He specifically wanted to know:

• But, how much time and money should you devote to each social network?
• Which ones produce the best ROI?
• How much are 100 social media followers really worth?

And the results were very interesting and well worth the 5 minute read.

While Google  already blocks some types of “mixed content” on the web and makes it difficult to view non SSL websites it has now announced that from early 2020, Chrome (and other browsers will follow that example so they don’t appear “insecure” ) will block all mixed content by default, breaking some existing web pages. Which makes the information below on why all websites need to have a valid SSL certficate below even more pertinent.

What is mixed content

Mixed content is confusing. If you are viewing a web page that’s both secure and not secure. For example, a usually safe and secure web page via https but the web page is getting a JavaScript file via HTTP then it is possible that the script could be modified—for instance, if you’re on a public Wi-Fi network that isn’t secured—to insert malicious code into the  web page that could monitoring your keystrokes etc.

Google announced in September on it security blog that if your website is not using HTTPS/SSL when they implement their latest changes  in 2017, your website credibility and search engine rankings may be affected. Chrome- Googles web browser  has already begun to mark non-secure pages containing certain input fields as Not Secure in the URL bar as you can see below. 

At the moment this only appears on non-SSL pages that ask for a password or credit card information and  it’s not too noticeable. But Google  has confirmed that in the near future, this warning will appear on ALL pages served over HTTP vs. HTTPS and it will be in RED and look like this NOT SECURE- not exactly the sort of thing that will instill confidence in your website!!

There is already a lot of research which shows that Google is already using  HTTPS as a ranking factor…SSL DOES Correlate with Higher Rankings!!

Websites need to convert from HTTP to HTTPS to Avoid the ‘Not Secure’ Warning and feel confident with a Secure green padlock

Another reason why you should convert your website to HTTPS/SSL is that its safer for your visitors

HTTPS and SSL prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

When an SSL certificate is installed on a web server, it operates as a padlock and acts as a secure connection between the web server and browser. An SSL certificate binds together your domain name (or server or hostname), company name and location. While how an SSL certificate works goes into more details–involving a public key and a private key–what you need to know here is this: Even if a hacker manages to intercept your data, he won’t have the private key to decrypt it. Basically HTTPS and SLL adds extra layers of protection.

So what do website owners need to do

The first step would be to contact their webhost and purchase and  install a Secure Socket Layer certificate (SSL)  to ensure that data between your web server and browser remains private and secure and they are not penalise by Google’s SSL update.

SmallSEOTools.com also has the same tools plus quite a few more and allows you to localize the results to google.com.au rather than just google.com which is very happy but the only issue I have with it are all the ads but hey its free so I shouldn’t complain 🙂

And here is 7 more tools https://blog.kissmetrics.com/seven-free-seo-tools/

They are all important, but one of the biggest local search boosts comes from local Australian business directory listings.

Australian business directories are not just for driving search traffic, they can also provide referral traffic from people clicking through from your listing.

and while there are literally hundreds or thousands of business directories online below is the start of a list which I feel are the most valuable to Australian businesses (remember this post is about local SEO) I will update as time goes by and I find new useful ones.

But before you begin submitting your website to them it will be quicker and more consistent if you prepare the information below:

• 2-3 Business listing titles (Vary titles and descriptions to create unique listings.)
• Submission email address (Also try to create consistent login details so you can maintain any listings more easily) 
• Business contact email address (Use a dedicated email to separate confirmation & marketing emails from personal email.)
• Business phone number
• Social media links
• 2-3 unique business descriptions (usually 200 words max)
• Square logo image
• 5 business related images
• Business ABN

Australian Business Directories List

www.yellowpages.com.au– Getting a free listing in the yellowpage is done via their sensis site here

www.truelocal.com.au –submit a business link here

www.hotfrog.com.au  – add your business link

www.startlocal.com.au –  add your business here

www.local.com.au – free listing here

www.aussieweb.com.au – free listing here

www.womo.com.au – free listing here

www.dlook.com.au – free listing here

www.localstore.com.au – add your business here

There are alot more that you can find and add your website to. Remember many of them will expect you to confirm via email your details and will also probably give you a phone call to try to upsell you into a premium advertising package 🙂

what I haven’t listed are industry specific directories such as trip adviser or yelp so have a look at what is available in your industry and make sure you can found.

Also just on another note- submitting business listings via a Directory Submission Tool is a nice idea it doesn’t work well in practice. Different directories are built on different platforms and have unique fields and customization. Some even have hidden fields to trick these submission tools. This means the listings either fail or have missing or incorrect information!!

Link Exchanges and Bad Neighborhoods

Create content automatically

Use keyword rich doorway pages and cloaking

Hide text on your web pages

Get links in bulk

And while the order of importance of the items below are a hotly debated topic in regards to onpage SEO I think as a broad guideline each point below is within 3 spots of most SEO experts view of the importance if them in regards to a quick SEO onpage checklist. Also once you have the onpage SEO sorted you then have to think about the offpage SEO- but that is a topic for another post so off we go 🙂

Onpage SEO quick checklist

Title tag:

Key phrase in the meta title tag- you can have other words in the title tag but I would definitely have the phrase at the beginning and not go too over board with other text in your title tag.

H1 tag:

Key phrase in the first H1 of the page and the there is a debate about how important that it is that this H1 is as close to the opening body tag as possible. There is a school of thought that there should be only 1 H1 on any page but with the explosion of blogs and CMS systems this rule of only one h1 on a page has been watered down.

h2 and h3 tags:

Reuse your key-phrases individual words in different configurations in the h2 and h3 tags. This should be easy if you are writing good content and means that you making your page more relevant to the key-phrase that you have chosen for the page

Description meta tag:

Key phrase in the description meta tag. It is a well documented fact that Google ignores the description and keywords meta tags when it comes to SEO ranking factors but it does use the description field when it displays results so it can be the deciding factor for whether users click on your link on not so therefore has an effect on your traffic so in that sense it does affect your ranking.

Bold and italic key words/phrases:

Emphasis important key words and phrases with strong tag and em tags or the equivalent option in your CMS. This will not only indicate their importance on your page to the search engines but will also enhance your users/readers experience which is an important but hard to define ranking factor.

Keyword density/Body content and First paragraph:

Your key-phrase should appear in your liberally in your body content and especially in the first paragraph and some say also in the last. This is technically referred to as keyword density. And  this makes sense if your page is really about a topic then the topic will probably appear several times in the content. Exactly what is “liberal” is again highly debated and the damage done by overdoing it and looking like you are “spamming” the search engines can be disaster so I would say the rule of thumb is if it doesn’t read properly to a human then the search engines aren’t going to be happy either. Others have said that a keyword density of around 15% is a good number. So basically having your key-phrase appearing 15 times in every 100 words.

Incoming links:

Your links from other pages and other websites ideally will have the key-phrase in them– kinda makes sense if that is what your page is about.

URL:

Again this kinda of makes sense the key-phrase should be in file name- standard best practice to have meaningful file names. Or if your website utilises a CMS system then ensure that your key phrase is in the URL/ address of the page.

Page speed:

Ok so you have the actual content sorted so now you need to consider the technical considerations such as page speed. You can test your website and webpages page speed with with either the pingdom tool or googles page speed tool. And depending on your skill and background some of it may over your head and also out of your control but as general rule don’t include additional dynamic features if you don’t need them. For example if you have a WordPress website check if you really need all the plugins that you have installed. If it is a static html website then do you really need all the extra calls to JavaScript framework libraries such as jquery if you aren’t using them.

Optimised images:

This works with the page speed consideration and is definitely something that anyone developing or managing a website should be aware of. The simple rule is don’t upload that huge print quality image straight from your camera to your website!! Screen graphics do not need the same resolution and quality as printed graphics so optimise your images before using them on your website. and while your at it include your key-phase in the file name- this is a small consideration but every little bit can help. Also include your key-phrase in the alt text of the image.

Valid html and no errors:

If its possible at all then you pages should pass html validation. And yes I know many popular websites do not pass validation but when we are down to trying to squeeze every last bit of SEO juice from our pages then fixing simple validation errors is a good thing. Some webpages you won’t be able to get to pass the w3c validation but that should be for very real reasons not just because of sloppy work habits such as not bothering with alt text on images.

Mobile responsiveness:

As I have pointed out in another post “6 website factors that Google loves” your website must be responsive these days as Google is definitely considering this a key factor in its ranking algorithm.

External links:

I wrote about external links in the 6 website factors that Google loves post mentioned above but the general rule is that while you won’t be penalised if you don’t have any external links to quality websites it certainly won’t do you any harm if you do include them. So think about including some if they will enhance your users experience.

Ok well that’s it for now as I wanted this to be a quick checklist 🙂 And here is the link to a great article from Yoast the WordPress SEO plugin developers on keyword researching which if you haven’t already considered your key-phrases is a good article to read as they are the important first step in gettting the most from this onpage SEO quick checklist.

Tracking your website search engine placements

Once you have your website setup and your onpage optimisation done you need to track your SERP’s (Search Engine Results Placement) the first two tools you should setup to track your traffic and results are Google Search Console (previously known as Google Webmaster Tools) and Google analytics.

Google Search Console

This is a free service from Google for webmasters which allows you to check the indexing status of your website. It also allows you to submit sitemaps and check them for faster and more accurate indexing, it lists pages that link to your website, lets you know if the Googlebot is having trouble “crawling” any of your pages, it will notify you if Google feels your website has been hacked or contains links to malware site which will definitely cause you issues in your search engine placement as well as other useful tools.

Google Analytics

This is another free service from Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google brought the web statistics utility Urchin and further developed it into Google Analytics. It is the most widely used web analytics service used on the web and has been integrated with Google Adwords so that you track your return on investment of adwords campaigns.

Google has also expanded Google Analytics to include additional subscription based (paid for)  services such as  Google Analytics 360 which is targeted at enterprise users and  Google Analytics for Mobile Apps, an SDK (Software Development Kit) that allows developers and marketers to gather usage data from iOS and Android Apps.

There are other tracking tools but these 2 I would consider that it is vital to have in your tool box.

These days the majority of users access website via a smart phone or tablet and Google keeps separate search rankings depending on whether you’re searching with a smartphone or not?  The May  update to Google’s algorithm identified that mobile friendly pages would get higher rankings.

Google even has a free tool that can help you find out if your pages are mobile friendly which you can access here- “googles mobile friendly test tool” . If you’re site isn’t mobile friendly you really should make sure it is.

No 2: your website delivered via HTTPS/SSL

In September 2016 Google announced on it security blog that if your website is not using SSL which means https:// not http://. When they implement their latest changes  in 2017 (NOW), your website credibility and search engine rankings may be affected. Chrome- Googles web browser  has already begun to mark non-secure pages containing certain input fields as Not Secure in the URL bar as you can see below.
You can read more about it in this article on “why SSL is a must have for SEO/Google Results”

No 3: XML Sitemaps

Sitemaps are a way of letting Google know about all of your pages instead of just hoping that Google will find the link to them, follow it and index each of the pages. You can think of a sitemap as a book index or table of contents that tells you all the sections/pages of the book or website.

Most CMS systems can automatically create their own sitemaps, or you can use a plugin to generate one but you need to make sure that it is a valid xml sitemap by using a validator or by going to Google Webmaster Tools  and testing the sitemap.

If your sitemap validates and you want to signal to Google that you’re ready for indexing, you can submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. This is a great step to do if you’ve spent a lot of time revamping your site behind the scenes and are ready to go live and what your website re-indexed with all of your new content.

HTML sitemaps are also really good for sites that have a lot of dynamic content as they list of all the pages on the site by hierarchy, which can help human visitors- who should not be confused with robot visitors as detailed further down this list.

No 4: Site Speed

Thanks to the internet and humans expectation of instant gratification it is important that your webpages load fast and even more so on phones and devices that may be accessing your webpages via slow data connections. So for this reason  your site absolutely must load quickly.

Google has a tool to help you measure page speed for your site so you can tell if you’re too slow for their tastes. It will rank your site for both mobile and desktop and give you tips on how to improve the speed. If you want to go a little more advanced then consider going for Accelerated Mobile Pages.

No 5: Relevant and specific Titles and Meta Descriptions

Google says they don’t use titles and meta descriptions for ranking, but they’re quite important for readers that want to know what a page is about. So while it may not be something that google uses in its algorithm it is important for usability and getting user traffic from Search Engines. Titles are ideally under 60 characters to prevent Google from cutting them off. Meta descriptions should describe what the page is about and be between 150 and 160 characters.

If you don’t put in a meta description, Google will try to pull one from the text. Sometimes this is good enough for a page that’s trying to target a long-tail keyword, but it’s good practice to write your own titles and meta descriptions for all your pages in order to improve click-through rates in organic search results.

N0 6: Good Content Quality

When it comes to onpage SEO it is important to have good quality content.  Which in Googles eyes means:

• Original content
• How much content is “alot” or “enough” is relative but for this point I would say the amount of content needs to be “enough” to get the overall message across.
• Fresh content or regular content- the expression “Google loves fresh content” didn’t come from no where for no reason.
• Media rich enough for today’s content standards . So include pictures, video, etc that enhance the content.
• Clear navigation

No 7: Robots.txt

Robots.txt files inform search engine spiders how to what of your content you want to be indexed. The search engine spiders want to index as much content as possible but there maybe pages or content that you do want to appear in the search engines. For example for usibility reasons you may not want to your admin pages to appear in Googles index or you may not want content or webpages that are still in development to be indexed.

You do this by including commands for the search engines spiders on whether they are allowed or disallowed as examples to index files and folders this is called The Robots Exclusion Protocol.

It works likes this: a robot wants to vists a Web site URL, say https://tipsforyourwebsite.com/stuff/stuff.html. Before it does so, it firsts checks for https://tipsforyourwebsite.com/robots.txt, and finds in it:

The “User-agent: *” means this section applies to all robots. The “Disallow: /” tells the robot that it should not visit any pages on the site.

Or the robots.txt may contain:

where in this one the robots.txt is giving instructions for only googles spider and telling it not to index the admin, stuff and cgi-bin folders

There are two important considerations when using /robots.txt:

• robots can ignore your /robots.txt. Especially malware robots that scan the web for security vulnerabilities, and email address harvesters used by spammers will pay no attention.
• the /robots.txt file is a publicly available file. Anyone can see what sections of your server you don’t want robots to index.

So don’t try to use /robots.txt as a security feature.

N0 8: Good quality reference links and citations

These are also often referred to as citation links. And while you won’t be penalised by Google for not including them they do provide supporting information and validation of your content and can be useful for your users.

Anther helpful SEO article

So where to begin “Write good content”

if you want to be found on the web write good content. Even if your site is technically perfect for search engines, it won’t do you any good unless you also fill it with good content. This why websites with all of the content embeded within a single .swf files while ever so glamourous and beautiful tend not to rank well in the search engines.

Good content is content which is relevant to the site and needs to be unique and specific enough to appeal to people. Good content that is frequently maintained brings return visitors. Return visitors who like your content will eventually link to your site, and having lots of inbound links is great for search engine rankings, especially if those links are from highly ranked sites.

Good content that is regularly maintained is fresh content. Search engine robots will visit your site more often once they notice that you update regularly, which means that any new content you add will be indexed quicker.

Use keyword rich page titles

By including keywords in page titles you make it easier for search engines to know what each page is about, and people scanning through search results can quickly determine whether your document contains what they are looking for. The page title is also what is used to link to your site from search result listings.

what are keywords

Keywords are word that you think that people will type into a search engine to find your site.

Use html heading tags

Use the h1 – h6 elements for headings. Using graphics for headings may let you use any typeface you want, but search engines aren’t going to pay much attention.

Promote Your Site

Here are a few tips for driving traffic to your site.

Register your site with search engines. Over 90 percent of Internet users search one or more of the top engines to find what they need. Make sure your business is part of the results when customers look for the products and services you offer. Manually submitting your site to search engines and directories can take countless hours every month; so try SubmitWizard, an easy-to-use search engine submission service from Network Solutions and MyComputer.com. Submit Wizard has the capability of automatically submitting your site to over 200 search engines and directories, including Google, Yahoo!, Altavista, Look Smart and Lycos. Check out http://www.searchenginewatch.com for more tips for getting the most out of search engine listings.

Put your domain name everywhere. Brochures, advertisements, business cards, and even hats, jackets, and t-shirts can be effective ways to promote your site and establish your corporate identity. Don’t forget to include your domain name in press releases, too.

Advertise. Placing a banner ad on other well-trafficked sites can attract huge numbers of prospective customers-and doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

SEM: Search engine marketing is where you pay for advertising on search engines such google through programs such google adwords