Fanatically Digital

Author: steve

  • What your SEO agency doesn’t know can hurt you

    What your SEO agency doesn’t know can hurt you

    No, this isn’t about the competency of your SEO agency. My guess is they’re good; you’ve hired them. 

    This is about communication. The people in your SEO agency are there to help you increase your business by improving the search results among important topic searches. As such, much of the conversation with the agency is about the page copy, headings, title tags, etc. Because site structure does not change too often, the topic is not top of mind. It should be.

    Little Changes Matter in Organic Search

    Over the years we have seen websites suffer significant declines in sales and lead generation because of changes that the companies didn’t think would matter. What seems like a minor change to a developer or site owner can send up a bunch of red flags for an SEO.

    It is not a call for a prohibition on changes. Rather, it is about managing those changes properly and having a chance to weigh the risks vs rewards of making them.

    When Site Changes Go Unmanaged

    Years back, we had a client working on an old version of a CMS. When they decided to come current, they contracted with an off-shore development group. We were unaware of this project.

    The developer looked at the easiest migration path. Two days before the go-live date, the client called to let us know that site may be unavailable during a short period over a couple-of-hours window. This is when they let us know that the updated version would be pushed.

    When we asked if we could look at the staging site, they were assured by the developer that it was unnecessary, that they had “all the SEO considerations addresses.”  

    Not so much. Almost immediately the site began to fall off the SERPs. It took us weeks to get the developers to properly address the issues, but the impact lasted over a year. As a result, the client lost several hundreds of thousands of dollars. The exact amount is hard to pinpoint because we can’t say what would have been. But, multiple 6-figures of lost revenue is a safe bet.

    We had another situation in which the person responsible for the site thought the URLs were “ugly”. And they were. However, the change was made without notifying us, and there were no proper 301s setup. 25% drop in organic traffic almost immediately.

    Search engines, ok, Google, is finicky. When there are changes that aren’t properly managed, Google will happily drop your pages from the SERPs. And, to be fair, they should. It’s scary how much sites depend on search engines. But, that is the reality and we have to manage accordingly.

    Communicate Any Website Changes Early

    When making changes to a website, notify your marketing team, and in particular, your SEO agency as soon as the topic comes up. Early involvement can ensure the impact of the changes can be anticipated and mitigated. 

    Usually, developers are comfortable working with SEO teams. The tension tends to stem from SEO getting involved too late in the game and a bunch of re-work is requested. With introductions made early, all parties can work together for a seamless website change that ultimately improves UX, conversions, and search results.

  • Why do we need server-side tracking for Google Analytics?

    Why do we need server-side tracking for Google Analytics?

    Before we jump into server-side tracking for analytics it is important to understand the state of website tracking up to this point. For simplicity, we are going to use Google Analytics as the tracking tool for this discussion. But, the same ideas apply to virtually every analytics and user tracking tool out there.

    How site tracking has worked – client-side

    Google Analytics tracking code is a bit of javascript that a website adds to the code that is pushed out to the browsers when a page is loaded. Once a page is loaded, several things can happen and all of them are controlled in the browser. This is also referred to as client-side. 

    The tracking code will often tell the browser to create a cookie that is saved to the user’s device. These cookies contain information about the session and browsing activity. No PII is stored, but behaviors and non-identifiable information can be stored. When the user revisits a site or visits other pages on the site, the javascript will access the cookie, retrieve some information from it, and often combine it with the current page load data, then send it to the server. In this case, Google analytics.

    What’s important about this transaction is that the entire process is being controlled by Google Analytics, not the website itself. This is known as a 3rd party cookie. 

    The javascript sends a unique id (stored in the cookie) and the current page being visited to Google Analytics. In the reporting, this shows up as a “page visit.” 

    What is changing? 3rd Party Cookies Being Blocked.

    Because of security concerns, browser developers (Apple with Safari, Google with Chrome, and others) have either already or are in the process of restricting 3rd party cookies. While the well-known and reputable players can be trusted to use the 3rd party cookie tech properly, this does expose users to unscrupulous players as well. Within a year or so (the actual dates get changed), we expect the majority of browsers to block third-party cookies completely.

    How can Analytics Continue? Server Side Tracking with APIs.

    Analytics applications like Google, Facebook, and others have released Server-Side APIs to let site owners send information directly from their servers to the application’s server. This is more complicated to implement than a simple bit of javascript code, but it is the only way to track activity without exposing users to the security risks associated with client-side (browser) tracking technologies.

    What to do with Google Analytics now.

    There are several steps to take now to be ready for the ultimate shut down of 3rd party cookies.

    • Add Google Analytics G4 to your site. It is quite different from Universal, so getting it setup, even with client-side tracking for now, will help you get used to it before it is required. Universal Analytics will not be made to support the API tracking even with Google Tag Manager.
    • Meet with your Dev team ASAP and audit what client-side tracking you are doing. In addition to Google Analytics, virtually all ad platforms use js code to track users and report metrics back to their platforms. Getting a full scope of these is critical.
    • Plan the priority for migrating from client-side to server-side tracking. If you’re like many organizations, there is more work than resources. You’ll want to be sure the must-haves are on the top of your list.
    • Shoot for early implementation on the most critical tools. More the majority of sites, Google Analytics will be high on the list.

    While the heavy lifting will have to be done by the dev team, read enough about Google Analytics to understand the scope and options. GA will have the ability to use Google Tag Manager to some extent. Knowing how this can be used for what you need to track can give you more control and alleviate some of the burdens on the dev team.

    The technology for tracking is changing. 3rd Party Cookies are being phased out. Start planning for Server-Side tracking technology now to be sure you are not caught off guard in a year or so when browsers like Chrome completely block the 3rd party cookies.

  • Website Analytics and Reporting

    I’ve been asked what we use for analytics and tracking. The short answer is Google Analytics (like most everyone.) But, I think a better way to think about it is “how do you use your analytics platform?”, whatever it is. We find that we are creating different implementations for our clients, but every implementation has the same base elements. Below is a general approach to analytics and reporting that we use.

    Core Analytics Platform

    Our go-to platform is Google Analytics (GA). The reasons are both obvious and, perhaps, not so obvious.

    As the most popular website tracking platform, GA is easily integrated with any website. From tracking basic actions like page views, time on site, bounce rate, and sources to easy reporting, GA is great for the basics. It also connects easily with Google Ads, making the sharing of audiences, goals, and key metrics quite easy.

    Custom Audience

    GA provides a hub for creating custom audiences. The most common application is to track and target general site visitors. But, with the custom audience capabilities, we can segment users based on content consumption, self-selected preferences, or any number of attributes. While the scope can be wide, the value comes from knowing what is important for your marketing efforts prior to establishing the audiences.

    External Data

    Importing external data into GA allows us to connect off-site data with on-site usage. The most fundamental data is media spend, impressions, and interactions. Properly set up, we can see fairly nuanced data points as well as a full, 360-degree view of media performance.

    Google Tag Manager

    In addition to GA’s core attributes, Google has also created a great connection with Google Tag Manager(GTM). With a bit of knowledge about the elements of the website, we can easily set up GTM to trigger events and send data back to GA for additional user insights. On-page interactions can be tracked, video interactions measured, and custom dimensions/variables set. Using GTM, we can access page elements, browser variables, or data layers to help trigger events without taking up the developer resources. By combining GTM and GA, digital marketers can gain significant insight into the users.

    But, GTM and GA can also allow us to do much more. With the right combination of 1st party cookies, scripts, and database knowledge, we can create a level of visibility into individual user behavior(without violating PII rules.) How this is implemented depends on the client’s needs and questions to be answered. While not necessarily an easy lift, for some businesses, this is a worthwhile investment.

    Google Data Studio

    While we use GA reporting for some basic management steps, an additional benefit of GA is the integration with Google Data Studio (GDS). From management dashboards to drill-down reporting, GDS allows us to see GA data in unique ways that answer our program-specific questions. 

    G4 Analytics

    Google Released G4 to allow marketers to more easily feed data from different sources into a single container. This allows us to see a broader range of user interactions across different environments. Consider an online lead or sale that results in a longer-term relationship managed through a CRM. For most businesses, the connection between the two is broken. But, with G4, the CRM can continue to send data, maintaining the continuity of information. 

    G4 also sets the stage for the next step in website analytics, server-side tracking. 

    Up to now, and at least through 2022, most website analytics data comes from the users’ browsers. This has been somewhat problematic in that it does require third-party cookies and calls from the browser. With some people blocking the third-party cookies, and indeed some browsers doing so by default, the data has holes. But, there are enough enabled browsers to provide good data for tracking and marketing decisions. That’s going to change.

    In 2023, Google Chrome will block 3rd party cookies. Once this happens, the continuity of data from users’ browsers will disappear. 

    To address this, Google has released a suite of tools to allow websites to use server-side actions to send data to G4. It is through this same paradigm that marketers can think about sending data from virtually any environment to Google Analytics G4. With the right planning, the lifetime actions and attributes of customers can be visible and used to enhance their experience as well as marketing efforts.

  • Google Ads: Another AI/ML Move To More Data-Driven Automation

    As Google continues down the path of AI/ML-driven “everything”, advertisers are left with blind spots. The latest push came when Google announced that last-click attribution will be replaced by data-driven as the default for Google Ads. This, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad. What it means to you depends on your program. 

    One challenge inherent with AI/ML is that it requires consistency with the inputs. And the inputs encompass everything involved: user behavior, your program parameters (budgets, geo, and any setting not fully controlled by an automated part of Google Ads), as well as your website with UX/UI, goal parameters, and more. If there are regular changes to any portion of these, then the system has to relearn what “optimized” is.

    Where we see the biggest challenge is in the area of client-side decisions. If the landing pages are in constant flux or the definition of a goal changes, these throw off the inputs Google uses. Maintaining consistency is a key element in leveraging Google’s automation.

    As we stabilize programs and the AI/ML process maximize Google Ads programs, we must determine what’s next. 

    Optimize what is rather than being able to decide what should be

    Another challenge in the AI/ML-driven world (currently at least) is that, while these are great at doing what you tell them to do, they are not great at figuring out what should be done. 

    When it comes to paid search, sometimes the spark of an idea comes from diving into the data detail. The more Google automates and removes our visibility, the fewer opportunities we have to gain insights based on intuition or have an “ah-ha moment” from some querk in the data.

    This becomes particularly acute when we see what Google is doing with ads. Soon, Google will lock Extended Text Ads and force all new ads to be responsive. Unless there is much more transparency in the Responsive Ads reporting, we will lose visibility into the nuance of copy that drives action. 

    Google will optimize the combination of inputs, but not allow us to “force” inputs in order to see what is actually happening beyond not converting. 

    Are certain phrases leading to more site-search, or navigation to other pages, or are they more likely to simply bounce? What other behavior are we not seeing because we can’t control our copy? What do these behaviors tell us about our understanding of the prospects? The more that is controlled (and hidden) by automation, the less chance we have of understanding why things happen.

    It’s not new

    Years ago we use to build paid search programs that were targeting long-tail searches. In fact, it was one of the strategies that Google Reps encouraged. Then, Google stopped allowing long-tail strategies by designating that the searches had “low volume,” no auction would be created. Not only did this take away a key cost-optimization path, but it also blinded us to the best ways to communicate with prospective customers. 

    But, we still had the query report. While we couldn’t necessarily create ad groups around the queries we saw, we could nuance our ad groups to force them to trigger certain ad groups and not others. In 2020, Google removed a great number of those queries from the SQR under the guise of privacy. They recently reintroduced greater visibility into the search terms as SEMs were fairly vocal about our disappointment in their decision. 

    With each step Google takes to advance automation, we lose some visibility & insight into the users.

  • Google Ads Match Types Lack Meaning

    As Google continues to push its belief that the Google Ads AI is better at aligning search queries to advertisers’ needs than are advertisers, the Google Ads Match type becomes less meaningful. From phrase match to exact match, Google increasingly serves ads for queries that are not aligned with the goals of the advertisers.

    This isn’t to say the queries are not relevant to the general themes of the keywords, but they tend to push the edge of relevance. Google reps will argue that these terms are connected to future sales or conversions. The reality is, most programs have shorter timelines for ROAS than can be attributed to these peripheral queries.

    We’ve always managed programs with deep sets of negative keywords. As Google (and Bing) make match types meaningless, these negative keyword lists become ever more important.

    Shared Negative Keyword Lists

    Google’s shared negative keyword lists make for more efficient management of the negative keywords.

    The way Google Ads aligns search queries, we see ads for one campaign showing for keywords that are in other campaigns. This is true for the expansion of phrase match and exact match as well. While this has been true with broad match keywords all long, we were “safe” with the other match types. Now, not so much.

    So, while each ad group should have a distince set of negative match types, you will need to leverage shared lists for negative keywords. We find that adding all the targeted keywords for a campaign or ad group to a nagative list, you can then share these lists across the other campaigns. This will keep Google (in theory) from showing ads in campaigns or ad groups that you would prefere to go to a defined ad group.

    That sounds familiar, and it is. This technique was used extensively for broadmatch ad groups, and quite a bit for phrase match. But, unfortunately, if you want control of how your ads appear, to which pages you drive users, and how you align offers with ad groups, you need to do this for every campaign, every match type, in your account.

  • Seeing beyond our inner geek. A digital marketers biggest challenge

    Sometimes a flyer with big black letters printed on bright yellow paper stuck in a person’s front door handle is the best marketing tool.marketing flyer

    Okay, I said it. The world doesn’t revolve around digital marketing. Sometimes the best answer is the simplest, most straightforward, non technical approach.

    This is true on the spectrum of marketing. As we roll out digital marketing programs for our clients, there is the temptation (on their part as well, because they are all jazzed up on digital) to chase the shiny objects, newest social media fads, latest photo / video sharing sites, or whatever is out there at the time.

    Time tested, and perhaps altered a bit, methods of digital marketing are no longer sexy, but they are effective. From paid search (which some of us still think is pretty cool) to basic email marketing, all pointed to a creative site with great UX, is often the foundation of a good digital program. It’s not sexy like Facebook or twitter used to be, or instagram or (I hesitate to name channels because “cool” will change before I finish this paragraph), but if you are looking to drive business, then the basics have to be core elements.

    Looking at shiny objects without losing focus on the core contributors

    It’s not a matter of avoiding the shiny objects, but one of managing the resources and measuring the impact. One client (SMARTMD) has implemented a simple yet effective method derived from “The Lean Startup” that:

    1. Clearly identifies the problem and hypothesis for the solution
    2. Sets success criteria (before starting the experiment)
    3. Provides a timeline
    4. Tracks all experiments – successes and failures.

    To allow any testing regime to succeed, organizations need commonly accepted methods of tracking. I am a Google Analytics fan, and use it for simple and complex tracking/ analytics/ reporting, but the key is creating one view of the truth that everyone agrees to before hand. Too often we get caught up in why two methods of measuring don’t show exactly the same results (this could lead to a really long bit on methodology and technology differences) rather that focus on the objective. So, chose one measurement method and stick to it.

    By setting up the analytics and reporting methods, experiments can be executed quickly and either implemented or left behind. This way we get to play with the shiny objects and keep our proven performers in place and managed.

    ps. if you’re interested in those flyers on the image above, you can order them here. 🙂

  • What to do with SEO if You are not an SEO

    We get asked questions about SEO all the time… its what we do, so it makes sense. One of the things that come up from people who do not have the budget for a true SEO program is “what can we do to help our pages rank?”

    Well, one of the biggest things you can do with your site is to not get in the way of the search engines understanding your page content.  Too often we see pages that have very poorly organized content. In some cases, there are many different topics covered on a single page. This prevents search engines from understanding the key content and how it best relates to user searches. Here are a few things you can do to help search engines properly index your page content.

    Focus your topic

    Remember that search engines are trying to associate the user’s queries with the most relevant content. If your page has multiple topics on it, then it becomes less clear that it is associated to any given query.

    Use your H tags properly

    H1, H2s, and H3s, etc are like an outline for your page content. Use these similarly to how you created outlines in grammar school to write an essay. There should be only one H1 tag on a page with the primary topic. The H2 and H3 tags are subtopics. Each should be followed by a paragraph or more of content.

    Yoast SEO Plugin

    For the WordPress users, the Yoast SEO plugin is a great tool to help add Title and Meta descriptions to the page.

    Short Video on Title Tags, H tags and keywords

  • SEO & Digital Marketing For Business to Business

    B2B companies make up the core of our digital marketing clients. Over the years, our B2B clients have recognized that the shift in B2C purchasing is also taking place in B2B. While personal relationships will always be an important part of the B2B landscape, there is a shift to using the internet as a key purchasing & research tool.

    Websites can serve several different purposes for our B2B clients along the sales spectrum:

    1. Lead generation
    2. E-commerce
    3. Sale team support

    For our business to business clients, the websites serve one or all of these objectives. Knowing the role of digital marketing and the websites allows us to guide our clients and provide effective SEO and paid advertising.

    It is best to discuss specific tactics based on the unique situation of our clients. But, here are some of the areas we push on and how it’s helped our clients:

    Improving Domain Authority

    When the search engines rank pages on a website, one of the factors is the quality of the page and website. One (not the only) indicator of the quality is the Domain Authority. This is, in part, a measure of the number and quality of other sites that link to the clients’ site. Whether our clients start with low or mid range Domain Authority (DA), we increase the DA as part of the overall organic site traffic growth.

    To encourage links, we help our clients develop new content and improve the visibility of existing content.

    The adage “build it and they will come” does not apply to websites. Gaining links to your website requires time and effort to connect with other websites to encourage new content or links within existing content. This activity not only takes time to execute, but the impact may take months to be evident.

    In the below case, link building activities were taking place for many months before they started to register, and search results started to reflect this.

    Ultimately, your objective is more business. Through increases in relevant site traffic, more on-site lead generation, or more e-commerce, we demonstrate growth for our clients.

    A word about keyword tracking

    Tracking keywords can be useful and we do it. However, keyword positioning is not the objective. Gaining more business is the objective.

    Users will search for products or services with a large number of permutations of the product names; this is particularly true in B2B.  From differences in the way they refer to a product to use of model numbers or attributes, the way you and your products are found extend way beyond any group of keywords.

    We have clients come to us with strong rankings on keywords and yet the business is not growing. Too much emphasis on keyword rankings and not enough on total performance puts SEO and digital programs at risk of failure. So, while we track keyword rankings, they are not the core focus of our SEO programs.

    Working with a digital agency

    SEO is a long haul opportunity. While any good agency will not lock clients into long term contracts  (we have 30-day outs), there should be an expectation that SEO activities may not bear fruit for more than 6 months. While we all like the quick hits, gaining and retaining organic search traffic take time.  To help your agency help you, you can do the following:

    1. Maintain your core goals. SEO is cumulative. If you change your focus, you often reset to the baseline. Seek the long term objectives.
    2. Expect ups and downs. Search engines change, competition changes, so your results change too.
    3. Focus on results above keyword rankings. De-emphasizing keyword rankings may seem odd for an SEO, but strong results come from overall site health and improvement, not just a few keywords.

    If you are interested in talking with us about your SEO or digital marketing program, please fill out the form or give us a call.

  • Google Exact Match Changes: Review Your Search Terms Reports

    Google Ads, (AdWords) has become a mainstay of most advertising programs, and certainly of most digital advertising programs. Let’s face it, it’s pretty easy to light up a new campaign. But, it’s not so easy to do it well. Then, once running, there are a lot of actions to make a paid search program run well. Chief among these is the search query analysis using the Search Terms Report.

    A little background for those unfamiliar with query data.

    When you bid on keywords, Google will decide if a user really meant something close to the keyword on which you bid. It used to be that you could say “match only exact queries.” But that option is gone. You can say “exact”, but Google will decide “how exact” you really mean. So, your ads appear for queries that are different than the target keywords on which you bid.

    This has always been true for broad (modified or standard) and phrase match bids. But the changes to how Google interprets exact match have moved it to a vague area.

    The query report shows the queries for which Google has shown your ad. These may look nothing like your target keywords. The times that you can isolate your terms based on exact match are gone, not even close anymore. Use the Google Search Terms report (in the keyword area of the UI) to see the queries for which your ad was shown. This also shows you the target keyword, ad group, and campaign associated with the query.

    How To Use The Search Terms Reports

    Getting the Search Term Data

    We find it best to pull the search terms data into a spreadsheet. You can download the reports in the Google Ads interface, or (as we do) connect to Google Ads via api and pull the data automatically.

    Google Ads Search Term Report nav

    If you have conversion data feeding back to Google Ads, be sure this is part of your data set.

    Before you dive too deep

    The first step is a quick review of the report. The purpose is to determine if Google Ads is showing your exact match keywords for a whole lot of non-exact queries. Ultimately, you should consider revamping the account campaigns to adjust for the changes in exact match. A review of this report will tell you if that change should happen sooner rather than later.

    If there are many queries that are different from the exact keyword, you will spend a lot of time managing the changes based on the Search Term report. If this is the case, you may want to jump to restructuring your campaigns now; essentially pushing everything to number three below.
    If you’re one of the fortunate people who have a lot of time, you should probably do #3 now anyway.

    Using the Search Term Report

    Reviewing the user queries should be a regular practice in managing your campaigns. The actions apply to all ad groups, and now, all match types.

    There are three basic decisions to make when reviewing the Search Terms(query) report:
    Add a query term as a negative match
    Add a query term as a new target keyword to the ad group
    Create a new ad group, or campaign structure

    Negative match

    If you add queries as negative keywords, look beyond the ad group that generated the query. It may be applicable to other ad groups or the broader campaigns. No sense restricting it in one ad group only to have Google Ads decide to show your ad from another campaign anyway.

    Add the query term

    There is a tendency for some campaign managers to throw everything from the Search Terms report that is relevant to the ad group into the keywords. This has a couple of issues.

    First, it leads to keyword bloat. Having hundreds of keywords in an ad group dilutes it’s relevance to any one term. Be sure only keywords that are tightly aligned with the core message are in the ad group.

    Second, Google has a “low search volume” designation that is applied to keywords that have few searches. The days of bidding on the hyper-long tail are gone; Google will simply not even create an auction for these keywords. Instead, Google uses its AI to decide if your ad should appear for the long search terms. Putting everything in an ad group simply clutters it with terms that never see the search results.

    Create a new ad group or campaign

    If you see a lot of search terms that truly deserve to be directly managed, pulled these from the report and develop new campaigns or ad groups just as if you were starting a new program. Build a solid campaign structure around these new terms, even if it is just one ad group.

    The change to Google’s Exact match policy has taken some level of control away from search marketers. But, with proper use of the Search Term report, you can effectively create an “exact” match ad group by building out a strong negative match list.

  • WordPress and SEO: Its more complicated than you think

    Over the past ten years, the cost of launching and keeping a site has decreased considerably. You can easily find hosting plans for less than $10/ month. With WordPress, you can update your site real-time, adding and editing content as frequently as you want. To the casual observer, this is great. To those in the industry, this creates significant problems.

    For search engine optimization (SEO), search engines score sites on a few broad criteria, each with a host of nuances. While many hosting plans make it easy to create a website, they also make it too easy to mess up on the core SEO criteria.

    Site Speed

    Storage and bandwidth are cheap. Quality storage and bandwidth are no so cheap.

    In shared hosting environments, your site is hosted in such a way that what happens on other sites can affect what happens on your site. The bandwidth is shared. The processors are shared. The ability to respond to requests (page requests) is shared. This leads to variability and even degradation is site speed/performance.

    Google has made it clear that site speed is a key metric for rankings. The ability to launch a site quickly now can lead to poor performance later. You are better off looking for quality hosting vs cheap hosting.

    In speed testing, we see the server first response lacking in sites. Often, these sites are in shared hosting environments.

    Page structure

    One of the most challenging aspects of managing a site is ensuring the page structure aligns with the way search engines look at content. There are few key areas that we see regularly messed up. The use of key phrases in the Title tag and a well-organized H tag structure helps the search engines understand your page content. This is often lacking.

    We have seen sites completely devoid of these tags. We have also seen the use of the H1 tag multiple times on a page because the person creating the page liked the way the H1 tag was styled. Either way, this messes with the search engines’ ability to understand your content.

    Page size

    Related to page speed, the amount of data being transferred to the user’s browser directly affects the page load speed. The biggest offenders in this area are usually images. Unoptimized images top the list of issues for most speed tests.

    WordPress has some plugins to reduce the image size. But, they can only do so much when a 4600×2200 10MB image is loaded into the library. The inputs have to be optimized in dimension and size to ensure the best possible performance.

    Site bloat

    For established sites, old files can clutter the system. Five years of weekly backups, unused themes, unused images, deactivated plugins, and other stray files can create huge sites, with no benefit to the user. Left unchecked, this bloat can cause performance issues and make the site difficult to manage.

    Most hosting packages, especially “cheap” plans, provide no site management. This leaves it up to the site owner to review the files, removed what is not used, and ensure the file structure is clean. Most users can’t do this.

    Failure To Update

    WordPress is extremely popular. This popularity makes it a favorite target for hackers. WordPress.org does a good job of patching issues, identifying vulnerabilities and trying to keep problems at bay. This is great when you keep your site updated.

    The challenge comes with site owners who don’t update their WordPress installation or fail to keep the plugins updated. These failures allow malware and viruses into the site.

    Once Google detects this malware, your pages are flagged in the search results, or sometimes dropped. If you don’t use Google Search Console or search for your site often, you may not know this happens. You may notice lower traffic or lead flow, however.

    Get the most from your website

    To ensure your investment in your website has maximum benefit and is in the best shape for your SEO efforts do two things:

    1. Pay for good hosting. They are not all equal.
    2. Hire a webmaster or agency that will maintain the site properly. It really is more complicated than it seems.