Why Startup Business Websites Should Not Focus On First Page Rankings On Google
In a decade of working as a website designing company in Delhi, we have made websites which rank on first page of Google for their most relevant search term. Our best practices have helped us to establish ourselves as one of the best SEO companies in Delhi.
Startups in Delhi looking for website development contact us with just one goal and that is to get a website which ranks number one on Google.
With our experience as a SEO company in Delhi, we feel that for startups it is a complete waste of time and money if they focus on ranking number one on Google for the popular keywords.’
Why startups businesses should not focus on first page rankings on Google
Everything comes with a price and so does search engine optimization. When you start a business in a city like Delhi then you compete with established businesses which are already ranking on top for almost every keyword in the industry for years.
If you want to outrank them on first page rankings on Google then you have to shell out your pockets every month for months and that is not good at initial stages for your start up.
There are many reasons why shouldn’t startups focus on first page rankings on Google.
Number one rankings doesn’t means you are getting clicks
A study by Ahrefs shows that ranking number one on Google doesn’t means you are getting clicks.
I am not trying to drive you away from first page rankings goal. It will be good if you get there but that will take a lot of time for your start up website. Rather you should focus on getting relevant traffic even if you don’t rank on first page of Google.
Take your website content to the depth
Content writing which is focused on solving problems for your customers and presents in depth information tends to rank for many long tail keywords.
In depth content not only helps you to rank for your main keyword but also gives you an opportunity to rank for other relevant keywords. Thereby generating a lot more website traffic than your main keyword.
That is why the website which ranks on first place on Google might get less traffic than the one which ranks on third place.
Now the question is,
How do you write content in more depth keep it relevant and using long tail keywords phrases?
We can help, contact our content writing experts now.
Focus on user experience
You are getting more traffic than the top ranking websites doesn’t always mean that your customers are spending time on your website. If the bounce rate is high on your website then your website may loose all the traffic.
Learn about bounce rate in detail here.
Keeping an amazing user experience site wide helps in better user engagement and Google loves to keep your site in top search results. You automatically start ranking higher in the long run.
Read following articles for detailed information about user experience.
User Experience, a must for your website visitors
Business Website checklist for good customer experience
Keep checking and improving your conversion rate
Conversion rate by definition means that percentage of your website visitors which convert into sales and become your customers.
High traffic on your website is of no use if you are not able to convert your website visitors into sales. Your website should be optimized for conversions. Once optimized doesn’t solves the purpose.
Keep monitoring your conversion rate and working towards small improvements in making it better. You will see the growth in sales gradually.
Unleash the power of overall organic traffic
To conclude you should frame an SEO strategy which focus on long tail keywords phrases and not just the specific keywords. You will increase your over all organic traffic slowly and gradually you will start ranking higher on Google.
Monitor your traffic regularly and even if increases slowly for different long tail keywords, you are doing fine.
Don’t have time to do the SEO yourself? Contact our SEO company in Delhi at +91-8447380262.
Setting International Targeting In Google Search Console is good or bad for your business SEO rankings?
Webmasters working on a website’s Google Search Console (formerly Webmasters Tools) always come across setting International Target of that website. And the big question that runs in their mind is to whether or not set the Geographic target to a particular country or not.
What is Setting International Targeting in Search Console?
Google Search Console allows a website to set a target geographic location to emphasize on the traffic from that location.
By setting international targeting to a particular country you are indicating Google that;
…the content on your website is more suitable for the target audience of the selected location.
When you select a country while setting international targeting the content on your website will not be of much importance or priority to other parts of the World.
How to set International Targeting in Search Console?
Steps to set target Geographic Location in the old Search Console:
- Log in to Google Search Console
- Select the website (property) from the dropdown that you want to set target location for
- Select Search Traffic > International Targeting from the left side menu
- Click on the “Country” tab
- Select the region you want to target or select “unlisted” and Save your selection
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If you have some trouble setting up the target location then contact your SEO service provider to assist you in setting up the location.
Does Setting International Targeting affect SEO?
International Targeting is not a direct Google Ranking Factor. But it certainly does impact your website’s search engine rankings.
When you set the geographic targeting to a particular Country then Google gives your website a boost in rankings when a query is raised from that location.
Having this said, other ranking factors like On Page SEO, Off Page SEO, Mobile SEO, Responsive Web Design etc are also considered in ranking your website on the SERPS.
Before digging in deep into setting international targeting let us first understand what is TLD, ccTLD and gTLD.
TLD – Top Level Domain
The last part in a domain name is referred as a Top-level domain (TLD). Simplistically it can be understood as the part after the dot(.) in a domain name.
TLDs are further sorted into two categories:
- generic TLDs (gTLD) and
- country-specific TLDs (ccTLD).
Most common examples of TLDs are .com, .in, .org, .net, .gov, .biz and .edu.
Generic TLD (gTLD)
As the name suggests they are General TLDs, suggesting no geographic location or region in particular. This makes gTLDs the most preferred and popular types of Top Level Domains.
Some of the common examples of gTLDs are; .com, .info, .net, .org etc.
Country code top-level domain (ccTLD)
The name itself is self-explanatory. A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is a TLD which is generally used or reserved for a particular target location.
This location can be a country, a state, or even a territory identified with a country code.
Examples of a ccTLD are; .asia, .au, .in etc.
Who Should Enable International Targeting?
As per Google International Targeting is beneficial to you only if you are targeting a particular location.
To elaborate further, let us assume that your website is in “Hindi” language and it targets the audience in India. In this case it’s best advised to set the geographic location to India in the search console.
This way you signal Google that your website is of more importance to the users in India. Hence when a user searches for a related query from Asia, Google may boost your search engine ranking.
But, if your website is in a general language like “English” and does not target any location in particular then its best to leave the target as “unlisted”. This way Google understands that your website has information of use for the users worldwide.
In what scenarios should you select International Targeting?
Scenario #1 – When you are targeting particular markets with TLDs
If you have Top Level Domains pointing to a particular country code (ccTLD) the its a best practice to assign a target location respective to the Country.
For eg:
www.example.com – (gTLD) – Unlisted (do not select any location)
www.example.it – (ccTLD) – Set International Target Location to Italy
www.example.au – (ccTLD) – Set International Target Location to Australia
Scenario #2 – When you are targeting particular markets with subdomain
If your website has subdomains or sub folders targeting to specific locations, then set the international target to the sub-folders only.
For eg:
www.example.com – (gTLD) – Unlisted (do not select any location)
–>it.example.com – (sub-folder) – Set International Target Location to Italy
–>au.example.com – (sub-folder) – Set International Target Location to Australia
In the above example the example website has two sub-folders – it.example.com and au.example.com. Therefore the gTLD will NOT be pointing to any specific location. And its sub-folders will be setting international targeting to respective countries.
Scenario #3 – When you are a local business targeting multilingual audience within your country
If your business website has multilingual content for multilingual audiences in your country then instead of adding different countries for different languages. Just add the target local country on the main domain.
For eg:
www.example.ca – (ccTLD) – Set International Target Location to Canada
–>www.example.ca/fr/ – Unlisted (Set target on the domain level)
–>www.example.ca/es/ – Unlisted (Set target on the domain level)
In the above example a website example.ca has content in two different languages to suit their local multilingual users. Therefore, just set the geographic location for the main domain to Canada. And for the language specific domains set the target on the domain level only.
This is because if you will set the target location to France for example.ca/fr/ then Google will not understand that this setting is for French speaking users in Canada.
When should you not assign International Target?
If your aim is to target the users Worldwide then assigning a particular country in Search Console is not a good idea.
Although by assigning a country you will experience a boost in rankings from that country, but it will cost you much more. The bounce rate of your website will increase because it will be demoted for the rest of the world.
Let us understand this in details with an example.
As per the above example let us assume that a Website has 100,000 searches globally for a web page. And this leads to us assuming that the same web page will have around 10,000 searches in a particular country.
This means that by restricting the website to a particular country you are restricting its access and exposure to lesser queries.
While the CTR can be high in your selected country, because of a better ranking positions. But again the percentage of exposure in just one country is way less as opposed to the whole world (10,000<100,00).
Whereas if your target audience are global and you have not selected any location preference then Google will spread your search appearance and ranking in different countries. Therefore you get a high chance to get more leads and more traffic from all over the world.
Opt for “Unlisted” i.e. do not select any location in the search console if your target is to rank better globally.
You must not play hit and trial with setting international targeting. It can harm your website’s SEO rankings drastically. And it has been noticed that it takes several months or more time for the previous rankings to show up.
Therefore set up a geographic location only and only if your website targets a particular language/region/country.
Should technical bloggers assign a Geographic Target?
No, it is not recommended.
This is due to the reason that knowledge sharing is not restricted to a particular country. For example; if someone writes about WordPress Website Designing, then the content in it will hold true for USA, UK, India and other countries too.
Summary of Setting International Targeting
As it is clear from the above facts a website owner should only select a particular country if the content in that website really caters to one specific country only.
But if a website caters globally then its best advised to not assign any country in the search console.
If you have any doubt regarding setting up International targeting then you can reach our SEO Agency in India to assist setting it up for you.
You May also be interested to read:
Why do you need a professional SEO Agency to manage your business website SEO
What is a Sitemap and is it Important for SEO?
How to use images on your business website for competitive edge
Mobile SEO mistakes small businesses should avoid in 2019
Global Electronics and Telecom Systems Dominates 17 Keywords in 3 Months
Mobile SEO mistakes small businesses should avoid in 2019
Mobile phone users have grown drastically in past few years. Easy access of internet on small screens makes it comfortable for more and more people using mobile phones.
On an average around 5 hours are spent by a normal person on a smart phone every day. This usage includes searching for services, online shopping, blogs reading, social network games etc.
Have you ever noticed, how many people arrive on your website from smart phones?
You can easily get this data from Google Analytics.
Why is that your website doesn’t appears on mobile phone internet search results on Google. Even if it does then why are you not getting sales or subscribers. Why do people leave your website within first few seconds of arrival making your website bounce rate high.
Not familiar with bounce rate? Read all about bounce rate.
It is all about following the best practices of mobile SEO. SEO is not just a process which starts afer the website is developed and live. SEO starts right from planning your website.
SEO exists while you design your website. If you haven’t realized it then you have made huge mistake and lost all the mobile traffic to your competitors who rank on first page of Google in mobile searches.
But it is never too late. You can still prepare your website for 2019 if you start right away. You can avoid mobile SEO mistakes for 2019 as mobile phone traffic is still growing fast and will continue growing.
Here is Mobile phone internet user penetration worldwide from 2014 to 2019
Here is the data of global mobile phone data traffice from 2016-2021
The compound annual growth rate is expected to be 47%.
This article talks about how to make the most of this super growth of mobile traffic.
How to avoid mobile SEO mistakes in 2019
Below are the mobile SEO mistakes and measures to avoid them.
1) You website pages are not responsive in design
The the researches show that people prefer mobile phones over desktop these days for internet surfing and the number is growing each day.
If you want this increase in traffic to reach your website on smart phones then you need to have a responsive website.
Responsive website design makes your website compatible with devices of all the screen sizes. Read more about responsive website design here.
If you cannot impress your mobile visitors with a robust design then they tend to leave your website within 3 to 4 seconds.
You need a website which changes its design depending on the device it is viewed on. The website sections should be as prominent and text should be as readable as it is on the desktops.
People used to maintain a different mobile website for mobile phones but we recommend to make only one website which has responsive web design. It is easy to maintain and more search engine friendly as it has just one URL for all devices.
Below is an example of responsive website which we have created for one of our clients.
You see how the navigation menu and buttons rearrange on different screen sizes.
2) Your website pages have very slow page speed
Website page speed is an important ranking factor both for mobile and desktops.
Users never spend time on a website which loads slow and takes more than 3 to 5 seconds to load. Google never ranks the website which people don’t love and don’t spend time on it.
If you want your website to rank on mobile searches then you have to fix page speed optimization.
You can use the page speed test tool from Google.
You can take care of few thinks to improve your website speed:
Optimize images: You can use free tools available online to optimize images on your website. There are many available like tinypng
Enable cache: Enable caching on your website improves the website speed drastically. Caching serves content to your website visitors faster and reduce the load time.
Minfiy HTML, CSS, Javascript: Minifcation of HTML, CSS and Javascript also helps in increasing your website speed. It deletes the blank spaces in these files and makes them work faster.
Keep all CSS, Javascript in footer This is the best practice and should be kept in mind fromthe begining.
Enable AMP: AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP enables create website pages for mobile users and load them at lightning fast speed for mobile visitors. Learn more about AMP in our Google AMP Guide.
There are many other things which can be done to improve your website speed. Contact us to get more details on how to improve your website speed.
3) You have blocked files in your website.
Most people tend to block CSS and javascript files for Google bots. These doesn’t renders the page completely to Google and they cannot see the good design your website has.
Google doesn’t ranks the websites which they can’t access completely. Website pages are not indexed by Google if they have blocked resources. Proper indexing of the website pages is extremely critical for a website to rank in mobile searches.
Make sure your robots.txt file doesn’t has code which blocks these files. If you are not familiar with indexing and blocked resources then take the help of a digital marketing company to take care of this for you.
Good online marketing companies understand the importance of indexing the site in Google have technical experience in dealing with robots.txt, XML sitemap, site URLs and structure.
You must avoid doing it yourself if you are not sure of what you are doing as it may backfire on your mobile SEO.
4) You don’t have rich snippets in your website
Rich snippets is not the traditional SEO technique and is often ignored while doing the SEO. Rich snippets extract important information from your website pages and display them on the search result pages in your search appearnace along with meta content.
Here is an example of how Rich snippets look like.
It is a good way to display extra relevant information in search results to gain your visitors trust. By extra information I mean things like star ratings, images etc.
Rich snippets are a good way to catch users attention even if you are not on top of the search results.
5) Multimedia on your website
Multimedia content like videos on your website should be served smoothly to your website visitors on your website on mobile.
It is a good way to engage your website visitors by using videos etc on your website. If not used properly the heavy video files may make your website super slow.
A good way to do this is upload your videos on video platforms like Vimeo and YouTube and then embed them on your website.
Another issue is with the trend of using background videos on web pages. You should be extremely careful as some mobile platforms doesn’t display background videos on websites.
You should use a fallback background image in such cases for a better user experience.
Conclusion on mobile SEO mistakes to avoid in 2019.
I am sure you now know the importance of mobile SEO and how to avoid mistakes and increase traffic on your website. This is the right time to work on the mobile SEO mistakes if you want to perform it better in 2019.
These things require time effort and patience so if you start today then you will have a perfect website by beginning of 2019 and impress your website visitors in the new year.
If you are not sure about these things. Contact us now for a free mobile SEO consultation.
Importance Of Colors in Website Conversions: How to use them.
Ever since the concept of marketing came into existence, colors are used to persuade customers for purchasing. Deep down in the subconscious mind every body has its association with colors.
Lets talk about retail for example:
You may think that the various colors you see in the stores in shopping malls starting from doors to labels and shopping bags, are the color of the brand but you are not aware that those colors may be placed to persuade your psychology and drive you to make purchases in those shopping stores.
Every color is associated with some cultural or social thought and that makes the connection between your mind and the products.
When we talk about websites most of the website designing companies ask you for the colors you like or what are your favorite colors and they make websites as per the colors you like. But this is the most stupid thing a web design company can do to your money.
Below are some examples of color psychology and how they affect shopping habits.
White: The color white is associated with purity so you find almost every skin care product company has major portion of white in their product branding. So why not have white color on the website for skin care products.
Pink: You must have noticed that majority of bubble gums are pink in color. This is because color pink is associated with sweetness, calmness, cool and comfort, so why not use pink on ecommerce websites selling cool stuff
Orange: Orange color is associated with energy, brightness, warmth, freshness and affordability. So you will find orange on the brands which sell products or services at affordability. If you are targeting mass audience through ppc advertising of your website then orange is the best choice.
Red: This one is the most tricky color as it relates with alarm or danger but many shops and websites and used it very smartly to increase conversions on websites. If you want to use red on your website then it is better to hire a website designer who knows what he is doing.
Yellow: Mostly found in the branding of restaurants as it relates with energy and of course what is bigger than sun when it comes to energy. So have it on your list if you are looking to start an online food delivery website.
Purple: Resembles royalty so you will find this color on brands which target rich customers and sell products with some advanced properties or features at a handsome price. So think before using it if your website targets mid size customers
Green: Everyone knows that green color is associated with eco-friendly products but even the brands which have nothing to do with such products use green in their branding to attract customers who have a soft corner for ecosystem. So green is the safest color to use on your website.
Above are just examples but the association of colors to the buying psychology has no limits. You should do a proper research and study before you give instructions to your web designer about the colors you want to use on your website.
Here are some tips on how to use colors to increase sales on your website.
1. Use the right color at the right time
A website is a mix of colors and not just a single one so don’t just follow the color psychology examples blindly which I have mentioned above. It is important to use the right colors at right places on your website to make it a conversion machine.
So lets say you are selling electronics system as one of our clients who partnered with us for Web Design and SEO services in Delhi NCR has orange, blue and white on his website.
These colors have been used smartly on his website without overdoing it. As mentioned above that orange relates with affordability the website we have designed for him has orange buttons which persuades users to click in order to own the electronic products at an affordable prices.
Blue resembles intelligence and trust so you find the website landing page is a mix of blue and orange but the web design doesn’t makes it obvious for customers about the colors used to target them.
This website ranks for 17 keyword on the first page of Google. This has nothing to do with the colors. Colors come into play once a customer lands on your website with all the SEO efforts put in.
Now what if you are selling hair wraps as another client of ICO WebTech does. Go Curl hair wrap collection became our partner for ecommerce website development and SEO services
Hair wrap is a product which comes in every possible mix of colors for every type of color conscious customer so we have used pink at right places as it associates with comfort and calmness and a cool effect.
Our dedicated web designers have also used the color psychology in the background of the product images. You will find blue, green, grey and a lot many colors in the backgrounds of different products images.
2. Be careful and don’t turn your website into a rainbow
This is the craziest thing to do. We are humans and we tend to make mistakes by creepy color choices decisions. Website making companies in a race to impress you will show you colorful websites which may look tempting but facts show that the most successful websites keep the use of colors to a minimum.
Your website should use a maximum of 2 – 3 colors. Take the example of Facebook, Twitter, Bore Panda etc.
Its a different thing if you are selling products like hair wraps, but those are different products. Here we are talking about the theme of your website.
3. Colors of call to actions should be bright and catchy.
It is always recommended to use bright colors for your call to actions, because that’s where persuasion comes into play. People tend to click if they feel associated with the color of the call to action.
Orange, pink, Blue green are the favorite choices when it comes to color choices and call to actions are the most important factors on which the conversions through your website depend.
Research shows that the bright colors have high conversion rates as compared to the dark colors when used on call to actions.
Also color choices for call to actions should be made in accordance with the target audience. For example: pink, magenta, cyan, all these are women centric colors used to persuade women to make purchase online. On the other hand blue, orange, black and green are for men.
Conclusion
- Research and test a number of colors and then zero down on best combination of two or three of them. Keep in mind your target audience and their color psychology.
- Don’t just blindly trust your web design company or the dedicated web designer you may have hired. Colors play a critical role in your website conversions so take the help of digital marketing experts.
- Avoid too much of colors as you may leave your customers in a state of confusion. Keep your website colors to just 2 or 3.
Hope this information was helpful. If you like it then share it so that others can read it too.
Have questions then leave a comment or contact us for free consultation.
Don’t get conned by these Unethical SEO Practices
Stay distant from these Unethical SEO practices if you do not want to be penalized by Google
In our previous articles we have explained goals and mistakes to avoid when you are planning to hire a SEO firm.
Now when you have finalized a SEO firm, what next? Next comes the practices the SEO firm follows and will implement to your business. But the big question here is: