9 Tips To Optimize WordPress Sidebars for Better Conversion Rate

WordPress web development is one of the most preferred methods of building a website and its convenient features attract users from other platforms who take help from agencies who provide facilities for migration such as PSD to WordPress conversion services. Below, we have shared nine tips to optimize your WordPress sidebars for better conversion rate. People pay a lot of attention in designing the header footer and body of their website but the sidebar is usually neglected when it can be very effectively used for converting visitors into users. Let’s take a look at some valuable tips to optimize WordPress sidebars which will help in providing a better user experience and improve website traffic.
The sidebar is the space on one or both sides of a webpage which is usually populated with widgets for displaying popular posts, search box, advertisements etc. A common mistake that most people commit is stuff this limited space with as many widgets as possible which only leads to bloating and making the website slow. A specific purpose for the sidebar must be identified like using it to display your social media accounts or promoting a new product. This will help in finalizing the widgets
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18055/9-tips-to-optimize-wordpress-sidebars-for-better-conversion-rate

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/03/9-tips-to-optimize-wordpress-sidebars-for-better-conversion-rate/

Why a well-crafted SEO strategy is imperative for the holidays

Whether your business is in the B2B space or consumer goods, the holiday season presents ­­some unique SEO opportunities to capitalize on, and important pitfalls to avoid.

Ecommerce, brick and mortar retail stores, and even B2B businesses can experience unique opportunities by being visible in search at a time when people are actively shopping, researching, and getting caught up on work.  The holidays are a time when there is a huge uptick in SEO activity, including purchasing through ecommerce and in-person at retail stores.

SEO strategy and content planning as we approach 2019

Much has changed in the SEO space over the past years, but the message from search engines like Google has not changed all that much. The name of the game is still to create better content and a better experience on your website for users, based on specific user search intent.

When forming your SEO strategy for the holidays you need to identify the problems your customers will be looking to solve, and how you can present the best solution.  Here are the steps you should take in forming your SEO content strategy for the holidays.

1. Keyword research

Perform an exhaustive analysis of the keywords being used by your customers when they are searching for your products or services. Consider the specific issues your customers might have during the holidays related to your business. Visit competitor sites to identify the keywords they are targeting; Screaming Frog is a great tool to crawl a website and pull meta-data for all accessible pages. Use SEMrush to see current ranking terms for your website as well as competitors.

You can use a variety of SEO tools to perform keyword research including: Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Moz, Wordstream, and a variety of others.  Identify all variations and organize into broad groups. Once you have created broad keyword groups (and even during research), it’s a good idea to check intent by examining search results for your chosen terms. Make sure the results line up with the subject matter and type of content that makes sense for your business.

2. Competitive SEO research

Once you have identified the keywords you are looking to rank for, take the time to examine the web pages that are dominating the search results. What about them is done well, where are they falling short?  What types and depths of content are being showcased? Is it short informational videos explaining how to diagnose a home-improvement problem (like a broken garbage disposal at a holiday party), an extensive written blog post on fixing the issue, or is it a directory filled with local repair specialists?

You will want to fit in with what is already there as much as possible. You might write the one blog post that outranks all the ecommerce product pages, but this is less likely. The goal is to understand the intent of your audience and present the best solution possible. Google search results pages are your best resource here, the SERPs offer powerful data and insights into the intent and search behavior of your audience.

3. Content planning

If you have completed thorough keyword and competitor research, you should have some ideas on the types of content you want to create in order to outperform the competition. Focus on providing better information, easier and more straightforward solutions, and plenty of details so the user gets everything they need without leaving the page.

Organize content so it is easy to digest visually; use bullet points, simple charts, images, and videos. Keep text short enough to scan, with plenty of headings and sub sections so users can easily find the information they want. Lastly, research questions that your audience is asking related to the keywords you are targeting. Including questions with thorough and accurate explanations within your content is a good way to target voice search and rich snippets.

Ecommerce SEO during the holidays

If you sell products online through ecommerce, the holidays should already be on your radar and you likely have already been forming a strategy to maximize sales. SEO is still one of the biggest drivers of traffic and online sales across the board, so a well-crafted SEO strategy should be central to your overall digital strategy.

It’s still the same SEO

The rules for SEO don’t change with the season, so the same rules you follow the rest of the year still apply. The big difference is the stakes, and during the holidays the stakes are very high for many ecommerce stores. There are some things you can do to research seasonal SEO trends in order to create a strategy that capitalizes on the very best opportunities. If you can get access to monthly search volume for your target keywords (instead of just monthly average searches) you can plan ahead and target terms that you know are big during the holidays. Google Trends is also a great resource for identifying these kinds of seasonal SEO fluctuations across various keywords and topics.

In-person retail sales

While many brick & mortar retail businesses may not think about digital presence and SEO during the holidays, this is a major mistake to avoid.  Lots of businesses don’t sell online and still depend on SEO visibility to drive foot traffic and in-person sales.  If you are a business that gets lots of foot traffic during the holidays, you will want to make sure your local SEO listings are accurate, visible, and provide all credibility factors possible so that you’re the destination of choice for holiday shoppers who need what you’re selling.

Local SEO listing management

Make sure you have claimed your Google My Business page, that it is filled out as much as possible and has updated information and pictures. Make sure your important product/service categories are listed wherever possible, and there is a link to your website (if you have one). Lastly, make sure your name, address, phone number, and hours are accurate!  If you stay open later during the holidays, you better make sure your listing doesn’t say you’re closed. You can use free audits from tools like Yext & Moz Local to check your local listings and get a list of other local directory sites you will want to claim and update your business listings on (most can be done for free with a little extra research). Although, be aware you may receive a sales call after using Yext as your info may be passed to their sales team. Both are solid services for managing local listings, and for the price Bright Local is another great option.

SEO for B2B businesses during the holidays

B2B businesses are the last type you might expect to have big SEO opportunities during the holidays, but you would be wrong!  Although many B2B businesses are pretty dead during the holidays, the key stakeholders, c-suite executives, and other senior management personnel are often using this time to catch up on work initiatives and other high priority tasks they couldn’t fit in before the break.

Businesses opportunities from SEO can definitely materialize around the holidays. While search volume goes down for many B2B business topics, there are also amazing opportunities that can pop up from people filling out online forms or leaving messages during the holiday break.  If you can get ahead with your SEO plan and be visible in the right spots when this time hits, you might find that your competition is out to lunch when the big opportunity you have been waiting for arrives as a result of your SEO strategy.

Tax write-offs

Another big consideration around the holidays is how businesses can lower their tax liability, SEO is a great investment around this time.  The truth is that if you are waiting till the holidays to develop your SEO strategy, you’re unlikely to be successful. The good news is you have a huge opportunity to get ahead for next year!

Many businesses put off SEO investment until the new year because of annual budgets and the previous year’s planning.  End of the year is a great time to get ahead and gives you an advantage over competitors who kickstart new SEO programs after the new year (of which there are always a ton).  There is a great deal of SEO work that requires heavy research and planning in the initial phases and making these big investments at the end of the year can get you a few months ahead of the competition.

The holidays are a great time to take advantage of increased activity and purchase behavior, but it’s critical that you plan ahead and cover your bases. If you dedicate the proper time and resources into developing a well-crafted SEO strategy, you can capitalize on some significant opportunities during the holidays and reap huge rewards.

Chris Rodgers is CEO of Colorado SEO Pros.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018-seo-strategy-holidays

25 Best Martial Arts WordPress Themes

Are you looking for the best WordPress themes to create your martial arts website? While building a karate or martial arts website, you need a theme that can prominently showcase your training sessions, events, and schedules. In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best martial arts WordPress themes that you can use.

Making a Martial Arts Website with WordPress

WordPress is the most popular website builder in the world. It is easy to use and flexible to create all kinds of websites.

There are two types of WordPress websites. WordPress.com, which is a hosted platform, and WordPress.org also called self-hosted WordPress. See our side by side comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org for more details.

We recommend using WordPress.org because it gives you an instant start and access to all features.

To build your Martial Arts website using WordPress.org, you will need a domain name and web hosting account.

We recommend using Bluehost. It is one of the top hosting companies in the world, and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

For WPBeginner users, they are offering a free domain name, free SSL certificate, and a discount on web hosting.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

After purchasing your domain name and web hosting, follow our step by step guide on how to make a website with detailed instructions.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best martial arts WordPress themes that you can use to create your website.

1. Sportify

Sportify is an excellent WordPress theme specifically built for sports, fitness, yoga, and martial arts websites. It comes with custom templates and beautiful sections for the homepage. These sections can be used to add testimonials, portfolio, services, schedules, and more.

It has a custom theme options panel to easily customize your site. Sportify provides support for shortcodes to display call to action buttons, pricing tables, and tabbed content. Other than that, it includes a slider plugin and WooCommerce support.

2. Olympic

Olympic is a beautifully designed WordPress theme for gyms, fitness clubs, and martial arts studios. It has built-in sections for image galleries, sliders, services, and team profiles. Olympic includes an events calendar plugin that can be used to showcase your classes, schedules, and more.

It features a widget-ready layout which means you can quickly setup the homepage and landing pages. It offers custom widgets for social media integrations like Twitter and Instagram. You can add more features to the theme using the best WordPress plugins.

3. Rhino

Rhino is a WordPress sports theme that can be easily adapted to create a martial arts website. It has a beautifully crafted layout for the homepage that includes a custom logo, navigation menu, search bar, and image slider.

Inside you’ll find custom widgets, unlimited colors, social icons, and more. It comes with a built-in section to display client reviews. Rhino has a support for subscription form and content discovery features out of the box.

4. Energy

Energy is a powerful WordPress theme for CrossFit gyms, fitness clubs, yoga, and martial arts studios. It comes with an image slider on the homepage and built-in sections to add classes, events, and schedules.

It offers two custom templates for header, multiple page templates, image gallery, and a separate blog page. It is easy to setup and supports WordPress live theme customizer with a preview to see the changes you made in the theme.

5. Strong

Strong is a modern WordPress theme for gyms, yoga studios, and martial arts academies. It features a fullwidth background image, parallax effect, and a beautiful navigation menu. With the drag and drop options, it is easier to design the homepage as you need.

The theme layout uses bright colors on the homepage. It ships with 1-click demo installer to quickly setup your site and change the content. Furthermore, it includes custom page layouts, shortcodes, Google Fonts support, Google Analytics, and multiple sidebars.

6. Motive

Motive is a stylish WordPress theme designed flexibly to create all kinds of websites. It offers custom layouts, fullscreen homepage slider, custom logo, and sticky menu. It has beautiful sections on homepage for services, clients, team members, and testimonials.

It features custom post types, post formats, 2 different layouts, and a contact form. Theme features parallax effects, call to action buttons, customizable portfolio templates, and more.

7. Inspiro

Inspiro is another excellent theme to create your martial arts website with WordPress. It comes with a portfolio section to add your karate videos, images, and galleries professionally. It supports a video background and video gallery on the homepage.

It has built-in a drag and drop page builder and custom theme options panel to quickly launch your martial arts website. Also, you’ll find 4 beautiful ready-made templates to choose from.

8. Personal Trainer

Personal Trainer is a free WordPress theme for martial arts and karate trainers. It is a flexible and fully customizable theme with modern layout. It offers custom header background, image slider, featured posts, and multiple sidebars.

It is packed with beautiful sections for services, testimonials, and portfolio. It includes custom colors, post formats, and more.

9. Wellness

Wellness is a WordPress theme designed on Genesis Framework which makes it a prior option for fitness clubs, health-related services, yoga, and martial arts websites. It supports a widgetized homepage layout to quickly setup your site in WordPress.

It comes with custom widgets, unlimited color schemes, and a live theme customizer with advanced options. Wellness has a full WooCommerce support which means you can easily start an online store for karate gear.

10. Crossfit

Crossfit is a professional and modern WordPress theme for fitness, gyms, and martial arts websites. It comes with an Ajax powered schedule to showcase your classes, training schedules, and events. It has ready-made sections for portfolio, services, testimonials, locations, and more.

The theme supports 1-click demo content installer and unlimited custom options to easily create your martial arts website. More features include a custom logo, color options, over 600 Google Fonts, shortcodes, and unlimited sidebars.

11. Landing

Landing is a multipurpose WordPress theme that can be used to design a martial arts website. It is bundled with Themify page builder which makes it super easy to add features using the drag and drop functionality. It comes with built-in pages, header styles, and parallax background effects.

Theme is easy to setup and offer ready-made sections to showcase events, portfolio, and services. It has full eCommerce support, MailChimp integration, and powerful theme options.

12. Listee

Listee is a WordPress business directory theme that can be used to add listings and locations of martial arts studios. It has a beautiful and modern design with flexible search filters for user listings. It supports Elementor page builder to drag and drop features on your pages.

For easy customization, it offer custom colors, layouts, and visibility toggles. The theme options panel comes with additional settings for the design and appearance, so you can create better user experience across your site.

13. Gymmy

Gymmy is a WordPress theme designed specifically for fitness sports, athletes, and martial arts specialists. It comes with multiple page layouts that can be used on the homepage and landing pages. It includes a drag and drop page builder, image slider, and appointment booking system.

Inside you’ll also find color options to add colors of your choice. It fully supports WooCommerce, and can be used to create multilingual websites using WPML.

14. TheWest Pro

TheWest Pro is a premium WordPress theme for fitness consultants, yogis, and martial arts experts. It offers a great flexibility with powerful features like social media integration, locations map, contact form support, and image gallery templates.

It ships with advanced customizer options to easily setup your martial arts website. It supports 5 color schemes, custom shortcodes, and multiple page layouts.

15. Core Fitness

Core Fitness is another free WordPress theme with modern and stylish design that can be used to create a fitness, gym, or martial arts website. It has a built-in appointment form to manage online bookings. It is packed with ready-made sections to add testimonials, services, and more.

The theme is easy to install and supports WooCommerce. It is fully optimized for performance and speed for a better user experience.

16. Indigo

Indigo is a perfect WordPress theme to create all types of blogs and websites. It comes with the demo content to quickly launch a preview of your martial arts website. It is flexible and easy to setup theme.

It offers built-in drag and drop page builders to create custom layouts and templates. Indigo has typography support, image sliders, user login feature, and more.

17. Good Health

As the name suggests, Good Health is a free WordPress theme suitable for health-related services, fitness clubs, gyms, yoga studios, and martial arts academies. It comes with 2 headers where you can showcase custom logo, navigation menu, social sharing icons, business information, etc. It offers multiple ready to use landing pages including an additional homepage layout.

Furthermore, you’ll find post formats, custom colors, advanced theme options, and a masonry layout on the homepage. It also showcases your featured posts beautifully.

18. Active Sports

Active Sports is another modern WordPress theme designed specifically for sports, fitness, gym, yoga, and martial arts websites. It supports a fullscreen video background with parallax transition effects on the homepage. On top of it, you can add a welcome message and call to action button.

It comes with a filterable portfolio, support for shortcodes, and beautiful typography. It has built-in sections to showcase your services, blog posts, classes, and more.

19. Ultra

Ultra is a stylish and professional WordPress theme that can be used to create your martial arts website. It has multiple ready-made websites which means you can choose a layout that suits your requirements and launch your site on-the-go. The pre-built layouts are fully flexible and customizable to add your features.

It offers addons for pricing tables, Google Maps, countdown timers, and more. Theme is beginner friendly and support a drag and drop page builder to design your pages.

20. IronMass

IronMass is a WordPress theme designed for crossfit gyms, yoga clubs, fitness, and martial arts studios. It ships with a drag and drop page builder for quicker setup of your site. IronMass has an appointment manager to schedule classes and training sessions.

It includes custom widgets, color schemes, and multiple advanced theme options. To manage your karate classes, it offers a time table plugin, business hours section, location maps, and social media integration.

21. ClubFitness

Club Fitness is a free WordPress theme with minimalist approach in terms of design and functionality. It features built-in sections for portfolio, services, testimonials, and featured posts. It has a fullwidth header with custom logo, tagline, background image, and navigation menu.

The theme has bold and bright colors on the homepage and landing pages. You can easily edit colors using the live theme customizer.

22. Vimes

Vimes is an elegant and versatile WordPress theme built for fitness, health services, gyms, and martial arts websites. It supports a widgetized layout to easily setup the homepage. It comes with a featured content slider, welcome message, and call to action button.

Some other useful features include support for a flexible framework, portfolio template, custom widgets, custom posts, and multilingual support with WPML.

23. Split

Split is another modern WordPress theme based on smooth split scrolling which makes it a notable choice for your website. The built-in split scrolling layouts make it easier to setup. It gives you an access to enable/disable the sidebar layout to prominently display your post content.

It supports portfolio with post filter, masonry layout, infinite scrolling, and lazy load effects. It also includes 9 color skins, column styling, and WooCommerce support.

24. Lifestyle Pro

Lifestyle Pro is another premium and stylish WordPress theme beautifully designed for fitness, health services, gyms, and martial arts websites. It is built on Genesis framework. It has multiple widget areas on homepage to easily drag and drop features.

It comes with an advanced theme options panel which makes the customization super easy and flexible. It has eCommerce integration and a beautiful sidebar.

25. Meridian Fitness

Meridian Fitness is a professional WordPress theme designed specifically for fitness, gyms, and martial arts websites. It offers a fullwidth background slider on homepage with custom logo, navigation menu, social icons, welcome message, and call to action buttons. It includes built-in sections to add schedules, training sessions, team members, and portfolio.

It features parallax effects, custom widgets, unlimited color options, ready-made post templates, and more. For easy editing, you can use the WordPress live customizer with preview.

We hope this article helped you find the best martial arts WordPress themes. You may also want to see our comprehensive guide on what is a blog and how is it different from a website to easily understand whether you want to create a WordPress blog or website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 25 Best Martial Arts WordPress Themes appeared first on WPBeginner.

source https://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/best-martial-arts-wordpress-themes/

Announcement: WordImpress is now Impress.org

We are extremely excited to announce that we’re rebranding our company with a new name, new logo, and new website. As of today, we are no longer WordImpress but Impress.org:
Here’s a little insight into why we are rebranding and what this means for our future.
Impress.org now serves as our corporate identity and showcase for our growing product offerings. No products will be sold on the site directly, but we will continue publishing relevant and thought-provoking articles.
Our new identity signifies a few important concepts for us, which are summarized fairly clearly by our new slogan: “Code for Good.”
With the tremendous success of our flagship product, GiveWP, we felt compelled to arrange our entire company around the idea of bringing more good into the world through our products. This means a lot of things:
Our products must “impress” and do real good in the world.
Our company must “impress” and be a place where our employees feel they are doing good in the world.
Our customers must benefit from development and support best practices that press forward and help them succeed online.
What does this mean for our existing products?
GiveWP
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18054/announcement-wordimpress-is-now-impress-org

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/02/announcement-wordimpress-is-now-impress-org/

How To Earn Money Online With Your Own WordPress Blog

Hi, I’m Sam, and I run a WordPress support company FixRunner. We help people across the globe with any issues they have with their websites. I love WordPress, and I am very excited about the upcoming Gutenberg update. Also, I’m a passionate traveler, always trying to explore new places. Our company, FixRunner, provides WordPress support for hundreds of happy customers across the globe, and many of our clients are running successful blogs. Most started small, blogging as a hobby. But, some of them have grown their blogs into real businesses that make significant amounts of money every month.
By working on their sites, we have started noticing repeating patterns. Many successful blogs follow a similar scheme that leads them from creating written content to monetizing it. We don’t know if they follow the same route deliberately, or unconsciously, but the fact is that most of them earn money in similar ways.
Still, monetization is not the only thing they have in common. Successful bloggers share one more thing – freedom. They get to choose their own working hours, and they get to work from wherever they want. And of course, no annoying bosses towering over their heads. No commuting
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18053/how-to-earn-money-online-with-your-own-wordpress-blog

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/02/how-to-earn-money-online-with-your-own-wordpress-blog/

Introduction to the Twenty Nineteen Theme (Theming for Gutenberg)

WordPress 5.0 is just around the corner, and many of us feel excited and worried at the same time. Gutenberg brings a great change in how we use WordPress, and there is definitely some concern regarding what will happen to our websites if we should update our installations without previously testing it. But don’t worry, we have a post about how to disable the Gutenberg WordPress Editor (even if it’s just temporarily) in order to prevent unsupported themes and plugins from breaking our websites. You may be surprised to know that we are already using WordPress 5.0. Actually, we are! As Matt stated on Make WordPress blog:
If we keep the 5.0 release to strictly 4.9.8 + Gutenberg, we will have a release that is both major and a non-event in terms of new code. It’s all battle-tested. In some ways, 5.0 is already de facto out in the wild, with some forward-looking hosts already installing and activating Gutenberg for new installs.
This means that we already have WordPress 5.0 running on our servers: it’s just WordPress 4.9.8, with Gutenberg in the core. Actually, that’s not all, because WordPress 5.0 comes with an additional entry, which is the brand new Twenty
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18052/introduction-to-the-twenty-nineteen-theme-theming-for-gutenberg

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/02/introduction-to-the-twenty-nineteen-theme-theming-for-gutenberg/

Google Walkout: What the ‘five real changes’ demanded by staff will entail for the search giant

As I write this (1^st November) thousands of Google staff in offices around the world have taken to the streets ‘to protest sexual harassment, misconduct, lack of transparency, and a workplace that doesn’t work for everyone,’ according to the movement’s official Twitter feed.

The mass walkout is just the latest public display of employee anger within the search engine. It follows criticism of the company’s involvement with Project Maven back in March, high profile resignations over the leaked Dragonfly project in August, as well as the “Rubingate” scandal uncovered by the New York Times last month which saw key Android developer Andy Rubin given ‘a hero’s farewell’ and a $90m exit package after claims of sexual misconduct were made against him.

It would appear that the treatment of Andy Rubin (amid accusations that Google admitted to be completely credible) has been the key contributing factor to the well-orchestrated global protest.

Employees are united under a banner of five clear demands they want to see implemented within the organisation. Let’s unpick these proposed changes one-by-one to get a better understanding of how a multinational company might go about making them and why they are so important for the future of the tech industry.

1. An end to forced arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination for all current and future employees.

Forced arbitration refers to the policy of companies who only allow their employees the right to solve disputes via processes of internal arbitration.

Many organisations have forced arbitration clauses written into the employment contracts for their staff and while it isn’t a bad route to go down when employees have the option to solve disputes this way (this is known as voluntary arbitration), forced arbitration means that anyone at the company who wants to bring forward a case does not have the right to sue, to make a class action lawsuit, or to appeal – and nor do they have access to federal protections such as The Equal Pay Act of 1963.

A change within Google which would end forced arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination would signal a fundamental shift in corporate culture which has, to date, more often sought to protect the wellbeing of the company above the wellbeing of those who work on the office floor. It would ensure that any employee who is embarking on the complex and, often, emotionally difficult process of raising a dispute would have the right to raise it outside of the internal arbitration framework if they want to.

There is some advantage for Google itself when internal disputes are resolved by internal arbitration – but this change could certainly help rekindle their image as a progressive organisation.

2. A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity.

Google is still plagued by a significant gender pay gap, as well as a lack of representation of women and people of colour at board level. In the US during 2017, the Department of Labor said that its audit of Google revealed ‘systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce.’ This was followed by UK reports by The Telegraph this year where the company admitted that the mean average salaries for women working at the search engine were 17% lower than the salaries for men.

Of course, the ethical argument for pay and opportunity equity is clear, but there is increasing data which points to the business and economic value of diverse workforces. McKinsey’s illuminating Delivering through diversity report published earlier this year sees companies in the top quartile for gender diversity being 21% more likely to experience above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile. The most ethnic and culturally diverse businesses see even better comparative performance, with those in the top quartile earning 33% more than those in the fourth quartile.

3. A publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report.

The value of this quite straightforward. It will be useful for employees, future employees and the public to have a full understanding of the levels of harassment which have occurred within Google’s walls. It will also go some way to drawing a line under the problematic nature of the Andy Rubin resignation, and will set the company on a course of renewed transparency.

4. A clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously.

This change will further set Google on course to improving the lives of people at all levels of the business. It would improve the rights for victims of harassment and would provide better support as they go through the process of reporting misconduct. It would also give employees more confidence in coming forward should they be unsure whether to report something.

The organisers of the protest sum it up well, ‘The improved process should be accessible to all: full-time employees, temporary employees, vendors, and contractors alike. Accountability, safety and an ability to report unsafe working conditions should not be dictated by employment status.’

The goal to roll this out globally would be a positive step for the tech industry at large – showing that the organisation can be united across borders in protecting the rights of all who work there.

5. Elevate the Chief Diversity Officer to answer directly to the CEO and make recommendations directly to the Board of Directors. Appoint an Employee Rep to the Board.

This will be the step which ensures numbers 1-4 are implemented and that there is the necessary accountability in place for these demands going forward. The CDO and Employee Rep will also be in the position to suggest changes in the realm of gender and ethnicity equity.

Five real positive changes for Google, its employees and the tech industry

It has been fascinating to see this protest play out across news sites and social media today. The walkouts in New York, Dublin, London, Berlin, Haifa, Zurich, Tokyo and elsewhere have shown that staff are united in wanting to see the company do better for their current employees, as well as the thousands of gifted programmers, developers, engineers etc. who are looking to the company as a potential source of work in the future.

It also gives Google a clear opportunity to listen to the needs of the very people who make the business work. If they implement these changes, and acknowledge that the actions of their staff are justified, then they can be seen as a leading light for worker’s rights and equity within the tech industry on an international level – a place which is too often seeing such values eroded.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/11/01/google-walkout-five-demands