Getting To Grips With Google Search Workshop
The recent workshop "Getting to Grips With Google Search", was held at the 3Mile Coworking Space in Carterton on Wednesday, 11th April 2018.
Dan Broughton from Wairarapa Web Design lead the workshop, talking through the basics, old-school SEO methods, latest search optimisation techniques and how things are changing in the world of search.
Wairarapa Web Design specialise in search optimisation for websites, new and old. Using a wide range of tools and techniques to simplify web content, maximise visibility and delivery to both Google and the pubic, client websites "get found".
Download the SEO checklist to see where to start your search optimisation journey.
In addition, this page offers a range of SEO resources including some of the key ones we use or recommend:
SEO Resources
A few places to start your website audit and upgrade for better SEO:
- Nibbler - a helpful SEO summary of your website, highlighting areas that you might want to improve
- Grader - another website grader, identifying room for improvement
- Google Page Speed Insights - See what's loading fast on your website and what's not
- Google Mobile Test - Check whether your website is delivered well on mobile phones, tablets and other devices
- Submit A URL - Google and Bing both have "submit website" pages
- Google My Business - Sign up, list (or claim) your business NOW!
- Google Analytics - Track users of your website, explore statistics, visitor paths and much more
- AddThis - Make it easy to link to / share your content
- Google's own SEO answers - The basic premise of SEO summarised by Google themselves
- LSI Graph - Automatically generate SEO-friendly keywords
Advanced Optimisation
More search optimisation-focused websites to visit with a more technical bias, but well worth the visit:
- Google Webmaster Tools - Add your website, sitemap and get lots of data about site-search
- Bing Webmaster Tools - As above, but Microsoft's web tools equivalent
- Pingdom - Further web page speed testing with much technical data
- MOZ Open Site Explorer - Explore the inbound links to your site (or your competitor)
- Google Keyword Planner - Optimise your page keywords to help searching customers find you
- Keyword.io - Research keywords for your website with this simple alternative to Google
- Structured Markup Data - Clarify first-hand what page elements "mean" so it's easy for Google to index
- Alexa Site SEO Audit - Find issues that affect rank first-hand from the experts
- ahrefs Site Explorer - Who links to your site and what authority do you have?
- OpenGraph - OpenGraph allows social media (e.g. Facebook) to best present links you share
- Twitter Cards - These allow you to display photos, videos and other media when you post Tweets
- Audience Overlap - Explore 10 sites that share something in common with you and link to them
- AMP - A new technology that allows super-fast, simplified page loading on mobile
Wordpress SEO Resources
Wordpress SEO plugins should be used cautiously as some may interact with other plugins on your website, your theme or security setup:
- Yoast SEO - A great plugin that enables SEO editing and auditing on your site
- All In One SEO Pack - An alternative SEO plugin to Yoast, possibly less features but still effective
- Autoptimize - Automatically minimise the code on your website so it loads faster
- MaxCDN - Load pages faster via a Content Delivery Network
- Broken Link Checker - Find any broken links that exist in your website and fix asap!
- Rel NoFollow Checkbox - Keep all the relevance of links and content for yourself!
Website load-speed is one important factor in web search rankings. As such, don't add so many plugins that it actually undoes your hard work by slowing the website down! It's a fine balance but with some SEO experimentation you'll get there!
Website SEO Review
More search optimisation-related resources that you can grapple with once you've looked at the basic stuff. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch.
For a limited time get in touch for a website free website review. A summary of areas that need attention will be provided at no charge. Or get a full report on your site for $25+GST. Contact us by email or phone 06 379 5566.
Article published Wednesday 11th of April 2018
