritize user experience, it will not let a slow loading website rank on the first page of Google SERP despite having marvelous content.

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What do you need to do?

To improve your website’s loading time, below are the steps that you need to take to optimize it.

  1. Using the webpagetest.org, check the loading time of every element in your website.
  2. Improve what needs to improve such as:
  • Compress large image and video files
  • Remove unnecessary plugins that slow your website loading time
  1. ALWAYS, depend on a reliable and high-quality web hosting server to make sure that your website loads on an optimal level. Servers are also responsible for loading time of the website, if your server is too old and lacks resources, your website won’t load fast enough.
  2. And you are covering visitors and audiences across the globe, you need to also use Content Delivery Network (CDN) to speed up the delivery of your website’s page loading on areas far from the location of your web hosting server.

Page speed is indeed a crucial part in the success of a website. In this age when human attention span is shorter than the goldfish, the only way website owners need to do to adapt is to optimize their websites from content to loading time according to the behavior of the users.

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iManila is a trusted provider of both web solutions and digital marketing services that surely covers small and medium businesses online marketing needs. Our lines are open 24/7 and our sales executives are available Mondays to Fridays to assist you with your web, IT, and digital marketing queries.

Emails: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Telephone numbers: (02) 490-0000, 01, 03 or at (02) 959-4807

Mobile number: (+63) 917-8476005

 

 

Sources:

  1. wisdekcorp.com
  2. nytimes.com
  3. thinkwithgoogle.com

Mobile-first indexing: Should you worry about your current ranking?

 

From 2015 to 2016, Google has gradually rolled out the Mobilegeddon – a series of updates aimed to index and rank websites that are mobile-friendly. This update prompts most website owners to make sure their websites are responsive to the screen sizes of mobile devices.

With a few things going around the Google SERPs in the past weeks like FRED and other ranking changes, SEO experts have buried again in their desk figuring out what could be done to adapt to these algorithmic changes in the SERP. Until recently, Google confirmed that it is starting to roll out the mobile-first indexing in July.

Mobile-centric Culture

In the past years when the primary device to browse websites are the desktops and laptops, Google crawlers crawl and index websites based on their performance on the desktop. But as the lifestyle of being on-the-go become the new norm, people started to be mobile. The usage of mobile gadgets has increased drastically, especially in terms of personal searches. A year ago, Google announced that 60% of global searches were from mobile devices.

Other vital contributing factors are smartphone cost and internet connectivity. These two supports oxygen to heat up the usage of smartphones. With the continuous evolution of specifications, and rationalization of smartphone and data cost, people are more and more pushed towards mobile.

Mobile-first indexing

To support the increasing activity using mobile, Google has started to be a devout evangelist of better mobile experience. And other evidence of their commitment to this crusade is the release of mobile-first indexing on top of the mobilegeddon in 2015.

Mobile-first indexing is a little different and less disruptive than the mobilegeddon. It aims to prioritized indexing and ranking of websites based on their collective mobile presence. If mobilegeddon prioritized ranking based on mobile-responsiveness, mobile-first focuses on compliance and equivalence.

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Should I get worried about my current ranking?

If you are worried about your current SEO, you might be asking yourself whether that worry is qualified or not, and here’s the answer:

 YES and NO

YES – if you have a mobile version, but don’t deliver as a good as the desktop version

NO – If you are mobile-responsive and delivers valuable content, or with a mobile version that is equally the same with the desktop version.

Another issue that would cross your mind is, will affect my ranking and traffic?

Answer: There might be no great impact on the rankings, but there is in traffic. Remember the premise of having a mobile version which disconnects the user experience when one jumps from desktop to mobile? Well, that one can have a greater impact on traffic.

The bottom-line of mobile-first indexing is to make mobile searches better for all users, and that includes consistent user experience across devices.

Website Credibility Signals You Need to Have

A website is considered the most important online asset for businesses and organizations. But with more than 1.2 billion published websites, how can you tell your target audiences that your website (which represents your business) is credible?

In marketing, despite having a remarkable product or service, if your website doesn’t convey the superiority of your business, then there will be a disconnection between your brand and your market.

To clearly understand the credibility signals online audience look on a website below are the critical factors that you should look out for:

  • Image of the business owner

One of the ultimate trust signals that will give credibility to your website is an image of the owner in about us section of the website. No matter how awkward and uncomfortable for business owners like you, putting your image will boost your website’s credibility.

  • Thorough contact information

One thing is common among online users nowadays – and that is getting the information they need in just a few steps and few clicks. To be able to increase your website’s credibility you should include all contact information that your audience or your market needs to know to reach you. And that is not just putting them on the website, but also making easy for your audience to see it.

related:  Usual Mistakes SMEs Do with Their Website

  • Testimonies

Nothing is more convincing than good words from people who have tried your products or services. People love a recommendation from people that are not part of a business organization. Their recommendations are highly valued as they had a first-hand experience with your brand. Now, putting the most compelling and believable testimonials from your current and past clients will surely help in building your website’s credibility.

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  • Social Links

Another means of validation of the credibility and also the legitimacy of your website is through social links. As the online community gravitates towards socials, they are expecting a consistency in your brand from the web to socials.

  • Web design, Branding and Information Architecture

This one is a big chunk to swallow for beginners as this includes three dimensions that work as one. All three are part of the improving user experience. A good branding yields a comprehensive guideline that can be used to create a remarkable web design.

Also, while doing the design, the information architecture (or the correct arrangement and careful selection of content to be included) of the website is also a crucial factor in giving a better user experience. It is a must that you need to make highly sought information easily accessible to your visitors, and that is part of a good information architecture.

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Bottom-line is, your website is the face of your business online. Making sure that it represents your brand well, and that it looks completely credible is essential in making your online marketing a success.

For inquiries about website revamp, develop and design, you can contact iManila at (02) 490-000. You can also send an email via [email protected] or via [email protected].

FRED: Could this be the initial SEO shake-up of 2017?

Many website masters may have noticed lately that their ranking is gradually diluting, and that their website traffic decreases despite their SEO compliance. Some of them are probably thinking that there is something wrong with their SEO activities, but some had a hint that Google may have released an algorithm update somewhere in the first quarter of the year.

What really happened is that most sites saw 50 percent to 90 percent traffic declines from Google organic search. This was a massive organic ranking drop for these sites. It is somewhat believed that the update was released last March 08, when there has been as a sudden drop in the traffic and even rankings.

And according to some SEO thought-leaders, FRED (which they named the update) targets websites that are low in quality content but heavy on the ads. Other than confirming that it was targeting ad-heavy sites, Google hasn’t said much more about Fred. Since there are no other details about the update, it probably would help most webmasters to focus on their links, including the method of acquiring those links.

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Link building is always about quality over quantity. A few links from embedded within websites with outstanding domain authority are always better than a bucket of weak and spam-y links.

Since Fred has been making a shake-up in the SEO world, one thing appears to be a definite course-of-action for SEO experts and webmasters – to continue creating quality content and earn quality links.

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And in terms of on-page SEO, iManila’s digital marketing team is capable of helping small businesses to start their online presence through Google search engine’s results page. Visit our digital marketing page to know more about the services that we offer. For inquiries, please call (02) 565-4064 or send us an email at [email protected]

Things To Know Before Running an AdWords Text Ad

There will come a day when all businesses in the Philippines will shift online. And as of today, there’s a big chance that a sales executive will knock on your door and tell you, “Ma’am/Sir you need to advertise your business online, it’s the best way for you to get noticed without a big budget.”

What comes after are the feelings of amazement and confusion. Questions like, “Does it really work? Will it really work for my business? Do I need to allot more budget? How will I know if I am getting more from it?”

I am pretty sure that these are the things that you have in mind and you’re probably seeking for someone to guide you in making a decision whether to go or not.

At iManila, we encourage you to go for it. However, we first make sure that our prospective clients know the following things before we actually proceed to do the Google Search Ads for them.

  • First Mandatory: Website

One of the primary goals of a Google Ad is to bring web traffic through web clicks. The ads serve as a portal to bring them to a website of the client. If the client doesn’t have a website, we advise them to consider having one before we proceed with the ads.

A website serves as a primary online contact point of any online searchers to a prospective firm or business. The website must contain all vital information about the business including all contact numbers, email addresses, and physical address. We also highly recommend that the website contains all the offerings be it products or services.

Having a Website is NOT Enough

The website is mandatory but that doesn’t mean that having one is the end of it all. A website should be regularly updated. It should be well-designed and easy to navigate; otherwise, visitors will just bounce off.

The experience visitors have with a website is what matters to Google. If visitors are having a hard finding what they need to see on your website, then that means that the website is not well-made or it lacks content and substance. In return, Google will remove you from ranking high in the Google Search Engine Results Page, and it can also affect your ad rank in Google ads.

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  •  Second Mandatory: Research

We ask our clients if they have an accurate knowledge and sharp business intelligence about their competitors and their industry. This is for them to brief us about their positioning, prices and same with their competitors. If they don’t have one, we do some research to better understand their business and the competition within the industry.

What do we mean by competition?

We do not limit our research to offline must-knows such as location, prices, and their offerings. We also try running some keywords about the business and see if they are doing Google Ads as well. This will help us determine how tight it will get for our prospective clients should they push through with the service. And that’s how we adjust in terms of budget suggestion, keywords and even the landing pages of their ads.

  • Third Mandatory: Landing Page

A landing page is a specific page in the website that serves as a catch basin of incoming traffic from the Google Ads. It is the first page that they will see, hence the importance of having a well-designed and well-written one.

A landing page should be well-made and simple to understand. Moreover, it needs to have one explicit and achievable goal. Goals could be sign-ups, purchases or downloads. These landing pages offer valuable materials that are needed to be a downloaded from a portal going to an e-commerce page to convert them into a client.

What we always tell our clients is: Landing pages should contain a relevant and easy to understand core message. It either instructs to download, persuades to buy or begs for sign-ups.

  • Fourth Mandatory: Budget

Launching an ad means you are willing to pay a certain amount to post the ad. The same goes with Google Ad. It is universal for all ad platforms (both online and traditional) that an ad budget is required.

The difference between Google and other online platforms is that you have the power to dictate what budget works for you, unlike the traditional ones.

Fifth Mandatory: Understanding the Idea of the Bidding Scheme and PPC

Google Ads are created to operate on a specific model which is the pay-per-click type. Pay-per-click or PPC means that the advertiser gets charged for every click. If there are fewer clicks, there will be fewer charges as well. However, if there are a greater number of clicks, the higher is the possibility of spending your maximum allocated budget.

The bidding scheme, on the other hand, pertains to who gets the top spot in the allocated areas on the first page of Google based on the willingness to spend greater amount. However, Google rationalizes their bidding rules by incorporation of a quality score. Those advertisers whose ads obtain a high-quality score gets the spots.

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How to Achieve Better Quality Score?

Quality scores of Google ads are computed using the following elements:

  • Bid – refers to the amount the advertiser is willing to spend
  • Ad Relevance – The resonance of the ad message to the online researchers. It is sometimes evaluated by Click-through rate. Click-through rate is the number of clicks your ad gets over the number of times it was shown by Google.
  • Landing Page experience – The behavior of the visitors as they land on your page. The higher the bounce (quick and unexpected movement of visitors out of the website) rate is considered as bad landing page experience.

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As mentioned from the items above, clients need to make sure that they have everything in their arsenal before actually going for a Google ad – and one of those is having a well-made website with compelling landing pages.

Taking into considerations the ‘mandatories’ above will result in a higher success rate when doing the Google ad.

For further questions and inquiries about the Google Ad or with Website Development and revamp. Contact us at (02) 490-0000 or send us an email at [email protected].

 

 

SMEs Guide: It pays to understand your market online

 

As we all know, marketing is an essential business element from small to large businesses. Marketing is both an art and science because it needs both the critical and the creative part of your brain to be executed well.

Having said that, understanding your audience and how they behave is a crucial element before starting with any marketing activities. And if you are considering digital marketing for this, you need to deepen your understanding by coming up with a buyer persona that specifically and analyze their behavior online.

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Because digital marketing revolves greatly on timing and a strong grasp of the online behavior of your audience or market.  That makes experimentation and open-mindedness as entrepreneurial essentials to utilize digital marketing well.

To give a strong understanding of Filipino audience online, below are quick fact check to help you make your first step in digital marketing:

1) OVERVIEW

Philippne-Digital-Overview

2) TIME INVENTORY

Philippine-Online-users-time-spent

You can see in the data presented above by We are social Singapore, that more than half of the country’s population are the internet and mobile users. That is a strong signal that a large chunk of the country can potentially see your online marketing efforts.

With such staggering statistics, one must be out of his or her mind to not utilize such data to his or her market advantage. Formulate a strategic business plan centered around the searching behavior of your market’s niche and voila, watch your following increase by multiple folds. Your market is online. You just have to do an in-depth analysis of the data and from there craft a marketing concept.

Shift in Online Behavior

The truth is, your audience behave a little different online. They can transform into a different person or they completely became their true selves without holding back, and that affects how they gravitate and consume content online.

Experiment, experiment, experiment!

The best way to approach this behavior is by preparing different personas that could relate to your brand. Dissect these personas and their possible behaviors online and do experiments. Release different sets of content to a single persona and do with the other. Check which content earns a better response per persona and compared it all together. The one that emerged as the best content that attracts the majority of your potential personas is what you need to stick to.

The key to understanding your market is going beyond one’s gut feel. What you need to do is to go again the same process of content experimentation until you get the right formula that your market really likes.

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With the advancement in the world of information technology, the audience behavior continuously evolves that it is hard sometimes for marketers and businesses to keep up.

The process could be a little tedious but the outcomes are very rewarding when done right. Always take in mind that success of your marketing campaign always lie in how well you know your market, especially online.

Google SERP ranking: How long does it take to rank on Page 1?

 

How long does it take to make my website rank on top of Google?

When you’re working for a Digital Marketing agency (imanila.ph), this is the SEO million-dollar question and the most crucial. Do you overpromise? Or try your hardest to not look incompetent in front of the client.

For a million SEO dollars, what is your final answer?

IT DEPENDS! And that’s the truth!

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There is no 100% proven effective method to rank on top of Google SERP in no time – unless you’re cloaking in the dark and doing BLACK SEO, then you ‘might’. What most SEO guys and gurus do is just to follow SEO’s best practices.

In a recent case study published by Ahrefs , only 5.7% of their sampled pages from 2 million random keywords (potentially 20,000,000 unique pages) made it to the 1st page of Google’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page) – and those were the “lucky” ones optimizing for low-volume keywords.

Take note of the words “lucky” and “low-volume”. And the remaining 95%? Not even close.

To put it in a little more perspective, 5.7% of 20,000,000 is 1,140,000. Only 1,140,000 pages will rank in Google’s Page 1 SERP in one calendar year.

Take a moment to let that sink in. We know what you are thinking.

SEO is dead!!

On the contrary, it is very much alive and kicking. As a matter of fact, those who are reaping the benefits of ranking on the first page of Google are experiencing a 5% increase in their web traffic on a monthly basis.

Going back on track, the issues-at-hand discussed that the realities surrounding SEO are more of the duration and domain authority that websites undergo or must obtain before even having a shot of getting on the Page 1 SERP.

So what are the realities that we are looking at? To help us dig into these realities, Ahrefs’ case study analyzed two million random keywords in their database as a sample and analyze their rankings based on the keywords they used, the age of the web pages, and their respective domain ratings.

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Below are their key takeaways:

  • How old are the top-ranking pages?

For starters, Ahrefs identified how old the current top-ranking pages are.

They took 2 million random keywords and pulled data on the Top10 ranking pages for each of them. Which resulted in this graph:

websites-age-of-page-days

For those holding up a #1 spot in Google’s SERP, their average age falls somewhere in between 500 – 950 days or 1.36 to 2.60 years old.

Those at the #10 spot averaged at a peak at 650 days or 1.78 years old.

So the next thing they wanted to know is what percentage of pages at each ranking position were less than 1-year-old:

ahrefs-website-ages-since-publication

percentage-of-young-pages

For the #1 spot, only 1% of the sampled pages or an estimated 200,000 unique pages were less than a year old.

While those lingering at the #10 spot, were just a little above 4% or at least an estimated 800,000 unique pages weren’t even old enough to celebrate their 1st anniversary on the web.

Comparing that to the potential sample of 20,000,000 unique pages, clearly, this doesn’t look too promising, right? The SERP is clearly dominated by “old” pages.

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  • How long does it take for a page to rank?

They tracked the position history of each page for any keyword it’s ranked for. Which resulted in this graph:

ranking-performance-by-DR

Only 5.7% of all studied pages ranked in the Top 10 search results within 1 year for at least 1 keyword.

Pages from websites with a high Domain Rating (DR) performed way better than those with a low DR. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise because Ahrefs’ Domain Rating metric (shows the strength of a website’s backlink profile) correlates well with Google rankings.

They then zoomed into this 5.7 % of “lucky” pages to see how quickly they got from nowhere to the Top10.

The majority of them managed to achieve that in approximately 61 to 182 days.

lucky-pages-by-DR-2

SUMMARY:

We all know how powerful SEO can be in time, but doing it is not a breakthrough that can happen overnight. This study is not definitive, but this shines a huge light into the most common question of clients: How long does it take to make my website rank on top of Google?

Their study clearly shows the following key points:

  • 95% of newly published pages don’t get to the Top 10 results of Google’s 1st page within a year.
  • The top 5.7% SEO performing website who are dubbed as “lucky ones” made it to the 1st page within 2 to 6 months and that’s for low-volume keywords.
  • Domain authority is an undeniable factor in ranking.

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To all hardworking websites who have made it to the first page, good job!

Those who didn’t make it, yet working hard to breakthrough, you are almost there! Don’t stop!

To those who are still thinking whether they’ll invest in SEO, re-evaluate your thoughts.

To those who are still demanding to be on top in no time, wake up! SEO is a persistent project that only gets better over time, especially if you hire one of the best SEO guys in the Philippines to do the job for you.

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Why You Should Have a Website Revamp This 2017

 

Change is inescapable and life fads transform before we actually know it. Yet, the choices we have are… Uhm, no. We have no choices but to cope.  To cope for our own sake.  Like how we choose to cope up with that one powerful thing that consumes our lives – technology. Those technology-based techniques we used three to four years ago are now considered vintage, and as humans who couldn’t afford to be left out of the trends, we should always be on our feet to keep up with the coming changes.

Alright, let’s get to the point. We here at iManila deem to give you an eye-opening tip for your business, and specifically, your website. To cut to the chase, we highly recommend a website revamp for your business this 2017, and here are the reasons why you should definitely do it.

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Your website design is so ancient it could pass as an artifact in the National Museum.

The first time you launched your website ages ago, yeah, you were the cool one. The vivid color scheme, screaming bold typographies, text-heavy first fold, and pop-ups. You certainly lead the game. But not today. Not in this period of minimalism and simplicity. Web visitors prefer seeing clutter-free websites. They need information. You must provide it to them in the easiest way that their eyes could see and their mind could understand. You know the old saying that simplicity is beauty? It applies. So, a website revamp will definitely be ideal.

Your website lacks conversions like an unrequited love.

One of the reasons why websites are created is to be a profitable online medium for businesses. Why spend money if it won’t deliver results, right? So, if you want conversions, think if your website really deserves any. Does it contain high-quality photos? Does it have compelling content? Is it easy to navigate? Whether it’s for brand awareness or leads generation, you have to determine what your website goals are for you to measure conversions.

Your website has to move-on from the desktop era.

Mobile usage increases each day. Even ten-year-olds and people in their sixties are part of the increasing statistics, causing the unstoppable growth of mobile browsing. Given this, you have to go with the trend and make your website mobile-friendly. Getting a website revamp to have a mobile-responsive web design automatically adjusts your website interface from desktop to mobile, viz. Meaning, whatever device you are using, you can still view the site as it is. No need to zoom it in or out just to read the text properly.

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Your website couldn’t even get awards or nominations for the SEO-friendly website of the year.

You have probably encountered the term Search Engine Optimization once in your life. But, have you considered applying this modern marketing tactic for your business? If not yet, you better do so. You can start by redesigning your website first. Good ranking in search engines is a result of a good integration of meta tags, title headers, compelling content, AND great website design. These strategies always work BEST together.

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Revamping your website is not just a luxurious gesture, but more of a necessity. A need. A must. Whatever term you use, you just got to do it for your business, for your market, for you – as it mirrors the quality of your service and products digitally.