Dandelion Web Design Blog

Thanks for stopping by to read my blog. Hi, I’m Ruth Maude, a Toronto Web Designer and WordPress Developer. I blog mainly about WordPress, my favourite platform, SEO (search engine optimization) and about social media.  I also blog at LearnWP.ca

SEO Friendly Images for your Blog

Create SEO Friendly Images in WordPress with alt text

An often overlooked part of on-page SEO is image optimization. I'm not talking about optimizing the images themselves so that the images will load faster---this post is about how to create SEO friendly images in WordPress using the alt tag. Alternative (alt) text are the words used in the alt tag field to describe the image.
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customizing Jetpack Related Posts

Customizing Jetpack’s Related Posts

Jetpack is one WordPress plugin that I install on most projects. It is packed full of great features. One of the best things about Jetpack is the Related Posts feature. Jetpack's Related Posts, unlike other related post plugins, doesn't eat up a lot of server resources. With Jetpack Related Posts you'll encourage site visitors to stick around longer on
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10 tips to make your WordPress website Accessible

How to make your website accessible | AODA Compliance

AODA Compliance You may have heard that you need to make your website accessible for AODA compliance (The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act). Web accessibility obligations came into effect under AODA on January 1, 2014. Web Accessibility makes the web usable for everyone. It removes barriers for those with limited mobility, learning disabilities, hearing disabilities, those
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What you need to know when Google displays - This site may be hacked

3 things you need to do when Google suspects “This site may be hacked”

If Google ever suspects that your website has been hacked they will begin to warn potential visitors in the search results. Needless to say, if Google search results label your website as hacked --- it is very bad for business. When Google thinks your website has been hacked you need to do 3 things: Determine if the site
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8 secrets to reduce bounce rate and improve user experience on your blog

8 Secrets to Reduce Bounce Rate and Improve User Experience

As a blogger or business owner you want to not only attract visitors to your website but you want to keep them there as long as possible, navigating from page to page and post to post consuming your fabulous content. When you look at Google Analytics are you concerned by a high bounce rate? Let's take a
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Load Images Faster - Optimize Your WordPress Media Library

Optimize your WordPress Media library – Load Images Faster

We all know that when a website crawls.... we aren't going to wait around. All too quickly we give up and click away. My last post was about how to test your page speed and improve your WordPress site’s page speed. I was pleased with the results I achieved but since then I've learned that when
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Hosting Concerns for your WordPress site

Is your Host providing what your WordPress site needs?

There are a number of things that you should be aware of when setting up hosting for a WordPress site including the PHP version, server environment and one-click WordPress installation settings.
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how to speed up your WordPress site

Page Speed Obsession … What I learned

I read this post about how to improve the speed of your site and quickly became obsessed with Google PageSpeed Insights. My goal was to exceed post-author Raelene Wilson's 91 and if possible reach her goal of 95. I did manage to reach to 95 but doing so was at the expense of plugins I wanted to keep.  So
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