Category: SEO

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Slow Website Page Speed Means Missed Sales

Monitor Your Page Speed
Monitor Your Page Speed

Google says that as your site load speed increases from 1 to 7 seconds, your bounce rate increases 113%. Missed opportunities; bounced prospects means missed sales.

I tested my own website against a number of other sites on the Google Test My Site tool and here’s what I found.

My site www.mccordweb.com – 3 second load, excellent rating, low loss of visitors. My site is a responsive design in PHP and only uses WordPress for the blog.

Industrial company legacy HTML website that is over 8 years old, but the owner is not ready to do an update yet. 7 second load time, fair rating, 26% estimated visitor loss.

Service industry company legacy PHP website that is over 10 years old, but the owner is not ready to do a site update yet. 6 second load time. fair rating, 24% estimated visitor loss.

Doctor’s practice  redone responsive WordPress website, but the owner was not speed-focused. 7 second load time. fair rating, 26% estimated visitor loss.

Technology business newly redone responsive WordPress website with a very glitzy look, but the designer was not speed-focused. 10 second load time. poor rating, 29% estimated visitor loss.

What I have found is that the WordPress sites with the slide show on the home page are not testing well for speed. The PHP based websites that do not have a slide show cover and are more text focused and utilize created AMP pages are testing as speedy.

Need help with your website? Check us out to see how we can help you get a speedy rating and not risk visitor loss.

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Why Page Speed is Important

Image of Clocked Page Speed
Image of Clocked Page Speed

How fast your website page loads in a smartphone or browser is really important.  Not be paying attention to your website load time is a huge error in the world of Google today.

This is why knowing and working to improve your page speed and site load time is crucial.

Google has a new tool called “Google Test My Site”. This online tool will test your URL, compare your site to others, give you a rating, and even give you a free report and recommendations to follow to improve your speed.

Google says that your site will lose one-half of all your visitors while the page is loading. Know that 70% of visitors globally are surfing the web on 3G or slower speeds until 2020. Want more business? Speed up your website!

Test your own site out today now at Google Test My Site. Then touch base with us about purchasing a new fast responsive PHP website. Our own website at www.mccordweb.com clocks at a 3 second load, received and excellent rating, and has low visitor loss.

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Should You Worry About the July 2018 Chrome Site Insecure Warning?

What to do when July comes about the Chrome browser warning.
What to do when July comes about the Chrome browser warning.

Coming to the Web in July is a change to the Google Chrome browser that will now mark any website that is not using https as insecure. Should you be worried if you are not selling online?

Personally, if you are not selling product online, I would not worry about the site insecure warning. This warning will appear on your site if you have a contact form, but I personally do not feel that your submissions will drop.

In most cases now, my clients and prospects contact me by phone or by chat. I have very few customers who contact me via my email form. Most like the immediacy of a call.

If you are flush with cash, moving to https could be good for you to prevent any insecure site warnings to be ultra safe. Cost for an SSL certificate is about $149 to $199 yearly. You will typically need to have a dedicated IP address which will run $7 to $15 a month and your web host will most likely charge installation fee for the SSL certificate. So, there are moderate costs associated with the move to https.

If you sell online https is mandatory. No consumer will buy and provide their credit card information via http.

So, the bottom-line is that really you have an option if you are not selling online as https and the additional costs are not a requirement to continue to have website traffic. Your site will still appear in the Google search results and other browsers will not trigger a warning.

For more important and interesting tips on how to manage your business online subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter.

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Use Different Keywords for Organic Placement

Nancy McCord is a Google and Bing Partner
Nancy McCord is a Google and Bing Partner

As a professional AdWords account manager and expert in Search Engine Optimization, I do recommend that the focus of keywords be different for your website optimization versus what you use for pay per click.

Personally, I like a very narrow set of very tightly targeted keywords for AdWords; as we are typically driving traffic for lead generation. Our top focus is cost per conversion and increasing leads.

For organic, I like to focus on keywords that have the most click activity and may be more general yet still industry specific. I find that the balance helps sites to drive more site visits and  leads and is not redundant with the specificity we use for AdWords.

For example, for a client selling warehouse equipment, in AdWords I might target very tight product names and categories like Forklift model 45S, powered warehouse equipment, and other specific keywords.

In organic I might target material handling equipment and material handling equipment supplier as my focus for blog writing and social media; striving to cast the net farther and wider but for high click volume keywords.

When every click you pay for in AdWords must make a difference in growing your business, you have to be narrow and very results oriented. In organic where you do not pay by the click the effort should be to enhance website traffic that is free.

If you need help adjusting your strategies to make the most of your ad spend and drive traffic and build inbound links, visit www.McCordWeb.com to see how we can help you too.