Website customer journey: more sales through an engaging story

Often, marketers talk about a so-called ‘(website) customer journey’. But what does this exactly mean? Meanwhile, this umbrella term has so many definitions that it no longer has a clear meaning. Time for a clear definition! 

In this blog, we will discuss what the (website) customer journey is and how you can use it to generate more revenue for your website. 

What is the customer journey? 

The customer journey is the path that a customer takes from the moment of an initial encounter with your company, to purchasing a product and hopefully becoming a returning customer. Throughout the customer journey, a potential customer is considering the best options that suit his or her needs and where to get those options. 

The general idea behind a customer journey is that the first contact rarely leads directly to a sale. A conversion often requires several phases or contact moments. These phases together form the customer journey and can be roughly divided into the following four: 

Awareness

In the awareness phase, potential customers discover that they have a certain need. Therefore, they go out and do research to find different options and solutions for their need. 

Consideration

In this phase, potential customers have a better idea of what they exactly want and delineate their needs. Accordingly, they compare the best solutions that best fit their needs. 

Purchase

The potential customer is transformed into a customer by proceeding to purchase a product or service. In this phase, it is important that the customer experiences as few barriers as possible. 

After-purchase

This phase is about building a relationship. Through pleasant experiences, providing good customer service and staying in touch with the customer. With high satisfaction, there is a chance that the customer recommends the product or service to someone else.

Customer journey vs. Website customer journey

The only difference between a regular customer journey and a website customer journey is that the latter takes place mainly on the website itself. The four stages would look like this: 

Awareness

I want to be in more control over my WooCommerce store by adding more functionalities and am curious what it takes to do so. After reading the blog, I think I should buy a plugin that suits my needs. 

Consideration

Now I just have to find the best option. After looking at several options, I think the WooCommerce plugin of WPupgrader  is the most suitable. The page won me over.

Purchase

I have purchased the plugin and the installation went smoothly! Also, the guide about how to utlize the plugin was very helpful. 

After-purchase

What a nice plugin this is! The customer service was also very good: when I had a question about the functionalities, I immediately received a clear en extensive response. I would definitely recommend this plugin to others. 

How to create an engaging website customer journey 

From the first moment of contact with your website, a potential customer has to be stimulated to see you as an option. After that, trust needs to be gained by convincing the potential customer that you are the right match! What can help with this is mapping out the customer journey by means of dedicated (landing) pages. 

Landing pages for awareness

  • Blogs are very suitable for introducing your target group to your services or products. In blogs, address their problem and tell them how they can solve it. Try to incorporate the keyword(s) in the blogs that your target audience searches for in Google. 
  • Your homepage should contain the most important information about your products or services offered. This is the entry point and through this path potential customers should be enticed to explore the rest of your website. 
  • You can use a portfolio to show what you have to offer as an organization and the variety of projects you have done. Hopefully, the potential clients will find projects that are similar to their niche. 

Pages for consideration

  • Specific product or service pages are pages that tie in nicely with the blog(s) you created in the awareness phase. These pages should further crystallize the potential customer’s problem and provide a solution to it. Additional tips: make the page scannable, structured and visually appealing. 
  • Do you offer an exclusive product? Then you can warm up a potential customer by offering a free sample
  • A convincing and clear pricing page can help the potential customer decide whether the money is worth the investment and whether it fits within their budget. You can add testimonials and reviews here to increase the chances of winning over the potential customer. 
  • In the service industry, but also increasingly for web shops, emotion plays a major role in purchases. So on your About Us page, tell them who you are, how you distinguish yourself from others and what your business contributes to the world.  

Pages for purchase

  • On checkout or contact pages, make sure that the product or service is easy to purchase. Also include quality and safety labels or references in order to increase trust. 
  • Do not ask for unnecessary information and make the payment process as quick as possible. 
  • Answer any questions the customer may still have about the terms and conditions or (shipping) costs of a product or service by using an FAQ table.

Pages for after-purchase

  • Make it easy for your customers to contact you through a ticket system or chatbot. Customer service is one of the most essential parts of a positive customer journey today. 
  • Ask customers to sign up for your newsletter and keep them informed about interesting news and information about new products or services.

Website speed optimization: get a perfect Google score

Does your website already meet all the speed optimization requirements of Google Pagespeed Insights? Anno 2021 it is important to have a website that loads at the speed of light. In fact, Google is increasingly judging websites by user experience metrics, of which website speed is an important one. There are a number of useful website speed optimization hacks you can use to make your website lightning fast. In this article we will discuss the most important ones. 

Google developments 2021

The Google algorithm is actually constantly evolving, so it’s no wonder that a few things are going to change this year as well. In June, an important update called “Core web vitals” will be implemented. In short, Google is going to judge websites more strongly based on user experience factors using ‘Core Web Vital statistics’. This includes factors such as page speed, responsiveness and the stability of content while loading. 

Google has promised that website owners have until June 2021 to improve their website metrics on user-friendliness, speed and structure. Since then, Google saw a 70% increase in users engaging with Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights and Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report in preparation for the update.

What does this mean for my website speed score? 

Google Pagespeed Insights is actually a misleading name because the test measures more statistics than just website speed. This also means that you won’t achieve a score of 100% if speed is the only optimization priority you have for your website. Factors such as user friendliness and structure must also be taken into account. Therefore, in this article we also look at these factors, in addition to the website speed optimization hacks. 

Create a solid foundation by choosing a good hoster

How fast your website is, is for a big part determined by your hosting provider. If your website is running on a server that responds slowly, then there is little point in starting to optimize your website. That’s like tuning up a moped: you can optimize all you want, but you won’t succeed in making it fast enough to drive on the highway. For this, you need a car. 

If you choose a solid WordPress hosting provider, your website will have more hosting capacity, and you will notice this almost immediately in the loading time. The two hosters we can heartily recommend are Kinsta and SiteGround. Both are very good and score excellent on speed, support and security. 

Go for full size images and compress them

Most websites are full of images. This often also means that images are the cause of a significant portion of the loading time. Therefore, we recommend testing the loading time of your website thoroughly and to reduce the size of unnecessarily large images to the actual size. 

WordPress already helps by saving each image you upload in different formats. You can further reduce and scale images in the WordPress media library, but also – if you are handy – on your own computer before uploading. You can use any image editor that exists; from Photoshop to Paint.

When you have set the format of your images correctly, there is a second optimization possible for the loading time of your images: compression. This means that the images are “packed” as best as possible into small packages, without losing too much quality. In this way you can quickly save several megabytes on dozens of images. 

Load content above the fold first

One factor that relates a lot to user experience is how quickly content above the fold loads. In other words, content that is visible without the visitor having to scroll down. Because Google wants to provide users with a pleasant experience, a lot of value is placed on how fast this content is loaded. 

How does your content load correctly above the fold? This has to do with how your website’s codes are structured. Some tips we can give you are:

  1. Remove CSS and Javascript that block the loading of the content above the fold. This way you load the visible elements first, then the rest. 
  2. A technique that has become very popular in recent years is Lazy-loading. This loads images only when they are needed.
  3. Reduce the data above the fold by compressing and/or combining scripts. 
  4. Make sure that the important content above the fold comes into view first, before other elements are loaded. 

Fair is fair, this does take some coding. Not too versed in coding, or don’t have anyone on staff? We’d be happy to help you out. 

Optimize your website code

An important point for website speed optimization is to optimize the code of your website. You do this by combining and/or compressing scripts. Loading JavaScript later by moving it to the footer also helps in improving your website code. 

Combining scripts

Combining scripts means nothing more than putting all the separate files together in one file. It’s basically like combining the contents of three Word documents by placing them one after the other in one document. The file size of the one combined script is actually no different from that of the separate scripts added together. Yet you improve the loading time, because your web browser has to make a new connection to load each file. And that takes time.

Because the browser now does not have to connect for three scripts, but only for one, the speed of the loading time increases. Two excellent plugins that allow you to combine JavaScript and CSS are WProcket and NitroPack.

Compressing scripts 

When you have combined all scripts as much as possible in the previous step, you can now start with compressing the combined file. For scripts, compression mainly means that unnecessary spaces, comments, tabs and whitespace are removed from the code so that the total file size decreases. This is called minifying. You can find numerous WordPress plugins that optimize the code for your website, but sometimes they create more problems than they solve. The plugin that we found most useful for compressing scripts is WProcket

Move JavaScript to the footer

JavaScript files contain code related to the functionality of your website. And CSS files make sure the website and the functions are displayed in a certain way. Since search engines care that your website is fully displayed as quickly as possible, it helps to load CSS files first, and JavaScript files as late as possible. A free plugin that can do this for you is Scripts to Footer

Check carefully that your website is still functioning optimally after activating this plugin. It often requires some technical knowledge to tune all JavaScript files so that they do not cause problems in the footer.

Use caching

A cache makes your website faster by preventing the web server from having to load the same page over and over again. The website will load faster on your next visit because the browser has already saved it, so to speak. It is very easy to set up caching. If you have a WordPress website, you can do this using the plugins WP Rocket and W3 Total Cache

Loading static content externally with CDN

Normally, images and scripts are loaded from your own server. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is an external hosting party that copies and offers all your static content (images, PDFs, videos, but also scripts that rarely change). When a visitor visits your website, the dynamic content (the code of your website that changes per request) is still delivered by your own server, but all static content can be retrieved from somewhere else. Because the requests of a visitor are spread over two servers, the load per server is lightened and a request can be handled faster. This improves your website speed. 

Read more about the best CDN providers of 2021 in the article by Techradar.

Remove and relocate render blocking resources

A website has several components that are not directly interesting to a visitor, but which must be loaded either way. Think of certain CSS, Javascript or tools like Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. If these scripts are loaded first, the visitor has to wait longer for the things that really matter. And this is not what our friend Google likes either.

To solve this you can do a few things:

  • Minify your JavaScript and CSS. This means removing all extra white space and unnecessary description in the code.
  • Add JavaScript and CSS to each other. To do this, take several .js and .css files and combine them.
  • Delay loading JavaScript. It can be useful to delay loading JavaScript files until everything else on the page has loaded. A reliable way to delay loading JavaScript is to use asynchronous loading.

A handy plugin that can get you well on your way to removing and moving render blocking resources is WP Rocket

Website maintenance

The final point for website speed optimization is maintaining your WordPress environment. Many website owners neglect this task which makes their website slower and sometimes even let it crash. Therefore, always make sure that your theme, plugins, WordPress and PHP version are up to date. Also try to remove all plugins you no longer use, they take up unnecessary space and slow down your website speed.

But don’t take Google too seriously.. 

Actually, we mainly recommend that you take the score and recommendations of Google PageSpeed Insights with a grain of salt. A 100/100 Pagespeed score does not guarantee a lightning-fast website, but only shows that you meet Google’s website optimization requirements. This means that Google values your website more than websites with a lower score. Which of course is a big advantage if there is a lot of competition for similar content on which you want to rank. Yet, this does not say everything because website speed is only a small piece of the puzzle. There are many more Google ranking factors (2021) that are important for a good score in the search engine. 

To assess the speed of your website a bit more objectively, you can also use other tools like GTMetrix and Pingdom Website Speed Test. Just like Google, these tests give recommendations on how to optimize your website speed. This data will hopefully get you very far in speeding up your website and making it search engine friendly!

Best WordPress webshop themes 2021: our top 8

Are you planning on making your own webshop or do you want to build a webshop for a client? Then you for sure need an attractive, fast and responsive WordPress webshop theme that is user-friendly as well. Luckily there are plenty of great webshop themes to choose from and it is often not necessary to build one yourself from scratch. 

To create your webshop you can choose the free Storefront theme of Woocommerce itself. This is a free theme with a quite attractive design that meets most Google pagespeed scores. The theme also offers a number of options for implementing your own branding and is maintained by the main developers of Woocommerce. Which means that the integration with WordPress and other WooCommerce extensions is seamless.

If your goal is to design a website where you can customize the branding, it is best to choose a premium (paid) theme of WooCommerce. Most themes cost between $50 and $70 and offer numerous options for applying your own style and design. Moreover, the themes are often fully responsive and have a good speed score which is beneficial for SEO. Furthermore, the themes usually take a lot of account of user experience factors, making it easier for your webshop to convert. Which is the main goal of most webshops right? 

Enough talk, below we present our top 8 WordPress webshop themes.

Top 8 WordPress webshop themes

 

1. Astra 

Astra

 

 

Astra is a very light WordPress theme that can be used for creating webshops, portfolios, agency’s blogs and many other purposes. The theme is above all very suitable for building webshops because it is very user friendly and meets all Google pagespeed scores. The theme also offers many options for customizing your webshop. Furthermore, the theme offers very good support and is being updated with many new features on a monthly basis due to the large number of users. You can choose to extend the functionality of Astra by upgrading to the pro version of the theme. However, this is most of the time not necessary because a wide range of functionalities are completely free to use.

2. Astra 

OceanWP

OceanWP is a flexible WordPress theme that is suitable for almost any webshop, in any sector and of any size. The theme has a very clean code and is quite light, making the website optimally secured and also very fast. Also, the theme is fully responsive, works very well with Woocommerce, has an extensive mega menu and is compatible with almost all popular page builders. In addition, monthly updates are performed, making the theme better and better by time.

3. Shoptimizer

Shoptimizer

Shoptimizer is a WooCommerce theme of CommerceGurus, built around the two goals of speed and conversion. Research shows that even a one second delay results in a 7% reduction in conversions. Because Shoptimizer meets all major page speed scores, you don’t have to worry about your webshop converting less well due to poor website speed. Besides the lightning-fast website speed, Shoptimizer also has a number of very handy conversion-oriented features, including a distraction-free checkout process, trust badges (in addition to attractive call-to-action buttons) and a callback option. Moreover, this theme is designed to be completely mobile-first, which is beneficial for SEO as well.

4. Jayla

Jayla

If you want to go for a minimalistic and modern Woocommerce website then Jayla is definitely a suitable option. Jayla contains every functionality you need for creating a professional looking webshop to promote and sell your products/services online. The theme is fully responsive as well and super flexible through the advanced panel options and mega menu’s. Moreover, you have many options for customization through the Multi Builder blocks and an unlimited number of colors for the layout. Video backgrounds and even portfolios are also available! Building general pages can be done with the easy-to-use page builder Visual Composer and the Bootstrap framework.

5. Metro

Metro

Like Jayla, Metro is an excellent choice if you want to go for a minimalistic WooCommerce design. The theme comes together with two premium plugins called WooCommerce Variation Swatches Pro and Woocommerce Variation Images Gallery Pro. These two plugins are built to make your web shop pages even more attractive and convert better. Metro also offers a wide range of layout choices, with an unlimited number of color combinations and seven unique multi-page homepages. Like all the other themes in this blog, Metro is fully responsive and mobile friendly, making your web shop look great on all devices.

6. Divi

Divi

Divi is an immensely popular theme, suitable for all kinds of applications – from creating blogs to building webshops. Especially when combined with the bundled WooCommerce plugin, Divi is transformed into a true e-commerce monster. Thanks to Divi’s very user-friendly page builder (called Divi Builder), designing layouts is a breeze for everyone. When you download Divi you can choose from pre-programmed layouts with different homepages, portfolios, e-commerce storefronts and much more. In this way you can start building your webshop right away!

7. Storefront

Storefront

Storefront is the official WooCommerce theme of WordPress, which can also be downloaded for free at WordPress.org. The theme is seen as a lightweight basic theme that forms an excellent basis for creating a webshop. The integration with WooCommerce is seamless and makes it easy to create a fully functional webshop. The theme looks pretty simple, but the lightweight and bloat-free design makes it easy to expand and customize Storefront to your own wishes.

8. Atelier

Atelier

Atelier offers a high-quality look that you would expect with a premium WooCommerce theme. Because of its luxurious look, the theme is very suitable for selling art or more luxurious clothing for example. Moreover Atelier contains and supports a number of popular plugins, such as Yoast, BuddyPress, Visual Composer, Gravity Forms, Revolution Slider and Go Responsive Pricing Tables. It also has a large number of layouts to choose from, with seven demos, three product pages, 10 headers and more. Also included are shortcodes and a child theme for easy customization.

 

Enough WordPress webshop themes to choose from.. 

As you can see there is enough choice for your ideal WordPress webshop theme. We are curious about what your favorite theme is for creating a webshop, in a comment at the bottom of this blog.

 

Google Ranking factors: what is going to change in 2021?

Google Ranking factors: what is going to change in 2021?

About a month ago, WordPress Tavern published a rather disturbing article about a number of new Google ranking factors in 2021. The article states that as of May 2021 Google will rank websites more strongly based on user experience factors by means of  ‘Core Web Vital statistics’. This includes factors such as page speed, responsiveness and the stability of content during loading.

The upcoming Google update combines these factors with previously announced UX-related signals for mobile friendliness, safe browsing, HTTPS security and intrusive interstitials (intermediate pages or web elements that appear before or on the mobile web page you actually want to visit, for example ads, banners or pop-ups).

Google has promised that website owners will have until May 2021 to improve their website metrics in terms of user friendliness, speed and structure. Since then, the company has seen a 70% increase of Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights and Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report users in preparation for the update.

But what will be the effect of these new ranking factors on the current ranking system? That is of course the big question and nobody knows exactly. What we do know is that Google has promised to still give priority to pages with the best information in general. Hence, the website metrics related to user experiences, which will be used from May 2021, help a website to score better when there is a lot of competition on similar content.

Most likely this means that already existing Google ranking factors such as backlinks and content will remain important. So we think there is no reason to worry that the entire ranking system will be blown over by the Google update. Below we have made a list with which Google ranking factors will all remain relevant in 2021, taking the new update into account.

Type Google ranking factors

Before we present our top 6 Google ranking factors, with which you can optimize your website, we will first discuss the three different types of Google ranking factors. Marketers usually talk in terms of ‘on- and off-page’ Google ranking factors, but there are actually three distinct types: 

Off-page ranking factors: external ranking factors that are not measured on your website by Google and mainly relate to backlinks.

On-page ranking factors: ranking factors that are measured on your website itself and are related to the keywords and informative quality of your pages. 

Technical ranking factors: factors that are also measured on your website itself, but have more to do with the overall performance of the website as a whole, as opposed to individual pages as is the case with on-page ranking factors. 

It is important to note that there is not a single Google ranking factor that will make or break your SEO. It is the sum of all your technical, on-page and off-page efforts that will determine your website ranking.

The 6 major Google ranking factors in 2021

Now that we have categorized the Google ranking factors, we are pleased to present the 6 important ranking factors in 2021, starting with the technical ones.

1. Core web vitals

As discussed in the introduction, Core Web Vitals are the latest user experience metrics that will soon become very important Google ranking factors. The statistics measure the first impression the user gets when visiting a website. For now this impression will be made measurable with three metrics, but there will most likely be more in the future. These three measurement factors are the loading time, interactivity and stability of a website.

Google ranking factors 2021: As discussed in the introduction, Core Web Vitals are the latest user experience metrics that will soon become very important Google ranking factors. The statistics measure the first impression the user gets when visiting a website. For now this impression will be made measurable with three metrics, but there will most likely be more in the future. These three measurement factors are the loading time, interactivity and stability of a website

Source image

 

Google has released a detailed set of guidelines to optimize every vital website part. In summary: for faster loading, Google recommends better service response times, less JavaScript and CSS blocking and faster loading of resources. For improved interactivity, Google recommends splitting codes and using less JavaScript.

Finally, for improved visual stability, Google recommends using size related guidelines for images and videos. This content should also be loaded from above so that images and videos are visible immediately. For more in depth knowledge about the Core Web Vitals we recommend reading the following article

Want to know how to measure core web vitals on your own website? Then read the following article.

2. Mobile optimization

Since September 2020 Google uses mobile-first indexing when crawling websites. This means that Google’s search engine mainly uses the mobile version of a website for evaluating a page.

Even if the desktop version of your website is fully optimized, your ranking in Google’s search engine can take a huge hit if the site is not optimized for mobile traffic. So always preview your web pages on the mobile to see if they are easily accessible on this device. 

You can use this test of Google to check whether your website is mobile friendly. If your website is sufficient, you’ll get a green light and if not, you’ll get (some) suggestions for improvement. 

Checking your website page by page may be a bit impractical. You can also choose to use the Google Search Console tool to check all your pages at once. Instructions: Start the tool, go to Enhancements > Mobile Usability and view a report compiled with a list of suggested improvements.

In this article on Mobile SEO you can read more about how to optimize your website for mobile traffic.

3. Internal links

As mentioned in the article about Mobile SEO, search engines crawl different types of content and index them accordingly. The search engine uses internal links as a method to analyze information and index it correctly. In this context, the term ‘internal links’ refers to any hyperlink that refers to an internal page on a website.

In practice, this means that the more organized and thoughtful your internal link structure is, the easier it is for search engines (and users) to find what they are looking for. 

To realize this, when creating a new page, you need to think about which pages you are going to link to. As we also have done in this article. 

A popular method to structure internal links is by creating subject clusters. The idea is simple: you create content around a specific overarching topic and maintain interconnectedness within this cluster.

Furthermore, topic clusters are also beneficial from a user experience perspective. It makes content easy to navigate and readers will find that they do not have to go to multiple sites to find what they are looking for. This also increases the ‘average time on website’, which is also an important parameter for a better ranking.

4. Backlinks

On the contrary to an internal link, a backlink is a hyperlink that comes from a page outside your website. In 1996 Google launched its groundbreaking PageRank algorithm update that made the number and quality of links to a website or page a strong indicator of a website’s ranking. Ironically enough, this is still the case more than two decades later. 

It seems that Google is planning to abandon backlinks in the future, but for now this still seems to be a pie in the sky. Backlinks are and will remain the most important ranking factor for a website for the time being. So your goal should be to get as many backlinks as possible from domains with a high authority. 

There are several backlink strategies to grow your backlink profile. The three most important are writing quality content that peers in your sector can share, guest blogs and the most difficult one: cold-outreach. To get more ideas of what kind of backlinks are suitable for your niche, competitive research is very useful. Tools that can help you on your way are for example SE Ranking and Ubersuggest.

5. Relevant keywords

There is no doubt about whether relevant keywords are the basis for an effective SEO strategy. Keywords are the search terms that people use when they visit a search engine to find what they are looking for. Before you start creating content for your website, it is crucial that you do a keyword search.

It can be a challenge to find out which keywords to use, where to place them and how often to do this. In order to have as much chance as possible to rank well, it is a good strategy to benchmark the top pages of your competitors. You can do this with the tools SE Ranking and Ubersuggest, which in our opinion are two of the best SEO tools. 

Once you’ve determined your keyword strategy, it’s time to create content. One tool that can be very useful for meeting SEO variables on the pages you are going to create is Yoast. Yoast gives you, among other things, an indication of how often you should use the keyword and where to place it. It also gives advice about the link structure on the pages you are going to design.

6. Quality content

In the good old SEO days it worked to stuff your pages with many different keywords at the same time. Nowadays focus is very important in SEO and a page has to meet an appropriate number of relevant keywords, titles and images in order to rank well. Hence, the page should be written in a ‘natural copywriting style’ with qualitative information as the main focus. After all, the goal of the visitor and Google is to get an answer to the question they have been looking for. 

Most content loses its value over time. Articles you have written in 2018 become obsolete at some point and Google search trends change over time. So try to take a closer look at older pages and complement them with new keywords and information.

Some pages may need a complete rewrite, while others only need a few minor adjustments to bring them back to life. If you are updating a message, republish it with the new publication date. This will give your visitors the impression that the message is brand new. Don’t forget to delete the old message otherwise Google will see it as duplicate content.

Google’s algorithm keeps evolving

The new update of Google that will be implemented in May 2021 shows us to keep an eye on the ever evolving SEO landscape. It is highly likely that in the future current Google ranking factors, such as backlinks and keywords, will gradually lose their value. Other factors, such as user experience and qualitative content, will take their place.

At the same time, there is no such thing as an SEO miracle cure. Climbing into the search engine takes time. It turns out that Google’s algorithms are erratic and that updates can completely overhaul the current ranking system. The most important notion to keep in mind is therefore to keep your website as relevant and informative as possible for your visitors.

Google wants to show the most relevant search results for each search, so that everyone can find the information they are looking for as quickly as possible. So if you do your absolute best to show your visitors the most relevant information possible, Google will notice it and will reward you with a positive ranking.

Mobile SEO: mobile first and the most important ranking factors

The growth of the mobile internet is unstoppable… Worldwide, more and more people are using their mobile phone to perform searches on Google, visit websites and make purchases on webshops. Of the just over 17 million inhabitants in the Netherlands in 2018, 16.38 million people were Internet users and 84% of this group used their mobile phone to surf the Internet. 

Research shows that on average we spend more than a month a year on our smartphones. The cell phone truly has become our best friend. We take it with us everywhere we go, even to the toilet.

Mobile SEO best friend

Apart from the fact that this trend has a major impact on our way of life, the SEO, ‘Search Engine Optimization’/Search Engine Optimization, ranking factors are also strongly influenced by this phenomenon. Many websites already receive more than half of their search traffic via mobile phones.

Google also sees that mobile searches have increased explosively in recent years. 

That is why websites are increasingly judged based on SEO ranking factors related to concepts such as ‘mobile first’ and ‘mobile friendliness’. Do you want to know what this means and what guidelines you should use to optimize your website for mobile traffic? Then read on or click below on the topic you want to know more about.

  1. Brief introduction SEO
  2. Mobile SEO
  3. Mobile Indexing
  4. Mobile SEO ranking factors and Google guidelines
  5. How WPupgrader can help you with your mobile SEO rankings

Brief introduction SEO

Ever wondered why one website in Google ranks better than another? The answer is SEO, which stands for the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website for internet users of a search engine. In essence, SEO ensures that your information, product or service matches the searches of internet users as well as possible. SEO also often refers to the improvement of unpaid results and excludes direct traffic through the purchase of advertisements.

This is how it works: Google (or any other search engine that performs a search) has a ‘crawler’ (a robot that searches the world wide web in a very methodical and automated way), which collects information about all the content it can find on the internet. The crawler brings all this data back to the search engine to build an index. That index is then fed through an algorithm that tries to match all the data with a specific search query. There are a lot of SEO factors that are relevant for this algorithm, just take a look at this article.

Mobile SEO

No distinction is made between the SEO ranking factors on the mobile phone or the desktop; the same principles apply to both devices. However, as relatively many searches and website visits are performed on the mobile phone these days, the experience on this device is becoming more and more important. Google and other search engines measure this experience based on a number of essential factors that you should definitely take into account when optimizing a website for mobile traffic. Don’t worry about this, because if your website is already optimized for search engines there are only a few things that need to be adjusted according to Google.

It is always a smart idea to check if your website gets a lot of mobile search traffic before you start optimizing your website. It could be that your website receives almost no mobile traffic, this differs from industry to industry (see the image below). If this is the case, it’s a shame to completely set up your website for mobile traffic. Researching your website traffic can be done with the tool Google Analytics.

Responsive web design

Advantages responsive web design

Creating a responsive website offers many advantages. For example, only one website needs to be developed and maintained for different devices and most of the content remains accessible on almost all devices, with focus on the mobile phone. 

Moreover, a responsive web design offers an optimal visitor experience on both smaller screens and larger screens with a (very) high resolution. As with dynamic websites, in a responsive web design there can also be chosen to omit less relevant content from mobile visitors in order to improve page speed. For example with heavy imagery or font files.

In addition to these benefits, Google indicates some other advantages of a responsive web design;

  • a responsive web design makes it easier for users to share content with the same URL and link to it;
  • a responsive web design helps assign Google’s algorithms accurate indexing properties to the web pages instead of investigating and indexing the existence of corresponding desktop or mobile pages;
  • it requires less time and energy to maintain multiple web pages with the same content;
  • a responsive web design does not require redirection of visitors to display a device optimized view, which ultimately reduces loading time;
  • and Google only needs to crawl a responsive web design website once, instead of multiple times to retrieve the content. This improvement in crawl efficiency can indirectly help Google index more of your site’s content and find all relevant content.

All in all, Google definitely recommends to go for a responsive web design, in order to score well in terms of mobile SEO and create the best user experience.

Mobile indexing

Another very important topic of mobile first is mobile indexing. It is very important that the Google crawler can fully index a website by not excluding JavaScript and CSS files from indexing in robots.txt. If you don’t do this, Google will not be able to determine whether the website is actually mobile friendly.

In 2020, Google indicated that their analyses show that most sites displayed in search results are suitable for mobile-first indexing. For example, 70% of the sites displayed in Google’s search results have already switched to mobile-first indexing. To make it easier, Google will switch to mobile-first indexing for all websites from September 2020. Google claims to still crawl with the traditional desktop Googlebot from time to time, but most crawling will be done with their smartphone user agent.

To check if your website complies with the mobile-first indexing features, it’s best to use the Google Search Console tools. For example, the status your mobile first indexing can be displayed on the settings page as well as in the URL inspection tool. In particular, Google recommends ensuring that the displayed content (including text, images, videos, links), metadata (titles and descriptions, robots meta tags) and all structured data are the same on both the mobile and desktop website.

 

Mobile SEO ranking factors and Google guidelines

SEO mobile ranking factors

There are several ways to make your website mobile-first easier and score well on the mobile SEO ranking factors. Below you’ll find 11 very important methods to do this:

 

  1. High page speed score: Ensure a high page speed score. This is a very important ranking factor and certainly for mobile traffic. When your website is too slow, Google will not only rate your website worse, but you will also miss a lot of visitors. If a page doesn’t load within three seconds, visitors will most likely abort the loading and go to a competitor’s website. This is especially true for webshops. Ways to improve the page speed score are: selecting a fast hoster (like Kinsta), reducing resources on HTML, CSS and JavaScript, optimizing images, limiting the number of redirects, enabling compression, using browser caching, improving the server response time, considering a Content Delivery Network and choosing a suitable (WordPress) theme. With this tool you can examine the page speed of your pages.
  2. Responsive web design: Always go for a responsive web design in the first place if you want to score as good as possible in the field of mobile SEO, here is explained why.
  3. Mobile friendliness analysis: Always test the mobile friendliness of your website with an analysis tool like the mobile friendliness test or the settings page of Google Search Console and improve the error messages.
  4. Delete unnecessary content: Delete all unimportant content on your website. Mobile visitors don’t feel like scrolling through long lists of unnecessary content, so always make sure you have a minimalistic and sleek landing page. This ensures a lower bounce rate, which can significantly improve the SEO of the website.
  5. Call to action buttons: Make sure your Call to action buttons work and give them a prominent place. In this way you don’t run the risk that visitors will leave because they couldn’t find what they came for fast enough.
  6. Clear pages: Work with clear buttons and (product) pages. For example, provide your pages with a logical categorization of content and do not put too many products on one page when you are running a webshop.
  7. Search bar at the top of the page: Make it easy for the visitor to search for specific content by placing the search bar clearly visible at the top of the page.
  8. Structured data: Use structured data from Schema.org. Because of the limited screen space on a mobile phone, a search result with rich snippets is even more striking than on a desktop. It is therefore recommended to take advantage of structured data such as rich snippets.
  9. Optimize titles and meta descriptions: Remember that when a visitor visits your website with a mobile phone, you have less screen space to work with. To score best in terms of mobile SEO, you need to be as concise as possible when creating titles, URLs and meta descriptions.
  10. Optimize for local search: If your business offers a local service or product, don’t forget to optimize the website for local search. This includes standardizing the name, address and phone number and including the name of your city in the metadata of your site.
  11. AMP: Make use of AMP (‘Accelerated Mobile Pages’) on your website where this is possible and appropriate. Read more about AMP here.

Besides the different ways to make your website mobile-first and score well  in the search results, it’s also useful for both visitors and search engines, that your website meets the following guidelines of Google;

  • notify Google when a page has been created for mobile search traffic. This helps Google to accurately display your content in search results for mobile traffic;
  • make sure your website does not block CSS, JavaScript or other  files. The Smartphone GoogleBot wants to see and categorize the same content as users, so don’t hide it. These elements are essential for Google to understand whether you have a responsive site or another mobile solution;
  • try to avoid common mistakes that really frustrate mobile visitors, such as displaying unplayable videos (for example Flash video as the main content of the page). Mobile pages that provide a poor search experience can be downgraded in the ranking or displayed with a warning in mobile search results; 
  • the text must be readable on the page without having to zoom in;
  • content should be scaled based on screen size;
  • do not bundle links in a small area 
  • avoid installing App Interstitials for mobile users as much as possible (e.g. a pop-up for downloading a particular app).

WP Upgrader can help you with your mobile SEO rankings

The above Mobile SEO ranking factors and Google guidelines can be a lot to process and perhaps also difficult to put into practice right away. At WP Upgrader we are happy to help you as our goal is to rank your (mobile) website in the search results for organic (mobile) search traffic as high as possible. We do this by applying our knowledge of the Mobile SEO ranking factors and Google guidelines to your website. So if you need help with the implementation of the SEO ranking factors, creating a responsive website or have certain questions about the Google guidelines, you can ask for help here

 

Top 5 mistakes in your navigation menu: This is how to prevent them!

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The menu structure of your WordPress website is very important for both visitors and search engines. With this article, you can improve the main navigation of your website in a few simple steps. We’re talking about the most important menu at the top of your WordPress website. Are you ready for the do’s and don’ts?

Five mistakes in the navigation of your WordPress website

Mistake #1: Generic names for menu items

When I talk to customers about a new menu navigation, I usually show their homepage and cover everything but their navigation menu with my hands. I read the menu out loud and ask them: what is this website offering and to whom? There’s usually a silence. After your logo, the navigation menu is the first thing a visitor reads on your website. An excellent opportunity to show important information here. That is why instead of ‘Our services’ or ‘What we do’ we use the terms ‘WordPress Development’ and ‘Hosting & Maintenance’. When choosing the right terms, think of what the customer is looking for, instead of what your organization wants to say. Also check out our tips at the bottom of this blog.

Mistake #2: Too many items in your navigation

Limit the number of items in your navigation. A maximum of 7 is a good guideline, but less is even better. Personally, we only have four. Other options:

  • Make a short menu of, for example, three items. The last item being a menu button called ‘More’, that contains a drop-down menu with all the other, less important options
  • Use a secondary menu next to the main menu
  • Or both, see screenshot:

Mistake #3: Menu with an odd style

A menu with an unusual style is very common. Think of these mistakes:

  • Bad contrast between the menu items and the background, for example menu items that are shown on a colorful picture that makes it unreadable.
  • Hamburger menu on a desktop. We usually advise against this, because it adds an additional click, before your visitor gets to the relevant information. Except for a landing page where you want to show as little distraction as possible, and you choose to focus on just one action.
  • Bad responsive menu, that doesn’t come out well on smaller screens like tablets and mobile phones. (Tip: look at your website on all devices with Browserstack)
  • Odd location, for example when your main menu is not situated horizontally at the top or vertically at the left-hand side of your page (but in another creative place, without this making any sense or being a deliberate choice).

Mistake #4: Wrong order

Items at the top or bottom of a list are the most effective. Navigation is no exception to this. In psychology there’s the term ‘serial position effect’, which describes the tendency of a person to most remember the first and last items on a list. So, place your most important menu items at the top and your least important ones in the middle.

Mistake #5: Complicated drop-down menus

You’ve probably seen this: drop-down menus containing more drop-down menus, that make it impossible for you to click on the item you want. Just don’t do it! Live on the edge and try not using a drop-down menu at all. Why? Because you’re causing a choice overload, by confronting your visitor with more choices after they’ve just made a choice in the main menu. And yes, we’ve got some learning to do ourselves in this area ????

Five tips to improve your menu navigation

These where the things we often see go wrong in navigation menus of WordPress websites. But then what? How can you do it right? We give you five tips to improve the navigation of your WordPress website:

Tip #1: Take a visitor’s perspective

When naming your menu items, look at it from the visitor’s perspective and not your own (or that of your organization). When selling products, consider using the most important products or product categories as navigation. When providing services, try to name them. It can be helpful to use your target groups as navigation items. What will help your visitor to a better navigation?

Tip #2: Remember the search engines

When creating your main navigation, you also give an incredible amount of information to search engines about the structure of your website. This is why it can be a good idea to include your most important services and/or products in the navigation. Because with this, you’re saying: “Look, Google, this is what I have to offer”.

Tip #3: Remove the ‘Home’ button

The ‘Home’ button is not necessary in the main navigation. By far, the most internet users get that they can click on the company’s icon to go to the homepage. But keep your target group in mind: for an older target group we do recommend you leave the home buttons, because they are very used to them, and are very attached to the buttons they’re familiar with.

Tip #4: Put the call-to-action in your menu

In the end, your website is there to convince your visitors to do something. For example, to subscribe to something, order a product, request a quotation, to donate or to contact you. Put this action in your menu, because that is the way you want to lead your visitors. You’ll find good example, here below:

Tip #5: Make your menu visually attractive

When you sell various products on your website and you have a target group that is visually oriented, it can be very effective to include images of these products in your menu. Do you offer a service? Then icons are often very suitable. An example of Sony:

Bonus tip: Use WordPress to simply change your main navigation

Did you know you can easily change your main menu in WordPress? Check out our special WordPress Menu Manual!

Conclusion

There is usually lots of room for improvement in a main navigation. Do you have any good tips or ideas for this? We’d love to hear from you! Let us know in a comment below.

10 WordPress plugins to increase your conversion rate

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In this article, we’ll talk about WordPress plugins that can substantially improve the conversion rate of your website. Please note: it’s no use installing ALL plugins. Consider which WordPress plugins actually lead to the kind of conversion you want. In case you need help with this, then read our tips on how to determine your online strategy.

We’ve divided the WordPress plugins into four common calls to action (some plugins appear in more than one category):

WordPress plugins for newsletter subscriptions

Do you want visitors of your WordPress website to sign up for your newsletter? Then we’ve listed the best WordPress plugins for newsletter subscriptions for you.

1. Ninja Popups ($ 25)

Ninja Popups is still one of our favorite plugins when it comes to collecting e-mail addresses on your website. The plugin is flexible, you can choose from many different pop-ups and you can choose the exact moment to show the pop-up (for example when the visitor is on your website for more than 30 seconds, when he’s scrolling, or rather right when opening the page). Also, you can send the new e-mail subscriptions directly to your favorite e-mail marketing software (like MailChimp or CreateSend). Make sure the pop-up is not full screen, because Google doesn’t like pushy pop-ups.

2. Elegant Bloom Email Optin ($ 89 per year)

Elegant Themes gives you one year access to a lot of plugins and themes for $ 89 per year, among which there’s Bloom Email Optin. You can choose from many beautifully designed pop-ups, opt-in bars and banners to let visitors subscribe to the newsletter. The nice thing about Bloom Email Optin is that you can also place the call to action as a widget in the sidebar or footer. This is something Ninja Popups does not offer. Bloom Email Optin is in comparison a rather pricy alternative, but worthwhile, if you also want to make use of the beautiful themes and the Divi content builder that Elegant Themes offers.

3. ConvertPlug ($ 21)

With ConvertPlug, you can choose from many different pop-ups for very little money. Subscriptions to your newsletter can be linked directly to your favorite e-mail marketing software, and there are flexible options to set up the pop-ups. The design of some of these pop-ups is in detail not always that great, but if you have some knowledge of CSS, then ConvertPlug is a good and cheap solution.

4. Thrive Leads (one time $67)

Thrive Leads is our most favorite plugin, because it is the most extensive one, and offers all the features of the above-mentioned plugins. You can make all kinds of pop-ups, but also do A/B testing, create Content locks (content is made available after you’ve given your e-mail address), Multiple Choice forms, etc. A big advantage of this plugin is that you get free updates for life after one single purchase. When you are a WpUpgraders customer, you can try out this plugin for free for a year.

WordPress plugins for forms

Sometimes catching someone’s e-mail address is not enough; for example, when the purpose of your website is to collect warm leads that want to be called back. In that case, you want at least a name and phone number, and a contact form with a flexible configuration is what you’re looking for. We’ve listed the best forms plugins for WordPress for you.

1. Gravity Forms ($ 39 per year)

Gravity Forms is still our favorite forms plugin for WordPress. The plugin has been around for years, it has a good reputation and is very well maintained. This is important, because collecting customer data requires a well-secured plugin. Granted; when it comes to design, there are other forms plugins for WordPress that look much more modern, but if your theme includes support for Gravity Forms – or if you’re pretty good with CSS – then this is still the plugin you want. Gravity Forms saves the subscriptions for you in WordPress, but you can also have them forwarded to e-mail addresses, external CRMs or marketing software.

2. Formidable Pro ($ 49 per year)

Formidable Pro is somewhat more complicated than Gravity Forms, but it also allows you to make simple applications. You can make forms entries publicly searchable, which allows you to, for example, create a review system on your website. In case you will be needing this kind of system on your website in the future, then Formidable Pro is a nice two-birds-with-one-stone plugin that’s worth buying.

3. Contact Form 7 (free)

The most well-known and widely used WordPress plugin for contact forms is still Contact Form 7. This plugin is completely free and has all the basic requirements; you can create forms, and visitors can fill them out. However, the entries are not saved on the website (so, if you don’t receive them by e-mail then they’re lost) and there’s no link to third parties included in the standard package. On the other hand, there are hundreds of add-ons for Contact Form 7 that offer such extensions. But if you think you’ll be needing those, we’d rather recommend one of the above-mentioned plugins; they have proven to be very reliable – with OR without add-ons.

WordPress plugins for direct contact

When we say direct contact, we mean the possibility to contact you with just one click. Contact forms (or newsletter subscriptions) are not included in this category, because the visitor has to do more than just clicking once. Depending on the branch you’re in, offering direct contact on your WordPress website can be very attracting (or even necessary). Think of websites for car dealers, but also web stores, real estate agents, etc. There are several plugins that create the possibility to make direct contact on your website.

1. LiveChat (free trial, then from $ 16 per month)

With LiveChat visitors can start a chat session on your website with just one click. With the LiveChat app on your phone, you can also respond while travelling. Are you not available? Then the chat will not be visible on your website. The WordPress plugin LiveChat is integrated into your WordPress website with just a few clicks. Plus, you can try out the service for free the first 30 days.

2. YITH Live Chat (free)

The YITH Live Chat plugin requires a little more configuration than the previous one, but a limited version is available for free. You do have to integrate the plugin using Firebase, a Google service for mobile applications. This service has a limited free version, but you have to pay once you start using it more frequently. If you like playing with settings options, you should definitely try YITH Live Chat.

3. Really Simple Click To Call Bar (free)

Did you know you can link buttons on your WordPress website to a phone number? When you click it, your device will directly call the phone number. For laptops and desktops this is, of course, of very little use, but for mobile visitors it can be very useful to be able to call you with just one click. The plugin Really Simple Click To Call Bar does exactly what its name implies; for mobile users, it adds a bar at the bottom of the website with a clear button: ‘Call us’. When you tap it, you immediately make the call.

WordPress plugins for social media conversion

Social media can be used in different ways to increase the conversion rate of your WordPress website. This works on two levels; first of all, you can convince the visitors of your WordPress website to follow you on social media (e.g. ‘Follow us on Facebook’. Secondly, you can use your WordPress website to feed your social media channels with new content, so you keep attracting your visitors to your website. Note: always keep step 1 in mind: does the integration of social media serve your strategy and objective?

1. Ninja Popups ($ 25)

Ninja Popups is not only good for e-mail marketing, but you can also use it to gather followers on social media. For example, you can show pop-ups on specific pages where you invite visitors to follow you on Facebook. It helps when you briefly explain to them the advantages of following you. For example, being informed on interesting offers or relevant messages.

2. ConvertPlug ($ 21)

ConvertPlug also offers social media integration beside e-mail marketing. The nice thing about ConvertPlug, is that you can also use pop-ups to tell your visitor about certain messages you’ve shared on social media. So, the plugin can be used to get more followers, but also to increase your range among your followers!

3. Jetpack Publicize (free)

Jetpack Publicize makes it easy to automatically share recently placed messages on your WordPress website with your social media channels. This is very practical when you want to efficiently increase your range of your WordPress website. There are very many WordPress plugins like Publicize, but we still find Publicize the easiest to work with. Publicize is part of Jetpack; a free plugin package that allows you to activate or deactivate different functionalities (so, you can install the package, but only use Publicize).

The Impact of the New Privacy Law (GDPR) on Your WordPress Website

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As from the 25th of May, 2018, the new privacy law (GDPR) comes into force. From then onward, all of Europe will have to abide by the same privacy regulations. The Dutch Wbp will be suspended and replaced by new regulations for processing and editing personal data. These new rules apply to your WordPress website too should you have a contact form, make use of Google Analytics, or have a webshop. In this article we explain how the new privacy law operates and what applies to your WordPress website and, therefore, deserves your attention.

This is no juridical article and no rights can be derived from its content.

Moving from a user agreement to a handling agreement

The former privacy law already required a secure processing of personal data, which was to be defined in a user agreement. The new law requires every European organization to be able to account for a secure handling of all personal data, which is to be recorded in a handling agreement. This means that you, first of all, need to know exactly what kind of personal data your organization gathers.

Secondly, you need to be able to guarantee that personal data you share with third parties, is also protected; such as personal data you share with your accountant, with your CRM or within your email marketing software. This applies to software of non-European origin as well (e.g. software supplied by American companies). You are obligated to make agreements with all your suppliers. Practically, this means the GDPR has an impact on privacy policies of organizations worldwide.

You also need to make agreements with third parties that have access to your WordPress website; like your hosting party, editors, administrators and parties that can access personal data via a plugin.

What is personal data?

What is considered to be personal data? And, when is this data deemed privacy-sensitive? Basically, all data that can identify a person as an individual. For instance, when someone fills in a contact form on your WordPress website. Data like,

  • name
  • postal address
  • email address
  • location data (e.g. GPS coordinates)
  • IP-addresses

Keep in mind that company information (e.g. the name of an organization, email address, postal address, etc.) is not considered personal data.

When is personal data regarded as extremely privacy-sensitive?

On top of ‘standard’ personal data, there is an additional category: ‘privacy-sensitive’ personal data. Should you handle data within your organization that is categorized as such, then there are additional requirements. These requirements also apply to your WordPress website, when you gather data that involves,

  • Social Security Number
  • Race
  • Medical information
  • Sexual orientation
  • Religious / political preference

What rights do consumers have?

As mentioned before, the goal of the new privacy law (GDPR) is to protect the rights of the end user (consumer). This includes visitors of your WordPress website. But what exactly are their rights, and what can they demand from you as an organization?

Inform, permit and refuse

People have the right to be informed before their data is being gathered, edited and processed by your WordPress website. Users must give their explicit consent to this, too. This means providing a cookie announcement in the footer of your website, giving the option to sign up for a new letter via a tick box (that is not checked by default!). Ultimately, users must be given the option to withdraw their permission at any time, for instance by unregistering or reviewing the cookie settings again.

Easy access

Individuals you have gathered personal data from on your WordPress website, are allowed to request this data from you. Organizations have to deliver this data within a month and are, in principle, not entitled to charge any costs. In addition, there is the data portability right: personal data must be able to be inspected in a reasonable manner. Excel sheets or CSV files are relatively easy to open, but a direct database dump is not.

Edit, limit and remove

Consumers are entitled to ask you to rectify faulty information, as well as request to refrain from further editing of personal data (apart from storing it). Also, every person has ‘the right to be forgotten’. Put differently, upon request you will have to be able to remove people’s data completely.

The GDPR and marketing automation

Quite possibly, you make use of marketing automation in your WordPress website. This may consist of email marketing software reminding you to respond to a comment, or to send a follow up mail once the first email has been viewed. Or perhaps adverts that are shown based on customer behavior.

People have the right to demand from you that your software cannot make automated decisions based on their data and/or behavior, unless you have explicitly have asked their permission. Therefore, in case you use marketing automation, make sure you explicitly ask your visitors permission, as well as inform them that automated decisions are made based on their personal data.

How serious is all this GDPR stuff?

The penalties that can be imposed by this law are considerable. That is, fines can run up to € 20 million or up to 4% of the annual revenue. The provided ‘grace period’ that lasts until May 2018, foretells that the GDPR will be seriously upheld. Moreover, the GDPR is applies to every organization within Europe; not only the bigger ones or the multinationals.

Make sure your WordPress website is GDPR compliant

There are many aspects to take into account in order to make sure your WordPress website complies with the new GDPR regulations. Make sure you do a Checklist: Is Your WordPress website GDPR Compliant?

Checklist: Is Your WordPress Website GDPR Compliant?

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By May 25, 2018, every European organization has to comply with a new privacy law to be allowed to process and handle personal data. This applies to the personal data you gather via your WordPress website as well. We already posted an article on the impact the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has on your WordPress website. In this article, we provide you with a clear-cut checklist to help you determine whether your WordPress website meets the GDPR requirements.

This is no juridical article and no rights can be derived from its content.

1. Inventory and document

To start off, describe the target group(s) that visit your website. Then make up a spreadsheet in which you document the kind of personal data your WordPress website collects for each group (inform yourself here on what the GDPR marks as personal data). As you specify per target group, you’ll reduce the risk of missing something. Complete this inventory by checking the following list:

a. Hosting & Administration

External service providers have access to your website as well. Check how they handle your data and if you have made the right agreements with them.

  • Hosting Party
    • Theoretically, your hosting party has access to all data on your website. For this reason, you will have to make a processing agreement with your WordPress hosting party.
  • Managed hosting, external developers and administrators
    • Which administrators have access to your WordPress website? Should you contract certain bureaus (or freelancers) to work on your WordPress website, then you will have to set up processing agreements with them as well.
  • Backup Locations
    • Where and how does your hosting party make backups?

b. Plugins

Log in as administrator on your WordPress website and answer the following questions to complete the list above. In WordPress, go to ‘Plugins’, then locate what data is being collected by each plugin and determine whether this data is being stored or not:

  • Contact forms (e.g. Gravity Forms)
    • What information do you require from your users? And where is it being stored?
  • Usernet plugins (e.g. Ultimate Member, BuddyPress, etc.)
    • What profile information is stored for each user? And, what else can possibly be deduced about your users through membership? Think in terms of political activity, religious preference, financial status, or sexual orientation.
  • E-commerce (bijv. WooCommerce)
    • E-commerce will contain basic personal data, such as names, addresses , and banking details. However, it also reveals the kind of products people order. Do you, for instance, sell magazines with a political affiliation?
  • Email marketing widgets (e.g. sign up via MailChimp or CreateSend)
    • Which information do you require? What will you do once you obtain it from your users, and to which service do you forward it?
  • Links with external services, like accounting packages
    • g. a link between WooCommerce and Exact Online
  • WordPress reaction plugins
    • g. Akismet, which filters spam based on data gathered from your users’ reactions, email addresses and IP-addresses. Or, Disqus, which stores such information as well.
  • Safety
    • Safety plugins, like Wordfence, process IP-addresses and user locations for instance.
  • Backup plugins
    • Complete copies of your site are privacy sensitive should they end up in the wrong hands. Where are backups stored and how are they secured?
  • Statistics
    • Like Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager: are you aware of which parts of your users’ data is being stored.
  • Logging
    • For instance, activity monitors that register user activity.

c. Services outside the EU

Check whether you make use of services outside the EU. For instance, American service providers, for instance, that may process data from your website. Verify if they are GDPR compliant.

d. Duration

Check how long personal data is stored and ascertain yourself that this is done no longer than necessary. The following step will help you consider whether this time span is justifiable.

e. Other

Which users have access to your website, and are their pass words up to par? Are you using marketing automation or A/B-testing? If so, have the subjects been informed?

2. Justify

You have to be able to justify reasons for all personal data you are storing on your WordPress website. Make sure your data gathering stays within the boundaries of the law. If you intend to store data on your WordPress website, then this is only allowed when meeting one of the following criteria:

  • Because it is by consent, backed up by an agreement
    Like paid subscriptions on your WordPess website for which you need users’ banking details.
  • Because you are obliged to record this by law
    Like customer data in your WooCommerce shop that you also need for your administration according as the Tax Administration demands.
  • Because you have been given explicit consent to do so
  • By virtue of a cookie announcement on your WordPress website or a registration form by which one subscribes to your newsletter. Make sure that,\
    • consent is freely given (users are not to be misled or forced)
    • consent is explicit (that means no tick box checked by default!)
    • consent needs to be given per component (e.g. someone registers for an event, and also subscribes for a newsletter)
    • users have to be able to withdraw their permission.
  • Because the gathering of this data is justifiable
    Like tracing the location of a logged in user as an additional safety check to determine if the user is logging in from a likely location on the planet. Of course, determining what is justifiable data gathering is somewhat of a grey area. All the more reason to explain in detail why you consider it justifiable. And, when in doubt, you may want to consult a lawyer.

Go through the inventory list (step 1) and check each item for its justification.

3. Confine

Remove personal data that you cannot legitimately gather and store in your WordPress website.

Deactivate plugins that can’t do so either, or search for alternative plugins that do comply.

4. Draw up Procedures

Record different protocols for situations that may occur in the future. Make sure it is crystal clear which information is to be found where, so you won’t have to figure that out later on. In any case, record the following procedures:

  • Personal requests
    Individuals may demand access to their personal data stored by your WordPress website, but may also want to edit or delete their data.
  • Safety
    Record how you will guarantee data to remain confidential, now and in the future. Think about a consistent update policy for your WordPress website, plugins and theme, but also a safe back up storage and a complex password policy for every new user that is added.
  • Data breaches
    In case of data breaches, you are required by law to inform the Personal Data Protection Authority within 72 hours. Therefore, make sure you have a phased plan ready, as speed is crucial in such cases.

5. Inform and ask for permission

Inform visitors of your WordPress website in a clear and transparent manner. This can be realized by clearly referring to a privacy statement, for instance in the footer of your website and in the cookie statement. Also, ask visitors of your WordPress website explicitly for permission of data handling activities as documented in your privacy statement. Make sure that you get their permission as described in step 2c.

Manual: Setting up Yoast SEO for WordPress

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With the free WordPress plugin Yoast SEO ((search engine optimization) you optimize your WordPress website for search engines. But how do you set up this plugin of Dutch origin? In this article, we’ll explain step by step how you can set up your WordPress website for the ideal search engine optimization.

In this manual

1. Install Yoast SEO plugin
2. Yoast SEO Configuration Service
3. Fine-Tune WordPress for SEO
4. Fine-Tune Yoast SEO
5. Link Search Console
6. Resolve Notification Issues
7. Write Content
8. Content Strategy

1. Install Yoast SEO Plugin


You’ll find the Yoast SEO plugin in the WordPress repository. In WordPress, go to Plugins -> New plugin and search for “Yoast SEO”. Click “Install now”, then click “Activate”.

2. Yoast SEO Configuration Service


Now that the WordPress SEO plugin has been installed, you’ll see a “SEO” button in your WordPress menu on the left-hand side. Click it to open the plugin’s Dashboard. You’ll probably already see some notifications and warnings, but we’ll ignore these for now. First click the “General” tab at the top, then click “Open the configuration service“, and then “Configure YOAST SEO”.

You’ll now run a wizard that will help you set up a large part of your website for SEO (search engine optimization). Many of these steps are self-explanatory, but we’d like to comment on some of them:

2a. Company or person? (step 4)

At step 4 you’re required to fill out whether you’re a company or a person. In both cases, you can still fill out the name of your company/person. We recommend you include your most important search term in your company name. For example, if you are a carpentry business with the name “Johnson LLC“, then fill out “Johnson LLC Carpentry”. And if your name is Vanetta Smith and you write a personal website on recipes, then call yourself “Food blogger Vanetta Smith”. Copy this text right away, because you’ll have to fill it out a couple of times.

2b. Social profiles (step 5)

When entering your social profiles, do not think: the more, the better. Limit yourself to using two or three social media channels, that you use well, instead of using eight which you totally neglect. Consider the social media channels that are most suitable for your target group.

2c. Visibility of the post type (step 6)

In every WordPress website there are three default post types: Pages, Posts and Media. Some themes and plugins add extra post types. A properties plugin for real estate agents, for example, can add the post type “Houses” to the website.

At this step, you can set up exactly which post types should be indexed by Google and which should not. All post types that you don’t use for the conversion goals of your website, can here be set to “Hide”. This does not mean that they won’t be used on your website. But only that the search engines won’t be instructed to index such posts.

In case you don’t have a blog/news archive, but only a few static pages, you can hide the post type “Posts”. The same often goes for media; the media library on your website is probably not setup with the purpose of attracting traffic that increases conversion; usually these media are used to, for example, placing images in your pages and posts, in which case you can simply hide “Media”.

In fact, some plugins put their settings in a post type. In that case, you might see something like “Extended framework” as a post type. If you have no use for this, then hide this too; the more unnecessary post types you hide, the better the other types will be valued by the search engines. Obviously, you’ll want to make sure you don’t accidentally hide a post type that you do need. Because then you’ll be throwing away a lot of valuable information for the search engines.

2d. Title settings (step 9)

At this step, you can fill out the website name. Here, you paste the text that you copied at step 4, or fill out your activities, and maybe even your location. For example, “Rotterdam Lawyers Friesinger & son”. Or “Architect Anna van der Molen”. You’ll need this text again later in this manual, so be sure to copy it again.

3. Fine-Tune WordPress for SEO

Now that you have run the configuration service, you’ll arrive back at the Yoast SEO plugin Dashboard. You’ll probably get some more notifications at this time. You can keep ignoring these, because first we’re going to run through some WordPress settings, that will probably resolve a large portion of these notifications.

3a. Site title and subtitle

Now, in WordPress go to Settings -> General. At the top, you’ll see the site title and subtitle. Many people use the name of their website or organization as a site title. This seems logical, but if you want your website to be easy to find in the search engines, it’s better to put your activity here, just like you did in the configuration service. So, again paste the title that you’ve used at step 2a and 2d here, e.g. “Furniture manufacturer New York – Donald McMillan”, or “Antique children’s toys – Web store ToyToy”.

Very often, the subtitle is still the default WordPress text: “Just another WordPress site”. Remove this line and enter a short description of your website. Try to use keywords that apply to your entire website and keywords that you want to lead visitors to your website. For example: “Web store for remanufactured chassis parts for Volkswagen Beetle.”

Now that you are on this page: be sure to scroll down and check if your website language is set correctly. Is your website in Spanish? Make sure your website language is also in Spanish. Because the language is also picked up by search engines. It says something about your target group.

Finally, click “Save changes”. Save or copy the title and subtitle, because you’ll need them again later.

3b. Update services

In WordPress, go to Settings -> Write. At the bottom of this page you’ll find a field to “Update services”. These are external webservices that need to be informed when you’ve made changes to your website, e.g. when you’ve written a new blog, or made changes to one. This makes sure that search engines are almost immediately informed of your new content, so they’ll include it faster in their search results. Make sure it says: “http://rpc.pingomatic.com/” under “Update services”. If it doesn’t, then paste this URL here. Pingomatic is an update service that informs all large search engines of your new content, so you don’t have to. Usually this is configured correctly, but it never hurts to check.

3c. Search engine visibility 

In WordPress, go to Settings -> Read. At the bottom of this page, you’ll find the “Search engine visibility” option. Make sure this box is unchecked, otherwise your website will actively inform search engines to NOT be included in the search results. Are you developing a website, or do you have a website that you, in fact, do NOT want showing up in search engines, then DO check this box. By the way, this is not a completely safe guarantee that your website will not show up in any search results; if you really don’t want to be found, it’s best to secure your website with a password. You can do this with a free plugin such as Password Protected.

3d. SEO for comments on your WordPress website

In WordPress, go to Settings -> Comments. Here, you can change the settings for comments on your website. It may seem strange to include this topic in a manual for SEO, but we’ve done this for a good reason. After all, comments on your website are content too! So, ask yourself whether comments on your website will help you be more findable to search engines, or that they would only add less relevant information to your webpage. If you’ve noticed that the comments on your articles lead to irrelevant conversations and discussions, then it might be better to turn off the option to leave comments on your website, or decrease the amount of comments under your blog. Or maybe you’ve seen that your blogs rarely get comments. In that case, you also better turn off the option to leave comments, because it makes your pages more compact. And with less irrelevant content, the rest of the content gets valued more by search engines and your visitors.

3e. Permalinks

With permalinks you configure the structure of your website’s URLs. This is very important for the SEO (search engine optimization) of your WordPress website, because the structure of a URL says a lot about the content of its page. As the term implies, permalinks are permanent; you configure them once, and then you never look at them again. Anyone who links to your website (search engines, social media, friends, etc.), will link to the URL as configured in your permalink.

In WordPress, go to Settings -> Permalinks. The default general permalink settings are year, month, day and name. This will result in URLs like www.furnituremanufacturer-newyork.com/2017/08/12/sanded-wood-with-discount/. But these data are probably not at all what you want in your URL. What you do want is to include the most important category of your blog in the URL (e.g. “Sale”). This way, you could get a URL like this: www.furnituremanufacturer-newyork.com/sale/sanded-wood-with-discount/. You can configure this, by choosing the “Customized structure” and then typing: /%category%/%postname%/.

Under the general settings, you’ll also find the “Optional” button. Below this, you’ll be able to change the category and tag archives structure. The permalink of the archive for the category “Dinner tables” by default would be: www.furnituremanufacturer-newyork.com/category/dinnertables/. But the word “category” is not relevant here (and thus a distraction for the search engines), so you could choose another word instead, for example: “furniture”. Please note that the category structure is the same for all categories; so, the “Sale” category archive will get the URL: www.furnituremanufacturer-newyork.com/category/sale/. In case you don’t know any good category structures, you can also turn it off altogether (see step 4e).

You’ll probably use several categories for most of your articles. The Yoast SEO plugin gives you the option to set one primary category, so that one will always be used in the permalink. To do this, click “Make Primary” next to the most relevant category, when creating/editing a post.

If you change the permalink structure afterwards, a lot of old links will probably become obsolete. This has great consequences for your findability; search engines don’t like it when pages in their search results are suddenly unreachable. It will cause you to drop fast in their search results. So, when you change your permalinks, check to see if existing links still work in the search engines. If not, then install a plugin like WordPress Ultimate Redirect Plugin ($ 29), that will automatically try to redirect as many “not found” pages (or 404 pages) to the right page. It’s like saying to the search engines: “The current page still exists, but has been moved to this new URL”. That way you transfer the accumulated value in search engines to the new pages on your website, and search engines will gradually adjust their index to your new permalink structure.

4. Fine-Tune Yoast SEO

Now that WordPress has been set up correctly for SEO (search engine optimization) and the basics for Yoast SEO have been configured, it’s time to do some fine-tuning in the Yoast SEO plugin.

4a. Activate advanced settings

To unlock additional functionalities in Yoast SEO, we first must change some settings. To do this, go to WordPress, SEO -> Dashboard and click the “Features” tab. Set the “Advanced settings pages” to “Enabled”. Then click the “Security” tab and also enable the “Advanced section of the Yoast SEO metabox”. Now click “Save”. In the menu on the left-hand side, under “SEO” you will now see additional options.

4b. Titles and metas

Titles and metas, are the title and description of a page/post, just as they are communicated to search engines. With this, you actually tell the search engine: “When you include this page in your search result, then show this title and description.” It’s obviously up to the search engine to do what they want, but if you use relevant texts, your request is usually honored.

Using good Titles and metas is very important, because you use them to give a first impression to your potential visitors, even before they visit your website. So, make sure you have attractive, relevant texts. The title is also shown in the tab/title at the top of your browser screen when visiting that specific screen.

Click “SEO” -> “Titles & metas” and open the “Homepage” tab. Here, you enter the title and subtitle that you’ve also filled out at step 3a. If you want, you can change the subtitle a little, by adding a call to action, to make it even more attractive to click on. For, example, if your subtitle is: “Web store for remanufactured chassis parts for Volkswagen Beetle”? Then your meta description could be: “Web store for remanufactured chassis parts for Volkswagen Beetle? Ordered today, delivered tomorrow!”.

Now click the “Post types” tab. Here you’ll see the visibility for the post types, as you’ve configured them at step 2c. Good to know, if you ever have to change this in the future. Here, you can leave the title and meta templates as they are, because we’ll configure these per article/page later in this manual.

Now, click the “Taxonomies” tab. Taxonomies is the umbrella term for both categories and tags. So, on this tab you’ll find all the categories/tags of your WordPress website. Every taxonomy has an archive page in WordPress. It is passed on to search engines by default. Just like with the visibility of the post types (step 2c) you must ask yourself here which categories/tags you actually use. So, for example, if you have added no tags at all to your posts, then set the “meta robots” for that taxonomy to “noindex”. This way, you tell the search engines, that the archive pages for that taxonomy don’t have to be included by the search engines; because they are not relevant pages.

For the taxonomies that you do use, you can check out the title templates. By default, they are set up as follows: %%term_title%% Archives %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%. The title for a post category called “Sale” would then be sent to search engines like this: “Sales Archives – Furniture manufacturer Rotterdam – Pieter de Heuvel”. Which is fine, but there’s room for improvement. If you make sure all your categories for this taxonomy are consistent, then you can change the template to for example: %%term_title%% of %%sitename%% %%sep%% %%page%%. With categories like “Sale” and “Portfolio” you’ll get nice-looking titles: “Sale of Furniture manufacturer New York – Donald McMillan”, or “Portfolio of Furniture manufacturer New York – Donald McMillan”. The meta description template can best be left empty here, we’ll run through that later on in this manual.

Now, click the “Archives” tab. Here you will see some additional options for archive pages generated by WordPress next to the taxonomies. Such as author pages, date archives, etc.

Author archives show all articles per author. This is usually unnecessary, because for search engines it is rarely relevant who wrote the article. In fact, author archives are only useful when you work with several well-known authors and you want to build up findable archive pages for them. For example, the Youp van ’t Hek columns on the NRC (news) website. You can probably turn off your Authors archives, though.

The same goes for date archives; these show all articles published on your website during a certain period (e.g. January 2017). Unless you publish news messages that actually describe current events, you can turn off these archives; your archive pages for taxonomies probably offer much more relevant content than this kind of archive pages.

You’ve now configured quite a lot, so don’t forget to hit “Save”!

4c. Social SEO

Go to SEO -> Social. Here, you’ll find an overview of the social media accounts you added at step 2b. Run through the various tabs and fill out all the required information for the social media that are relevant for you. The rest of the precompleted settings in these tabs are all perfectly set, so you don’t have to look at those.

4d. Sitemaps

Now go to SEO -> XML Sitemaps. Sitemaps are XML files, automatically generated by Yoast SEO, that give search engines a structured overview of all content on your WordPress website. Make sure that the settings under the “Post types” and “Taxonomies” tabs include only in the sitemap what you’ve configured as visible at steps 2c and 4b.

4e. Advanced

Now go to SEO -> Advanced. You start off at the “Breadcrumbs” tab. A breadcrumb trail shows on which page you currently are in the tree view of the entire WordPress website. Many WordPress themes already have a built-in crumb trail, but in case yours doesn’t, it is best to archive it here. You do, however, have to make some adjustments to your WordPress theme, so a little PHP knowledge is required.

When activating the breadcrumb trail, delete the text after “Prefix for Archive breadcrumbs”. And at the bottom, at “Taxonomy to show in the breadcrumb trail of the post types” select for each post type the richest taxonomy for that post type. When I say “rich”, I don’t necessarily mean the taxonomy containing the most terms, but that the terms in that taxonomy are full of posts. Categories are usually richer than tags; an average tag maybe contains two or three posts, an average category probably ten to twenty. Finally, click “Save”.

Then, click the “Permalinks” tab. In this tab Yoast SEO can make a few more changes beside the changes you’ve made to the permalinks in WordPress at step 3e. This way, you can turn off the category structure if you couldn’t think of any good category structures at step 3e.

Enable “Redirect attachment URLs to parent post URL” to prevent visitors from directly going from a search engine to one of your website’s attachment pages (usually containing only an image and a title). This feature makes sure that visitors are sent to the corresponding page where the attachment is used. This is generally more relevant.

Finally, under “Clean-Up Permalinks” choose “Remove” under “Stop words in the slug”. This way, words like “the”, “a” and “an” are automatically removed from your permalink when writing new articles. The rest of the advanced settings are good, so now click “Save changes”.

5. Link Search Console

You can link the Yoast SEO plugin to your Google Account. This way, you can load relevant SEO information and resolve warning notifications on the website. Go to SEO -> Search Console and click “Get Google Authorization Code”. Follow the steps, paste the code and click “Authenticate”. You then get an overview of the pages of your website that cannot be found by Google, but that are linked to on other pages (or used to). You can run through this list and check to see if you can restore them (by changing the permalink of a page, or by making redirects to the correct page).

6. Resolve Notification Issues

Go back to the Yoast SEO plugin Dashboard. Maybe you’re still getting a few notifications. These notifications point to your WordPress settings that need to be resolved to further optimize your website for search engines. Do not click the close icon on the right, but click the link on the notification. You’ll then be directed to the right page for the WordPress settings.

In the above-mentioned example, you’re redirected to the WordPress Customizer, where you can enter your site title and subtitle under “Site Identity”. By the way, if you’ve been following the steps of this manual, you’ll probably not get this notification, because we’ve already fixed this problem.
Resolving notifications is something you can do on a regular basis. The Yoast SEO plugin gives you a clear overview, so if you schedule this once a month, it’ll cost you very little time.

7. Write Content

Your website is pretty much set up for Yoast SEO. But you can still fine-tune Yoast SEO per page, post, category and even per tag. We’ll start with fine-tuning posts and pages.

7a. Titles and permalinks of your WordPress articles and pages

After typing the title of your post, WordPress automatically generates a permalink for you. This is not always the permalink you want, and sometimes you change the title afterwards, but the permalink stays the same. The main rule is: you can easily change your permalink as long as you haven’t published your post yet. Then, you best leave the permalink as it is.

What is a good permalink for your post or page? You only need to include the most important keywords. Say, as a furnituremaker, you’re writing an article in the category “import” called “Strong quality improvement of imported wood from Italy”, the permalink automatically ends with: “/import/strong-quality-improvement-imported-wood-from-italy/”. This can be made shorter and more relevant; the words “import/imported” are duplicates and some of these words are not relevant for the slug. How about: /import/quality-improvement-wood-italy/? Much better.

7b. Configure the Yoast SEO metabox

When you’ve finished writing your article, there’s a new block “Yoast SEO” under your text editor. Here, you’ll see an example of how Google will probably show your page in the search results, based on your title, permalink and text. An example of such a snippet below.

The content of this snippet is based on the settings we’ve configured in the previous steps. However, it is possible to make a few more adjustments for this particular article. In the above example, we see that the title is too long for the box, and the description underneath is too. Click “Edit Snippet” to change the title and description. By making the title and the meta description a bit shorter and more attractive, we’ve created a snippet that looks nice in Google:
You can edit the snippet for each and every post or page that is important for you in the search results. Also, you can edit your categories and tags to see per category what a similar archive page will look like in search engines. To do this, go to Posts -> Categories (or Tags) and select a category. At the bottom, you’ll find the Snippet. You can, for example, give the category “Import” a nicer description:

7c. Focus keyword

Under every snippet you’ll also find a “Focus keyword” field. Here, you can enter the most important keyword of the page. Under the focus keyword, the SEO plugin gives you an analysis of the page, containing suggestions to make improvements. Mind you, it is a technical tool; always ask yourself if the suggestions make sense. The analysis of an article with the focus keyword “jerseys” can turn out wrong, because the words “jersey” and “sweater” won’t be recognized. So, use the analysis as a guideline, not as hard facts. Furthermore, it is good to know that the focus keyword is only a personal analysis; the focus keyword won’t be sent to search engines as a search term, nor is it embedded in the code of your page.

7d. Cornerstone articles

When you’re editing pages or posts, there’s another option under the focus keyword: mark the article as “cornerstone content”. Cornerstone articles are the most important articles on your website. The ones you really want everyone to read. Say you write a lot of articles on the different aspects of DIY woodworking. But there is one article about the complete process of woodworking. In that case, this article is a cornerstone article; in a way, all the other articles are related to this main article. By marking the main article as a cornerstone article, Yoast SEO will make new suggestions; are there enough links to this article? And do these links contain the most relevant keywords for this article?

An average website can contain about five cornerstone articles. Choose them carefully and ask yourself; can I link to these cornerstone articles from all the other (non-cornerstone) articles? And make sure you do this; after the introduction of a non-cornerstone article, make a quick reference to the cornerstone article.

8. And from Now on: Content Strategy

If you’ve made it all the way to the end, your WordPress website has a great configuration for SEO! But you’re just getting started; make sure your website stays attractive, relevant and up to date. You do this, by regularly writing articles on topics related to your website. Make a content strategy and schedule, for example, one day a month to write and publish a good article.

Use social media for your organization

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Many organizations have all kinds of social media links on their WordPress website. But is this wise? When you use social media the wrong way, they can backfire on you. In this article, we’ll explain what you can do as an organization to prevent this from happening. And we’ll talk about a social medium that is often forgotten.

Invite in or send away?

Imagine you’ve just finished a new blog post and you share it on your Facebook page. An interested follower clicks on the link and visits your WordPress website. While he’s reading your article, he sees the sidebar with Facebook and Twitter feed. He stops reading and starts scrolling through your Twitter feed. He clicks on one of the conversations and goes to the Twitter website.

What is happening here? You first successfully get the attention of a visitor on Facebook, but as soon as he arrives on your WordPress website, you make it really easy for him to leave again. That sucks!

Social media on your website 

We see many organizations embed all kinds of social media feeds on their website. For example, you’ll see their most recent messages from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. in the sidebar next to an article. Embedding a feed like that is so simple, that you almost forget to ask yourself why you would do this. Very often, such a feed does not serve your goals.

I often hear people say they place these feeds to keep their website ‘alive’, or because they want to show their organization is an interactive and modern one. But these arguments don’t fit in a solid online marketing plan. You’re treating your visitors like ping-pong balls: on social media you invite them to visit your website, but once they’re there, you put your social media back on display.

Don’t make it too difficult for your visitors; limit their choices. Ask yourself where does most of the conversion of online activities take place for your organization. Are most of the sales and quotation requests processed on your website or on your social media channels?

Marketing funnel

Your online activities are like a funnel: by being visible on various platforms, you attract as many people as possible to one place. Often this place is your website, but in some cases, this can be a social medium (a vlogger’s purpose is to “funnel” as many followers as possible to his YouTube channel).

Say your marketing funnel points to your website. Does this mean you should not integrate any social media on your website? Maybe, but then you might be taking it a bit too far. Because even if the conversion for your website might not be happening on social media, they may still serve another purpose: engagement.

Engagement: a long-term relationship through social media 

Even if the conversion for your organization does not take place on social media, they can still be functional to build a “soft relationship” with your visitors. Because every visitor is unique; one takes immediate action on your WordPress website, another may want to get to know you better first. Social media are perfect for this.

Again, a well thought-out online strategy is very important; because you need to focus your social media on a specific target group: potential clients that want to get to know you better. This means you have to think about the image you want for your organization on social media; are you an informal bunch, or a serious group of professionals?

These choices determine the type of content you put on social media; do you build confidence by showing you’re having a good time or by sharing professional knowledge? To answer this question, you can ask some of your new clients what made them decide to become your customer. You can let these decisions determine your content on social media.

When you’ve decided on a strategy, then you can go back to thinking about the role of social media on your website. A role which is now well-defined: For example, you now only bring social media to the attention of your visitors to give them an alternative, next to the direct action to make a purchase. Or you use social media mostly to ask (and answer) direct questions. Whatever the purpose, with a clear definition you’ll know how and where to use social media on your website. For example, a social media follow button with caption, or rather a prominent place on the contact page.

Which social media and which target group?

Every social medium has a different user group. And these groups change continuously. We see Facebook being used mostly by adult consumers, Instagram and Snapchat are more popular with teenagers, and Twitter is averagely used more by men than by women.

Plus, there is a clear difference between business and personal use. Few users have a Facebook account for their business. On the other hand, there aren’t many people on LinkedIn who show pictures of their afternoon walk.

The difference in age, fields of interest and motivation of users are important for the way you use social media. When you have a business service, think about the usefulness of approaching your customers through social media. A manufacturer of packaging material would not use a marketing campaign on Instagram.

Don’t forget this one 

The landscape of social media is changing continuously. Every time, different social media are popular. That’s why you’d almost forget this one social medium that has been incredibly effective when it comes to building engagement: e-mail.

The great power of e-mail is in this small detail: messages on social media pass by very fast; if you’re not on Facebook even for a day, you miss a great number of messages. Messages that you don’t just get back on your timeline. An e-mail, however, only disappears after you’ve read it (or marked it as read). So, e-mail has a much more pressing character than messages on social media.

Because e-mail is more pressing, it demands caution; for a good reason, many e-mails end up in the trash or spam folder without being read. By law you are required to get someone’s permission before sending them a newsletter. And if you have this permission, consider carefully the e-mail’s title, length, content, the time you send it and the frequency with which you send e-mails.

WordPress themes and plugins for the hotel and catering industry

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If you are the owner of a hotel, bed-and-breakfast, restaurant, café or any other business in the hospitality sector, you can use WordPress to make a beautiful website. But which themes and plugins should you use? In this article, we’ve listed the pros and cons of some popular themes for the hotel and catering industry and recommend some additional plugins to make your online service successful

Some links in this article contain affiliate code.

WordPress themes for the hotel and catering industry

Online you can find thousands of WordPress themes for restaurants, coffee shops, diners, bed-and-breakfasts, etc. But which one is most suitable for your company? We’re giving you an overview of the most popular WordPress themes for hotel and catering businesses.

Divi Café ($ 69 per year)



Divi Café is a beautiful complete theme for cafés and restaurants from ElegantThemes. The theme contains a digital menu, online ordering options and lots of space for nice product photography.

Pros:

  • Digital menu
  • Ordering online
  • WooCommerce integration
  • Great design
  • Contact form
  • Responsive

Cons:

  • Payment module not included by default
  • Reservations/schedule module not included by default

MyCuisine ($ 69 per year)



MyCuisine is a complete theme for restaurants from ElegantThemes. The theme contains a digital menu and a page for contact information, including your location on Google Maps.

Pros:

  • Digital menu
  • Google Maps
  • Many settings options
  • Contact form
  • Responsive

Cons:

  • Payment module not included as standard
  • Reservations/schedule module not included as standard

Enfold ($ 59 one-time)



Enfold is our favorite WordPress theme, and is also suitable for restaurants. With the floorplan and reservation form, your customers can book their own table in your restaurant. Furthermore, Enfold can be expanded with many plugins.

Pros:

  • Multipurpose design
  • Floor plan with reservation form
  • Many settings options
  • Contact form
  • Responsive

Cons:

  • No digital menu
  • No ordering module
  • Booking module does not block the times that are fully booked

Restaurant ($ 69 per year)



Restaurant Theme from Organic Themes is simple and to-the-point. The fact that you can make a very elaborate menu with this theme, makes it very attractive. The contact form is limited and depends on the Gravity Forms plugin, which is not included ($ 39 per year).

Pros:

  • Simple design
  • Elaborate digital menu
  • Contact form
  • Responsive

Cons:

  • No ordering module
  • No booking module
  • Contact form only possible with external plugin

Hotel California ($ 59 one-time)



Hotel California is a very complete WordPress theme for hotels, hostels and bed-and-breakfasts. The theme offers the possibility to show different rooms, that can also be booked. It includes a calculator, so visitors can quickly calculate the price of their stay.

Pros:

  • Design offers space for photography
  • Booking and reservation module for rooms
  • WooCommerce integration possible
  • Price calculator
  • Responsive

Cons:

  • No payment module

Starhotel ($ 49 one-time)



Starhotel is a WordPress hotels theme with a clean design. The included booking module has a prominent position and you can easily add rooms with a specific price per room.

Pros:

  • Design offers lots of space for photography
  • Booking and reservation module for rooms
  • Prices adjustable per room
  • Responsive

Cons:

  • No payment module
  • Booking module does not block the times that are fully booked

Grand Restaurant ($ 59 one-time)



Grand Restaurant offers lots of space for photo impressions. The theme contains a menu for your products, including ordering options when you’re using WooCommerce. Also, the theme has a simple reservation module.

Pros:

  • Design offers space for photography
  • Simple booking and reservation module
  • Ordering products via webstore
  • Responsive

Cons:

  • No payment module
  • Booking module does not block the times that are fully booked

Piquant ($ 59 one-time)



With Piquant you can choose from different website layouts for your restaurant/café. You can describe your recipes and ingredients, and have your visitors book a table. Visitors can also purchase products online, using WooCommerce.

Pros:

  • Practical menu description
  • Booking and reservation module for tables
  • Elaborate descriptions of recipes and ingredients
  • Responsive

Cons:

  • No payment module
  • Booking module does not block the times that are fully booked

WordPress plugins for the hotel and catering industry

Hotel and catering businesses often need additional functionalities on their WordPress website. Think of a booking system for a bed-and-breakfast, a reservation module for a diner, an online menu and payment methods for a take-away and ordering forms for ordering online. Not every theme contains all the functionalities you need. That is why we describe a few plugins you can use as an addition to your WordPress theme to complete the website for your restaurant or café.


WooCommerce adds a webstore functionality to WordPress. This allows customers to buy meals, but also to pay for the reservation of their room or apartment. Plus, there are loads of plugins and extensions for WooCommerce, so it has many possibilities.

Pros:

  • Free base product
  • E-commerce integrates with WordPress
  • Many plugins and extensions
  • Many themes are compatible with WooCommerce

Cons:

  • The base product is free, but the extensions are usually not
  • Complex software, also read our webstore comparison

Gravity Forms ($ 39 per year)


Our favorite plugin for building webforms is so extensive that it can even be used as a basic ordering system. Are you subletting a few rooms per month? Don’t get into an entire webstore package, but start out with Gravity Forms. With a few clicks, you create an ordering form, place it on your ordering page, and you’re ready to go.

Pros:

  • Easy installment
  • Drag and drop form builder
  • Conditional logic offers many possibilities
  • Elaborate online documentation
  • Many themes support styling for Gravity Forms

Cons:

  • The form styling is not very modern

Pinpoint Booking System ($ 50 one-time)


With Pinpoint Booking System you can process the reservations of, for example, rooms on your website, including payment. The plugin is very useful for, for example, hotels and bed-and-breakfasts.

Pros:

  • Very versatile plugin with many options
  • Organized back end
  • Can be linked with payment module (Mollie)
  • Options to add discounts, additional costs and upsells

Cons:

  • For price exceptions (per room), you need to create separate forms
  • Configuring the plugin takes some time

BirchPress Scheduler ($ 75 per year)


Just like with Pinpoint Booking System, you can use BirchPress Scheduler to handle the reservations and payments of the tables or rooms on your website. Additionally, BirchPress offers synchronization with an external schedule, so you can also see the reservations, for example, on your phone. This plugin is exceptionally suitable for restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts.

Pros:

  • Elaborate plugin with many settings options
  • Link to external schedule feed
  • Organized backend
  • Many payment modules possible

Cons:

  • It takes some time to get to know the plugin
  • Payment modules via WooCommerce are versatile, but complex

Booked Appointments ($ 34 one-time)


Booked Appointments is a lesser-known, but a very nice plugin with a clean design, that may be exactly what you need for some target groups. Visitors can pick a date, schedule a time slot, and then leave their contact info. Optionally they can even make a payment with a WooCommerce payment module.

Pros:

  • Plugin has a clean design
  • Compact display of schedule and dates
  • Can be synchronized with an external schedule feed
  • Many payment modules possible
  • Form fields are configurable

Cons:

  • External schedule feed is read-only (reservations are not saved into the schedule)
  • Plugin is not easily extended with add-ons

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