When you run and operate a website, you should strive to keep it in order and under control. When doing so, clients and potential ones will check out your site and enjoy your content. Otherwise, if you have a lot of issues with your Web pages, you will cost yourself some business. Furthermore, Google takes this into consideration when looking at website rankings and where to place your site in the organic rankings. With this in mind, Google now looks at secure websites and gives them an extra boost. Here are a few reasons why Google values safe websites.

Legitimacy

Above all else, when determining SEO rankings, Google will want to discover and reward sites that are real. Now, this may sound funny, but in the past, plenty of site owners would make fake websites full of spam or targeted offers. This was not good for visitors as they would not enjoy any true value from the website. When discovering a spam or fake site, Google will knock it out of oblivion and the site owner will not see any traffic.

For this reason, it is obviously important that you show Google and the other search endings that you mean business. When seeing a secure site, Google will know that you have a real website with a legitimate product or service. In reality, a spammer or someone who wants to make a cheap AdSense site will not take much time to use SSL or other methods to secure a site. For this reason alone, if you want to do well in the organic rankings, you must set up your site with https ability. When doing so, you will go a long way in maintaining stable rankings.

Long-term

If you have SSL on your site, it is obvious to most people that you plan to stick around for the long-term. This is important to Google as they want to give their customers value. You must realize, when looking for something important, people will trust Google and will want to land on a website offering true value to its users. Otherwise, in the long run, Google will suffer as the leading search engine wants clients to find what they seek.

So, when you think about it, you will understand why Google would want to place an SSL site on the first pages for many keywords. In the long run, even if you do not have a login system or credit card payment setup, you should consider an SSL certificate as you will go a long way in showing Google and other search engines you are serious about your online ventures and value the long-term strategy you have laid out. Otherwise, your site will look like any other and you will struggle to get on the first page of Google.

Quality

As mentioned, Google has, and always will, value a quality Web page. Meaning, when looking at a page with a lot of great information and plenty of happy customers, you will likely encounter a website with https security.

Think about it for a minute. When you land on a great site such as your email provider, bank or even a local restaurant, it probably has an SSL certificate. Without this, many will leave the site as they will not want to leave it up to chance. As people use other devices and become more aware of the situation, they are likely to convert to this way of thinking. When this happens, not only will you get more traffic, but current clients are likely to stay on your site. For this reason, if you want to do well in the organic search rankings and see your site thrive, you must have an up-to-date SSL certificate. Simply put, if you are truly in it for the long-term, you need to invest a small amount of cash in getting your site secure for every user.

Luckily, with a bit of cash and a couple of hours of your time, you can do so with ease. Then, in the short and long run, you will see your site thrive as people from all over will enjoy a site of high quality with all the necessary safety precautions

Throw up fewer errors

One metric Google takes a look at is the errors on your page. When using old and outdated code, you are likely to cause browser errors to your visitors. While this may not seem like a big deal on your end, it can cause a visitor to grow frustrated. Other times, people with older or outdated computers will struggle to load your website. For this reason, you should take the time to buy and install an SSL certificate. With this ten-minute job, you will see your pages load without any errors. Furthermore, people will take notice and feel more secure about going to your website.

If you have any sort of errors, whether with your SSL certificate or code, you need to fix them quickly as your site will never recover in the rankings and you will have a hard time impressing customers. Remember, with one or two errors, you can see an otherwise perfect site suffer in the organic search rankings.

So, if you can fix it up and make sure it is secure, you will have an upper hand against your competition. This is true even if they have an older page with more content as small errors will kill their SEO strategy.

Visitors

Now when looking at your site, Google will take notice when you have a lot of people come and stay for a long time. On the other hand, when you have a high bounce rate, you will see your site suffer. A bounce rate is the rate in which a person comes to your site and leaves without clicking another link on your site. When a potential client lands on your site, they will want to see a secure page. When they do not, they are likely to leave your site never to return.

On the other hand, if you have a secure site and let customers know this, you will rise in the rankings as Google values a site where people stay for a long time. This is a smart reason for you to rush out and install an SSL certificate. While this is true, you must make sure to do it right as one error can cause you to waste your time and money. Without a doubt, once you test it and make sure it works well, you should advertise this fact and let clients know your site is fully secured.

If you run a website, you must think of the future. While it is easy to make one on the cheap, you must invest in a few things. For starters, you should build a great site that people enjoy. Not only that, you must offer relevant, interesting and unique content that will set your site ahead of the competition. Finally, you must install an SSL certificate as customers will take notice. Furthermore, with https, Google and the leading search engines will value your site and you will see it zoom to the top for many organic search terms.

If you are a small business owner or if you have an innovative product idea that is ready for the market, the most effective way of acquiring customers and drawing attention to what you have to offer is by utilizing the internet. Creating a website is one of the most effective ways of advertising your product, but opening a website alone does not guarantee foot traffic. There are different methods a business owner can use to increase website traffic, but the most successful way is by using Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO consists of various formulas and keywords that ensure a website appears on the top of someone’s search results.

In order to attract visitors to their websites, many business owners are turning to SEO service Companies to increase customers without having to go through the trouble of dealing with SEOs on their own. These companies not only offer website design options, but they also ensure your website appears higher in search engine results – thus attracting more foot traffic to your site. The following are ten things businesses look for in a SEO company in order to make their business more successful.

Fees

SEO companies charge various amounts of fees for their services, but some companies’ pricing is more competitive than others’ pricing. The amount of money a business owner is willing to pay for SEO services depends on his or her needs and what the company offers. For example, many small business owners look for SEO service providers who offer a nominal, one-time fee and who charge an affordable amount to maintain the SEO service as long as the website is up and running.

Small business owners typically prefer SEO providers who do not charge a monthly fee that exceeds thousands of dollars; SEO charges should be equivalent to the services provided. In other words, do not pay for services that are not applicable, and do not pay for a company who does not deliver.

Location

When beginning the search for the right SEO company for the company, business owners should search SEO providers with respect to their own geographic location. If the SEO company is local, business owners can speak with their provider in person rather than having to rely on internet or telephone communication.

Furthermore, SEO firms that are in close proximity with local business owners are more apt to handle small businesses and the type of SEO required to boost internet traffic for their respective sites. While business owners are not required to limit their SEO company to a local firm, many choose their SEO based on its location due to their product knowledge and community reputation.

Reputation

Even if your chosen SEO provider’s website does not appear in the top ten search results, it is not necessarily because the company is incompetent or insufficient. Savvy business owners know to check Ripoff Report or the Better Business Bureau to make sure the company they’ve chosen is not merely running a scam. Furthermore, business owners will research SEO companies’ reviews.

A thorough investigation into testimonials will help determine just how successful an SEO company is at bringing in internet traffic.

Increase in Ranking

One of the more obvious aspects business owners look for in an SEO company is their ability to increase their websites’ ranking in search engine results. Business owners will look to testimonials and reviews for these rankings, but they will also check with the firm itself as well as conduct their own research. Knowing what sites an SEO company is responsible for enables small business owners to perform their own searches and see whether or not those sites show up high on an internet search.

If those sites do not show up, or if the sites show up on Bing! But not Google, business owners must take these factors into consideration before choosing that SEO company to provide services for their websites.

Link Building

Business owners who are interested in SEO services are aware of the fact that links play a large role in the algorithm that determines which sites are displayed prominently and which sites are not when one conducts a search on an internet search engine.

Business owners are more likely to choose an SEO company that ensures link freshness, links with trustworthy sites, and anchor texts and keywords that trigger search engines. Before choosing an SEO provider, savvy business owners will be sure to inquire about the company’s link building services.

Retargeting

Another SEO service business owners are interested in is retargeting. Retargeting is a cookie-based technology that strategically places ads for your business on other sites visited by customers who have viewed your website. SEO companies who provide this service must ensure their retargeting services are ethical and effective, as spam is a consequence many business owners would prefer to avoid. This option is sought after most by established businesses.

PPC Management

PPC Management, or the management of Pay-Per-Click advertisements is an SEO service many new business owners are interested in. SEO services that provide PPC charge a small fee every time an advertisement is clicked on by a potential customer, and the fee ranges depending on the placement of the ad (whether on a linked website or a search engine). It is important to compare competitors’ prices, as this service is largely dependent upon what business owner is trying to accomplish.

Ongoing Services

Experienced business owners know that SEO companies who promise instant results without any ongoing maintenance sound too good to be true – because they are too good to be true. Business owners look for SEO providers that offer consultations and continued support as the business grows. If your SEO company does not provide more than a one-time service, it might be time to find a new provider.

Reputation Management

Many business owners are aware of the horror stories. One bad review leads to a dozen bad reviews, and if you have a spiteful competitor who is willing to cross ethical lines in order to tarnish your reputation, you will lose business.

Reputation management keeps the negativity in check and ensures your website and company will establish and then maintain raving reviews and a high ranking in comparison with other sites and in search engine results. SEO companies provide reputation management services that vary depending on the desires of the business owner, so be sure to ask about specific services provided.

Content Marketing

In order for any online business to be profitable, business owners must maintain excellent content marketing. Without content marketing, search engines will not pick up your website, and consumers will breeze past it as if it were not there at all. Content marketing encompasses aspects of online businesses such as leads, brand awareness, customer service, and customer retention.

Many business owners are too busy to run their business and take care of their online content marketing. Efficient content marketing is the foundation upon which most successful online businesses are built.

Today, most consumers make their purchases through an online format. For business owners who want to make the most of their companies, hiring an SEO company to increase internet traffic will increase sales and improve their companies’ reputation.

There are many Internet search engines available for people to use. However, it is the Google search engine that revolutionized the way that we search for things online. It is also the search engine that websites and businesses live and die with. Being among the top of the Google search ranking for a given subject or keyword can mean an extraordinary amount of unique visitors for a particular website. On the other hand, being buried on the 20th page of search results can result in the failing of a website or business. In the Internet age we are living in, Google is just that important.

Traditional SEO

Getting to the top of the search results and staying there takes a lot of work. Google wants to be certain that the websites it presents in its search results are legitimate and do not represent a problem to the public. They also try to steer away from websites that have business practices that Google believes to be shady. This leads us to the subject of spam.

We hear about spam every day we are online. Our email accounts even have special spam folders to capture and dispose of all the spam emails that we receive. Needless to say, spam remains a huge problem all over the Internet. Google is not taking the issue of spam lying down. In fact, they have made it a mission to punish websites who engage in spamming on a regular basis. Perhaps you run a website and you have received a Google Webmaster email that says your website has been issued a “manual spam penalty for having “pure spam.” Google considers pure spam sites to be the ones they believe have performed the spam infractions that are the most egregious.

Making Google’s S#!% List

So what exactly is pure spam and does Google give any clear definition as to what it considers to be spam? After all, there is no way you can try to fix the problem and comply with Google unless you know what exactly the problem is. If Google sends you a Webmaster email regarding a “manual action” being implied to your site, you need to carefully read the email. There are specific words that they use in their emails. It is important to know exactly what they mean so you can take steps to fix the problem that Google has with your site.

It is hard to recover from Google penalties of any kind, especially a severe penalty such as the removal of your homepage. If you run a website that has been engaged in spamming for a long period of time, and you are currently trying to change your practices and get Google to accept your site again, you have a difficult road ahead of you. You will certainly have more trouble than a site that is guilty of only a few spamming infractions. Sites that have a long history of spamming will not be able to get back into the search results for Google very easily.

Google has been forced to get tough with a lot of sites that continue to spam despite being penalized by Google in the past. In certain cases, the standard method of removing the site’s links has not been an effective enough deterrent to get a website to stop its spamming practices. Enough websites were not slowing their spamming that it made Google realize that it had to up the ante as far as penalizing these sites is concerned. Google has defined the targeted sites as “those sites that display a long-standing practice of delivering mass and deliberate spam.”

Recovery

These sites naturally want to know if there is a possibility of ever getting this huge penalty lifted. While it is possible, if a site has been spamming long enough and in a high enough volume, undoing that amount of spam could be a tough task. In many cases, certain sites have created such a horrible reputation for themselves, and have become so deeply entrenched into the world of spam that it is virtually impossible to get themselves back to respectability and to get Google to lift their penalty.

In some cases, a site has a reputation that is so tarnished and beyond repair that the best thing to do is to shut down the site and start again with a new website that does not have all of the spam baggage associated with it. While it is never a decision that any website owner should make lightly, this is occasionally the best move for all parties involved. It is just a matter of determining if the damage that has already been done can be corrected enough to the point where Google is willing to forgive you and lift the penalty.

Bad Neighbors

Even with Google laying down the law and severely penalizing websites that have been spammed for a long time, you can be sure that sites will continue to do it, knowing full well the risk they are taking. The reason for this is because these sites believe that spamming is what they need to do in order for their site to rank in the search results. Sites that peddle gambling, prescription drugs and payday loans have been at the focal point of spamming for many years. None of these industries shows any signs of curtailing their spamming activities.

Google has also recently confirmed a key piece of information that a large number of webmasters, especially those who spam on a regular basis, have suspected for a very long time. Google stated that a website known for spamming has the ability to contaminate various sites that contain the identical company information and address. Along with this, Google looks into other less known factors to figure out the validity of various sites that are known to be on the shady side. Google is on the lookout for multiple businesses that operate from the identical address. This does not necessarily mean that shady activities are going on, but Google considers it a red flag that causes them to investigate the site further. It could also be one of the reasons that Google eventually decides to penalize a specific site. Payday loan sites are directly in Google’s crosshairs because of their long history of spamming and unethical business practices.

Minimizing Risks

There are some important things that webmasters can do to minimize the penalties and headaches they may face as a result of being targeted by Google. For example, if a webmaster is having problems with spam warnings relating to a specific site, they should immediately separate any other sites they own that are related to the site that is having the problems. This should include such items as WHOIS information, contact information and any affiliate codes that happen to match. This will eliminate any possible “guilt by association” scenarios.

If you submit a request to Google to have your penalty reconsidered and you either get a negative reply or none at all, you should not give up. Consider hiring a professional who has experience with this sort of issue to help you determine what exactly the problem is. If you keep submitting your request to Google without fixing the problem, they may eventually start to ignore you. This is a situation you want to avoid at all costs.

Google Adwords, established in 2000, brought into being the idea that marketers could dissect the algorithm in order to serve up landing pages and online offers that placed highly in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). The race was on for people trying to elbow their way to the first page of the SERPs. At that point, it was all about advertising. Marketers were trying to make sure that their online copy was the one people viewed most often. It was the same game that advertisers played when they tried to get the most views in a television spot playing during the Super Bowl or bought a one-page ad in a big magazine. The idea in advertising is to get the most views by hogging attention in strategic ways in particular high-publicity media channels. However, two things changed SEO from being totally advertising to a more public relations role: Google updates and social networking.

Google Adwords and the Need for Updates

Google may be a free service for billions of people who search it, but it is a business never-the-less. Much of its revenue comes from its advertising program: Adwords. While savvy online marketers were busy gaming the system to get free advertising by stuffing keywords into content and spamming links designed to fool the Adwords system into serving their pages up first, Google was busy perfecting their business to keep activity from damaging their own business model. Updates like Panda, Hummingbird, and Penguin tanked more than one website’s advertising strategy. It made it clear to business owners that Google would no longer tolerate poor quality, attention-hogging, content by making it almost impossible to use their search engine simply to advertise a product offering. Instead, they would be forced to contribute content that created value for the Internet community, if they wanted Google to notice them at all. It was no longer about being attention hogs, it was about making genuine online connections and relaying information that was valuable to the community. The shift from advertising to public relations solidified with the introduction of SEO strategies that no longer could rely on mindless keywords and arbitrary links. Now, marketers had to provide truly interesting and unique content that provided some value to the community. However, the game had already started changing with the introduction of social networking in 2004.

Social Networking

Facebook emerged in 2004 and social networking began to influence how people shared information online. Sites like Twitter and LinkedIn created a way for people to share more information, but now the curators of that information were your peers, not a large organization that you could manipulate with algorithm-hunting SEO strategies. To get noticed on a social networking site, it meant that marketers had to adapt towards creating one-on-one relationships that built a social brand that created trust. Without it, your friends and followers would not bother sharing your information because they would not risk losing their own friends and followers for the offense of social spamming. If you weren’t into public relations before social networking took flight, all of a sudden it became a requirement, simply to compete with others getting all the online shares and likes.

Algorithm-Hunting SEO versus PR SEO

There are stark changes in how a modern-day Internet market approaches SEO these days. It starts at the simple keyword level and goes forward into how that information is shared online. Here are a few different ways, the two models differ.

• • Keywords – The Hummingbird Google update introduced the concept of semantic keyword searching versus coding keywords. In layman’s terms, Google is more interested in what a keyword search means, not what keywords were actually typed into the search engine. This way, they don’t pull up pet accessories when someone types in the query: ”Why am I in the dog house?” Instead, Google now understands that this is a query about relationships, not pets. Thus, the content of your online copy is far more important than the keywords. If you want to place highly for a topic such as relationships, you have to provide a lot of quality content on relationships. The keywords alone will no longer sway Google. What you need to do is community outreach and get into the mind of your reader to make sure your content provides actual value.

• • Publishing – It’s no longer reasonable to assume that publishing on your own website is enough to draw attention to your offers through Google searches. Business owners who want to generate buzz for their offerings have to be involved in social networking. Content marketing is an integral part of SEO, including posting status updates on places like Facebook and Twitter. You can still use hashtags and keywords, but some sites also deal more with images and videos than they do with textual content. You will need to include more than one type of content to keep people interested on a social level. Other content will be viewed in a smartphone and will need mobile-friendly content.

• • Creating Buzz – To create excitement for an offer, in the past, an Internet marketer might have looked to high-ranking pages and site to share that content. They might try to get a retweet from people who had thousands of followers as opposed to the one with just a few friends and followers. They might try to get that person to post a link back to their pages. This is getting harder to do without being penalized for spamming or inappropriate links. It also missed the opportunity to create buzz on a local level. That’s why more marketers are creating buzz in a more social manner, by networking on various sites, not just one social network and one website. Google+ may be the late-comer in the social networking venues, but it is the one tied into the SERPs more, thus it makes sense for marketers to have a presence there, too.

• • Geographic Marketing – One of the biggest benefits to SEO was the ability to enter a global market. However, some businesses soon realized it wasn’t necessary to market the world when they’re selling pizza in a particular neighborhood restaurant. In that situation, businesses had to create positive public relations in their chosen demographic first, to compete successfully in their area. This could be achieved by cultivating good online reviews, shares, and likes from people in their own area. This cements the idea that you have to connect to your chosen demographic to outsell your competitor, instead of focusing on just issuing copy or trying to chase the Google SERPs tail.

There are distinct differences in the way SEO is approached today to when it was initially developed. Marketers want to make sure that they continue to place highly in the SERPs by creating goodwill among their customers, readership, and sponsors. That is more a public relations role than a sales advertiser. It means being genuine, providing high quality copy, and integrating the strategy with good old-fashioned one-on-one connections to fuel interest and excitement for your online offers. Those businesses that take their public relations role seriously will end up naturally ranking higher and win out in the end.

When you run a website and use WordPress, you can make a great blog that people from all over the world love to read. While this is a great outlet to use, it is wise to take a proactive approach to prevent problems such as too many blog comments or spam. Other times, you will have to deal with people who comment multiple times, either on purpose or accident. While it is easy to manually delete comments if you run a small blog and only make a post or two a week, it is a challenge when you run a larger operation and have a lot of blog posts and a busy comments section. Simply put, when you run a blog, you will want to weigh the benefits and downsides. However, when coming up with this plan, you must realize your ideas, strategies and business will grow. For this reason, you will want to come up with a comprehensive and practical solution. At the same time, you will need to devise a plan that works now. With this in mind, here are three ways to remove duplicate comments from WordPress.

Manually

As mentioned, if you have the time and patience, you should manually remove blog comments. To do this, a site owner should log in to his or her WordPress account a couple of times a day. Then, one should look at the comments and make sure users are not posting too frequently. When this happens, you should simply delete all the comments except the original one. Of course, if all comments are spam from the same user, you should delete all of them. To take this further, ideally, the site owner should block the IP address and not allow the user to comment on the blog.

With this, not only can you take an approach which allows you to remove bad users, but you can also avoid a solution causing you to delete legitimate comments. Either way, with a manual removal plan, you can enjoy the best of both worlds. However, if you are a busy webmaster and do not have much time, this is not an ideal solution. Think about it, if you have hundreds of comments a day, you will have a hard time manually removing duplicate ones. In fact, with this system, you would have to hire a person to remove excess comments. Either way, you must think of your long-term wants and needs when coming up with a plan.

When doing so, you will discover that manually deleting has limitations but is perfect if you run a small blog with only a small amount of followers. With that being said, this is the best approach if you want to plan slowly and think you may need to come up with an automated solution in the future. Simply put, when starting out, you can probably rely on this method without much trepidation.

Community based

Now, when people make a lot of comments in a row, you will want to take action. As mentioned, it is only easy to delete multiple comments when times are slow and you run a small blog. However, over time, you will probably want to think of a more comprehensive and effective solution. At the same time, while coming up with a strategy, you will not want to anger or hurt customer’s feelings by making them jump through hoops to make a comment or two.

Instead, with a community based plan, you can do a couple of things. For starters, you can employ a community flagging system. With this, other commenters can inform you of spam comments or multiple ones. This is the perfect solution when you have a lot of interested followers who care about your blog and want to help. While this is a great way to prevent long-term spam and duplicate comment issues, you should know it will still require you to manually log in and remove the duplicate comments. However, this is a great way to save time and allow you to do other things for your visitors. Not only that, with this approach, you will keep the visitor experience a good one as they will not have to deal with a burdensome and annoying approach to simply make a comment or two.

Remember, when you involve your current followers, you can take a lot of guesswork out of it and end up with the best solution for your needs. Again, you must attempt to make the user experience a good one and you can do this with a community based solution. In the long run, this is a great solution that will allow you to save a lot of time and money as you can concentrate on other pressing matters.

Plug-ins

Now, without a doubt, one of the biggest benefits of WordPress is the ability to use so many plug-ins. With many software applications available, you can run your blog and keep things in order with ease. With that in mind, you should consider a solution to your duplicate comment problems. For starters, you should, of course, manually remove some comments. However, as mentioned, most site owners should look for a complete solution.

One way to do this is to use a plug-in which prevents this in the first place. With a proactive approach, you will not have to deal with too many blog comments in the first place. But, it is wise to think about this more deeply as you will want to keep visitors happy and not frustrated. To do this, you must search for the best plug-ins for your situation.

With some software solutions, you can remove duplicate contents without any work on your end. Without a doubt, with this system, you will enjoy a few benefits. For starters, your clients will not notice a bunch of annoying blog comments. At the same time, people will not grow frustrated when dealing with prevention techniques many use.

If you run a blog, you must understand the importance of participation. Think about it, when visitors can make a comment or two you your blog posts, you can reach out and potentially reel a customer in. Other times, with comments, the site owner can gain interest in his or her idea or strategy. While this is true, if you want to have a comments section, you must police it wisely. One way which many bloggers do so is to force people to sign up for accounts or log in. This is annoying, and most will end up clicking the back buttoned of the browser. No, you need to take a proactive approach while still giving the visitor a decent experience. Remember, there are so many sites out there that you cannot afford to annoy users. With this knowledge, you must know how to proceed wisely. Ideally, you should come up with a multi-faceted approach, which allows you to keep the comments flowing and prevent a ton of spam or duplicate ones.

Luckily, with these three easy to follow tips, you can keep people coming back. They will not grow frustrated by reading mountains of duplicate comments by people who made mistakes or wanted to spam the blog comment section.

Bounce Exchange and OuiBounce both provide your website with an option to accept user enrollment to receive newsletters. A newsletter still provides one of the most effective ways to contact your customers and connect with them at a time when it’s most convenient to them. While social media sites have greatly improved the level of communication between you and your subscribers, certain disadvantages do still exist. A newsletter goes directly to the subscribers inbox, and people tend to review items sent by email more carefully than a status update posted on a business page.

Bounce Exchange Overview

Bounce Exchange works by detecting when a customer leaves your page and providing them with an offer to sign up or receive a free offer instead. This can help you sell more products, keep the customer on your page longer and turn a visitor that would otherwise abandon your page into a returning customer. While the product works and can increase the amount of traffic to your site over the long term, the cost of the service is simply astronomical and not affordable for many small business owners. In contrast, OuiBounce provides an open source alternative that allows you to interact with and connect with your customers without the high price tag.

OuiBounce Overview

The open source OuiBounce software provides everything you need to keep visitors on your site and coming back for more. The software was designed with ease of use in mind and provides a simple, and easy to customize platform for your website. Since the software is Open Source, you don’t have to pay to use it and like Bounce Exchange it exhibits intelligent behavior that allows your website to detect when a user is about to leave your site. The library can help you improve conversion rates by seven to 15 percent, depending on the type of website you operate. You can use OuiBounce to provide real value to your customers and give them something free just for signing up and returning to your website.

Helping Users Find Information

New visitors to your website can’t always locate the information your visitor needs and often, the first reaction is to click the back button when this happens. Before the visitor leaves, you can greet them with a pop-up that allows them to sign up for one of your special offers or provide them with a book he can download to peruse while not on your website. People appreciate when you offer free materials and can visit your website and download materials to peruse in their spare time. By providing them with a PDF booklet, or getting them to sign up for a special offer or newsletter you increase the likelihood that he will return in the future.

Types of Offers

When setting up your first campaign, your options are virtually limitless. As with Bounce Exchange, OuiBounce makes it possible to offer a free eBook, invite the visitor to come back and participate in a webinar, give a link to contact a customer service representative or even give the user a sample course to take in their free time.

OuiBounce is Open Source

Useful and relevant content directed at your customers is the goal of OuiBounce and with a community of Open Source developers, you can remain certain that the software will continue to develop and grow. Additionally, since the software is Open Source, you can edit and change the code however you like. Bounce Exchange is proprietary software that can’t be modified, distributed, or sold. Even if you don’t want to use the software on your website, you can modify it to include additional features and offer it to your site visitors as a free or paid download. Bounce Exchange is very similar to OuiBounce and functions as the commercial version of the product. Provided you don’t need extensive individual help setting up and configuring the software, you can use OuiBounce free of charge without the need to pay the hefty annual fees that Bounce Exchange charges.

OuiBounce Usage and Options

In coordination with other site monitoring tools, you can also set OuiBounce to alert visitors to your website after a set amount of time. Use Google Analytics or another site analytics tool to determine the average time spent per page and prompt users with a dialog box before she leaves. You can set the sensitivity of the software, turn on aggressive mode or create a callback to keep your customer engaged and active on your website. Rather than using the pay per user or campaign scheme of Bounce Exchange, you can use the software for free and provide a value added feature to your website.

Sensitivity

The OuiBounce software library provides a few simple options that you need to understand to get the most out of the library. Sensitivity refers to how far away from the edge of the browser the mouse must be before a prompt displays. If you put the sensitivity too high, you will lose visitors because the pop-up ad may display too quickly before they get a chance to view the website. Set it too low and they might leave the website before they have a chance to view your offer. Bounce Exchange provides a similar feature that intelligently determines when someone is about to leave your website. However, the added cost and system resources used by the software make Bounce Exchange a costly alternative in both time and money.

Aggressive Mode

You can configure OuiBounce to use Aggressive Mode to prevent ads from getting in your visitors way. Aggressive mode shows your advertisement only once per customer. This prevents your visitor from having to dismiss the dialog box each time they move the mouse to a certain position in the screen or visit a new page. Once you set up Aggressive Mode, you can feel confident that the user experience remains high by preventing a negative experience with your website. Users that have to constantly battle advertisements and free offers are less likely to return to your website in the future. Unlike Bounce Exchange, you can set this option with a simple code edit.

Minimum Timers

Setting a timer before a pop-up displays is a simple and straightforward process that can potentially add great value to your website. At the point when most users leave your website, you can gently guide your visitors toward your product or service or encourage her to sign up for your newsletter to get additional information in the future. By providing a simple form to provide a name and email address, you can increase the conversion rate and decrease the likelihood that emails you send will get returned or sent to your trash.

Choosing the Right Software

Website owners have to carefully manage their time, expenses and resources. Using a full-featured version of a product such as Bounce Exchange may actually hurt the effectiveness of your website. Too many database connections and data flowing between the website server and the visitor can impede the overall user experience. OuiBounce gets around all of this by using a simple, streamlined and effective library that can add an interactive element to your website. Before spending money on an expensive option like Bounce Exchange, it makes sense to explore the Open Source OuiBounce option.

Thanks to the nearly universal prevalence of the Internet, it seems like everyone and their cousin has a blog, website, or other foothold in cyberspace. Some people use their websites and blogs for fun, others sell stuff, while a rare few actually use their blogs, websites, YouTube channels, and so on to actively influence the world around them. Whatever form or incarnation a person’s web presence might take or the motivation behind its maintenance, though, traffic is the one thing everyone has in common. Everyone needs it, everyone wants it, and in most cases, the majority of users can carve out their own little group of visitors and fans. Here’s the thing about traffic, though: Getting people to visit a website isn’t the hard part. Anyone with enough time and/or money can get some web traffic to their blog, YouTube channel, or what have you. No, the hard part is keeping the traffic once it’s there. The denizens of the Internet are a fickle, flighty lot, and anyone who wishes to attract and retain their allegiance must first gain their attention. Fail in that regard, and there’s only one outcome: The dreaded “bounce”.

Read on to learn what the bounce / bounce rate is, and more importantly, a simple little trick anyone can use to decrease this most unwelcome of analytical metrics.

Bounce Rates: What’s it All About, Anyway?

Before going any further, it’s imperative to understand what the phenomenon commonly known as “the bounce” actually is, as well as what a website’s bounce rate indicates. On the Internet or off of it, knowledge is power, and only those admins and site runners with a firm grasp of these metrics and their consequences can hope to better their situations.

Quite simply, “bounces” are single-serving visitors to a website. They show up, view a single page or piece of content, and then vanish, often forever and without a trace. If you take the total traffic to a website and you parse out this element, that’s your bounce rate. Put another way, if 100 people visit your site, and eighty of them look at more than one page / one thing while five of them bounce according to the above definition, then you, which is to say, your website, have a twenty percent bounce rate.

As you might imagine, the longer a person stays on a particular site, the more interested, engaged, and invested they are in that site. The inverse is also true; a higher bounce rate can mean your site is broken, confusing, or simply boring. Of course, traffic quality can also play a part in a site’s overall bounce rate, as can a variety of other factors. Whatever the reason or problem, the most important question isn’t how to cure the symptom, but how to cure the disease.

How does one lower an unacceptable bounce rate? Simple – withdraw your visitors’ ability to ever bounce in the first place!

Setting Blank Targets, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Share My Traffic

There are plenty of methods to reduce one’s overall bounce rate, and a wise site owner / admin will use as many of them as he or she can. Make sure your website’s design and interface are pleasing and user-friendly. Make sure you have interesting content. Keep your traffic targeted to the purpose/theme of your website, and if you market to them, do it at a whisper, not through a megaphone. All of those things take time and skill to implement, at least to some degree. One of the easiest bounce-reducers, however, is the setting of blank targets. All it takes is a snippet of HTML code (the techie language that makes the whole Internet run), and voilà – watch your bounce rate drop like a stone.

Here’s how it works:

Setting a blank target is simply an instruction to your computer, or more specifically, to your Internet browser, to open external links – that is, links which point to sites or web pages that aren’t your own – in new windows. This will show your visitors the content they’ve requested, but unlike those who don’t set blank targets, it will also keep your own site open. This greatly increases the likelihood that these users will come back and visit your site after they’re done with whatever the other content is. Not only that, but blank targets mean you’re sharing your traffic with other sites instead of simply handing it over without a fight.

The setting of blank external targets is especially useful in the blogging community, which tends to be tight-knit and familial. If you share your traffic by linking to someone else’s interesting, funny, or otherwise worthwhile content, the chances are good that the favor will be returned. Setting blank targets for your external links is, in other words, a win-win situation for everyone. Your users are happy because they get to see the content they enjoy, the individual site owner – that’s you, dear reader! – are happy because their site(s) remain(s) open and available for further viewing (leading to reductions in the overall bounce rate), and one’s fellow site-runners are happy because the traffic everyone wants and needs is being shared rather than hoarded. Put another way, external targeting is a tide which raises all boats, as the old saying goes.

Dude, Where’s My Code?

Here’s the only code anyone needs to set external blank targets. The part that actually opens the new window is in ALL CAPS, but this is for illustrative purposes, not out of necessity. At any rate, the code is below:

<a href=”#” target=”_blank”>Link</a>

This code will, as previously stated, open the linked URL / Web address in a new window while keeping one’s own site open for visitors to come back to later. On that note, it’s time to discuss what not to do with this code.

Blank Targets: How Not to Misfire

If there’s one thing you should never do with this sort of link structure, it is to use it on the internal pages of a website you actually own or run. Why? Because no one likes pop-ups. If a visitor to a certain site gets bombarded with a new window or tab each time they click a link, they will quickly grow angry and resentful. Such feelings will almost certainly cause them to leave soon thereafter. Improper use of external targeting isn’t just a recipe for a significant drop in traffic and the site’s overall reputation, though – it’s also a surefire way to shoot a site’s bounce rate through the roof.

Fortunately, the solution to this grim scenario is an easy one: Keep blank targets set to external links only!

Conclusion

The prudent management of website traffic is a crucial skill for anyone who hopes to make a lasting impression on the Internet. Happily, this guide is the ideal tool for anyone, be they novice or veteran, who wishes to sharply reduce their overall bounces / bounce rate, increase their visitors’ satisfaction levels, and generally enhance the quality of their web properties and the value of their web presence. Happy coding!

Now, when you run a website, you should strive to have a serious and well-thought-out SEO strategy. With this, you can bring more customers to your website. Not only that, with organic clicks, a visitor is more likely to convert into a customer. Simply put, with SEO your business can thrive; without it, you will l have to spend a lot of cash getting people to your site. With this in mind, you must understand how to have the right mindset in regards to your onsite SEO. Here is the ultimate checklist for your onsite search engine performance.

Keyword density

In the past, a writer could write a lot of content and ignore the rules. For example, when selling shoes, some site owners would use the phrase “Nike shoes” dozens of times in a short 500 word article. However, when using it too often (more than 2 percent) you will end up angering Google as they will assume the content is nothing but spam. To combat this, you should go through all your Web pages and make sure your content is not too heavily relying on one or two main keywords.

At the same time, you should change the wording to similar keywords. In this example, a site owner should change “Nike shoes” to “Nike footwear” and so on. With this, you will not end up with a problem as Google will assume your content is legitimate, and not a simple attempt to drive traffic to your site. This is probably the number one reason many site owners saw their pages fall off the first page of Google. Simply put, when you try to game the system and trick Google, you will not succeed in the long run. No, with naturally written content, you will have a better chance at landing on the first page. At the same time, your customers will enjoy reading pages not stuffed of keywords.

Duplicate content

Without a doubt, if you have any duplicate content, you are going to struggle to gain in the rankings. In fact, if you do this, you may not have any traffic from search results. To test this out, you should head to Google and search some of the phrases in your content. If other websites show up, you will have a problem. Of course, if you have the money, you can also use Copyscape. With this, you can run your content through the system and make sure it is 100 percent unique. If it is not, you should change a few words and try to make it readable and interesting. Remember, Google came down hard on people who did this, and you must avoid duplicate content. The only exception is when you want to write a product description as it is often hard to avoid the same keywords. Either way, with a quick search, you should uncover your worst fears or confirm you do not have any duplicate content.

Speed

Believe it or not, if your pages load slowly, you will kill your SEO results. To check this out, you should head to one of the many online portals which allow you to test your site speed. Now, with this information, you will have to make changes. To do this, you should resize any large photos which hog bandwidth. Also, you should make sure your videos do not load automatically. Just as importantly, you need to check out your code and find any errors in it. With bad code, your site will load poorly, and you will have other issues. Fortunately, when fixing this, your customers will enjoy faster loading pages and your site will do well in SEO. Without a doubt, this is an often overlooked step. This is a serious mistake as you can catch your competition by surprise when you have a faster loading site than they do.

Titles

One overlooked aspect of SEO is the page title. At the top of every page, you should have a unique title related to your content. This is less important for the contact us page or other essential parts of your site. On the other hand, for product description pages or others, you will want to ensure your title works for the situation. For example, if you give music lessons, your page title should have words related to music lessons in it. Then, when doing this, Google will take notice and likely understand what your content is about. When done in the right way, you will have an easier time going up in the ranks as this is a huge metric google keeps in mind when valuing a website.

Links

Believe it or not, you can hurt your cause with a dead link or two. For this reason, you should go around your site and make sure all the internal links work. Luckily, there are online solutions; these allow you to check your site links in seconds. To take matters further, at least to make your clients happy, you should check out your external links and make sure it still goes to a live page. Often, it will not, especially if you link to a news article or some source that may change over time. Either way, when checking links, you can help your SEO outcome and please your customers who will grow frustrated when a link does not work.

Length

Sadly, if you have too little amount of content, you may not register much on Google’s radar. To change this, you should fill up your website with plenty of great content. To do this, you must try to have a lot of pages full of interesting information. Furthermore, make sure to keep your page length long. While it is okay to have a short page for product descriptions, you should keep other pages longer. If possible, most of your pages should have more than 500 words. With this, Google can accurately determine what your site is about and you can answer your customer’s questions.

Keywords early

If you want to gain the attention of a search engine, you should have the right keywords. Just as importantly, if not more, you should have your keywords in the top part of the content. By putting them in the first few paragraphs, you can show Google and Bing what you are trying to sell. Otherwise, if you put it way down at the bottom, you will have a problem as the bots crawling your site will not know how to value the content.

With this short guide, you will have an easier time improving your site and landing on the first page. While this is important, you must also understand how to track your results. For starters, you should know which keywords you are aiming for. Then, you should know where you are on Google. After a week or two, you should check your results and see if you have moved up or down. If nothing happened, do not worry, you may have to wait another month or so. Then, to take things further, you should make sure to track visitors as this will tell you what search terms they used and how they landed on your site. Without a doubt, when following this guide to the fullest, you will have great success on Google.

Google Adwords is a popular online advertising platform that places various ads on Google’s search engine as users search for specific keywords. The advertisements appear at either the top, bottom, or side of search results after the user makes a specific query. Several factors determine the placement of the ad. The relevance of the keywords and the amount paid per click are both determining factors in the rankings of paid keywords. Google is the world’s premier search engine with millions of users per day. Because of this, Google Adwords is the company’s primary source of income. In 2012, Google’s total advertising revenue totaled 42.5 billion dollars.

Google offers three payment platforms for potential advertisers: cost-per-click (CPC), site-targeted advertising, and cost-per-mille (CPM). Cost-per-click is the most commonly used platform, as Google only charges the advertiser between a few cents and a few dollars for each individual click the advertisement receives. The cost-per-mille platform charges advertiser for every thousand impressions the ad makes. The site-targeted advertising platform places targeted images, banners, and media ads on specific sites. Ranging from local, national, to international distribution, Google Adwords is unanimously the most popular search engine advertising campaign on the Internet.

SEO, as you well know, is the systematic process of increasing visibility and traffic of a certain website using organic or natural methods, which makes the primary goal of search engine optimization is to increase the page rank of a certain website. SEO techniques vary depending on the website and the search engine being optimized for. Each search engine uses a different algorithm for ranking, so it is important to do proper research before altering the content of your website for SEO purposes. Search engine optimization involves the alteration of content and HTML code to increase relevance for specific keywords. Additionally, increasing the total number of backlinks and inbound links is another popular search engine optimization technique.

That being said, web analysts often speculate on the effectiveness of search engine optimization vs paid advertising generated by Google Adwords. Purists are firm in believing that the two techniques are completely independent and do not compliment each other. However, a small minority believes that including a Google Adwords campaign increases organic traffic generated by search queries. Truthfully, the organic traffic of a particular web page is completely separate from the traffic generated from Google Adwords.

There is a reason Google is the most popular search engine in the world.

If Google awarded more organic traffic and increased page rank for paying customers, competitors like Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.com will gain considerable market share. Google does a good job at maintaining the integrity of its results by separating paid traffic from organic traffic. The executives at Google realize that seasoned users of search engines differentiate between paid advertising and organic search results. In fact, they often recognize the fact that the paid advertisements are not usually relevant to the keyword they are searching for because the advertiser paid a significant amount of money for the ad placement.

Why Adwords has no effect on organic traffic

A study conducted by Search Engine Journal proves that Google does not award organic traffic to paying customers. Using an app called Google Webmaster Tools, a comprehensive report was generated for pre-selected websites to prove where the majority of their traffic originated. The report concluded that websites with no Adwords campaigns generated traffic from organic clicks, or the total number of click-throughs on a website for a particular query. Organic traffic was also measured by organic click per query, which measured the total number of clicks divided by the total number of website appearances in search engine results pages. The report compared websites with Adwords campaigns to websites without paid advertising and concluded that an Adwords campaign has no effect on organic search results.

SEO vs AdWords

Website owners realize that visibility from search engines account for a significant amount of traffic. Web developers are often conflicted when devoted limited resources to either search engine optimization or paid traffic via Google Adwords. Effective SEO usually involves the use of a marketing firm. However, enlisting the help of a marketing firm is very expensive and not always 100% effective at increasing traffic.

For example, a reputable marketing firm may demand up to $2,000 per month for search engine optimization. By forgoing external marketing firms, web developers spend a significant amount of time on search engine optimization. While generating traffic is a priority, the time used for optimizing keywords and adding backlinks can be used on creating more relevant content and marketing on social media networks. The alternative to SEO is paying Google for traffic. The cost of Google Adwords varies on the specific keyword being paid for. Popular keywords will obviously cost a lot more than niche or longtail keywords. Before focusing on one specific traffic-generating technique, one must consider the products being sold at the particular website being promoted.

High-end products and services with significant markup such as jewelry, legal and financial services, cars, and home renovation may benefit from search engine optimization. Because the return on investment for expensive services and products are so high, minute increases in traffic due to search engine optimization is well worth the effort. For example, if a financial firm gets one click-through generated by SEO and charges $900 for their services, the company will still generate respectable revenue. The same cannot be said for low-end products like clothing and silverware. The volume of traffic needed to see the same return on investment is much greater and the time invested in search engine optimization may be considered wasteful. SEO techniques take a significant amount of time before the user sees an increase in traffic. In fact, many organic traffic campaigns take up to six months to see positive results.

An Adwords campaign takes a lot less time to see a return on investment. Increases in traffic can be seen in 24 hours. In addition to this, some keywords only cost a few cents per click, making it a financially viable option for small business owners. Optimally, both SEO and Google Adwords should be used simultaneously to generate results. While search engine optimization takes time to increase traffic, web developers can see an immediate return on their investment via Google Adwords. By the time the SEO campaign sees a return on investment, Google Adwords would have already increased visibility. The two techniques will eventually compliment each other and the web developer should see an exponential increase in website traffic.

Use WebMaster Tools for Traffic Analysis

Google offers a free program called Google Webmaster Tools to analyze the effectiveness of your website’s advertising campaign. Google Webmaster Tools allows users to see how much traffic is generated from each keyword. Using this tool, web developers can tweak their advertising campaign and stop spending money on keywords that don’t generate traffic. Conversely, undiscovered keywords can be optimized or paid for in order to increase traffic. The program is completely free to use and is a necessity for an effective website advertising campaign.

In conclusion, years of evidence and web page analysis have proven that a Google Adwords campaign has no effect on organic traffic. Google rightfully chooses to maintain the integrity of its search algorithm by not rewarding paying customers with higher page ranks. Because of this, paid advertising is completely separate and denoted by a yellow highlight banner. Small businesses benefit from the affordability of Google Adwords as opposed to hiring an external SEO marketing firm. Additionally, users will see faster results via Google Adwords as SEO takes time to materialize results. If your budget permits, it is recommended to use both of these traffic-generating techniques. While, Google Adwords benefits in the short term, the strength of effective search engine optimization cannot be underestimated. Websites ranked on the first page of Google obtain the status solely through SEO and often maintains the position on the first page for years. Because of this, SEO should not be ignored. The most profitable websites use both techniques: Adwords for short-term traffic and SEO for long term visibility.

Over time, Google has released hundreds of changes to its search engine. It doesn’t take a genius to see what has been happening to keyword data. Unfortunately, Google wasn’t very vocal about the changes that were being made to keyword data.

Webmasters first noticed the change quite some time ago. Upon reviewing their website analytics, webmasters started to see keyword data encrypted, which means they weren’t able to see what keywords organic visitors were using to find their website.

When Google first started encrypting search activity, not all keyword data was encrypted. However, it didn’t take long before Google decided to make the switch to fully encrypted search activity.

Why Google Encrypted Search Activity

There is a lot of speculation regarding why Google really made this change. However, Google says the reason why it started encrypting search activity is because it wants to protect the privacy of its users. To this day, many SEOs wonder if what Google said is true, and they wonder if the search giant actually has ulterior motives.

The problem started in 2011. During this year, Google rolled out what is called secure search. Basically, secure search made it so that keyword data is encrypted, and while logged in, Google users are unable to pass keyword data to website analytics tools.

It started with SEOs noticing that many of the keywords in their analytics reports were not provided. The secure search that Google implemented strips all of the keyword data out of the information that is absorbed by analytic software.

It’s important to understand that this is only a problem for organic search traffic. Google still provides the keyword data for paid search traffic, which makes it much easier for SEOs to track.

In the beginning, Google said that the percentage of stripped keyword data would only be a tiny percentage of a website’s total search traffic. However, over time, the percentage of stripped keyword data grew steadily.

Not too long after the release of secure search, many webmasters were seeing over half of their keyword being stripped from their website analytics reports. Later, webmasters were seeing over 80 percent of their keyword data being encrypted.

The Reality

Currently, almost all organic search traffic is encrypted, so webmasters and search marketers only have access to a sample of the keywords that searchers are using to find their website. Unfortunately, the amount of keyword data that is provided for organic search traffic is nearly gone.

With the way secure search is progressing, it won’t be long until 100 percent of all organic search traffic is encrypted, which means webmasters won’t be able to see any of the keywords that searchers are using to find their websites.

The Problem

Secure search creates a huge problem for SEOs. The main role of a search marketer is to optimize web pages for desirable keywords, but if SEOs have no way of measuring the effectiveness of their optimization, then it’s almost impossible to measure and plan campaigns.

The Reasoning behind the Madness

Many SEOs will argue that there are several reasons why secure search is a bad idea, and there is no doubt that it has caused some massive headaches for search marketers. However, there is something that has many SEOs completely stumped.

Search marketers don’t understand why Google has chosen to only affect keyword referral data for organic search. For many marketers, it almost seems unfair that AdWords customers still have complete access to all of the keyword data.

A lot of professional SEOs believe that the real reason why Google has made this move is because they want to force people to increase their AdWords spend, which would give them access to keyword data, but Google still insists that the move to secure switch was made to protect user privacy.

Many people from Google have said that they believe SSL is very important. In fact, they think SSL protection is so important that they’ve already started encrypting search data for users who aren’t logged in.

They’re rolling out SSL protection across as many regions as possible. People from Google continually say that the switch to secure search has nothing to do with increasing the use of AdWords campaigns, but they don’t have too many SEOs who believe them.

What to Do Next

As mentioned earlier, Google is now blocking the majority of keyword data for organic search visitors, so many search marketers have no idea what to do about the problem.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter why Google is stripping this data. There are several ways for SEOs to get around this issue. The reality of the situation is that there is no full workaround for the problem, but there are ways to lessen the damage.

The impact of this data stripping is forcing SEOs to find other sources of data. Without these alternative data sources, search marketers will find it difficult to optimize their campaigns.

The Interesting Solutions

What many search marketers will find interesting is that most of the alternative data sources actually come from other Google products. This fact is enough to make many SEOs even more suspicious of Google’s motives. The first tool that SEOs can use is Google webmaster tools.

One of the reports provided by this tool displays 2,000 different keywords that have brought organic search visitors to a website. However, the report only shows the top 2,000 queries. Although the report also shows the number of clicks delivered by these queries, the numbers are only approximations.

The numbers of clicks that are displayed in the report do not represent an accurate number of organic search visitors. The second tool that SEOs can use is Google AdWords organic and paid report. Ironically, this is another Google product. Inside of the AdWords interface, there is a tab called dimensions.

Fortunately, this report can be used to view organic and paid keyword data, which can be viewed next to each other. All of the organic keyword data that is shown in the dimensions tab is extracted from webmaster tools.

Does It Really Help?

Sadly, many problems arise when comparing keyword data from different sources. SEOs end up being forced to use data from three different tools, and as one can imagine, this presents several issues.

Many search marketers have performed studies on the data from these different tools, and unfortunately, these studies reveal that the combined data from these tools is quite inconsistent. In some cases, the numbers looked completely random.

All SEOs want to make data-driven decisions because that is what optimization is all about. However, if the data sources that SEOs have access to are regularly reporting inconsistent data, then it’s nearly impossible to make decisions that are strictly data driven.

Some SEOs might feel comfortable with the data acquired from these various tools while others will continue to avoid using any of it. Regardless of what data sources are used as workarounds, this issue of stripped keyword data is a large one, and even today, thousands of SEOs are still angry with Google’s move to secure search.

404 pages are considered by most to be an extremely bad sign. Although they are commonly called errors, they are technically the page that shows up when a website is not able to perform a request. The most common action that results in a 404 page being displayed is when there is a person clicks on a link that has a URL that is not able to be delivered. It’s common knowledge that people who click on links with URLs that cannot be delivered have the tendency to become frustrated quickly and abandon their search for the page. If too many customers become frustrated, a business has the potential to lose a lot of web traffic and therefore a great deal of money. Experts in search engine optimization, or SEO, even goes as far as to have every 404 redirected to another page, such as the homepage or a page that is close proximity to the page that was requested.

This is not advisable because, in reality, 404s are not horrible. Those who work on web pages even consider them to be part of a normal web experience. Most of the worry about 404s stems from the belief that Google will cause the search page result rankings to go down if there are any 404s that exist. Another common concern is that a great deal of link equity, or the number of in bound links that connect to any page of a given website, will be lost should quality links direct to 404 pages. Despite the fact that this latter concern is actually valid, 404 pages are fairly normal and not ordinarily threatening to a website’s rankings on any search engine.

When They Are Dangerous:

A website that has a lot of 404 pages, meaning a number that is abnormally high, does have the potential to be rated lower on a Google search results page. When a customer clicks on a link, that means that there is information that he or she needs. If the link does not connect to the page that is expected, instead redirecting to a 404 page, then the customer will not be able to have access to that information. This will reduce the efficiency of the SEO system that the website is currently using to remain high on a search page. When a customer is not able to get the information that he or she wants, then he or she will not use the site. This will reduce the amount of traffic on the site, as users travel elsewhere. The search engines follow the users and, if a website is not getting a lot of views, then the search engines will turn away from that website.

Another issue is if a URL has a lot of valuable links. Link equity does not demand that every single 404 be redirected to a valid page. A 404 page is never a good reason to direct a link to a page that is in no way relevant to the page where the link was supposed to go. However, if the links are hard to obtain and secure on a site, then it’s recommended to create relevant content for the link that exists, or finding a page that approximates what is supposed to be on the page.

Ideas for Dealing With 404 Pages to Help SEO

Assure the User that it is Just the Page That Doesn’t Work

Users will often feel as though a page that is directed incorrectly is indicative of the entire site not working. This will cause them to leave the site and reduce the amount of web traffic. If the customer is told that the overall site is working and provided with links to get to the site’s homepage, less web traffic will be lost.

Tell the User Exactly What is Wrong

It is best to be upfront with the user and let him or her know why he or she has reached a 404 page. Explain that the link might have been bad and the page might have moved, or talk about how the URL might be misspelled and resulted in the incorrect redirect. This will make the user feel empowered and give clues as to how best to find the information that was originally being sought.

Post Helpful Links on a 404 Page

Another excellent way to deal with 404 pages in an SEO friendly manner is to have the 404 able to be used as a springboard to get to other information pages. It is important to always let the user know that he or she has reached a 404 page in order to clarify his or her experience. Then, some of the website’s most popular pages, or pages that are relevant to the page that wasn’t able to be returned, can be linked to that 404 page. This will allow the users to continue onto the site, so that no web traffic is lost. It will also increase the chances that the users to find the information that they were searching for and be satisfied with their experiences on the site.

Provide a Way for Users to Report Broken Links

Another way to deal with 404 pages in an SEO friendly manner is to provide users with a way to report broken links. This could simply be adding a link to the 404 page redirecting the user to a contact page where he or she can enter the URL that didn’t work. This will cut down on the total number of 404 pages in the system and reduce the chances that Google or other search engines will no longer index it.

Use the Enhance 404 Widget

Many search engines provide tools that allow web developers to customize the 404 pages. This customization tool lets developers create pages that, when accessed because of a broken URL, provide ways for the customers to find the information that they need. There are various ways to do this. A list of different alternatives or common misspellings will help users fix the URL themselves. A search bar will allow users to search for the information that they were originally looking for. Both of these ideas will allow users to find the information on the website and prevent the loss of traffic.

Update the Website’s Address

A common reason for an increased number of 404 pages is because a website might change its web address. Most search engines will provide a page that allows the web address for the website to be updated so that it is correct. It essentially tells the search engine about the new URL and will result in the pages being directed correctly.

Use a 301 Redirect

It is possible to take a link that directs to a 404 page and label it with the HTTP status code 301 Moved Permanently. This will allow anyone who tries to click on the link to be permanently redirected to whatever new URL is provided by the company that is hosting the website. The response is entirely cachable and will prevent 404 pages from ever being formed.