the steps to correcting mixed content errors

Mixed Content Issues

November 14, 2019/in SEO /by Dorothy Phillips

The Push for a More Secure Web

Google is forcing websites to be labeled as secure. They are doing this by leveraging the browser – Google Chome, to label non-secure sites directly in the address bar. They are also speaking of making non-secure websites not able to be added to the Google index – which means that a Google Search won’t find your website. This makes one of the most current SEO trends to be insuring a website is fully secure.

Dealing with Mixed Content Errors

As a web developer or an SEO professional one of the things you will inevitably have to deal with is the dreaded mixed content issues. For those still learning, mixed content is what happens when your HTTPS website either requests resources from an HTTP location such as an image, or when that HTTPS website has links on pages pointing to HTTP websites.

I know what you are thinking, “But I installed an SSL”. Well, the SSL certificate does not automatically fix those images being pulled from HTTP when the website is now using the HTTPS protocol. Fixing the issues, for the most part, is not that difficult with the correct access to the backend of the website.

Resolving Mixed Content Errors

There are several ways in which these errors can be resolved. The most common are doing it manually or using a plugin that forces HTTPS on everything. When dealing with a situation where you do not have access to the file system on the server the plugin option is the only option that you may have. Having full access to the file system on the server gives more options other than the plugin route.

Get a FREE SEO Audit on your website INSTANTLYhttps://t.co/O0xh7ECufC

— Dean (@DEAN_Knows_Tech) November 14, 2019

WordPress Plugins

When working with WordPress most people try to limit the number of plugins installed and/or active on the site at any given time. The more plugins you have, the better the chances of some of them being way out of date and creating security vulnerabilities.

If plugins are the only option you have then something like Really Simple SSL may provide all the features you need. It will force all URLs and resources to use the HTTPS protocol. Just know that plugins such as these are not always perfect. There are times where it will resolve 99% of all your HTTP/HTTPS issues. But, it may leave a thing or two untouched and forcing you to do some manual on page fixes.

really simple ssl plugin

Other Plugin Options

Another plugin option that seems to work well but does pose some risk for the inexperienced would be a Find and Replace plugin that can edit the database. One such recommended plugin would be Better Search Replace.

The nice thing about this one is that it has a preview mode where you can test your changes and it will show you how many items will be altered. This is great if you know or think you have around 15 URLs that you know are still going to HTTP addresses.

If you test and the results come back with anything from 15-30ish URLs you can be confident that nothing will break if you commit those changes. I have also found that you can actually find all http:// entries and change every single one to https:// in one clean sweep.

Do I need to say do a backup first? Work smarter, not harder. Keep the rookie mistakes to a minimum and always run a backup of your site before making any modifications.

Manually Correcting Mixed Content Errors

For those who possess Jedi web powers, you may prefer to do things manually and keep that WordPress installation nice and clean. Ok, maybe not “clean” but damn close to it. Using tools like SEMrush or SERPed will give you a report of all the mixed content on the site.

Looking at your report you might see that of the 100 mixed content errors reported, it may be the same 10 or 15 things repeated several times across the website. It may show 100 items but you really only need to fix around 15. This can be done relatively fast, especially when you know or built the website to begin with.

Mixed content errors are not extremely difficult to fix. At times they may be hard to find depending on the theme used for the website. Unfortunately, they are something that has to be addressed in order for your SSL Certificate to fully cover your site.

Your choices are doing the work yourself or outsourcing to someone else. If you decide to do the work yourself make sure you create a backup before you start then take your time and check your work. Don’t forget to clear that cache if you have one.

If you decide to hire outside help make sure they know what they are doing before handing over access to your website. In either case, you should be able to resolve all mixed content errors and secure the website with the SSL Certificate.

The Latest Trends in SEO

November 29, 2018/in SEO /by Dorothy Phillips

What are the latest SEO Trends for 2019?

SEO trends tend to change across time as the Internet continues to develop and come up with new features. Traditional SEO tasks, roles and strategies have all undergone changes in the past and the advent of some new directions for businesses and industries means that there will be considerable changes in SEO services.

Influence of Search Engines

The number of business owners coming to realize the importance of search engine authorship is increasing and author rank is being taken more seriously than before. Search engines are constantly trying to increase the click through rate for high quality content and this has signified an overall reduction in the complete number of search results being accompanied by proper authorship info, thereby leading to more competition among writers to generate good SEO content.

A tiered system is also coming into view next to the search results and the current situation is such that some search results display full authorship details while others are displayed merely with a simple byline. A few factors that continue to determine whether or not authorship snippets are included are the trustworthiness and reputation of the authors, along with the site that publishes the content.

Speculation continues regarding the fact that those who are unable to establish some amount of authority through author rank will slowly turn irrelevant. Though this is yet to happen, it is a strong reminder for marketers and writers to get their authorship set up now prior to reaching that point.

Social Media and Its Growing Power

Brands are slowly coming to terms with the newfound power of social media and the way it affects website traffic referrals and content dissemination. As many sites continue to actively struggle to earn even mediocre rankings in search engines, brands have become increasingly aware of seeing social media as a quicker way to get the content in front of the target audience and raise their website traffic.

New Avenues in Content Marketing

Most experts agree on the fact that it is no longer enough to merely come up with an SEO strategy but you also need to have “content marketing” techniques in place. The term content marketing has slowly started to replace SEO and it is evident that marketers must continue the focus on high quality content guided by solid keyword research based on SEO competition and focus on topical and long-tail targeting. However, the days of choosing some keywords and putting most of the efforts towards becoming the top ranked keyword is over.

There is too much competition in most industries and there is always going to be at least one brand that is doing better and spending a larger budget than you. Therefore, a good and efficient content marketing strategy must seek to build the exposure for several long-tail keywords while, at the same time, raising awareness, credibility, authority, conversion rates and social media awareness.

Every content marketing strategy must have the best and time-tested SEO practices at its foundation, meaning that the SEO practices still remain useful. A technical knowledge of search engine optimization together with corresponding strategic content marketing plan seems to be the new weapon of choice for online marketers.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging has gained a lot of prominence in recent times and both online marketers and SEO professionals understand the value of this strategy for building links, brand authority, credibility along with numerous other advantages.

Guest blogging should not merely comprise a means to get links but should rather focus on contributing excellent content in order to build an audience and reputation. Guest blogging is poised to remain an excellent strategy for building an audience along with a brand as well as a personal thought leadership plan. However, low quality and spammy guest blogging has become redundant and smart marketers are instead attempting to focus on using guest blogging for several other benefits.

SEO Expenses and Increasing Costs

SEO has become more expensive recently due to the increased difficulty in gaining inbound links and creating link-worthy content. Earlier, producing good content was easier since all you needed to do was get write some keyword-rich content, insert a few keyword-rich links to it, and voila!

However, with the increased difficulty in terms of rankings, business owners and marketers have come to realize that they must increase the investment in content creation and link building so as to rank in the search engines. Such large-scale investment in SEO and content creation means that brands need to thoroughly re-evaluate the types of content they are coming up with, and actively keep track of whether or not that content is allowing them to achieve their goals.

How Local SEO Can Impact Your Brick and Mortar Business

February 1, 2018/in SEO /by Dorothy Phillips

SEO aka Search Engine Optimization is a term that in this day and age every local business owner should recognize. If you don’t know, or are scratching your head trying to figure it out the acronym. You need to read this article and, chances are that your website — You do have one, right? — is likely only found if someone types in your URL directly. SEO is the means by which a website is optimized for search and everyday there are literally millions of searches that are performed on Google.

Here are a few quick statistics:

There are over 7.5 billion local searches each month
87% of people who search for a certain type of business are searching for local results and call or visit the business within 24 hours
Implementing local SEO into your marketing plan is 15 to 20 times more cost effective tha compared with traditional SEO in terms of return on investment (ROI).
Previously, local businesses relied primarily on foot traffic and traditional forms of advertising to compete at the local level. However, more and more people are using search engines to find the local businesses around them.
The creation of Google+Local, local SEO has become necessary to put a business on the map (figuratively and on map applications users refer to on their mobile devices).

Different Types of SEO

Even if you already have SEO as a priority for your business, the new ranking factors that define local SEO differ from traditional SEO especially when it comes down to building links. Traditional SEO is having your business (brick and mortar or web based) show up organically in search results. The search could be from a mobile device or from a desktop computer. Traditional SEO has a variety of factors that are looked at, with back links being the most important.

Local SEO is quite different. Local SEO is for bricks and mortar businesses only and uses the business location to show up in relevant search results. Examples would be: best hamburger near me, best Realtor website, printing company, personal injury attorney and so on. You are anticipating seeing local businesses around you. In many instances, the top 3 of these searches pull up in a map — which is called the 3 Pack or Map Pack.

Traditional SEO and Local SEO have very different cost structures – because there are different ranking factors. This article outlines the most important aspects of local SEO services that will optimize your business and most assuredly will increase foot traffic as well as online traffic to your establishment.

Local SEO

SEO local services can even help your bottom line if you don’t have a website by using your Google My Business page along with posting your listing in various directories on the Internet, such as Yelp , Brownbook , Yellowpages – and even the smaller, localized citation sites such as eBusinessPages. These local “links” act as a hub for potential customers to find your business.

LOCAL SEO

The NAP Factor

There are multiple factors that lend themselves to ranking your business in local searches however, the most important part of providing local SEO services comes down to three pieces of information known as NAP which stands for name, address, and phone number.

While providing this basic information may seem like a no-brainer, a recent Constant Contact survey revealed that more than 50 percent of small businesses surveyed knew that there were inaccuracies in their NAP listings, however, 70 percent of the same businesses said they simply did not have enough time to spend on updating their listings across all directories.

Example of Properly Set Up GMB NAP

That is an amazing percentage, especially considering the fact that according to Moz, the number one negative ranking factor on Google is a false business address, and the third negative ranking factor is inaccuracy across directories in NAP information.

Updating your company’s NAP information has become a critical piece to a business’s online ranking and it’s all comes down to consistency and accuracy in your online presence. Which can be a real challenge for humans because we all know that “to err is human.” In today’s world, a simple typo in your business name or the wrong address in a single directory can negatively affect your Google ranking.

It’s not always convenient to stop everything else and take time to update what might seem small changes, but it can be critical when it comes to your customers finding you when they need to.

Update your information:

If your business changes names (even slightly).
If you’ve moved to a new address.
If you’ve changed or added a new phone number or fax line.

Accuracy is critical and keeping this information up to date on on the major internet directories can take some research, patience and time that many business owners just don’t have in today’s fast-paced world of commerce.

Which brings the question: How does a local business owner make sure the NAP information for their business is accurate and consistent across all of these internet directories?

While you can spend your time searching the internet to check each listing, making sure your information is accurate and consistent, many small business owners simply don’t have the time to take on the task. If that is the case then it may be time to find a reliable and professional SEO company. They will do the work for you and scour the internet to find and check each directory your business is listed on to make sure that your information is accurate and consistent.

Information Beyond NAP

Name, address, and phone numbers are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to filling out local directories for your business. Potential customers want to see more information and the more information about your business that can be found in local directories is the more credibility it lends to your company in the eyes of local search engines. Beyond NAP you include as much information as you can including:

Hours of operation
Forms of payment
Prices
General Products and Services
Customer Reviews and testimonials
Link to Website and Social Media
Local Maps and Directions

As a general rule, the more information you include in local directories about your business the better. Not only do customers like to see the most possible information, every piece of information gives your business a slight advantage in your local SEO efforts when compared to other local businesses in your geographical area. Google makes this process simple with its My Business page. This shows the business owner a completion bar which indicates how complete their page’s information is.

Here are some tips to get your local SEO services information to 100%:

Social Media

Compared with traditional SEO algorithms, social media becomes much more important when it pertains to local SEO services. This is because many customers may never see your business website but will find you on whatever social media platforms they might be searching with i.e., Yelp, Facebook, YouTube, etc.

Your first step in providing local SEO services is to claim your Google My Business page, then optimize all of the information on your social media pages to match the information on your My Business page as well as other local directories. This provides customers with all the information they need to find your business and optimizes your local SEO.

Facebook “Likes” and “Retweets” on Twitter will count as a local search ranking factor. This basically means that you will rank higher on local search results the more people you have interacting with your business on social media.

Encourage Customers to Review

get reviews for local SEO

A huge local ranking factor is that of getting reviews from your customers and there are ways to incentiveize your customers to leave those all-important Facebook, Google+, Urbanspoon, Yelp, etc. reviews.

It is no secret that Google favors businesses that are highly reviewed over ones that don’t have enough reviews or even worse have negative reviews. Good reviews from your customers can be the difference between showing up somewhere in the murky middle of local search results and reaching the highly sought after top spot.

If your establishment is needing reviews, there are a variety of ways to encourage customers to leave a review after visiting. Something as simple as putting up a sign asking customers to leave a review could work. Incentives, such as a discount, coupon, or even a shout-out on social media could be enough to generate some reviewers. Assuming you have a great product or service these positive reviews can immediately bolster your local SEO efforts.

Google’s New Hyperlocal Algorithm

A newest development in the local SEO is Google’s hyperlocal “neighborhood algorithm.” While sometimes it may be hard to group businesses into neighborhoods because of unclear boundaries, Google is trying to make local searches more accurate for the people trying to find businesses in their area.

It’s never too early for businesses to jump on this bandwagon and include neighborhood data in their listings. By including specific neighborhood terminology, a business can be ahead of the curve when Google integrates neighborhood data into local SEO and optimizes their existing local SEO efforts at the same time.

Some ways to take advantage of this new hyper-local search are:

Include neighborhood information in your Google My Business page
Add your neighborhood to your website and social media page text
Add your neighborhood to title tags on your website.
Make sure Google Maps has your neighborhood mapped correctly.

While hyperlocal SEO is still being embraced and understood by businesses, it’s important to continue to stay ahead of competing local businesses as it becomes more and more significant for consumers.

The information here was borrowed heavily from the article on DEAN Knows Local SEO For Real Estate Agents

How Much Does #SEO Cost?

April 11, 2017/in SEO /by Dorothy Phillips

How Much Should SEO Cost?

Everyone has either gotten the phone call or e-mail from someone offering affordable SEO services starting at $99 per month! Are these real? Can they really get your website on “Page One Of Google” like they said?

What Is SEO?

#SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. #SEO is having your website rank for specific keywords that your potential customer may be putting into Google. That sounds easy right? Keep in mind, there are ONLY ten places on Page One Of Google for any particular set of keywords. The next time you go to Google and type in a search… pay attention to the number of results. Why? Well, that will show you the number of pages that are trying to rank for the term you just put in. If I put in the search term “real estate SEO” you will see that we have one million six hundred thousands results. How easy do you think it is to be the “first ten”? Well what about page two you ask…

The old joke is “where do you hide a dead body? Page two of Google”

SEO Takes Work

This article will not cover what needs to be done to rank your website on page one of Google… there are millions of search results telling you how to do that– if you don’t believe me, just Google it! To give some explanation of the work involved in ranking a website — here is a Guide to real estate SEO. Real estate SEO is generally much more challenging than most verticals because of the immense amount of competition. To get some idea of your current site’s SEO – Here is a FREE SEO Website Audit.

What we will go into is: Real SEO takes time! There is a ton of work involved including On-Page SEO, which is setting up your website properly including:

H1, H2, H3 Headers
Meta Title
Meta Description
Keyword Density (even if its simply double checking for keyword stuffing)
URL Structure
Internal Links

And that is just scraping the surface. Once the on-page SEO is done, then someone needs to write some high quality, original content. That’s right, every page of your site needs to be custom written and not plagiarized from any other place on the internet. Once all of that NEW copy is written, then someone is going to syndicate that content on social media. That is not just posting the new blog on your personal Facebook page, but somehow figuring out how to have it shared, liked, plus 1’d, tweeted, retweeted, upvoted and everything else that shows its a quality piece of content.

SEO Takes Time

Anyone claiming that they will have you on page one of Google instantly (or even within a month) is either lying to you…or simply running an Google Adwords campaign. It takes months, sometimes even years, to properly rank a site.

How Much Should SEO Cost?

Now that we have somewhat of an understanding of the work involved in SEOing a website. Understanding the work, time and ability that SEO takes, now we can look at the affordability of real SEO. Different SEO agencies provide different levels of SEO with different pricing models.

SEO Pricing is based on a variety of factors:

How much work needs to be done to your existing website
The number of monthly searches for your keywords you want to rank for
How competitive the search is
How strong the competition for the search results are
Domain age and existing domain metrics for your existing website
The going Cost Per Click paid for Adwords for those keywords

Once again, we are just scraping the surface. Needless to say, its easier to rank a website that wants to be found for “Dog Walking in Granbury Tx” than it is for “New York Real Estate”. One search term will have very few searches and very few competing websites. The other search term has thousands of monthly searches and millions of websites fighting to be on page one of Google.

NO ONE can guarantee page one placement on Google for a pre-determined price

Is SEO Affordable?

Affordable SEO is a matter of value. Any digital marketing service, such as search engine optimization, should provide a return on investment. The amount of ROI dictates its affordability. Most businesses are perfectly fine in spending any amount of money, if it provides a consistent return on investment. At the same time, it doesn’t matter how little you spend (yea, we are talking about you $199 per month SEO guru) if you don’t acquire any new business or generate any new revenue.

How Do I Know If My SEO Price Is Affordable?

There are many ways to qualify value in SEO services. Whether your long term business goals are brand recognition, product awareness or bottom line sales, there are may was to measure success. One common way is to compare your SEO Quote to what it would cost to run Google Ads (which ultimately gets you on page one of Google). This is not an direct comparison for a variety of reasons. Some basic reasons are:

When you stop paying the ads go away instantly
Some people skip ALL ads and go to the first “organic search result”

Comparing your SEO Spend to the Google Adwords equivalent costs is a quick way to get an idea if your SEO is Affordable.

When you get a quote for ongoing SEO services, it should include some of the main keywords the SEO company anticipates you ranking for. It should also include the average CPC or Cost Per Click needed to pay for an ad on Google. Simply multiply the number of searches by the Cost Per Click. Keep in mind when looking at comparing organic ranking to paid ads, don’t anticipate getting 100% of all of the clicks — but this process will give some relevance and assign a value for each search term.

The only way you get 100% of the clicks is if you don’t have any ads and rank for all ten positions.

The point here is that you can look at each key-phrase searched in Google and know how much it would cost to show up (in the ads) each time that keyword is searched. Your SEO for those series of keywords has a direct relationship to the amount of the equivalent Google Adwords.

Real SEO Can Be Affordable

Depending on your specific business goals, SEO can be very affordable. SEO has single handily created multi-million dollar, publicly traded companies. Let’s look at real estate SEO, Zillow for instance…They would only be a funny name if they did not beat out everyone else in the extremely competitive world of online real estate.

SEO is all about getting a return on investment. It really doesn’t matter how much it costs.

If every dollar you spend makes you a dollar fifty — spend 100 million!!

Seo, Outsourcing Video Tutorial In Bangla, Outsourcing Bangla Tutorial Lesson 1, Outsourcing Course,

October 2, 2016/5 Comments/in SEO /by Dorothy Phillips

Seo, Outsourcing Video Tutorial In Bangla, Outsourcing Bangla Tutorial Lesson 1, Outsourcing Course,
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bL3KCxTBXOg

How To Dominate The Google Snack Pack & Local SEO

October 1, 2016/11 Comments/in SEO /by Dorothy Phillips

How To Dominate The Google Snack Pack & Local SEO
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Mixed Content Issues

The Push for a More Secure Web