Stress, often considered a mental or emotional response, can have surprising and far-reaching effects on the entire body.
While it’s natural to associate stress with psychological strain, it’s important to recognize its physical repercussions.
In response to stress, our body undergoes changes in hormone and chemical secretions. Most of these secretions are produced by the adrenal gland, a small organ positioned atop the kidneys.
The hormones released from this gland serve multiple functions, including initiating the “fight-or-flight” response, regulating metabolic processes such as blood sugar levels, managing the balance of salt and water, and facilitating pregnancy.
While these hormones can be life-saving in moderation, their prolonged presence can lead to significant detrimental effects.
Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, primarily functions to inhibit processes that might obstruct the body’s “fight-or-flight” response. To be more specific, it alters the way the immune system reacts and obstructs the proper functioning of the digestive, reproductive, and growth-related systems.
Stress is a complex foe that can have a negative impact on multiple parts of your health. It can trigger a spectrum of digestive issues, ranging from stomach discomfort and indigestion to conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Stress can also interfere with your eating patterns, episodes of overeating or undereating, which can contribute to fluctuations in body weight.
Beyond its digestive implications, stress can manifest in your skin, exacerbating conditions such as acne, psoriasis and eczema. Additionally, it can trigger allergic reactions, often leading to discomforting skin issues like hives.
The impact of chronic stress extends even further, encompassing your cardiovascular health. It’s associated with an elevated risk of heart disease, hypertension and atherosclerosis. Stress hormones, particularly cortisol, have the capacity to elevate blood pressure and promote inflammation within blood vessels.
For women, stress initiates a reduction in the production of estrogen and progesterone while elevating cortisol levels. This particular blend frequently leads to erratic and uncomfortable menstrual cycles and can have adverse effects on both emotional well-being and libido.
In the case of men, stress prompts a decline in testosterone levels and an upsurge in cortisol, which subsequently translates to feelings of fatigue and a notable decrease in sexual desire.
When it comes to lifestyle interventions, physical activity is a top recommendation.
Exercise stands out as the most effective way to mitigate stress and lower cortisol levels.
Avoid responding to non-urgent emails and phone calls.
Consider taking breaks or practicing relaxation techniques to manage stress effectively.
Adopting a balanced, nutritious diet and steering clear of smoking, alcohol consumption or recreational drug use are fundamental steps to reduce stress.
Nonetheless, it’s crucial to keep in mind that if you feel that stress is having a substantial impact on your health and overall quality of life, it’s wise to seek guidance from a health care professional.
Drawing on your medical history and unique situation, a health care expert can provide personalized advice and solutions.
Practicing stress management techniques such as meditation and exercise, and seeking support from professionals, can help reduce these surprising and often detrimental effects on the body.
We know Google has hundreds of ranking factors when it comes to determining where a URL will land on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). According to Google, website accessibility is not a direct ranking factor because it’s difficult to quantify. So if that’s the case, is there any correlation between accessibility and SEO? While there … Continue reading Does Poor Website Accessibility Affect Your Rankings?
We know Google has hundreds of ranking factors when it comes to determining where a URL will land on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). According to Google, website accessibility is not a direct ranking factor because it’s difficult to quantify.
So if that’s the case, is there any correlation between accessibility and SEO?
While there may not be a direct link, there is likely to be an indirect one. This comes down to user experience metrics. So what exactly is the correlation and what should you expect as a website owner?
In this post, we’ll introduce website accessibility standards and why they exist. We’ll then compare the performance of four websites with varying levels of accessibility compliance to see if accessibility does have a noticeable impact on SEO. So let’s dive in!
Why We Have Website Accessibility Standards
Accessible websites that are intuitive and easy to use for all visitors are the right thing to do. Unfortunately, that doesn’t often translate to what website owners actually do.
It’s not out of malice. In fact, it’s mostly from a lack of knowledge on the topic. How can one even begin to make their website accessible if the definition of “accessible” varies from person to person?
That’s where website accessibility standards come in. These standards lay the foundation for accessibility best practices. So instead of website designers and developers creating what they think is accessible, they can know the techniques they implement are part of the approved standards.
Where Do Sites Struggle Most With Website Accessibility?
The greatest struggle for sites is in the marriage between design and accessibility. That is, web designers and developers feel like they have to prioritize one over the other. A few common examples of this include:
Popups or flyouts that may confuse visitors or screen readers
Text on images without a high enough contrast for visually impaired visitors
Text on images with too small font size
Complex nested navigation
Poorly structured tables
Lack of “skip to content” link
There are plenty of ways to combine design and accessibility whether you’re using a pre-built layout or building your own from scratch.
What We Learned From Analyzing 4 Websites
In this part of the article, we’ll look closely at the breakdown of accessibility issues for each site. We’ll also consider the last six months of domain ranking information and that domain’s keyword positions for the month of June. This will help us to develop a fuller picture and understand the true impact of web accessibility and SEO.
Amazon: Not As Accessible As You Would Think
Surely a global giant like Amazon would have website accessibility all figured out, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case based on our analysis. Amazon is actually number two on our list when it comes to the number of total accessibility issues.
The breakdown of issues, as of this writing, is one critical issue, 18 serious issues, and 114 minor accessibility issues.
To provide some context, here are the differences between these classifications:
Critical issues are those that stop most users of assistive technology (e.g. screen readers, screen magnifiers, refreshable braille displays) from using the website.
Serious issues are those that may cause problems or increased frustration for users, but it doesn’t fully prevent them from using the site.
Minor issues are those that may cause problems or frustrations for a smaller number of users.
To understand the impact of accessibility and SEO, we must also consider other domain ranking factors. As such, we’ve analyzed the last six months of website domain statistics.
Over the last six months, Amazon has maintained a domain rating of 96, 18.8 million backlinks, and 179,700 referring domains. When looking at their ranking profile, in particular, we see 73.7 million organic keywords with roughly 900.9 million organic traffic visits per month.
To narrow in even further, in June 2022, Amazon has 13.25 million keywords ranking in positions one through three. Of those keywords, 13 million are non-branded.
Etsy: All-Around Accessibility and Performance
Etsy is a marketplace, like Amazon. Unlike Amazon, which has a wide range of manufactured products, Etsy focuses on handmade and vintage products.
When it comes to accessibility issues, Etsy has 68 total issues with one critical issue and one serious issue among them.
Over the last six months, Etsy has maintained the second highest domain ranking on our list, 93. In addition, its number of backlinks is 204.7 million with 1.1 million referring domains. When looking at keyword statistics, in particular, Etsy ranked for 37.2 million organic keywords with roughly 247.8 million organic traffic visits per month.
And how about keyword ranking performance? In June 2022, Etsy has 2.76 million keywords ranking in positions one through three. Of those, 2.74 million are non-branded.
Nordstrom: The Front-Runner
Amazon and Etsy are e-commerce marketplaces with tens of thousands of brands (or millions, in the case of Amazon). Nordstrom, on the other hand, is an e-commerce storefront. So how does it compare?
According to our analysis, Nordstrom is the most accessible website on our list with a total of 42 accessibility issues. Nordstrom has no critical or serious accessibility issues, unlike the other three websites in our analysis.
When it comes to domain rating, Nordstrom scores an 87. The e-commerce site has 5.4 million backlinks and 79,100 referring domains. It also ranks for 3 million organic keywords with roughly 43.2 million organic traffic visits per month.
For June 2022, Nordstrom has 343,800 keywords ranking in positions one through three. Of those keywords, 329,600 are non-branded.
Lululemon: How Accessibility and Performance Interact
Lululemon is an athletic wear and lifestyle apparel brand founded in the ‘90s. It grew in popularity within the Yoga community, but it soon expanded its reach to all areas of athletic and leisure apparel. Similar to Nordstrom, Lululemon hosts an e-commerce storefront.
According to our analysis of accessibility issues, Lululemon is the least accessible website on our list with 133 total issues. This includes three critical issues and 49 serious issues.
Coincidentally, Lululemon also has the lowest domain rating on our list with an 82. Over the last six months, Lululemon has maintained 1.1 million backlinks, 30,000 referring domains, and 489,900 organic keyword rankings. This has netted Lululemon roughly 8.3 million in organic website traffic per month.
When zeroing in on June 2022, Lululemon has just 12,800 keywords in positions one through three. Of those, just 1,900 are non-branded.
Web Accessibility Main Takeaways
The goal of this part of the article is to determine just how much of a factor website accessibility is on website rankings. To do so, compared the keyword ranking metrics of each website based on overlapping keywords. What did we find?
Using the Keyword Gap tool in ahrefs, we narrowed it down to roughly 2,900 overlapping keywords that ranked in positions one through three. These include keywords like “mesh sports bra,” “tie dye mens shorts,” and “mid rise skirt.”
Of those almost 3,000 keywords, this is how each of the four sites performed:
Amazon ranked for 2,470 keywords in positions one through three;
Etsy ranked for 479 keywords in positions one through three;
Nordstrom ranked for 694 keywords in positions one through three; and
Lululemon ranked for 84 keywords in positions one through three.
Lululemon did rank lowest among the four websites, which isn’t surprising considering its domain rating and organic keyword profile. If website accessibility was a big factor, though, you’d expect Amazon to do poorly. However, Amazon has the highest number of ranking keywords by far. This may have to do with its strong domain rating.
While these results don’t show a direct correlation between poor website accessibility and keyword rankings, it’s still a legal requirement. While there are no enforceable laws in the United States specifically referencing website accessibility, most websites do fall under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This means website owners can face civil lawsuits from website users and potentially be fined by the federal government.
We also know sites with better User Experience (UX) perform the best in SERPs, so having an accessible website is a must.
Creating an Accessibility Improvement Strategy for Your Website
According to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as outlined by The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), to be compliant, a website must be:
Perceivable
Operable
Understandable
Robust
These terms of subjective, so how can we know what’s truly accessible? Fortunately, WCAG lays that out very clearly.
So how do we put this into practice?
There are a lot of steps you can take to meet ADA website compliance requirements. If you’re just getting started, these are the most important ones to consider.
Choose a Content Management System that Supports Accessibility
Not all e-commerce platforms are created equal. There are some that support accessibility better than others. So if you’re in a position to choose a new content management system, then do so with accessibility in mind and be sure to add it to your redesign checklist.
An accessible platform will make it easy to incorporate accessibility features like alt text, anchor text, high-contrast text, and content structure. It may also have accessibility elements built into its HTML structure, or it gives you full access to the HTML files to do so yourself.
Include Descriptive Alt Text for Images
Images make up about 50% of digital content. As such, they cannot be ignored when it comes to making accessibility accommodations on your website.
Alt text is a written description of the content of the image. It describes what it is and the contextual purpose it serves on a website or blog post.
As an added bonus, descriptive alt text can also increase the odds of your content being found with Google image search.
Use a Logical Content Organization Structure
Screen readers and other types of web accessibility software rely heavily on HTML to determine what content should be read in what order. A logical content organization structure is important for this type of software, but also for visual readers in general.
What do we mean by a logical structure?
This includes the page structure itself, consisting of the header, nav, main, aside, and footer elements. It also includes content structure as you might see on a product page or blog post. This includes the use of heading and subheading tags like H1, H2, etc.
Use Descriptive Anchor Text for Links
How you link can be just as important as where you link. Descriptive anchor text ensures users understand where they are going before they click a hyperlink on your site.
An example of non-descriptive anchor text would be:
“To learn more about this topic, go here” with “here” serving as the anchor text.
A better way to link to internal and external sites is to incorporate your links naturally into your content. In the example image above, you can see “Search Console website” is another link that goes to – you guessed it! – the Search Console website.
The clear and concise anchor text leaves no questions as to what type of content the link will lead to.
FAQs
Do you still have questions about web accessibility and SEO? Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions.
What is website accessibility?
Web accessibility is the inclusive practice of making websites available and easy to use for all visitors. This is inclusive of those with physical disabilities, cognitive limitations, and even socioeconomic factors like bandwidth restrictions and speed.
What are some examples of accessible design?
Examples of accessible design include any measure that’s designed to ensure those who are differently abled or have limitations can make full use of a website. This can range from closed captioning on any video/audio to items like reducing image size to make it easier for pages to load for users with lower internet bandwidth.
Why is website accessibility important?
Web accessibility’s main goal is to make the internet a more accessible place for all people. It is also a great way to ensure a smooth user experience for everyone, regardless of disabilities or limitations. There can even be an added SEO benefit to doing so.
Where can I find tools to check my website's accessibility?
There are plenty of free and paid tools to check your website’s accessibility. These include accessiBe, WAVE, and audioeye.
How do I make my website accessible?
One of the best first steps you can take is doing an accessibility audit using both your own team’s expertise as well as free and paid tools. When you know what areas your website is struggling most, begin laying out a plan to address them. Depending on your team’s bandwidth, you may have to focus on lower-effort areas like lowering image sizes and make plans for more extensive changes later.
Web accessibility is the inclusive practice of making websites available and easy to use for all visitors. This is inclusive of those with physical disabilities, cognitive limitations, and even socioeconomic factors like bandwidth restrictions and speed.
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Conclusion
There isn’t such a clear connection between web accessibility and SEO. While it is likely a ranking factor considered by Google, it’s not one that seems to have a noticeable impact on search results. That doesn’t mean it’s something you can forego. Web accessibility standards are a legal requirement, so a website not in good legal standing is likely to see some negative impacts. So if you want to achieve SEO success, it’s just good practice to have an intuitive, user-friendly, accessible website.
When navigating the internet you may notice the URL changing as you click from site to site. Sometimes you have a simple URL like www.mysite.com. Or, you might see words added before the site like this, www.shop.mysite.com.
The word “shop” in this case, is a subdomain and it’s used to differentiate the two websites from each other.
In this guide, you’ll learn what subdomains are, how you can use them, and whether or not they impact SEO.
What Is a Subdomain?
A subdomain is an addition made to a URL string to separate and organize content on a website.
Using a subdomain allows you to partition areas of the site, such as a blog or store, from the main areas of your website.
Each time you see a URL, there are essentially three main parts:
The top-level domain of a URL.
1. Top-Level Domain or TLD: This is the extension at the end. Examples would be, .com, .org, or .io.
The second-level domain of a URL
2. Second-Level Domain or SLD: This is the creative portion of the domain. In Neilpatel.com, Neilpatel would be the second-level domain.
The subdomain of a URL.
3. Subdomain: The subdomain in this scenario would be anything that comes before “neilpatel.” For example, if you go to app.neilpatel.com, the “app” part of the URL is what leads you to the keyword research tool, Ubersuggest. In this case, “app” would be the subdomain and it helps separate the tool from the rest of the site.
Many sites use this to create different sections for organization and user experience purposes.
An example of Wikipedia uses a subdomain to create different sections of their website.
If we look at the example above from Wikipedia, you’ll see they use one to differentiate the languages across their site. There are many purposes for subdomains, but they’re all used to make the experience easier and faster for the user.
Now you have an answer to “what is a subdomain.” Let’s learn how to create a subdomain.
How to Create a Subdomain
Learning how to create a subdomain is very simple and something you’ll do through your web hosting provider.
You’ll first login to your backend and scroll down a little until you find the section for domains.
Step one of creating a subdomain.
Step 2: Create a Subdomain
Here you’ll enter the name of your subdomain and the domain you want to attach it to. In this case, I used a tennis site as an example.
Step two of creating a subdomain.
Step 3: Update DNS Records
Once you’ve created the subdomain, you’ll need to add a new domain name system record or DNS. It can take anywhere from an hour to 24 hours for the changes to update and be implemented on your site so don’t expect to jump back in right away.
Subdomain vs. Subdirectory
The biggest misunderstanding is the difference between a subdomain and a subdirectory. Here is an example of a subdomain:
In the case of a subdirectory, the addition to your URL is still part of the main domain. It’s a part of the website as a whole and doesn’t tell Google that it’s anything different.
Subdomains, on the other hand, intend to stand alone, and want Google to treat them as a separate site.
Subdirectories always come after and subdomains always come before.
The big question of the subdomain vs. subdirectory debate is, which is better for SEO?
The most important thing to understand is that Google treats a subdomain as a separate entity—which means everything you do isn’t associated with the main site. All links and content are not factored into the overall domain rating of your primary domain.
This could be a good or bad thing, depending on your goal.
If you’re doing something completely different on the subdomain that could hurt the reputation of the parent domain, then it could be a good thing. If your subdomain is entirely related to the parent domain and you’re getting all your links and content on that area of the site, then it could be a bad thing.
With customer experience being one of the most important driving factors for businesses this year, I can understand why subdomains seem desirable, but Mr. Google himself has said it:
We do have to learn how to crawl[subdomains] separately, but for the most part, that’s just a formality for the first few days. – John Mueller, Google
In most cases, the difference between the two is extremely minimal, so you’re better off focusing on something else like content audits and mobile optimization.
When Should You Use a Subdomain on Your Website?
Now that you understand some of the differences between subdomains and subdirectories, here’s when you should use one over the other.
Detach From Your Main Site
In some cases, you want to create content or do something on your site but you don’t want it associated with the main page.
Adding a store to your site is a great example of this.
An example of when to use a subdomain.
If we look at the image above from Nascar, we’ll see they use a subdomain for their store. This makes sense if you think about the actual purpose of Nascar.com when compared to a Nascar-related e-commerce store.
Nascar.com is trying to rank for time-sensitive news about races and drivers, while the store targets people who want to buy Nascar gear and apparel.
While they’re similar, each URL has its own purpose and should be treated separately for SEO purposes.
Subdomains help you organize your site by limiting the amount of information on it. No one wants to sift through dozens of pages to find one simple answer that they’re looking for. It’s up to you to provide your customers with a high-quality user experience and both subdomains and subdirectories can help do this.
To Separate Sites by Language
If you operate multiple companies in different countries around the world, you may want to use a subdomain for each language.
I gave you the Wikipedia example above, but plenty of international brands use this to improve site organization while also allowing Google to focus on the right language for your audience at the time.
When Should You Not Use a Subdomain?
If you’re using SEO as your primary way of generating traffic for your site, you might want to avoid subdomains. You want to create cohesiveness across your brand and that includes all aspects of your website.
There’s no reason you shouldn’t put keyword-rich content on sales and product pages as well. By treating your store as a separate site from your blog, Google isn’t taking that link juice and keyword richness and passing it off to your main site.
Keep in mind, Google won’t punish you for doing these things, but it will have no benefit to you either.
I think the focus should be on crafting high-quality and relevant content as your primary means of giving your site an SEO boost. You can still organize your site in a way that works well for everyone without having to use subdomains.
What Are the SEO Benefits of Using a Subdomain?
So far, we’ve talked quite a bit about why subdomains shouldn’t be a major focus for SEO but let’s discuss the reasons why they could actually be beneficial to you.
That’s no surprise. There are so many options to buy and read anything you want, why would you bother going back to a site that you didn’t enjoy?
Remember this, our job is to recreate the in- store experience but do so online. If you walked around a store for two hours and were unable to find what you were looking for and no one helped you, would you go back to that store?
The same rules apply online.
Boost Your Domain Authority
Domain authority is a rating that essentially states how well you’re trusted to provide what searchers are looking for. The better and older your site is, the higher rating it gets.
When a site is first created, it’s automatically given a score of 1.
If you’re publishing high-quality content, generating traffic, and keeping people on your site for a while, the score will go up. If you’re using black hat SEO techniques, your score can go down.
One great way to use subdomains to increase domain authority is by linking between the two domains.
For example, you can create a piece of content on your blog that includes links to products on your store. This type of back and forth linking looks good for SEO as long as you don’t overdo it.
I’ve talked a lot about user experience and content organization but it’s important to understand why this matters.
When your content is organized, it’s not just easier for people to find—it also makes it easier for Google to crawl your site. This can help Google find the keywords you’re trying to rank for faster, and if Google can easily navigate the site then users can as well.
Allow You to Include Relevant Keywords in Your URL
As of 2018, John Mueller said that keywords in URLs have very little to do with ranking or user experience.
John Mu explaining the keywords in URLs are not crucial to ranking.
In my opinion, they can very easily have a negative impact, but it’s much more difficult for them to have a positive impact.
That said, including keywords as an overarching subdomain to help organize content could positively affect your SEO. Again, it makes the site easier to crawl, but it also tells Google right away what that section of your site is about.
What Are the SEO Drawbacks of Using a Subdomain?
Here are some of the ways that subdomains can negatively impact your site.
Subdomains Can Dilute Your SEO
Here’s a great analogy for you.
You have two buckets that you’re filling with water and when one bucket is full, you get to drink from the bucket. But, you can’t have a drink until at least one bucket is completely filled.
If you’re dying of dehydration, is the best strategy to fill each bucket equally or focus on one bucket?
Having an unnecessary subdomain spreads your SEO efforts across two sites instead of focusing on one. This means it could take double the links and content to get the same results if you simply focused on one domain.
The consequences can be even worse if you have a blog on a subdomain. Companies with blogs get 97 percent more inbound links, so instead of those links benefiting your main site, they’ll only benefit your blog subdomain and leave your primary URL out to dry.
If you’re linking from a subdomain to a main page, it doesn’t count as an internal link and could possibly force Google to see your site as weak or “thin.”
A Little More Difficult for Google to Crawl
Earlier in the article I talked about how Jon Mueller said the algorithm needs to learn to crawl subdomains separately, but that’s not something that lasts forever. Since subdomains are a separate site, you’ll need to verify them and track everything in Search Console and Analytics separately.
All of these factors combined can make it more challenging for Google to crawl the site in the beginning with hopefully a better experience on the backend.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Impact of Subdomains on SEO
What Are the Benefits of Subdomains for SEO?
Subdomains can improve the on-site experience when used properly, boost your domain authority if you’re linking between the two sites, and can help you better organize content.
How do you set up a subdomain?
You’ll login to your cPanel, find subdomains, create a subdomain name, attach it to the primary domain, and update your DNS. Expect to wait up to 24 hours for changes to take place.
What is the difference between subdomains and subfolders?
Subdomains come before the URL while subfolders come after. Subdomains are treated as a completely different site from the primary URL while subfolders are simply new pages on the main domain. s
What are the drawbacks of using a subdomain?
The main drawbacks are you’re spreading your SEO efforts across multiple websites, which makes internal linking more difficult. They can also make your site more difficult to crawl if you don’t organize everything properly.
Conclusion: What Is a Subdomain?
Now you know what a subdomain is—so what do you plan to do now? Do you think subdomains are the right choice for your site?
While they certainly have their time and place, I’d recommend treading carefully and only using them if you absolutely have to. In terms of overall SEO ranking factors, this is pretty close to the bottom.
Instead, focus on organizing the content you have on your site, fill up your content calendar, and work towards improving your on-site SEO.
What is your opinion on subdomains? Do you think they’re good or bad for SEO?
When navigating the internet you may notice the URL changing as you click from site to site. Sometimes you have a simple URL like www.mysite.com. Or, you might see words added before the site like this, www.shop.mysite.com.
The word “shop” in this case, is a subdomain and it’s used to differentiate the two websites from each other.
In this guide, you’ll learn what subdomains are, how you can use them, and whether or not they impact SEO.
What Is a Subdomain?
A subdomain is an addition made to a URL string to separate and organize content on a website.
Using a subdomain allows you to partition areas of the site, such as a blog or store, from the main areas of your website.
Each time you see a URL, there are essentially three main parts:
1. Top-Level Domain or TLD: This is the extension at the end. Examples would be, .com, .org, or .io.
2. Second-Level Domain or SLD: This is the creative portion of the domain. In Neilpatel.com, Neilpatel would be the second-level domain.
3. Subdomain: The subdomain in this scenario would be anything that comes before “neilpatel.” For example, if you go to app.neilpatel.com, the “app” part of the URL is what leads you to the keyword research tool, Ubersuggest. In this case, “app” would be the subdomain and it helps separate the tool from the rest of the site.
Many sites use this to create different sections for organization and user experience purposes.
If we look at the example above from Wikipedia, you’ll see they use one to differentiate the languages across their site. There are many purposes for subdomains, but they’re all used to make the experience easier and faster for the user.
Now you have an answer to “what is a subdomain.” Let’s learn how to create a subdomain.
How to Create a Subdomain
Learning how to create a subdomain is very simple and something you’ll do through your web hosting provider.
You’ll first login to your backend and scroll down a little until you find the section for domains.
Step 2: Create a Subdomain
Here you’ll enter the name of your subdomain and the domain you want to attach it to. In this case, I used a tennis site as an example.
Step 3: Update DNS records
Once you’ve created the subdomain, you’ll need to add a new domain name system record or DNS. It can take anywhere from an hour to 24 hours for the changes to update and be implemented on your site so don’t expect to jump back in right away.
Subdomain Vs. Subdirectory
The biggest misunderstanding is the difference between a subdomain and a subdirectory. Here is an example of a subdomain:
In the case of a subdirectory, the addition to your URL is still part of the main domain. It’s a part of the website as a whole and doesn’t tell Google that it’s anything different.
Subdomains, on the other hand, intend to stand alone, and want Google to treat them as a separate site.
Subdirectories always come after and subdomains always come before.
The big question of the subdomain vs. subdirectory debate is, which is better for SEO?
The most important thing to understand is that Google treats a subdomain as a separate entity—which means everything you do isn’t associated with the main site. All links and content are not factored into the overall domain rating of your primary domain.
This could be a good or bad thing, depending on your goal.
If you’re doing something completely different on the subdomain that could hurt the reputation of the parent domain, then it could be a good thing. If your subdomain is entirely related to the parent domain and you’re getting all your links and content on that area of the site, then it could be a bad thing.
With customer experience being one of the most important driving factors for businesses this year, I can understand why subdomains seem desirable, but Mr. Google himself has said it:
We do have to learn how to crawl[subdomains] separately, but for the most part, that’s just a formality for the first few days.
In most cases, the difference between the two is extremely minimal, so you’re better off focusing on something else like content audits and mobile optimization.
When Should You Use a Subdomain on Your Website?
Now that you understand some of the differences between subdomains and subdirectories, here’s when you should use one over the other.
Detach From Your Main Site
In some cases, you want to create content or do something on your site but you don’t want it associated with the main page.
Adding a store to your site is a great example of this.
If we look at the image above from Nascar, we’ll see they use a subdomain for their store. This makes sense if you think about the actual purpose of Nascar.com when compared to a Nascar-related e-commerce store.
Nascar.com is trying to rank for time-sensitive news about races and drivers, while the store targets people who want to buy Nascar gear and apparel.
While they’re similar, each URL has its own purpose and should be treated separately for SEO purposes.
Subdomains help you organize your site by limiting the amount of information on it. No one wants to sift through dozens of pages to find one simple answer that they’re looking for. It’s up to you to provide your customers with a high-quality user experience and both subdomains and subdirectories can help do this.
To Separate Sites By Language
If you operate multiple companies in different countries around the world, you may want to use a subdomain for each language.
I gave you the Wikipedia example above, but plenty of international brands use this to improve site organization while also allowing Google to focus on the right language for your audience at the time.
When Should You Not Use a Subdomain?
If you’re using SEO as your primary way of generating traffic for your site, you might want to avoid subdomains. You want to create cohesiveness across your brand and that includes all aspects of your website.
There’s no reason you shouldn’t put keyword-rich content on sales and product pages as well. By treating your store as a separate site from your blog, Google isn’t taking that link juice and keyword richness and passing it off to your main site.
Keep in mind, Google won’t punish you for doing these things, but it will have no benefit to you either.
I think the focus should be on crafting high-quality and relevant content as your primary means of giving your site an SEO boost. You can still organize your site in a way that works well for everyone without having to use subdomains.
What Are the SEO Benefits of Using a Subdomain?
So far, we’ve talked quite a bit about why subdomains shouldn’t be a major focus for SEO but let’s discuss the reasons why they could actually be beneficial to you.
That’s no surprise. There are so many options to buy and read anything you want, why would you bother going back to a site that you didn’t enjoy?
Remember this, our job is to recreate the in-store experience but do so online. If you walked around a store for two hours and were unable to find what you were looking for and no one helped you, would you go back to that store?
The same rules apply online.
Boost Your Domain Authority
Domain authority is a rating that essentially states how well you’re trusted to provide what searchers are looking for. The better and older your site is, the higher rating it gets.
When a site is first created, it’s automatically given a score of 1.
If you’re publishing high-quality content, generating traffic, and keeping people on your site for a while, the score will go up. If you’re using black hat SEO techniques, your score can go down.
One great way to use subdomains to increase domain authority is by linking between the two domains.
For example, you can create a piece of content on your blog that includes links to products on your store. This type of back and forth linking looks good for SEO as long as you don’t overdo it.
I’ve talked a lot about user experience and content organization but it’s important to understand why this matters.
When your content is organized, it’s not just easier for people to find—it also makes it easier for Google to crawl your site. This can help Google find the keywords you’re trying to rank for faster, and if Google can easily navigate the site then users can as well.
Allow You to Include Relevant Keywords in Your URL
As of 2018, John Mueller said that keywords in URLs have very little to do with ranking or user experience.
In my opinion, they can very easily have a negative impact, but it’s much more difficult for them to have a positive impact.
That said, including keywords as an overarching subdomain to help organize content could positively affect your SEO. Again, it makes the site easier to crawl, but it also tells Google right away what that section of your site is about.
What Are the SEO Drawbacks of Using a Subdomain?
Here are some of the ways that subdomains can negatively impact your site.
Subdomains Can Dilute Your SEO
Here’s a great analogy for you.
You have two buckets that you’re filling with water and when one bucket is full, you get to drink from the bucket. But, you can’t have a drink until at least one bucket is completely filled.
If you’re dying of dehydration, is the best strategy to fill each bucket equally or focus on one bucket?
Having an unnecessary subdomain spreads your SEO efforts across two sites instead of focusing on one. This means it could take double the links and content to get the same results if you simply focused on one domain.
The consequences can be even worse if you have a blog on a subdomain. Companies with blogs get 97 percent more inbound links, so instead of those links benefiting your main site, they’ll only benefit your blog subdomain and leave your primary URL out to dry.
If you’re linking from a subdomain to a main page, it doesn’t count as an internal link and could possibly force Google to see your site as weak or “thin.”
A Little More Difficult for Google to Crawl
Earlier in the article, I talked about how Jon Mueller said the algorithm needs to learn to crawl subdomains separately, but that’s not something that lasts forever. Since subdomains are a separate site, you’ll need to verify them and track everything in Search Console and Analytics separately.
All of these factors combined can make it more challenging for Google to crawl the site in the beginning with hopefully a better experience on the backend.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Impact of Subdomains on SEO
What are the benefits of subdomains for SEO?
Subdomains can improve the on-site experience when used properly, boost your domain authority if you’re linking between the two sites, and can help you better organize content.
How do you set up a subdomain?
You’ll login to your cPanel, find subdomains, create a subdomain name, attach it to the primary domain, and update your DNS. Expect to wait up to 24 hours for changes to take place.
What is the difference between subdomains and subfolders?
Subdomains come before the URL while subfolders come after. Subdomains are treated as a completely different site from the primary URL while subfolders are simply new pages on the main domain.
What are the drawbacks of using a subdomain?
The main drawbacks are you’re spreading your SEO efforts across multiple websites, which makes internal linking more difficult. They can also make your site more difficult to crawl if you don’t organize everything properly.
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Conclusion: What Is a Subdomain?
Now you know what a subdomain is—so what do you plan to do now? Do you think subdomains are the right choice for your site?
While they certainly have their time and place, I’d recommend treading carefully and only using them if you absolutely have to. In terms of overall SEO ranking factors, this is pretty close to the bottom.
Instead, focus on organizing the content you have on your site, fill up your content calendar, and work towards improving your on-site SEO.
What is your opinion on subdomains? Do you think they’re good or bad for SEO?
When navigating the internet you may notice the URL changing as you click from site to site. Sometimes you have a simple URL like www.mysite.com. Or, you might see words added before the site like this, www.shop.mysite.com.
The word “shop” in this case, is a subdomain and it’s used to differentiate the two websites from each other.
In this guide, you’ll learn what subdomains are, how you can use them, and whether or not they impact SEO.
What Is a Subdomain?
A subdomain is an addition made to a URL string to separate and organize content on a website.
Using a subdomain allows you to partition areas of the site, such as a blog or store, from the main areas of your website.
Each time you see a URL, there are essentially three main parts:
1. Top-Level Domain or TLD: This is the extension at the end. Examples would be, .com, .org, or .io.
2. Second-Level Domain or SLD: This is the creative portion of the domain. In Neilpatel.com, Neilpatel would be the second-level domain.
3. Subdomain: The subdomain in this scenario would be anything that comes before “neilpatel.” For example, if you go to app.neilpatel.com, the “app” part of the URL is what leads you to the keyword research tool, Ubersuggest. In this case, “app” would be the subdomain and it helps separate the tool from the rest of the site.
Many sites use this to create different sections for organization and user experience purposes.
If we look at the example above from Wikipedia, you’ll see they use one to differentiate the languages across their site. There are many purposes for subdomains, but they’re all used to make the experience easier and faster for the user.
Now you have an answer to “what is a subdomain.” Let’s learn how to create a subdomain.
How to Create a Subdomain
Learning how to create a subdomain is very simple and something you’ll do through your web hosting provider.
You’ll first login to your backend and scroll down a little until you find the section for domains.
Step 2: Create a Subdomain
Here you’ll enter the name of your subdomain and the domain you want to attach it to. In this case, I used a tennis site as an example.
Step 3: Update DNS records
Once you’ve created the subdomain, you’ll need to add a new domain name system record or DNS. It can take anywhere from an hour to 24 hours for the changes to update and be implemented on your site so don’t expect to jump back in right away.
Subdomain Vs. Subdirectory
The biggest misunderstanding is the difference between a subdomain and a subdirectory. Here is an example of a subdomain:
In the case of a subdirectory, the addition to your URL is still part of the main domain. It’s a part of the website as a whole and doesn’t tell Google that it’s anything different.
Subdomains, on the other hand, intend to stand alone, and want Google to treat them as a separate site.
Subdirectories always come after and subdomains always come before.
The big question of the subdomain vs. subdirectory debate is, which is better for SEO?
The most important thing to understand is that Google treats a subdomain as a separate entity—which means everything you do isn’t associated with the main site. All links and content are not factored into the overall domain rating of your primary domain.
This could be a good or bad thing, depending on your goal.
If you’re doing something completely different on the subdomain that could hurt the reputation of the parent domain, then it could be a good thing. If your subdomain is entirely related to the parent domain and you’re getting all your links and content on that area of the site, then it could be a bad thing.
With customer experience being one of the most important driving factors for businesses this year, I can understand why subdomains seem desirable, but Mr. Google himself has said it:
We do have to learn how to crawl[subdomains] separately, but for the most part, that’s just a formality for the first few days.
In most cases, the difference between the two is extremely minimal, so you’re better off focusing on something else like content audits and mobile optimization.
When Should You Use a Subdomain on Your Website?
Now that you understand some of the differences between subdomains and subdirectories, here’s when you should use one over the other.
Detach From Your Main Site
In some cases, you want to create content or do something on your site but you don’t want it associated with the main page.
Adding a store to your site is a great example of this.
If we look at the image above from Nascar, we’ll see they use a subdomain for their store. This makes sense if you think about the actual purpose of Nascar.com when compared to a Nascar-related e-commerce store.
Nascar.com is trying to rank for time-sensitive news about races and drivers, while the store targets people who want to buy Nascar gear and apparel.
While they’re similar, each URL has its own purpose and should be treated separately for SEO purposes.
Subdomains help you organize your site by limiting the amount of information on it. No one wants to sift through dozens of pages to find one simple answer that they’re looking for. It’s up to you to provide your customers with a high-quality user experience and both subdomains and subdirectories can help do this.
To Separate Sites By Language
If you operate multiple companies in different countries around the world, you may want to use a subdomain for each language.
I gave you the Wikipedia example above, but plenty of international brands use this to improve site organization while also allowing Google to focus on the right language for your audience at the time.
When Should You Not Use a Subdomain?
If you’re using SEO as your primary way of generating traffic for your site, you might want to avoid subdomains. You want to create cohesiveness across your brand and that includes all aspects of your website.
There’s no reason you shouldn’t put keyword-rich content on sales and product pages as well. By treating your store as a separate site from your blog, Google isn’t taking that link juice and keyword richness and passing it off to your main site.
Keep in mind, Google won’t punish you for doing these things, but it will have no benefit to you either.
I think the focus should be on crafting high-quality and relevant content as your primary means of giving your site an SEO boost. You can still organize your site in a way that works well for everyone without having to use subdomains.
What Are the SEO Benefits of Using a Subdomain?
So far, we’ve talked quite a bit about why subdomains shouldn’t be a major focus for SEO but let’s discuss the reasons why they could actually be beneficial to you.
That’s no surprise. There are so many options to buy and read anything you want, why would you bother going back to a site that you didn’t enjoy?
Remember this, our job is to recreate the in-store experience but do so online. If you walked around a store for two hours and were unable to find what you were looking for and no one helped you, would you go back to that store?
The same rules apply online.
Boost Your Domain Authority
Domain authority is a rating that essentially states how well you’re trusted to provide what searchers are looking for. The better and older your site is, the higher rating it gets.
When a site is first created, it’s automatically given a score of 1.
If you’re publishing high-quality content, generating traffic, and keeping people on your site for a while, the score will go up. If you’re using black hat SEO techniques, your score can go down.
One great way to use subdomains to increase domain authority is by linking between the two domains.
For example, you can create a piece of content on your blog that includes links to products on your store. This type of back and forth linking looks good for SEO as long as you don’t overdo it.
I’ve talked a lot about user experience and content organization but it’s important to understand why this matters.
When your content is organized, it’s not just easier for people to find—it also makes it easier for Google to crawl your site. This can help Google find the keywords you’re trying to rank for faster, and if Google can easily navigate the site then users can as well.
Allow You to Include Relevant Keywords in Your URL
As of 2018, John Mueller said that keywords in URLs have very little to do with ranking or user experience.
In my opinion, they can very easily have a negative impact, but it’s much more difficult for them to have a positive impact.
That said, including keywords as an overarching subdomain to help organize content could positively affect your SEO. Again, it makes the site easier to crawl, but it also tells Google right away what that section of your site is about.
What Are the SEO Drawbacks of Using a Subdomain?
Here are some of the ways that subdomains can negatively impact your site.
Subdomains Can Dilute Your SEO
Here’s a great analogy for you.
You have two buckets that you’re filling with water and when one bucket is full, you get to drink from the bucket. But, you can’t have a drink until at least one bucket is completely filled.
If you’re dying of dehydration, is the best strategy to fill each bucket equally or focus on one bucket?
Having an unnecessary subdomain spreads your SEO efforts across two sites instead of focusing on one. This means it could take double the links and content to get the same results if you simply focused on one domain.
The consequences can be even worse if you have a blog on a subdomain. Companies with blogs get 97 percent more inbound links, so instead of those links benefiting your main site, they’ll only benefit your blog subdomain and leave your primary URL out to dry.
If you’re linking from a subdomain to a main page, it doesn’t count as an internal link and could possibly force Google to see your site as weak or “thin.”
A Little More Difficult for Google to Crawl
Earlier in the article, I talked about how Jon Mueller said the algorithm needs to learn to crawl subdomains separately, but that’s not something that lasts forever. Since subdomains are a separate site, you’ll need to verify them and track everything in Search Console and Analytics separately.
All of these factors combined can make it more challenging for Google to crawl the site in the beginning with hopefully a better experience on the backend.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Impact of Subdomains on SEO
What are the benefits of subdomains for SEO?
Subdomains can improve the on-site experience when used properly, boost your domain authority if you’re linking between the two sites, and can help you better organize content.
How do you set up a subdomain?
You’ll login to your cPanel, find subdomains, create a subdomain name, attach it to the primary domain, and update your DNS. Expect to wait up to 24 hours for changes to take place.
What is the difference between subdomains and subfolders?
Subdomains come before the URL while subfolders come after. Subdomains are treated as a completely different site from the primary URL while subfolders are simply new pages on the main domain.
What are the drawbacks of using a subdomain?
The main drawbacks are you’re spreading your SEO efforts across multiple websites, which makes internal linking more difficult. They can also make your site more difficult to crawl if you don’t organize everything properly.
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Conclusion: What Is a Subdomain?
Now you know what a subdomain is—so what do you plan to do now? Do you think subdomains are the right choice for your site?
While they certainly have their time and place, I’d recommend treading carefully and only using them if you absolutely have to. In terms of overall SEO ranking factors, this is pretty close to the bottom.
Instead, focus on organizing the content you have on your site, fill up your content calendar, and work towards improving your on-site SEO.
What is your opinion on subdomains? Do you think they’re good or bad for SEO?
The 125 factors that affect the fundability can be broken down into 4 main categories. One of those categories is the Application Process.
Here are 6 ways applying for a small business loan can affect the fundability of your business.
# 1: Timing
When you apply for a loan makes a difference. Consider your current circumstances. If you have recently paid off a lot of credit card debt, that’s great! But, the payoff will not show up on your credit report immediately. Lenders will see more debt than is actually there.
The same is true of any change on your reports. UCC filings, liens, bankruptcy, and anything else that may be added or about to roll off can affect a credit provider’s decision.
Having a good relationship with a lender that is familiar with your business and its industry is priceless. It can allow you insight to understand if you have flexibility to negotiate. Maybe you apply for a loan and get initial approval for $10,000. If you have a couple of other credit providers that are ready to extend substantially higher amounts, you might be able to use that to convince the lender to approve more.
#3: Application Format
It may seem like applying online is always the best option these days. It’s for sure faster and easier. Yet, there can be substantial differences in what is available if you apply in person or with a paper application.
Some lenders may require a personal guarantee if you apply online, but have a paper application that does not require one. There are any number of possibilities, that’s just one example.
#4: Lending Product Selected
You have to choose the right lending product for your business. A large project you want to complete may mean you need a business loan. However, if you simply have a lot of smaller expenses and want a way to manage cash flow, a credit card or line of credit may work better
#5: Lender Selection
Some lenders may loosen their belts and lend more around the end of the
year. Eventually, they will tighten up again. Then, another group of lenders may decide it is time to increase lending. Knowing which lenders are lending more what you are applying for a small business loan greatly increases your chances for approval.
6: Verifiable Information
When you apply for credit, you have to include your business name and address on the application. Lenders will then search with the Secretary of State to make sure you are the owner. They will also verify your business phone number and business address match what is on file with the Secretary of State.
Get Help Applying for a Small Business Loan
Lending trends, choosing the best lending product, and a number of other factors in this process are difficult to maneuver on your own.
This is where the business credit specialists at Credit Suite can really help. We are in a unique position to be able to see the big lending picture throughout the year. Our finger is always on the pulse of the industry, so we can help direct you toward lenders that are lending the most at the moment. We can see the big picture.
Do business credit cards affect personal credit? They can, and in fact most do. But, they don’t have to. There are steps you can take to make sure they don’t. The key is to build your business credit score, and choose the right business credit cards.
Do Business Credit Cards Affect Personal Credit? It Depends
If you are asking yourself “Do business credit cards affect personal credit?” you are obviously trying to fund a business. And yes, most high limit business credit cards report to your consumer credit report. In fact, some report to both your personal credit and your consumer credit. There are even some business cards that will report negative payment information, but will not report anything if the account is in good standing. If you are trying to keep your business accounts from affecting your personal credit score, you need cards that will not report to personal credit bureaus.
Do Business Credit Cards Affect Personal Credit? Does it Even Matter?
Yes, it matters. Here’s why. You know that if an account, business or personal, is not in good standing, it can be detrimental to your personal credit if reported. Yet, did you know that even if an account is in good standing, it is possible that it may still damage personal credit.
This is due to one of the fundamental differences in business credit vs. personal credit. Your personal credit score is affected by your debt-to-credit ratio. That’s a measure of how much debt you have, relative to how much credit you have available. A high debt-to-credit ratio can negatively impact your personal credit score. This is further complicated by the fact that many business credit cards stay at or near their limit, even if you are making regular payments. It is a function of the fact that business expenses are typically much higher than personal expenses.
As a result, if those accounts are on your personal report, they can bring your credit score down even if they are not delinquent. The question then becomes, how do you make sure this doesn’t happen? There are two key parts to this.
Do Business Credit Cards Affect Personal Credit? Make Sure They Don’t
First, if you are getting business credit cards with a personal guarantee, you have to make sure they will not report to your personal credit report. There are a handful that will not, even though they do ask for a personal guarantee. It is important to note that a personal guarantee means there will be a personal credit check. That will create an inquiry that may affect your personal credit for a bit. However, if the account does not report payment information to your personal credit report, the impact will be minimal.
A Few Examples of Business Credit Cards that Will Not Report to Personal Credit
If you have bad personal credit, the Wells Fargo Business Secured Credit Card is a good option.
You can get approved with a credit score as low as 580 currently, but that can change of course.
You do have to make at least a $500 deposit. Also, they do not report to consumer credit agencies, but they DO report to Dun & Bradstreet. That is, assuming you have your D-U-N-S number.
That means it can help you build business credit even with a bad personal credit score. They also report to the Small Business Finance Exchange. While the SBFE does not issue credit reports, they do share information with certain lenders, vendors, and credit agencies.
Wells Fargo will review your account periodically, and they may move you up to an unsecured account if you are eligible, based on a number of factors, including FICO.
If you have good credit, you have even more options for credit cards that will not report to personal credit. A few include:
CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Mastercard®
Costco Anywhere Visa® Business Card (have to be a Costco member)
Wells Fargo Business Platinum Credit Card
Remember, even though these cards do not report to your personal credit report, they do require a personal guarantee. That means they will do a personal credit check, and that inquiry will affect your score for a bit.
Do Business Credit Cards Affect Personal Credit? Business Credit Cards That Will Not Affect Personal Credit Scores Without a Personal Guarantee
Using a personal guarantee to begin building your credit portfolio is okay to start with. The goal, however, is to get as much as you can without a personal guarantee. To do this, you need to lay the groundwork before you apply for any cards. After all, they cannot report to your business credit profile if there is not one to report to.
Do Business Credit Cards Affect Personal Credit? They Do if You Do Not Establish a Business Credit Profile
In contrast to a personal credit profile, you have to intentionally build a business credit profile. While a personal credit builds passively, business credit scores do not. With consumer credit, all you have to do is get credit accounts and they almost all end up on your consumer credit report.
How Do You Establish a Business Credit Profile?
First, you have your business up to be fundable. This includes a number of factors, some of which include:
A business name that does not indicate you are in a high risk industry
You can get your EIN on the IRS website for free, and apply for the D-U-N-S number on the Dun & Bradstreet website, also for free. This is vital, because if you do not have that D-U-N-S number, accounts will not be able to report your payments to Dun & Bradstreet, because you will not have a profile there for them to report to.
The EIN is what you will use when you apply for business credit instead of your social security number. You may have to provide your SSN for identification purposes, but it will not be used to determine approval. This is one way you ensure your business credit accounts are not reporting to your personal credit report.
Do Business Credit Cards Affect Personal Credit? How to Get Business Credit Cards That Do Not Affect Personal Credit
Once your business is set up in the right way so that you have a business credit profile, you need accounts that report to that profile. However, if you start applying for high limit credit cards using your business credit profile right away, you are going to get denied.
You have to find accounts that will extend credit to your business without any sort of credit check. You don’t yet have a business credit score, and you are trying to avoid personal credit all together. To do this, you start with starter vendors.
These are accounts that will extend net terms and report payments, but they will approve you based on factors other than your credit score. These factors may include time in business, revenue, average balance in your business bank account, or other factors.
How to Find Starter Vendors
The trick is, these types of vendors are not easy to find. They do not advertise themselves as “starter vendors.” They do not make it easy to find out whether or not they report payments to business credit profiles. Business owners need help finding this information.
Here are a few options to get you started:
Grainger
Uline
Marathon
Still, you need more accounts than this reporting before you can build a strong enough business credit score to apply for higher limit accounts.
Do Business Credit Cards Affect Personal Credit? They Don’t Have To
How to Build a Strong Business Credit Portfolio With Minimal Effect on Personal Credit
The secret to building a strong business credit profile as fast as possible and with minimal effect on your personal credit, is to work with a business credit expert. A business credit expert makes this whole process faster and easier.
They can help ensure you have your business set up the right way, and guide you toward those starter vendor accounts that will help you initially build your business credit score. They will help you know when you have enough accounts reporting to start applying for higher limit accounts and be approved.
In addition, our business credit experts have the knowledge and expertise to help you find the best accounts to flesh out your business credit portfolio. There is more to this than just building strong business credit with accounts that report. An expert can guide you toward the best vendor accounts for your specific business, whether they report or not.
The best way to start this process with no risk is to have a free consultation with a business credit expert. They can help you figure out where you stand now, and where you need to start so that you can build your business credit portfolio in the most effective and efficient way possible.
While we spend a lot of time focusing on keyword optimization, mobile-experience, and backlinks, Google pays a lot of attention to the on-page experience. That’s why they’ve rolled out a new set of signals called Core Web Vitals.
These signals will take into account a website’s page loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability.
In this guide, I’ll explain what Core Web Vitals are and help you figure out how it could impact your rankings.
Core Web Vitals: What Are They and Why Should You Care?
Is this simply another scare tactic by Google to make us revamp everything and get all nervous for a few months?
I don’t think it is; I think this will become a serious ranking factor in the coming years — and for a good reason.
The good news is you may not even have to do anything differently because you’re already providing a high-quality on-page experience for your visitors.
This is essentially what Core Web Vitals are. It’s a page experience metric from Google to determine what type of experience visitors get when they land on your page.
For example, Google will determine if your page is loading fast enough to prevent people from bouncing. If it’s not, you could face a penalty in ranking and be replaced by a website that’s loading correctly.
So, now we have the following factors determining the quality of a “page experience” on Google:
No intrusives: The page doesn’t contain any issues that cover the primary content.
Core Web Vitals: The page loads quickly and focuses on elements of interactivity and visual stability.
Many websites are providing these factors already, and if you’re one of them, you have nothing to worry about.
Google’s Announcement about Core Web Vitals becoming a Ranking Factor
I took a look at Google’s press release to see if there was anything that stood out. Google announced that over time, they’d added factors such as page loading speed and mobile-friendliness, but they want to drive home the importance of on-page experience.
They’re looking at upcoming search ranking changes that factor in-page experience. Google says they’ll incorporate these page experience metrics for the “Top Stories” feature on mobile and remove the AMP requirement.
Google also says they’ll provide a full six months notice before rolling this out, so it does look like we have some time to think about it and get ourselves on track.
Core Web Vitals Metrics
As a website owner, developer, or builder, you consider a million different factors when putting together your website.
If you’re currently working on new sites or making updates to existing ones, you’ll want to keep these three factors in mind going forward.
Loading: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest Contentful Paint or LCP refers to your page loading performance. It covers the perceived loading speed, which means:
How long does it take for your website to start displaying elements that are important to the user?
For example, it’s common practice to keep the most important information and eye-catching content above the fold, right?
Well, that’s no use to anyone if it takes all the interesting “above the fold” six seconds to load.
We see this all the time when sites have images or videos above the fold. They generally take up a lot of space and contain important pieces of context for the rest of the content, but they’re the last to load, so it leaves a large white space at the top of the screen.
Google is paying attention to this because they realize it’s causing a lot of people to bounce.
The general benchmark for Google is 2.5 seconds. This means that your website should display everything in the first frame (above the fold) in 2.5 seconds.
Keep in mind that webpages are displayed in stages. So when the final elements of the top of your page loads, that would be your LCP. A slow LCP = lower rankings and penalties and a fast LCP = higher rankings; it’s as simple as that.
Interactivity: First Input Delay (FID)
The First Input Delay or FID is the responsiveness of your webpage. This metric measures the time between a user’s first interaction with the page and when the browser can respond to that interaction.
This web vital might sound a little complex, so let’s break it down.
Let’s say you’re filling out a form on a website to request more information about a product. You fill out the form and click submit. How long does it take for the website to beginprocessing that request?
That’s your First Input Delay. It’s the delay in between a user taking action and the website actually moving on that action.
It’s essentially a measure of frustration for the user. How many times have angrily hit a submit button over and over because it’s taking forever?
This is a huge UX metric because it can also be the difference between capturing a lead or a sale.
Chances are, someone is taking action because they’re interested in whatever it is you’re offering. The last thing you want to do is lose them at the finish line.
Visual Stability: Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Cumulative Layout Shift refers to the frequency of unexpected layout changes and a web page’s overall visual stability.
This one is straightforward, and I have a perfect example.
Have you ever scrolled through a website, saw something interesting, went to click on it, but right at the last second, a button loads, and you end up clicking that instead?
Now you have to go back and find what you were looking for again and (hopefully) click the right link.
Or, where you’re reading a paragraph, and buttons, ads, and videos keep loading as you’re reading, which keeps bumping the paragraph down the page, so you have to keep scrolling to read it.
These are signs of a poor on-page experience, and Google is factoring these issues as they strive to provide the best experience for users.
Going forward, the focus is on mimicking an “in-person” experience online. As more and more stores shut down and e-commerce continues to boom, it’s up to store/site owners to provide that in-store experience to their users.
For CLS, the goal is to have a score as close to zero as possible. The less intrusive and frustrating page changes, the better.
The Effects of Core Web Vitals on Content Strategy and Web Development
Now let’s talk about how to improve core web vitals and where you can get this information.
Head to your Google Search Console, where you’ll see the speed test was replaced with “Core Web Vitals.”
When you click it, it’ll bring up a report for mobile and one for desktop.
You’ll see a list of poor URLs, URLs that need improvement, and good URLs.
Remember that Google is factoring in the three things we discussed previously to determine the URL’s quality.
So, if you have many poor URLs, it means that they’re slow to display the most critical content, slow to process actions, and continually offer a poor experience by shifting layout too frequently.
If the URL “needs improvement,” it may have a slight combination of two or three of these. A good URL checks out clean.
If you open the report on mobile, for example, you’ll see a page that might look like this.
It’s an example of a website that needs improvement, and the issue here is LCP or page loading performance.
The goal is 2.5 seconds on mobile, and this URL has an average LCP of 2.9 seconds, so this shows clear room for improvement.
If we hop over to the desktop report, here are some examples of poor URLs.
This one has a CLS issue, which means that the website is loading in a way that changes the site’s physical structure too often.
The goal for this is 0.25, and this webpage has a CLS of 0.55. It also says that 472 URLs are affected by this same issue, so this website owner has a lot of work ahead of them to get this fixed.
I’m a big fan of these reports’ transparency because Google makes it easy to locate the problem and fix it.
You can even click the “validate” button when you think you’ve fixed the problem, and Google will verify your progress and update the report.
How to Track Your Website’s Core Web Vitals
Tracking your Core Vitals is as simple as going into the search console and looking at each web property on a case-to-case basis. You’ll want to go in and play around with this to see where you stand.
How to Improve Core Web Vitals
Once you’ve pulled your report, it’s time to make some changes.
You’ll be able to improve the LCP by limiting the amount of content you display at the top of the web page to the most critical information. If it’s not critically important to a problem that the visitor is trying to solve, move it down the page.
Improving FID is simple, and there are four primary issues you’ll want to address:
Reduce third-party code impact: If you have a bunch of different processes happening simultaneously, it will take longer for the action to start working.
Reduce JavaScript execution time: Only send the code your users need and remove anything unnecessary.
Minimize main thread work: The main thread does most of the work, so you need to cut the complexity of your style and layouts if you have this issue.
Keep request counts low, and transfer sizes small: Make sure you’re not trying to transfer huge files.
Improving CLS requires paying attention to size attributes and video elements on all media. When you allow the correct amount of space for a piece of content before it loads, you shouldn’t experience any page shifts during the process.
It also helps to limit transform animations because many of them will trigger layout changes, whether you want them to or not.
Conclusion
Core Web Vitals and SEO go hand-in-hand, and we all know that we can’t ignore any single ranking factor if we want to beat out our competition and keep our rankings.
Do we know exactly how much of an impact core web vitals have on our ranks? No, we don’t. But Google is paying a lot more attention to the on-page experience.
Is your website following best practices for Core Web Vitals? Let us know!
As the novel coronavirus continues to affect our economy, the SBFE remains committed to its mission. Let’s take a look at the Small Business Finance Exchange in a recession – because the chances of our economy going into a recession look rather high right now.
The Small Business Finance Exchange Affects the Way Lenders Do Business
The Small Business Finance Exchange, in a recession, can change the face of business credit. You need to know how. Solid business credit is necessary to business growth always, whether there is a recession going on or not. It is also important to the protection of your personal finances. Without a strong business credit profile, you will have to rely on your personal credit when it comes to business financing.
This is bad is so many ways. It may not seem so if you have great personal credit. The problem comes when you do not have separate business credit. Then anything that affects your business affects your personal score. If something doesn’t work out with the business, your personal credit score suffers.
It can work the opposite way also. A bad personal credit score can affect your ability to get business financing.
The remedy is to ensure your business has its own credit score, and to be certain that score is complete and accurate.
The Small Business Finance Exchange, also known as the SBFE, helps with that. Certain lenders and agencies have access to their data. How do they get your information? Does it affect your business credit? How can it affect your ability to get financing for your business?
What is the Small Business Finance Exchange?
To fully understand the role of the Small Business Finance Exchange in a recession, you need to understand what it is. The SBFE is a not-for-profit entity that gathers data on small businesses from its members. The data is then used to compile comprehensive credit information. Lenders use this information to make credit decisions.
The Small Business Finance Exchange does not lend money. It also does not create or distribute credit reports.
How Does the Small Business Finance Exchange in a Recession Work?
Generally speaking, it works the same way in recession as it does in solid economic times. The impact however, can change. The model they use is self-dubbed a “give-to-get” model. Members provide information about their borrowers. In return they can receive information from the exchange. This information can help them make future lending decisions.
Small Business Finance Exchange in a Recession
Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring. It’s a worthwhile investment, saving you money even during a recession.
The process starts with members. The members report credit data from those companies that they do business with. This data will include payment history, among other things. This is one reason it is important to make payments on time. When businesses use the Small Business Finance Exchange in a recession, your payment history prior to the recession can affect your business even more.
Next, the SBFE normalizes the raw data into usable information. It then distributes this data to certified vendors. These include credit agencies that have a partnership with the SBFE. The distribution to certified vendors is step three.
Certified Vendors use the information to create comprehensive credit products for distribution to SBFE members only.
What Do Members Get?
Members can request data on any small business to whom they may extend credit, making the Small Business Finance Exchange in a recession hugely impactful. Since they gave information, they have information available to them. That means if you work with member lenders, they have access to even more information that can affect their decision than what is on a standard credit report.
Practically, it looks like this. A lender reports credit information about its current borrowers to the Small Business Finance Exchange. When a new potential borrower comes along, they request a credit report. This report does not come from the SBFE. The request is to one of the credit reporting agencies such as Dun & Bradstreet or Equifax. Because of their membership with the SBFE, they receive an extended report that includes the data received from the SBFE as well as that from D&B.
How Does Using the Small Business Finance Exchange in a Recession Affects Your Business?
There is so much more to a business than how and when they make payments. Making consistent, on-time payments is essential. However, not doing so for a period of time does not always tell the whole story. The Small Business Finance Exchange uses its data to paint a more complete picture so that creditors can be better informed.
The result is that even if your payment history is not pristine, the use of information from the Small Business Finance Exchange in a recession can be a good thing for your business. Their mission is to be an advocate for the safe and secure growth of small business. They know that lenders need the most complete and accurate information available to make a viable credit decision.
The Small Business Finance Exchange in a Recession Can Help Your Business in 4 Ways
1. It Can Help You Build Business Credit.
Strive to do business with SBFE members. When you do, you know your information is being reported, which means you are building business credit. How do you know if your lender or vendor is a member?
Small Business Finance Exchange in a Recession
Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring. It’s a worthwhile investment, saving you money even during a recession.
Ask them. If they are not, considered mentioning that they become a member. However, there are enough members in the network that it should not be hard to find one.
2. They Can Help You Grow Your Business.
By working with members, you ensure your complete information is being reported. When creditors receive your information, you know they get a complete credit picture and not just one piece of it. If you are making your payments and working to build strong business credit, this can only help you.
3. You May Have Increased Funding Options.
The data available about your business from the Small Business Finance Exchange in a recession could open up additional funding opportunities that may not be available to you otherwise.
4. They Can Help You Make Wise Credit Decisions.
Small Business Finance Exchange in a Recession
If you are a small business that lends money to other businesses and has the ability to report that information, you can join the SBFE yourself. You will gain access to information about borrowers available exclusively to members. This information can help you make better decisions about your own business lending.
Who Can Become a Member?
Anyone who has the ability to report their small business lending information to the SBFE can become a member. The only way to gain access to the information that the exchange has in their Data Warehouse is to join.
Members include all types of lending institutions including banks, credit unions, and alternative lenders.
Certified Vendors
Certified vendors are agencies that have a partnership with the Small Business Finance Exchange. They distribute the data they receive from the SBFE. They do this by creating credit analysis products using the information that the Small Business Finance Exchange provides. Then they report the data to members who request a credit report on a business that is included.
Certified Vendors include Equifax, Dun & Bradstreet, and most recently, LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Of course, Equifax and Dun & Bradstreet are credit reporting agencies. LexisNexis sells lending risk insurance products.
While other credit agencies are available to lenders, when they are a member of the Small Business Finance Exchange, in a recession especially, they can get a double shot. If they utilize one of these certified vendors, they get the benefit of the vendor’s own information plus data received from the Small Business Finance Exchange. In a recession, this can be an essential link to risk mitigation and solid decision making.
What Goes Around Comes Around
As much as doing business with members of the exchange can help you, it can hurt you if you do not do things properly.
If you are doing business with SBFE members you eliminate the potential to not have any business credit. By default, members are reporting your information and therefore, you have business credit.
However, if you do not handle your business properly, the report members are getting about your business may not be favorable.
Members contract to report both positive and negative information.
How Do You Know If Data Related to Your Business is In the Warehouse?
If you are doing business with member entities, your data is there. How do you know if the companies you do business with are members? Ask them.
What Kind of Data do They Have on My Business?
They have identifying information related to your business. This would include your business name, DUNS number, EIN, address, and NAICS code.
They also have both positive and negative payment information. Bills paid to vendors, suppliers and business partners on time or early are all included. It also includes bills paid late, or not at all, to suppliers, business partners, and vendors.
The limits on your credit accounts, payment information on lease payments, and credit card payment history are also included.
What Action Do I need to Take?
The Small Business Finance Exchange, in a recession, can benefit small businesses. They want to see these businesses thrive and grow, and one way they do that is by offering comprehensive credit information to those who lend them money to do so.
As a small business, you are responsible for your business credit. You control what information ends up on your credit report. What can you do?
Pay your bills consistently on time
Do business with SBFE members.
If the businesses you currently work with are not members, encourage them to join.
Join the SBFE if you are eligible. (Remember you cannot self-report your own information, but by joining, you can make better credit decisions for your business.)
Monitor your credit information
Small Business Finance Exchange in a Recession
Keep your business protected with our professional business credit monitoring. It’s a worthwhile investment, saving you money even during a recession.
A Word on Credit Monitoring
There are a couple of ways to monitor credit. Remember though, that the Small Business Finance Exchange does not create or distribute any type of credit report.
You can request a report from one of the credit agencies such as Dun & and Bradstreet or Equifax. Even though they are members of the SBFE however, you cannot see that information specific to the exchange unless you are a member as well. You cannot be a member unless you extend credit to small businesses.
Working with members of the Small Business Finance Exchange in a recession is still beneficial, but it doesn’t really help with credit monitoring.
You can also join a credit monitoring service. This will give you continuous access to the information on your report, including your credit score and what is affecting it.
Use the information. Look for ways to build your business credit and report any mistakes. Send the agency a detailed explanation of what is incorrect, what the correct information is, and copies of all supporting documents available.
How to Take Advantage of the Small Business Finance Exchange in a Recession
It is a good idea to work with SBFE members regardless of the economic client. In a recession however, it can be even more beneficial for all the reasons already stated. The most prominent reason is that, by doing business with SBFE member, you ensure lenders see the most complete picture of your credit possible.
If the recession has been hard on you and you have missed a payment or two, those negative marks could have a reduced impact. This is based on information lenders receive from the SBFE. It may not make the bad things go away, but it can definitely add in other information that can help.
The Small Business Finance Exchanges in a Recession – Exists to Help Small Businesses
By offering a more complete credit picture to lenders, the SBFE ensures that more businesses have the financing available that they need to grow. As businesses grow, more businesses can be born. This is how we come out of a recession. Successful business begets successful business. And before you know it the economy is thriving again. It’s a win/win for everyone and the Small Business Finance Exchange, in a recession and out, is a superhero to all. Make your payments, do business with SBFE members, and your business can survive and even thrive during the recession.
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#2: Lender Negotiations
