Rich’s Web Design – Feb. 2017 Newsletter

Rich’s Web Design – Feb. Newsletter
– Chrome & SSL –
– How to Rank High –
– What is TTFB? –
– Instagram is Now BIG! –

Google / Chrome & SSL

As touched on in the Jan. 1st’s RWD Newsletter, it looks like the Google requirement that ALL sites have a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificate WILL occur very soon. (See clients’ 1/17 specific newsletter)  I will make these installations on a ‘first-come-first-serve’ basis, so let me know if you wish me to do your site first!

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How to Rank High

As discussed every January / February, here are Google’s Top 10 ranking factors:

1. Proper TITLE tags – Use of your targeted key phrases.
2. Proper use of H1 tags, should include targeted key phrases.
3. Content length – At least 1000 words per page that is keyword targeted.
4. Content Updates – Old content will NOT rank high! Fresh content is needed; Monthly is preferred.
5. Inbound links – Having as many related inbound links as possible, more than your competition.
6. Proper linking within your site, including footer links, sitemaps, etc.
7. Mobile Friendly – Your site must be mobile optimized.
8. Social Media consistent updates – You must have and use these basic social media sites (Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) and used regularly.
9. TTFB (see this next article)
10. Bounce Rate – Google can tell if visitors leave your site quickly after arriving. Do they stick around and visit other pages on your site…or do they quickly bounce back to the search results?

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What is TTFB?

Many marketing, web professionals have believed for years that a top ranking factor is ‘Load Time’, or how long does it take to load your entire web site.  If your site has large images, many scripts, then Google will punish your site and you will lose rankings.  This has now been proven to be incorrect!  What matters most is your site’s TTFB.

Time To First Byte (TTFB) is a measurement used as an indication of the responsiveness of a webserver or other network resource. TTFB measures the duration from the user or client making an HTTP request to the first byte of the page being received by the client’s browser.  In other words, if you use a shared server, that takes more than .2 seconds to respond, YES, this will impact your rankings.

How can you tell what your own site’s TTBB is?  Go to http://bytecheck.com/ and enter your own site’s URL.  If your time is around .2 or less, then your server is responding well.  If it is over .5 second, then you need to consider changing host servers.

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Instagram is Now Big!

For most businesses, having the following social media sites are highly suggested (in order of importance) – Facebook (Business), Google+ (Maps / Local), LinkedIn (Networking), YouTube (if you share videos), Twitter (?) … and now … Instagram (mobile photo-sharing)!

Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing site that enables its users to take pictures and share them either publicly or privately on the app, as well as through a variety of other social networking platforms.

Instagram, developed by the Facebook team, is one of the first social media sites that originated on mobile devices and is designed for use with your smart phones. Their motto is, ‘Inspire People Visually With Your Business Story‘. Ask any young person, ask other web savy person … they will say, ‘Instagram is Big!‘

If you have set-up an Instagram account for your business, let me know your URL and I will place the social media icon on your site … next to your Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn icons!