Tag Archives: search-engine

You Asked: Top 10 Questions about SEO from our webinar

Posted on August 29, 2019 by Hosting

The post You Asked: Top 10 Questions about SEO from our webinar appeared first on HostGator Blog . When you think about Search Engine Optimization, you probably think about how to increase your website’s ranking in Google. While that’s correct, it’s not as simple as it may sound, and there’s a lot that goes into the practice of SEO.  HostGator offered a free webinar about the 5 Steps to SEO Success to help website owners get started with optimizing their website for search.  We focused on on-page SEO and covered the following steps:  Implement keyword research  Set up metadata on all pages Create quality content Format URL structure and links Use schema, if appropriate  Missed the webinar? No worries. Check out the recording below. Here are the top 10 questions about SEO that our webinar attendees asked.  1. Once you have a website, what is the #1 thing you should do to immediately increase your rankings?  The easiest thing you can do to quickly impact your search results and rankings is to register your business with Google My Business. Google My Business is the official business profile listing from Google that integrates with Google Maps and Google search. GMB is Google’s way of allowing you to control what shows up in search by giving you the space to provide as much information as possible about your business. You’ll want to make sure that your Google My Business listing is accurate and matches all your listings online.  2. I don’t have a physical address or storefront. Do I still need a Google My Business account?   Yes! If you want to be found online you should definitely have a Google My Business account even if you don’t have a physical address or storefront. In fact, when you set up your Google My Business account, you can note your business as a “ service area business ,” meaning you serve a certain cities or zip codes.  When you set up your account, one of the first questions will be ‘do you have an address where customers can visit you?’ Follow these prompts to indicate that you do not have a physical location. If you already have a Google My Business account, you can edit your physical location from the dashboard. You will see that “service area” and “storefront address” can now be edited separately. 3. How important are sitemaps? Do I need one?  Sitemaps help Google identify and crawl all of your site’s pages and URLs. Without a sitemap, Google might not be able to index all of your pages – meaning you could be missing out on a lot of organic traffic.  A lot of CMSs automatically generate sitemaps; or if you use the Yoast plugin for WordPress, it will create your sitemap for you. Manually creating a sitemap is a fairly intensive process, especially if you have a lot of pages. So if your CMS has the functionality to create a sitemap for you, take advantage of it!  It’s important to note that when SEO’s refer to “sitemaps” we’re typically referring to sitemap.xml not HTML sitemaps that you might find front-of-site.  4. How important are good Google reviews for SEO?  Google reviews are important for SEO! Essentially, Google reviews show Google that your business is real and that people have interacted with it. Additionally, reviews frequently contain relevant keywords which add to Google’s understanding of your business. The more context you can provide to Google about your business, the better.  5. For SEO purposes, is it more important to update existing content or create new content?  This is a great question and one that we debate at HostGator as well! You should do both! As content gets old, it may no longer be relevant, which then causes it to not rank well anymore (don’t forget, you want your content to be timely!) For example, an article about ‘top web design tips of 2015’ only holds value during 2015 because people always want the most current tips. To improve your rankings of that article, you should update the content to make it more evergreen and relevant to your readers no matter when they find the article.  Updating older posts is great because they typically have more SEO value, since they have been indexed longer and have more backlinks. If you do have to delete a post or page however, you’ll want to do a 301 redirect to a new, highly-relevant article. A 301 redirect indicates to Google that the page has permanently moved and allows you to pass 90-95% of SEO value from the original article to the new one. 301 redirects allow you to both maintain your rankings and update your content.  If you can, we recommend that you publish new articles on a regular basis to indicate to Google that your website is current, relevant, and active.  6. How many keywords should I have? And where do I put them?  The number of keywords you need is really dependent on your business. You should have a mix of both long-tail keywords (phrases or questions that are fairly specific) and head terms (general keywords with high search volume). For HostGator, our head terms include our products, such as web hosting and shared hosting, while our long-tail keywords include phrases like what is web hosting, how expensive is web hosting, and how to keep my website secure.  If you are a local business, be sure to include the city or state in your keywords to target people in your area. We covered keyword research in detail during the webinar – go back and watch from minute mark 7:05-12:45. As a reminder, you can target three to five keywords on any given page and the biggest tip we can offer is this – use your keywords naturally.  Finally, think about keywords like topics. Don’t just “say” them, talk about them. Write as much as you know about the topic and make the conversation natural. 7. How do I get backlinks?  Essentially, a backlink is when another website links to yours. The absolute best way to get backlinks is to develop quality content, like blog articles, and wait for other websites to link to your articles. If your content is helpful and original, this should happen naturally.  If you want to take a more proactive approach to building backlinks, you can find a website that might find your information helpful for their readers and actually ask them to link to it.  If you are a local business, you can consider partnering with another business on a promotion and exchanging links in return. Think of this like networking in real life – meet people who have similar interests and ask them to link to your articles, specifically if the content is helpful for their readers.  8. What are the best SEO plugins for WordPress?  Yoast is well-known as the best SEO plugin for WordPress. With a few short configurations, Yoast will manage your metadata, canonicals, sitemaps and your robots.txt. While Yoast automatically selects certain configurations for you, you also have the ability to fully customize your selections. Check out this article for eight more awesome SEO plugins for WordPress .  9. If I’m working with a contractor for SEO, what questions should I be asking my SEO person each month?  I always want to see metrics. While it’s important to note that SEO changes usually take a long time to see results, there are still analytics your SEO contractor could be sharing with you. Things you might be interested in seeing are:  Month over month, or year over year keyword changes The number of keywords you have ranking on pages one and two Organic traffic, transactions and revenue Top organic landing pages Chances are that your SEO contractor is already pulling this information to guide their strategy, so it shouldn’t be too much effort to share that information with you.  You and your SEO contractor should also be monitoring your competitors and any changes they may be making to their sites that could impact their rankings and therefore affect your organic traffic.  10. Are SSL certificates important to being found on Google?  An SSL certificate is very important for a few reasons! To provide context, an SSL certificate prevents a “middle man” from stealing information as it is passed through to your website. This is especially helpful for eCommerce websites where customers are entering their credit card information. Even if you don’t have an online store, an SSl certificate can protect the contact forms on your website.  SSL certificates are also essential for ranking highly in the SERPs. For many years Google has indicated that the presence of an SSL certificate will help your site rankings. Google further proved this statement in July 2018 when Google Chrome started flagging websites without SSL certificates; as of last summer, website visitors started receiving notifications when they visited a site without an SSL certificate. Obviously when visitors see this alert, they will quickly leave your website, which will increase your bounce rate and decrease your rankings.   Luckily, HostGator offers free SSL certificates with all hosting plans . Follow the steps to set yours up today! Want to learn more about SEO? Check out our SEO blog articles or download our free ebook , the Beginner’s Guide to SEO.  Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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The Right Way to Tag Your Blog Posts

Posted on August 16, 2019 by Hosting

The post The Right Way to Tag Your Blog Posts appeared first on HostGator Blog . It’s easy to overlook the humble post tag when you’re setting up your blog. But tags are worth a second look and then some. These little labels can deliver a lot of value when you know what they do and how to use them wisely. Tags on your blog posts can make it easier for readers to find what they’re looking for. They can help search engine crawlers understand the content that’s on your site. And tags can help you organize, update, and repackage your archived posts. With the right tracking tools, your tags can even show you which direction your new content should take. What a Blog Post Tag Is—and Isn’t Tags are similar to a lot of other site elements, and it can get confusing. Let’s start by clearing up what a tag is and is not. First, blog post tags are not hashtags. They have similar functions, but hashtags work across an entire platform, which is why you get results from about a million different accounts when you search for #puppies on Instagram. Post tags work within your site, so clicking the puppies tag will return only your posts about wee puppers. Post tags also aren’t the code snippets used to track marketing campaigns with Google Tag Manager. Two totally different things. Post Tags Complement Categories Tags are optional, but WordPress automatically sorts blog posts into categories. If you don’t set up your own categories and use them, your content will be “uncategorized.” That’s not helpful for your readers, you, search crawlers, or people using search engines to find the topics you write about. So please, use your categories. Some bloggers don’t tag their posts because they feel like categories take care of all their sorting needs. That can work if you have a small blog that you don’t update that often, but the more content you have, and the more varied your topics are, the more useful tags will be. Here’s why: Categories sort your posts into a top-level groups that provide a general outline of your content. For example, baking blog categories might be cakes, pies, cookies, and brownies. But you can tag posts in any of those categories with specific labels like Christmas, gluten-free, and so on, so readers can find all your Christmas or gluten free recipes in one tag search. Category and tag management menus in WordPress Post Tags and Meta Descriptions Have Different Jobs Meta keywords show up in a search results snippet for your post, and they get scanned by search engine robots. They can share some of the same words you use in your post tags, but tagging your posts doesn’t automatically generate meta descriptions. You need to enter them in the meta description box for your post. 4 Ways Post Tags Make Your Blog Better 1. Tags can help your SEO. Before you start freestyling your tag names, check out your Google Search Console data to see what keywords people are using to find your blog. By tagging with keywords, you help search engine bots find and categorize your posts. That helps new readers find your blog more easily. 2. Tags make a big blog more manageable and appealing to readers. Consider the tags on a TechCrunch post about robot food delivery . TechCrunch has been around for more than a decade, so they’ve got a huge archive. But they limit the tags to a few relevant labels. Seven of these tags lead to lists of related content that readers can scroll through. The Berkeley SkyDeck tag only applies to the Kiwi story for now. But as the startup accelerator gets more coverage, that tag may appear on more posts. You’ll notice one tag that’s not on this post is food delivery. Even though it’s central to the story, most TechCrunch readers are not there for food delivery stories. Their focus is tech. So keep your tags tied to what your readers are looking for. Resist the urge to toss in oddball tags, because you’ll end up with a bunch of one-off tags that make your site navigation harder instead of easier and don’t help your SEO. 3. Tags relate your blog posts to one another. Once you have a few posts with the same tag, you’ve got a little niche within your content that readers can explore. Behind the scenes, you can also use your tags to find related blog posts you might want to link to in new posts. You can do this manually or you can use a WordPress blog plugin that will automatically surface related posts for you. Once you have a few posts with the same tag, you’ve got a little niche within your content that readers can explore. Behind the scenes, you can also use your tags to find related blog posts you might want to link to in new posts. You can do this manually or you can use a WordPress blog plugin that will automatically surface related posts for you. You can review your tags to see if it’s time to put together a mega-post that updates and combines related content from several different posts in your archive. Tags can also help you pull together material for an eBook quickly. 4. Tags can show you which blog topics your readers like most. You can track metrics for your tags, and even your categories, but you’ll have to do a couple of workarounds for Google analytics to make it happen. One option is to create custom dimensions for your tags and categories in your analytics dashboard . If you do this yourself, you’ll also have to modify your tracking code, too. If you’d rather not mess with your tracking codes, you can use a plugin to set up your custom dimensions. The MonsterInsights Pro plugin has an add-on for exactly this purpose. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP by ExactMetrics also lets you set up custom dimensions for tags and some other post elements. Ready to set up your blog and start tagging your posts? Get started with HostGator’s managed WordPress hosting. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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How to Secure a Website from Hackers [10 Step Guide]

Posted on August 5, 2019 by Hosting

The post How to Secure a Website from Hackers [10 Step Guide] appeared first on HostGator Blog . As a website owner, is there anything more terrifying than the thought of seeing all of your work altered or entirely wiped out by a nefarious hacker? We see data breaches and hacks in the news all the time. And you may think, why would someone come after my small business website? But hacks don’t just happen to the big guys. One report found that small businesses were the victims of 43% of all data breaches.  You’ve worked hard on your website (and your brand) – so it’s important to take the time to protect it with these basic hacker protection tips. 5 Easy Steps to Secure Your Website from Hackers You may have worried when starting this post that it would be full of technical jargon that your average website owner would find baffling. Some of our tips further down do get technical, and you may want to bring in your developer for those. But there are a few things you can do on your own first that don’t involve that much technical know-how.  Step #1: Install security plugins. If you built your website with a content management system (CMS) , you can enhance your website security with plugins that actively prevent website hacking attempts. Each of the main CMS options have security plugins available, many of them for free. Security plugins for WordPress: iThemes Security  Bulletproof Security  Sucuri Wordfence fail2Ban Security options for Magento: Amasty Watchlog Pro MageFence Security extensions for Joomla: JHackGuard jomDefender RSFirewall Antivirus Website Protection These options address the security vulnerabilities that are inherent in each platform, foiling additional types of hacking attempts that could threaten your website. In addition, all websites – whether you’re running a CMS-managed site or HTML pages – can benefit from considering SiteLock .  SiteLock goes above and beyond simply closing site security loopholes by providing daily monitoring for everything from malware detection to vulnerability identification to active virus scanning and more. If your business relies on its website, SiteLock is definitely an investment worth considering. Note: Our Managed WordPress hosting plan has SiteLock built in, along with other features to help secure your site. Step #2: Use HTTPS As a consumer, you may already know to always look for the green lock image and https in your browser bar any time you provide sensitive information to a website. Those five little letters are an important shorthand for hacker security: they signal that it’s safe to provide financial information on that particular webpage. An SSL certificate is important because it secures the transfer of information – such as credit cards, personal data, and contact information – between your website and the server. While an SSL certificate has always been essential for ecommerce websites, having one has recently become important for all websites. In July 2018,  Google Chrome released a security update that alerts website visitors if your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate installed. That makes visitors more likely to bounce, even if your website doesn’t collect sensitive information.  Search engines are taking website security more seriously than ever because they want users to have a positive and safe experience browsing the web. Taking the commitment to security further, a search engine may rank your website lower in search results if you don’t have an SSL certificate. What does that mean for you? If you want people to trust your brand, you need to invest in an SSL certificate . The cost of an SSL certificate is minimal, but the extra level of encryption it offers to your customers goes a long way to making your website more secure and trustworthy. At HostGator, we also take website security seriously, but most importantly, we want to make it easy for you to be secure. All HostGator web hosting packages come with a free SSL certificate. The SSL certificate will be automatically applied to your account, but you do need to take a few steps to install the free SSL certificate on your website.  Step #3: Keep your website platform and software up-to-date Using a CMS with various useful plugins and extensions offers a lot of benefits, but it also brings risk. The leading cause of website infections is vulnerabilities in a content management system’s extensible components.  Because many of these tools are created as open-source software programs, their code is easily accessible – to both good-intentioned developers as well as malicious hackers. Hackers can pore over this code, looking for security vulnerabilities that allow them to take control of your website by exploiting any platform or script weaknesses. To protect your website from being hacked, always make sure your content management system, plugins, apps, and any scripts you’ve installed are up-to-date.  If you’re running a website built on WordPress, you can check whether you’re up to date quickly when logging into your WordPress dashboard. Look for the update icon in the top left corner next to your site name. Click the number to access your WordPress Updates. Step #4: Make sure your passwords are secure This one seems simple, but it’s so important. It’s tempting to go with a password you know will always be easy for you to remember. That’s why the #1 most common password is still 123456. You have to do better than that – a lot better than that to prevent login attempts from hackers and other outsiders. Make the effort to figure out a truly secure password (or use HostGator’s password generator).  Make it long. Use a mix of special characters, numbers, and letters. And steer clear of potentially easy-to-guess keywords like your birthday or kid’s name. If a hacker somehow gains access to other information about you, they’ll know to guess those first. Holding yourself to a high standard for password security is step one. You also need to make sure everyone who has access to your website has similarly strong passwords. One weak password within your team can make your website susceptible to a data breach , so set expectations with everyone who has access. Institute requirements for all website users in terms of length and types of characters. If your employees want to use easy passwords for their less secure accounts, that’s their business. But when it comes to your website, it’s your business (literally) and you can hold them to a higher standard.  Step #5: Invest in automatic backups. Even if you do everything else on this list, you still face some risk. The worst-case scenario of a website hack is to lose everything because you forgot to back your website up. The best way to protect yourself is to make sure you always have a recent backup. While a data breach will be stressful no matter what, when you have a current backup, recovering is much easier. You can make a habit out of manually backing your website up daily or weekly. But if there’s even the slightest chance you’ll forget, invest in automatic backups . It’s a cheap way to buy peace of mind.  5 Advanced Steps to Secure Your Website from Hackers All of the above steps are relatively painless, even for website owners with minimal technical experience. This second half of the list gets a little more complicated, and you may want to call a developer or IT consultant to help you out.  Step #6: Take precautions when accepting file uploads through your site. When anyone has the option to upload something to your website, they could abuse the privilege by loading a malicious file, overwriting one of the existing files important to your website, or uploading a file so large it brings your whole website down.  If possible, simply don’t accept any file uploads through your website. Many small business websites can get by without offering the option of file uploads at all. If that describes you, you can skip everything else in this step.   But eliminating file uploads isn’t an option for all websites. Some types of businesses, like accountants or healthcare providers, need to give customers a way to securely provide documents.  If you need to allow file uploads, take a few steps to make sure you protect yourself: Create a whitelist of allowed file extensions. By specifying which types of files you’ll accept, you keep suspicious file types out. Use file type verification. Hackers try to sneakily get around whitelist filters by renaming documents with a different extension than the document type actually is, or adding dots or spaces to the filename.  Set a maximum file size. Avoid distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks by rejecting any files over a certain size.  Scan files for malware. Use antivirus software to check all files before opening. Automatically rename files upon upload. Hackers won’t be able to re-access their file if it has a different name when they go looking for it.  Keep the upload folder outside of the webroot. This keeps hackers from being able to access your website through the file they upload. These steps can remove most of the vulnerabilities inherent in allowing file uploads to your website.  Step #7: Use parameterized queries SQL injections are one of the most common website hacks many sites fall victim to. SQL injections can come into play if you have a web form or URL parameter that allows outside users to supply information. If you leave the parameters of the field too open, someone could insert code into them that allows access to your database. It’s important to protect your site from this because of the amount of sensitive customer information that can be held in your database. There are a number of steps you can take to protect your website from SQL injection hacks; one of the most important and easiest to implement is the use of parameterized queries. Using parameterized queries ensures your code has specific enough parameters so that there’s no room for a hacker to mess with them. Step #8: Use CSP Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks are another common threat site owners have to be on the lookout for. Hackers find a way to slip malicious JavaScript code onto your pages, which can then infect the device of any website visitors exposed to the code. Part of the fight to protect your site from XSS attacks is similar to the parameterized queries for SQL injections. Make sure any code you use on your website for functions or fields that allow input are as explicit as possible in what’s allowed, so you’re not leaving room for anything to slip in. Content Security Policy (CSP) is another handy tool that can help protect your site from XSS. CSP allows you to specify which domains a browser should consider valid sources of executable scripts when on your page. The browser will then know not to pay attention to any malicious script or malware that might infect your site visitor’s computer. Using CSP involves adding the proper HTTP header to your webpage that provides a string of directives that tells the browser which domains are ok and any exceptions to the rule.  You can find details on crafting CSP headers for your website here . Step #9: Lock down your directory and file permissions All websites can be boiled down to a series of files and folders that are stored on your web hosting account.  Besides containing all of the scripts and data needed to make your website work, each of these files and folders is assigned a set of permissions that controls who can read, write, and execute any given file or folder, relative to the user they are or the group to which they belong. On the Linux operating system, permissions are viewable as a three-digit code where each digit is an integer between 0-7. The first digit represents permissions for the owner of the file, the second for anyone assigned to the group that owns the file, and the third for everyone else.  The assignations work as follows: 4 equals Read 2 equals Write 1 equals Execute 0 equals no permissions for that user As an example, take the permission code “644.”  In this case, a “6” (or “4+2”) in the first position gives the file’s owner the ability to read and write the file.  The “4” in the second and third positions means that both group users and internet users at large can read the file only – protecting the file from unexpected manipulations. So, a file with “777” (or 4+2+1 / 4+2+1 / 4+2+1) permissions is readable, write-able, and executable by the user, the group, and everyone else in the world. As you might expect, a file that is assigned a permission code that gives anyone on the web the ability to write and execute it is much less secure than one which has been locked down in order to reserve all rights for the owner alone.  Of course, there are valid reasons to open up access to other groups of users (anonymous FTP upload, as one example), but these instances must be carefully considered in order to avoid creating a website security risk. For this reason, a good rule of thumb is to set your permissions as follows: Folders and directories = 755 Individual files = 644 To set your file permissions, log in to your cPanel’s File Manager or connect to your server via FTP.  Once inside, you’ll see a list of your existing file permissions (as in the following example generated using the Filezilla FTP program): The final column in this example displays the folder and file permissions currently assigned to the website’s content.  To change these permissions in Filezilla, simply right click the folder or file in question and select the “File permissions” option.  Doing so will launch a screen that allows you to assign different permissions using a series of checkboxes: Although your web host’s or FTP program’s backend might look slightly different, the basic process for changing permissions remains the same. Our support portal has solutions for how to modify your folder and file permissions . #10 Keep your error messages simple (but still helpful).  Detailed error messages can be helpful internally to help you identify what’s going wrong so you know how to fix it. But when those error messages are displayed to outside visitors, they can reveal sensitive information that tells a potential hacker exactly where your website’s vulnerabilities are.  Be very careful what information you provide in an error message, so you’re not providing information that helps a bad actor hack you. Keep your error messages simple enough that they don’t inadvertently reveal too much. But avoid ambiguity as well , so your visitors can still learn enough information from the error message to know what to do next.  Protecting Your Website from Hackers Securing your site and learning how to protect against hackers is a big part of keeping your site healthy and safe in the long run! Don’t procrastinate taking these important steps.  At HostGator, we have created a set of custom mod security rules to aid in the protection of your website. If you’re looking for a new hosting provider, you can click here to sign up for a great deal. For new accounts, we’ll even transfer you for free! After you’ve created an account, you just need to fill out the form here . Don’t worry about getting tripped up in the process. HostGator has world-class support available around the clock! Our customer support specialists are available 24/7/365 via email ticket, chat, or phone. We can help you get secure! Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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10+ Best Free Gutenberg Ready WordPress Themes

Posted on August 2, 2019 by Hosting

The post 10+ Best Free Gutenberg Ready WordPress Themes appeared first on HostGator Blog . There are hundreds of thousands of WordPress themes on the market. A lot of them are free while some cost more than a few hundred bucks. Finding a theme that suits your WordPress site’s style and is compatible with all the plugins you use is very difficult. If you want to use WordPress’ new Gutenberg editor , then you need a theme that is compatible with it. With thousands of themes to choose from, most of which aren’t compatible with Gutenberg, I wanted to make it easier for you to find the perfect theme. So, here’s my collection of the best free Gutenberg-ready WordPress themes right now. What is Gutenberg? Gutenberg is the latest page/post editor that comes with WordPress. If you are a fan of the original, the classic WordPress editor, then it might take you a few minutes to get comfortable with the new editor. Gutenberg is WordPress’ attempt at creating a drag and drop page builder that can make it easier for beginners and novices to create beautiful looking pages. If you want your website to stand out, you need your content to stand out in your niche. The easiest way to do this is by improving the design of your blog’s content. Now, if you hire a programmer to do it, it will cost you well over $500. But with a tool like Gutenberg , you can do it all by yourself within minutes… for free. Why you need a Gutenberg compatible theme? If you want to use the new Gutenberg editor and take advantage of all the wonderful tools and widgets it has to offer, then you need a WordPress theme that is compatible with Gutenberg . Most themes on the market, even the premium ones, aren’t compatible with Gutenberg. If you use a theme that isn’t compatible, most of your pages will break in unexpected places. If you don’t want your blog to break right when you catch your big break, then you should only use a theme that is compatible with Gutenberg. To make it easier for you to find the perfect theme, we have made the following list of the best free WordPress themes that are Gutenberg-ready. Best Free Gutenberg Themes 1. GeneratePress Best suited for: All types of websites, is a Multipurpose theme. Sites having this theme activated: 200,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/generatepress/ GeneratePress is one of the most popular WordPress themes out there. Unlike some other themes on this list, this is a multipurpose theme. That means, you can use it to build almost any type of website you want. Whether you want to use it on a travel site or cooking blog, you can easily customize this theme to suit your niche. You can customize almost all elements of this theme without writing a single line of code. This theme is made to be a lightweight kickstarter for any kind of a project based on WordPress.  They offer a big library of importable templates for all types of websites including travel, cooking, and personal blogs. You can also use this theme to build an eCommerce site and sell your products online. Features: Clean minimal design that is suitable for all types of websites. A huge library of hundreds of design templates available to choose from. Easily customize almost all aspects of the theme’s design. Compatible with all page builder plugins on the market including Gutenberg and Beaver Builder. Translation ready and supports over 20 languages. A lightweight theme that won’t slow down your website. 2. Gucherry Blog Best suited for: Personal Blogs, Travel Blogs, and blogs that display large images. Sites having this theme activated: 700+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/gucherry-blog/ GuCherry Blog is a beautiful free WordPress template designed for blogs. It offers a very clean, minimal design that focuses the user’s attention on the content. If you are looking for a theme for your personal blog, then this is one of the best options. You can easily customize this theme to suit your personal style by changing the colors and typography of the design. It comes with full support for page builders like Gutenberg. It is optimized for speed and is translation-ready. This theme is perfect for bloggers who want to start a blog , build an audience online and stand out in their niche. It offers a simple design and comes with everything you will need including social media share buttons and a lot of built-in widgets to choose from. It is also SEO optimized so that you can focus on creating content without worrying too much about the search engine bots. GuCherry blog is designed to be fast and offers lots of space placing advertisements on your blog. You place ads on your blog with just a few clicks in many different places without editing any code. Features: A minimal design that will help you stand out in your blogging niche. Lots of places to place ads on your blog to earn a side income. Optimized for SEO and fast load times. Easily customize everything from the colors to typography. Built-in support for page builders like Gutenberg. Translation-ready and supports RTL languages. A theme best suited for bloggers. 3. Getwid Base Best suited for: Startups, Digital Agencies, and Portfolio websites. Sites having this theme activated: 700+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/getwid-base/ Getwid Base is a free WordPress theme that is designed specifically to work with Gutenberg. Getwid Base theme is a part of Getwid, a bundle of multipurpose blocks designed for Gutenberg. To get the most out of this theme, we recommend that you install the Getwid plugin but even without the bundle, this theme has all the features you will need. It offers a beautiful, minimal design that is compatible with Gutenberg. It is best suited for digital agencies, startups, and portfolios. Although it is designed for digital agencies and startups, you can customize it to suit whatever niche you are in and change the design to suit your brand style. Features: A theme that is built specifically for Gutenberg page builder. Customize the theme easily with just a few clicks without touching code. You can add more blocks and widgets compatible with this theme by installing the free Getwid Gutenberg bundle. It comes with a simple design that looks great on all devices. 4. Page Builder Framework Best suited for: Agency Sites, Portfolios, and Service Businesses. Sites having this theme activated: 10,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/page-builder-framework/ Page Builder Framework is a free WordPress theme that is designed to be super fast. It is a lightweight theme that weighs less than 50 kb and doesn’t slow down your website. If you need a clutter-free, minimal design that you can customize yourself without editing code, this theme is a great option. This theme is designed for page builders like Gutenberg and Beaver Builder. You can easily customize all aspects of this theme’s design to suit your personal style. This theme scores 99% on all speed test tools like YSlow, Pingdom, and GTmetrix. It loads in less than 100ms. Features: This theme is built for speed and will never slow down your website. Customize all aspects of this theme’s design with just a few clicks. Designed to be compatible with all page builders including Elementor and Gutenberg. Responsive design that works on all screen sizes. WooCommerce support, if you want to build an eCommerce store. 5. Mission News Best suited for: News and Magazine sites, and sites with lots of content. Sites having this theme activated: 3,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/mission-news/ Mission News is a free WordPress theme designed for news and magazine websites. The design is clean and makes your website look like a classic news site. It’s fully responsive and looks great on all devices no matter the screen size. The layout of this theme is minimal, clean and focuses attention to the content. It is fully compatible with Gutenberg, Elementor, and some other page builder plugins. It also offers WooCommerce compatibility so that you can build an online store within a few minutes. This theme is optimized for speed and loads really fast. Features: WooCommerce support allows you to build an eCommerce site without writing any code Easily customize all aspects of your website’s design using the customization options. 100% responsive and looks great on all devices. Compatible with Gutenberg and Elementor. 6. Storytime Best suited for: Personal Blogs, Story Blogs, and Author Blogs. Sites having this theme activated: 1,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/storytime/ Storytime is a theme designed for authors and creatives. If you are a writer or really want to showcase your work, this is the theme for you. This theme comes with hundreds of customization options. You can choose from 2 blog layout options and 10 sidebar options. It is fully compatible with Gutenberg and is designed with the tool in mind. It also comes with its own built-in Gutenberg blocks you can use to improve your content. The theme offers a fully responsive minimal design. It offers a beautiful layout design that focuses attention on the content of your blog. If you are starting a personal blog and want to stand out in your niche, this theme is one of the best options. Features: Fully compatible with page builders like Gutenberg. Comes with additional built-in Gutenberg. Easily customize the theme using WordPress Theme Customizer interface. Hundreds of customization options so you can customize the design to suit your brand. 2 Blog layouts and 10 sidebar positions to choose from. 7. Music Lite Best suited for: Music artists, Bands and Musicians. Sites having this theme activated: 2,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/music-lite/ Music Lite is the free version of Music Pro. The free version of the theme comes with dozens and dozens of customization options. If you want more customization, then you can always upgrade to the pro version. It is built on a responsive framework to make sure it always looks good across different devices. It is also retina-optimized to look good on a large screen and high resolution displays like Apple’s products It comes with a tour dates page that you can easily customize and change dates on for your fans and followers. The theme comes with custom page templates that you can use to build your whole website in only a few minutes. It also comes with multiple column layouts. This theme allows you to easily customize the logo, the header, and even the background without writing any code. Features: The design is built on a mobile responsive framework and works on all screen sizes. Tour dates pages where you can list your tour dates with just a few clicks. Easily customize the theme using WordPress’ Theme Customizer tool. Custom page templates. The theme comes with multiple column layouts to choose from. 8. Portfolio Lite Best suited for: Photography Portfolio, Creative Portfolios, Freelancer Portfolios. Sites having this theme activated: 2,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/portfolio-lite/ Portfolio Lite is a portfolio theme for creatives. It offers a very unique design to help you stand out of the crowd. The design is very minimal to focus the attention on the portfolio items. If you are a freelancer and need a site to show off your work, this is the best theme for you. It comes with a sidebar menu on the left to allow for easy and minimal navigation. This theme will allow you to build your portfolio online in only a few minutes. This theme is best for portfolios with lots of images. It is best suited for people who wish to show off their designs or photography. It comes with a few different page templates to choose from for your portfolio items. You can easily create a slideshow for your portfolio within seconds. Features: A clean minimal layout to show off your creative portfolio. Showcase large images in a beautiful layout. Different page templates for portfolio items to choose from. Get more features by purchasing the premium version of this theme. Dozens of customization options and support for WordPress Theme Customizer. Support for Gutenberg and other Page Builders. 9. Davis Best suited for: Personal Blogs and sites that are more focused on the content. Sites having this theme activated: 3,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/davis/ Davis is a minimalistic WordPress theme that you can either use as a framework to build your own theme or you can use to build a superfast website that scores high on all page speed test tools like Google PageSpeed. It is super lightweight and weighs only 61 kb. This theme offers a super minimal design that focuses the attention on the content. It is fully responsive, looks great on devices, and comes with a dark mode option. It also supports featured images, and aside post format. This theme is built to be fast and minimal and to be used as a framework to build upon and as such doesn’t offer many options or customization features. It is pretty minimal. Features: Fully responsive design. Super minimal, clean design. Super lightweight theme that weighs only 61kb and loads really fast. Comes with full support for Gutenberg and other page builders. 10. Block Lite Best suited for: Creative portfolio sites and photography portfolios. Sites having this theme activated: 1,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/block-lite/ Block Lite is a theme that is built for the Gutenberg editor. It comes with dozens of customization options that you can use to customize all aspects of the theme. It offers a responsive design that is minimal and looks great across all screen sizes. This theme is best for showcasing your creative portfolio. If you are a designer or a photographer, this theme will allow you to focus the visitor’s attention on your portfolio items. It is retina optimized to make sure the design looks great on even large-resolution displays. Block Lite’s premium version offers dozens of more customization options and features. Features: Easily customize the design of this theme using WordPress Theme Customizer. Customize the Typography and use any of the free Google Fonts you like on your website. A clean, minimal design best suited for showcasing creative portfolio items like pictures and designs. 11. Atomic Blocks Best suited for: Blogs and websites that need a minimal design. Sites having this theme activated: 2,000+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/atomic-blocks/ Atomic Blocks is a free WordPress theme that offers a simple design. It is fully compatible for Gutenberg page builder. This theme is a part of the Atomic Blocks plugin. The plugin adds more blocks to the Gutenberg builder. With this theme, you don’t need to download a hundred different plugins. It comes with blocks for everything including pricing table, newsletter sign up forms, post grid blocks, call to action blocks, testimonial block, sharing block and much more. Although this theme offers a minimal design and is best suited for blogs, it can be easily customized and used to build any type of a website. Features: Add dozens of new blocks to Gutenberg page builder by installing the accompanying Atomic Blocks plugin for free. Simple, responsive design. Dozens of theme options to help you customize the design without touching a single line of code. Fully compatible with Gutenberg and other page builder plugins. 12. Richone Best Suited For Minimal, basic portfolio sites. Sites having this theme activated: 600+ Download/preview link: https://wordpress.org/themes/richone/ Richone is a clean, beautiful portfolio theme that is compatible with Gutenberg editor. It offers a super minimal design that looks clean and focuses attention on the portfolio items. This theme offers full support WooCommerce so you can create an online store on our own. This theme comes with dozens of customization options so you can customize everything from the typography to the color scheme of the design. It offers a widget sidebar at the bottom. Features: WooCommerce ready so you can build an online store in minutes. Fully compatible with Gutenberg. Comes with custom page templates so you can build your website in minutes without any code. This theme is optimized for SEO, so you can focus on creating content. Fully responsive minimal design that focuses attention on the content Wrap Up All of the themes in this list support Gutenberg and will help you create content that stands out of the crowd. Most of these themes not only support Gutenberg, they also support other page builder plugins like Divi and Elementor , and others. If you are still having trouble deciding which theme to go with, let me make it super easy for you: If you need a theme that loads up really fast, then go with GeneratePress . It’s mostly a theme framework to help you build super fast websites. It comes with dozens of customization options and is really lightweight. If you produce a lot of content on your website, then go with Mission News . Although it’s a theme built for news sites, it is fully customizable, so you can easily customize it to suit your needs. If you want more Gutenberg blocks than the defaults, then go with the Getwid theme and download the accompanying Getwid plugin to add more blocks to the Gutenberg editor for free. Are you using a free Gutenberg compatible theme that has been left off this list, and you think is worth mentioning? If so, we would love to hear all about it in the comments! Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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How to Improve SEO

Posted on July 26, 2019 by Hosting

The post How to Improve SEO appeared first on HostGator Blog . Your website can only do its job if people can find it.  SEO (search engine optimization) —a collection of tactics website owners can use to increase your ranking in the search engine results—is one of the best ways to make sure your audience can find you.  But on-page SEO is challenging. And many website owners struggle with the question of how to improve SEO for their websites.  The search engines are fairly tight-lipped about how the algorithms that determine how search engine rankings work . But between the information they have shared and an analysis by SEO experts of what the ranking web pages have in common, we have a pretty good understanding of how to improve Google search results. Improving SEO involves a mix of things you can do on your own website and offsite strategies.  How to Improve SEO on Your Website On-site SEO is mostly about two main things: making sure Google can tell what your website is about, and ensuring the site has a good user experience for users. To do that, there are eight main steps you should take.   1. Review your website analytics. If you already have a website, then your first step is to review your website analytics to better understand how people find and interact with your website now. If you haven’t set up Google Analytics for your website, do that now! You won’t have any data to review to start, but you can come back to this step once you do.  In Google Analytics, you’ll learn how much traffic you’re getting now, and what share of it is coming from Google (labeled “Organic Search”). The Acquisition section gives you an easy snapshot of how often people are finding you through Google now. In addition, you can find a list of any keywords you rank for now and what your average ranking is. Click on Acquisition, Search Console, and then Queries.  This gives you a good understanding of where you are now in terms of your SEO strategy. That’s helpful in setting goals for where you want to be, and working out a plan to get there. And any relevant keywords you rank for now (even if you’re not on page one) are a good place to start your optimization efforts, since you already have a headstart.  2. Identify your keywords. Keyword research is the cornerstone of SEO. Before you can do any of the other steps involved in SEO, you need to know what keywords to target. Sit down and write every word or phrase you can think of that’s relevant to your business and products. Once that’s done, use keyword tools to figure out how valuable the terms on your list are, and build out your list further.  Google’s free Keyword Planner provides data on the average number of searches a keyword has, and how competitive it is. It also provides suggestions for long-tail keywords relevant to your website that you can use to build out your list. To get new ideas, start by plugging either your URL or a starter list of your main keywords into the tool. You can export the list of long-tail keywords they suggest to better organize it based on relevance, popularity, and competitiveness. Using these keywords throughout your website or a blog post will help tremendously when trying to drive organic traffic.  Google’s tool may give you enough information, but many businesses that have an SEO strategy go further and use paid SEO tools that provide more detailed keyword information. With these, you can learn what keywords your competitors rank for, and get more analysis on the value of a keyword based on factors like the search engine results page (SERP) features, level of competitiveness, and the number of clicks the top results are likely to get. 3. Optimize every page on your site for SEO. Once you know what keywords to target, it’s time to get to work on your website. For each page and blog post of your website, determine the most relevant keyword from your list you want to rank for. To optimize the page for the selected keyword, look for natural ways to include it in these parts of the page: The URL – Always edit your URL so it’s relevant to the content of the page and uses your primary keyword.  The heading tags – Using headings and subheadings (in the HTML, these look like , , etc.) break up your page copy for readability and provide more opportunities to naturally get your keywords onto the page. The image names and alt tags – Before you load an image to a page, give it a name that includes your keyword. Then add an alt tag that includes it as well.  The title tag – Write a short title for each page (50-60 characters) that uses your primary keyword.  The meta description – The meta description is what shows up underneath your link on the SERP. Like your title tag, they don’t directly affect rankings, but they can increase your click-through rate (CTR). Write a meta description for each page that describes what’s on the page in under 160 characters, includes your keyword, and has a call to action that encourages people to click.  The page copy – Look for opportunities to use your keyword in the words on the page where it makes sense naturally. Google wants to deliver relevant results for every search. All of this helps signal to Google what the page is about so they know what keywords it makes sense for it to show up for.  4. Create relevant content. Creating and publishing content on your website accomplishes a few important things for SEO: Fresh website content signals to Google that your website is current and active—they don’t want to show outdated results. It gives you a chance to create more pages optimized for more of the keywords on your list. It gives your visitors a reason to stick around, and time on site is a metric that signals to Google that people like what they see when they visit your site. When you publish valuable content on your site, it gives other websites more of a reason to link back to you. Creating high-quality content that’s relevant to your audience is therefore an important part of good SEO. Use your keyword research to help guide your content strategy. Knowing what topics people are searching for tells you what your audience is interested in.  Before you write a piece of content, do some research to learn what’s on the SERP for it. Seeing what’s ranking there now shows you what Google likes for that keyword and what you need to beat. In addition, if there are rich results on the SERP for a term, you want to know so you can optimize your content to claim them.  5. Update your old content. This is a step many people skip, but a regular content audit can be really valuable for improving your SEO. Make a point of returning to your old content to update it periodically. Google likes content that’s fresh and up to date, so changing outdated information can go a long way to making sure the search engine (and your visitors) still see an old piece of content as valuable.  6. Use internal linking. An internal link is any link on a page that goes to another page on the same website. Google’s algorithm factors a link’s anchor text into its analysis of what a page is about. The anchor text is the words that are hyperlinked, the part that usually shows up in blue with an underline.  For internal links, you get to choose the anchor text. That gives you another opportunity to use your primary keyword and signal to Google what keywords to associate with your page. 7. Make your website mobile friendly. While Google keeps a lot of the details about its algorithm under wraps, one of the things they’ve been upfront in telling people is that mobile matters . For the sake of both SEO and your visitors—many of whom will be visiting your website on a mobile device— make your website mobile friendly .  8. Improve your site speed. Speed is another ranking factor Google has told people about outright . They know people care about how fast a website loads, so Google does, too. Taking steps to improve your site speed will both improve the user experience of your website, and improve Google search results for your site.  How to Improve Google Search Results Using Off-page SEO Many of the steps involved in on-site optimization require a lot of work, but the harder part of SEO happens offsite. In order to determine a web page’s value, Google pays attention to how often other websites link to it, called backlinks . A link is seen as an endorsement of what’s on the page. When a lot of websites with authority link to a particular page, it suggests that whatever’s on it is useful.  Building backlinks is challenging because you can’t control the decisions other people make about what they put on their websites. But there are a few strategies you can use to encourage other websites to link to yours.  1. Promote your content. Publishing great content is only worth the work if you get people to read it. Make promotion part of your content strategy. Share your pieces on social media. Send them to your email list. Highlight industry influencers in your content and let them know when it’s up. Consider paid promotion like pay-per-click (PPC) or social ads if you need that extra boost.  2. Sign up for relevant directories. This is one of the easiest ways to build links, but it’s important not to abuse. Add your business information to sites like Yelp and Google’s My Business. Research industry organizations that have member directories, and consider joining local organizations like your Chamber of Commerce that have one.  Only sign up for directories that are legitimate and relevant to your business. A lot of links from low-quality directories will look spammy and could hurt rather than help you.  3. Guest post. A guest post on a blog in your industry is a good way to bring awareness of your brand to a new audience and gain a backlink to your site at the same time. Identify blogs that cover topics relevant to your business that accept guest posts, and start pitching. It takes time, but it can pay off in both links and new traffic.  4. Become an expert source. Whatever your business does, you’re an expert on it. When a blogger or journalist is writing a topic that relates to your expertise, providing a quote or interview will often result in a link back to your site. You can hire a PR consultant to help you find these kinds of opportunities, or sign up for email alerts from Help a Reporter Out to find opportunities yourself.  5. Develop industry awards. People (and businesses) love getting awards. The recognition feels good and is something they’re likely to talk about on their own website. Handing out awards for your industry is therefore a good strategy for earning more links. It’s one employed by successful internet businesses like TripAdvisor: Figure out what categories to include in your awards. Research businesses doing good work in each of them, or open them up to nominations. When you’ve decided on nominees and winners, alert them to the award. Create a badge they can share on their website to encourage them to post about it with a link back to the awards page on the website.  6. Create a relevant certification program. This requires a lot of work, but is a good way to position your business as an ultimate expert on what you do as well as a strong link building strategy. Anyone who completes your certification program will want to let others know they’ve done so. As with awards, create a badge people can add to their websites to show they’re certified.  7. Do broken link building. Some SEO tools will help you find links around the web with your target keywords in the anchor text that no longer work. These are a link-building opportunity. If you track down the website owner, you can alert them that there’s a broken link on their website that needs fixing, and propose the content you have on the topic as a replacement. Because you’re helping them fix a problem they have at the same time that you’re asking something of them, it increases your chances of getting your desired response.  Improve SEO with Less Work SEO is difficult and time consuming. You know you want better SEO results, but reading over a list like this may have you feeling hopeless. How will you find the time for all this? While there’s no good shortcut to getting better Google search results—someone has to do the work—that someone doesn’t have to be you.  You can hire the skilled SEO professionals at HostGator. We know how to implement all these SEO strategies and more to get your website to start showing up for your target keywords. It saves you time and work, and will also net better results since they come to the job with more knowledge and experience.  Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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