Wordpress SEO Expert

Improve your Google ranking with Peter Mahoney, 20+ years SEO & Wordpress experience

In the realm of social media platforms, Google Plus was once considered a promising contender.

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However, Google officially discontinued Google Plus in 2019.

For website owners, this means it’s crucial to remove any lingering links to Google Plus from your site. It’s important to take action; here’s the steps you should follow to ensure your website remains up-to-date and optimised.

The End of Google Plus

Google Plus, introduced in 2011, aimed to rival other social media giants. However, despite initial enthusiasm, it failed to gain significant traction. Consequently, Google made the decision to shut down the platform in April 2019. While the platform’s discontinuation has been known for some time, it’s essential for website owners to remain vigilant and remove any outdated links to Google Plus to maintain a seamless user experience and optimise their websites for current search engine guidelines.

The Impact on SEO

As Google Plus no longer exists, any links pointing to the platform on your website serve no purpose and can potentially harm your SEO efforts. Broken or irrelevant links can negatively impact user experience, increase bounce rates, and signal to search engines that your website contains outdated or irrelevant information. To safeguard your website’s credibility and rankings, it’s imperative to conduct a thorough link audit and promptly remove any links associated with Google Plus.

Steps to Remove Google Plus Links

Removing Google Plus links from your website is a straightforward process. Begin by conducting a comprehensive audit of your site, paying particular attention to social media icons, share buttons, and any references to Google Plus in content or footers. Once identified, update your website’s code, content management system, or plugins to remove the Google Plus links. Don’t forget to check your website’s structured data markup and social media profiles to ensure they align with your current social media presence.

As Google Plus has become a thing of the past, website owners must take the necessary steps to remove any remaining links associated with the platform. By keeping your website up-to-date and removing obsolete links, you maintain a seamless user experience, safeguard your SEO efforts, and demonstrate to search engines that your website is current and relevant.

 

SEO doesn’t shouldn’t your site’s front-end

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On my SEO Emails section (where I share helpful responses to commonly asked queries) I recently shared a not uncommon occurrence, where a site owner gets the SEO work delivered and then blames the work for causing problems with the front-end of the site.

It’s actually very rare for that to happen. On-site SEO has two main components:

  1. site wide SEO work. For example, default settings for social sharing, sitemaps, robots.txt files, all manner of things.
  2. page specific work. This includes title and description tags, social sharing meta tags, image alt and title tags, things like that.

When clients do suggest that SEO has somehow changed their site’s layout or display, it’s usually related (to their mind) related to that second part, that certain pages don’t show like they should, or used to, etc.

But the information output there is all very standard. Title tags are ubiquitous, descriptions, social tags and the like are all just meta content. They live in the head of the page’s code – meta head tags of this nature are there to be read by search engines and browsers – they don’t impact the display or front-end of the site at all.

And image tags like alt and title tags are added to the code that makes an image display – it was showing anyway, so again there’s no change to how the page looks.

So what’s going on? Why do clients occasionally worry search engine optimisation work has impacted how visitors will see their site?

Quite simply – and when you think about it this makes perfect sense – the problem were already there. A lot of website owners don’t check their site thoroughly regularly. They might just preview new blog posts, or see the homepage fairly often. So they’re not always going to notice errors.

But after paying an SEO professional for a service as vital as organic search marketing, or indeed paying any web developer for a service, they’re much more likely to flick through their site to see if anything has happened to it.

And that’s when they notice the historical problems.

Fortunately from my perspective as an SEO expert who works in this field full-time there are ways to illustrate that. Google has a recent cache of the last time they scanned a page (so as long as that’s not been updated in the meantime, it can be used to show the problem existed before any SEO work was done) and the Wayback Machine (from the Internet Archive) can fulfill the same role.

So it’s usually fairly easy to prove.

When I complete an SEO task for a new client I usually get a great big thank you in my inbox. But when something like this happens the email will usually be quite accusatory and aggressive, not allowing for the the possibility something else could have caused the problem – even quite a long time ago.

I suppose the moral of the story is quite simple. Website owners, keep an eye on your websites and make sure they work. This is important for a whole host of reasons; I really recommend checking your contact forms work too. My SEO work brings extra visitors (consistently) but if they can’t get in touch with you because something isn’t working it’s a tragedy. And if you do notice a problem be open to a variety of causes and reasons before placing blame. (Quite often problems with sites are caused by updating your theme, plugins, the WordPress core – those things can even auto-update which means you might not even know there’s been a change).

From my end of things I’ll keep doing my best to explain things to anyone with a question, matter-of-factly and politely, knowing full well when someone else is wrong it’s simply because they didn’t know something.

And who could blame someone for that?

I am a small electrical company with poor SEO

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I am a small electrical company with a poor online presence.

I have a WordPress website which I am looking to renovate along side some SEO and PPC. Additionally I need to look at social media as a platform to show case information and projects.

I am looking for long term business relationships with continues growth. We want a proactive partner who can explain when and how to scale these campaigns to offer similar returns of investment.

You look credible and i wanted to reach out.

I’ve had a look at the current SEO setup and there’s definitely room for improvement. 🙂

Currently (for example) the homepage description code says:
“Looking for an honest, reliable, professional Electrician in the London or Surrey area? Visit our website for more information.”

There are a few rules that doesn’t conform to. You have two commas which is okay, albeit the maximum. There’s a question in there which is considered a no-no.

But most importantly, the only three words in there that actually get searched for are:

  • Electrician
  • London
  • Surrey

and only one of those relates to your actual service!

So I can absolutely help with your SEO.

You talked about renovating the site – if you mean you want a new design made that is something I can help with – but it would involve making a new site from scratch. (Obviously I do extensive SEO work, but I don’t make bespoke layout or design changes to existing sites I’m afraid.)

I also don’t work with PPC or social media. I used to, but year’s ago decided to hone my offering to the service that overwhelmingly delivers clients the best return on their investment – search engine optimisation.

Just a bit more on my SEO campaign offering. You can read more about it here:
https://peter.mahoneywebmarketing.com/ongoing-wordpress-seo-campaign/

I do usually recommend clients buy and work with me on the initial full expert WordPress SEO overhaul first though:
https://peter.mahoneywebmarketing.com/complete-wordpress-seo-overhaul/

So they can be sure they enjoy working with me.

I hope that’s all helpful!

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

Following the SEO report I do have some questions

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Hi Peter, I just caught up with your message.

Thank you for the report again and after I send this message I will be paying your next invoice.

It makes for an interesting read and i do have some questions and points:

  1. “The number of times your site was seen in search results has increased by 26%
    Clicks to your site from search results are up 15%”
    Are there any statistics on:
    1. what people are looking at when they get to the site
    2. If people are coming from facebook or instagram to look?
    3. what are the actual numbers?
  2. Search terms: we have found others seem popular so you may want to add them to your list.
  3. The speed enhancement and error update tidy up sounds good. the 404 error and searching for yourself info was very interesting too
  4. Just to clarify: we don’t sell from our office so location is irrelevant to us. We only sell online – and will deliver anywhere within the known universe
  5. I will try to write some how-tos – does they have to go on the homepage?
  6. Do you think the blog which I started on your advice is having any effect? I’m thinking it should fit in with the Bert update – if I am doing it right…

That’s it. Thanks for your input and help.

Cheers!

Questions are, of course, always welcome.

1)
To give an idea of the actual figures (although I do usually track the growth, which is considered the optimal way to measure an SEO campaign)…
In the past month actual clicks to the site from organic search results were: 1,149
Impressions in the same period in organic search were: 36,941

You’ll note I made a real point there of specifying ‘organic search’ – that’s very much the domain SEO (and therefore my work) exists in. So I don’t have any stats for Facebook or Instagram. I can say the figures above really are just from search – so anything you get from social would be on top of those in your overall stats.

Similarly I don’t measure what happens to a visitors pathway after they get to your site either – that sort of thing is either considered the realm of generic Analytics (as opposed to search specific) or more explicitly – the realm of US (user experience) which is a whole different discipline.

🙂

2)
In terms of reporting I include up to 12 in the reports. Of course I’m targeting many, many more than that but for the sake of measuring growth and demonstrating the success 12 is more than sufficient.

But I can definitely swap some out for others if you’d like! Maybe you could just send me back a list of 12 you’d like and we’ll use those from now on.

4)
Oh I know – it’s just extra stuff Google likes to see in place even if it’s irrelevant to the operations of the business.

5)
It’s best on the homepage. Think of any content on the site like this – the more ‘steps’ away it is from the homepage the slightly less import it has for your SEO authority.

So if the FAQs are on the homepage we can use the structured data approach to full effect. If they’re on a page that’s one click away from the homepage they’ve worth less. If they’re buried in a link from the footer or something… even worse.

The higher any content on the site (both in terms of how many clicks through the navigation it is to get to, AND how high it sits on a page) the more weight it has for SEO.

So, with the FAQs, I recommend they go on the homepage, but towards the bottom so they’re not in the way of other stuff.

6)
Yes! It is, and will continue to as you add more. It’s amazing how much of a difference blogging couple with an SEO campaign is.

Case in point is my own site:
petermahoney.com

I have great SEO on it of course, but being my own site it’s never really finished or up-to-date – my clients get all my time and my own ‘house’ is never really finished. So I go through phases of blogging a lot and then I get busy and forget about it.

Well, just three weeks ago I started adding regular content again. One of my targets is ‘seo expert peter’. Google that – see where I suddenly am after just a spat of blogging and SEOing it all properly!

🙂

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

Should I get you involved now or after launch?

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I am about to launch a landing page on my website for a new online business. I have a hair salon and will be selling haircolour kits off of website and social media. I have just written the copy. Would now be the time to get you involved or would it be after I launch?

Thanks for contacting me!

And congratulations for getting the new landing page up.

The best time to get me involved with your SEO is actually right after the site goes live. That way when I do the work I can do it all:

  • Keyword research
  • Devise the best strategy
  • Deploy all the SEO and related settings on the site
  • Do all the search engine submissions work (including sending the sitemap to them, pages, etc.)

I do from time to time get involved earlier though if a client really wants. The way I manage that is I do everything except that final step, and we wrap the job up when I’ve done all I can at that stage.

But when they do put the site live they just let me know and I jump back in to do the Google, Bing and other search engines work – obviously without any further charge.

I hope that helps!

So the short version would be – after it’s live is best. But I can work on your site’s SEO earlier if you’d really like.

I hope that helps!

Thanks again,

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

Help us rank higher on Google

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A colleague recommended me to your page and service. I just wanted to know a little bit more about how you would be able to help us rank higher on Google. We are a full service commercial real estate firm and would need to rank high for brokerage and Management mostly. We do have active social media accounts.

Thanks for contacting me. It’s always good to be recommended!

My offer would be appropriate for your site: you don’t have a lot of SEO work on there currently so it would certainly make a difference.

A few general thoughts:

1)
Your homepage is a bit light on text. Personally I’d recommend you rewrite the main About page text (to ensure it’s unique) and include that on the homepage too. If that isn’t feasible I’d suggest moving the main About page text to the homepage instead.

2)
It’s good you have active social media accounts. They can work well for social related traffic to your site (when you link from them to pages on the site) but actually have very little SEO impact. Facebook for example has marked all their outbound links as ‘nofollow’ for some years. So links don’t count towards your SEO authority. In my experience social accounts are best used to create a mini ‘community’ on those platforms you can have your own specific strategies for.

Thanks again!

Peter Mahoney
WordPress SEO Expert

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