WordPress Competitors: The Negatives Of Using Other CMS Systems

We’ve discussed why WordPress is so popular but now we’re going to look at other WordPress Competitors CMS systems and website builders and see how they stack up against WordPress. Although not an extensive list, here are a few of the most popular.

WordPress Competitors

Shopify

Shopify is one of the largest CMS systems with over 500,000 active stores on the platform, and store owner has processed $40 billion worth of sales. Not bad at all.
However, unfortunately, it is impossible to customize the structure of your website’s template without touching the code. If you’re not a web programmer or a coder than this can be extremely difficult and challenging. You may need to hire a “Shopify expert” to do any customization because code changes involve handling Shopify’s own programming language (Liquid), in addition to HTML and CSS.
Like any closed website builder, if Shopify decides to shut down operations one day, then you may wind up losing your online presence. This is because you’re hosting your store through Shopify instead of your own external hosting agency. Although unlikely to happen, there isn’t the same 100% guarantee as if you ran a store from your own platform.
The stores that Shopify offer are designed to be a single-language interface only. You can create a multi-language store if needed, but you’ll need to go through the various templates and apps that Shopify offers to do so. It’s very complicated and not at all intuitive.
Lastly, Shopify is more expensive than WordPress. Each of the three levels of service have a separate pricing band. The basic service costs $29 a month, while the professional and unlimited packages are $79 a month and $179 a month, respectively.

Wix

One of the fasted website builders is Wix which is in over 190 countries and as 45,000 sign ups each day. Wix has the widest selection of prebuilt designs for any kind of industry. But unfortunately, it’s not possible to switch to a new theme after your initial choice, and it’s more difficult to revamp your site’s design. You’ll have to redesign it manually or start from scratch which can take a lot of extra hours.
Because Wix is a closed system – meaning not open source like WordPress—Google tends to downgrade it. If you just want a simple site just as a placeholder, Wix is fine but if you’re in a competitive industry and care about SEO (and really everybody should) then Wix isn’t a good solution for you. It doesn’t have any of the flexibility to use tags, metadata and other SEO tools which can severely hinder customers finding your business.
The last thing to mention and the biggest is the total lack of total control and advanced features. You can only do so much with this type of website builder and if you want something that’s outside the norm or different you’re going to be SOL with Wix.

Joomla

Joomla is a free and open source CMS system. The big disadvantage with Joomla is that it’s in the middle of the spectrum, meaning it really doesn’t excel any particular one thing. It’s not as aggressively easy and pretty as WordPress, and it’s not as developer-friendly as Drupal. The end result is unsatisfying, no matter which end of the spectrum you look at it.
Also, because Joomla isn’t very popular, you’re limited to the types of plugins you can get and since they’re not updated regularly they are also easier to hack. This can limit the customization you can do with your website.

Drupal

About 4% of websites are made using Drupal. It is a developer friendly, but if you’re not a coder, you may find Drupal difficult. Recent releases of Drupal have made huge improvements that make it easier for normal users. However it’s not quite as easy as WordPress or Joomla and therefore it’s not as popular as other platforms.

Squarespace

Squarespace is another one of the best WordPress Competitors in the market. This platform is great for creating professional-looking websites, especially if you’re an artist, photographer, or filmmaker. In terms of drag and drop, it has some of the best designs and features on the market. The templates look incredibly modern and anyone who visits your website will think you hired an expensive graphic designer. While not as customizable as WordPress, you do have a range of flexibility and features at your fingertips, allowing you to customize your website. Another bonus is that it’s not as expensive as other drag-and-drop website builders like Wix.

However there are a few drawbacks. Because of the way Squarespace is built, it also not SEO friendly. A big drawback is you’re not able to change blog page titles. Moreover, this website builder claims that their websites use clean HTML mark-up, so pages are easily indexed by Google. However, like any drag-and-drop program, it adds additional HTML code that is not needed, which can lead to poor user experience and potentially harm your organic rankings.

Conclusion

There are of course plenty of other CMS systems (WordPress Competitors) and website builders that we haven’t covered here. But it’s pretty safe to say WordPress is the most popular for a reason. It allows you to build a fully customizable website economically and efficiently. If you need a website built don’t hesitate to contact the team here at Rad Websites where we can take care of you every need.

The post WordPress Competitors: The Negatives Of Using Other CMS Systems appeared first on Rad Websites.

SEO Practices That Make Google Penalize You

One of the worst things that could ever happen to an eCommerce website is a fall in ranks. Usually, bad SEO practices  are the usual suspect behind. And that is mild if you compare it to what can happen when you’re penalized by Google. But what could ever cause Google to penalize you?

A lot, actually. You’d be surprised by the number of black hat tricks or bad SEO practices employed by webmasters in order to appear on Google’s page one. However, for the purpose of this article, we are only going to list the top 10 of the worst SEO practices that make Google penalize you. 

1. Keyword Stuffing

There was a time when site owners actually got away with this bad SEO practice. But I am getting ahead of myself. You’re not sure what I’m talking about because this is such an old practice–perhaps before your time. What is keyword stuffing? Let me let Google tell you:

“Keyword stuffing” refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose). Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

In other words, Keyword stuffing is when you place your keywords too many times in your web content. You’ve probably seen it, because unfortunately, it is still being used today, but didn’t know what it was. Have you ever been to a website after your search term produced some favourable looking results, but when you try to read the article it doesn’t really make sense? I like WebFX’s example (The keyword, in this case, is “yellow rubber duckie.”):

“Get a yellow rubber duckie for your children”. A yellow rubber duckie is a charming toy, so buy a yellow rubber duckie today. With a yellow rubber duckie, you can have tons of yellow rubber duckie fun. It’s easy to make bath time great with a yellow rubber duckie, and a yellow rubber duckie from our company guarantees yellow rubber duckie enjoyment.

According to Google, don’t do that. Not only will it damage your brand, but you will lose credibility with your clients. Your website falling in Google rankings is also a negative outcome.

2. Duplicate Content (Whether Yours Or Others)

What is duplicate content? Let’s hear from Google: Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely matches other content or are appreciably similar.”

In other words, either you or someone working for you decided that the content on another website matches info you would like to share with your audience. However, instead of using the content as reference, you instead chose to copy word for word that content on your website.

If that is you, stop it! It’s not worth it. We know content is king. That’s why the Best SEO in Canada offers evergreen content at affordable prices. We guarantee that every article written will pass plagiarisma.

We know that by and large, people are honest, so sometimes mistakes happen. You didn’t deliberately set out to duplicate content, however you recently updated content on your website, accounting for the duplication. If this is you, don’t panic. All you have to do is use 301 redirectswhen you create new pages so that the old pages are no longer accessible.

You can also use the tag: rel=canonical for pages with similar content, in order that Google, or any other search engine for that matter, will know which content is the original; while the “no index” tagshould be used for those pages you do not want Google to search.

Let’s take this article  for example: You’re reading this article, Top 10 of the Worst SEO practices That make Google Penalize You, and we noticed that it was getting traction and moving up the ranks, we could not use this content on any other page or website that we own (even though we are the original owners of the content). We would be penalized by Google if we were to “duplicate” this content.

3. Scraped Content

Further to #2 is scraped content. What’s the difference, you ask? It’s like apples and oranges. They are both fruits, but not all fruits are apples or oranges. So scraping does result in duplicate content, however, the act of scraping is deliberately copying and pasting content and publishing it as your own.

While Google will overlook duplicate content if they recognise that identical content which (often unintentionally) appears in more than one place on your site, they will penalize websites with scraped content–and you can bet they know the difference.

4. You’re linking to low-quality sites

According to Google, “Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.”

So, if you have links pointing to low quality websites, Google will penalize you.

5. You’re buying links

Further to #3 above, is the practice by link builders and some webmasters of purchasing links. Whether you choose to pay for a slot on a blog post so you can add links, or you are directly purchasing links in a directory, buying links is one of the fastest ways for you to get penalized by Google.

According to Google, exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links is considered a violation of their guidelines.

6. Coaking

“Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines. Cloaking is considered a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines because it provides our users with different results than they expected”. (Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

It is a very bad SEO practice to show one content to the web crawlers in order to rank higher, while showing a different content to your site visitors. If you do this, you will be penalized by Google.

BTW, Google is aware that hackers use cloaking to hide their activities, so the only instance you will not be penalized by Google is if your website gets hacked.

7. Auto-generated content

Interestingly, this makes the top 10 list because Google does take action against websites where content is automatically generated (also called “auto-generated”—content). Believe it or not, filling pages with auto-generated contents  is a sign of  bad SEO practices.

If your content is “translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before publishing”, “generated from scraping Atom/RSS feeds or search results” and “generated through automated processes”, among others, they are all considered auto-generated content and will be penalized by Google.

This is sometimes done to save time and money, but you could end up being penny wise and pound foolish. If you must have these types of content on your site, Google has some best practices you can implement to prevent them from showing up in Search.

8. Doorway Pages

This is an interesting one, because there was a time when doorway pages were considered good SEO practice. To use BrightEdge’s example, “…a nail salon with two branches that wants to bring in traffic for two cities may have pages targeted for each city that have the same or similar content and describe the same nail salon”.

Six years ago, this would have been an okay SEO practice. However, the good must now suffer for the bad, as search engines realize unscrupulous black hat technicians have manipulated the system to create doorway pages that lead searchers to intermediate pages (as final pages) that are not useful.

So have you guessed what are doorway pages? Indeed, it’s having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page. But in the case of Bad SEO practice they are sites or pages created to rank for specific, similar search queries.

According to Google, “They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination”.

9. Hidden Text

While hiding text in and of itself is no longer considered them as bad SEO practices, Google may consider it a violation of their webmaster guidelines and penalize you.

There is a saying, it’s not what you do, but how you do it. This would be one such time. For example, if your website includes technologies that search engines have difficulty accessing, like JavaScript. Or if there is sensitive information you do not want everyone to have access to.

What Google penalizes is the deliberate attempt to manipulate the system in order to trick search crawlers.

For example, making your keyword text the same colour as the background of your website or locating text being an image. Because search crawlers are robots, or bots, they don’t see the Internet the same way we do. They can see your “invisible” keywords.  And they are smart enough to know the difference, especially in cases where keyword stuffing is present.

10. Sneaky Redirects

According to Google,

“Redirecting is the act of sending a visitor to a different URL than the one they initially requested. There are many good reasons to redirect one URL to another, such as when moving your site to a new address, or consolidating several pages into one.

However, some redirects deceive search engines or display content to human users that is different than that made available to crawlers. It’s a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines to redirect a user to a different page with the intent to display content other than what was made available to the search engine crawler”

So there you have it: Straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth. Need we say more?

Final Thoughts

We at Best SEO in Canada know you would never wittingly use any of these top 10 worst SEO practises that make Google penalize you. But just in case you unwittingly did and now your website has lost its ranking. Don’t panic. It’s reversible. Let us help you.

AJ Frey and his team “have a constantly evolving proven whitehat secret recipe that can help you get on the first page of Google and start converting potential leads into actual, paying customers”.

If you have questions about avoiding bad SEO practices or can suggest a few more, send them to us in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!

The post SEO Practices That Make Google Penalize You appeared first on Rad Websites.

The Top Pricing For SEO Audit Services In Canada Ranked

An SEO >audit refers to a full analysis of all the factors that affect a website’s visibility in search engines. It determines the strengths, as well as the weaknesses of your website when it comes to SEO. Let’s find out below about top rank pricing for SEO audit services in Canada.

An SEO audit can give you insight into the challenges you’re facing, why you may not be achieving your SEO goals and also realise the strategies your competitors are using to be successful. Based on the results from the SEO  audit, you receive a list of recommendations from an SEO expert like AJ Frey (Rad Websites – Best SEO in Canada), who further implements these recommendations on your behalf, if you do not have your own SEO team.

There are many articles on the Internet for DIY website owners on how to conduct an SEO audit. However, if you’re not tech savvy, or have the time to do a thorough audit, enlisting the services of an SEO expert is the best gift you could give yourself. But how much should you be doling out to an expert to audit your site?

In this article, we are going to list the top rank pricing for SEO audit services in Canada. Check No. 5.

SEO Audit Services In Canada

1. Arhefs

At the top of the list is Ahrefs –a well-known toolset for SEO analysis. Though based in Singapore, Ahrefs is worldwide, including in Canada. They make the top of the list because their prices range from US$99 – 999/month, with a wide array of services, including their SEO site audit tool for DIY web owners.

An SEO site audit tool automatically audits a page on your website — all you have to do is enter your Url. The tool then “crawl” your site before generating a report, which highlights the strengths and weaknesses of a webpage. Other SEO audit tools on the market include Moz,  Semrush, Alexa, Serpstat, to name a few.

Most SEO audits have two things in common: They’re too technical and they take DAYS (or even WEEKS) to complete! Ahrefs SEO audits take hours. They do have a caveat: If your website is HUGE, i.e. hundreds of thousands, or even millions of pages—it may take longer than a few hours. However, for most small to medium-sized sites, this should be doable in hours rather than days.

They also give you a breakdown of their SEO audit process:

• Steps 1–4: check for BIG issues (that may be holding your site back)
• Steps 5–9: uncover easy-to-fix on-site problems;
• Steps 10–12 analyze organic search traffic (and find low-hanging opportunities);
• Steps 13–14 backlink analysis (VERY important!);
• Steps 15–16 content audit AND “content gap” analysis.

As well as the “tools” they use during the audit process:

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Google PageSpeed Insights
• Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool
• Ahrefs(7‑day trial)
• Copyscape
• SERP Simulator
• Web Page Word Counter

Ahrefs reports usually include recommendations for optimizing your webpage’s SEO.

2.  Webfx

According to Webfx, whether you’re a small-to-midsize business (SMB) or established enterprise, you can expect to pay between $650 and $14,000 for an SEO audit. Granted, if you’re a larger company with a bigger website, you will have higher SEO audit costs than a startup with a small site.

Like the size of your website, several factors affect the price of your SEO audit. Their figures quoted are also one time prices–but again, depending on the size of the website and other factors. WebFX also provides SEO services to clients around the world! So whether you needSEO in Boston, orSEO in Charlotte, or Canada, they’ve got you covered.

3. Neil Patel

Well-known marketing expertNeil Patel comes in at #3 because his website generates millions of organic search traffic—about3.5 million 3.5 million. No ads, only through SEO-optimized content marketing. That qualifies him as an expert on SEO marketing. 

He states that at a minimum, a technically sound website should be secure, quick to load, easy to crawl, have clear and actionable navigation actionable navigation, and not contain any duplicate links or content. It should also have systems in place to engage users even if they do hit a dead end, such as content created for 404 errors and 301 redirect pages

Finally, a site should have structured data to help search engines understand the content. This can come in the form of
schema graphs and XML sitemaps
His SEO Analysis doesn’t just point out errors, he says, but gives you step by step instructions on how you can fix each of them. Each SEO report contains video tutorials to step by step instructions.

His prices come with two options: a 30-day money back guarantee on a one-time lifetime payment ranging from $120 – $400 or a $12 – $40/month with a 7-day free trial. 

4. Semrush

Semrush is a SaaS platform used for keyword research and online ranking data. It’s SEO audit tool can do a full website scan in minutes. If your website is under 100 pages you get your audit free. Their audit report includes Intuitive charts, instructions and directions for:

• Loading speed
• Crawlability
• Content issues
• Meta tags
• HTTPS security protocols
• Internal linking
• JS and CSS errors
• AMP implementation

With their SEO checker, you get a quick report card on how your site’s doing from an SEO perspective. That report can serve as a handy resource when discussing with decision makers why a professional SEO audit is necessary.

Their pricing ranges from $119.95/mo for marketing newbies, to $449.95/mo for large agencies and enterprises. Bear in mind, Semrush is a tool, not a person like No. 5. 

Which brings us to:

5. Rad Websites / Best SEO in Canada / AJ Frey

SEO expert AJ Frey starts his audit with a web crawl. This procedure is so important that you need to run it first before you do the other steps, he says. Why is this important? Because this is where you identify your website’s problems for example:

• duplicate contents
• low word count
• unlinked pagination pages
• excess redirects
• Loading speed
• Crawlability
• Content issues
• Meta tags
• HTTPS security protocols
• Internal linking
• JS and CSS errors
• AMP implementation

AJ Frey’s professional SEO audit focuses on in-depth, customized assessment of your entire website by his experienced team of digital marketers. And AJ 100% agrees with Neil Patel on the many aspects he considers when performing a technical SEO audit. These include:

• mobile optimization
• page load speed
• link health
• duplicate content
• schemas
• crawl errors
• image issues
• site security
• URL structure
• 404 pages
• 301 redirects
• canonical tags
• XML sitemaps
• site architecture

 

For Audits they use Moz and Spyfu as their primary tools. Other tools to produce a comprehensive audit report include:

• Google Search Console
• Google Page Speed Insight
• Google Analytics
• SpyFu
• CrazyFrog

An SEO audit by the Best SEO in Canada delves deep into your marketing data to analyse the meaning and implications of the site’s SEO performance. What you will end up getting is valuable insights, historical contexts (past and present performance) and meaningful recommendations from AJ Frey for what to do next.

If you do not have your own SEO team, AJ Frey offers his at competitive packages to meet every budget. The Best SEO in Canada prices range from CA$699 (for those on a budget)  to CA$2499–their best value is the local Rad package at CA$1499. 

6. OuterBox

If you’re an online retailer, the team atOuterBox has extensive Ecommerce expertise and can deliver one of the most detailed and comprehensive Ecommerce SEO audits available. The audit will help you be more prepared and eliminate unknowns when heading into a full comprehensive SEO campaign. Outerbox also offer a free SEO audit quote.  

Their SEO audit process begins with their team analyzing your website content, code, structure and more to determine the strengths and weaknesses. They’ll also review your competitors to see what they are doing well and reverse engineer their strategies.

Their SEO audit final report will include all findings along with recommendations and how to find the problems. Their SEO audit process typically takes between 4-6 weeks. However, throughout the process you will work with various team members at OuterBox. 

7. SEO North

SEO North has been in the industry for close to a decade, which means they have the experience to create a unique service and withstand the new regulations set by major search engines that may hinder your site’s high ranking.

Also, they base their SEO audit on the developed algorithms, strategies, and links. The digital marketing services allow them to work remotely, and their clients have the option to contact them anytime.Their main tasks in the audit process involve:

We check and identify the highest performing content.
Check for any website errors and identify each comprehensively.
Develop solutions and seamlessly implement them on the site

Markedly, technical SEO Audits are designed to identify technical barriers in the way of your content ranking higher in search results is what their site states. However, what can one get for CA$100– their one-time fat rate? 

8. Optimized Webmedia Marketing

And finally, Optimized Webmedia Marketing is also based in Canada. They offer a “Free” SEO Audit, but by their own admission, nothing is truly free and there’s no such thing as “cheap SEO”–you get what you pay for. They’re on the list because they do offer good SEO Audits based on their testimonials–but it costs $150 per hour, which is more realistic than SEO North’s one-time fee of $100.

We can only surmise though that if they\re offering “free audit”, then they are using the foot-in-the-door technique. If so, you can expect to pay anywhere between $650 (low end), $2000 (average) to $5000+ (high end) on a monthly basis, or $100 to $300+ on an hourly basis.

Don’t expect to spend less than $650 if you choose the monthly plan, for according to OWM, they don’t do “Cheap SEO”. Cheap SEO is considered to be anything less than $650 per month and provides the level of “skill, time, and customization that is unique for every single website”.

What An SEO Audit Services Means

It was tough putting this list together because of each’s uniqueness and the wide range of prices offered by each. In most instances it was not a case of which was “cheaper”. But which is more aligned with your goals for your website.

The top rank pricing for SEO Audit services in Canada tried to find the best SEO audit service whether by a team or a SaaS platform.

–as we so easily could.
We believe AJ Frey at Rad Websites is the Best SEO in Canada because he provides top notch SEO service that places you on page one for your search term. Not many agencies can say that based on their own placement on the search engines.

Important to realize, Ahrefs and Neil Patel offer the best organic results. Semrush will get you on page one with paid SEO, and Semrush is an SEO tool.

Final Thoughts

Optimized Webmedia Marketing gives more flexibility by offering both hourly and monthly rates, but there’s a grey area, as they offer a “free page audit”, while stating on their blog that the “cost for a manually created audit varies from $1,500 to $10,000, with the average cost in Canada being $2,500”. You decide if this is a foot-in-the-door technique. You decide also if we were fair in our assessment by ranking ourselves No. 5. 

Notwithstanding, whether we’re Noi. 5 or No. 1, at Best SEO in Canada, we don’t depend on cheap sales tactics to lure our customers. Our work speaks for itself. The fact you are here means you found us on Google’s page one.

We have done the same for all of our clients. AJ Frey is the best SEO in Canada. If you want him to  carry on SEO audit services  and optimize it for the search engines, just drop us a line via email, or call us at 1 250 801 6588. You won’t regret it!

Like this article? Why not share with your friends and family.

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Why WordPress Is The Best

WordPress is the best, Still! with marketshare of 43% of the websites online. that means almost every second website you see is WordPress. Said another way WorPress dominates of 1/3 of the internet and every single website built at Rad Wesites is WordPress, No exceptions.
WordPress is by far the most popular open source CMS (content management system) – around 43% of all websites use WordPress and for good reason. In fact, over 10 million websites use WordPress, with 500 new ones added each day, according to the latest statistics.
Rad Websites wants you to know why we use WordPress, we’ll go through the reasons why WordPress is the best over other CMS systems such as Shopify, Wix, Joomla or Drupal.

WordPress Is Easy to Use

It’s a simple system which you can use with only minimal coding or even no coding skills. It just takes a single click to install and website is ready to go. Once installed, you can start creating and publishing pages to your specifications. It’s possible to customize colours, design, and even features of a WordPress theme. If you still feel hard to use there are literally hundreds of tutorials out there for you to learn from.

Free and Open Source

As we mentioned, this platform is free to use, edit and redistribute. That’s why you can easily find its original source codes publicly available. Because it’s free it ensures there are plenty of options and support available if you need it. There are no monthly or yearly fees from WordPress – you just have to pay for a domain and hosting.

Create Any Website With WordPress

Today, this platform has a lot of versatility and gives you full flexibility to create any type of website. It has a wide range of themes and plugins increase its functionality to a great extent, giving you the ultimate flexibility.
You can build anything from an infomercial site to an Ecommerce website which you can use to sell your products online. This website builder gives you several powerful plugins like Woo Commerce and WP Ecommerce that make it easy to handle shipping and taxes.
WordPress is also quite good for supporting membership website. For example, you can sell subscriptions of any premium service or digital products that you have.

Lots of Troubleshooting Help Available

WordPress has a massive community of active users and developers. Its well-maintained support forum contains millions of queries and solutions to troubleshoot problems. You can also search for your query to get the answer to your question. Post your questions unhesitatingly, and you’ll get a solution almost immediately.
Apart from its official forum, there are a number of other WordPress dedicated forums run by developers where one can ask queries and get solutions if you have more complicated or specific problems.

WordPress Has High Security

WordPress has a high-security standard which is extremely important for any business. If your site is down, you lose money, customers, and potentially data.
Since WordPress is so popular it also makes sense that hackers are continuously trying to find loopholes to get into your backend. But not to worry. Regular updates provided by WordPress strongly protect you from this vulnerability. You should also ensure you have regular backups just in case.

Easily Integrated With Any Application

Default WordPress has a lot of built-in functionality but you can even make it more powerful with plugins. When you install Plugins, it will add extra functionality in your website. Some plugin and free and others are premium. There are around 41000+ plugins available at repository.

The Most SEO Friendly Platform

What’s the point of having an amazing, beautiful website if nobody can find it, right? Google and all search engines show and rank websites in search results on the basis of various predefined parameters.
The more parameters you fulfill, the better your website ranks in search results. And WordPress checks all those boxes. Things such as fast loading speed times, navigation, site maps, and social media integration are all things that are easy with WordPress.
One advantage WordPress has over other CMS’s is user experience. Of course, user experience is great for the individual user, but with Google concentrating on how flexible a CMS is, it gives an extra boost.

The post Why WordPress Is The Best appeared first on Rad Websites.

How Much Does A Website Cost in Canada?

Here at Rad Websites one of the first questions people always ask us is how much does a Website cost? The truth is, the cost of building a website depends on your personal budget and goals. In this article, we’ll show you the ins and outs of building a website so not only you know the process but the entire process. Depending on the complexity of your website, for example, the number of pages, plugins you are using, the amount of custom coding you have, whether it’s an infomercial website or an ecommerce, your cost will fluctuate.

That isn’t why your here and that is not what you wanna here from the Rad Websites crew. Well here we take a rad stand. I will tell you what it costs. so you can plan and dream and then reach out when your ready.

A Rad developer can cost you anywhere between $150 and $180 USD per hour. While that may seem like a lot of money, is completely worth it because the end product will reflect you and your brand. We have all seen what a cheap website looks like and at Rad affordable and cheap are way different. Rad Websites thinks that anyone can have there dream site and we have a way to affordably get you there. Rad!

Having said that, Now I am going to tell you what you need (the ingredients) to build a website. this is all part and parcel to how much does a website cost in Canada, and at the end of this post, we’ll explain in detail our cost structure and even give you some tips on how you can save money and bring that cost down. (No Skipping To The End) So what do you need to build a website? Here is the ingredient list and the steps you should take.

Domain Name

At a very basic level, your domain name is your website’s address on the internet. It’s what your customers type into their browsers to access your website. Once you register a domain name with a company like CanHost, GoDaddy or Bluehost, you’ll get the right to use that name for your website for
however long your purchased it for. You are required to renew your domain every year that you have it. Domains unless you are purchasing premium are around $25 per year. you have to renew these after the term has expired.

*RadProtip Register your Domain for 10 Years. It the maximum allowed and it shows google you believe you are here to stay!

Web Hosting

Web hosting is like the home of your website. This is where you store the content and images of your website. When a visitor tries to access your website by typing in your web address, they’ll be directed to the website files stored on your web hosting server.
There are a lot of different types of web hosting services such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, cheap hosting, WordPress hosting, and dedicated server, just to name a few. When you’re starting out, we recommend you choose shared hosting or WordPress hosting because both are the best for most website owners in terms of affordability and needs. When your website becomes more popular, you might want to switch to dedicated hosting.
Cool (Basic) Hosting with Rad Websites is $185/yr
Awesome (Mid) Hosting with Rad Websites is $349/yr
Rad Hosting (Advanced) with Rad Websites is $549/yr

*RadProtip Host your website on Canadian soil. This protects your intellectual property and your clients from prying eyes

Website Builder or CMS

A website builder makes it easy to create a website the way you want it to look. There are many choices fisher price website builders (not made by fisher price)out there including – Shopify, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, read our blog on why to stay away from these companies or talk to AJ he will tell you.
Here at Rad Websites we always use and recommend WordPress. WordPress is the platform of choice for around 49% of all website owners. It gives you endless possibilities to create your website the way you want. It also gives you complete control over your website so you can customize it in both the front and back end. One of the key features of WordPress is it is free and open-source software so there are thousands of different tools to help you. Most Importantly and this is also the RadProTip, you own and control your website. No one else does, period.

*RadProtip Work With Rad Websites and WordPress and you always own and control your website.

Estimating the Cost Based on Your Goals

How to add it all together

Ok Now you know what the main ingredients are, but how do we get from that to a Rad Website,
Before I go on and to recap,

• • Decide on a domain $20 – $200
  • Choose your hosting package $185 – $549
  • Speak to a digital advisor at Rad Websites to determine what you need or decide what you can affordHourly $150 USD/hr
    

5 hour block $140/hr
10 hour block $135/hr
25 hour block $125/hr
50 hour block $100/hr

Don’t worry if your Canadian everything is priced in Canadian dollars

With this info your basic site cost including domain and hosting is about $1500 for 10 hours of dev time, add in the hosting package and choose your domain and you pretty much have the cost of a simple one pager.

*RadProtip it is about 8 – 10 hours of work per page of your website

Alright I digress, you may also want to consider just hiring Rad Websites or someone to do it for you. If that is the case, the first thing you should consider is what is the website going to be used for. If it’s just a placeholder then you probably don’t want to spend a ton of money, but if you’re going to put through hundreds of transactions a month, then it’s worth it to spending the extra money to make sure it can handle what you and your clients throw at you. Anyways,

Do You Need A Custom-Built Website?

Installing a pre-built WordPress theme is the easiest way to roll out a new website. Especially if you are going to do it yourself. It also helps you save on costs and looks amazing. The downside, normally with these is of course, is that your website won’t be super original and might even look similar to your competition. What we like to do is have you choose a theme that you like and then we build that theme from scratch with a builder, like wp Bakery or Elementor you can work with.

However, if you want to give a unique look and feel to your website, then you’ll have to build a custom WordPress theme. With a custom site, the sky is the limit. You can do whatever you want and add any type of element you can dream of. Whether this is worth the extra cost, well…
you’ll have to decide. The answer is yes. Next to consider is?

What Features Will You Need?

When starting out, you won’t need all the extra bells and whistles. Even though it may seem like you do. Start small, it’s essential to write down the list of features that you think you will need now and the ones you’ll need down the line. This helps you streamline the entire development process and focus on features that are of high priority (the stuff that will make your life easier and those that are just nice to have. When you hire a developer, it’s critical that you communicate which features are absolutely must-haves. However, keep in mind that these might just be personal preferences and might not be the same must-haves for the people visiting your website – your customers.

*RadProtip Meet with a digital advisor at Rad Websites is the easiest way to determine what you will need to be successful.

Does Your Website Need To Take Transactions?

If your website needs a portal to take transactions, it will probably increase the cost as it’s harder to develop an ecommerce website than an infomercial website. However, as more people are buying products online, it might be worth it to spend a little extra money and give your
customers the convenience of buying in their underwear. Ecommerce Online Stores, Come with a base set of 10 simple products.
SO if you take a 50 hour block you will have a Rad Website with basic ecommerce if that’s what you need and then adding each additional product is easy, its $15/ simple product and $30/ for variable product. So 10 more variable products, would add $300 and 100 more would be $1500 – $3000 depending again if they are simple products or variable

*RadProtip Variable products are products that have different sizes or colors or Flavors for example. Simple products are just that simple for example brown coffee table.

The Rad Websites Deal

Now I told you that I would show you how to save money on your website, didn’t I? At Rad Websites, we have a unique way of pricing our services. We generally bill our time in blocks of hours. We do this because our clients love the transparency, flexibility and control it allows.

If you live in Medicine Hat here is where you can save a lot of money on your project.
40% to be exact if you are a chamber of commerce member here you already get this discount!!
if you are not sign up now and you will get this discount on your project. that is an unprecedented $85/hr on any block of hours. Tell them you joined for your Rad discount on a website or just tell them AJ sent you.

Most of our pricing is peppered throughout this resource for you. if you don’t live in medicine hat that’s ok you can still get your costs down.
Rad Websites Hourly Rate is $150/hour USD, for both development and marketing.
If you purchase:
a 5-hour block of time that number goes down to 140/hour
a 10-hour block of time, drops the hourly even further to 135/hour. Purchasing a 25-hour block it drops to 120/hour. Purchasing a 50+ hour block gets our best available rate of $100/hour. Rad Websites wants your business to be online and we want it to be affordable we also have a slew of payment plans available so its not something you have to pay for all at once.

Rad Right? Like I said we tell you. now you can do it on your own if you like you know what you need to be successful or you can contact a digital advisor at Rad Websites. One more way we are making the world rad one website at a time. We look forward to bringing your business online.

The post How Much Does A Website Cost in Canada? appeared first on Rad Websites.

Why It’s Important To Keep SEO Momentum Going

It’s a great accomplishment when you reach the first page of Google. You probably have an influx of clients and a boost in revenue. All those blogs, white papers, website links, and digital marketing efforts are finally paying off. You’re successful enough that you don’t have time, or perhaps the will, to market yourself. After all you’re a success so that means you can take your foot off the pedal, right?
WRONG!
You may be tempted to put SEO on the backburner or cut costs, you think your competition is going to do the same? Not likely. Keeping the momentum going is more important than ever, especially if you’ve worked so hard to climb the Google rankings. Here are some good reasons why it’s important to keep SEO momentum going:

Reason 1

It’s Tougher To Start Again

You remember when you first started riding a bike? You were wobbly and shaky until you started to pick up momentum and then suddenly it was easier to balance and steer. SEO is kind of like that.

It’s a lot harder to start over again than to coast. Maybe you don’t need to try so hard to rank on certain keywords but it you stop altogether than it’s like falling off the bike. You’re back at square one.

Google keeps constant tabs on you when you’re constantly updating your website, blogging often, and creating great content. But when you stop SEO, Google stops coming around to your site often and even if you start all those SEO tasks again Google is slow to visit you because it’s not used to your updates.

Reason 2

Your website’s traffic will decline

AS we mentioned, SEO takes time to build up and requires a great content strategy and execution to maintain a great raking on Google.

While stopping all search engine optimization efforts won’t make your phones stop ringing – at least at first, it is inevitable your rankings will decline. Google will see your sight as less valuable and you won’t be as searchable and your conversions will decrease.

Though the decision is momentous and seemingly temporary, the impact it has on your rankings is longer-term than desired. It takes time to build your rank on search pages and it must be an ongoing practice to keep your content and backlinks fresh, and maintain a competitive edge within the marketplace.

You must keep your site from becoming stale in order to maintain a credible business in the eyes of search engines.

Reason 3

You Lose Valuable Insights About Your Customers

If you stop SEO then you lose valuable insight on what your customers are doing and how they behave on line.

Their interests, behavior patterns, and how they use your site are derived from analytical reports developed by your SEO team. If you don’t have that information, it because very difficult to make future predictions about your business.

Here’s how you can use this information to support your overall business goals:

Find patterns in users’ engagement to create content they truly care about identify opportunities for improving your website’s structure based on bounce rate, conversion paths, and more Identify business gaps and validate the need for new service or product offerings Define new campaigns and offerings based on interests

Google Changes It’s Criteria, so Should You

There are almost 4 billion search requests each day made on the biggest search engine – the only one that really matters because let’s be honest, nobody cares about Yahoo or Bing anymore. Because Google processes so many requests a great user experience is mandatory and so they constantly evolve to make their user experience better.

As they change their search criteria, what you used to do – keyword stuffing, tons of useless backlinks for example – no longer work. You have to remember Google’s job isn’t to get you to rank higher on its search engine but, it’s customers are all those people using it to search for information.

Those are the people Google caters to and wants to keep happy. You have to ensure your SEO goals align with Google’s –keeping your customers (And Google’s) happy.

The Competition Won’t Stop

Perhaps with your first place Google ranking you’re in a position to turn business away, but maybe your competitors are willing to hire more people or come up with alternate solutions to maintain their momentum.

We had previously discussed how Google rewards high-quality, fresh content – and if you stop nurturing your content creation, it’s only a matter of time before your competitors begin capturing traffic and potential customers that were once yours.

Conclusion

If you need some help determining the best SEO strategy for your business, talk to AJ Frey aka The Best SEO in Canada. We’ll guide you through the difficultly &; help you define the best course of action going forward and create a plan that is sustainable and effective.

Call Now 250-801-6588 or Contact US

The post Why It’s Important To Keep SEO Momentum Going appeared first on Rad Websites.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is like a car race, except the race is to make it to Page One on search engines like Google and Bing. In this race, you have several different types of cars, such as Car #1 (Content), Car #2 (Link building), Car #3 (Technical SEO), Car #4 (Social Media) and Car #5 (Keyword Research).

In this race, the cars are not racing against each other. They are racing with each other, each attempting to fit in simultaneously on your website. Once you gain momentum with one “car”, it can help boost your rankings and traffic.

According to Brian Harnish, lead SEO at iLoveSEO, “When you have both elements – rankings and traffic – performing well, you can expect higher conversions as a result”.

In a previous post I talked about maintaining a high ranking by practicing white hat SEO, something we, here at Best SEO in Canada, are very good at. Btw, if by some miracle you don’t know what SEO is, let me just say it is a term used to describe the process webmasters’ use to make a website rank higher in search engines like Google and Bing.

In today’s article, I will share with you five expert SEO tips to push your traffic–and how we nail it every time, because I am the best SEO in Canada: Someone RAD who makes Rad Websites, equipped with all the latest best practices and  technology, and the creator of high-functioning, complex e-commerce stores that perform. Which brings me to:

Number 1 – A well-designed website

It doesn’t matter how many Ads you purchase (and we hope you don’t because we hate PPC), if you don’t have a well-designed website, the traffic you worked so hard to gain will “bounce”. That’s right! They’ll say, “See yah later”, and you can bet they will not be sharing your link with anyone either.

A well-designed website is a RAD website. If you’re reading this article then it means you’ve seen our website. And since ya’all know I love to brag, you won’t be surprised if I say it is one of the best websites on this superhighway. A well-designed website has a sitemap-whether created by you or generated by Google or Bing.

However, it is vital, as it provides search engines like Google with the necessary information to swiftly crawl and index site pages, audio and video. As a matter of fact, in order to appear in Google News, your website must have a sitemap.

On the front page of your website should be several or one main image that has been optimized for search images. See Number #3 below. Your blog (and I am presuming you have one. If you don’t, then you really need to stop reading this post and contact me NOW!) must be discoverable on your front page.

Do I have to say that the link should lead to your latest post? A well-designed website has a well-chosen name, and on the backend, uses relevant keywords. More on this later (see Number #4 below).

Last, but not least, a well-designed website looks just that: well-designed. It is pleasing to the eye. Believe it or not, visitors are turned off by unattractive websites. What will happen is that they will visit your site because you’ve implemented all these expert SEO tips I’ve shared with you, but they will not stay, and they will not return.

Those are potential clients. Solid leads. Lost revenue. So my number one expert SEO tip is that you build a well-designed website to attract people and spiders. At Best SEO in Canada, we make sure people enjoy being on our client’s RAD website, want to come back, and tell all their friends.

Number 2 – A Fast Website

So you have a well-designed website, but because you chose our competitors it’s not a RAD website. Chances are it is not fast. Are visitors waiting up to 30 seconds for your site to load? Guess what? You’re losing revenue.

If your website takes longer to load than the time it takes for you to say Search Engine Optimization, your bounce rate will be high. Check to make sure your third-party plugins are not bogging down your website. If so, either optimize them or lose them.

Do you really need them though? Check also the size of your image files. I am not saying a fast website will drive traffic to your website. However, it certainly won’t convert that traffic.

Remember my analogy of the race at the beginning of this article? Well, think of a fast website as Car #3, and in this race, the cars work together–not compete against each other.

Number 3 – Optimized Images

Well, I’ve been talking so much about images that I might as well tell you about them now. Let me ask you a question. Are you making the most of the image “alt text” option? Here’s the thing.

Search engines cannot really see the bright, colourful images you upload to your website. They depend on alternate text, what they call “alt attributes” that helps them categorise your lovely images. As the name suggests, it is a description of the image.

You might think it is too much bother and so may choose not to add images. That would be to your detriment. Images are very important to a website as they not only highlight your product(s) or service(s), but also break up large text blocks to keep readers engaged with your page.

Images are important, so you should take time to optimize them. In addition to describing your image for the search engines and persons with devices that cannot load images, you should shrink your images to manageable sizes. And what I mean by that is to ensure your website can manage the size of the image.

Search engines hate sites that are slow in loading, and one of the major causes is large image files. And while we’re on the subject: Ensure to save your images as either JPG or WEBP.

Number 4 – Use relevant keywords

As mentioned earlier, a well-designed website uses relevant keywords. And this will push traffic to your website. The fact you’re reading this article is proof that our relevant long-tail keyword worked. I hear you asking: What are keywords? I like PCMagazine’s simple answer: “They’re the main words that lead people to your site”.

See our previous article here, there we explained long-tail keywords. Keywords must be strategically placed throughout your website in articles, images, videos, etc. You should also place them in your website’s URL, header tags, meta descriptions, and alt attributes.

Number 5 – Write descriptive meta files

The final SEO tip to push your traffic that we nail every time that I’m going to share with you is meta descriptions. Visitors to a website usually read the first few lines in a search result to see if the information matches what they are looking for.

This “snippet” of information below the page title or mini paragraph is what we call meta description. So we don’t need to convince you of its importance. Search engines allow you approximately 150 characters, so you are at liberty to say all that you wanted to that couldn’t fit in your page title. It is here you would want to also place your long-tail keyword.

Your meta description should explain the purpose of your website. As it is the second thing searchers see (after the title), you want to ensure it provides enough information to induce that coveted click to your website–wat we SEO experts call a “click through”.

Subsequently, you may be tempted to put all your keywords in your meta description. Don’t! That’s what Google describes as keyword stuffing, and they will penalize you for it. See our article on worst SEO practices.

That’s it! That’s my 5 expert SEO tips to push your traffic. Have a well-designed website; have a fast website, optimize your images, use relevant keywords and write an informative meta description that tells the purpose of your website. These 5  SEO tips are just the tip of the SEO iceberg. I didn’t even mention mastering internal links, which is another potent one.

However, I believe if you implement these five SEO tips you will see more traffic coming your way. Can AJ Frey push traffic to your website? You found me on page one, didn’t you? The fact you’re here is proof we nailed it! If I can do that for myself, just imagine for a moment what I can do for you!

Did you find value in this article? Why not share it with your friends and family? Perhaps you have your own SEO tips to push traffic to your website. Why not share them in the comments section below.

Need to push traffic to your website but don’t have the time or expertise to apply these 5 expert SEO tips? Give us a call or send us an email. We believe we have the best and most affordable SEO packages in Canada.

The post 5 Expert SEO Tips to Push Your Traffic – How We Nail it Every Time! appeared first on Rad Websites.

In other words, the Shopify platform  “helps people achieve independence by making it easier to start, run, and grow a business”. Over 1,700,000 businesses in more than 175 countries are powered by Shopify.  Same, it “creates the best commerce tools for anyone, anywhere, to start and grow a business”, (Shopify.com). The platform is simple, sleek and integrates well with many different apps at just the click of a button.

Plus, you don’t have to take out your wallet to start. This means, they allow you to set up your store for free, and try their service for 14 days before you’re asked for your credit card. Did I tell you that they are also headquartered in Ottawa, Canada? Nice! However, not everything shines when it comes to Shopify. So, the next question is, what’s not to love? Their SEO.

Obviously, if SEO is critical to your business, you need to read this article as I try to answer the question: Why is Shopify’s SEO bad?

Can you do SEO with Shopify?

First of all, let’s be clear, you can do SEO with Shopify. But it’s limiting. Here are many quick, technical wins.

If you are new to eCommerce and just looking for a place to start, then Shopify is the perfect place for your online store. However, once your business starts to take off that’s when you start to see how Shopify actually holds you back.

Look at it this way: 

You can become 80% competitive on Google’s search engine using Shopify, but that’s it. It won’t get better. If you know what you’re doing and put in the effort, you may even rank on less-competitive searches. However, profitable rankings are extremely competitive, so trying to make up for that last 20% of lost performance will over time become frustrating.

Now that I’ve got your attention, let Best SEO in Canada show you five problems with Shopify’s SEO that might make you think twice about choosing their platform. You might even become motivated to migrate to BigCommerce–our go-to eCommerce plugin for all things WordPress.

1. Canonical URLs

The first problem is Shopify’s Canonical URLs. Canonical issues are all about copies of the same content getting spat into Google.

If you asked them, Shopify would say that they solved the problem using the rel=”canonical” HTML tag, but they would be wrong. It’s not that they’re using the code wrong (I actually love that they make it so easy). Rather, they’re simply expecting this HTML tag to do something that it was not meant to do.

For example, Northcutt, based out of Chicago, had a Shopify client with the following URLs all visible in Google when they searched for site:theirdomain.com:

searched for site:theirdomain.com; proving that all four copies were indeed in Google’s index:

/products/Batteries

/products/batteries

/products/batteries/

/products/BATTERIES/

>Their “batteries“>” product page contained the rel=”canonical” tag. So what happened?

By Google’s own definition, the rel=”canonical” tag is a suggestion. In my experience, they’ve only occasionally followed their own suggestion.

And if you tried patching things together using Shopify’s redirect tool, you would find that this doesn’t work either. At least not if the page to which you are redirecting technically exists.

We still recommend rel=”canonical” HTML tags, but it is unreliable in this situation. The role of this tag is entirely different — perhaps we’ll do another article on that at a later date. Note that in this case, too, JavaScript redirects cannot be relied upon.

These problems can only be solved by using .htaccess or vhost files. Period. And you cannot access these files on Shopify. They know this. Shopify Plus support confirmed this problem, but were unwilling or unable to fix it.

2. Breadcrumb URLs

The second problem is a variant of problem #1: Shopify creates breadcrumb URLs of products beneath categories. What that means is that you will often find two copies of the same page in Google’s index:

/collections/collection-title/products/product-name

/products/product-name

So using MinistryofSupply.com (a clothing store) as an example, Shopify’s default canonical behaviour will state that only the second URL should get indexed. I.e. /products/product-name:

However, a search on Google proves this suggestion often just doesn’t work:

This, right here, is just foolish behaviour. What is the purpose of creating so many conflicting URLs with the same content? None. There is no benefit. Worst of all, like problem #1, Shopify will not provide access for you to solve this problem.

3. No Plusses, Please!

The third problem with Shopify’s SEO is the inability to modify the indexing file, which contains the + sign that must be deleted in order for search engines to crawl the site. Let me explain. There is a file named robots.txt that sends signals to Google about how to index your site, and all other sites. On Shopify, you cannot edit this file. Here’s what’s inside by default:

# we use Shopify as our ecommerce platform

//User-agent: *

//Disallow: /admin

//Disallow: /cart

//Disallow: /orders

//Disallow: /checkout

//Disallow: /3092321/checkouts

//Disallow: /carts

//Disallow: /account

//Disallow: /collections/*+*

//Disallow: /collections/*%2B*

//Disallow: /collections/*%2b*

//Disallow: /blogs/*+*

//Disallow: /blogs/*%2B*

//Disallow: /blogs/*%2b*

//Disallow: /*design_theme_id*

//Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*

/Disallow: /*preview_script_id*

//Disallow: /discount/*

//Disallow: /apple-app-site-association

//Sitemap: https://ministryofsupply.com/sitemap.xml

//# Google adsbot ignores robots.txt unless specifically named!

//User-agent: adsbot-google

//Disallow: /checkout

//Disallow: /carts

//Disallow: /orders

//Disallow: /3092321/checkouts

//Disallow: /discount/*

//Disallow: /*design_theme_id*

//Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*

//Disallow: /*preview_script_id*

//User-agent: Nutch

//Disallow: /

//User-agent: MJ12bot

//Crawl-Delay: 10

//User-agent: Pinterest

//Crawl-delay: 1

Most of these instructions are useful. However, these default instructions also cause problems. Not least of which is that products and vendors that contain a plus (+) or a space character will be blocked from crawling. Take a look again at the instructions. Do you see those lines that contain a “+”, “2B”, or “2b“? Those “instructions” keep those pages from being added to Google’s index. They also disrupt Google’s crawl pattern, which can lead to other indexing problems.

4. That Blog… It’s No WordPress

The fourth problem with Shopify’s SEO is its blog. Indeed, every eCommerce site should have a blog for content marketing. Not doing content marketing? Why ever not? Don’t you know it is always better to own attention rather than rent? In order to thrive, mature brands must become natural link-earning machines.

But let’s be real: Shopify is an eCommerce platform, not a content-marketing platform.

I mentioned WordPress at the beginning of the article with good reason. WordPress is the number one content management platform on the planet. According to the latest statistics. as of March 11, 2021 some 455,000,000 websites are using “>WordPress right now! That means around 20% of all self-hosted websites use it, too.

Shopify has a default blogging engine, but there are too many issues and limitations that are beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say, the solution would naturally be to install WordPress in a subfolder on the site for your blog. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. Shopify does not allow you to install anything in a subfolder on their site. You will have to host the blog somewhere else and then point the subdomain there, like content.yoursite.com.

In SEO, a closer affiliation is implied when your content shares the same subdomain (such as “www”). This is why it is a part of our best SEO practice to host your blog, news, ebooks, infographics, etc, in a subfolder. However, on Shopify, you can’t do that.

5. The Rest

If by now you are not convinced Shopify’s SEO is bad, then it makes no sense to continue, so we’ll just lump all the other problems as “the rest”. Moreover, I’ve given you a taste of how limiting Shopify’s SEO capabilities can be. But it doesn’t get better. It gets worse; especially once you get into creative keyword architecture, segmentation for account-based marketing, performance tweaks, and other situational fixes (the rest).

Conclusion

Shopify is a great eCommerce platform–for beginners and nontechnical users of the Internet. However, if you are a developer, SEO expert, or a business person with a huge eCommerce store, be aware of what you’ll never be able to do with Shopify’s SEO:

• First, customize robots.txt
• Second, customize web server headers
• Third, customize URL handling and subfolders
• Four, install the world’s greatest content management system for your link-earning endeavours.

Those aren’t just unsolvable problems. They’re three categories of problems and then some. For these, there are no hacks or workarounds. So, if SEO is critical to your business, Shopify is not for you. Why is Shopify’s SEO bad? In a nutshell: There’s no room for growth–your growth!

At Best SEO in Canada, AJ Frey wants to see you grow. He wants to help your business to scale up. As an SEO expert, he knows how to get your business ranking on Google’s page one, using only organic search strategies, because he hates PPC.

“So whether you’re an enterprise company or a small independent business, your success online depends largely on ensuring your target audience finds you on Google” through SEO. AJ Frey offers an extensive range of SEO services, exclusively for driving traffic in order to meet your lead, acquisition or sales objectives. So are you ready to make that move? Give AJ Frey a call at  250-801-6588 or drop him a

So, did we answer the question, “Why is Shopify’s SEO bad”? We surely hope so. Let us know in the Comments box below.

The post Why Is Shopify’s SEO Bad? appeared first on Rad Websites.

And millions of people around the world hire experts like AJ Frey for their SEO audits. Still not convinced? Let me ask you? Do you think it is a coincidence that you are here? No, it’s not! You are here because our SEO experts have spent hours auditing our website to ensure that we make it on Google’s page one–which is where you found us. 

And that’s just one reason people prefer hiring experts for their SEO audits. We’re the good guys. We believe in sharing information so we’re going to share some more reasons with you. Are you ready? Here then are 5 reasons people prefer hiring experts for their SEO audits. But for the newbie who is just starting out in SEO and has no idea what we are talking about, let’s first define an SEO audit.

What Is an SEO Site Audit?

Well, we are going to presume that you already know that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. According to Yakkety Yak (a Chicago-based marketing agency) “an SEO site audit is an analysis of the factors that impact your website ranking in organic search. 

This often includes technical back-end factors as well as on-page, content-focused elements that make a website both easier for search engine robots to crawl and easier for people to navigate”. The objective being to understand the ranking of your site and to discover how to increase traffic to your site.

Why is this Important? 

A 2020 study (Search Engine Journal) found that the clickthrough rate for websites in the first position on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is 25%. For websites in the second position, this number drops drastically to 15%, and 2.5% for websites in the 10th position. And this is all on the first page!!! 

Can you imagine what happens when you get to Google’s page 2? This means if your website is not on page 1, the odds are pretty slim for consumers to find you. Why spend money to build a website if not to generate revenue. However, if no one is visiting your site, then it means no leads and ultimately no revenue. 

So now you see the purpose of SEO, you can also understand why it’s important to do an SEO audit of your website to ensure it is properly optimized for the search engines. 

Why can’t I do it for free?

Good question. Let’s look at free: 

We all know that time is money, therefore it is unreasonable to expect an SEO Expert to spend the time to do an audit for free, right? So what’s left? DIY or have a team member who’s not an expert do it. Anyone else who promises free has an ulterior motive, whereby you are going to end up being penny wise and pound foolish. 

Note that a free SEO audit will generate incomplete and misleading information, which if acted upon could harm the quality, visibility and profitability of your website. If using a third-party, he/she could provide sales-oriented recommendations to steer you towards engaging with the third-party providing the audit. I.e. “Hire us” and we will fix the problem for you. This we call the foot-in-the-door tactic.   

What you will not get for free is valuable insights, historical contexts (past and present performance) and meaningful recommendations for what to do next. The danger of missing these three necessary ingredients is that you can end up making harmful decisions due to a lack of information, the wrong information, or information designed to lead you in a predetermined direction. 

Not only will you now have to deal with the financial fallout of an uninformed decision, but you will also have to bear the additional cost of fixing it–penny wise and pound foolish.

Why it is Worth Paying for an SEO Audit

A free SEO audit, as a giveaway, only provides limited useful information in its purpose, scope and strategic value. A paid SEO audit delves deep into your marketing data to analyse the meaning and implications of the site’s SEO performance.

Not only that, but it also presents a “comprehensive picture of how SEO affects overall marketing and business goals, so the audit delivers many times the value of your investment in revenue-driving conclusions”.

Having established that you are now left with a paid SEO audit, let’s now look at the 5 reasons people prefer hiring experts for their SEO audits. Also, let’s give a look how SEO Expert AJ Frey, the best SEO in Canada, can audit your site and ensure your audiences discover you on Google’s first page. 

You’re hiring a team of experts

Usually, SEO experts do not work in a vacuum. So what most people don’t know is that when you hire an SEO expert, you are actually getting a team of experts working together to do a comprehensive audit on your website. 

You’re getting value for your money

When you hire an SEO expert, you’re actually getting value for your money because he/she is going to evaluate your website based on your unique needs, foci and desired conversions. There is no one-size fits all in SEO, therefore, you cannot use a template to do an SEo audit. Even if you start with a template, it must be customized to meet the needs of that particular website. 

You’re getting thoughtful, Informed Insights

You could decide to purchase the SEO tool–which is good, and even the SEO experts use them sometimes. The only problem is, you may not be able to read and understand the outcome. What does “manual actions” and “tracking/analytics” really mean, for example? An SEO expert will give you thoughtful, informed insights based on the outcome after he/she has audited your website. 

You can expect to receive quantitative and qualitative information because well-trained experts like AJ Frey are looking through every single anomaly revealed through their SEO audit of your website. 

Issues like duplicate contents, excessive redirects, low word count, unlinked pages, etc. are recorded and categorized into subheadings. The SEO audit report will not read like a fill-in-the-blank generic report used by everybody. No, every section of the report will contain thoughtful insights about your website–information that has been obtained from the data collected.  

You’re Getting Honest and Forthright Recommendations

After a thorough evaluation, you can expect an SEO expert to provide a prescriptive list of categorize recommendations fit to your budget. And one that is easily implemented by you and your team. 

Many third-party auditors will give you a description of what’s “wrong” with your website–Usually in the form of a pdf file, and that’s where they stop. However, they will not prescribe the “medicine” needed for your “broken” site. 

With an SEO expert, an SEO audit report is not just a pdf file (though you will get that too), but also includes meaningful recommendations that go beyond “check your sitemap” and “improve content”. 

The SEO expert will have a conference call or face-to-face meeting with you to discuss the findings of the SEO audit. After giving you honest and forthright recommendations, he/she will answer all the  questions you may have concerning the audit and your website. You can expect to get honest feedback.

By the time you finish, there will be no doubt as to what your next move will be. This is another reason people prefer hiring experts for their SEO audits. If you do not have an SEO team, we will gladly assist. We have the best SEO packages in Canada, so you don’t have to worry about your bottomline. 

You will avoid Issues with Google

And the fifth reason people prefer hiring experts for their SEO audits is to avoid any issue with Google. If you know anything about SEO you know that Google has a Best Practice manual of the things one can and cannot do in order to rank on their pages. 

You’re an upstanding citizen, but unknown to you, when you decided to place your favourite keyword 20 times in your underperforming page Google sees that as a “black-hat” technique and penalises you. 

Google no longer accepts keyword stuffing (that’s what they call using a keyword too many times in one article) and so Google’s crawlers notice this on your web pages. What will happen is, you will see your page rank go down instead of rising, which means fewer people will find your page, and subsequently fewer leads and conversions.

As you can see, it’s bad enough If you make a mistake with your SEO campaign–if that’s all you had to worry about: wasted resources. However, your real problem starts when you get entangled with Google. If you’re not experienced with SEO-and most DIY web owners aren’t–you could accidentally conduct black-hat SEO techniques without fully understanding the consequences of your actions.

SEO Experts know all the rules. That’s why they are experts. A part of their job is to understand the ins and outs of the industry, to ensure they never run into legal issues. If they were to conduct “black hat” SEO, they could find themselves in trouble with Google, and you could take legal actions against them. 

Final thoughts

When It comes to SEO Audit, you could download a free SEO tool and DIY. However, if you did, and if you’re not an SEO expert, you coud not only hurt your bottomline: you could get into trouble with Google and your website could get penalised for inadvertently practicing black hat techniques.

Or, you could hire an SEO expert who will not only conduct a thorough audit of your site, but will also present the results in a timely, well-thought out manner, whether face-to-face or virtually. He/She will go through the results with you in a thoughtful way. 

Once through, you will receive a honest and forthright recommendations. So you can make informed decisions. The value you get from hiring experts for your SEO audit will be proportionally more than what it costs, if managed correctly and nurture your business to scale.

If you do not have an SEO team, we can provide SEO services to you, at a fraction of the cost seen on the Internet. Or, if you want to learn more about how search engine optimization can help your business grow, give us a call, or send us an email. AJ Frey is ready to help you!  

So there you have it. The 5 Reasons People Prefer Hiring Experts for Their SEO Audits. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the Comments box below.

The post 5 Reasons People Prefer Hiring Experts For Their SEO Audits appeared first on Rad Websites.

Either they put too many (especially towards the end), or not enough (especially in the first paragraph–which should always have at least one). Of course, if you are blogging using the WordPress CMS, you have the benefit of their Yoast SEO partner, which will guide you into placing the required numbers that will meet Google’s best practices.

Still, even after all that, there is no guarantee you will start seeing traffic to your website as there are other factors that can prevent Google’s algorithms from ranking your site. So how can you guarantee traffic flows to your website through blogging? By using the Best SEO in Canada. However, if for whatever reason you are unable to avail yourself of the excellent services of our SEO-expert A J Frey, fear not. We will share with you 12 tricks you must know to attract traffic through SEO blogging when DIY. 

Attracting Traffic Through SEO Blogging

Here’s the thing: Google is on a mission. And so are you. Google’s mission is to ”organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. What’s your mission? If you wish to succeed in attracting traffic to your website, you must familiarize yourself with Google’s mission, which means you have to understand search engine optimization (SEO). Is your blog in line with Google’s mission? 

If you’re reading this article, then it means We have succeeded in attracting traffic through SEO bogging. It means We have succeeded in showing search engines like Google and Bing that our blog is a relevant source for people like you who are searching for information about attracting traffic to your website. That’s what SEO blogging is all about.

Do you think We could help you do the same? Sure we can. Here, then, are the12 tricks you must know to attract traffic through SEO blogging:

1.  Use a SEO-friendly CMS

What’s a CMS, you ask? Content Management System. The text and images on your blog are called contents. It’s a no-brainer: If you’re doing SEO blogging you need a CMS that not only facilitates SEO blogging but also promotes it.

It is a documented fact that WordPress is, by far, the best CMS on which to blog, especially SEO blogging. WordPress not only allows SEO plugins like Yoast (which is the closest thing to a human SEO expert), but also facilitates Google Analytics so you can do your own informal audit of your site. 

2. Conduct a SERP Research for your keyword/phrase

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page— it’s your go-to to learn which pages are ranking using your search term. Knowing what the search results page looks like for the term you’re targeting is important.

After spending time analyzing the top five or so posts to see what they are doing right, you are now armed with the necessary information on how best to optimize your blog posts to not only land the best spots on the results page, but to ensure your content is outstanding.

Researching your keyword/phrase is perhaps the foundation for your plan as it shows you how many people are already searching for your keyword/phrase, which sites are ranking for your keyword/phrase and even make suggestions for alternate keyword phrases that could potentially be more successful for your website. 

3.  Strategically place the keyword/phrase

Another “trick” you must know to attract traffic through SEO blogging is placement. One of the reasons many people are turned off SEO is due to misunderstanding. They believe SEO is stuffing keywords into headers and body of content that does not make sense. That is what’s called keyword stuffing, and actually frowned on by Google. See our article Good SEO Practices vs Bad SEO Practices to learn more. 

Good SEO practices actually include placing keyword/phrases in headers and paragraphs of content that has been well-researched and is coherent. It means when a searcher enters a search term like “how to bake a cake”, he/she is looking for an actual Recipe, not a site with the phrase “how to bake a cake” a million times, but no Recipe.

If this has ever happened to you, you know how frustrating that is. That’s why Google heavily penalizes sites that practice keyword stuffing. 

But where do you place these keywords/phrase you ask? AJ Frey and his team of SEO experts suggest placing them at the following places: 

URL:

The first and most obvious place for your keyword/phrase is in your Url. The Url with the main keyword/phrase gives a hint of what is on the page. Besides, It is a big turn off for Google to see these Urls with a string of characters and numbers.

Page title:

The page title is the “main idea” of your page, and should show up first in a search result. This is a no-brainer.

Headings (and subheadings):

These are phrases used to segment the content on your page. They make the content more scannable, and also help visitors to your page to decide which sections to read, in the event they are unable to read the entire article.

Content:

This is the tricky part, and where most people err. There’s a not-so-thin line between keyword stuffing and strategically placing keywords in the body of your article. Rule of thumb: One in the opening paragraph, one in the closing paragraph and at least 2 – 3 in the body of the text. This, of course, is dependent on the length of the article. You wouldn’t want to have half a dozen keywords in your 500-word article. That could get penalised by Google.

Meta description:

Do you ever notice the block of text in a search result? Sure you have? That’s what decides whether or not you will click on the link in that search result. That’s what we call the meta description. It is very important, as it not only helps Google to determine how relevant is your content, but it also helps searchers to decide whether or not they should click the link to your website. Including the target keyword/phrase clearly makes your content more relevant to the search.

4. Use internal links

There are only a few times that I’ve gone on a website for a minute and end up staying for hours, and that’s usually caused by the interlinking of their articles. I.e., linking from one post to another on the same site. I would start to read one article, but it linked to a few others that I was interested in reading. This is a wonderful trick by the SEO experts for that site, because they managed to accomplish what many experienced webmasters failed to do–keep visitors on their site. 

Google rewards such SEO practices. By using internal links you’re helping search engines better understand the topic of your blog content, and keeping visitors on your site longer, which ultimately can lead to paying customers. 

If you’re new to blogging, don’t worry. It will only be a matter of time before you find yourself with a solid library of posts that you can interlink. 

5. Add internal links to new pages

Internal links are backlinks from one page to another on your website. As mentioned before, they keep visitors on your site, and also help visitors to navigate from page to page, distribute ‘link authority’ throughout your site, and allow Google to use their anchor text to understand context.

The problem is that most people forget to add internal links whenever they publish a new page. However, if you want your page to stand the best chance of ranking on Google or any other search engine for that matter, then you must remember to add internal links to it. 

6. Long-tail keyword/key phrase

Long-tail keywords are also called key phrases. They’re highly specific, consisting of three or more words. For example, “12 Tricks You Must Know To Attract Traffic Through SEO Blogging” is considered a long-tail key phrase. Four reasons long-tail keywords are so effective are:

They generate more qualified leads

Searchers using long-tail keywords have a more defined search query, which typically results in more qualified leads. Someone searching for “SEO blogging” might just be looking for information on what is search engine optimization and how to use it in a blog post; whereas someone searching for “12 Tricks You Must Know To Attract Traffic Through SEO Blogging” as clearly pass that stage and is more than likely looking for other ways to attract more traffic to their site. 

There’s less competition

Long-tail keywords/key phrases also have less competition, which makes it easier to rank for organically and cheaper to bid for when advertising. They make up more than seventy percent of online searches, but they have less traffic, making them more effective for smaller eCommerce brands to rank highly in SERP.  

They result in more conversions

The third reason they are so effective is that they result in more conversions. Online shoppers searching for long-tail keywords have high purchase intent, making them more likely to convert and generate profit. They’re no longer in the discovery phase of what is “SEO Blogging” – they know they want “12 Tricks You Must Know To Attract Traffic Through SEO Blogging” and they’re ready to apply them.

You can create targeted content

Finally, long-tail keywords enable you to create more targeted content for your audience. Information on 12 Tricks You Must Know To Attract Traffic Through SEO Blogging is relevant to your audience and geared towards creating trust and value that increases spend and customer lifetime value. Your site becomes the “go-to” site for all things SEO, and before long, they are purchasing one of the best SEO packages in Canada.

7. Fix pages with broken backlinks

Backlinks are hyperlinks that link one website to another. However, the link is incoming. Meaning that the other website is linking to your website. The more backlinks you have pointing back to your site, the more popular your site becomes.

However, if the linked page is dead, then it is not ranking, and is probably preventing other pages on your site from ranking. If the websites linking to your site are high quality–what we call “high-quality backlinks”–then it is worth fixing these “dead” pages. However, if they’re not, then you can leave them as 404 pages (that’s the error message you get when a page is dead).  

8. Update old posts to keep them current

It takes a lot of work to create fresh content on a regular basis. One way to ease the “stress” is to look for good, older posts that may have become “outdated” and spruce them up with “new” information. 

This is especially applicable to those pages ranking on Google’s page 2 and older. Analyse them to see what could have prevented them from making it to Page 1 and fix the problem. This could also mean adding missing information. 

9. Feature Influencers in your blog posts

One of the big “tricks” to attracting traffic to your website is finding ways to collaborate with Influencers. This is useful as it exposes your blog to a wider audience. Collaboration could be in the form of interviewing them, featuring a quote from them, or referring back to advice they provided on their site (with a link).

By featuring them, you not only get on their radar (you’ve initiated a relationship with them), but they may thank you by sharing your blog post with their audience. And the rest, they say, is history. 

10.  Optimize Your Images for SEO

As mentioned earlier, blog posts consist of text and images. At least, it should be. If your blog post has text only, it may be intimidating to read for the visual learners. As such, every blog post you publish should include at least one image, and sometimes more. But don’t just post them, optimize them! 

Every image you include in a blog post gives you an extra opportunity to add your keyword/phrase to the page. You can use either the alt text and/or the image file name. If possible, you can even add it to the caption text. That’s a few more ways to signal to Google what the page is about.

11. Embed your videos in relevant posts

You can take it a step further and add videos, in addition to your image(s) to your blog posts. Videos can really bring your blog to life and make the visitor experience more engaging and interactive.

12. Make sure your site is optimized for Speed and Mobile Use

The days when web browsing was done exclusively on a desktop are long gone. It is proven that more people access the Internet on a mobile device than ever before, which means more people are searching the web on their mobile devices than ever before. This is the reason your site must be optimized for mobile. 

Your mobile site should have a responsive web design with a fast page speed, so people don’t bounce from your site. If your mobile site delivers a positive experience, visitors will stay longer on your page longer and even return. These behaviors show search engines like Google that your site is helpful and easy to use. This will improve your ranking and send more traffic to your site. 

Conclusion

1. And that’s it. 12 Tricks you must know to attract traffic through SEO blogging:
2. Use a friendly CMS like WordPress
3. Conduct a SERP Research for your keyword/phrase
4. Strategically place the keyword/phrase
5. Use internal links
6. Add internal links to new pages
7. Use long-tail keyword/key phrase
8. Fix pages with broken backlinks
9. Update old posts to keep them current
10. Feature Infuencers in your blog posts
11. Optimize your Images for SEO
12. Embed your videos in relevant posts and make sure your site Is optimized for speed and mobile use.

We guarantee if you follow these 12 “tricks”, you will start to see traffic flowing to your website.  Did we leave out any you think should have been among these twelve? Let us know in the Comments box below.

The post SEO Blogging: 12 Tricks You Must Know To Attract Traffic appeared first on Rad Websites.