Flipping your website’s “Closed͟” sign to “Open for Business͟”

1. Flipping your website’s ?Closed? sign to ?Open for Business? The internet is an ugly, ugly place. I know this not because I saw a shocking video, but because of this graph. This graph belongs to a client of mine who was suffering from a Google penalization. And no, this ?as?’t after a major update like Panda, just a simple detection of conflicting signals from duplicate content on their website. Sure, this company saw something blow up and came to us to fix the damage. But the ugly part is this: so many companies have websites that are telling search engines they do not want to be found and don’t even know it.

2. Every website is sending thousands of signals to Google right now, with many failing to do these three things: 1)Not send conflicting signals 2)Have an optimized, easily crawlable site structure 3)Perform optimally by looking at speed testers and GPSI (Google Page Speed Insights) Doing these three things correctly is the best place to start if your goal is to get large amounts of organic traffic in your website’s front door. Ki?d of like tur?i?g arou?d ?our ?Closed? sig? to sa? ?Ope? for Busi?ess? i?stead. And sending the right signals does?’t ha?e to ?e rocket science when the high level strategy behind this can be understood by anyone. To prove this to you, here are fe? of the ?o??o? ?istakes ?e’?e see? from companies recently. Not sending conflicting signals- the common mistakes Ho? ?a? ?ou k?o? if ?ou’re se?di?g ?o?fli?ti?g sig?als? Well, we use these three essential tools to find the most of the potentially harmful conflicting signals.

3. Google Search Console ScreamingFrog DeepCrawl Google Search Console gives you massive data on your site, including BIG mistakes. Kind of like this: Ha?i?g ?our site flagged as ?ha?ked? ?? Google is the last thing you want to happen. In this case, the company had unwittingly copied their content to multiple sites not realizing it would be penalized as ?dupli?ate? ?o?te?t. Google does?’t take spa? lightl? because the?’?e had to punish those that have tried to game the system time after time. Finding tag conflicts in ScreamingFrog is extremely easy to do. Here, we found 1,61? URLs i? our ?lie?t’s ?e?site that there were telling Google ?Yes, i?de? this page??hile sa?i?g ?No, do ?ot i?de? this page? at the same time.

4. Conflicting signals like this confuse Google, and lead to a bad time for your website. By using data from DeepCrawl we can see a couple of major errors on this website. 35,113 instances of duplicate body content is doubtlessly going to punish this website’s ranking. Having an Optimized Site Structure- what not to do

5. 1)As ?e’?e lear?ed ?ore a?out SEO over the years, its become clear that deep architecture most of the time is better for SEO than flat. Flat architecture effectively reduces your ability to focus on important topics as well as creating a less enjoyable experience for visitors. 2)Use a variation dropdown box to show multiple versions of the same product or service. 3)A?oid dupli?ati?g URLs i? ?our site’s stru?ture, o?l? s?all a?ou?ts of duplication are acceptable. Your Website Performance- How to Optimize Both users and Google are looki?g at ?our site’s load speed.

6. If you run some tests and find your page speed sub-optimal, you can start by doing these four things: Optimizing hi-res images/videos File compressing with Gzip Use minify (removing all unnecessary code) Remove redirects Do ?ot ha?e ?ore tha? ? fo?ts a?d k?o? ?here ?ou’re i?porti?g them from These points are a good place to start, but it still might not be enough to get your page speed where it should be. If that is the case, looking at 3rd party servers delivering slow page elements to your website is the next step. Fortunately for you, when you make a Google search you only see the ?e?sites that ha?e alread? flipped their sig? arou?d to sho? ?ope? for ?usi?ess?. If ?our site is still ?losed or has?’t ?o?pletely opened: Get a SEO audit here Learn more about our SEO work here