Once you’ve created your Google Analytics account, you can add extra users to access your information. This way multiple users can view your data. You can also create specific permissions per user, ranging from only viewing the data, to editing it.

If you want to only share information about your Google Analytics, it’s best to rather grant access to someone, instead of sharing your login details.

Step 1: Open the Settings in Google Analytics

After you have signed into your Google Analytics account, choose the site to which you want to grant access.

Google Analtyics Grant User Access Choose Account 1

 

Next, click on the Admin option. This is the gear icon in the bottom left of your screen.

 

There are three types of access levels under the User Management option. Account, Property and View.

Account:this allows a user to add more users, extra websites, as well as link AdSense and AdWords data.

Property:this allows a user access to the tracking code. The user can also adjust the retargeting code and settings on a specific website.

View:this allows a user to view reports, add new goals and content groupings.

Google Analtyics Grant User Access User Management

Step 2: Grant Access to a User

To add a new user, you will need to make sure that the person has either a gmail account, or that their email is registered in Google Accounts. You have to decide on which level you want to grant access (account, property or view).

Click on the “+” icon on the column you want to add the user to (account, property or view)

Google Analtyics Grant User Access Add New User

From the drop-down menu, click on “add new users”

Different types of permission can be assigned to a new user. You can choose between manage users, collaborate, edit or just read and analyze.

Manage Users: a user can add or delete users and assign permissions. This permission does not include the option to Edit or Collaborate.

Edit: access to administrative as well as report-related functions. This includes adding/editing/deleting accounts; access to properties, filters, views and goals. But it does not include managing users. A user with this permission can also see report data. This permission is required at the account level in order to create filters, and at the view level to be able to apply filters. It also includes Collaborate.

Collaborate: with this permission a user can create, edit, delete, as well as share personal assets. The shared personal assets include: dashboards, segments, conversion segments, attribution models, channel groupings, custom reports, and unsampled reports. The user can also collaborate on shared assets and it includes the Read & Analyze permissions.

Read & Analyze: the user can view report and configuration data. The data can also be manipulated within reports for instance to create a segment, add a secondary dimension, or filter a table. The permission allows the user to see shared assets, create personal assets, and share them. But it does not allow Collaboration on shared assets.

Google Analtyics Grant User Access Add New Users Email Address

Enter the email of the user you want to add. You can send a notification email to the new user. Finally, click on add.

How to Modify the Permissions of an Existing User

Once you have created a user, you can modify the permissions assigned to the user at any time.

After you have signed into Google Analytics account, choose the site to which you want to change access. Next, click on the Admin option.

Choose the column of the level you want to change and click on User Management.

You can search for the user you want to change in the search box located at the top of the user list. Type in part of the email address or the full address.

Click on the user name, and then you can add or change permissions.

Remember to click Save.

How to Delete A User

After signing in to your Google Analytics, click on Admin and choose the account you want to change.

Click on User Management in the column you want to edit (account, property, or view)

Search for the user you want to change in the search box.

Check the box next to the user you want to delete.

Click Remove.

google-mobile-first-update

We all suspect that mobile phones are taking over the world. But do you know just how big the mobile movement really is? A few stats that Neil Patel has gathered:

There were close to 150 billion mobile app downloads worldwide in 2016. If this trend persists, statistics predict that in 2021 the mobile app downloads will be over 350 billion. BrightEdge reported recently that their web traffic was 57% mobile generated, versus the traditional desktop computer generated traffic.

What Is the Google Mobile First Update Impact On SEO?

The mobile usage trend is huge. So, it’s no surprise that Google has finally implemented the mobile-first search index criteria. There has been rumours about it for a while now. You might wonder why this is something to take notice of.

The Google Webmasters blog shed some light on how this will affect your website. The Google algorithms will systematically work towards eventually using only the mobile version of your website’s content to rank pages, evaluate structured data, and to display page snippets in the search results. Google’s search index will remain a single index of both websites and apps, but soon the mobile movement will completely take over.

These changes can either help or hinder you. If your website is not currently mobile-friendly, any attempts at a good SEO strategy will be futile. But if you respond swiftly to the algorithm updates, you can beat out the competitors in your industry that are lagging behind.

Related: The value of being in the first page of search results.

google-mobile-first-seo

When Will the Google Mobile First Update Be Implement?

Unfortunately, Google is currently keeping everyone in the dark, not committing to a specific date. Gary Illyes mentioned at the March 2017 SMX West conference that it would happen as soon as Google views results as “quality-neutral”. They are monitoring the search results to remain close to a status-quo level, or a little above it.

Luckily there are a few basic steps that you can follow to ensure that your website survives the Google mobile first update. Firstly, let’s look at what exactly mobile-first indexing is. Till recently Google used only a desktop-oriented page ranking method.

Related: desktop indexing vs. mobile indexing

Back in the day, everybody used desktops to conduct searches. Desktops won’t disappear any time soon, but Google knows that it must pay attention to the mobile movement. Mobile traffic will constantly keep increasing.

The ranking requirements vary between desktop and mobile, but the indexing system remains the same. What it does mean, is that Google will be using your website’s mobile version as the primary means of ranking. Your desktop site version won’t be completely ignored, but Google will focus first on the mobile site.

Guide to The Google Mobile First Update

In the end, the main aim of the Google mobile first update, is to provide users with the most relevant and accurate search results, regardless of the device used for the search. Quite a few years ago mobile users exceeded desktop users, but desktops are not yet completely out of the running. The mobile movement does not point to a mobile-only shift, only a steady increase in mobile usage.

This increase offers you a great opportunity to tap into a different online market. Research shows that 78% of internet users have discovered a new business they were unaware of when browsing on their phone.

The Google mobile first update does not mean that Google will completely disregard desktop searchers. You need to keep both your desktop and mobile site up to date. This change will not be drastic, it simply means that Google is taking the mobile movement into consideration when determining site and page ranking. If your site is genuinely relevant to search criteria, Google will rank you near the top, regardless of where the search request is coming from.

For instance, if the search criteria were “best five star hotel in Cape Town” and you are one of the most prominent hotels in town, you will appear at the top whether someone is searching from their desktop computer or Smartphone.

Follow the Google Mobile First Update Rules

The trick is to make sure that whether the searcher is landing on your desktop or mobile site, they are still having an effective browsing experience. If your mobile version would frustrate even a five-year-old trying to navigate around your website, Google will start penalising you.

Google doesn’t like ranking sites that are frustrating to use. You don’t have to go overboard and completely redirect your SEO strategy, but it’s important to have an optimised mobile site. One of the most important reasons, is to ensure your competitors don’t outrank you.

Tip: use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to make sure your data is optimised for Google to index your website correctly.

Step One: Test Your Mobile Site

Before you start making changes, determine the current mobile-friendly rating of your website. Google has set up a test to assess the quality of your site. Go to search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly.

It’s very simple to use, simply enter the URL you want to test and click “Run test”. The system will analyse your website. The results will offer you feedback about your website. If there are any existing problems, it will be clearly listed for you to investigate the issues. Click on the “Page loading issues” link at the top for a more detailed explanation of errors that were detected. You can also view more tips on the “Fix your WordPress page” link.

google-mobile-test-tool

One of the most important elements to keep in mind with a mobile version, is how the user will engage with your content. Make sure that it loads quickly, and that the navigation is very simple to follow.

Related: basic checklist for a good mobile site

Step Two: Check your Content

If your site is listed on an “m” subdomain or if the mobile version uses adaptive/dynamic serving for content sending. The tricky part with a mobile website is that there are a few display limitations. You need to prioritize the most important elements, keeping the user’s experience of your website in mind.

This includes both text and visual elements. Ask yourself with each element how it fits into the visitor’s interaction with your company. Rather stick to the bare basics, than adding too much clutter that could be confusing.

Try doing a few random Google searches on your phone, click through to the websites, and take note of your first impression of the site’s mobile version. What did you enjoy about engaging with the content and what frustrated you?

Step Three: Check Site Responsiveness

google-seo-responsive-design

Designing for a desktop experience is very different to mobile. Firstly, when browsing on your desktop computer, the little mouse cursor is doing all the clicking work for you. On the mobile version, you need to design for easy finger touch.

By focusing on creating good “tap targets”, you will ensure that users will not become frustrated with engaging with your site. For most of the browsers 16px is the best default font size. For design elements, it is advisable to have at least 44 pixels of whitespace around a clickable element.

Together with the actual design, another important element is loading time. Users will simply click back to the search results page if your site loads too slow. Research shows that 53% of users will click the back button if the page takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

Telephone numbers need to be in the correct format to be tappable. If a user needs to copy and paste a number to get hold of you, chances are you’ve already lost the potential lead. Same principle for your email address.

Tip: activated browser caching for user convenience

If you want to create an advance mobile site experience, use a site builder that will detect the device from which the user is browsing. This way your site will be automatically adjusted to display in an optimised format.

Step Four: Streamline the Coding

The speedier the mobile site, the better. There’s a few coding tricks you can use to make sure that your mobile version responds quickly, and the navigation is efficient. Try to decrease the HTTP requests as much as possible. You can achieve this by reducing images, or completely removing them if they are redundant to the browsing experience.

google-seo-mobile-first

The next tweak won’t increase the speed of your mobile site, but it will increase the chances of searchers clicking through to your website. Also, on a Smartphone there’s less space for the meta titles and page descriptions. So, choose your words carefully.

Also, make sure your social metadata has been optimised to entice people to click on the link when someone shares your content on a social media platform. Each platform has its own system for creating engaging links to share. From Twitter Cards, to Pinterest Rich Pins – invest time in creating correct meta tags to entice people to share your content. Or you can use the Open Graph meta tags across all platforms.

Related: how to create effective social meta tags

Check that your media sitemaps and XML are set up correctly. Also pay attention to your linking structure. Finally, consider using the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) plugin. It’s a separate format, used by Google to cache your site, increasing the page loading speed. It won’t affect the search ranking of your website. But as mentioned before, it’s crucial for a mobile site to be extremely responsive, ensuring a good user experience.

Let Storyteller Design Help You Optimise Your Mobile Site

The Google mobile first update is a huge shift in the way that websites will be ranked from now on. There’s no denying that the mobile movement will only grow stronger. A mobile-friendly site is extremely important if you don’t want to be left behind with the mobile movement.

If your head is spinning from all the information in this post, not to fear. As a Cape Town SEO company, Storyteller Design we make it our mission to stay on top of the latest trends. We can assist you to tweak your existing website to adhere to the Google mobile first update criteria.

Take our SEO help survey now to give us a better idea of the health of your website.

google-mobile-first-seo-search-engine-optimisation

WordPress White Screen Of Death

Oh No…My website has disappeared!

Don’t worry your website and all your content is probably still there, you might just be experiencing the white screen of death.

WordPress White Screen Of Death Marvin The MartianThe white screen of death is something many WordPress users have stumbled upon at least once. It is very frustrating as it locks you out of your site as well as the admin area of your website.

There is also no error message explaining what the problem is or giving a hint on how to fix it, so it looks like your website has just been vaporized by Marvin the Martian.

How will I know I am a victim of the screen of death?

You might see the white screen of death on specific posts and pages only or on the WordPress admin panel only whilst the rest of the functions are working perfectly. In this article we will show you some of the reasons why the white screen of death occurs and how you might be able to fix it.

Because there are several reasons why this error might occur there is a lot of trouble shooting involved in order to correct this.

One of the biggest issues with the white screen of death is that because you cannot access your admin panel to fix the problem it is difficult to solve unless you are comfortable working from the server side of your website and have access to it, through your website host.

Why it happens?

There are mainly 3 reasons why you get this error:

  1. You have exhausted your memory limit
  2. There is a problem in the code of your theme or one of your plugins
  3. A technical issue on the web hosting server

Finding the reason for the problem

For you to find the root of the problem you need to examine where the white screen of death is showing first, it might show in either one of these 3 ways.

  1. Multiple sites– if you see the error occurring in multiple sites, then your hosting provider is having some problems. If so contact your host and they might be able to tell you what the issue is.
  2. One of your sites– if the problem is occurring in one of your sites it may be a problem with the activated theme, or from the installed plugin.
  3. Specific pages or posts– if the error is showing on specific pages or posts then there is a problem with your specific site.

Rectifying the problem

Step 1. Increasing the memory limit– There are 2 ways in Increasing the memory limit

  • Do it yourself- it is important to note that this process requires advanced knowledge of coding. You could try increasing your PHP memory limit by modifying the wp-config.php file. Simply add the following line:

          define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);

  • Contact your host–  This is the option we recommend, this kind of support is something your hosting company should be comfortable with. Just call them or send them an email and ask them to increase your memory limit. The problem with this option is that it may take a few hours to be put in place, and if it was not the issue then you are back to square one.

Because you cannot access the backend of your WordPress site you are probably going to need to access your server in order to carry out the following troubleshooting issues. To do this you will need:

FTP Server details:

  • FTP Address or Ip Address
  • FTP Username
  • FTP Password
  • FTP Client to access your server

Once you have accessed your server you will need to drill down into the wp-content/ folder of your website.

Another way to access this is to log into the cPanel provided to you by your host and find the file manager. This is an inbuilt server client where you can see the files and folders stored on your server. Your website files will usually be kept in a folder named public_html or www.

NB – Be very careful when navigating through your server. Any files you delete could permanently damage your website, so move forward with care, and if you are not sure of yourself seek professional help.

Step 2. Disabling all the plugins– Find your main plugin folder that should be at the file path wp-content/plugins. Do not delete it, simply remake it so it can no longer be found by the WordPress system. I like to call it fluginsold.

Once you have done that go back to the hoe page of your website and refresh the screen using CNTRL – R. Does your website appear now?

If so one of your plugins are faulty. If you are still looking at a white screen, then your problem lies somewhere else.

Now go back into your server and rename your plugins folder back to “plugins”. You should still be able to log into the admin area of your WordPress site. If you go to the plugins section all of your plugins will now be deactivated.

This step becomes a bit tedious. You need to one by one reactivate each plugin and then check that your website is still working correctly and you do not have a white screen of death again.

If you get hit by another white screen of death you know that the plugin you previously activate is one of your problems.

Restart this process, by renaming the plugin folder again, and then undoing your name change. This time do not activate the plugin with the issue, but skip it and check the rest of your plugins. Sometimes you may have more than one plugin causing the problem.

If you really need the plugin that is causing the problem, try to delete it and then re download it. One of the causes of the white screen of death is if your plugin did not download completely.

If after renaming your plugin folder your website is still just showing the white screen of death then you need to try a similar process with your theme folder.

Step 3. Replace current theme with a default theme– if the plugin troubleshooting didn’t work then you should try replacing the activated theme with a default wordpress theme. Before replacing the theme it is advised to back up your                                                                                                     current theme file, the best way to do this without access to your WordPress backend is probably through your hosts services.

This time rename your themes folder which you can find at wp-content/themes in your server folders.

Now check the front end of your site. Does your site appear now? If so then the theme you were using was causing the issue or was clashing with one of your plugins.

When you rename your themes folder back to themes, your default theme will have been activated. This is why it is always a good idea to have a default theme as a backup theme on your site but not activated on your site. We like to use the latest WordPress theme like twenty-seventeen.

Now you should be able to log back into the admin section of your website. Again maybe try to re download your theme to see if that is what caused the problem. Another possibility is that your theme is clashing with your plugins. In this case you need to choose which is more important to you.

Step 4. Other fixes

  • If you did not find any problem through trouble shooting you should try to reinstall a fresh copy of WordPress, as the core file of WordPress might be corrupted.
  • You can also use the w/p debug function to see the root of the problem by adding the following code in your wp-config-php file. Once you add this the blank screen will have errors, warnings and notices, this way you will be able to see the root of the problem.

           error_reporting(E_ALL);
           ini_set(‘display_errors’, 1);
          define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, true);

  • Another successful trick is pasting the following code in your wp-config.php file. Or in some servers, you will be required to modify your PHP.INI file.

          1./** Trick for long posts */
          2.ini_set(‘pcre.recursion_limit’,20000000);
          3.ini_set(‘pcre.backtrack_limit’,10000000);

We hope these solutions will be of value to you, if you have found other solutions feel free to let us know, we will be more than happy to hear other ideas and add them to this post. If you have any questions or would like us to help you with your #whitescreenofdeath let us know on [email protected]

To follow along with us watch the video below:

Rocket-Launch SEO Speed Test

Rocket-Launch SEO Speed Test

The best way to test your website for its load time and how Google views it is to use Google’s own page speed insights. Since we want it to help us rank higher in the Google website and search rankings, it is important to take into account how Google views your load time, and what they think needs to be fixed or improved.

To test your website using Google Page Insights.

1.Click here and enter your website address or URL.

2.Click Analyse

3.Read through the results and see what needs to be changed or upgraded.

Do not get scared if you find the results too technical for your understanding, send us an email at [email protected] along with your website address and we can test your websites speed and let you know what needs to be fixed and improved, what is critical and what should not be changed.

What can slow your page speed down?

  • Your host or server: As the saying goes, you usually get what you paid for. In the long run, a cheap hosting account can damage your page speed. Pick the right host best fits your business size.
  • Large images: Images which are very large are heavy to load and can really slow your website down. It is often due to extra data included in the comments or to a lack of compression.
  • External embedded media: External media like videos are highly valuable but can seriously lower you load time. To gain some load time, host the videos on a sharing platform like youtube or vimeo.
  • Unoptimized browser, plugins and app: You should test your website on all browsers since they do not all load your website in the same way. Applications like Flash can also slow your site down considerably.
  • Too many ads: Besides irritating you visitors, ads can cost you page speed depending on how they are set up and how many you have.
  • Your theme: Some highly designed themes containing a lot of effects and fancy functionality can penalize your load time.
  • Widgets: Some social buttons or comment areas can have an impact of your page speed.
  • Double-barreled code: If your HTML/CSS is not efficient or too dense, it will lower your page speed.

Alternatives for testing your load time and your websites speed are:

Pingdom or Web Page Test

It is always good to have a number of sources when trying to speed up our website.