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How To Tag Your Website Images The Right Way

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Imagine you’ve lost your eye site. How would you want someone to describe what’s in front of you?

When you’re tagging images for your website you need to put your ‘blind person hat’ on because people can look at an image and see its contents, but screen readers and bots (search engine robots) cannot.

Tagging images is good for SEO…

…It’s also a requirement if you want a good page ranking.

If you have images on your website that aren’t tagged, don’t worry. You can start today.

Finally, be descriptive when you’re tagging images, and use keywords when appropriate.

How to tag your images

  1. Resize your image(s) and put them in a file on your computer.
    Here’s what my file system looks like on my iMac. All images are put into a folder called “Assets,” and then subdivided into file names that make sense to me.Desktop Website Files
  2. Next, log-into your WordPress website. From your dashboard go to Media —> Add New
    NOTE: If your images are already in your media library choose Library. Click on the image you want to tag and begin at Step 6 below.WordPress dashboard Media Add New
  3. Click Select FilesWordPress Dashboard Media Select Files
  4. Navigate to the image on your desktop and click Open
    Once you choose your image you will be taken back to the Upload New Media page
  5. Click EditWordPress Dashboard Upload New Media window
  6. In the Edit Media page add a title
  7. Add Alternative Text (for screen readers & bots)
    1. if you do not add an alternative tag screen readers would ‘read’ alternative, which is not a good user experience
  8. Add a description (can be same words you used in Alternative Text field)
  9. Click Update

 

WordPress dashboard Edit Media page

 

Dos and Don’ts

Don’t use numbers or names that will not make sense to a screen reader, or bot. For example, the image I downloaded from Adobe was named AdobeStock_110326070.jpg. DON’T keep a name like this. Instead,

Do change the image name to something a blind person would understand such as “four-children-playing-tag-outdoors”

WordCamp Boston 2015 Highlights

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logo WordCamp Boston 2015

Here’s my takeaway from WordCamp Boston 2015, July 18-19.

Website Design Trends

Color

Still popular are bold and bright colors: red, green, blue, orange and yellow. This summer pastel colored sites are beginning to appear.

Dimension

Flat design is still trending. Anything showing depth, such as web buttons with shadows and highlights are out…for now.

Back to the Future

Simple, one column design is making a fast comeback, meaning no sidebars or any visual distractions that might take away your reader’s attention.

 

Marketing 101: How to get people to come to your website

Bobbie Carlton of Carlton PR and Marketing says to think of your website as a circus.

In the early days of Barnum & Bailey, an advance man would come into town to put up posters and billboards. He also bought advertising to control the message 100%.

When the big day finally arrived, box cars would pull into the train station and the elephant parade would begin. Lumbering through town and toward the ‘big top’, any mishap, such as an elephant trampling a flowerbed, would likely receive front page headlines, adding further promotion  to the event.

And the ring master? Today, think of social media as your megaphone where you announce one website ‘attraction’ after another.

 

Your Home Page is not what it used to be

“The Home Page has started to die,” commented Jesse Friedman. If people find you using search (i.e. Google, Bing, Yahoo!) they are more likely to be taken to another page on your website — the page that answers the problem or question they typed into their search bar. Typically this is a blog page, and not your Home Page.

Solution?

  1. Think of every page as your Home Page.
  2. Provide great content that provides value to your readers.
  3. Make sure your tags, categories and meta descriptions are powerful enough to lead people to your website…see below — Tips on where to use your keywords

Using the Yoast SEO Plugin to the fullest

Tips on where to use your keywords

  • Once, in your title
  • 1-2 times in your meta description
  • In your H1 & H2 tags

Other tips for SEO

  • You need at least 300 characters on a page for Google to search your page
  • Your title tag should be not more than 40-60 characters in length
  • 156 characters for your meta description

Is your website’s mission to raise money for your non-profit organization?

Michael McWilliams says a good non-profit website has:

  • An engaging homepage
  • Clear navigation
  • Up to date information
  • Simple language
  • Images and media (video) to tell the story
  • Quick access to critical information for supporters and stakeholders

A great non-profit website:

  • Relates to its audience
  • Generates a powerful first impression
  • Makes the mission clear
  • Connects solution to problems
  • Has an elegant navigation: smooth, reliable, and gives the viewer confidence to continue to explore
  • Has a bold call-to-action on every page
  • Offers useful infographics
  • Is current and urgent
  • Works well with social media
  • Uses media appropriately (video and/or audio)

Want a faster website?

Large images and fancy fonts slow websites down. Why should you care? (1) Visitors will not stick around if they have to wait, and (2) your visitors don’t want to waste precious mobile data minutes: FYI: over 50% of all web searches are used on a mobile phone or tablet, and mobile usages increases each year.

How to speed up your site?

  1. Resize your web images to fit your website.
  2. Use no more than two specialty fonts — specialty fonts are those that are not included in your WordPress install, such as those you might add from Google fonts or Adobe Typekit.

GoDaddy® Managed WordPress Hosting

My biggest take-away was a change in my “stinking thinking” toward GoDaddy® as a WordPress hosting provider.

GoDaddy® was an event sponsor. As fate would have it, earlier in the week I spent time on the phone and in a “chat” with techs on the GoDaddy® customer support team — 4 different times for two different clients.

In the past, if my client had a WordPress site hosted on GoDaddy®’s servers, and the site went down, or I needed help migrating a WordPress site, the only response from their technical team was, “We don’t support WordPress.”

All that has changed with GoDaddy® Managed WordPress hosting. Not only do they fully support WordPress, they also provide the same great customer service (phone and chat) many of my clients really love.

Me too! So, when I saw the GoDaddy® event table, I made a beeline to tell them of my recent experience with customer support. I also told them about Lori, one of my website clients, who refused to take my advice and change from GoDaddy hosting. In fact, she said it was “non-negotiable.” Reluctantly I followed Lori’s direction in 2014. Turns out, GoDaddy® had decided to change their “stinking thinking” nearly two years ago by providing the type of service WordPress customers needed. I’m so glad I listened to Lori — can’t wait to show you her new site!

If you want your hosting, your domain name, and email all under one roof, you now have another great option with GoDaddy® Managed WordPress hosting.

Go forth and prosper!

Blog Post Photo Not Showing Up on Facebook?

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owl front face

Have you ever wondered why the photo you chose for your blog post does NOT show up on Facebook? Instead of your blog post photo, you might see your logo, or part of your website header banner.

Why Does This Happen?

If you don’t tell Facebook what information you want, the Facebook computers make an educated guess about what’s best.

What if you don’t agree with that choice? How can you tell Facebook what you want?

You need change the Open Graph protocol.

3 Ways to Tell Facebook What Photo to Display When Linking to Your Blog Post

  1. Manually add special “op” (Open Graph) meta tags to the head <head> of your website, or
  2. Use a plugin call WP Open Graph, or
  3. Use WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast. By default this plugin will display the first image on your blog post. If you want a different image, click the “Social” tab and insert the photo’s URL in the “Facebook Image” field: You’ll find the photo’s URL with your photo, in your WordPress media library.

Aren’t we the bee’s knees!

Does Google Think You’re a Nobody?

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girl being bullied

Last week I stumbled upon a juicy MP3 from Copyblogger entitled SEO What You Need To Know in 2015 and Beyond, within which Sonia Simone compared Google to “a mean high school girl” because Google only cares about you if you’re unique and interesting: Otherwise you’re a nobody.

Why It’s Good To Be Popular

In the early days of the internet there were ways to “trick” the search engines to improve your page ranking, such as keyword stuffing.

Today, Google’s robots have gotten much more sophisticated. Not only will Google penalize your site for keyword stuffing, their update called Hummingbird, uses what’s called natural language recognition. ​Today the Google robots actually understand what you’re writing about!

The only way you’ll get noticed is if Google sees that others are interested in you.

What Does This Mean for SEO?

The experts at Copyblogger say…

  • You need to write properly,
  • you need to write what your audience cares about, and
  • you need to write something that makes your audience look good, so they want to share your posts.

3 Ways to Improve Your Search Ranking Immediately…and In This Order

  1. Draw attention to yourself by writing something your audience wants to share.
  2. Use language your perfect customer uses so they’ll find your great blog post. TIP: This is where keyword research comes in to play.
  3. And the LASTLY optimize your fabulous post.

How Do You Optimize Your Post?

Although it’s last on the list of importance, it’s still important. Here’s how to optimize your post:

  1. Write a great eyeball catching headline.
  2. Modify your permalinks by adding keywords.
  3. Think like an advertising exec: make your post sound irresistible in 160 words or less, and put it in your meta description tag.

SEO Fun!

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oxymoron-nun-giving-middle-finger

Aren’t the words SEO and fun an oxymoron?

After attending another excellent GeekGirls event I’ve decided to switch my thinking about SEO from, “Ugh! Do I have to?” to “Cool!”

SEO Fun

SEO is simply doing things to your website copy so that your site shows up higher in search engine results on Google and Bing — the only two search engines that matter: Google is used by 65-75% of the world, and Bing is number two.

Think of this process as building your favorite puzzle!

This Is Really Cool!

Some really smart mortals hooked up special cameras to a person’s eyes, so they could see how people scan a web page.

Check out this 1-minute video called “Example of eye-tracking on Universal Search”.

Something Fun You Can Do

See how many times Google has indexed your site (or anyone’s site) by:

  1. entering “site:” before the website address. See image below
  2. Not only did I find out that Google has indexed my site 241 times,
  3. it appears someone else has attached themselves to my site — who is eanbarnard.com and why are is a link to their site on my Home, Product-features, and Contact Me pages?

So glad I ran this simple check: Need to contact my web host and take care of this immediately!

screen-shot-google-site-search

Want more SEO Fun?

It’s coming!

Filed Under: SEO

Website Anatomy: Part 5 – Content

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bang for the buckContent and SEO are like bread & butter, salt & pepper — the ultimate dynamic duo.

Make Your Efforts Pay Off

After you’ve written all your great content get the most bang for your buck by going back over your copy and picking out your keywords. Keywords are those that are most relevant to your perfect customer.

Then put them in the place that search engines love best:

  1. SEO Title
  2. Meta Description
  3. In your Page or Post Page title (This is your H1 tag and where search engines look first.)
  4. In at least one of your headers within your copy (your H2, H3, H4, H5, or H6 tags)
  5. In your content, several times
  6. Bold them at least once (Bolded text gets noticed first by search robots and humans.)
  7. In the alt tag of your images: NOTE – Your Alt tag is what’s read by the robots and people who are visually impaired. If you don’t tag your images search engines will penalize your site.

Congratulations! You are no longer invisible.

Eat Your Vegetables

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Girl And Healthy Broccoli Diet

Do you have a blog? Each time I ask my clients if they want a blog page on their WordPress website I can feel the energy change…immediately. The once enthusiastic and positive thoughts about having a website are suddenly transformed to moans and groans, questions about why they need a blog page, and all the excuses why they don’t need one. Does this sound familiar? I had the exact same response the first time my social media and marketing coach broke the unwelcomed news.

I blog, therefore I exist

The only reason I agreed to have a blog page was that I could repurpose my weekly e-zine articles. The e-zine was the first priority because it enabled me to keep in touch with prospects who have signed up to be on my list.

My first sales pitch as to why my clients may want a blog is for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because search engine robots like those in Google, Bing and Yahoo!, voraciously search for new. I tell my clients, if they don’t have new, original content on their site each month, the robots get bored with push their site further down the search list until no one knows they exist.

“Hey, you’re about to pay all this money, and put in lots of time building your WordPress website. Do you really want to throw your investment the down the drain?”

The biggest blogging benefit of all

In the beginning of February, I agreed to take part in a BAD challenge. I had already missed the first day, but was able to repurpose my last e-zine: advantage number one. My biggest surprise, however, was that blogging has helped my business in ways I could never have imagined:

• Blogging daily helps clear out the cobwebs and get to the core of why I love my business.
• Helps me stay focused on building my business.
• It’s forcing me to stop making excuses and schedule time to get my website in shape. Um, I’ve scheduled the time. I haven’t actually put the time in…yet
• I get to write about things I’ve said that I’ll and write about, but have never made the time.
• Blogging stretches my mind.
• Blogging makes me think about the book in me — it now feels like it really could actually happen
• It’s cathartic —by clearing my mind of “stuff” that’s bothering me, I can make room for new and better thoughts.
• It’s helping me get over the overwhelm because I just keep chugging along at an more even pace.
• I’m getting to know a whole new group of like-minded people by reading their BAD musings.
• Other’s BAD Challenge blogs are really helpful.
• Receiving comments on my own blog posts from other BAD challengers is a gift. Thank you!
• Yo! I just repurposed another blog post.

Eating your broccoli first

I rise early when the house is quiet, feed the dogs, put my cereal on the stove, and write. Getting my dream filled thoughts organized, fed, dressed, and out-the-door makes the rest of the day flow like water.

If you haven’t tried blogging, you don’t know what you’re missing. Which could be a healthy dose of what your business — and your website — needs to get going.

If you’ve found this helpful, please feel free to share.

Juice Your Website

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Did know that the right type of bulleted list can help drive traffic to your website?

Bulleted lists are the perfect place to add juicy keywords — and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about having the same words on your website that prospects use when they’re search for something on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any search engine.

Unfortunately, most of us are throwing valuable SEO juice down the drain by not using keywords in our bulleted lists.

Get More SEO Juice With a Better Bulleted List

I love bulleted lists: they’re easy to create, easy to read, and easy for your reader to consume. They also break up heavy text areas, making your web page look better.

Here are the steps I take when making a bulleted list for a web page:

Step One: Pick Your Keywords

After I write my page copy, I read over the text and pick out words people are searching for. In this example, the page is about my web design services so my keywords are:

• WordPress
• Genesis framework
• StudioPress
• responsive theme
• website design
• opt-in form
• custom web headers
• graphic design
• SEO

Step Two: Make Your List

Next, I simply list the services that prospects would be interested in if they’re looking for someone to build their WordPress website. Here’s what my website design services page bulleted list looked like before adding my keywords:

• WordPress theme by StudioPress
• Install and configure WordPress
• Wireframe
• 5 content pages: home, about, contact
• Theme customization
• Custom web header
• 2 hours of training on how to update your pages and add content

Step 3: Add Your Keywords

Referring to the list I made in Step 1, I added my keywords and more detail so that my list did not seem so sterile:

• 5 content pages: home, about, services, content, plus one (your choice)
• Site planning & wireframe to build a strong foundation and get started on the right foot
• Installation and configure WordPress, plus you get the superior Genesis framework and a StudioPress responsive theme
• Custom web header design with opt-in form & irresistible free taste graphic so you can build your list
• WordPress Theme Customization: fonts, color, background
• Install plugins for SEO, Google Analytics, and Social Media
• Widgets & Sidebar graphics to maximize engagement
• Prepare all images for web & tag all images for SEO
• Permalink edits for maximum SEO
• Design and install web buttons to keep your brand consistent
• 2 hours of 1-on-1 training on how to update your pages, add content, and SEO tips
• 1 hour post launch design review and tweak (must be redeemed within 2 month of site launch)

By weaving my keywords into my bulleted list, I not only increased my changes of getting found for my web design services, but searchers for website design are more likely to land on my products page, than my home page — which is exactly where I want them to be.

Don’t worry. You don’t need to have a keyword in every bullet point. Other highly visible areas for keywords are:

• Title tags
• Web page headlines
• Web page copy

One Final tip

Bold your SEO pearls because search engine robots “see” bold type as more important. We humans do too!