How to build a successful Customer Experience strategy

Customer Experience (CX) is one of the main aspects to take into account for the success of any company. A successful CX strategy is based on customer satisfaction, understanding company objectives, designing a unique user experience, and data-driven decision making.

To build a successful CX strategy, you must start with a clear understanding of the company’s objectives and customer desires. Analyzing company data to identify patterns, understand customer habits, and understand their tastes and preferences will help you satisfy them. This information will help identify trends in the industry and develop a better CX strategy.

It is important to take into account the needs and expectations of customers, as well as those of the company. This means that a personalized experience must be designed for each user, requiring investment in touchpoint technologies and communication channels to improve the user experience.

Using tools like predictive analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence can help you better understand customers and improve their experience. Finally, A/B testing should be performed to validate the changes implemented and improve the user experience.

5 Keys To Improve The Customer Experience

Customer Experience (CX) is the perception that customers have of a business. This perception is based on their interaction with the brand, from the first time they find out about its existence, until the purchase of its products or services. This experience is a key factor for customer loyalty. We all know that a good experience can lead to customers becoming brand loyal.

There are several keys to improving the Customer Experience strategy, but here we are going to mention five essential ones:

• Customer service:  offering quality and personalized customer service is one of the keys to improving the Customer Experience . This includes answering questions, offering solutions to problems, etc.
• Quality Products:  Products and services must be of good quality to meet customer needs. This also includes delivering them on time and ensuring they function.
• Involve Customers:  It is important to involve customers in decision-making, for example through surveys and feedback. This will give the business a better insight into the needs and preferences of its customers.

Response time:  How quickly you respond to customers is a key factor in improving the user experience.

Conclusions

In conclusion, building a successful Customer Experience strategy is a complicated task, but it is possible with understanding the company’s objectives, designing a unique user experience, and making data-driven decisions. The 5 essential keys to improving Customer Experience are: offering quality and personalized customer service, quality products, involving customers, response time and improving the user experience. Do you want to know how to achieve these objectives with a social Wi-Fi adapted to you and the needs of your business? Contact us now and let us give you a hand.

The post Characteristics Of A Customer Experience Strategy appeared first on Trends Tech Blog.

Identify Your Goals

Defining your goal is an important first step, particularly when it comes to establishing a website design for contractors. First and foremost, make a wish list of everything you need from your website. Create a list of questions to ask yourself, such as what kind of website you want to create, why you want to create the website, what outcomes you want from that website, and many more. Your website’s specialty, name, logo, title, and tagline will all be determined by the goals you set for it.

Understand Your User

Before you can start building your website, you must first determine who your target audience is. Who are your target audiences, and who makes up the bulk of your audience? Current and prospective families, as well as graduates and other members of the community, are typical members of an institution’s audience. What type of stuff do they need or desire? Keep your school’s specific objectives, as well as any strategic planning documents and other goals, in mind while you create your website and its divisions.

Ensure Simple Navigation

People are likely to get dissatisfied with cluttered navigation. Keep navigation title lengths short, but avoid acronyms if feasible. Keep your key navigation categories to no more than seven. An overabundance of options might be annoying.

Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

Mobile-responsive websites perform well. One-third of Americans solely shop online on their phones. People spend over five hours every day on their cell phones. Customers must be pleased with your mobile website.

If your website is difficult to read or navigate on a mobile device, prospective consumers may abandon it in favor of a competitor. A bad mobile user experience may also harm your website’s search engine rankings, making it more difficult for clients to find you on Google.

Add Your Contact Information At The Top

If your company relies on customers being able to contact you or your sales staff, make sure that information is readily accessible.

“Your contact information should be accessible, ideally at the top of the site. Visitors should not have to seek out a phone number or address if they want to contact the company.

If you use social media to communicate with consumers, provide links to your social media accounts in the website’s header or footer, where they may be readily accessed.

Choose A Color With Care

The use of psychology in the process of selecting colors is crucial.

Our human brains are hardwired to associate different colors with different attributes almost from the minute we are born. The color red, for example, is connected with fury, but the color green is associated with financial prosperity.

It is critical to use color schemes that are consistent with the company’s culture while creating an easy-to-navigate website.

Consider Psychology

Remember to keep key psychological principles in mind while you work on making your website user-friendly. The majority of people are used to certain features of a website when it comes to viewing the page.

For instance, the information on the terms of service and the privacy policies is often located at the bottom, whereas the navigation is typically located at the very top.

If you are unclear about where to start, one option is to examine the core site design of some of your favorite websites or even some of your competitor’s websites to see how they have implemented it.

Use Information Chunking

No one has the time or inclination to read long paragraphs or walls of text. Instead, use information chunking to visually divide chunks of content on your page. This may be accomplished by employing various colors or text sizes.

For example, we have separated this information into several unique subheadings to make it easier to read and easier on the eyes.

Employ Simple Language and Tone

Another piece of advice is to talk clearly and in a tone that is acceptable to the audience.

What does this imply exactly? If the majority of your customers speak a language other than English, it is a good idea to have a version of your website written in that language.

Moreover, it is critical to ensure that particular mindsets and cultural undertones are represented in the language you employ.

Also Read:  Microsoft SQL Server Update To Advance Digitization

The post Your Essential Resource For Creating A Superb Website Design appeared first on Trends Tech Blog.

Why SMS Marketing Matters

SMS marketing is an integral part of any marketing strategy because it is one of the easiest and most effective ways to reach consumers. It does not require an internet connection, like social media, or a customer login to view it, like email. More and more businesses are using SMS messaging to communicate with their customers, for example, when sending a notification about household waste collection, which has increased exponentially in recent years. They realize they can leverage that first contact to increase that customer’s potential sales through targeted text advertising.

SMS Marketing Forecast Statistics

If you’re still not convinced that texting is more effective than email marketing or social media, here are some statistics that will change your mind:

The average open rate for SMS marketing is 98% – For comparison, email has an average of 21.33%, making SMS one of the most powerful marketing tools. Text message response rates are up to 295% higher than phone call responses – People are more likely to ignore a call than a text message. 50% of customers make a direct purchase after receiving an SMS containing a coupon or discount code – You can increase your sales simply by sending a targeted SMS to the customer. 75% of customers don’t mind receiving text messages from businesses if they consent. ​​

Give people what they want! If a customer has chosen to receive SMS, they want to know what you offer them. 83% of millennials say they open text messages within 90 seconds of receiving them – Your message will be viewed within two minutes of being sent. In addition, 77% of consumers say they are likely to positively perceive a company offering SMS messaging as a communication option. People prefer texting, so using an SMS marketing platform will only increase the number of customers.

Trends to Watch for SMS Marketing

New technologies and changing consumer behavior are paving the way for the future of SMS messaging. As a result, it is expected that more brands will embrace SMS marketing and leverage it to form more personalized relationships with their audience.

RCS Messaging

RCS messaging, also known as Rich Communication Services, is a modernized version of SMS messaging that incorporates features from texting apps like iMessage and WhatsApp into classic texting. These features include acknowledgments, keystroke notifications, images, videos, live notifications, GIFs, and many more that make it easy to showcase your messages. RCS is necessary for marketing via SMS because it allows businesses to interact with their customers one-on-one and send them rich media so they can make an informed purchasing decision.

Conversational Marketing

Brands should ditch the outdated formal and commercial style of messaging. Instead, they should take a more conversational approach and use texting to establish two-way communication with their customers. Below are a few scenarios that would benefit from more conversational SMS marketing.

Welcome Texts – Sending a heartfelt thank you message to a customer for making a purchase or creating an account on the brand’s website is a great way to start a conversation with a new customer and keep them coming back.

Abandoned Carts – This phenomenon occurs when online shoppers have items in their cart but never purchase them. Contacting the customer to remind them quickly brings them back to your site to complete their purchase. But, of course, offering a little discount doesn’t hurt either!

Event Invitations – If your business is hosting an event, you can send a personalized text to your customers with an invitation detailing why they could benefit from your event. Product Launch – Spread the word about a new product launch that your customers would like to have based on their previous purchases.

One-To-One Marketing

Currently, generic language and flat tone make many marketing text messages look like scams. This dissuades consumers from agreeing to receive text messages from companies. In the future, SMS marketing should be more precise about opt-in options and strive to personalize texts to customers and their unique circumstances.

Future Of SMS Marketing

The future of SMS marketing is preparing to be more personalized for the consumer, to offer more engagement between the brand and its consumers, and to be a more transparent interaction in your daily life. It provides a more one-on-one conversation that focuses less on sales and more on building a relationship with the customer to create loyalty, ultimately increasing sales in the long run. Sites like sms-gratuitlook to the future of SMS marketing and offer solutions for over 25 marketing needs, from loyalty marketing to event management to lead generation.

Also Read: Top Ways to Transfer WhatsApp from iPhone to Android

The post What Is The Future Of SMS Marketing appeared first on Trends Tech Blog.

Easily manage employee payroll managing employee payroll is a reasonably tedious task for companies. But, having payroll software will make it easier for you to complete this step. Indeed, with the payroll software, you can easily create a dematerialized payslip for each employee. To do this, you must fill in the software with information such as gross salary, overtime, paid holidays, etc. The software will digitize all this and create complete pay slips adapted to each employee.

With this option, you limit errors on the sheets and employee complaints. By using payroll software, you also can optimize the distribution of bulletins to employees. Generally, this software is associated with digital safes where you can store payslips and send them in digital form to each employee’s mailbox. Thus, each employee can receive their payslip more quickly without waiting or going to the accountant.

Easily access data as a business, using payroll software helps you directly access your financial data. There may be times when you need to look at the payslip of one of the employees. Generally, it is necessary to search many files before finding such a document. But payroll software spares you that trouble. This software lets you see your digital copies through its storage or digital safe. You can access it and consult the data you want from anywhere.

Save company resources with payroll software, a company can easily save its financial resources. For example, without this software, the accountant calculates, edits, and establishes the sheets. In this case, the company may have to recruit another person to support the accountant in his work to go faster. But, when you have payroll software, one person can handle all the work. This then allows you not to be forced to hire and recruit another person.

With payroll software, you also save a lot of time in payroll work and management since the system automates and simplifies the process. Finally, when you opt for payroll software, you limit printing costs since you no longer use too much paper. By using less form, your company actively participates in safeguarding the environment. Through this point, the company can quickly improve its brand image because many will interpret its action as an eco-responsible, symbolic and exemplary gesture.

Also Read: How to Get Deleted Photo Back With or Without Software- Solved!

The post Benefits Of Using Payroll Software For Your Business appeared first on Trends Tech Blog.

How to integrate Google ads into your marketing strategy to make a Google advertisement, also called “Google Ads,” you can contact a web marketing agency to accompany you. This is because the operation can turn out to be complicated. Indeed, to integrate a Google advertisement into the marketing strategy of your business, you must:

Think about the objectives of your strategy first, and the advertisements must be in line with your marketing and communication strategy. Having a clear idea of ​​the main lines of the objectives you are pursuing will make managing the various campaigns easier. When you focus on your main objective, you will be able to:

• Develop sales on your e-commerce site;
• Acquire a large base of qualified prospects for the establishment of a sales team;
• Develop notoriety around your business.

Set a substantial budget for advertisements Once you know your strategic goals and can choose an ad type, you need to set a budget. Next, you will need to assess the volume you want to reach for the advertisements. This can be, for example, the number of leads you can provide to your sales reps monthly or the number of possible impressions.

As soon as you have these answers, it would help if you also determined the profits you can generate. After these steps, you can now check Google’sGoogle’s Keyword Suggestion Tool to find out the prices related to what you are looking for. Correlate all this information and establish the budget you will need.

Give a reliable orientation to its advertisements. By reaching this stage, you are sure to have all the essential elements to insert Google advertisements into your marketing plan. Google gives you different alternatives to direct an advertisement. Apart from ads, you can also promote videos and products on platforms like YouTube and Google Shopping.

Make a forecast of the selection of a service provider. You can certainly try it if you have the necessary rudiments, but with a specialist, you are guaranteed to reach the goal faster. You must choose a qualified service provider to manage your Google advertisements and optimize your Adwords campaigns effectively. Integrating Google advertising into its marketing strategy will help you better position yourself in the market. For a better service provider, feel free to consult the Google certifications because these are guarantees of quality.

Also Read: Mobile Marketing Advantages For Companies

The post How To Integrate Google Advertising Into Your Marketing Strategy appeared first on Trends Tech Blog.

Why is it essential to develop a digital marketing strategy today you may have noticed it, but very few people not take their smartphones out of their pockets at least once in the evening. Because the tool has become almost consubstantial in our lives, we need actions as simple as they are frequent. Order a meal delivered in a few minutes, book a hotel on the other side of the world, and find out what the weather will be like in the next few hours; the least of our needs now goes through the smartphone.

For companies, this, therefore, means that it is essential to be visible on the networks. And this necessarily involves developing an effective digital marketing strategy. To do this, it will be necessary, in particular, to create an effective website, showcase, or merchant according to your needs. It will also be required to ensure its referencing or the quality of the customer experience it generates. But the importance of digital monitoring should not be overlooked either—a site specializing in digital intelligence, such as an essential ally in achieving your objectives.

The importance of digital monitoring is a process that consists of staying informed of developments on the web to remain competitive concerning its competitors. To succeed in digital monitoring, you have to be able to devote time and resources to it, but also to master certain specific tools. It is, therefore, a profession in its own right, which experts should entrust to it to derive the maximum benefit.

The importance of digital monitoring lies in the very nature of the Internet, which is a universe in perpetual motion. If you have reached a certain level of service and quality but no longer make an effort to optimize, you will inevitably be overtaken by one of your competitors. In addition, digital monitoring makes it possible to know what your customers think and anticipate future changes. It is, therefore, a powerful adaptation tool!

What tools to carry out a digital watch adapted to your needs the importance of digital monitoring is such that it is essential to have it carried out by experts. However, nothing prevents you from doing your daily research to stay informed, at least superficially. For this, it is strongly advised to use search engines, in particular Google and Bing, to know what your competitors offer and to visit their sites regularly to observe the improvements made.

In addition, it is strongly recommended to follow them on social networks. It is indeed through this channel that the majority of information passes today. Also, consider using them to recruit, primarily through the essential LinkedIn. Finally, also know how to master little monitoring tools like Google Alerts. It is not a question of “mastering” the future computer but of using the essential tools.

Also Read: Solutions For The Retail Sector Digitize Your Warehouse Management

The post Importance Of Digital Monitoring In A Digital Marketing Strategy appeared first on Trends Tech Blog.

Legal Obligations In Stock Management

The first reason, perhaps not the most important, but the one that prevents us from giving up, is that it is mandatory. Every entrepreneur must keep an orderly accounting appropriate to the activity of his company that allows a chronological follow-up of all his operations, as well as the periodic preparation of balance sheets and inventories.

He will necessarily keep a book of Inventories and Annual Accounts and another Journal without prejudice to what is established in the laws or special provisions. In this way, all organizations (SMEs, Micro-SMEs, and the self-employed included) must carry out a physical inventory by the end of the year to present said book.

Accurate Stock Control Key For Companies In The Retail Sector

Over time, it is common for part of the assets to go astray, and where your internal control says you should have 100 units, you only have 90. This is usually mainly due to the following:

• Goods receipts in the warehouse with incorrect information or pending registration. It is not strange that some delivery notes do not coincide with the received material, and this is where an error begins that, if not detected at the time, remains present from minute zero.
• Confuse some items with others. This can occur both in the inputs and outputs of material. If the person in charge makes a mistake, either due to ignorance or due to an error in the pace of work, it can cause a double failure in your stock and can cause a headache even though the product is still in the warehouse; even more so if there is a difference in price between the item we think we have and the one we have.
• Administrative errors in recording amounts. Not only can an error occur in the type of product, but also when reporting the quantities, an error can occur, even though everything above is correct, and where I wanted to put a 5, I put a 6.
• Products that leave the warehouses without registering with the corresponding document. This may be due to employee fraud (or “gifts”) or a clerical error.
• Theft or robbery. It doesn’t sound good, but businesses often suffer from these problems more than we think or would like. External people can cause this, but it is usually caused by internal staff.
• Throw away products no longer valid for the company’s activity without giving the corresponding cancellation (expired, with defects, etc.).

What Costs Do We Avoid With The Digitization Of Warehouse Management

This is possibly the most important reason for carrying out this inventory. And is that not having accurate control of the stock of the different materials that you have in your warehouse will generally translate into costs:

• Image costs: when we tell a client that we can supply an item within a given period and that ultimately this is not the case as it is not available, this will inevitably cause a problem of trust in the relationship with that client, even though later it may be more or less sympathetic.
• Costs in time: When discovering where the error has led you to give that incorrect information, different people will have to waste their time. And they will also lose it by having to perform a job a second time to correct it.
• Economic costs: having to acquire the materials you lack may include the aggravating circumstance that the price of that product is higher than what you had valued. This last point is even more sensitive now that the problem of supply and rising energy prices have been a recurring theme in recent months.

Sage 200 Advanced. A Perfect Management System For The Retail Sector

This is the key point that we at Integra like to make available to you. Technology allows us not only to have a computerized record of stock but also to give us the possibility, with an integrated system such as SAGE 200 Advanced, of having all the information connected to all the info: purchases, all warehouse movements, manufacturing, sales, and accounting.

In addition, for those who want to go a step further, this ERP has an integrated solution for advanced warehouse management or SGA. In addition to responding to all the problems I have mentioned, it optimizes resources and simplifies logistics processes. This software will offer these customers:

• Information in real-time and constantly updated.
• Space optimization. In busy warehouses, the WMS suggests possible locations for the products received.
• Improves operator productivity by using mobile devices that speed up processes and allow the optimal route to be calculated in the preparation of orders. This translates into an increase in the company’s competitiveness.
• Full traceability. By giving you control of batches, expiration dates, and incidents in the transfer of locations.
• Reduction of costs caused by errors. Eliminating the use of paper and having automation in operations will reduce manual errors.

Conclusions

Implementing a management system can mean your business’s qualitative and quantitative improvement. The digitization of products and processes is necessary to remain competitive in an increasingly volatile market. We must use technology to make our day-to-day work much easier and more efficient with solutions focused on the retail sector.

Also Read: Marketing Automation Tools To Generate Automatic Leads

The post Solutions For The Retail Sector Digitize Your Warehouse Management appeared first on Trends Tech Blog.

An Overview Of SEO

Acronym emanating from the English language, SEO is the set of actions and strategies that can prioritize the positioning of a website in the natural or organic results of search tools. Specific prerequisites are necessary for efficient SEO mastery, and they are summed up in a trilogy.

First, know the ranking method of the engine’s algorithm. Second, a list of keywords will be a compass for the site’s positioning. Third, carry out actions that converge with the mode of operation as well as the progress of the algorithm. Many agencies are now specialized in SEO.

SEO levers

Search engine optimization does not work in a vacuum as one might imagine. In executing the missions entrusted to it, it benefits from the helping hand of a certain number of levers. They are essentially 3 in number:

• The contents
• Netlinking
• And technical optimization

Google’s search engine gives credit to well-structured content with relevant answers, and the insertion of links testifies to the website’s notoriety. As for technical optimization, it strives to identify and correct the site’s failures and decentralizes its visibility.

Brief On SEA

Search Engine Advertising is an SEO tool that focuses on creating and optimizing advertisements for a fee. Which promotions are found on search engine result pages? By way of illustration, it is possible to carry out a campaign on Google Search Ads to grant a place of choice to a website on sensitive queries.

This type of Google operation is similar to the auction, where the property is sold to the highest bidder. For successful SEA campaigns, relying on a list of keywords defined upstream is imperative. This is where SEA joins SEO. Their competitive nature conditions the cost of keywords. The purpose of these words comes down to the conversion generated.

The Difference Between SEO And SEA

Although SEO tools agree on visibility and traffic generation from search engines, SEO and SEA still stand out. SEO offers its services complimentary, which is quite the opposite of the SEA, which works under underpaid conditions. The SEA has the monopoly of directing users towards a specific target taking into account their geographical location or center of interest. The effort’s determination and constancy in content creation are the exclusive responsibility of SEO. It is the same for strengthening the confidence of Internet users and the notoriety of a trademark.

Also Read: Tips For Smooth System Management

The post What Is The Difference Between SEO And SEA appeared first on Trends Tech Blog.

Various software packages intended to assist business leaders in their tasks are now available. Complete management software is undoubtedly the most provided, and the latter has several features to manage different modules at once.

Thus, this software allows, among other things, the management of accounting, tasks, and also orders or stocks. Therefore, each sector of activity has the management tools that correspond to them. These are carried out to optimize the organization of the business chains within the company and its commercial relations.

Human Resource Management Software

This type of tool is essential from the first stages of recruitment. Thus, having human resources management software facilitates the organization of personnel, and it is then easier to manage your employees’ schedules, attendance, absences, and replacements.

The human resources software is also a means of accessing all the information concerning your employees with a single click. This helps you make important decisions about the evolution of your business. It becomes easier to recognize the most qualified personnel for a given job.

A Billing And Accounting Tool

For a better organization of your company, a tool intended only for accounting and invoicing is essential. You have access to track payments and purchases, but you also can better manage your finances.

The invoicing software is also practical for issuing professional invoices. You also have access to different financial reports, such as the balance sheet or the income statement. Knowing these elements is essential for the excellent management of your company.

Customer Relationship Management Software

Like with your staff, the relationship with your customers requires special attention, especially if you have a large company. Also called a CRM or Customer Relationship Management tool, this tool encompasses various elements relating to customers.

THEREFORE, the CRM tool is a platform that allows you to know your customers better to retain them better. This leads to a better commercial relationship between your prospects or consumers and your company. Customer management software also gives you a better way to organize your contacts efficiently.

The use of different management software is an effective way to save time and optimize the assets of a company. On the one hand, these tools come in handy for lightening workloads, and on the other hand, they are also used to perform complex tasks. In addition, new technologies increasingly make it possible to produce more efficient software with more features than previous versions.

Also Read: 5 reasons to keep your personal and business finances separate

The post Essential Tools For The Development Of Your Business appeared first on Trends Tech Blog.

Technically, SEO alone won’t drastically increase the position of a site on search engines if the content isn’t of good quality and if on-page optimization isn’t done. However, if a technical issue prevents search engines from indexing your site, it won’t appear in the results regardless of the quality of the content and other SEO activities you have undertaken.

By reading below, learn:

• how to start making it simpler for Google to find your website and start displaying it in search results as soon as possible,
• what’s the Google Search Console and what are some of the most important features that this platform provides you,
• how to speed up your site and avoid someone leaving the site just because the page takes too long to load.

The whole guide is written from the point of view of someone who doesn’t know how to program, so you don’t need any programming (or any other) experience to follow this text and technical optimization of the site. This is especially true if the site you’re optimizing is made in WordPress.

If the site you want to optimize isn’t made in WordPress, we assume that you’re definitely cooperating with the developer who created the site, and in the text, we’ll list the exact parts in which you need developer help.

What Activities Does Technical SEO Cover?

Many factors affect technical SEO, and we’ll arrange them as follows for the purposes of this article:

• Aspects that influence site indexing
• Content that’s duplicated
• So-called noindex tag
• Robots.txt file
• Canonical tag
• Load speed optimization
• Site structure
• Responsive web design
• SSL certificate

Some of these terms may be unfamiliar to you but don’t worry, they aren’t overly complicated. Let’s first look at the most important factors that determine whether your site’s pages will appear on search results at all or not.

Indexing

Indexing basically means that search engines were able to find your site when they searched the Internet and easily added it to their site database. Based on whether the site is properly indexed or not and what the search engines found on the site, they later rank it for relevant terms.

In order for a site to appear on search engine results, it’s necessary for search engines to find that site through crawlers (small bots that go on the Internet and find sites). Most of the time, this will happen on its own after a while, but there are a few things to consider to do to make their job easier and faster.

You also need to make sure that there’s nothing to prevent your site from being indexed. The Google Search Console platform allows you to verify most of these items and more.

Google Search Console

It’s a free tool that allows you to understand a lot concerning your website and the people who visit it. You can use this platform to learn things like the number of visitors who visit a website through search engines as well as the terms people employ when searching, the number of organic hits, etc.

With the Google Search Console, you can also check that your site’s pages are properly indexed, check that your site is optimized for mobile devices, and see any potential errors. This is the part that would interest us most for the needs of this guide.

Before you can use all of these options, you must first add the site to the Google Search Console. Worth noting:  it’s better to do this as soon as the site is launched given that the Google Search Console commences gathering data from the moment you add your site to the platform and can’t display any data from an earlier period.

The process of adding a site to the platform is very simple.

• First step: Log in to your Google Account – use one where Google Analytics is implemented (we’ll explain why below)

• Second step: Visit the “About” section and click on “Start now” inside the Google Search Console page.

Third Step: Next page will show two options for integrating the site with the platform If you have several subdomains and demand DNS validation, the first option is preferable. In the vast majority of circumstances, a different choice with a far simpler verification process would suffice. Write down your domain and press “Continue”.

It’s time for verification. The easiest method we recommend in all cases is Google Analytics verification. If you’re logged in to a Google Account where Google Analytics is already set up, simply select this option and then click “Verify”. After a short check, you’ll be taken to the Google Search Console platform where you’ll be capable to see a great deal of information about your page, and indexing will be faster. If you have just added a site, you won’t be shown any data, but it will become popular over time.

The next action is to submit a Google Search Console XML Sitemap. A sitemap is a file through which you provide information about pages, videos, and other content on your website and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google read this file in order to properly search and index the site. The indexing of your site might be expedited by submitting a Sitemap to Google Search Console. This is especially important for new sites, but it is also useful for sites that have been around for some time. To add a sitemap, you must first create one.

Creating an XML Sitemap in WordPress

In this regard, we emphasize the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin, which is very useful when it comes to optimizing WordPress sites. Although the option is a little hidden, this plugin also allows you to easily construct a sitemap.

The XML Sitemap can be found under General> Features> XML Sitemaps>. See the Yoast SEO plugin’s XML Sitemap section. You’ll be shown all the sitemaps that are likely to include content types such as posts, pages, projects, categories, etc. Depending on the structure of the site, in most cases, it’ll be enough to enter folders of posts and pages in the Google Search Console. Copy the URLs to these folders and paste them into the Sitemaps tab of Google Search Console.

Create an XML Sitemap if the Site Isn’t WordPress

If your site isn’t created in WordPress or another popular CMS (Content Management System) system, we assume you have a developer who created the site, so ask him/her to create an XML sitemap. If for some reason you still don’t have access to the developer, you can create a sitemap using the free Screaming Frog tool. Instructions for creating a sitemap using this tool can be found at https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/xml-sitemap-generator/. Once you get sitemap links from the developer or use the Screaming Frog tool, you can also enter them into the Google Search Console in the Sitemaps tab.

Manual URL Preview

Another thing you can do to potentially speed up the indexing of your site’s pages is to manually review the URL. You can do this in the URL Overview tab in the Google Search Console platform. At the top of the page, type the URL you wish to index, and you’ll obtain the most up-to-date information Google has on that address. There you can see if Google can regularly find and index the address or there are some issues as well as whether the site is optimized for mobile devices. Hit the button saying “Require indexing” if the link hasn’t been indexed yet, or if you’ve made modifications to the website that you want Google to index more rapidly.

We recommend that you request indexing each time you place a new page on your site in order for Google to find and rank the page earlier.

Identifying Indexing Problems

In the “Coverage” area of the Google Search Console platform, you can look for indexing faults or notifications on your webpage. You can also see how many of the site’s pages have been correctly indexed and how many have been omitted from the ranking.

Duplicated Content

Simply put, duplicated content is a situation where multiple pages on the Internet contain the same or very similar content. Duplicated content can be found within the same site (e.g. multiple pages with the same text) or on different sites (e.g. the same text is found on two different sites).

Google doesn’t penalize sites directly for duplicate content, but it can cause many other crawling issues. Duplicated content is always best eliminated and there should be original content on all pages of the site.

There is an option to keep duplicated content or maybe there won’t be a way to remove it from the website. For example, if your site has different addresses for mobile and desktop versions, addresses with and without www prefixes, etc. In this case, you can only remove those pages from the Google index, and duplicated content will then not negatively affect your SEO.

Removing Pages From the Google Index

You’re probably wondering why you’d like some pages of your site not to appear on Google results. Isn’t it true that having more pages rank is better for SEO? Not always. Some sites are simply not good for first contact with site visitors and should be excluded from search results. This doesn’t mean that they’ll be removed from the site (users will be able to access them without problems), but they won’t appear on Google.

Here are some examples of pages you might want to remove from the Google index:

• Categories and tags pages – if you have a blog and don’t want to display pages where all the texts by categories and tags are listed.
• Comment pages – if you have a lot of comments and they are organized into pages, you don’t want those pages to be ranked on the results.
• Carts, payment pages, thank you pages, and similar pages are always good to remove from search engines.
• Duplicated content pages – avoid duplicate content whenever you can, but if you already need to have duplicated content on some pages – remove it from the index.

One way to remove these pages from the index is to request it in the Removals section of the Google Search Console platform. This is a great solution if you only need to temporarily (up to 6 months) remove the address from the index.

For example, if you have pages about seasonal promotions so you don’t want them to appear until next season. Hit the “New request” button. Then, after entering the web address you wish to erase and clicking the “Next” button, Google will ask you if you want to temporarily remove the address from the index. Confirm and the request will be sent. If you still want to delete some pages from your browser permanently, the best option is the noindex tag.

Noindex Tag

A Noindex tag is a piece of HTML code that can be added to a page and signals to search engines not to index that page. Search engine crawlers can visit the site but don’t include it in the results. If the site you’re optimizing is made on the WordPress platform, you can add the noindex tag to the pages using the Yoast SEO plugin. While editing a page at the bottom you’ll have a Yoast SEO section and in the Advanced tab, you can choose not to index that page.

This is a great method for removing individual pages from the index, but what if you want to remove categories and tags? This can be done in the Yoast SEO plugin’s Taxonomies tab in the Search Appearance section. If your site isn’t built on the WordPress platform, we assume that you have a developer who can add a noindex tag to pages you don’t want to appear on search results. If for some reason you don’t have access to the developer, you can add a noindex tag inside the <head> part of the HTML code of the page and this tag looks like this: <metaname = “robots” content = “noindex”>.

In the URL Overview tab of the Google Search Console platform, you can check that the noindex tag is working properly. Enter the URL and click the “Test Active URL” button. If you get a message the URL isn’t available to Google, it means that the noindex tag is set correctly. However, if you get a message that the URL is on Google, it means that the noindex tag isn’t implemented properly.

Once you’ve placed a noindex tag on a page, it usually takes Google a few days to a few weeks to pull changes. There is also one more way to control what search engines read and index on your website – the robots.txt file.

Robots.txt File

It’s a text file that instructs search engines on how to crawl specific HTML files or sections of websites. A robots.txt file isn’t required by most websites because Google and other search engines can easily index all of the site’s important pages.

In cases where you want to remove a page from the index, the noindex tag can solve this easier than a robots.txt file. The robots.txt file, on the other hand, is quite handy if you wish to exclude certain files (PDFs, images, and so on) from the browser index. This is a rare case and would be beyond the scope of this text, but you can find all information at Developers at Google’s website if you want to learn more about it.

You’ll very certainly come upon a robots.txt file indirectly if you have a site built on the WordPress platform and for some reason noticed that your site doesn’t appear at all in search results. Once you have installed WordPress and started working on the site, there’s no point in indexing that site because it’s under construction. WordPress has a feature that automatically uses a robots.txt file to require search engines not to crawl and index pages, and that feature is automatically enabled. It’s therefore important that, once your site is ready for users, in the Settings> Read section of the WordPress CMS, remove the bar in front of the Discourage web browsers option from capturing this site. A few days after you make this change, your site will likely be in the search index.

We’ve seen a few ways to remove pages with duplicated content from the index. But what if for some reason you don’t want to remove those pages from the index, you don’t want to change the content, and you don’t want it to negatively affect your SEO? The solution is the canonical tag.

Canonical Tag

It’s also called “rel canonical” and notifies search engines which URL is the primary page for a specific piece of content. This address ranks in search results while search engines crawl much less often and don’t generally include other sites that have similar content in the results.

One of the greatest ways to avoid difficulties appearing on multiple pages of a site and caused by the same or similar information is to utilize the canonical tag. The easiest way to set up a canonical tag on a page is, again, the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. In the WordPress panel, go to the page you want to add a canonical tag. You can enter the address of a page with the same or comparable content in the Advanced tab, and you want only that page to be indexed for that content.

If your site isn’t built on WordPress, you can add a canonical tag using HTML by entering inside the <head> section of the page: <link rel = “canonical” href = “https://example.com/sample-page / “/>.

Site Speed Optimization

Google strives to give consumers high-quality, fast-loading information. Users want sites to load in seconds, and if they don’t, they go back to the search results to find a better, faster alternative. This reflects badly on the average time spent on the site and the bounce rate, and therefore on SEO. Therefore, page loading speed is among the most important factors of technical SEO.

Alright, it obviously makes sense to you because no one likes waiting for a website to load, but how do you speed up a website? Some of the things you should consider if you want your site to load quickly are:

• Web Hosting
• Caching
• Minification of the elements
• Image compression
• CDN

We’ll briefly look at each of these factors.

Web Hosting

All content on your site must be stored on a server. That server is essentially your web hosting. You can find many hosting providers and packages but now let’s take a look from the Technical SEO point of view. We need to see what is the location of the server and to see what is the category of hosting

The server’s location is crucial because the more distant the server is from the source of the request to load content, the longer it will take for the server to respond and the site to load. So, the best move would be to pick some servers that are close to your target audience. If most of your users are in the UK, then you should select some hosting provider that has servers there. Most of the time, you won’t be able to find servers in exactly the location you need (or they are over your budget), but there is also a solution for that – use a CDN. There are two main categories of hosting to choose from: shared and dedicated hosting.

• Shared hosting means a hosting package where the site shares the server with some other sites and in this case, you rent only part of the server. As a result, your site will load slightly slower, but you’ll pay significantly less for hosting.
• Dedicated hosting means renting an entire server that will only host your site (or sites). This means that the loading time will be much faster, but this type of hosting is also much more expensive.

For small and medium-sized businesses, in most cases, shared hosting will be enough, for which you can expect to set aside around 30-50 euros per year. We recommend Hostinger. If you have more than one site, you can go through the site cheaper if you take one of the hosting packages that allow more sites.

Even after doing all the other speed optimization methods, we’ll list here, dedicated hosting can halve the loading speed. However, with this benefit comes a price of at least 800 euros per year, so we recommend this only to larger companies for which this cost wouldn’t be a significant investment.

Caching

Cache memory is located between one or more web servers and users, and watches incoming requests and saves copies of responses – such as files, images, and HTML pages. When a user requests the same URL again, the cached copies are served to them instead of the content returned from the original web server.

Caching is utilized for two primary reasons:

• Load speed time – The page loads faster because the request is handled by the cache (which is closer to the client) rather than the source server.
• Reduce data traffic – Because content representations are re-displayed from the cache, this decreases the volume of data traffic. This is good because hosting providers usually limit how much data traffic can be used on a daily or monthly basis.

If your site isn’t made in WordPress, the developer who created the site probably implemented caching (ask just in case). If the site is made in WordPress, there are several plugins that allow you to easily implement caching:

• WP Rocket
• WP Super Cache
• W3 Total Cache
• WP Fastest Cache

Some of these plugins (WP Rocket, for example) allow for element minification in addition to caching.

Minification of the Elements

Another technique to accelerate your site is to use clean and compressed HTML, JavaScript code, and CSS. The very first task should be to get rid of any unnecessary code. This redundancy can result from features you no longer have on your website or from poor coding. It all comes down to that the more clean code there is, the faster the site will load.

As we have already mentioned, WordPress plugins like WP Rocket plugins allow you to do this without coding if your site is made through this platform. After cleaning the code, it’s recommended that you compress it with a program such as GZip.

It’s important to note that minifying elements using plugins can often cause problems loading elements on the site. Therefore, it’s recommended that after turning on the minification, make sure that everything on the site works properly. If an issue arises, simply disable the minification option in the plugin and your site will resume normal operation.

Image Compression

Large images slow down your site which is pretty bad for the user experience and therefore SEO. Image optimization is the process of reducing the space that images take up on the server, using a plugin or script, which speeds up page loading time. All images on the site should be compressed to a size of 1-2 megabytes or less.

High-resolution images are necessary when printing, but on the web, there’s no need to be so large because the additional quality on the screens isn’t noticeable. Lossy and lossless compression of images are the two primary kinds. It’s important to understand these terms because different tools offer different types of compression.

• Lossy – This type of compression can significantly reduce the image size, but there is also a risk that the images will significantly lose in quality. If you opt for lossy compression, it’s very important that you don’t overdo it.
• Lossless – This type of compression reduces the size to a lesser extent, but doesn’t cause image deterioration.

The image formats you should use for web use are PNG and JPEG. PNG files are usually of better quality and compression usually doesn’t affect the quality, but PNG files take up more space. PNG is, for instance, recommended as a format for images you put inside newsletters (previously created via the Benchmark platform containing responsive and mobile-friendly templates) because it’s more appropriate when more advanced transparency control and handling of logos and complex colored icons are required. JPEG files use both lossy and lossless compression and the quality can be adjusted for the optimal combination of quality and size.

Some of the programs you can use for compression are:

• Adobe Photoshop
• Tiny PNG
• JPEG Optimizer
• Optimizilla

CDN

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a collection of servers distributed across the globe, in parts that are geographically separated, for faster delivery of web content. CDN services store site content on servers around the world and, depending on where people accessing the site are located, send content from the nearest server.

As we’ve already mentioned in the section on hosting, this leads to faster loading of the site. If your consumers are located all over the world, a CDN is very beneficial. If this isn’t the case and most users are in a narrow geographical area, it’s enough to rent hosting near that location and then you don’t need a CDN.

There are numerous CDN providers available, with varying levels of quality. Cloudflare is one of the more popular low-cost services although we don’t recommend it. One CDN we’ve had a good experience with is BunnyCDN, especially since it’s paid per-used stream so you only pay as much as you really need and you can choose which continents the CDN will be included for and which won’t.

Site Structure

The structure of a website refers to how pages are organized and linked. The optimum site layout is one that makes it easy for search engine users and crawlers to discover the information they need on a website.

Google will have a hard time identifying and indexing pages on your site that are a few clicks away from your homepage or aren’t linked to anything at all. However, if the site is well-structured and the pages are linked to one another, Google will have no trouble finding and indexing all of the pages. Moreover, when you link to other pages of the site from sites that already have authority and backlinks, you transfer some of that authority to those other pages. This is a fantastic approach to boost the visibility of new web pages. A well-organized site improves the user experience by allowing users to find the information they need quickly and effortlessly.

Responsive Web Design

Today, users access sites more often via mobile phones than via laptops or desktop PCs. As a consequence, there is a rising demand for responsive site design. Responsive web design means that sites must be clear and easy to use on all devices that users use.

If it’s necessary to zoom in on the elements, the elements are on the edges or off the screen, etc., it’s very bad for the user experience and search engines punish it. Google implemented mobile-first indexing a few years ago, where it looks at how well the mobile version of the site is optimized, and based on that, it decides where the page should show in the search results. You can make the site responsive with CSS code and if you use WordPress, your site will automatically be responsive if you use any more popular theme (just in case, review well the theme summaries).

Click “Test URL” after you previously entered the URL in Mobile-Friendly Test made by Google to see whether or not it’s responsive. After a brief analysis, the tool will tell you whether the site page is well optimized for mobile devices or not.

SSL Certificate

SSL (Safe Sockets Layer) adds another layer of security between the web server and the browser, making the website more secure. If you have active SSL protection, users are less likely to hack information that they supply on your site, such as payment information or contact information. This added security is rewarded by search engines, which rank SSL-enabled sites higher in search results.

How can you know whether or not the SSL certificate is operational? There’s the green padlock displayed to the left of the URL in the browser. To have it there, the web address is supposed to begin with “https”, not with an old “http”. Most of the better web hosting firms either include an SSL certificate with cPanel for free or charge an extra fee for SSL. For a basic certificate, it’s usually approximately 10 euros per site.

It’s sufficient to have that basic certificate setup if no payments are made through your site. Although it needs some technical knowledge, you can always set up SSL through cPanel for free and yourself using the Let’s encrypt service.

Conclusion

Technical SEO is sometimes very complex and in this guide, we’ve listed the most important things you need to know in order for your site to be well technically optimized. If you do technical SEO correctly, research your keywords well, and write quality content regularly, SEO results won’t be lacking.

The post The Ultimate Technical SEO Guide for Your Website appeared first on Trends Tech Blog.