Tag Archives: Website Maintenance Ireland

Google’s Mobile Search Update

You may have noticed a new layout while searching Google recently on your mobile device. Around the end of May, Google released an updated visual layout for the mobile search results page. This refresh was released to introduce a more modern and user friendly layout. Google say “we’re unveiling a visual refresh of the mobile search results page to better guide you through the information available on the web.” This was referenced on the Google blog here. The familiar green font on the ads has now been changed to a black label with a simple ‘Ad’ reference. See below for reference: As you’ll see from the above image, what Google have implemented is an opportunity for companies online to introduce their branding to users on the web before even landing on your site. This is done by using the favicon image which is uploaded on most websites. You’ll generally see this small icon on your browser tab while searching from a desktop or laptop. What does this mean for me? In order to take advantage of this update, you’ll need to make sure your website has an active favicon set and specified. There are some rules behind this:
  • Your website and the favicon need to be crawlable to Google (meaning you need to ensure your site is fully accessible to Google’s Spider). This can be a complicated issue, but we can help you with this if required – Contact Us
  • The favicon should be similar to your overall branding on your website. This will allow users to identify and recognise your brand online with ease.
  • Google will resize your favicon to 16px x 16px. They recommend uploading your file in multiples of 48px square to ensure clarity. For example, 48×48 or 96×96 etc.
  • Any favicon that Google see to be inappropriate will be removed and replaced with a default icon image.
At 2Cubed Web Design & Development, we can assist you with any of the needs above, allowing you to take advantage of this latest Google update. We offer a number of services to help you grow your online presence. Check out our list of services – https://2cubed.ie/services/ Contact us today for more information on the services we provide – Contact Us Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon Google+ icon

3 Common Google Ads Mistakes to Avoid Making

Google Ads Recently we discussed how to evaluate whether your PPC campaign is worth it? In this post we will discuss 3 common Google Ads mistakes that people make all too often in their PPC Campaigns. Not enough ads per group Less is certainly not more when it comes to ads in your ad group. Google recommends that it is best practice to have at least three ads per ad group. If you only have one ad then you aren’t giving Google’s machine learning technology the proper chance to analyze and prioritize the ads that are expected to perform better. Bad Landing Page While getting a lot of traffic from Google Ads is a good thing, if you aren’t getting conversions out of these hits then it’s simply a waste of money. One big reason why you may be failing to get conversions is if your landing page is poor, if your landing page is poor people will land on your page, be unimpressed and leave without you converting them which means they cost you money and you got nothing in return. To ensure that your landing page is good you should ensure the following:
  • It loads fast
  • It has a clear Call to Action
  • It’s easy to read and navigate
  • It speaks to the audience who your ad is targeted at
Not taking advantage of Location Settings To ensure that the right people, your target market see your ad you need to configure the location settings. If you only wish for your ad to be seen in a specific county, province or country you can do so through here. For instance, if your ad is aimed at businesses in Wexford then it shouldn’t be appearing in Dublin, Cork etc.. By taking advantage of location settings you can ensure that your budget will be spent on the right places. By ensuring that you avoid these 3 common Google Ads mistakes you will minimise the risk of wasting your ads budget and greatly increase your chances of getting your target market to see and click on your ads and most importantly get conversions to your website from your successful PPC campaign. For advice and information on having a successful website contact 2Cubed today! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon

Importance of Google Reviews for SEO

Importance of Google Reviews for SEO Whether it’s from word of mouth or testimonials reviews have always been an integral part of a business’s success. The positive impact of great reviews for a business cannot be underestimated nor can the negative impact of bad reviews. Reviews help potential new customers to decide whether they should choose your business over another, having positive reviews from past clients will instill confidence in them that they will experience the same satisfaction as those before them who left the positive reviews. If your website for instance had no reviews then a customer may feel unsure whether they will receive a good service as they have no past precedent or frame of reference to base their decision off. Having reviews can provide this much needed clarity. While getting reviews from customers has always been an exercise that is beneficial to businesses, the importance of Google Reviews for SEO has never been greater. By having Google reviews you can actively improve the visibility of your business on Google so this means that Google reviews are good for your SEO. The reason Google reviews have become so important for SEO is that when people use the Google search engine Google will aim to generate the most relevant and beneficial results for local web searches as the quality and quantity of reviews on Google is one of the most important ranking factors for local SEO. Google looks to see how many reviews your business has and what your current average rating is and from here they will determine where exactly in the listings of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) you should appear. Google themselves have even stated in the past that the “highest-rated” businesses near you will be returned when you search with local intent. By having your listing appear high with a great rating and a lot of reviews potential customers will be a lot more likely to click on to your website over your competitors and you will be a lot more likely to get conversions from these people. A great part of any SEO strategy is to ensure that you can regularly get customers to give your business a review. The best way to encourage people to give your business a review is to ensure the following:
  • Great Customer Service
By offering all customers a great customer service they will be happy and happy customers are a lot more susceptible to give you a positive review and share their good experience.
  • Simple Review Process
As well as ensuring that the customer service you offer is great, the second thing you should do to encourage reviews is to make the actual process of leaving you a review simple, straightforward and easy. The easier the process is the more likely people will be to take a second and give you a review. Don’t make the customer work for it! 2Cubed provide award-winning web design and mobile app development services. If you would like to give 2Cubed Web Design a review please click the link below: CLICK HERE TO GIVE REVIEW For advice and information on having a successful website contact 2Cubed today! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon

Is my PPC Campaign worth it?

PPC Campaign
April 30, 2019
Pay-per-click, commonly known as PPC, is a paid advertising strategy which is used to get your ad in front of your target demographic. When your PPC campaign is effective it can become a brilliant source of lead generation to your website. However conversely if your campaign is ineffective and is costing you money without giving you the leads and results you envisioned it can quickly become a very dear misadventure. If you find yourself spending a lot of money on ads and PPC but still aren’t seeing good results then you need to take a step back and ask yourself the question “Is my PPC Campaign worth it?”. By taking a step back and evaluating the effectiveness or lack thereof of your campaign you can determine whether you need to tweak your campaign for better and improved results or whether you need to pause your campaign entirely and go back to the drawing board. You need to be sure before you delete a PPC campaign because when you do you will lose all of its data and will be unable to retrieve any of it back. Before you delete an underperforming campaign you should first evaluate it and see if you can apply some tweaks to fix it and turn it into a strong performing campaign. To ensure your PPC campaign can perform as strongly as possible ensure that you have considered and took the following into account: Evaluate Your Chosen Keywords: For any PPC campaign to be successful it needs to incorporate the right keywords. These keywords need to be relevant to your target demographic. By undergoing proper keyword research before you start your campaign you can minimise the risk that you will incorporate irrelevant keywords in your campaign. Landing Page Optimisation: Your landing page will be the first impression for the users who you will get through your PPC campaign. Thus it is vital that your homepage gives a good first impression, by ensuring that the page is correctly optimised to give a good user experience you will increase your chances of getting conversions from your paid traffic. There is no point getting people to your website just for them to have a bad user experience and bounce, that will simply cost you money and give you nothing in return. Created Ads: Lastly you need to ensure that the ads themselves that you create need to be appealing and enticing enough to get people to click on them. To ensure that your ad speaks to your target audience incorporate the main keywords (which you will have discovered from your keyword research) into them and include a snippet that will act as a powerful and intriguing call to action. Before you give up on your PPC campaign make the tweaks. By making these tweaks you should see an improvement in your PPC campaign and generate better results. For advice and information on having a successful website get in touch with 2Cubed today! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon Google+ icon

3 Ways Your Web Design May Be Damaging your SEO

Three Ways Your Web Design May Be Damaging your SEO
April 25, 2019
As we have touched on before having a great Web Design employed throughout your website is very important to ensure that your website delivers a great user experience. We all know that a great user experience is great for SEO however if not properly done correctly web design can inadvertently end up actually damaging your SEO. Three Ways Your Web Design May Be Damaging your SEO that you need to look for are: Bad or no optimisation of Header Tags Header tags (H1, H2, H3 etc..) are important for SEO as they help Google to determine what the content on your page is actually about. H1 should always be your page title and H2 tags need to accurately clarify what the page is about and what it contains. The other tags can be used when you go more in-depth. Image Optimisation A major factor in any web design is that it needs to visually be beautiful and pleasing to the eye of any user. To ensure that your images are successfully optimised you need to ensure the following three things have been done:
      • Ensure that relevant alt text has been applied to all your images.
      • Ensure that your image is compressed
      • Ensure that you have the correct image format
Non Mobile-Friendly Design Since Google introduced Mobile-First Indexing the question of whether your website and web design is mobile friendly or not has become an extremely important one. Mobile-First Indexing means that Google will look at how your website performs on mobile first rather than on Desktop and from this judgement they will determine where your website will rank. Therefore if your web design for mobile is poor your SEO will be severely damaged. If you can ensure that these three things are done then you will greatly reduce the chances of your web design damaging your SEO.

Mobile-First Indexing and SEO

Mobile-First Indexing
April 23, 2019
Mobile-First indexing was introduced by Google as an effort to make websites on the internet more mobile friendly. According to trends more users use mobile than desktop when browsing, so in accordance with this user behaviour trend Google have placed a higher emphasis on how a website is designed and works on mobile than on desktop. At its core mobile-first indexing means that when Google index websites and determine their ranking on a wide range of factors that they are basing their judgement firstly on how the website looks and performs on mobile rather than desktop. Since Google now actually indexes sites on a mobile first approach it means that they are first ranking your site on how responsive and how well designed it is for mobile. If you are unsure whether your website is being negatively impacted it’s important to remember not to panic. According to Google themselves if your website is already responsive on mobile or if both versions on mobile and desktop are the same already then your rankings may not be affected at all. However, it should be noted that even if your website is a very responsive site to rank well with mobile-first indexing in practice you need to ensure that both your website’s mobile page speed and it’s load time are fast and efficient and that all images are optimised correctly so that the user experience on mobile is not compromised or hindered in any way. By ensuring that your website looks great on a mobile device firstly you can be safe in the knowledge that it will then translate brilliant to other devices. That’s because if you design for the smallest screen first it will be a lot easier to successfully replicate on a big screen rather than if you were to take the opposite approach. Designing for mobile first means that you have to design within it’s tighter limitations, while initially this may sound like a negative, it is actually a good thing because it will force you to really prioritize the content you display as you will have no room for extra fluff or fat. This helps to ensure that the all important user experience you deliver will be the best possible. When Google looks at your website as part of mobile-first indexing and determines that you are delivering an optimal user experience as well as having a website that looks and works well on mobile they will look favourably upon you and you will rank well so obviously it is great for your SEO. For advice and information on having a successful website get in touch with 2Cubed today! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon Google+ icon

How to Improve Your Website Page Speed

Website Page Speed
Category: Tips and Tricks
March 19, 2019
Website page speed is the measurement of exactly how fast the content on your page loads. This means how long it takes to fully display the content of your page. One of the best ways to evaluate your page speed is to use the free tool Google PageSpeed Insights. In one of our most recent posts we went into great depth on how important having good results on Google PageSpeed Insights really is. In that post we made the point that page speed is a very important factor for SEO as it is known that Google uses page speed as one of it’s many signals used by its algorithm when ranking pages. As well as being important to Google, page speed is very important to user experience also which plays a part in how your website ranks. There are many ways to improve your website’s page speed such as: Fully Switching over to https: Ensuring that your website has an SSL Cert not only shows that your website is safe to browse on and to purchase products/services safely with your credit card but it will also help with your SEO as Google looks favorably on websites who have an SSL Cert over those who have none. Where this affects page speed is when the http version of your website is cached and redirects to your https version. By ensuring that your website automatically redirects to the https version you can greatly enhance the page speed. Rectifying Image Related Issues: Images tend to be a common issue that cause an unfavorable page speed. Images can cause issues unnecessarily as they can be a huge size and of too high of an image quality than required or needed. To rectify these two issues it’s recommended to take a look at all your images and to both compress and resize them as necessary. By resizing them to a more appropriate size and by compressing them to a more appropriate image quality you will reduce your page load time which will in turn improve your page speed. Browser Caching: By implementing browser caching on your website you are telling visitors to your website exactly how long their browsers should retain information/memory of your website for. This means that a message would be sent to the users browser that images on the website should be cached (remembered) for three weeks so that when this specific user visits the website again within this three week period your website will load more quickly as the resources to remember the images are being pulled from their device instead of your website. This takes some of the workload away from your website and in turn this will improve your page speed also. Improving your page speed is a never-ending goal and something that should be continuously worked on to improve it as much as possible as it is so important not only to SEO and User experience but the overall success of your website. If you would like to inquire about improving your website’s page speed please contact 2Cubed and get your business the traffic and success it deserves. You can call us on 01-9058114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie or else get in touch using the live chat on our website! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon Google+ icon

Google PageSpeed Insights and why it’s so important!

Google PageSpeed Insights
Category: Tips and Tricks
March 6, 2019
Google PageSpeed Insights is a free tool offered by Google which is designed to report and make an informed determination of the performance of a specific web pages performance on both Desktop and Mobile devices. Google PageSpeed Insights also provide suggestions on how that specific web page can be improved. The report that is provided by Google PageSpeed Insights provides you with information such as field data and lab data about your submitted web page. Lab data is a type of data that can be used to aid with debugging performance issues whereas field data’s main use is that it captures real-time user experience metrics which can be helpful. As mentioned previously since PageSpeed Insights are a free tool offered by Google anyone can simply search “Google PageSpeed Insights” and enter their website URL to get a live up to date results for their PageSpeed on Desktop and Mobile devices. Entering a URL and hitting “Analyze” will quickly get you a detailed report of what’s slowing that web page based on two parameters and this report will also come with recommendations on how to fix it. When you enter your url your website will be analyzed and within a few seconds you will receive a score for both desktop and mobile which will be a percentage out of 100. 0%-49% is considered slow, 50%-89% is average whereas 90%-100% is considered fast by industry standards. The reason these scores are important is because they play a factor alongside general SEO optimisation when it comes to google’s algorithm of ranking websites. Basically the better your Google PageSpeed Insights score is the more likely you will be to rank higher than others provided your general SEO optimisation is done efficiently as well of course. Google recently changed how PageSpeed Insights judge websites and since Google have made this change a lot of websites are finding that their once higher score has now fallen and they are struggling to get it back to it’s once former glory. When your website is analyzed by Google PageSpeed Insights as part of their analysis summary they will provide diagnostics and opportunities for improvement. By following these suggestions you can improve your overall score again. Google PageSpeed Insights true to their name provide a great insight in to the health and strength of your website by giving you accurate reports on it’s page speed. As it’s a free tool there is no excuse to not avail of it and use it’s useful information.

IMPROVE YOUR GOOGLE PAGESPEED INSIGHTS SCORE

To inquire about improving your score on Google PageSpeed Insights please contact 2Cubed and get your business the traffic and success it deserves. You can also call us on 01-9058114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie or else get in touch using the live chat on our website! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon Google+ icon