A favicon (pronounced “fave-icon”) is a small iconic image that represents a website in web browsers. If you take a look at the address bar of your browser right now, I’m sure you’ll see several favicons. Well-designed ones are styled to feature a logo, the first letter of the company name or simply an image that reflects the specifics of the website it represents. In the small chance that a website doesn’t have a favicon, the browser will display a generic browser symbol.Here are examples from famous brands:Which of these favicons do you recognise?While favicons may seem small and insignificant, having one can make a huge difference in terms of user experience and online branding. In this post, we’ll figure out where favicons come from, what kinds are used in modern browsers, and how to create one for your website.
Why is a favicon important for your brand?
Favicons attract user attention and boost brand awareness. If users visit a website with a memorable favicon a couple of times, they will then easily distinguish it from others in the future. Think about a famous brand you interact with daily—like Facebook or Instagram—you should be able to easily picture its favicon with your eyes closed. Again, If you‘re like me and tend to keep dozens of tabs open simultaneously—ultimately being unable to read their names—favicons are your best friends that make finding the website you need much easier.The favicons for Facebook and Twitter have look exactly like their respective logos. So, does it mean that all you need is to minimize your logo image and upload it onto your website? Let’s dive deep into all the technical details and talk about what it takes to create a favicon.
What type of image is a favicon?
Although most modern browsers will recognize PNG, GIF, and JPG formats for favicons, Internet Explorer currently does not. It is recommended to use the Microsoft ICO format, which works in all browsers.
What size should your favicon be?
Another good reason to use the ICO format is that it can contain multiple favicons of different sizes in one ICO file. It is best to have, at minimum, a 16×16 pixel version. I usually include 32×32 and 48×48 versions as well. That way, if users drag the bookmark to their desktop they will see a nicely scaled version of the icon instead of the 16×16 version stretched out. Google recommends going with the largest possible resolution of 192×192. At the moment, Google simply stretches existing low-resolution favicons when a bigger size is required. As a result, all of the images look blurry and take away from the user experience.
General tips to consider
So, if you don’t want to lose out on clicks, consider “upgrading” your site’s favicon. And here are some general guidelines you should stick to:
Use a square icon.
A favicon should represent only your brand and not contain inappropriate symbols (like swastikas) — otherwise, Google will not show it and will use the generic symbol instead.
Favicon file should be accessible to Google crawlers.
How to create a favicon
Although there are many ways to create favicons, the easiest is to use an online tool. Use an existing image of, for example, your logo and upload it to an online generator like a site heaalth checker. Once you download the generated favicon, all that’s left is to add it to your site.
How to link to your favicon
Now that you’ve created a nice little favicon, you need to tell web browsers and other applications where to find it. Adding this line to the <head> section of your HTML will ensure that your favicon will be found:The location of the favicon isn’t really important, as long as the href attribute is accurate. Most are, however, placed in the root directory (the directory that contains the homepage). Keep in mind that it is not necessary to have multiple instances of the same favicon on one website.If you add a favicon without linking to it within your HTML, you may notice that some browsers will still find and display it. This only occurs if the favicon is in the root directory. It isn’t good to rely on this method, so if you want to make sure that applications will see your favicon, <link> to it!
Conclusion
Favicons help websites stay afloat in the vast ocean of online resources, plus make them more attractive and professional in the eyes of the visitors.If you need any help with yours, turn to our website audit for help. Among other things, it can run a full technical check-up for your website that includes finding your favicon. Well, your favicon is a very small detail that can affect the public perception of your site and brand, their recognition and even the volume of traffic it gets from search, so don’t underestimate it. It’s worth every second that you invest in it.
If you have already audited your website and have walked here to understand how meta-description works, I’m here to help remove that confusion. This article will cover everything you need to know about the basics of meta- descriptions and what makes a perfect one. You’ll also learn why your site’s meta descriptions are so important, as well as the best length for your meta descriptions (especially taking into account Google’s changing policies) and some great meta description examples.
What is a meta tag?
A meta tag is an HTML element that provides information about a webpage for search engines and website visitors. Two elements must be placed as tags in the <head> section of an HTML document. These elements are:
Title tag
Meta description
We’ve already discussed title tags in a separate post, and now, let’s move straight into meta descriptions.
What is a meta description?
The meta description is the short paragraph of text placed in the HTML of a webpage that describes its content. This is also known as a snippet. The meta description appears under your page’s URL in Google’s organic search results. The meta description will often appear when people share your articles across other websites and social channels.
Where is meta description added?
You can add a meta description in the <head> section of your site’s HTML. It should look something like this:<head><meta name=”description” content=”Here is a precise description of my awesome webpage.”></head>Here are examples:If you use an SEOplug-in, that comes with a content management system, you can add a meta description to the ‘meta description’ section, and you can preview an example of how it will look in search engine results pages (SERPs):
Why is the meta description important?
Since meta descriptions appear with your title and URL on the results pages, they have the power to influence the decision of the searcher as to whether they want to click through on your content from search results or not. The more descriptive, attractive, and relevant the description, the more likely someone will click through. Research has shown that having your content focus keyword in the meta is a relevant signal for search engines to discover you.
How to write a perfect meta description?
A great meta-description will compel the reader to visit your website and read more. Here’s an example of what it usually looks like.
1. Keywords
Do make sure your most important keywords for the webpage show up in the meta description. Often search engines will highlight it in bold as a clue to where it finds the searcher’s query in your snippet.
2. Write legible, readable copy
This is essential. Keyword stuffing your meta description is bad and it doesn’t help the searcher, as well as robots, discover you well. They’ll assume your result leads to a spam or phishing website, so make sure your description reads like a normal, human-written sentence.
3. Treat it as an advert for your web page
Make it as compelling and as relevant as possible. The description MUST! match the content on the page, but you should also make it as appealing as possible. That is what we call SEO copywriting.
4. Length
Google cuts off the displayed description tag at about 150 characters but may index up to 185 characters. Other engines may index up to 250 characters, but will still only display about 150. Therefore, try to say what you’ve got to say in 150 characters or less, but feel free to use up to 180, and even up to 250 if you’re not concerned with the entire thing getting indexed by all the search engines. Aim for about 1-2 sentences (140-160 characters) long
5. Keyphrase
Use your primary keyphrase at the beginning of your description tag, giving it higher “keyword prominence”. Don’t overuse your keyphrase though, or it can be considered “webspam”. Higher than zero keyword prominence is good, but higher still is not always better.
6. Use natural-sounding language
Use proper grammar, and try to peak interest in the subject. Also, consider making an actual “offer” in your description tag. Remember, you want the reader to click your ad, but not just to record impression. Now let me ask you? how many times have you skipped over a search result because the two lines of text you see (the description tag) in the SERPS looked gibberish?
7. Do not duplicate meta descriptions
As with title tags, the meta descriptions must be written differently for every page. Google may penalize websites that indulge in mass duplicating of meta descriptions.
Examples of good meta descriptions
Since you only have 160 characters to work with, writing a great meta description takes more than just throwing a few words together. To help you get your creative juices flowing, here are some examples for your inspiration.
Helpful online tool for checking your meta descriptions
Below is a helpful tool that you can use to test your meta descriptions as you write them.SEO Analyzer— This tool analyses the health of a website. It will provide you with a list of issues that makes it easy to see where exactly a website is struggling, including missing and duplicate meta descriptions:
Conclusion
Remember, the primary reason for a perfect description tag is NOT so you can rank higher, (since Google, for example, is currently not using the description tag in their algorithm). The primary reason for a good description is to compel the reader to click on you, instead of the competitor.
Defining title tags rightly is very crucial for your business. The title tags in SEO are the title of your document to your most important types of readers; people and robots. The page title is used by search engine algorithms to decide the order when listing pages in search results. Title tags are shown in the browser’s title bar or in the page’s tab and are the most prominent and noticeable part of a SERP result. The contents of a page title are very important for search engine optimization (SEO). People need to know what they can expect to find on your page when they click the link.
What are Title Tags?
The <title> tag defines the title of the document.
Your title tag is the “headline” that people will see in the search results. It’s also one of the primary factors for the search engines in determining your ranking for a given search phrase, although that’s declining in importance.
In the HTML code of your web page, they should appear as:
<head><title> Your Title Goes Here </title></head>
These titles can appear in:
Search engine results
Social media posts
Unfurled chat messages
Browser tabs
Why are title tags important?
Defining title tags are important because they let readers know what information will be present when a user clicks on a page. They also function to determine the relevancy of the web page as a result of a search query. If your title tags do not appeal to Google, then they may change it to better suit their/user needs. If this happens, you can bet it most likely won’t be to your liking.
Tips to defining your title tags
Here are some tips and best practices to ensure your title tags are optimized for crawlers and readers alike.
Your wording
Stay away from all capital letters in your title tag as they’ll use up more character space than lower case letters will and like emails, it is considered improper. Instead of the title, “BEST SELLING SHOE SHOPS IN GHANA” use “Best Selling Shoe Shops In Ghana”.
Search engines will display about 50-60 characters of the title, so try not to have titles longer than that. Keep your titles shorter. This makes for a nice headline for the SERPS and prevents the title from being cut off in the mid-sentence. Google has not specifically come out and said that title tags should be this length; however, if your title is longer than 60 characters, you risk the chance of it becoming cut off in the middle.
Avoid stop words in your title tags such as A, And, But, So, On, Or, The, Was, With, etc. Sometimes it might not seem impossible to have a title tag without stop words, but if you try different combinations of the same title, you can find them.
Your creativity
Write the title in plain English, using proper grammar, make it easily readable, and not just stuff a jumble of keywords in there. As a headline, it should captivate the reader’s attention and motivate them to click. What do you think is more effective to draw in a customer” “SEO Ghana – Evans Stevens” or “SEO Ghana – Secrets to Boosting Your Online Presence”?
Put in your most relevant and desired keywords you want to be ranked in the title, but don’t overdo it. Google can easily recognize keyword stuffing and may change the title of your web page if it feels you’re just throwing different variations of a keyword into it.
Having action words in your title tags can help entice users to click through. Some examples of action words often used in titles are: Get, Take, Boost, Learn, Make.
Try to feature your brand at the end of the title if there’s space. If not, shorten your page title and make space. Having your brand featured can further convince users that the web page is reputable, trustworthy, and has solid information. By using your company name in the title tag, you’re possibly also wasting space that could otherwise be used for a secondary persuasive keyword or phrase. What do you want here? New customers or bragging rights? You decide!
Conclusion
Title tags play an extremely important role and the way you use them can impact your SEO significantly. Use all the SEO tools at your disposal wisely and ensure that you’re getting the most out of each SEO facet, no matter how small it seems.
Remember this is the headline for your search listing!
SEO is a vital tool for digital marketing but what exactly is it? Is SEO useful for businesses? SEO simply means Search Engine Optimization. It consists of multiple strategies, which have the end goal of improving your website’s position in search engines. This is why it’s called “search engine optimization.”
On-page consists of anything you can control on your own website to improve your rankings. Site speed, keyword presence, header text and content are examples of on-page SEO. For example, keywords must be well-researched, carefully chosen and used in your content in order to be effective. Keywords are words and phrases that prospects use to find content online. Brands use keywords to connect with prospects who are looking for their products and services.
When researching keywords, it is advisable to use those with high search rates and low competition. Short-tailed (such as food), long-tailed (such as foods that are delicacies), and local keywords (such as food delicacies in Ghana) are good for your content. Your content must also be educational, compelling, relevant and shareable to attract prospects. Content can include videos, infographics, social media posts, and local listings.
Off-page
Off-page consists of anything that happens away from your site. Generally, this only refers to links. The current best practices include guest blogging, creating compelling infographics and mentioning influencers. By appropriately implementing the components of on-and off-page factors, you’ll rank high in search engines.
Is SEO important for businesses and digital marketing?
Are you in an industry where there’s little to no competition? Are you already ranking #1, and wondering if there are options to keep you visible always? No matter the business you own, if it has a website, then SEO is crucial for its success online. Even if you are the only one in your industry, SEO is still important.
Importance of SEO to businesses
Investing in your business’s SEO, is making direct investment in its visibility and profitability. Regardless of the future, you can count on that visibility to help your business prosper.
Search engine is valuable tool for brand awareness and positioning yourself as a trustworthy expert in your field.
It also helps to know that once customers visits your website, then they have an interest in your services. Hence, saves you time in convincing them to patronize your product.
Search Engine Optimization rewards your business for its efforts at a higher rate compared to all the other forms of online marketing.
It is relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things.
A strong search engine can also leave lasting impacts many years ahead.
Finding the right SEO firm for your business
The SEO industry is constantly evolving. You need to stay on top of trends in order to maintain your rankings. You need a reputable and reliable partner that fully understands your business. A partner that will work with you to reach more people and make sales online. When selecting SEO firm to work with, examine their pricing, area of expertise and clients published testimonials.
Choose SEO Digital Ghana as Your Trusted Partner
Are you looking for a trusted and reliable SEO company to get you on top of search engine rankings? Kindly call/WhatsApp us on +233 050 66 43 847 NOW! Our experts are always available to speak with you and answer all your questions,
There might be numerous SEO tools out there and though nobody disputes their role, one of the easiest and most accessible ways to optimize your WordPress site is with the help of WordPress SEO plugins. Fortunately, there are quite a lot of WordPress SEO plugins for you to choose from. While you can’t say there is a WordPress plugin for every type of SEO tool you can think of, there are some SEO plugins for WordPress you really must try (if you haven’t already done it). Here is a list of the most important ones.
1 WordPress SEO by Yoast
WordPress SEO by Yoast is rightfully considered one of the top SEO plugins for WordPress. It’s a complete suite that covers almost any aspect of SEO. With WordPress SEO by Yoast you can analyze onpage and offpage factors, create XML sitemaps, optimize meta and link elements, as well as RSS and breadcrumbs, edit .htaccessand robots.txt file, enjoy integration with social media, use it on multiple sites and many more. In a sense, if you get this plugin, you might not need anything else.
2 All in One SEO PACK
All in One SEO Pack is another really popular and comprehensive SEO suite for WordPress. Similarly to WordPress SEO by Yoast, you can use this one to handle all your SEO tasks. All in One SEO Pack offers XML sitemaps, optimization of titles and meta tags, advanced canonical URLs, and what not. One of its uniques features is the ability to eliminate duplicate content issues. Additionally, it’s a plugin you can use on e-commerce sites.
3 Google XML Maps
If you are not looking for a complete SEO suite, such as WordPress SEO by Yoast or All in One SEO Pack that among their numerous features come with XML sitemap generation functionality but would like a simple plugin especially for this, then Google XML Maps is your best choice. This plugin doesn’t come with bells and whistles and it doesn’t offer tons of functionality but it is really fast and reliable for XML sitemap generation, even if your site is pretty large and there are thousands of pages.
4 HTML Sitemap for WordPress
Here is another plugin (or more precisely a template) from Yoast de Valk HTML Sitemap for WordPress. While XML sitemaps are no doubt useful for search engines, an HTML sitemap is definitely more useful for your human visitors. HTML sitemap generation is not part of the WordPress SEO by Yoast it’s provided separately. The template in the link is special because it gives you a lot of flexibility when you decide what to include in your HTML sitemap and what to skip.
5 SEO Friendly Images
We all know how important it is to optimize images and how much time this could take. This is why it really makes a difference when you have a reliable ally on your site. With the SEO Friendly Images plugin for WordPress, it gets so much easier to optimize your images. This plugin automatically adds alt and title attribute to all your images. Of course, if you are not pleased with its suggestions, you can always modify the automatically added alt and title attributes to something you like more.
6 WP Smush
As alt tags become a necessity for finding images, It is an SEO friendly practice also for your images to load efficiently fast so as to be on top of the SEO game. One sure plugin that caters for this is the WP Smush.
This plugin meticulously scans every image you upload – or have already added to your site – cuts all the unnecessary data and scales it for you before adding it to your media library.
In addition to smushing your media uploads, you may want to compress the images stored in other folders. Smush lets you compress any image in any directory so that you can optimize all the images on your site – including NextGEN images, images stored on Amazon S3 using WP Offload S3 and images in EVERY WordPress plugin and theme package!
7 Share This
You might have mind-blowing content but if it doesn’t get traffic, then it’s useless. Out of the many ways to drive traffic to your site, social sites are among the best. With the Share, This plugin for WordPress, content sharing is much easier. The plugin not only allows you and your readers to share your content on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and 120 others but it also comes with analytics features, too.
8 Broken Link Checker
There is hardly an SEO expert who doesn’t know how badly broken links are. Checking broken links one by one is not physically possible, even for a small site. While there are numerous free and paid tools that check for broken links, if you don’t want to leave WordPress, you can get the Broken Link Checker plugin and monitor the health of your links with it. When a broken link is found, you are notified about this.
9 SEO Links Checker
While the previous plugin is great for broken links detection, if you want more power in dealing with your links, then you need SEO Links Checker. The purpose of this plugin is to automatically create links (i.e. affiliate links) and make them nofollow, if you like. If you are running a big site with a lot of affiliate links tied to a particular keyword, this plugin is a valuable assistant. Just remember to use links wisely i.e. don’t stuff your posts with links simply because it’s so easy to do.
10 SEO Plugin By Squirrly
The last plugin on this list SEO Plugin by Squirrly is again a full SEO suite but the difference is that it’s for NON-SEO experts. This said, the plugin is by no means inferior to the rest, it simply doesn’t offer that many opportunities to mess directly with code. SEO by Squirrly deals with all aspects of SEO customization from content marketing, to keyword research, to SEO analytics, to onpage optimization.
Of course, there are many more SEO WordPress plugins we couldn’t cover in this article. If the plugins on the list are not what you need, browse the Net for alternatives. However, be warned that most of the other plugins are either not as good, or they are for earlier versions of WordPress (and might not be compatible with the latest ones). While the WordPress plugins on the list are generally OK for most WordPress Webmasters, if they are not OK with you, you always have the option to optimize your WordPress site with external tools.
Which of these favicons do you recognise?
While favicons may seem small and insignificant, having one can make a huge difference in terms of user experience and online branding. In this post, we’ll figure out where favicons come from, what kinds are used in modern browsers, and how to create one for your website.
Defining title tags rightly is very crucial for your business. The title tags in SEO are the title of your document to your most important types of readers; people and robots. The page title is used by search engine algorithms to decide the order when listing pages in search results. Title tags are shown in the browser’s title bar or in the page’s tab and are the most prominent and noticeable part of a 
In the HTML code of your web page, they should appear as:
<head>
<title> Your Title Goes Here </title>
</head>
These titles can appear in:
There might be numerous SEO tools out there and though nobody disputes their role, one of the easiest and most accessible ways to optimize your WordPress site is with the help of WordPress SEO plugins. Fortunately, there are quite a lot of WordPress SEO plugins for you to choose from. While you can’t say there is a WordPress plugin for every type of SEO tool you can think of, there are some SEO plugins for WordPress you really must try (if you haven’t already done it). Here is a list of the most important ones.