Will Uber’s sneaky trick fool you?

UBER claims this feature is sometimes unavoidable, but others are crying foul, saying the ride-sharing app is intentionally misleading users.

Source NEWS.com.au | Business http://ift.tt/1eIJi3d

Developer plans centers to care for dementia, Alzheimer's patients

A Las Vegas developer plans to break ground in August on a $4 million, 24-bed center to care for those with dementia and Alzheimer's.

Source Business http://ift.tt/1KGsvJQ

Nevada Power proposes trimming credit for net metering

A new rate structure for Nevada Power Co. customers who want to install rooftop solar and participate in net metering would provide a credit of about 5.5 cents per kilowatt hour instead of the current 11.6 cents, according to a filing made Friday by NV Energy with the state Public Utilities Commission.

Source Business http://ift.tt/1DX64ey

Families spending hundreds on back-to-school supplies

It's the time of year when retailers stuff their shelves with products that parents demand for their kids. It's back-to-school season. But it doesn't look like it'll to be a jolly one for stores.

Source Business http://ift.tt/1KGmYTw

Entrepreneur adds online poker to his portfolio

First he developed the employment website Jobbi in 2007. Now, Lawrence Vaughan, 30, is out to change the way people play poker as the co-founder of Real Gaming.

Source Business http://ift.tt/1JBnZh0

5 Myths About Capital Gains Taxes

Capital is the plant, the machinery, the computers, and trucks that businesses invest in to become productive. So it's strange that Hillary Clinton declared war on capital with her plan to nearly double the capital gains rate for investments.

Source CBN.com - Finance http://ift.tt/1eHoIQP

Marketing Day: Old Spice Instagram Campaign, Click-To-Call Report & More

Here's our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/1IdBmzp

Blending Families and Your Finances

TV families like 'The Brady Bunch' made it look so easy. It isn't.

Source U.S. News - Money http://ift.tt/1HbdcDW

Penn National buying Illinois slot machine route operator

Regional casino operator Penn National Gaming said Friday it was acquiring an Illinois-based slot machine route operator for an undisclosed price that will give the company ownership of more than 1,100 slot machines in 270 locations around the state.

Source Business http://ift.tt/1MCmu3Z

Old Spice Uses Instagram Tagging To Create Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Social Game

The quirky P&G brand makes Instagram more interactive for a sci-fi storytelling campaign.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/1UcEoM0

British Gas slammed for failing to pass on energy savings

Tom Wilson

hobandcoin.jpg

Consumers have been urged to shop around for the best energy prices as British Gas was criticised for failing to pass on energy savings to households.

Consumers have been urged to shop around for the best energy prices as British Gas was criticised for failing to pass on energy savings to households.

British Gas's residential division has announced its profits soared to £528 million profit in the first half of the year, fuelled by low wholesale prices for oil and gas.

British Gas slammed for failing to pass on energy savings

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Consumers have been urged to shop around for the best energy prices as British Gas was criticised for failing to pass on energy savings to households. British Gas's residential division has announced its profits soared to £528 million profit in the first half of the year, fuelled by low wholesale prices for oil and gas. But according to comparison site GoCompare, these lower prices have not been passed to consumers. Caroline Lloyd, energy spokesperson at Gocompare.com, said: "Two weeks ago British Gas announced it would be cutting its gas prices by 5% at the end of August, saving the average customer around £35 a year. "However, this is paltry when compared to British Gas' earnings of £63 a second, especially as customers will still be paying over £300 a year more than if they switched to the current energy ‘best buy' today." The comparison site estimates the average price of a dual fuel tariff with British Gas is £1,292 for a household paying by monthly direct debit. According to the GoCompare.com, the top-three best dual fuel tariffs currently available are: 1. GB Energy Supply's Premium Energy Saver, at £870 a year. It's a variable tariff, but there are no early exit fees if you switch to another provider. 2. Sainsbury's Energy's Fixed Price August 2016 offer, at £903 a year. If a better deal becomes available, however, you'll need to pay £30 per fuel to leave early. 3. First:utility's iSave Fixed December 2016 offer, costing £905 a year. It'll also charge £30 per fuel if you'd like to switch early.

Video Embed: 

How to switch energy provider

read more

Source Moneywise http://ift.tt/1gu0ag0

Invited to Lots of Weddings This Year? How to Attend Them All Without Breaking the Bank

I. Love. Weddings. From the flowers to the vows to the dancing, they are some of my favorite days of the year.

The only thing I don’t love about them? The cost.

As a 28-year-old woman, I am in the thick of the wedding years. Though sometimes I complain about how expensive they are, I never regret going.

I can count the weddings I’ve missed on one hand, and looking back, I wish I’d just sucked it up and gone. Why? Because there’s nothing better than sharing a special day with people you love.

Still, the costs can be overwhelming. How can you afford to attend so many weddings without going broke? How can you save money before and on the big day?

To answer these questions, I asked seven friends for their best wedding budgeting advice; combined, we’ve attended more than 100 weddings in the past several years. In other words, we’ve got some tricks up our sleeves.

If you put our strategies into place, you can stop worrying about money, and instead focus on what matters this wedding season: drinking signature cocktails and perfecting your Electric Slide.

Before the Wedding

Start preparing before you head to the ceremony for the biggest savings.

Create a Special Bank Account

If you don’t want weddings to empty your coffers, start saving money ahead of time.

Create a separate wedding bank account that’s funded by automatic withdrawals from your main checking account. Start putting away $25 a week now, and you’ll have around $1,000 by the time next year’s wedding season rolls around.

If you open this checking account with Chase, you’ll even start off with an extra $150!

Sarah Scheinman, a librarian at Summit County Libraries in Breckenridge, Colorado, has eight weddings this year. She makes regular contributions to a special wedding account, saying, “I just couldn’t afford them if I didn’t.”

Skip the Pre-Wedding Parties

In recent years, the wedding has expanded beyond the ceremony and reception: Now there are engagement parties, bridal showers and bachelor/bachelorette parties to attend. If you don’t live near the couple, these costs can get out of hand.

An easy solution? Don’t go. We’re betting the couple would rather have you at their wedding than their shower.

“I tend to skip destination bachelorettes and bridal showers, except for very close friends,” says Scheinman. “The destination bachelorettes can end up being more expensive than the wedding weekend itself.”

Getting to the Wedding

Heading out of town? Cut down on travel costs.

Use Frequent Flyer Miles

Many people focus on saving money at the wedding, but cutting costs on transportation is just as important. I’ve saved thousands of dollars over the past few years by cashing in frequent flyer miles for flights.

I’ve written about how to get started travel hacking before, but in short: Never forget to add your frequent flyer number to paid flights, and if you have good credit, use travel rewards credit cards to quickly rack up miles.

Set Up Flight Alerts

If you don’t have frequent flyer miles (yet!), set up a fare alert on Airfare Watchdog or Hopper with your route and chosen dates. When the price goes down, don’t hesitate!

Also research flying in or out of alternate airports, which could save you a bundle.

Never Check a Bag

As a wildland firefighter, Elisabeth Steward’s busiest time of the year falls smack dab in the middle of wedding season. So, she often can only fly in for a few days — and if an airline lost her bag, she’d be in serious trouble.

“Never check a bag,” she says. “It’ll save you time, money and headaches.”

Bring Snacks

Airport food is not only unhealthy, it’s really expensive. Burgers in the terminal aren’t worth the cost or the calories — especially when you have to fit into a dress the next day.

Never leave for the airport (or a road trip) without a bag full of snacks. Some great options include baby carrots, nuts, hard boiled eggs, celery with natural peanut butter and apples.

At the Wedding

You made it! But you’re still facing extra expenses. Here’s how to avoid them.

Share Everything

You’re attending a wedding to spend time with your friends and family, right? So start the bonding process by splitting your expenses.

Maggie Mayer, a Master’s of Social Work student who lives in Ketchikan, Alaska, finds this essential: “Sharing rental car and hotel costs makes things more manageable and definitely more fun!”

If you don’t have friends attending the wedding, ask the bride or groom for suggestions; they probably know someone who’d love to split costs with you.

Get App-Happy

Sure, we may be expected to attend more weddings than ever before, but we also have an array of technology to help us cut costs. Some wedding favorites:

• Groupon and LivingSocial: Even though you’re in a different city, you can still snag a discount on these sites. Use them to find deals at restaurants or salons near your accommodation. (And if you buy your Groupon through a site called SendEarnings, you’ll even earn cash back!)

• Uber and Lyft: These ridesharing services are often cheaper than taxis. If a friend doesn’t already have one of the apps, share your referral code so you both can get a free ride.

• Ridescout: Want to know the cheapest way to get from Point A to Point B? This new app compares bus, bike, taxi, car share, rideshare, parking and walking directions in one view.

• GasBuddy: Find the cheapest gas near you. Perfect for right before you return that rental car. (Or try one of these other great apps to find cheap gas.)

• Yelp: Scout out the best places on your budget, and don’t forget you can often get discounts by “checking in” with the app.

Rent a House

Besides your plane ticket, lodging is probably going to be the most expensive part of your trip.

One of my favorite solutions is to book an Airbnb house with a bunch of friends. Not only will you have a kitchen, allowing you to save on food costs — you’ll also have the perfect spot to hang out and pre-game, so you won’t waste a bunch of money at the bar.

Stay with Friends of Friends

Even if you don’t know anybody who lives locally, chances are the bride or groom does. Ask if they have any friends with whom you could crash. Remember, you’ll be so busy with the wedding, you likely won’t spend much time there anyway.

Scheinman, the Colorado librarian, has done this, staying “on the couch of friends of the bride who I didn’t know.” Given that she spends an estimated 10-15% of her income on weddings, this is a smart move!

Go Camping

Since most weddings are in the summer, the weather is usually warm enough to spend the night under the stars. If your friends don’t have any room in their house, ask if you can pitch a tent in their backyard and use their bathroom to get ready.

Naomi Marshall, an art teacher in Colorado, enjoyed her experience: “I once camped in a cornfield so I didn’t have to pay for a hotel… It was kind of awesome!”

Looking Your Best at the Wedding

Of course we have to talk about what you’ll wear.

Rent Your Dresses

This is one of my favorite tips on the list. Since I travel frequently — and hate shopping — the last thing I want to do is drag a dress around in a suitcase.

I started using Rent the Runway a year ago and am absolutely obsessed. (If you use the code FIRSTRTR25X75X, you’ll get $25 off your first rental of $75 or more.)

You can rent a designer dress (with a backup size) for the weekend for as little as $30, and their excellent customer service team is quick to help with fashion emergencies.

For $29.95 a year, you can become a Pro member (like me!), which gives you free shipping and insurance on every dress, plus a $50 credit during your birthday month. It’s worth it if you plan to rent more than two dresses in a year.

Re-Style Your Dresses

Already have a bunch of dresses? Don’t be afraid to wear them again. The key to not looking like you did at previous weddings is to style them differently.

Pilar Barba, a microbiologist from San Jose, Costa Rica, offers good advice. “I try to wear my hair differently every time,” she says. “And I try to wear a different necklace or earrings… So at least you look a little bit different every time!”

Sell Your Dresses

Once you’re really sick of your dress, it’s time to say goodbye. But don’t just throw it out; try selling it online.

Jackie Reilly, a school psychologist in Hoboken, N.J., who’s been to 25 weddings in the past few years, says: “You can resell those beauties on sites like Poshmark and use credits to buy others’ used items!”

Swap or Borrow Dresses

Have a friend who’s the same size as you? Swap your dress collections halfway through the wedding season. You’ll have a whole new set of dresses to last you the rest of the summer!

Or, with the help of technology, you can expand beyond your friend circle to buy and sell dresses on the cheap: Lauren Corrigan started a dress swap Facebook group that now has 230 members from all over upstate New York, with most dresses selling for $10-25 each. It’s free to participate.

“I love dresses and love a deal, so I thought, here is our chance to find new dresses for less,” she says. “I figured I wasn’t the only woman who felt this way and wanted to see what was in everyone else’s closet.”

“It was very easy to start up on Facebook. I just snapped a photo of my most colorful dress in my closet and posted a few dresses to sell and off it went!”

Turn to Pinterest and YouTube

Getting your hair and makeup done professionally can cost an arm and a leg. With a little bit of patience, you can probably learn to do it yourself — thanks to sites like Pinterest and YouTube.

Both platforms offer inspiration and step-by-step tutorials. Once you learn a few techniques, you can reuse them at every wedding!

Schedule Your Appointments Wisely

If you regularly get haircuts or manicures, simply schedule your appointments around weddings you’re attending.

Though Barba, the Costa Rican microbiologist, often turns to Pinterest for hair and makeup tips, she also finds it helpful to plan ahead. “If I know I have a wedding in a month, I wait to get my regular cut until the day of the wedding… Same goes for manicures and pedicures,” she says.

Giving Wedding Gifts

If you’re not careful, these costs can skyrocket.

Make Your Own Gifts

Though wedding registries are the best solution for couples you don’t know well, handmade gifts for your close friends can mean much more — and be much cheaper — than a set of dishes.

Steward, the firefighter, used her “chainsaw to cut wood centerpieces for an upcoming wedding.” Though most of us probably can’t wield a Stihl like she can, the sentiment rings true for anyone: Use your special talents to create something meaningful.

Emily Collins, an elementary school teacher in Stamford, Connecticut, says all it takes is a little bit of thought. “I think about who they are, what they like and what the theme of their wedding is,” she explains.

For the wedding of a fellow teacher, she framed a handmade cross-stitch that looked like a piece of notebook paper with their wedding date and initials on it. “It cost about $10 and they loved it,” she says. For a recent nautical-themed wedding, she made initialed napkin rings that looked like nautical knots.

Find Personalized Gifts Online

Alternatively, you can look for personalized gifts. Etsy and Personal Creations both have a wide selection of cute and affordable gifts that can carry meaning.

Reilly, the school psychologist, likes Etsy because “they have great, heartfelt ideas that tend to come out cheaper (financially) than just writing an impersonal check!”

Are Weddings Worth It?

Since weddings are so expensive, it’s worth asking: Are they even worth attending?

I say heck yes. I’m pretty sure you won’t regret attending these fun and love-filled celebrations — even if it means you have to scrimp and save a little bit.

“I would say every single one I have gone to has been 100% worth it,” says Scheinman. “I was so glad I was able to attend and celebrate their special day.”

Your Turn: Which of these tips was your favorite? What would you add?

Disclosure: We have a serious Taco Bell addiction around here. The affiliate links in this post help us order off the dollar menu. Thanks for your support!

Susan Shain (@Susan_Shain) is a freelance writer and travel blogger who is always seeking adventure on a budget.

The post Invited to Lots of Weddings This Year? How to Attend Them All Without Breaking the Bank appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Deepen Your Social Marketing Skill Set – Attend Marketing Land’s SocialPro Conference

Take your social media marketing skills to unprecedented levels by attending SocialPro! Formerly known as SMX Social Media Marketing, SocialPro is the conference to learn groundbreaking tactics taught by leading brands and agencies from across the globe. SocialPro is programmed by the editorial...

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO

Did that title scare you?

I’m not sure what it is, but as soon as people see the word “technical,” they start to get squeamish.

In this case, technical SEO just refers to any SEO work that is done aside from the content. Essentially, it’s laying a strong foundation to give your content the best chance it can have to rank for relevant keywords and phrases.

Just like they have for on-page SEO, technical aspects of SEO have changed as search engines have become more sophisticated.

While there isn’t much you can do to “game” search engines from a technical standpoint, there are some new factors in 2015 that you need to consider if you want to improve your or your clients’ rankings.

If I were to cover this subject in depth, I would have to create another advanced guide.

Instead, I’ll go over the most important aspects of technical SEO from a beginner’s perspective as well as give you a few specific tactics and next steps to fix common problems in each area. 

To get fast rankings, you need a fast site

This fact isn’t new: if your website loads slowly, a large portion of visitors will quickly leave.

What you need to know from an SEO standpoint is that a slow website can harm you in two ways.

First, site speed is one of Google’s ranking factors. First announced in 2010, it started to affect a small number of rankings at that point. We now know, the “time-to-first-byte” (TTFB) correlates highly with rankings.

TTFB is exactly what the name suggests: the amount of time needed for a browser to load the first byte of your web page’s data.

If that was the whole story, we’d only focus on improving TTFB. But there’s more.

We also know that 40% of people will close a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Further, 47% of polled consumers expect a page to load within 2 seconds.

Google may not take total page speed into account, but users do. Even if your TTFB is good, if it takes 3-4 seconds for your full page to load, many visitors will leave without waiting.

The worst part is that they’ll click the “back” button and choose a different search result.

This is known as “pogo-sticking,” and it’s one of the most important signs that a user isn’t satisfied.

If it happens too often, your rankings will drop in favor of a competing search result that doesn’t have the same issues.

Finally, while it isn’t a strictly SEO point, consider that just a one-second delay in loading time can cause conversions to drop by 7%. Even if site speed didn’t affect search rankings, you’d still want to optimize it.

Not all site speed problems are of equal importance: While there are hundreds of factors that affect site speed, some are much more common than others.

Zoompf analyzed the top 1,000 Alexa-ranked sites for site speed and found that the following four problems were the most common (in order from most to least):

1. unoptimized images
2. content served without HTTP compression
3. too many CSS image requests (not using sprites)
4. no caching information (expires header)

Keep in mind that the sites in that analysis were some of the best on the web. They fixed many basic problems that may affect you, especially if you use WordPress:

• excessive plugin use
• not using a CDN for static files
• a slow web host

Don’t guess your site speed problems; diagnose: You very well may have one of those issues that I just listed, but first, you need to confirm them.

There are a lot of great tools out there, but I always recommend starting with Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. Enter a URL, and let the tool do its thing:

Any score above 80 is decent. That being said, higher is better, and improving Quick Sprout’s speed is on my long list of things to do.

If you’d like a second opinion, use a tool such as GTmetrix.

Notice that some tools will give you different scores. That’s because they weigh problems differently.

The following are the two most important things you need to ensure: that (1) your page loads quickly (under 2 seconds) and (2) your page is as small as possible with the least number of requests.

The Google tool is the simplest and a good place to start. It will give you the most important issues to fix (in red). Fix the orange ones if possible, but they don’t usually cause too much of a slowdown in your loading speed.

I do recommend using another tool to get more details. With GTmetrix as an example, you can click on the “waterfall” tab to see the exact amount of time each request took to fulfill.

This lets you see if your hosting isn’t up to par (a lot of waiting) or if one request on your page is taking way longer than another.

Once you know what your problems are, fix them. As I said before, there’s no way I can go into everything in this guide, but I’ll show you what to do if you have some common problems.

Start with your images: If you do nothing else, compress them. Most types of images have unnecessary metadata that take up space, which can be deleted without causing any harm.

Use a tool such as Optimizilla to compress pictures beforehand, or use a plugin such as WP Smush to compress any pictures you upload to WordPress automatically.

In addition, pick your file size carefully. JPEG files are usually smaller once compressed although not as high quality as PNG files. If possible, use vector images (SVG is the most popular format), which can scale to any dimension with no loss of quality.

Next up: Combine images into sprites.

A “sprite” is simply an image file that contains many small images. Instead of having to make a separate request for each image, you only have to get the one. Then, you use CSS to tell the browser which area of that image to use.

Sprites should include often used images such as navigation icons and logos.

Here is a complete guide to CSS sprites if you’d like to do it manually.

An easier way to accomplish this is to use an online sprite creator. Here is how to use it: create a new sprite, then drag as many appropriate pictures as you can onto the canvas:

Next, download your sprite (button at the top), and upload it to your site. It’s much easier than coding it from scratch.

I’ve also collected some of the best guides to other common problems:

• Enable HTTP compression: http://ift.tt/1I9BjZk
• Set expires header: http://ift.tt/1MXA0vX OR use a simple expires header plugin: http://ift.tt/1xXuUNI
• How to use W3 Total Cache for WordPress: http://ift.tt/wCSS3g
• A simple guide to speeding up WordPress: http://ift.tt/u8YbRL
• One more WordPress guide for good measure: http://ift.tt/1b9ytRh

You don’t have to fix 100% of the problems that tools highlight, but be careful when you ignore one. Just because one page may have a fast loading speed doesn’t mean that all your pages do.

I suggest testing at least 10 pages across your site, preferably the ones that are the longest or largest (with the most images usually).

How do mobile visitors see your site?

The biggest recent changes to technical SEO have revolved around increasing the importance of mobile friendliness.

On April 21, 2015, Google released the “mobilegeddon” update. While it was hyped up as a huge update, it only had a slightly higher impact on rankings than normal:

But don’t dismiss it: Google has made its opinion on the importance of mobile-friendly content very clear. And this is just the first update of more to come; think of it as a warning shot.

The good news is that even if you lose some rankings, it’s not a permanent or even long-term penalty once you fix it:

“If your site’s pages aren’t mobile-friendly, there may be a significant decrease in mobile traffic from Google Search. But have no fear, once your site becomes mobile-friendly, we will automatically re-process (i.e., crawl and index) your pages.”

Test your website’s mobile friendliness: The first and last place you need to test your site is on Google’s mobile friendly checker tool. Enter your URL, and the tool will show you exactly what Google thinks of your page:

Additionally, you can check all the pages of a verified website in Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) by navigating to “Search Traffic > Mobile Usability.”

In a perfect world, you’ll have no errors either way.

However, most sites do have mobile issues. In fact, 44% of Fortune 500 company websites are not mobile-friendly.

So if your site is not currently mobile-friendly, you are not alone. But, it’s something you should fix as soon as possible.

To start with, you can choose from three different approaches to mobile-friendly design.

Approach #1 – Responsive design: This is the best option in the vast majority of cases. A responsive design shrinks and expands according to the visitor’s device.

Instead of setting widths for elements, you set a percentage.

For example, this is non-responsive CSS:

#body {

width: 600px;

}

It could be rewritten for a responsive site as:

#body {

width: 50%;

}

With this responsive code, the body section will always take up half of the visitor’s screen, regardless whether they use a phone or laptop.

Although those simple changes solve most of the problems, there is more to mobile design.

You can also use media queries so that you have different CSS values, depending on the screen size.

For example:

@media screen and (min-width: 600px) { CSS code here… }

The CSS you enter there will only be active when the screen is at least 600 pixels wide.

To learn more, read this guide on responsive design.

Approach #2 – Separate URLs for desktop and mobile visitors: This method has mostly died out in favor of responsive design.

This approach involves creating at least two different versions of each page of your website: a mobile one and a non-mobile one.

If the functionality of your website changes a lot depending on the size of the screen, this can be a good option.

But for most sites, it doesn’t make sense. Not only do you have twice as many web pages to update but you also face so many sizes of phones, tablets, and laptops that responsive design usually makes more sense.

Approach # 3 – Serve different content based on the visitor’s device: Finally, you can have a single URL for each page, but first check for a mobile user agent. If a visitor is on a mobile device, you can load a specific page, but if they aren’t, you can load the default page.

It’s similar to Approach #2 in that you’ll have to code for two different pages. The one upside is that all backlinks will point to a single URL, which will help content rank better.

Common mobile design mistakes: Making a site mobile-friendly really isn’t that hard. In most cases, it’s much easier than optimizing page load speed.

That being said, there are seven fairly common mistakes to keep an eye out for:

1. Blocked JavaScript, CSS, and image files: access is controlled by your robots.txt file (more on that later).
2. Unplayable content: don’t use flash videos, which aren’t playable on many mobile devices. HTML5 videos are a better option.
3. Faulty redirects: don’t just redirect mobile users to your home page. Redirect them to an equivalent page they were looking for.

4. Mobile-only 404s: if you’re serving dynamic (separate) URLs, make sure they both work.

5. Avoid interstitials and pop-ups: Pop-ups are always a controversial subject. While they’re annoying to some on desktops/laptops, they are much more annoying and often difficult to close on mobile. If you can, don’t have anything that blocks your content on a mobile device:

6. Irrelevant cross-links: If you have a separate mobile version of your site, always link within that. Don’t make the mistake of linking to a desktop site page from the mobile site.

7. Slow mobile pages: Remember that most mobile users are on a slower connection than desktop users. This makes optimizing your load speed crucial (see above section).

A strong site architecture will get you noticed

Google sends its search spiders to almost every website on a regular basis. However, the spiders need help to discover new pages or updated pages.

Having a clear and simple site architecture will help your pages get indexed and ranked faster. This isn’t new. All the rules and best practices in 2015 are the same as they have been for years. However, this is really important, so don’t skip it just because you haven’t heard news of a new algorithm.

There are four main components to creating a site that Google loves to crawl:

Step 1 – Create HTML and XML sitemaps: It starts with a sitemap that lists URLs on your site. This is the most basic way to direct spiders.

There are two types of sitemaps: HTML and XML.

HTML sitemaps are designed for humans, but search spiders can also use them to find pages on your site. These are typically linked to in the footer of your website, so the links don’t have to be prominent.

An XML sitemap, on the other hand, is essentially a text file with one URL per link. Humans shouldn’t see this—only search spiders. If you have an especially large site, you’ll need more than one XML sitemap. A single sitemap can’t be more than 50,000 URLs of 50MB.

You can (and should) also make separate sitemaps for each type of content (video, images, articles, etc.).

While you can have both, you need at least an XML sitemap. It will serve as the starting point for most spiders.

You have a few options to create your sitemap. First, you can use the Bing plugin to generate a server side sitemap.

The most popular option is to use a WordPress plugin to automatically create and update your sitemap. You can either use a specialized plugin like Google XML sitemap or use Yoast’s all-in-one SEO plugin, which has the option to create a sitemap.

Next, submit your sitemap in both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

In Google Search Console, go to “Crawl > Sitemaps,” and add all your sitemaps (one at a time), using the “Add/Test Sitemap” button in the top right.

Similarly, in Bing, go to the “Sitemaps” navigation section, and enter your sitemap(s):

Here’s the part that most site owners forget: you also have to add sitemap locations to your robots.txt file. This tells other spiders where to check. Plus, Google would check there if for some reason it had problems with your submission.

Your robots.txt file should include a section like this, with a line for each sitemap:

User-agent: *

Sitemap: http://ift.tt/1MC0eHl

Sitemap: http://ift.tt/1MC0dU2

You can even look at Google’s own robots.txt to see its sitemaps:

Step 2 – Silo content as much as possible: Another major way Google uses to crawl sites is to follow internal links. In addition, this is partly how it assigns relevance to a page and website.

Siloing involves breaking up your content into different categories. For example, since the Crazy Egg blog covers conversion optimization, email marketing, etc., there are different categories for each:

• http://ift.tt/1cDVhrz
• http://ift.tt/1d4uhSh
• http://ift.tt/JaTJ0f
• http://ift.tt/1MXzZbo

Each category page links to the posts in that category. The point of this is so that Google’s spiders could land on the homepage (or any post), navigate to a category, and then visit all the most recent posts on the category page.

Because of this, no post is more than a few clicks away.

Of course, there’s a problem when your site gets too big or you sell too many products as you can only fit so many per page.

You still want all parts of your website to be within 3-4 clicks of each other to ensure they get crawled. The most popular option is faceted navigation, which lets you filter results:

The right filters can take millions of results down to several in just a few clicks.

I also talked about one other bonus of having a simple site architecture. With a silo structure, it’s clearer to search engines what your site is about.

Instead of having a bunch of posts and pages on your website in no particular order, arrange them all in categories to make it clear to search spiders which content goes together:

One of Google’s main goals is to provide the most relevant results. The easier it can determine the topics you write about, the more search traffic you will get.

Step 3 – Get rid of crawl errors: The final part of optimizing your site for crawling is to get rid of anything that prevents Google from identifying or crawling your website.

Head over to Search Console, and navigate to “Crawl > Crawl errors”.

If you have a large site, you might see thousands of errors if you haven’t addressed them. That’s okay—you can often fix large batches at the same time. Here is a complete guide to fixing common crawl errors.

Stop confusing search engines

Redirects are necessary to keep any site up to date, but you need to do it the right way.

Use the wrong codes, and it will not only hurt your visitors but also affect your search engine rankings. I’ll explain how in a moment.

A brief overview of page redirects: There are many good reasons to redirect a page. It’s usually because there is an updated version of it or you no longer cover that exact topic but would like to preserve some “link juice.”

There are two popular types of redirects:

• 301: a permanent redirect
• 302: a temporary redirect

When you tell a search engine that a page has permanently been moved to a new URL (301), it will transfer most of the old page’s authority to the new one (90-99%).

However, if you do a 302 redirect, the search engine knows that the redirect will be gone soon and won’t transfer the authority of the original page over. If the redirect stays in place long enough, you will lose at least part of your traffic (usually).

Simple rule: If you no longer need a page, create a 301 redirect to an updated page.

The file not found page (404 error): Another common browser code is the 404 code, which means the page could not be found.

It’s important to create a custom 404 page even if it’s simple. If not, it’ll look like this to your visitors:

Most visitors will obviously close the page or return back to where they were.

Instead, creating a custom 404 page, like this one on Quick Sprout, can invite a lost visitor in:

Just below that llama, there are two clear links to important parts of the site. While some visitors will still leave, many will explore, which is great.

There are a few different situations where a 404 error will come up:

• You moved a page: You should 301 redirect the old page to the new one (it’s easy to forget).
• Someone linked to an incorrect URL: Either 301 redirect that URL to the correct one (if the link is strong), or create a custom 404 page.
• You deleted a page: Redirect it if it has links pointing to it (or significant traffic) and you have another highly relevant page to redirect to. Or just have it go to your custom 404 page.

The easiest way to find 404 pages on your site is with Search Console.

Once in your Search Console, navigate to “Crawl > Crawl Errors.”

This time, we’re specifically looking for “not found” pages:

The most useful thing here is that you can click any of these individual URLs. When you do, a pop-up will appear with more details. There’s also a “linked from” tab so you can see which pages link to it (you could correct any incorrect internal links).

Fix the link on those pages, and then mark the problem as fixed.

Another option is to use Ahrefs to find broken links. This is probably the best tool you can use for this in order to correct off-page links (controlled by someone else).

Type in your site in the search bar, then highlight the “Inbound Links” dropdown menu, and click on “Broken Backlinks.”

You’ll get a list of all the sites linking to your main domain, but with links that result in a 404 error. Usually this is because the other party made a typo.

If the link is strong enough, you can go to the linking page, find contact information, and give them the correct URL to replace it with.

Or, as I said earlier, you can 301 redirect the broken URL to the right one, which will preserve some link juice.

Get rid of thin or duplicate content

Pandas aren’t just adorable animals—they are also one of Google’s most famous algorithm updates.

The first Panda update was in 2011, which affected 11.8% of queries (huge). After that, there were a total of 26 more Panda updates in the following three years.

The Panda update was targeting low quality or duplicate content. Sites that had big issues were punished severely.

Curiously, there hasn’t been a Panda update since September 23, 2014 (as of July 2015). I’m not sure if we’ll ever see one again.

Why? Recently, Google released a “phantom” update. This update involved Google changing its core quality algorithm. There’s a chance that it incorporates part or all of Panda. After all, Panda was a filter that had to be run periodically. Google would rather be able to monitor quality constantly.

So that’s where we are now: Google is getting better and better at detecting duplicate content, and you will lose search traffic if you have a significant amount of it.

Duplicate content is bad for visitors, which is why search engines don’t like it. In addition, it can confuse search engines because they don’t know which page is most relevant.

Note: Even if you don’t get a penalty, you can still lose traffic.

Luckily, it’s pretty easy to take action to protect yourself against being penalized for duplicate content.

Step 1 – Find duplicate content: It’s pretty simple to find any pages with duplicate content. As is often the case, Google Search Console is the best place to start. Go to “Search appearance > HTML improvements” to see if you have any issues:

Click the number to see specific cases of duplicate content.

Alternatively, you can use a tool such as Siteliner. Enter your domain, and the tool will find any duplicate content, plus sort it by percent match:

Note that the free version only covers 250 URLs, so large sites will have to either upgrade or rely on Google Search Console.

Step 2 – Get rid of duplicate content issues: There are three main ways in which you can solve your problems:

1. Delete the duplicate content
2. Add a canonical URL to each version
3. Reduce the amount of duplicate content

The first solution is trivial—implement it if you can.

Mostly, duplicate content issues are caused by URL parameters. For example, visitors could get to the exact same page with the following URLs:

• http://ift.tt/1CkULlc
• http://ift.tt/1MC0eY7
• http://ift.tt/1MXzZrW

If all pages are indexed, they will be considered duplicate content. Your only option here is to include a canonical link on the page, if you haven’t already.

A canonical link tells Google that you realize there are similar pages on your site, but there is one preferred version that is the best version for readers to go to.

On this page, I have a canonical link to the original URL. Even if a visitor comes to the page with the parameters in their link, that same canonical will tell Google what it needs to know.

Finally, if you’re getting duplicate content errors because of your “read more” descriptions, you can reduce the number of words you show on your blog and category pages. Alternatively, write a custom description for each.

Describe your content like a pro with structured data

Modern search engines are pretty good at putting together what your page is about just by looking at the on-page content. However, you can make it even easier for them by using structured data markup.

While there are multiple libraries you can use, stick to schema.org, which is a project created by all the major search engines.

Structured data isn’t new, but it’s still heavily underutilized. Usually, it’s because an SEO hears the term and gets squeamish, just like with “technical” SEO.

It’s actually really simple, and I’ll show you how to use it for your site in this section.

What schema is – the simple version: The schema vocabulary is just a way of describing content to search engines. You can insert schema terms into your existing HTML.

While Google doesn’t use schema markup as a direct ranking factor, it can use it to help categorize a page and to create rich snippets.

Rich snippets are those things you see in certain searches, e.g., star ratings, pictures, and anything else besides the plain text:

Rich snippets can affect your search rankings. They almost always the increase click through rate, which could tell Google that your page is more important than the surrounding results, leading to more traffic and better rankings.

You can add schema terms to existing HTML code to describe a section of content. For example, the following common term—“itemscope”—tells search engines that the entire “div” section is about the same topic:

<div itemscope>

<h1>Avatar</h1>

<span>Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954) </span>

<span>Science fiction</span>

<a href=”../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html”>Trailer</a>

</div>

But there are thousands of other terms you can use. Here’s the full list.

Knowing which ones you’ll use most often takes time to learn. Instead of looking through that colossal list, you can use Google’s markup helper. It takes you through the process step-by-step for the URL you enter. You simply highlight text on the page, which will automatically open a small menu, and then pick which attribute the text describes:

There are only a few steps to the process. At the end, you can view the structured data incorporated into your page’s source code with the changes highlighted:

From there, you can either manually copy and paste the changes onto your page or click the download button to download the entire page code.

If you’re using WordPress, you could also use the Schema Creator plugin by Raven. It allows you to type in a limited number of important schema values into the WordPress page editor.

Whether or not your code is generated by Google, it’s still a good idea to test the code. Copy the entire code into the structured data testing tool, and click “validate” to see if there are any errors:

Conclusion

Ever wonder how some SEOs charge tens of thousands of dollars per month for their services?

This is why. Consider that this is just a beginner’s guide to technical SEO, and we haven’t really scratched the surface.

Expert SEOs learn as much as they can about all these individual elements and practice their skills for years to master them.

For now, you don’t need to do that. Instead, pick one or two of these technical SEO aspects. Then, see how they apply to your site, and fix any errors. Track your work and the results so you can quantify how much the mistakes hurt you.

I realize that there are some fairly complicated topics in this article, so if you need any clarification or you have some experience with technical SEO that you’d like to share, leave a comment below.

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