Bill Hartzer – February 2016 Update

It’s been been a while since I send out my newsletter. If you are one my newsletter subscribers, this is the type of content that you’ll receive in my monthly newsletter.

For me, the past few months I’ve had some personal and family challenges to deal with, so that’s really why I haven’t been sending out a weekly newsletter. But, I’ve decided to go ahead and send out a newsletter again, and get on a monthly schedule unless some sort of update or news warrants something an update.

Here’s what’s been going on lately that I’d like to point out:

I Changed Up My Website to Show Blog Posts on the Home Page
This is actually a pretty big change for me, as I now am featuring the blog posts that I write rather than having a static home page. I was interested in seeing whether or not my site’s rankings would suffer as a result, and so far it’s been about a month and I’m still enjoying top rankings for several important keywords. So, rather than having a static home page I would consider going with a page that shows your top blog posts if you have them. I also try to post at least once a day, and sometimes several times a day. That’s lead to more traffic.

How to Make Your WordPress Site Google AMP Compatible
Google has launched Google Accelerated Mobile Pages. It’s easy to change your WordPress site so that it’s compatible, and if you have a blog you should definitely do this.

Google Using Twitter to Promote New gTLD Domain Names
Google continues to promote the new domain endings, and they’re using Twitter to help promote their Google Domains service.

Facebook’s Competitor to Google AdSense: Facebook Audience Network
If you are using Google AdSense on your website, then you should be aware of the fact that Facebook actually has a competitor product, as well, called the Facebook Audience Network. You can run Facebook ads on your site and get revenue by showing those ads.

Did You Know? There is a Simple Version of Wikipedia
There is a simple version of Wikipedia. You can replace the “en” in the URL with “simple” and get another hidden version of Wikipedia. Cool if you’re helping an elementary school understand a subject or topic. 😉

And finally, it’s worth noting that we are still waiting for a Google Penguin update, which may happen at any time. The Google Penguin algorithm deals mainly with links from other websites to your website. Many sites have been penalized in the past by this algorithm update, and are still waiting for this update. It’s been a long time, and we’re all frustrated that Google hasn’t updated Penguin.

I usually send an update monthly, unless there is some sort of “big news” or issue that comes up that warrants an update.