The importance of 301 Permanent Redirects

It’s inevitable. Eventually, some how, for some reason, your pages are going to move or change names. You might reorganize your site structure. You might migrate to a new domain. Or you might just rename a blog name to something snappier for better SEO. Whatever the reason, any time you change a URL, the old link will break and present a 404: Page Not Found error.

Reasons 404 errors are a problem

1. First and foremost, it can be disruptive to your users. Even if you update all of your navigation, they might have bookmarks. Errors appear when visitors click on old bookmarks or emailed links.
2. There may be a plethora of links back to the page you just moved. You may or may not ever know about them. Anyone on the internet can link back to your site (and that’s a very good thing). It could be an old tweet or Facebook post someone will reference years from now.
3. Google’s bots crawl and evaluate those links to see how valuable your site is. Every backlink is a vote in favor of your domain being high quality. However, they ignore and delete any link that leads to a 404.
4. If your page has Pagerank mojo that’s gotten you onto Page 1 of Google a 404 will remove it from Google’s index. Restoring that prestige can be difficult and time consuming.

How to avoid problems with 404s

Luckily there is a way to avoid these calamities when you’ve moved content. It is a 301 Permanent Redirect. (Note: You don’t need to fully understand the different kinds of redirects. Just remember that ONLY a 301 will give you the benefits you seek.) A 301 redirect will redirect all of your users to their desired content at the new location instantly and seamlessly. Don’t worry if the bookmarked link is out-of-date. They arrive at the new location. They won’t even realize they’ve been forwarded. It will also redirect all of Google’s bots so they can continue to crawl and value your content. It signals to Google to update the address they’ve stored in their index. The new page is associated with the old. This carries almost all of your previous SEO link juice with it … almost.

The truth is, the worst thing you can possibly do for SEO is move content. Before you embark on reorganizations or migrations, ensure it’s for a good reason that truly benefits you or your users. If there’s not a really good reason to move content, DON’T. However, if you must, then a 301 redirect will be your best friend. Not sure how to implement 301 redirects or accidentally tarnished your SEO in a migration? Contact us for help!

Metadata Description can increase CTR

What is a metadata description? It’s a blurb about your page that tells a user what it is about, what they will expect to find, or what you want them to do when they arrive. Google often displays Metadata descriptions on the search results page just below your HTML Title. Here’s an example from the homepage of Dijon Marketing today:

Here, we’ve explicitly set the metadata description to read, “Dijon Marketing specializes in digital marketing for registered 501(c)(3) charities – hosting, domain registration, email, web design, SEO, PPC, and more!”

How Metadata Descriptions Impact Search

In doing so, we hope that users who are searching related queries will see this description and want to learn more about the digital marketing offers we have. You’ll notice in this example, the words “Dijon Marketing” are in bold. That’s because the Google query used to pull up this result was “Dijon Marketing.” Google highlights where your query shows up in the results. This additional formatting helps you determine which result is most relevant to you at this exact moment.

If we had searched “domain registration” or “digital marketing for registered 501(c)(3) charities,” these terms might be highlighted in the metadata description. Keyword: might. Something else might happen when you alter the query to test your site’s performance on Google. The metadata description can change entirely. Google reserves the right to interrogate your page and try to find the best blurb it can compared to the user’s exact query. It might grab the first sentence of a paragraph, a heading, or piece together its own description from content on your page. In general, that’s a good thing! It can help people who don’t know your brand yet discover you and click through to your site.

The ultimate goal of the metadata description is to increase the click-through ratio, or CTR, to your site. Calculate CTR by taking the number of times someone clicked on your site divided by the number of times you were shown as a result.

Best Practices for Writing Metadata Descriptions

1. Always manually populate the metadata description. Don’t rely on auto-generated or leave the field blank.
2. Think about the description as an advertisement, an enticement, or a call to action.
3. Place the most important or impactful language towards the front
4. While Google has played with the length of characters they will show (from 160 to 320 back to 160), aim for around 160 characters. If you run on a bit long, Google will truncate you in the display and all that hard work after the “…” will be for naught.
5. That said, a good description is better than a short one, so don’t fuss too much over exact character counts.

Need help identifying the right keywords, verbiage, and content for your metadata description and beyond? Contact us!

Knowledge Tiles: Use Quick Answer to Jump to Page…

It may be difficult for a brand new company or organization to make it to Page 1 of Google results quickly for generic, high-volume search terms. The best thing to do to get there is to write quality content, network your website for high quality backlinks, and wait. However, there is one method that may get you to the top of Page 1, even before organic results, without spending months building authority or spending money or grant dollars on AdWords advertisements. This is known as Quick Answer Knowledge Tiles.

What is a Quick Answer Knowledge Tile?

You might have seen these before without really knowing what they are. It is when Google attempts to answer the users query directly within the search results page, without requiring a click-through to view the content natively. This is probably due to the rise in voice-activated digital assistants. They pull answers to your questions from Google results, when providing you a link would be worthless. Here’s an example below for the query, “How do I write off a charitable donation?”

While authoritative content correlates more often to knowledge tiles, consideration does not require a rank of #1 organically. Google is constantly testing which content works best and shifting around who gets what spot.

Get Highlighted as a Quick Answer

They key here is that you are directly answering a specific question. Make a few pages that address questions or common inquiries around your charities or organizations that users might be searching. Use Keyword Planner or Google Trends to find high volume questions. Then test getting your content into a Knowledge Tile. It’s a departure from your usual content creation activities to think – What will people ask about my areas of expertise? How can I answer them directly and succinctly, in a list format or otherwise?

Give it a try, and see if you leap-frog your competition above organic results on the Google search results page. It can be a big boost, especially if your paid advertisement from a Google Grant appears directly above it. You will quickly own the results page and appear as a trusted expert on the topic. Try it today! How can we help?

The Importance of HTTPS for Charities

Look up at the address bar of your charity website. Does the URL  begin with HTTPS and show a green secure icon? If not, you could be having some serious problems with your website. And they are only going to get worse as time goes on.

The Dangers of No HTTPS

That little “S” on the end of the HTTP stands for “Secure.” If you don’t have one, the connection between your visitors and your servers is vulnerable to a number of attacks. One of your top priorities when asking for donations is to be a good steward of that transaction and data. You wouldn’t share your donor’s credit card number with just anybody. Therefore, you need to be sure your website follows the same ideals.

HTTPS Impact on Google Search Results

Aside from data privacy best practices, Google announced that non-secure websites will start to suffer in their ranking. You may not show up as often in relevant Google searches. That could in turn lead to less traffic on your website. Every new visitor is a new opportunity to spread your message, increase your reach, and get new donors and volunteers. It’s important to keep one eye on SEO as you monitor your websites performance and adhere to current standards.

Conversion Rates without HTTPS

Another thing it could hurt is your conversion rate. Take a look at the image below. This shows what a visitor to your non-secure website will see in the address bar of their Chrome browser.

Would you donate to a site with a warning at the top advising you not to enter credit card details? I wouldn’t. And neither should you.

There are lots of ways to accomplish securing your website on the HTTPS protocol. LetsEncrypt is a free provider of the necessary SSL certificates. If you’re not on HTTPS today, make this a top priority for the immediate future!

Google Search Console Reports

Google recently released a long overdue redesign of their SEO monitoring tool, Google Search Console. In the newly updated interface, reports show a much longer history of data. Knowing how to use that data can assist you in specifying exactly where to spend your energy improving the performance of your site. There are two main reports I use that I will discuss here.

Clicks and Impressions

This report will show you how two metrics. First, how many times you’ve showed up as a potential result in a Google search (Impressions). Second, how many times showing up in the list resulted in a user clicking through to your website (Clicks). The new console will allow up to 16 months of data, as opposed to the previous limit of 90 days. While it’s great to show this trended data over time and see it grow, the data just below the trend lines is even more interesting.

Queries

The queries report shows exactly which words the user entered that resulted in your Impression. If you’re showing at all, that’s a step in the right direction. You can then spend time evaluating your performance on each of the keywords. It might be worth it to create some dedicated content targeting those words since. Google already considers your domain to be an authority on the subject. Creating targeted content can get you onto page one and drive significant traffic to your site.

Pages

The pages report shows exactly which pages of your site are showing up in Google searches. This can be good for two reasons. First, it shows you what your most valuable content is so you can spend your limited hours each day where it will count the most. Second, it might show you that some less-than-desirable pages are being hit most often from organic searches. Quick, fix these pages up! Make them good landing pages with calls to action to drive towards your goals.

If you’re having any trouble getting your Google Search Console set up, or just have some questions on how best to interpret the data you’re seeing, contact us today for an SEO evaluation.

The most basic SEO test

Many people overlook the most basic search engine optimization (SEO) test you can perform on your website. SEO can seem daunting and overwhelming for those new to the topic. They may put it off, or think that it is too time consuming or expensive to tackle the subject. When I teach SEO, I say that SEO is just a couple hundred easy steps. Learning and mastering them all is not easy. That shouldn’t stop you from adding to your skill set over time.

The most basic SEO test you can perform on your website is to google it.

How to Most Effectively Google Yourself

Start by googling the name of your site or organization. Does your domain show on the first page of results? If not, click through a few pages to see if you might be languishing on page 2 or 3. If so, you have a bit of work to do. Are organizations with a similar name outranking you? Or might your social media profiles be outperforming your core website?

Tehnical Issues Uncovered

If your site cannot found, or shows the message, “No information is available for this page,” you might have technical problems with your site. This is most often due to your robots.txt file. The robots.txt file is a directive to search engines about how to best crawl your site. It is very common to set up a robots.txt file that says, “Go away! Don’t index me!” while your site is under construction or on a secondary development server. Many times, developers push that file into production. Its impact goes unnoticed until someone performs that most basic SEO test.

The last thing you can do is a site syntax search. In the Google search bar search for site:yourdomain.com (where yourdomain.com is your domain name). The “site:” syntax restricts Google results to just your domain. That definitely tells you if you have a technical problem with your SEO. If you still don’t come up, or get a no-information error, then investigate your robots.txt file. Look for Disallow: statements that are preventing your site from being found.

You’d be amazed how common this error is. It can make a huge difference once you rectify this error!

If you find your site not being indexed and you need assistance to correct it, contact us today. We can perform a preliminary SEO evaluation of your domain and correct this an other SEO errors.

SEO for Non-Profits

SEO for Non-Profits may seem daunting or overwhelming when you’re just starting out. To be fair, there is a lot that is working against you as a brand new website. Your domain authority quantifies your domain’s reputation. It is primarily calculated based on a measurement of how many backlinks your site has accumulated, and those take time. Not to mention that another factor in domain authority is simply that – age. As a brand new website, you will struggle to rank on Page 1 organically for any competitive terms.

Does that mean you should give up immediately and ignore SEO? No!

As with any digital marketing strategy, SEO will play just one part of raising awareness and conversions on your site. You should be aware of your SEO performance, and look for opportunities to improve. Set a list of targeted phrases you believe would bring you relevant traffic. Then, track your ranking for those phrases. Use these same keywords to inform your keyword strategy. This includes building additional content around certain topics to raise your reputation on search engines. Tools like Google Search Console can help you determine which keywords users were searching when they arrived on your site. You can capitalize on what you’re already ranking for to drive more, engaged traffic to your site.

But that’s the long game. You will grow domain authority over time and start to see more and more organic traffic. But, it will not happen over night. That’s where PPC, or pay-per-click advertising, can help. You can use the same keyword lists that you are monitoring for SEO and bid on them in Google AdWords. If you are a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit, you can even do this free of charge through Google’s Ad Grant program. Bidding on a keyword won’t affect your organic ranking. But, over time you can marry the two strategies to get the most real estate possible on page 1. Then start to drive relevant traffic to your site.

If you’re ready to look at the SEO performance of your site and drive more traffic for free to your non-profit, contact us today!