How to improve Google page speed score

We live in impatient times. Deadlines are set for yesterday and success and gratification has to be instant. In such an age, it’s vital for you to make sure people don’t need to wait long while the pages of your website load. This is because web page speed plays a crucial role in the success of your digital campaign. Below are some facts that will shed light on how important web page speed is.

1. A delay of one second in your site speed can result in a 7% reduction in conversions/enquiries
2. 40% of your website visitors will abandon your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load
3. The ideal time for your website to load is immediate but the ceiling is set at 2 seconds.

Well, now that how important web page speed is put to bed, let’s talk about how we can fix it.

Your first step should be to figure how fast the pages of your website are loading. To accomplish this, you can use Google Web Page Speed Tool. The tool provides a web page speed report and also gives suggestions on how to improve the page speed. Your Page Speed Score ranges from 0 to 100 points for mobile and desktop. A score of 85 and above is considered healthy and tells you that the pages are loading just in time.

Now, let’s delve a little deeper.

The Google Web Page Speed Insight tool provides a report that has three types of messages: red exclamation point, yellow exclamation point and green check mark. Here’s what they mean.

1. A red exclamation point means that fixing the problem will have a measurable impact on page performance
2. A yellow exclamation point means that you should consider fixing the problem if it’s not a lot of work
3. A green check mark means things are fine

Below are Important Parameters of web page speed and ways to improvise it.

Enable compression / minify CSS / Optimize images
When you run the Insight Test on Google Web Page Tool it offers optimized images, JS and CSS resources in the report. Download and replace the existing images, JS and CSS.

Leverage browser caching
To set the expiration date to various files you need to add the below code in the. httaccess file:
## EXPIRES CACHING ##
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/png "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/pdf "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 year"
ExpiresDefault "access 2 days"
## EXPIRES CACHING ##

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/text text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript

Avoid landing page redirects
Having too many redirects causes significant performance and speed issues. It’s recommended that you restrict your use of redirects to only those cases where it is absolutely technically necessary. You can check for redirects on your pages by using the redirect mapper tool.

Optimize CSS Delivery
For your webpage to load faster its preferable to have a single CSS File. The reasoning is quite straightforward. The more the number of files, the more time the webpage will take to load. However, if you do have more than one CSS file, you need not worry. Just go ahead and combine all your CSS files into a single file. And, to figure out how many CSS files you have, use the CSS Delivery Tool.

Best way to choose keywords for seo

If search engines brought your consumer to your city, SEO brought them to your neighbourhood. However, nobody wants their consumer loitering in the neighbourhood. You want your consumer right at your doorstep, ready to talk shop with you. Achieving this last stage depends on how good your SEO is. The success of any good SEO depends on keywords. If you get the keyword combination right, you’re very easily traceable on a search engine. Which means your phone is just about to ring.

So, how do you get these keywords right? Selection of keywords is something that depends on your objective. Broadly speaking there are three objectives consumers and organisations have. They are:

1. Traffic Generation
2. Enquiry Generation
3. Brand Awareness/Brand Engagement
 

Traffic Generation
If you want a lot of people to visit your website, you are looking for traffic generation. In this scenario, you require keywords that have huge tracking volumes. However, you have to be careful not to include too competitive keywords as these are difficult to rank and take a lot of time. Let’s say, you’re selling popcorn. If you want people to find you, don’t choose the keyword popcorn alone. Add cheese to it as well. Now, if somebody is looking for cheese popcorn, the person/organisation can find you.

Enquiry Generation 
If you’re looking to generate enquiries, then you need to add some more specificity to your keyword bank. In such a case, keywords have to match your needs even if volumes are low. Let’s say, you’re looking to generate enquiries for your popcorn brand, you should also add the cost for a tub of your popcorn.

Brand Awareness/Brand Engagement
If you’re looking to create brand awareness or engage your consumers, you should shortlist keywords related to your brand. So, if your brand promise is ‘popcorn that melts in your mouth’, you can use keywords such as Word of caution: go for keywords only if your brand has a good presence online and offline because if you your brand is not present in both media, searches will lead to a dead end, something that will end up being counterproductive.

Keyword Tool
The next step is selecting the right Keyword Tool for keyword research. It’s a good idea to go for Google Keyword Tool as it offers a huge database, gives you keyword ideas and also doesn’t charge you. Other Popular Keyword tools are SEM Rush, Moz, KWfinder, Long tail Pro, and ubersuggest.

SEO Domain Migration

In some cases, organisations may need to migrate their old website (old domain) to a new website (new domain). This process of seo domain migration can result in loss of organic traffic to the website. As organic traffic is a critical factor in the success of any website, it is imperative that it be unaffected. We have enlisted below certain steps that can be undertaken to ensure that the organic traffic keeps flowing just like before.

SEO domain migration phase before launching your New website

Meta Tags
Migrate the Meta Tags form the old webpages to the corresponding new webpages. In case any webpage is missing Meta Tags in the new domain, then create new Meta Tags for the same.

Google Analytics Tracking Code
While migrating to the new domain do check if the Google Analytics Code has been inserted in the new website.

Broken Links
Once the website is live you can use XENU Broken Links tool to check if there are any Broken Links in your website. If you come across any, do make the necessary changes.

H1 – H6 Tags
Check if all the necessary H1 – H6 Tags are present on all the webpages.

Canonical URL
Google Treats www and non-www version as different websites, so make sure you redirect to one of the version using .htaccess file. Also, add relevant Canonical Meta Tags in all web pages.

301 Redirects
Redirect old webpages to corresponding new webpages using .htaccess file.

Mobile-friendly
With more and more users using smartphones to surf, it’s crucial that you have a  Mobile- friendly website. You can use the Mobile Friendly Tool to test your website.

404 Error Page
“Error 404 - Page not found!” is the error page displayed whenever someone surfs for a webpage that’s simply not available on your website. In that case, you can create a 404 error web page and redirect the user to home page.

SEO domain migration phase post launch your new website.

Google Webmaster
Inform Google that you have shifted your business website domain.
Follow the below-listed process.

1. Sign-in into Google Webmaster Tool
2. Go to the Search Console
3. Create a Profile for your New Domain
4. Now select the Old Domain
5. Click on the Settings Tab in Old Domain Tab (wheel icon on upper right hand side)
6. Click Change of Address
7. Submit it to Google

Sitemap.xml
After the website is live, create a sitemap.xml file using xml generator and upload on the root folder i.e. www.newdomain.com/sitemap.xml
Follow the below-listed process.

1. Sign-in into Google Webmaster
2. Select the Domain
3. Click Crawl on the left hand side
4. Click Sitemaps and then submit sitemap.xml

Robots.txt
Use Robots.txt file if you don’t want Search Engines to crawl any specific webpages of the website. You can use the Robots.txt File Generator tool to create the Robots File. Upload the Robots.txt file on the Root Folder www.newdomain.com/robots.txt

Enquiry Form
Do test if all your Enquiry Forms and Call to Actions are working fine and whether you have the conversion code in place for the Thank You Page.

Off Page Optimization
If you have maintained a Record of all the Off-Page activities that you have done for the old website, then it’s time that you change the domain address in those websites, wherever possible.

If you are not tech savvy, it’s better to hire an SEO Company as they are well-versed with the SEO Migration.

On-Page SEO Trends

Search Engines aren’t static. They’re constantly being honed and reinvented. As such, what was relevant yesterday might be redundant today. To make sure your website’s SEO keeps working for you, you have to keep track of the changing scenarios.

Not very long ago, it was enough for you to optimise your website by completing basic On-page Optimisation - Meta Tags for each page, h1 - h6 tags, Alt Tags for images, checking Broken Links, etc. However, that’s not the case anymore. The Search Engine canvas has seen some prominent changes in 2017. These developments have improved the quality of the results produced by search engines. To keep with the times, you need to incorporate these changes in your website. To know what exactly they are, how will they benefit your business and tools you need to incorporate them, read on.

Accelerated Mobile Pages

Web surfers aren’t a very patient bunch. On an average, they expect your website to open under 3 seconds. If it does not, 40% of them will abandon it. As a businessperson wanting to their business to grow, this is the last thing you’d want. To help you deal with this problem, search engines have come up with a technology called AMP HTML. This technology allows websites to build light-weight web pages. As the web pages are light, they load faster and prevent your consumer from rushing to your competitor’s page. The best part is that incorporating it is really simple. All you need to do is change the way your HTML code is written.

Advantages

1. Increased web page speed for mobile sites.
2. Better mobile user-interaction experience.
3. Especially useful for publishers where revenue is generated from banners.

Useful Tools

AMP Learning Tool: Learn how to create AMP web pages
AMP Testing Tool: Testing Tool by Google

Structured Data Mark-up
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex have sponsored schema.org. Schema.org is a collaborative, community activity whose mission is to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet. Using the schema vocabulary and formats such as Micro-Data, JSON-LD and RDF you can add structured data to your web pages. The structured Data Mark-up will help search engines return more informative results related to your website. Alternatively you can use the Data Highlighter tool by Google webmaster where you need not make any changes in your HTML you simply “tag” data field with your mouse.

Advantages:

1. The Structured Data Mark will help search engine crawlers distinguish the content in the web page. For example, you have written an article on apple, the fruit, and not the company. In this case, the search engines could interpret it both as fruit or the company. However, by employing Structured Data Mark-up Code you can inform the search engine that it's a fruit.


2. Structured Data Mark also helps in adding rich snippets and other features to your search result e.g., the search snippet for a hotel might show its average review and price range.


3. As Users are shown Key information related to your business right in search results (reviews/pricing/upcoming events) the Click through rate (CTR) for organic traffic improves drastically.

Useful Tools:

Google Structured Data Tool : For testing the Structured Data
Schema Creator : Helps you create Structured Data

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Security (https)
Search engines, especially Google, give better ranking to websites that have a secure connection, i.e., HTTPS websites. This ranking especially applies to industries where online transactions occur, e.g., e-commerce websites, banking websites, payment gateways, etc.

Advantages:

1. Your ranking improves when your website ensures that the data keyed in by the consumer is secure from theft.


2. This increases your brand trust and credibility – 30% users look for Green Bar (https connection) before proceeding with a transaction.

Useful Tools: 

1. SSL Certificate Comparison and Review: Provides information about certificate authorities and reviews

Example:

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Mobile- responsive websites

There were more than 371 million users in India by June 2016. More users are using mobile phones than desktops to surf the Internet; therefore, it’s imperative for you to have a mobile responsive website.

Advantages:

1. Good user-experience on smart phones.
2. In the longer term, search engines will eventually use the mobile version of a website’s content to rank pages from that site.

Useful Tools:

Mobile-friendly testing tool

Example:

We’re sure you’ve got a hang of the above tools and how you can create more traction for your business using them. Besides adopting the above SEO technologies, we also recommend that you be alert about the new SEO technologies that are constantly emerging. This will help you make the most of your presence on the web and keep your business growing.

What every business owner must know about Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is one of the most used terms of the industry today. However, it is sadly just a bunch of jargon for most of the people who hear it and use it to convey their mind. What exactly is digital marketing and what part of it is essential for today’s business person? We’re here to break it down for you in the simplest words possible.

Digital Marketing is simply marketing of your product or service onto digital platforms so as to hold onto your loyal consumers as well as increase your reach to new potential target audience swiftly.

That is it. That is what digital marketing is. There are some further questions that need attention to solve your confusion; such as:

1. Is digital marketing the same as social media marketing?

The answer is yes. Digital marketing is a wider concept as compared to social media marketing in the sense that, all social media platforms are available digitally i.e. via the internet. However, there are other platforms that come under digital marketing other than social media marketing.

1. What are the concepts and platforms of digital marketing?

The search engines that we use to search our queries and requirements are in themselves a humungous platform for digital marketing. This concept is called “Search Engine Marketing” or SEM.

Search Engine Marketing is marketing of your product on search engines such as Google and Bing by Yahoo. This platform  is of utmost importance for businesses that are into a B2B industry.

Another concept that comes under the wing of digital marketing is “Search Engine Optimization” or SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a way of developing your website’s content in a way that allows the search engine’s algorithm to crawl and test your website efficiently. It is a way to get higher rankings in the search results on the search engine; helping us to have a better hand at SEM.

SEO is a primary necessity of any and every website owner as it helps you stand out among the sea of websites we see today.

Social Media Marketing is a concept that comprises of campaigns designed to market your product or service on social media platforms such as facebook, twitter, youtube, linkedin, etc. SMM is a great tool when it comes to products that have a B2C segment.

There is an interesting concept called Remarketing in digital marketing which enables us to reach out to the potential consumer base multiple times. It can be seen as following your consumer on various platforms, websites and showing your personalized ad copy to them so as to keep reminding them about their visit to your website.

This also enables us to work on another factor called Consumer Lifetime Value wherein we can increase our reach to existing customers and improve our ROI from these consumers through various practices such as Email Marketing,  Remarketing, Paid adcampaigns, RSS Feeds etc.

However, for a great digital marketing experience, a campaign needs to be developed using all the above mentioned platforms.

1. How is digital marketing different from traditional marketing?

Digital Marketing is cost effective in terms of better reach and results.

Digital Marketing lets you target specific audience based upon demographics, interest and devices.

Digital Marketing gives us factual data that can be statistically analysed. For instance, if a hoarding is marketing your product, you have no clue how many people saw the hoarding, read the content and actually became customers because of that hoarding. However, in Digital marketing, say we run a campaign marketing the same product, we can analyse the data produced by different marketing platforms that can show us how many people saw the product, how many actually became consumers and which consumers came via which of the used platforms. This allows us to find glitches in our campaign and work on it to make it even more action driven.

1. But then should traditional marketing be stopped completely?

Of course not! Traditional marketing, in fact, paired with digital marketing can give results superior than just traditional or digital marketing. However, one thing that people mistake about digital marketing is that it can be done for free. It is true to an extent; however, to get the best results, digital marketing needs to have an independent budget. Money must be set aside to be able to exploit all the opportunities that digital marketing has to offer to your business and its glorious future.

How to create a digital marketing campaign that is result driven?

We have all heard about the enormous results driven by digital marketers for various businesses and public figures. However, more often than not, rookie marketers fail to achieve the results they have aspired for due to simple avoidable mistakes.

Today, we are here to tell you more about how to formulate a strategy that is sure to drive extraordinary results for your business.

TIP 1: Always know your target audience 

Defining your TG is extremely important and a primary requirement before coming up with a digital  marketing strategy because if you are not clear on the people you want to target, your strategy, no matter how creative and well designed, will be ineffective because you won’t be reaching your potential consumer.

One of the major rookie mistakes that a lot of marketers do is to target a broader audience.  I want you to understand that just because we have that as an option, doesn’t mean that is the best option. Instead, it is better to segment your audience based on place, age group, gender and likewise; then have a different campaigns or strategies in place for these segmented audiences.

For instance, if you run an eCommerce portal and sell funky t-shirts, make sure to know exactly who your end consumers are. In this case, it will be college students as well as fandom's of various t.v. shows, superhero fan following, etc. rather than just vaguely targeting 18 to 40 year old.

Focused targeting will allow you to have a cost effective strategy as well as give you a better ROI .

TIP 2: Define a buyer’s persona

Once, we have defined our target audience, we need to make sure that we understand the characteristics of our buyers/potential consumers.

Going further with the above example of eCommerce portal funky shirts; this is the step where you map out a buyer’s persona so as to be able to understand where your potential consumer is going to be on the internet. In our example, these college students, t.v. series fandom's, superhero fan following will be sure to visit websites that discuss latest trends in the youth, websites that discuss fan theories, latest episodes as well as conspiracy theories regarding a newly introduced superhero or a t.v. series that is foremost the most watched by our targeted age group — Game of Thrones t-shirt anyone?

We define buyer’s persona on the following basis:

1. Gender
2. Age
3. Marital status
4. Interests
5. Hobbies
6. Location
7. Lifestyle type
8. Education
9. Family
10. Income
11. Social circle
12. And challenges of life

The above mentioned types of classification may not all be applicable and relevant to your Target Group at once. A combination of them is to be figured out based on the type of product or service you’re providing as well as by walking in the shoes of your consumer so as to predict the answers to the above questions.

TIP 3: Figure out where and how this buyer’s persona can be put to use on the internet

Once, the buyer’s persona is ready, all you have to do is prepare a spreadsheet of all the digital platforms your potential consumer may be visiting online and map out a strategy accordingly.

For instance, you can target Facebook for your funky t-shirt ads along with platforms such as Instagram and tumblr as these platforms grab the attention of just the demographic we’re targeting- college going students who are interested in Game of Thrones and Batman ( Thanks to George Martin and Marvel Studios for that!)

TIP 4: Action Driven Website / Landing Page / Creatives 

Once you have defined a target audience along with segmentation and positioning and launched your digital campaign the Ad Creative / Ad Copies will redirect the potential buyer to a website landing page where all information of the product / services is mentioned. This is where your final conversion happens. If your advertisement is great but you haven’t invested time and effort into your website to create a great user experience, you can lose your clientele at the very last moment due to a compromising user experience. So, it is important to have a great website to support a great digital marketing strategy because in the end, your website is going to be a primary portal for your consumer to communicate with you.

Once the target audience, the buyer persona are figured out along with a dynamic & action driven website, there are enormous opportunities for you to experiment and unleash your creativity; and the results are to be surely driven your way!

Consumer Behaviour on Search Engine

Consumer Cycle:

The following is how a consumer query cycle works.

Problem Recognition --> Information Search--> Comparison ---> Evaluation ---> Purchase

Our job is to make our website stand in front of the consumer at the Information Search stage, Win the battle at the Comparison Stage and help the consumer with appropriate Evaluation so as to finally convert him; leading him to purchasing a service or a product from us!

Below are some keynotes that need a light shedding so as to how consumers surf the Search Engines to make decision.

Consumers have started become impulsive; they want an instant answer to their queries which has led to a surge in utilising Search Engines to find an instant solution. An entire world filled with information and the capabilities to satiate their need at the eleventh most hour is in their pocket, just a few clicks away.

Marketers need to understand that consumers have started becoming more and more impatient, demanding of instant results, instant deliveries and instant knowledge. It can be both challenging and exciting when dealing with this consumer behaviour because it’s these micro moments that are moments of the fastest decision making and if everything is done just right, from targeting the intended consumer to actually reaching the consumer to reducing his effort of satiating his need; he is as good as a conversion.

Traditional advertising will lose muffin points here because Search Engines allows us to accelerate the consumer experience by offering a higher and faster need satisfaction and catering them just what they wanted. This is going to keep evolving and we for sure need to make an effort to keep up with this evolution, so as to win the race and win the consumer.

Mobile is the big thing, desktops are dinosaur :

Indian consumer behavior has shown a drastic rise in the usage of mobile phones when it comes to internet usage and consumption.

According to a newly conducted survey, there are more than 420 million mobile internet users in India. In countries such as the US or the UK, 8 out of 10 people have access to the internet, out of which 45% used their mobile devices; contrasting a whopping 80% of Indian users accessing the internet through their mobile phones.

Google Voice Search Engine App / Google Assistant :

With an increasing number of users transferring to mobile devices than using desktops or even laptops, the voice search option has been gaining popularity in preference to make searches and satiate query needs on search engines. This function is being used more and more by a lot of people because it not only allows the user the ability to not type in the search box, but allows them to multitask while doing so.

Around 8 Indian languages are supported in the Google Voice Search, allowing Indians to use it effectively (even those who aren't well versed with Hindi and English.)

Another amazing feature that is made available by Google is called 'Google Assistant'. This feature allows you to have your own personalized search engine. You can search and know the answers to personal queries such as the status of your flight booking, your friend's birthday, remind you of something important, etc; helping you manage your life effectively! You can try out this feature by visiting the following site:

Accelerated Mobile Pages : 

More than 50% of the users prefer an AMP induced website since most of their searches have started happening on mobile devices.

Another fact that needs to be given weightage is that an accelerated mobile page loads 85% faster than a normal webpage. Due to this fact, search engines give a higher preference to websites that have AMPs while determining their quality score, hence helping in a better organic ranking.

Trust Signals :

Customers are giving a lot of weight-age to reviews in search engines. Whether it’s for checking movie ratings/ product ratings/ service ratings it’s affecting the decision of users. This opportunity window is of importance so as to build credibility of your business online, along with having a loyal and rising customer base.

Location Matters :

Looking for something nearby whether it’s a restaurant, store, a tea shop is a common search done using a Mobile devices, contributing almost 1/3 of all mobile search devices. Therefore marketers need to optimize their website for location based queries. Search engines like google use the location of users based on GPS to deliver appropriate results even if the location isn’t mentioned in the query.

The Trends are clear, people expect relevant and accurate information when they search, also search engines have started using tools like machine learning to deliver relevance based on the consumers surfing behaviour, location and search query. Marketers need to create their SEO and SEM campaigns based upon behaviour changes of the consumer, allowing you to capture their attention in those micro moments when decisions are made at the speed of light.

The early you adopt, better the results. The phrase 'Change is the only constant' couldn't be more happening in any industry as it is in the Digital Marketing Field.