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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

WordPress FAQS

  • Establish the strategic goal for the website
  • Client to set up a WordPress hosting account with siteground.com (or your  hosting account of preference) then provide:
    1. A Domain name  (we can work on that together)
    2. Siteground username and password.
    3. Sitemap  – (this is the architecture of the site and we will work on that together)
    4. Logo/branding information.
    5. All photographs to be provided –  please organize the photos into folders and upload to dropbox.com   – I can download them from here. This method will save me a lot of time, and you money!
  • I will set up temporary URL for site development – you can have 24/7 access to the development site.
  • Conduct keyword research to create a ‘language se’t for the web site.
  • Install the selected WordPress theme a set of WordPress plug-ins to support the functionality of the site per your requirements (Plug-ins are, typically, free and provide added functionality beyond what is provided for the theme)
  • Design the site to meet your requirements and configure the theme to your desired hierarchy (sitemap)
  • Build-out site – I will be using a copywriter who will work with your draft copy.
  • Search engine optimize all key SEO page elements for each page’s targeted keyword.
  • Develop the  blog and blog content (if applicable)
  • Once approved, publish the site.
  • Register the site with Google and Bing webmasters and install Google Analytics. However, because you have a Google Business account we need to use the same email address for all Google products and so you will need to open a Google Search Console account ( https://search.google.com/ ) and a Google Analytics Account (https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/ )
  • Once the site is publish it is highly recommended to perform site maintenance on a regular basis

Yes, Web Strategic Marketing can maintain your website even if it was designed by someone else, typically the actions below can be complete in a couple of hours  monthly or bi-monthly.

WordPress websites require regular maintenance to remain both functional and secure.

The WordPress platform is updated on a regular basis and as soon as the platform is updated the design themes and operational plugins may have to be updated.

Additionally, the following should be included on your maintenance list:

  • Dead links
  • Database maintenance
  • Delete spam comments and old  page/post revisions
  • Check site statistics
  • Resubmit sitemaps to Google Search console

Content Management Systems (CMS) permits website owners to make website consent changes  without specialized programming knowledge.

Content Management System websites  can be edited by anyone who can use a word processes such as Microsoft Word.

Web Strategic Marketing uses WordPress for many clients who would like to edit the content on their own website as and when they need to do it without incurrent the expense and delay of a web designer.

Yes.

If you can use Microsoft Word (or equivalent), you can update your website: log into the website using a username and password and edit away? 

Furthermore, you can grant access to your team and control how much access each member of your team has:

Administrator

Admins are the most powerful user role. Administrators can add and edit posts by ‘any’ users on the site, and even delete the posts of others. This role is typically used for site owners because it gives you the total control of your WordPress site.

Editor

Editors can add, edit, publish, and delete any posts on a WordPress site. Additionally, an editor can moderate, edit, and delete comments.

Editors ‘cannot’ change the site settings, install plugins, or add new users. The role is one of a content editor only.

Author
Users with the author role can write, edit, and publish their posts.

They ‘cannot’ change the site settings, install plugins, or add new users. The role is one of a content author/editor of their own posts only.

Contributor

Contributors can add new posts and edit their posts, but they cannot publish any posts, not even their own, and they cannot upload files, including any image needed for their articles.

They ‘cannot’ change the site settings, install plugins, or add new users. The role is one of a content author/editor of their posts only with limitations.

Subscriber

Subscribers can log in to your WordPress site and update their user profiles, and they can leave post comments.

Search Engine Optimization

Learn more: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/

From July 1st, 2019, Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking for all new websites, and is gradually switching all establish sites over to mobile-first indexing.

Why this change, from desktop crawling and indexing to mobile? The majority of Google users now access the internet via their mobile devices!

To find out what type of indexing is use on your site, check your website’s search console (https://search.google.com/). If you currently no not use search console to manage your site, you should! Please feel free to contact me should you have any questions.

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) are keywords that are conceptually related to each other. It is a process that assists search engines understand the meaning of a keyword.

For example, for a search engine to differentiate between ‘Apple the fruit’ and ‘Apple the computer company’. LSI keywords would be:

  • iPad
  • iphone
  • OSX
  • Apple Store
  • MacPro
  • MacMini

By including LSI keywords on a page the search engine will understand what Apple is being discussed on the page.

Image optimization is the process reducing the file size of an image as much as possible without sacrificing image quality.

As discussed in an other FAQ, the loading time of a web page directly impacts a website’s SEO performance.  Typically, the greatest single element which slows a webpage down is the time taken to load a web page’s images and so the smaller the file size the quicker they load.

These are links from other websites that connect to any  page on your site.

Why are they important?

Search engines use backlinks (sometimes known as inbound links) to judge a site’s quality and marketing footprint. Theoretically, if a another website links to your site it is effect vouching for your authority on a particular subject. However, not all links are equal. A link from a website from your particular market will rate higher to the search engine algorithms than links from non-related website.

The more backlinks from related websites the better your website will perform in search engine results.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help your website rank higher in search engine results. A higher position will drive more traffic to your website.

It is a process of designing web pages using a set of design criteria  to appeal to the most commonly used search terms for your products, or services.

Learn more on the SEO web page.

Very!

Page loading speed is one element of how a search engine organizes it’s search results. Fast loading sites are prioritized over slower sites.

PageSpeed Insights (PSI) provides information on the performance of a page on both mobile and desktop devices, and provides suggestions on how that page may be improved.

You can evaluation your website’s page speed with these performance tools:

How often a webpage been updated over time directly impacts it search performances?  This is often referred to as a site’s freshness but how does Google know this information?

Each website should have an XML sitemap which is submitted to Google and this sitemap contains the date and time of last update to each and every page on the website, see image below:

sitemap

Duplicate content is content which is repeated on a site and it can negatively impact the site’s search engine results. Site content must be unique, even slight modified content can hurt a website’s performance.

If two pages have identical content, search engines will penalize you unless you use the Rel=Canonical tag which  specifies the ‘canonical URL’ which is  the “preferred” version of a web page.

If these pages existed on this site:

  • webstrategicmarketing.com/seo/
  • webstrategicmarketing.com/seo1/

By adding this tag – link rel=”canonical” href=”https://webstrategicmarketing.com/seo/”  – into the head section of webstrategicmarketing.com/seo1/ we will notify Google that webstrategicmarketing.com/seo/ is the preferred page.

Accelerated Mobile Pages are just as described, it is a stripped down coding platform dedicated to making websites running faster on mobile devices. The technology is back by Google who uses page loading speed as a factor when deciding how to  order results on a search engine page.

Google now crawls using Mobile-first indexing which means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. This means that loading speed is an important consideration for search result performance.

Website Design FAQS

Yes.

We have experience with WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento.

Yes, Web Strategic Marketing can maintain your website even if it was designed by someone else, typically the actions below can be complete in a couple of hours  monthly or bi-monthly.

WordPress websites require regular maintenance to remain both functional and secure.

The WordPress platform is updated on a regular basis and as soon as the platform is updated the design themes and operational plugins may have to be updated.

Additionally, the following should be included on your maintenance list:

  • Dead links
  • Database maintenance
  • Delete spam comments and old  page/post revisions
  • Check site statistics
  • Resubmit sitemaps to Google Search console

Content Management Systems (CMS) permits website owners to make website consent changes  without specialized programming knowledge.

Content Management System websites  can be edited by anyone who can use a word processes such as Microsoft Word.

Web Strategic Marketing uses WordPress for many clients who would like to edit the content on their own website as and when they need to do it without incurrent the expense and delay of a web designer.

This question is like asking how long is a piece of string!

However, in my experience, a typical search engine optimized small business website will take approx. 20 to 40 hours. There are many variables that may impact this, but I have designed many sites in this time range.

My billable hours’ rate is $85/hour.

There is a 25% deposit for new customers because I invoice monthly, and I may invest several weeks of work before I issue my first invoice.

If I estimate 30 to 40 hours for the website design, I will take 30 to 40 hours, which means that it could be completed within a workweek. Occasionally, I have had to design a website in a couple of days.

So, my time is finite; what takes time during a project?

  • Availability of all image assets 
  • Organizing digital assets
  • Availability of client written content
  • The review process

It is the latter ’the reverie process,’ which drags a project out. The 30 to 40-hour project could easily take 6+ months if the review process is slow.

My clients have day jobs, and a web design project is often supplemental to their daily work and sometimes has to be put on the back-burner. That’s life.

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