How User Experience (UX) fits into SEO? Top 3 Things to boost your Website Conversion Rate!

By | Date posted: | Last updated: March 22, 2021
ux and seo

We picked out three points that we think stood out on the topic of search engine optimization.

1. How SEO and online marketing have changed?

  • The social media platforms have severely restricted outbound traffic to websites
  • Google sends less organic traffic to the websites
  • Influencer marketing brings less than the current hype promises
  • The return on investment of many online advertising measures is almost zero.

Up until a few years ago, it was possible to research keywords with a high search volume and then write “good content” and then share it on social networks. In this way, fans and follower numbers could be increased and backlinks generated. The various advertising platforms were and are used to generate conversions.

This is what search engine optimization whole process looked like:

SEO Process

The problem is that using keywords with high search volumes: the website no longer receives enough visitors as they are often far too generic. And basically, less and less organic traffic comes through Google. Google is increasingly aggregating data and already providing answers in the search results so that users no longer have to go to websites to get the information they are looking for (“no-click searches”). These answers push the organic search results down with the advertisements so that the click rates have often dropped significantly. Even with local searches, the traffic does not go to the website, but the Google Maps entry or Google MyBusiness.

Also, it’s fair to say that the content is often just not good enough. Too short, too superficial, too sloppy researched and there may be many articles that are simply much better and more useful for the visitor. But SEO and content are directly dependent on one another.
A lot has happened in social networks as well. They are primarily interested in keeping users on their own platforms and have very limited reach for links. Instagram doesn’t offer any linking option at all. For example, those who share links to their own website on Facebook often only get a shockingly low reach. The problem is as follows: If a post on Facebook has little reach, the next post will also be “punished”. A downward spiral, which may make posting on Facebook for fan pages rather unattractive because hardly any traffic through it reaches the website.

Due to the lack of reach, you may hardly feel like posting, which means that the number of followers is still growing and backlinks are increasingly difficult to get. In addition, the advertising prices on advertising platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook have risen significantly in recent years, although Google Ads is still an extremely attractive advertising option, especially for smaller companies.

Influencer marketing is overrated, many companies are also not interested in specific metrics of what the campaigns have brought them. In 2012 influencer marketing was still the discovery of “sources” that influence users and do marketing there accordingly. Influencer marketing goes much further, because these sources can also be podcasts, newsletters, white papers, blogs, Facebook groups, YouTube channels, guerrilla marketing, events and much more. In fact, many companies only include YouTube and Instagram in their considerations.

So, how can you continue to do online marketing successfully?

  • Instead of focusing on keywords and high search volumes, make the website the online marketing flagship again and get back to email marketing. Yes, good old-school e-marketing! 10 new email list subscriptions and 100 website visitors are worth more than 10,000 followers.
  • Focus on real customers and encourage engagement. Again, see more value in 100 real fans than in 100,000 website visitors.
  • Away from generic keywords and towards more specific (long-tail) keywords with less search volume in order to prevent Google from providing the answers to the user’s search queries itself. It is essential to pay attention to the user’s intent, what is the user really looking for?
  • Instead of focusing on Instagram and YouTube, where the competition is already bustling, other marketing opportunities and other platforms should also be considered.
  • Instead of relying on link posts in social networks, non-promotional posts with high engagement rates make sense. These pay for direct traffic.
  • Address not only your own target groups but also multipliers. There is a lot of potential here. The more difficult content is to produce, the more it can stand out from the competition.
  • Show ads with Google Ads (and other platforms)? Yes – but first the company and the brand must be organically visible and trust must be built. In this way, users who already know the company or the brand can also be addressed (remarketing). Otherwise, the return on investment of the ads is simply too high.

2. Five types of navigation that every SEO must know

Many website operators are not at all clear how important it is for search engine optimization to have a clear structure and good user guidance (usability) on the website. This is to ensure good user experience. Often it is only with usability tests that it is possible to find out why users are not taking one route or another on the website that is intended for them. Or whether they are confused about where to go and where to find what.

It has long been my concern to convey that search engine optimization is not about mentioning keywords in any place. And elsewhere on this website, SEO is not a patch for a website that does not offer a positive user experience.

Google attaches great importance to the user experience and has now improved its algorithms so that it can very well assess whether a user has a good search experience when they visit a website. That is why usability, i.e. user guidance and the user experience of how the user “experiences” the website, is an important ranking factor. This includes, for example, the following points:

  • A logical structure of the website with clear naming of the menu items
  • Expected items in the right place
  • Legible font
  • No error messages or broken links
  • Clear text structure

Why is website navigation so important?

The navigation/menu structure should enable users (and also search engine crawlers) to efficiently achieve their goals (finding information, completing an order, etc.). According to usability, 77% of the reason why the website does not achieve its goal is a lack of information structure.

Top five types of navigation on a website:

1. The global navigation – the main navigation (where am I now?)

The main menu is used to allow users to move back and forth between main topics, even if they did not come to the website from the start page.

2. Local navigation – matching menu items (what belongs to the main topic, the submenu).

More specific information relevant to the topic is listed here, e.g. as a drop-down, in the sidebar or as a second menu bar

3. The “Utilities” – useful elements, e.g. login, shopping cart, help etc.

These usually located at the top right. Since only one icon often used, it makes sense to stick to common designs or to include a text.

4. The supplementary navigation – e.g. Further links in the footer or in the sidebar

These intended to convey to users and search engines which content on the website is the most important. The footers are often in a contrasting colour, preferably in light grey. But that is often difficult to read. The following readability tools to test if the contrast is good enough.

Recommended readability tools:

  • WAVE Evaluation Tool
  • Lighthouse Accessibility Audit tool
  • JAWS® (Job Access With Speech)
  • NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA)
  • VoiceOver

Using a sitemap in the footer if there are a lot of pages on the website. But, don’t just show all the pages of the website in a tree view, but a clear presentation of the most important pages sorted by topic.

5. Context navigation – what does this content include?

This is navigation through similar content. This is where the connection is established between the pages so that users can find other interesting pages. This is also known as internal linking and is very important for SEO!

So, this is not about navigation or a menu, but about guided navigation in the text. This form of linking is effective to ensure that long texts can be found, e.g. as a table of contents at the beginning of the article. The type of user guidance is a relief for the user, especially when the screens get smaller.

It is important to ensure that the anchor text (the text to be linked) makes sense.

An example:
Bad: You can find further information here.
Better: Here you can find further information on the subject of internal linking.

Ultimately, however, it is always a matter of weighing up user expectations on the one hand and business goals on the other.

3. The user experience with a website and real customer focus

We give a keynote on the subject of customer focus – real customer centricity. This holistic orientation of the company towards the customer does not mean that texts can be found on the website, such as “we focus on the customer”.

Is the customer really the focus on your website?

  • People want to come to your site every day, but they don’t! (= the click rates keep falling).
  • Every day people want to become your customers, but they don’t, they buy elsewhere.
  • According to a study, 68% of customers believe the company doesn’t care. Even if a website is convincing, easy to navigate and offers all the prerequisites for prospective customers to become customers, the question that concerns customers is whether the company is really committed to the interests of customers.
  • It is not because of digital disruption when companies disappear, but because they lose touch with their customers. Not being customer-centric is the greatest danger for companies. Many companies claim that they are customer-oriented – only customers don’t see it that way.

How do your customer buy?

What is missing is a deep understanding of what makes customers to buy your products. Why do customers buy? Why don’t they buy What do you already know, what point are you at? What is your motivation, your emotions? Many companies collect feedback from customers, but only 1/3 use the knowledge and very few changes anything.

Questions about opinions and future behaviour are pointless.

  • Don’t talk about yourself, talk about the customer
  • Which customer problem can you solve?
  • Wonder why customers don’t buy?

When asked what is stopping people from buying the premium version, the answer was actually simple: users were concerned about whether the texts they had already entered would copy. Try to remove the barriers that may exist in the customer’s mind. A website is something that people want to use, not just look at. So, the text is very important on a website and the design should support the user in achieving his goal.

Do you need any help to improve your website usability or user experience? We are here to help you out! If you are looking for UX/UI web design, online store design, ecommerce website design, Please explore our website design services! We also provide website redesign service, website revamp service, online store redesign service or ecommerce website redesign service, for more information, please explore our website redesign services! Ultimately, UX helps to improve conversion rate. If you require help with search engine optimization, digital marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, explore our SEO Services!

If you have any questions or would like to know more about how Skynet Technologies can help your business to reach one step ahead, Reach out us through below form & We'll get back to you soon!

Is your website no longer be found on google? Here’s How to Overcome Google Rankings drop?

By | Date posted: | Last updated: December 29, 2020
Overcome Google Rankings-drop

It is a very exciting topic for us but mostly very annoying for those affected by it. It’s about when you notice that your own website or ecommerce store can suddenly no longer be found or the ranking is massively dropped. Here is a first introduction to the topic. Please do not hesitate to contact us for individual advice and help!

First the good news

Google is not interested in the fact that super content suddenly smears and is gone just because someone made a technical mistake. If it is (as is usually the case) a purely technical error, then it can usually be remedied without permanent damage! Unless it was noticed months later.

For which systems does the first information apply here?

These are general SEO topics that are detached from systems. WordPress, Magento, WooCommerce, Drupal, Laravel but also your customer programming and other content management systems and ecommerce systems can all be affected by falling rankings on google.

The causes are always the same. Part of the challenge is to determine the exact cause. Google can no longer find the content, google is no longer allowed to index the content or the content has been changed so massively that Google can no longer find the content. Or an attempt was made to trick the search engine, which logically ends up badly.

The symptoms can be:

  • With your own main keyword, your page is suddenly no longer found on page 1-2, for example, or even over a few weeks (2-3 weeks).
  • Search terms with which you googled yourself no longer show your own page.
  • According to Google Search Console, the rankings have fallen dramatically.
  • The page may no longer even be found using a direct search for the domain.
  • The google Maps entry no longer appears.
  • The ranks have fallen by more than 2-3 positions.
  • Certain keywords are X pages, Further back than normal.

Classification of symptoms with falling placement

If one or more of these things are noticed, it is most certainly not a normal fluctuation. Usually, something went really wrong somewhere. Google rankings do not fall by several pages within 2-3 weeks. This mostly happened in the context of adjustments or revisions of the website or ecommerce. Something is overlooked or set incorrectly by mistake and the problems begin.

What to do if the ranking drops?

Analysis of the cause!

First a clean analysis, this does not mean that everything has to be checked X hours. But it is simply necessary that don’t panic and check the usual problem areas piece by piece. This is the only way to specifically exclude certain things and hopefully find the cause as soon as possible.

Eliminate the cause

If the cause is known and is really known for sure, it is usually a small thing to fix. Fortunately, the error often lies in the technically incorrect configuration or bug of an application/extension and nothing has been done wrong with regard to the content. However, if something has been done wrong in terms of content, correcting it can be quite time-consuming because it simply eats up time.

What can the causes be?

Be careful not to start adapting it without really being sure that it is the cause! Otherwise, there is a risk of dragging on the cause or even making it worse. A classic that can no longer be found on google is e.g. on WordPress on “no index”

With WordPress, test systems are usually set to “no index”. Unfortunately, this little tick is easily overlooked. The possibly new page goes online and the ranking drops massively.

URL change or no redirection

You actually have good content, but why always adjusted the URL. As a result, google can no longer find the content because the URL is different. However, this usually leads to a weak drop in the rankings. Because google usually finds the new URL itself.

Errors in Robots.txt in combination with errors in sitemap

URL/page is sometimes introduced via sitemap, but are excluded using robots.txt. Of course, that cannot work. The ranking can fall normal to strong, depending on what you did there.

Massively changing texts leads to poor rankings

When texts have been massively changed. In the worst case, they were completely deleted and rewritten. Then for google, only the URL is available, but everything on it is different. This is understandably a reason for google to revise the ranking because it is simply no longer the existing page.

Did you try to trick google?

One reason is working with keyword densities and similar things that can quickly backfire. If, for example, every subheading and heading is spammed with keywords that are optimized for then this normally leads to falling rankings. However, these fall very slowly but continuously.

Exotic points lead to ranking problems

However, there are a number of individual causes. In essence, however, it is always about the fact that content is no longer there where google expects it, google is forbidden to record content or an attempt was made to fool google and thus there was a legitimate punishment.

How quickly can these errors be corrected?

First, a detailed conversation/phone call is necessary in order to rule out things in advance or to find them directly. Afterwards, Google Search Console is extremely helpful. Without suitable tools, it is tedious to narrow down the causes. We will be happy to support you with the setup.

If it is a purely technical error, the ranking can increase again within minutes. Of course, this assumes that it is first clear and determined what the error is. The search for the cause can take significantly longer!

If, for example, the WordPress page was set to “no index” or a robots.txt is incorrect, this only needs to be corrected and usually quickly tracked down. Then google is manually set to search the page again. Usually, google is “happy” that the error has fixed and that google can index again. As a result, the ranking is usually back to how it was before the error in a few minutes.

Google is not interested in the actually super content suddenly being dropped and gone, just because someone made a technical mistake. So, it can usually completely correct without permanent damage.

It gets disgusting when content has massively improved. Then it is sometimes difficult to get the old content back, but the ranking can also be moved in the right direction. There are also tricks to get most of the old content even without backups. However, there it takes days, weeks or months until it is the same as before because the content has to be corrected first.

Do you need help with Google Rankings Drop Solution?

Talk to us. We look forward to identifying the cause and showing you how to solve it. In order to help quickly, we need the most precise information possible about what happened, Which keywords are concerned?

If, you have already set up Google Search Console and Google Analytics then give us access to it. So, we can identify and analyse it!

If you are looking for search engine marketing, improve your website rankings, effective search engine optimization, online marketing, digital marketing, social media marketing, content marketing strategies, search engine optimization services, digital marketing services, PPC campaign management services and more, Please Explore our SEO Services!

If you have any questions or would like to know more about how Skynet Technologies can help your business to reach one step ahead, Reach out us through below form & We'll get back to you soon!

Which Factors Really Impact on App Store Optimization? How to achieve successful ranking?

By | Date posted: | Last updated: December 29, 2020
App Store Optimization

Measures to be at the top of the Google search have now become commonplace in every company. But if you also want your app to be listed as high as possible in the app stores and can be found quickly, you have to deal with the topic of app store optimization.

This is very similar to the SEO measures of a website, whereby the aim of the App store optimization is to draw the customer’s attention to the own app offer and to encourage them to download.

Why app store optimization is so important?

An app is often quite complex to develop. If you have made this effort, it makes sense to market the app in such a way that it also generates customers. Depending on the project, the app should complement the company or expand it with additional functions. Simply putting the app in the store is not enough for this – the customer has to find it too.

With over 2.2 million apps in the app stores, this is not that easy. Often no exact names are entered, only keywords that come to mind about the app. Around 65% of the apps are thus discovered through the search function.

Which factors are important for app store rankings?

Similar to SEO, there are also various measures in app store optimization to rank well.

The title

In order to appear as high up as possible, the title must match the search queries. So, you should take your time to formulate a meaningful title. To do this, it is necessary to know your target group and their needs as precisely as possible.

Keywords

Keyword research is also an important factor in App store optimization. You should first ask yourself which keywords are used by the target group and which are relevant. The observation of competitors can also be a helpful tool.

Keywords in the title

When considering the title and searching for keywords, sooner or later the question arises whether keywords in the title make sense. The answer – absolutely. Based on tests, apps that also have the keyword in the title rank 10.3% higher than apps without the keyword in the title.

Downloads

Even if this factor is of secondary importance, it still makes sense to keep an eye on the number of downloads that have already been made. Unfortunately, there is little control over download numbers. Influencing is accordingly difficult. Nevertheless, these key figures for reporting and optimization should be collected and checked regularly. Because high download numbers can also have a positive effect on the ranking.

Ratings and reviews

This factor is also rather difficult to influence. However, positive reviews can be an advantage, especially when it comes to recommendations. The possibility of influencing this is small, but good customer service, for example, helps to accept negative feedback and change the customer’s mind.

How do I succeed?

First of all, it takes time. App store optimization is an ongoing process that has to be optimized again and again. A high-quality selection of keywords and good title formulations also take time to achieve measurable results. The target group should be defined in advance. In addition to the correct selection of keywords, the appearance of the app in the store is also important.

The so-called asset optimization describes the improvement of the actual app appearance. Screenshots, preview videos and app icons should also be carefully considered. The customer will only download the app if the preview already promises advantages or special features. The app icon should also look appealing and of high quality, only then will the user take a closer look at the app.

Why should I use app store optimization?

The main goal of an app is to appeal to users, to bind them to the company and thereby generate profits. Both existing and new customers are important users. In order to be well received and especially used by existing customers or customers who do not yet know the company, a ranking high up in the app stores is necessary.

A good app appearance, Improved UX design and a high position in the search also offer the use of new marketing channels. Users can also find your app via trends or random searches. If you like the app, it will also have a positive view of the company.

We would be happy to advise you in more detail on the subject of app store optimization, thus helping your app to grow user numbers.

If you are looking for a mobile application development including android, iOS, React Native and Flutter app development, please explore our mobile app development services! We also provide mobile application maintenance services and mobile application security audit. for more information, please visit our mobile app maintenance services!

If you have any questions or would like to know more about how Skynet Technologies can help your business to reach one step ahead, Reach out us through below form & We'll get back to you soon!

How Drupal SEO Service can be a Game Changer for Your Business Website?

By | Date posted: | Last updated: April 14, 2021
Drupal seo Service

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is one of the most influential factors that determine the success of your online business and to generate high quality leads consistently. Nearly 93% of online businesses start with search engines and 51% of all website traffic is organic, becoming the critical component of the buyer funnel. When people around the globe search for your products and services online, they should be displayed on the top in the search engine results as the prospects instinctively know that businesses that rank well imply merit, trust, and social validation.

Drupal is a highly customizable content management system and is considered to be the most SEO friendly platform in current times. It encourages Drupal website builders to implement ethical SEO practices in their workflows – SEO-friendly naming conventions, tags, targeted content to make the website search engine friendly. In fact, there isn’t any silver-bullet for getting to the top of search engines. But one can have a unique edge with Drupal SEO Services.

In this blog post, we discuss how SEO services can help your business to stay ahead of the curve and generate organic traffic to your website.

Drupal SEO services are phenomenal and have competitive advantages like faster websites, better rankings, improved brand visibility, and increased traffic making your websites a lead generation powerhouse. The reason why Drupal CMS is a go-to-choice for many enterprises is that it has been built from ground zero with all the necessary functionality optimized for the ever-changing SEO landscape.

Mobile-friendly Websites

As Google keeps rolling out new search engine algorithms with minor tweaks and major changes, your Drupal websites’ visibility shouldn’t be impacted. In 2016, Google updated its mobile-friendly algorithms rewarding the mobile-first websites and penalizing those who aren’t. Drupal has in-built mobile responsive capabilities that are impeccable and they align the content and media automatically depending on the device used, making it a clear winner. One way to speed up your website and be responsive is by downloading and implementing the Google AMP module. Businesses that are mobile responsive have reported a 300% growth in less than 3 years.

Drupal Speed and Security

Website performance and site speed contribute to a website’s SEO ranking factor. With the reduced user attention span, if your site takes a long time to load, it hampers user experience and the visitors would flock to your competitors. Drupal audits ensure to find the images, unused plugins, and slow loading media content which are the usual suspects when there are speed issues on a website.

Drupal uses leading caching technology that avoids reloading of the same content over and over and instead can be loaded faster from the cache. So your visitors won’t have to wait for all the content to load each time, making load times much faster. Speeding up the websites on both desktop and mobile effectively contribute to your SEO efforts.

Google rewards your websites that are secure and with the latest Drupal version, breaking your website, infesting your visitors, and stealing the data has become highly difficult. Drupal is regularly updated to incorporate new features and fix bugs/errors to keep potential security threats at bay.

Drupal accessibility

Website accessibility and SEO are closely intertwined. Drupal ADA compliance improves the content accessible to the entire community of users. Drupal 9 has come up with a new front end theme Olivero which has features to improve website accessibility and usability.
Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 versions are strictly in compliance with WCAG and ADA guidelines making the websites more inclusive.

Site Structure

No matter how great your content is, a poorly structured and optimized site would impact your visibility and usability. The larger and more complex your website is, the higher the chance that the search engine crawler will get confused. The XML Sitemap module creates an XML sitemap of your content that you can submit to search engines and other social sites.

Multi-lingual Support

Drupal has stepped up to the challenges of supporting global markets. Drupal has the ability to handle as many as 100 different global languages and this reduces the complexity of the page translations. With Drupal, you can integrate a language much more easily and create territory-specific content. You can also use Drupal’s language translator to translate pages, links, and titles.

Drupal SEO Modules

Drupal websites give you cutting-edge over your competitors with many in-built SEO tools and modules. The Drupal community has been meticulously working to offer exemplary SEO modules that could improve the SERP results.

Let us begin with some top Drupal SEO modules that enhance your SEO efforts on your website.

1. Pathauto Module

The Pathauto module creates SEO-friendly URLs on your website. These intuitive URLs are clean indicating what content it represents and easy for the site visitors to understand what they are looking at. This helps in improving your site rankings on search engines. This also saves your time from manually having to create URL path/aliases when dealing with a large volume of content. Another important feature is if the page title contains keywords then the URL would also contain the keywords which are the key for SEO.

2. Drupal SEO Checklist Module

This module checks your entire Drupal website for proper search engine optimization against the best practices and gives you a detailed report on what needs to be done to improve the performance of your Drupal website. This data report provides you with critical information on the changes to be made on your website and can be used for further monitoring as well.

3. SEO Compliance Checker Module

This module performs a complete check whenever a node is created or modified on your Drupal website. When a user makes a change, or previews a node, it provides SEO related feedback and user-defined rule compliance. It also checks if your title and meta tags are optimized, if any alt tags are missing, facilitates optimized keywords usage, and other factors for better SEO and to improve your keyword ranking.

4. Global Redirect Module

Spammy, duplicate content, or broken links can have a negative impact on your SEO which can hamper your rankings on the search engine. With the creation of new URLs, the default/old URL still exists and the search engines treat this as a duplicate content. The Global Redirect Module helps in rectifying the problem by verifying the current alias for any existing URL and redirecting the old URLs to the new URLs incorporating 301 redirects. This redirects both the users and search engineers to a different URL when there is a 404 missing page error. This is important especially when a piece of content is moved to another section of your site or inadvertently changed the URL.

5. Google Analytics Module

By adding Google Analytics Module to your Drupal website, you can track your visitors, their demographics, and behavior within your site. Accordingly, you can modify your strategy and curate the content to drive more traffic and increase conversions.

In addition to these modules, there are many other Drupal SEO modules such as

  • Meta Tag – The metatag helps the search engine to understand what your page is all about and this module helps in the setting of default meta tags for both the individual and whole pages.
  • Page Title – This provides your page with a relevant title and helps in getting good rankings when the search engine bots crawl your content.
  • Taxonomy Title – This module lets you edit the heading tag <h1> of the taxonomy page. The importance of an H1 tag can’t be overlooked for it forms a crucial element in SEO and helps in achieving rank on the top page of SERPs.
  • Links Checker – Broken links create a bad impression on search engines. Links Checker module can identify the broken links and can rectify them easily.

Conclusion

Your website’s visibility forms a crucial factor when it comes to your digital marketing strategy. Drupal CMS with all the above-states modules which can be easily integrated into your website is an excellent choice when it comes to SEO. With targeted content, properly coded website and theme, and installation of Drupal SEO modules you can create success stories seamlessly.

If you are looking for a Drupal Search Engine Optimization, Drupal SEO Service, Drupal Web Development, Drupal Commerce Development and Other Related Web Development Services, for more information, Please Explore our Drupal Web Development Services! We also provide Drupal Website Maintenance Services, Drupal Migration and Drupal Website SEO audit, Drupal Application Security Audit. For More Information, Please Visit Our Drupal Maintenance Services!

If you have any questions or would like to know more about how Skynet Technologies can help your business to reach one step ahead, Reach out us through below form & We'll get back to you soon!