Tag: SEO

How much is your peace of mind?

August 7, 2019
iManila Dev
iNews, Our Ideas

It was a hectic Monday, and your office is in chaos preparing for the weekly management meeting– when suddenly a noisy commotion grows in a corner as your employees are starting to break in panic.

“No inbound leads have come in!” an assistant, cried in.

Everyone’s on their toes trying to find out why, only to realize that the culprit is your server, as it crashed and failed to load your website, thus making it inaccessible for a couple of hours now, and still counting.

The sad thing is, this is the third time that this has happened just this month alone, and it’s starting to take a toll on your revenue.

What to do?

This scenario is probably one of the main stressors for most companies relying on their online channels to generate business.

The one-million-dollar question here is, “is it worth it to get stressed over this kind of issue time and time again?”

Our answer is NO.

You can always rely on reputable companies who can do it for you.

As one of the most trusted full-service digital marketing agencies in the country, iManila is the go-to provider of brands and companies here and abroad for the following services:

Hosting

Our hosting solutions are engineered for powerful and reliable performance online. From shared and dedicated hosting to SSL certificates and web security and backup, you can count on our solutions to provide 99.5% uptime and availability.

Web Design and Development

Our mission is to turn beautiful designs into useful and functional websites that represent your business in the best way possible. With a pool of expert designers and developers, we are very much capable of producing well-designed and functional websites from informational websites, to e-commerce sites with various functionalities.

Web System and Applications Development

A website is not just the only thing that businesses need these days. Reach your market through web and mobile applications by transforming your business to carry out automated processes and operations to improve productivity and profit.

Digital Marketing

Today’s online information age is unstoppable and is accelerating faster than anyone can anticipate. With social media networks and search engines rising as key getaways of the information highway, marketers are rapidly shifting from offline to online to reach their customers.

With the combination of both organic effort and paid advertising, you can surely interact with your audience in real-time. To add, digital marketing provides measurable results which can surely empower you to make wise business decisions when it comes to optimizing your campaigns and achieving your company’s goals.

Tech Support Services

Get 24/7 support from our fully-equipped, highly-knowledgeable technical staff! With over a million man-hours of experience, our technical support specialists can solve and troubleshoot all hardware and software issues of your business.

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Let iManila give you the peace of mind that you need. To know more about our services, call us at +632 4900000 or send us an email at [email protected].

Improving your Website’s Bounce Rate and Average Time on Page

June 19, 2019
iManila Dev
iNews, Our Ideas

Great news! Your website is up and you’re already seeing a lot of traffic coming in. But wait, why isn’t there any engaged and invested visitors on your website?

It seems that there are more exits than those who are staying and browsing through. Well, there might be a few analytic components that you are overlooking. Truth is, most businesses are experiencing those same problems on their website, where sadly, bounce rate triumphs average time spent on your page.

The good news is, we’re here to help you! Here are a few tips and ways on how you can improve your website’s bounce rate and average time on page performance.

Work on your website’s structural issues

If you are having trouble with your high bounce rate metrics, it is ideal for you to try and put yourself from a visitor’s perspective. Make sure that there aren’t any errors like 404 pages on your website, and that all your pages load successfully without any image errors.

Improve readability of your pages

When creating a website, one of the most important things that you should look out for is your choice of font. It should be clear and readable. Avoid using dramatic or heavily stylized fonts that can be too hard to read. As your primary digital asset, your website should also feature relevant, informative and engaging content to help build your brand’s credibility.

Build trust and credibility

Adding testimonials and photos of people such as your team or customers can make your website appear a lot more trustworthy. Badges, awards, and certifications can help boost your website’s credibility even more. It makes visitors comfortable to engage on your website and establish a sense of security that they are dealing with the right people to potentially, conduct business with.

Make sure your website is easy to navigate and that CTAs are easily found

Improving your website’s bounce rate and average time on page will ultimately affect your SEO positively. Thus, you have to prioritize on enhancing the UI (User Interface) and UX (User eXperience) of your website. Take note that having a UX/UI-focused landing page will enable your website to captivate your website visitors and ensure that they will engage in what you have in store for them.

To learn more, contact us at +632 490 0000 or visit our website at https://imanila.ph/.

SEO and SEM: The Perfect Online Marketing Tandem

June 11, 2019
iManila Dev
iNews, Our Ideas

The continuous rise of mobile and online users all over the world has definitely led to more and more companies venturing into digital marketing.

With its fast-paced growth comes constant (and sometimes abrupt) changes in algorithms and features, in which most business owners can’t help but be lost in a sea of digital platforms, strategies, and skills required to run an effective marketing campaign.

Among the most important aspects of digital marketing is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

While these two generally share the same goal of directing visitors to your website, it is essential to note the differences in running each type of campaigns.

To walk you through SEO and SEM, here are some basic insights to differentiate the two:

While there are identifiable differences between the two, companies, especially those with new websites are highly advised to do both at the same time. Running an integrated SEO and SEM campaign provides businesses an opportunity to build visibility and direct traffic to their website faster and more efficiently, which can later on, potentially generate more sales or conversions.

Need a hand in running SEO and SEM campaigns?

Let iManila be your partner in running effective SEO and SEM strategies for your brand. As one of the leading full-service web and digital marketing agencies in the Philippines, iManila has successfully delivered and is continuously running effective SEO-SEM campaigns for both local and international clients, and has, in the process, received the prestigious Google Partner badge.

To learn more about our digital marketing services, contact us through our website at www.imanila.ph.

Website Must-Haves: How to Reach your Full Potential Online

August 31, 2018
iManila Dev
Our Ideas

You can’t deny that modern technology has affected the way companies do business. Today, most successful businesses have grasped the importance of having an online presence. While a website is good place to start, it is not enough, and you definitely shouldn’t stop there.

To help you out, here are some factors that you should be keeping an eye on to make sure that your business will thrive in the digital age.

Site Security

Imagine that your website is your house. Now, you don’t want intruders easily accessing and coming into your house, right? So you put up a gate and filter what comes in and out of your house. That is precisely what an SSL Certificate does. SSL or Security Sockets Layer is the standard security technology that functions to establish an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. The link ensures that all the data or sensitive information that have been submitted or collected through the web server and the browser will remain private, confidential, and secure. You have to keep in mind that security builds credibility among your website visitors, thus, making your business look more legitimate and trustworthy. It is best that you secure your website by purchasing an SSL certificate from an authorized provider.

Better Google Ranking through Paid Ads

Aside from frequently uploading relevant content on your website, another factor that Google uses to help your website rank is PAID ADS. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) plays a vital role to reach a wider audience, drive more traffic to your website, and can potentially generate leads. The catch is making sure that your ads are relevant to your target audience. Google’s algorithm pushes your ads to users who are more likely to engage with it. Meaning, your ad should target a specific need of your audience so they will really click on it. Make sure you use the right keywords so you also reach the right audience.

Digital User Experience

Is your website user-friendly? Does it take less than a second to load? If yes, then great job on providing users with a good digital experience! Forbes defines ‘digital user experience’ as something that encompasses all aspects of person’s interaction with your website, including behavior, actions taken, perceptions, and satisfaction. However, if you are experiencing high bounce rate because your site is taking too long to load, then there might be a problem with your web host. On average, a user will leave your site if it takes more than 10-20 seconds to load. A good hosting provider will help you beat that time and successfully retain your audience.

Going digital has opened so many opportunities for businesses to reach their full potential. It’s important that you invest in the right marketing tools and strategies to keep your online presence afloat. Now it’s all up to you. Will you just wait in vain while your competitors surpass you, or will you take the leap and go digital today?

Partner with a reliable digital marketing agency to cater to all your digital requirements. Here at iManila, we provide services that will help your business succeed in the digital world. We offer Web and App Development, Digital Marketing, Hosting Services, and 24/7 Technical Support. For inquiries, visit our Contact Us page or get in touch with our team at (02) 490 0000 or (+63) 917 845 6005.

Why Your Website Page Speed Matters?

September 8, 2017
iManila Dev
Our Ideas

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.

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.

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.

Using the webpagetest.org, check the loading time of every element in your website.
Improve what needs to improve such as:

Compress large image and video files
Remove unnecessary plugins that slow your website loading time

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.
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:

wisdekcorp.com
nytimes.com
thinkwithgoogle.com

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

July 6, 2017
iManila Dev
iNews, Our Ideas

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.

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

June 6, 2017
iManila Dev
Our Ideas

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.

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.

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?

May 31, 2017
iManila Dev
Our Ideas

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.

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]

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

February 13, 2017
iManila Dev
iNews, Our Ideas

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!

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 1^st 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.

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:

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:

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 1^st 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.

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:

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.

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 1^st page within a year.
The top 5.7% SEO performing website who are dubbed as “lucky ones” made it to the 1^st page within 2 to 6 months and that’s for low-volume keywords.
Domain authority is an undeniable factor in ranking.

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.

Source:

Ahrefs blog