Meet Leaza – The AI Finance Chatbot

Leaza is one of the brainchild of a team from within DLL with a particular skillset and focus on finance. Leaza, whilst residing in an enterprise company is being developed with a start up approach and recently won €250,000 in funding to implement Leaza. The idea behind Leaza is to provide an AI chatbot that will do a variety of finanancial calculations and tasks and can be controlled by voice. Leaza and her capabilities are all summed up rather nicely in the video below, check it out!

Branding, Web Design & WordPress Consultancy

With regards to the project here a novel idea like Leaza with a talented team required a different approach. Usually for clients we do full WordPress web design & development however here the preferred was for the design to be completed by us and for the development to be completed in house.

The first step in the design phase was for logo design and branding which was completed with aplomb by our designer Elena Montes. Once the branding was set the next phase was web design where we worked iteratively with the Leaza team to define the content and layout for the site. Once the designs were completed we then provided the Leaza team with some WordPress consultancy so that they could then set about developing the site. After a few sessions and back and forth the site was launch ready and ushered in a new Leaza life for finance! Get to know Leaza here!

Thoughts From The Leaza Team

During the project we enjoyed working with the Leaza team and are happy with the end results. About the overall branding, design process and project the Leaza team had the following to say:

“Delivering ‘Leaza – the friendly finance and customer service chatbot’ as an enterprise start-up we encountered new things daily that we were not previously acquainted with. One of those topics is branding and how to create the right exposure of your brand. Rob and Elena were in this case our ideal partners as they had a great sense of where we were and where we wanted to go. They listened very carefully and put ideas forward to elaborate on. The ideas that were put forward were based, we felt, on a long experience and a good knowledge of how a brand can work (or cannot work). Additionally, and important for us is that Rob and Elena are nice people to work with and have excellent communication skills! That helps to get to a good result: the brand Leaza, driving conversation forward!”

– The Leaza Team

WordPress Consultancy

All in the Leaza project was an enjoyable one to work on and providing WordPress consultancy services is now something I’ll be offering more going forward. Some clients like the full web design package, some just want SEO or social media marketing help and others just want to be guided via WordPress consultations – whatever it is, happy to provide it.

If you’d like to see how I can help you with a future project, get in touch!

The post A New Leaza Life – AI Chatbots & WordPress Consultancy appeared first on WordPress Developer.

If you run a WordPress site but you’re not very technically-minded, you might feel totally powerless if you’re ever unfortunate enough to suffer a website hack. What should you do to respond to that kind of event? Does your site need to go down, or can you get it back to where it was? Is there a way you can avoid such a thing happening again?

To make things a little clearer, this post is intended to give you some idea of what you should do in the event of a hack to your WordPress site, so let’s get started.

Get Logged In To The WordPress Admin Area

Hacks come in many different forms, but you’re ultimately going to notice them when you see changes to your site. You’re most likely to notice the content change, see unusual login activity, find new plugins installed, or be unable to log in at all.

If you can still log in, go ahead and do so immediately. If you can’t, you’ll need to contact your web host and inform them of what’s happening.

They’ll be able to confirm your identity, look at system history, determine what’s going on, and reset your login details so you can get back in.

What To Do If Your WordPress Site Is Hacked

Once you’re logged into the system, you’ll need to proceed through the following checks very promptly. The hacker (or hackers) might still be in the system trying to make further changes, so exercise your admin power while you still can.

• Remove Any New Users – If you go to your user permissions, you’ll be able to see the full list of users with admin access. Has that list grown? If not, you’ll need to proceed directly to the next step. If you do see some new users, however, or some altered permissions, change them right away. Act as quickly as you can. To be optimally safe, you may want to delete all admin accounts but yours. You can always recreate additional admins later once things are safer.
• Change Your Security Information – At a minimum, you’ll need to change your password, but you’ll also need to check your recovery email address. If it has been changed, change it back to the original email account, and reset the password to that email account as well. When you set your new password, follow standard recommendations and aim for a high level of security — memorise it, then keep a record offline if you have to keep a record at all.
• Take The Site Offline – With the permissions done, you should take the site offline. If you needed to contact the web host to log in, you may have asked them to do as much then — if not, log in to your web hosting panel and take the site offline (then change your web hosting password for good measure). The reason for this is that you likely won’t know the exact nature of the hack, and you’ll want to fully check the entire site before putting it back up.
• Inform Everyone Relevant – If your site is just a personal project, or a basic promotional business site with no user accounts, then you may not need to notify anyone. If your site does have user accounts, though — and especially if it serves as an ecommerce store using WooCommerce — then you’ll need to reach out to the registered users as soon as possible to let them know their user data has been compromised.
• Check Your Plugins – The ability of WordPress to support a lot of plugins in combination is very valuable, but it’s also a security risk if abused. Just one plugin with a security vulnerability can ultimately allow a hacker access to an entire WordPress system, even if the basic installation is solid. Did you install any new plugins after the WordPress site development or before the hack took place? Were there any important updates pending? Perhaps an urgent patch was released for one of your plugins but you didn’t install it it in time. If you find updates that need to be made, make them, and Google your newest plugins to see if anyone online has been talking about them. If a particular plugin was the problem, you should find others with similar hacks, because hackers wouldn’t have targeted you in isolation.

Try To Restore an Old Version

Have you been keeping site backups? It’s always a good idea to make regular website backups, and if you’ve been taking that precaution then you should try to restore the most recent backup that you’re confident was made before the hack took place — unless you looked extremely closely, you would struggle to know for sure that deeper changes hadn’t been made to the site, so it’s best to revert the entire thing. Bear in mind that any plugin updating you did in the previous step may need to be redone here (it will depend on the exact nature of your backup system).

Consult A WordPress Expert

At this stage, you should have staunched the wound, but you won’t be able to do the full security audit that you’ll need to ensure that the website is ready to go live again. You’ll need a WordPress expert to help you with that. Feel free to get in touch and I’ll be able to inspect your site, remove the hack and minimise the risk of suffering another hack not long after the first.

This is a quest post and thanks to Patrick Foster from Ecomm Tips for submitting it. If you’d like to submit a quest post then get in touch.

The post What To Do When Your WordPress Site Has Been Hacked? appeared first on WordPress Developer.

Then Google unleashed its Penguin, Panda, Hummingbird and Pigeon, and the algorithm was never the same again. After the dust cleared, and said animals settled down into a peaceful virtual existence, there was nothing to do but for SEOs to pick themselves up, and adapt to the newly established reality.

Often was there talk about the ultimate demise of link building. And while their death was proclaimed on numerous occasions, backlinks still remain one of the more important ranking factors. As such, you naturally want to acquire as many of them as you can, and boost your traffic, climb that SERP, and be crowned the master of your universe.

This is when you ask yourself the question: how many backlinks do I need to get to the top?

Well, there is a rather straightforward formula available for calculating the number of backlinks you need to rank number one, but SEOs don’t like to share it, and like to guard it as their very special “secret sauce” recipe. Here’s what you will need though.

Quality in Large Quantities

The first thing they teach you in link building school is that quality always trumps quantity – in every industry, across all languages, in every market, for every search engine. Having one quality link in your hand makes it stronger than the hand of the website sitting opposite you, holding nothing but spam.

Let’s do a simple exercise. Let’s say that it takes you one hour to build a low quality link. Something with a very low domain rating (and authority), with virtually no traffic. And then you build 40 of these links a week, and you end up with 150 of them by the end of the month.

On the other hand, there’s your high quality link. A link from a website that people actually visit, respect and trust. A website that can be considered an authority in its field. A website that will pass on traffic to you. A website that will signal Google that you are a force to be reckoned with. And you can only build one of these for every day of effort you pour into it. At the end of the month, you have around 15 of these.

The 15 will trump the 150, every time. Think of these links as guests at a party. You may have 150 of them, but any meaningful conversation will be lost in all the noise, while people are trying to jostle to the bar, guffawing mini pizzas. On the other hand, 15 well-informed and intriguing guests will be able to hold a mindboggling conversation, while balancing delicate champagne glasses on their knees. And they will cost you less in terms of food and drinks.

While the analogy may not exactly be on point, you do get the point – investing in links that make sense, links that pass value, is always the better route to take, rather than investing resources in links that will have zero return on investment.

Never forget that you will also be acquiring links naturally as you go along. Some will be more or less spammy, others will be of a better quality, but this will all add to the naturalness of your backlink portfolio.

The key takeaway when it comes to links and their quality is to ask yourself a simple question: does this link make sense? As an internet user, do you feel this link would add value to the conversation? Would you like your website to be associated with the website you are chasing?

The same goes for anchor texts and landing pages: does it seem natural, or does it border on keyword stuffing? As the algorithm gets smarter every day, ranking will become much more intuitive. Think user experience more, and how to trick the machine less.

Focus on the Tortoise, rather than the Hare

The other all important issue when it comes to building backlinks is how fast you should be building them. If you try to amass a bunch at breakneck speed, you will likely tumble into a penalty at some point. To use a very tasteless metaphor, you are making turtle soup, rather than roasting a rabbit.

To put it plainly, and to reiterate the point made in the previous chapter – quality takes time. You can build yourself hundreds of spammy links all at once (while most likely paying for them in the process), which will sooner rather than later arouse Google’s suspicions, and you will end up in the doghouse.

You may be sorely tempted to get some links in quickly – especially when a website is new – and while you may be able to get away with dozens of comment links at a time, you don’t want to try to outfox the search engine. Focus your energies on building a reputation, rather than a link, and it will pay off in the long run. After all, you have probably had enough of the “SEO is a marathon, not a sprint” catchphrase, so I am not going to use it here. But remember that SEO is not a sprint, rather it is more of a marathon.

And now for the Backlink Recipe

If you’ve made it this far, I know you are simply dying to get to the part where you can finally calculate how many links you need to be building. So here it is:

Step 1: See how many links you already have

You can’t start doing the math without knowing your baseline first. Check your Search Console to see how many links you already have, and do a bit of a backlink audit. See how many unique domains are pointing to your site, what kinds of anchors are used, what the overall quality of these websites is, and how relevant they are for your business.

Step 2: Repeat process with competitor’s links

Some top ranking websites have billions of backlinks from millions of unique domains. Think Amazon and Wikipedia. But that’s not really the type of website you are trying to outrank, is it?

You need to know how well armed the competition is, and the way to do that is to check out their backlink portfolio. I find that using a combination of Ahrefs and Majestic works best for this task. Stick all of their backlinks in a sheet, put on a pot of coffee or boil a kettle, and settle down for some legwork.

Pay attention to the same things you did when analyzing your own links: quality, anchors, distribution, relevance.

Step 3: Repeat process with desired keywords

Now that you have amassed all this data – about yourself and your competition – the time has come to whip up a dish.

The number of keywords you will need is in direct correlation with the number of links the top ranking page for a desired keyword has.

Note: the quality of the page itself also plays a huge role in the equation, but let us assume that your page is of the same or better quality than the top ranking one.

How To Rank for Keyword X

So – to give you an example. You are trying to rank for keyword X. The pages that rank in the top ten have thousands of backlinks. You have none. Your page is new. You might not make it.

However – if the top ranking pages have only a few dozen backlinks, you have a decent chance of outranking them.

Don’t forget that there is much more to it than this simple equation, no matter what I said in the introduction. Links may be an important ranking factor, but they are never the only one.

Nevertheless, doing this kind of analysis will help you find low competition keywords with a decent search volume that you can actually rank for. And once you rank one page, ranking the next one will be just that much easier. Also never forget that building links is a never-ending process. Even when you make it to page one, or rank one, you need to keep working on them.

The Bottom Line for Backlinks

In conclusion, the number of backlinks you need to rank number one for a certain keyword will depend on the competition in your industry. If it’s a crowded environment, you will need more links, just because your competitors already have them. If there’s more room to jiggle, the number of links will be significantly lower.

Bear in mind that you don’t want to focus on competitor backlinks alone. While they may be a great starting point, you need to build links that are unique to you. There are countless resources online about the different ways to build backlinks in 2018 – try some of these strategies out. A variety of links will not only boost your backlink portfolio, it will also drive different types of traffic.

When embarking on a link building campaign, apart from using all the usual techniques, we like to ask ourselves a few simple questions: who needs the product this website is selling; how do we know they need it; where do they spend time online; how do they look for products; how can we reach them, where would they most likely notice us. The rest is a sea of emails, a mountain of articles to write, countless questions to answer, and a lot of fun to be had.

Because, never forget, building links is not only about getting to the top. It is about making connections with the people who can become leads and valued customers. It is about making a name for yourself. And you don’t want to be doing that in the shadiest neighborhood online. If you want to get some help with your SEO efforts then get in touch.

This is a quest post and thanks to Andrea Gombos from Cube Digital for submitting it. If you’d like to submit a quest post then get in touch.

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Award Winning Clients

Digitally Strong, a travel and tourism agency founded by Jenny Armstrong, is a site we designed and developed last year. Our designer Elena did the full logo design and branding for the business and Jenny & Co have gone on to win Best Travel & Tourism category at the 2018 Irish Social Media Awards (Sockies), for their campaign with tour company Irlanda en Espanol. Does that name ring a bell? Well, if you’re an avid reader of this blog it will as we that is one of the recently completed WordPress projects and so it’s great to see them getting this award so soon after launch.

About The Sockies

This year over 360 nominations were submitted by Irish companies across 35 categories. Digitally Strong and Irlanda en Espanol were selected as the winners in a competitive category whose nominees also included Adare Manor and the Maxol group. Their work was also shortlisted in two other categories – Best Business Twitter Account (Agency Run) and Best Use of Instagram (Business / Organisation). The prize was presented by RTE presenter Rick O’Shea to Jenny Armstrong, Founder of Digitally Strong, and Margarita Gruber, Managing Director of Irlanda en Espanol, at the awards ceremony in the RDS Dublin on June 14th.

Award Winning Websites?

Behind every award winner is a website and for these award winners it’s no different. The site for Digitally Strong got launched a little of a year ago and Jenny had this to say about it:

“Our website has been a fantastic shop window to showcase our services, past work and news such as our recent award win. The website’s “contact us” forms and SEO optimized content has enabled us to attract website visitors and convert them into leads.”

– you can’t beat that SEO optimisation for lead generation and whatever else may come from the leads (like awards!!).

Congrats To The Winners

So, as mentioned this is just quick mail to say congrats to the winners. Oftentimes things can get quite busy here in RR HQ with WordPress development or SMM for clients but do think it is important to find time to take stock, and give props, when people are blazing an award winning trail and so congrats to Jennifer & Irlanda En Espanol – onward and upward!

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What Is GDPR

General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) was introduced by the EU a little over 2 years ago but came into force on the 25th of May 2018. At it’s core GDPR is all about giving users control over their personal data and letting users hold businesses to account about what data they are harvesting or processing. The overarching idea behind GDPR is that businesses should not be using users personal data without their explicit consent and that users should be able to query businesses about what data they have on them and request that the business delete or remove it. That is what prompted the recent flurry of emails before the 25th May with businesses pleading with you to resubscribe to their list – they needed to get your explicit consent so that they could continue to market and sell to you (ahem aka, inform and entertain you).

GDPR is also global in scope insofar as any site that is collecting or using personal data from an EU citizen has to conform with the GDPR. In truth it will be interesting to see how this shakes out for non EU based businesses. Some businesses have taken the approach of banning traffic from EU rather than falling foul of the new regulations and that is probably just the start of the unintended consequences. I think in time the GDPR will be pared back significantly as some of the conditions are quite demanding and the burden will be too onerous for lots of small businesses. But, for now GDPR is here and so let’s talk about GDPR for WordPress and what you should do to try get compliant quickly.

GDPR for WordPress – Here’s A Caveat!

So, first things first here and an all important caveat. I’m not a lawyer, barrister, solicitor or wig wearer of any hue and as such my interpretation of what you should do to get your WordPress site GDPR compliant is just that, my interpretation. You should do some further reading to help solidify your own interpretation of GDPR for WordPress sites and continue to stay on top of it as it may change.

I’m not a lawyer, barrister, solicitor or wig wearer of any hue and as such my interpretation of what you should do to get your WordPress site GDPR compliant is just that, my interpretation.

Now, onto the good stuff.

GDPR Compliance for WordPress – What Should You Do?

From helping clients roll out GDPR compliance on their own sites and indeed by dotting the i’s on my own site, here are the steps you should take to try get your site GDPR compliant.

1. Privacy Policy: A GDPR friendly privacy policy is probably the most important piece of the GDPR puzzle. Make sure you state who is the data controller and clearly outline what cookies are in use on site and link to any 3rd party services you use that may contain personal data. Once you have your privacy policy penned then make sure to add a clear link to it in the footer of your site.

2. Cookie Notification: Depending on some interpretations of the GDPR you have to allow users the choice to accept whichever cookies they want when using your site. This is where things can get a bit hazy – not just in the degree to which you should let users choose their own cookies but potentially your site analytics could get hazy. If users don’t accept cookies for say Google Analytics, or my favourite, Clicky Analytics, then as a site owner you’ll be flying blind about how many people visit your site, what pages are viewed, how people get there etc etc. As such, I think having a cookie notification bar initially should be OK to let users know that by using the site cookies are being used and that they can view your full privacy policy for more info about which cookies are being used.

3. Personal Data Requests: Another key part of the GDPR is to allow users to request their own personal data. These requests should be completed within 30 days of receipt and to make things easier for users the core WordPress 4.9.6 update provided site admins with some tools they can use to query the WordPress database to see what, if any, data they may have about a certain site user. These core tools are great but somewhat limited if you use Gravity Forms or WooCommerce or MailChimp (or any of the other thousands of services/plugins that the core WordPress tools don’t query). One plugin which does query the 3 services mentioned (as well as some others) is the aptly titled WP-GDPR plugin. This plugin creates a specific standalone page where users can request their data from a variety of services. This is an approach I like as, if nothing else, by adding in these features and tools for users it will help show that attempts were made to be compliant with GDPR and, should the rubber hit the road, should stand you in good stead.

4. Checkboxes & Consent Blurbs: The next item to address for GDPR on your WordPress site is to make sure you have checkboxes in place on forms letting users know that you’ll use their data inline with your privacy policy. This may seem like overkill (and I think it is) as ultimately if a user is filling in a form on your site (anyone looking to hire a WordPress developer for example) you’d think that they are agreeing for their personal data (eg, name/email/phone number) to be used so that the site owner can then follow up on their enquiry. And, whilst they may be agreeing tacit agreement isn’t enough, it now has to be explicit and so adding in checkboxes on contact forms and content blurbs for mailing list signups is now recommended. Some schools of thought say that the checkboxes aren’t needed but again I think having checkboxes will go a long way to demonstrate that all efforts were made to be compliant. One word of advice here is to keep an eye on conversion rates – if you notice that they fall off a cliff after the addition of the checkbox then mighty be worth removing it as after all you have to keep your business up and running first and foremost, and be compliant thereafter.

5. Monitor, Update & Announce: Once you have the few items outlined above in place on site for GDPR you should then make sure to monitor, update and announce. Monitor any new tools, plugins or services you are using that may use personal data. If these tools merit a change to your privacy policy then make sure you update your privacy policy and announce that it has been changed. These announcements can be done via a mail blast or by adding a notice to the homepage to let users know that the privacy policy has been updated.

Getting GDPR Compliant

I hope the above guide to GDPR has given you a better understanding of what GDPR is all about and some of the steps you should take to try be compliant with GDPR. Realistically, I think things will be in a state of flux for the next few months (/years) as GDPR starts to get bedded down. I also think there may be some legal challenges to it in the future so will be interesting to see how that may impact it and as such would recommend keeping an ear to the ground so you don’t miss out on any GDPR related changes. Ultimately, the most important thing to do to get GDPR compliant is to take the first step to try be compliant – don’t fear it!

If you’ve any questions about GDPR, or how to get your WordPress site GDPR compliant, please comment below or get in touch here!

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Going Back To School: WordPress for Irish ITs!

This is a pretty exciting project that has been bubbling away beneath the surface for almost a year now. It’s been an ongoing project where we’re helping 8 Institutes of Technology migrate from their old library search system to a newer system. The newer system will be housed in a WordPress install which gives the librarians a lot more flexibility in what they can add to their site. The old legacy systems used very restrictive CMSs which didn’t give the librarians the control they needed of the sites and so in step WordPress. As mentioned this is an ongoing project but thus far 3 sites have been launched using the new site framework: GMIT Libary, LIT Library & Letterkenny with sites to come for Tralee IT, IADT, Sligo IT, Athlone IT, Blanchardstown IT. The process for these projects is a little bit different to the standard process but the output is the same – a quality site that the clients are happy with and able to update!

Lights, Camera, Toomey AV

You know one of the best signs that you’re doing something right in business world – or the WordPress world – is that your clients come back for more work. This is thankfully the case here as this is the 3rd WordPress site which has now been developed for this client. Following off the successful rebuilds of AudioVisual.ie and InteractiveFlatScreens.ie it was time to take on the crown jewel of the online fleet. Toomey AV have been in business for 50 years and are one of the top providers of ICT equipment to Irish schools. With 50 years in business and half the nation educated by a projector that they have probably installed over the years it was a project that had to be taken seriously. The new site is a large deviation from the old one, gone is the clunky ecommerce setup with a cluttered homepage and instead the site focuses on generating leads rather than processing online payments and since launch has been performing better than the old site. On an ongoing basis we work with the Toomey AV team to help them with the SEO of their online fleet and over the 3 years the trend has thankfully gone in the right direction, may the tide continue to rise!

¿Tu Hablas Espanol?

The next site to update you on is a really great looking photo driven site that was recently launched for Irlanda En Espanol – a site and business that caters to Spanish speakers who would like to visit and tour Ireland. The new site has a tour focused design with the homepage having lots of image driven links to the tours that Irlande En Espanol offers. The site is also fully integrated with the tour booking system so all bookings are fully synced and integrated. The integration partner, Fare Harbour, are also working on a booking system to allow clients to book trips to/from the airport and this feature will be added to the site once ready. This project was also an interesting project to take on as it’s a site that is in Spanish and so got to practice a few palabras!

Onto The Next WordPress Project!

So, hopefully this post will help dispel any suggestion that the WordPress machine is no longer grinding through the projects. If anything, the pace has picked up and there is less time available to write posts like these but that will be addressed in the coming weeks. If you have any WordPress projects that you’re looking for help with then get in touch and we can take it from there!

Until next time, may your keywords always be ranking!

The post Recent WordPress Site Projects appeared first on WordPress Developer.

Google has detected that your site is currently running WordPress 4.7.0 or 4.7.1, an older version of WordPress. Outdated or unpatched software can be vulnerable to hacking and malware exploits that harm potential visitors to your site. Therefore, we suggest you update the software on your site as soon as possible.

And, why is this noteworthy you may ask? Well, read on.

Importance of WordPress for the Web

I believe the first reason Google are sending these notifications is because the WordPress platform has grown to the point where it is significant to the web as a whole. It is estimated that 27% of the entire internet is based on WordPress and Google wants those sites – and the 50,000 new WordPress sites being added daily- to be kept up to date. That is over 1 in 4 sites are running on WordPress and should a large chunk of those sites be running out of date software or with WordPress malware it could quickly spread and then who knows what impact that may have on the web.

Importance of WordPress Updates

Updates are important. WordPress updates don’t occur for no reason. The purpose of WordPress updates is to continually evolve and improve the platform, fix bugs or remove security threats. If updates get pushed out by the WordPress team they should be tested and then deployed. We see it a lot that clients who self manage their sites can sometimes be tardy in applying updates (hence we got the notifications from GSC) but with Google now issuing these update notifications the importance of updates may be hammered home. These warning from Google may have been prompted due to the severity of the threat that the update resolved but the general rule holds, keep your site up to date. WordPress updates should not be considered as optional or a burden but understood for what they are – progress, and as such should be implemented as soon as possible!

Importance of WordPress Updates for SEO

As SEO is one of our main fortes we think there could potentially be an SEO angle here to these notifications – as there usually always is with Google. These update notifications tie in with Googles recent moves to reward sites that have an SSL cert in place and with their issuing of warnings for non secure sites that collect passwords in the latest version of Chrome.

Google wants to ensure that the web is safe and wants to know that if it’s sending traffic to a site that that site is secure and malware free.

One of the coarse checks Google can do for malware is to see what version of WordPress is in use on a site and if WordPress isn’t kept up to date this may then factor in to the overall SEO results of the site.

If you needed a compelling reason before to keep you site updated – as if getting hacked wasn’t enough – the potential negative SEO impacts of not updating should be enough to motivate all site owners and get them in the groove of updating.

Updating WordPress Sites

There will always be some site owners who don’t take the time to make sure their site is updated and for those of you who fall into that category the recent Google warnings for WordPress sites that need to be updated should be the catalyst for you to either start to self manage the site properly or get someone to look after it for you. If you need help in updating your site then get in touch and should be able to help you out but whatever you do – don’t forget the update notifications anymore, as Google won’t!

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Ongoing SEO Process – A Quick Overview

Our ongoing SEO process takes an holistic view of SEO. Everything which a company does should feed into the sites SEO – be it online of offline – and a core part of our process is getting to know you and your business. Via monthly client meetings we are able to get a good idea of your business needs, and sometimes opportunities, and marry the needs to the sites SEO. On a weekly basis new SEO optimised blog content is added to your site and clients are provided a variety of graphics to allow multiple social shares of the same piece of content. Whilst it may not seem like a big deal this allows clients to get the most out of their blog posts in the short term whilst also benefiting the sites SEO in the long term. The above is a really, really condensed version of the process but think of us as the eye in the sky – monitoring everything, seeing where site traffic is coming from, watching how it converts, identifying site issues or conversion blockers and removing them and generally ensuring that the site is always in rude SEO health to keep Google happy.

Think of us as the eye in the sky – monitoring everything, seeing where site traffic is coming from, watching how it converts, identifying site issues or conversion blockers and removing them

Ridiculous SEO Results & Those Sexy Curves

I can’t lie to you here, HLH are a great client who engage fully in the SEO process and so are now really reaping the rewards and so in that regard this graph is a bit of a unicorn and it’s sexy SEO curves may never be replicated.

The below graph shows the month on month growth from November 2015 to November 2016 and for that period there was always organic traffic growth, always. The top line represents total traffic to the site and the lower one the total traffic derived from organic traffic. We focus on this metric as it’s one that the ongoing SEO efforts impacts the most. Over the course of the year organic traffic rose by a whopping 1040% – not too bad at all!

Furthermore – and for all you business owners out there perhaps more importantly, organic traffic accounted for about 40-45% of all site goals, conversions and business. Again, not too bad at all.

For us this graph, and the results that we’ve gotten for other clients, is proof positive that the ongoing SEO process we have is one that works and is one that all clients can engage with. To be honest, we’re a little bit surprised at how good the results have been for some of our clients but you keep doing the right things and the results will come. Some of our other clients have dropped PPC advertising completely in favour of ongoing SEO and others are reviewing all offline activity so that it falls more in line with SEO goals. This is one of the best testimonials we can get to hear that budget is being shifted from other departments to what we’re doing but, on the topic of testimonials, here is one for you.

Thoughts From The Client

The below is from Nigel, the business operations manager for HLH, and one of the members of the HLH team that we were in contact with regularly throughout the year. The below is a copy/paste from the testimonial left on LinkedIn (for those Doubting Thomases out there you can view it and other testimonials here)
Following on from Rob and his teams fantastic work on the development and design of our website we knew that we had an expert in all things online on our hands who could help our website perform and get the best business leads to help us succeed. 12 months of SEO, Social Media Marketing and Website Management later we can safely say we have achieved this and more. Highly recommended!

Future Plans for HLH

Another hallmark of success is what one has in the pipeline and thanks to the stellar year that was HLH have been able to take on 5 new full time staff throughout the year, moved into a larger premises and have plans to expand their core business offering as well as open up a new branch in Melbourne. For us we’re delighted to have been able to help get this business to where it is now and look forward to helping it continue to grow. It is eye opening and really goes to show what is possible with one year of hard graft, an SEO plan and a willingness to take a leap of faith that SEO can work!

Start Your Own Sexy SEO Curve!

If you’d like to engage us for an SEO project so that we can try get you some sexy SEO curves like the above then get in touch with us today by e-mailing [email protected] or contact us online!

The post Hunter Labour Hire SEO Case Study – Sexy Curves appeared first on WordPress Developer.

For your site to do well you need to build up a tribe of followers, people who are interested in what you have to say and will help amplify your voice and message further than you could alone.

For this to happen you need to build relationships or allegiances with others online and ultimately content is the conduit for the connections that you’ll need for your site to succeed. This post is brought to you by years of experience with content marketing, and in part, by the letter C, so read on!

Craft The Content

The first thing to consider here is what is the purpose of the content and who are you writing it for? Sometimes content creation may have an overly SEO focus, sometimes it might be an attempt for viral glory, sometimes it might be a resource or roundup driven or sometimes it may be to generate connections but, unfortunately, content will rarely tick all those boxes (oh but when it does!. And so, before starting to write the post think about a central focus or objective for the post.

For example this post about WordPress malware removal was an SEO play, this post featuring Rebekah Radice was the help deepen the connection there and re-purpose content and this SEO Expert joke was a failed attempt at going viral (sigh) but each piece of content had a purpose that it was crafted for.

Cultivate The Connections

So, now that we’re starting to view content as specific little worker drones of sorts, each with their own purpose, we can start to consider how best to seed or amplify content. There is an element of what came first here, the chicken or the egg, but if you can identify those in your niche that you want to connect with and then try get on their radar you’ll be giving your content a better chance of being spotted, seen and shared.

For example, in this post about Google Plus serendipity, I discuss how I was fortunate enough to get on the radar of Martin Shervington, one of the best known power users of Google Plus. If you check out the post you’ll see some of the steps which were consciously taken to create a platform to cultivate the connection (gotta love that yellow banana!). This post on the differences between Google Publisher And Authorship helped me get on the radar of Mark Traphagen, someone I’ve learned a lot from, and then in turn went on to get almost 2,000 shares which shows the importance of creating good connections with your peers.

Your approach to how you cultivate connections should be one that is unique to you, that sets a tone that you want, that creates a perception you want for your brand – personal or otherwise – and, ultimately, an approach that is honest so it can be replicated time and time again! Which leads me to the next point about content and connections and one that you avid readers will know that I’ve failed miserably at…kind of.

Continue With Consistency

Momentum is mass times velocity and for your online business to succeed momentum is key.

The physical principle of P = MV could be adapted to the online realm and succinctly put at oP = QC x Cy², Online Momentum = Quality Content x Consistency Squared. Once you get the ball rolling online it’s key that you don’t stop. Like Sisyphus and his struggles with the boulder you can’t stop pushing. You should publish new content consistently (I’d recommend once a week at a minimum) and whatever you don’t do something like I did with the No Blogging Experiment!

Concurrently you should look to continually expand your social footprint by finding new places of seeding your content, new related communities/groups/forums of people who might appreciate what you publish and new influencers in your niche so you can try get on their radar. Have the mindset of iterate and improve and each time try to leap frog what you achieved before.

Content Is The Conduit For Connections – So What?

So, let’s bring this story full circle for those of you with a business mind shall we. What’s the point in publishing regular content? What’s the point in continually cultivating connections? Well, the embedded graph below shows the traffic spike this site got the day after posting the No Blogging Experiment (and also the genesis of this post). Then Stephan Hovnanian chimed in and eloquently put it that,

Traffic and connections have a symbiotic relationship if they’re to help you with what I hope is the ultimate goal: sales.

And that is it in a nutshell.

Posting regular content and building connections isn’t just done for the sake of doing it, it is done to generate sales. As mentioned at the start, all content should be crafted with a specific focus in mind and tailored to that end. Without content, your online fodder for the social media circuit, you’ll be hamstrung in your efforts to generate new connections which in turn will lead to traffic which in turn will lead to sales. And isn’t that we all want?

The post Content Is The Conduit For Connections appeared first on WordPress Developer.

That’s the amount of time between this post and the last blog post. You don’t need to be an online marketing expert to know that that is way too long a period to have between posts but I wanted to run an experiment of sorts to see what would happen if I let the blogging slide? Would the site become a no go zone? Would the business take a dip? Am I right to continually beat the drum to clients about the importance of blogging? Well, the experiment is over so read on to find out how this site fared with the blogging hiatus!

The No-Blogging Experiment Is Over

The first thing to say here is that for me blogging isn’t a chore and so to stop doing it for so long was the hard part but I really wanted to see how no ongoing blogging and SEO would impact the site and organic traffic to it.

The second thing to say is that it was a calculated experiment. If there was any risk of a significant downturn in overall business I wouldn’t have done the experiment (or, I would have stopped it). The reality is that we have a few sites that rank nicely and so throughout the entire period we were just as busy as before – but this site, my baby, did take a drop and so, like they say for all the cool experiments – do not try this yourself!

Now, with that out of the way, let’s look in more detail at what happened to this site.

Here Come The Stats!

So after 251 days of no blogging here are the key takeaways from the traffic stats, charted below.

Overall traffic to the site saw a major decline as it fell by 32% compared to the previous 251 day period. This is a hefty drop but one that I kind of expected to see with the lack of blogging. Now, I’m going to have to reverse that trend – phase two of this experiment if you will.

My reason for beating the drum about ongoing blogging and the importance of it for SEO were hammered home harshly in the following stat. Organic traffic dropped by a massive 42%. Without fresh blog content your site will quickly fall out of favour with Google. It’s important to continually stoke the coals and, as we do with our ongoing SEO clients, post at a minimum one new article each week. As you can see from the graphic this was the biggest decline over the period.

The site goals, as in people who visited the contact page fell by 15% and overall site conversions by 28%. When it comes to brass tax and the bottom line that is what should make businesses start to see the importance of ongoing blogging. If this business wasn’t buffered by other sources of leads and enquiries that 28% drop could have been a body blow to the operation we have going on here. Thankfully, it wasn’t as we’re up about 300% by coming in like a wrecking ball and continually honing and refining our craft.

To Blog Or Not To Blog, No Longer A Question

If ever there was any doubt about whether or not blogging is important to your business I think the above makes a compelling case as to why it is vital. The drop in traffic – and ranking for my main keyword of “WordPress Developer” from 1st to 6th – shows that without putting in the time in the SEO gym you’ll slowly start to fade from Google search results. One thing I can tell you, speaking from first hand experience after this experiment, it’s not nice to fade from Google search, it pains. And so, I’m going to fire up the blog machine again and start the march to top – currently occupied by one of our other sites ;)

Share The Results On Your Site

If you’ve found this experiment interesting then copy the code below to share the No Blogging Experiment results infographic on your site! Thanks for sharing!
<a href="proxy.php?url=https://robertryan.ie/the-no-blogging-experiment-is-over/"><img src="proxy.php?url=https://robertryan.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/The-No-Blogging-Experiment-Stats-What-Happens-SEO-With-No-Blogging.jpg" alt="The No-Blogging Experiment Stats - What Happens SEO With No Blogging" width="600px" border="0" /></a><br/><small>Infographic from: <a title="Robert Ryan - WordPress Developer" href="proxy.php?url=https://robertryan.ie">Robert Ryan</a></small>

How To Rise In Google Search

So, how am I going to get to the top spot on Google (or at least 2nd spot as there’s tough competition in the 1st spot) I hear you ask? Well, I’m going to practice what I preach and implement the game plan that we go through with our ongoing SEO clients: find keywords, track keywords, write content, share content, report, repeat. In follow up posts I’ll go into more details about each of those steps so make sure to come back for that – you know you want to!

If you’d like to get in touch to see how we can help your business online then contact me here, despite the nasty looking stats above – we know what we’re doing and are good at what we do.

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