Successful Financial Tips

At the beginning of every new financial year, we look back and sigh at our mistakes and promise not to repeat them in the new one. At the beginning of the new year, there are many who make resolutions to make better financial decisions in the new financial year. To help individuals make better financial decisions in the new year, here are some Successful Financial Tips for 2017.

 

Get Paid What You’re Worth and Spend Less Than You Earn

The tip itself is a simple one, but then there are many who struggle with the basic rule for a successful financial year. You need to make sure that you know the worth of your job in the market. How do you do that? You conduct skill evaluations, productivity, job tasks and evaluate your contribution to the company. Being underpaid can make a great difference during your working life, since your cumulative earning remains low.

 

 

The second aspect of this advice includes that you don’t exceed your earning when it comes to spending. It is easier to spend less and a little cost-cutting effort can help you make larger savings. It always doesn’t have to be big sacrifices.

 

Make A Budget and Stick to It

Right after you get your earnings, make an elaborate budget of all your expenses and stick to it. Sticking to the budget is something that you cannot be forced to do.

You have to stick to it on your own. Know that the budget will help you sort out your finances, and also ensure that you don’t overspend and can end up saving money.

 

Spend What Is Left After Saving

Remember the Warren Buffet principle of saving and investing. If you decide to save after spending from your total earnings for the month, chances are that you will be left with peanuts. Instead, decide on an amount that you will set aside for saving every month and stick to it. This will control your spending and make sure that you grow your savings.

Expert advice: You should save at least 26% of your annual earnings. If you aren’t saving this much, it is time to cut down your expenses and increase your savings. This change will help you live a comfortable retirement and provide you necessary backup in case of a job loss.

 

Stop Using Too Many Credit Cards

It feels good to be offered free credit cards and earning points after spending on them. However, it is time you know that nothing comes for free in life. When you spend through credit cards, you end up paying for a transaction fee. This fee is included in the cost of the product or service that you purchase with the card.

There’s no harm in paying through a credit card, but learn to restrict it for emergency purposes like booking a train or flight ticket when you have to make a sudden unforeseen expense. Apart from cutting down on the credit card expense, cut down on the number of credit cards to a maximum of two. This will prevent you from falling into a debt trap. When you have multiple cards and end up spending from all of them, you will have to end up paying all the finance charges and they can add up to quite a large amount.

 

Pay Off Credit Card Debt

Credit card debt could be quite a headache when you have to pay the large bill. On more than one occasion, we tend to forget that it is real money that we deal with when using the plastic cards. Despite our resolve to pay off the balance and outstanding bill, we often falter and then end up paying late charges and interests on the same.

In fact, we end up paying more for things that we purchase with our credit cards. In the new financial year, make a resolution to pay off your debts faster so that you can save on the high interests.

 

Purchase Enough Insurance

When financial experts ask you to cut down on unnecessary expenses, it’s not like they are asking you to cut down on purchasing insurance cover. Both life and health insurance are extremely important. While life insurance ensures

While life insurance ensures the safety of your family, health insurance safeguards your financial planning in case of an accident or illness. Insurance cover prevents you from paying in case of an emergency.

 

Don’t Wait for March

Many professionals think of investments and tax-saving right when March is around the corner. These individuals usually end up purchasing a product that doesn’t serve them any purpose. Financial experts say that we shouldn’t mix insurance and investments and should keep them separate. The easiest way to make sure that you don’t regret the financial year at the year-end is to start investing in April.

 

When you start early, you have time to study the product and earn good returns throughout the financial year.

 

Contribute to A Retirement Plan

You are saving at present to ensure a comfortable retired life. If your goal is a comfortable retirement then you need to maximize your retirement savings. You can put your savings in the salary deferrals 401(k) plans, automatic monthly withdrawals from a checking account and from paying down a mortgage.

You can also invest in tax-advantaged retirement schemes like IRAs. If your employer has the 401(k) plan and matches dollar for dollar up to 3% of your salary, then make sure that you contribute at least 3% from your monthly salary so that you end up saving 6% of your salary despite using only 3% for the same.

 

Invest for The Long Term

When you think of investment, think of it like a marathon and not a sprint. You should develop an investment strategy and stick to it no matter what is the situation of the market. You should know that the earning on

You should know that the earnings on a diversified portfolio of large capitalization stocks is 10% compounded annually since 1926, on the other hand, corporate and government bonds have earned only 6%.

 

Invest in Your Kid’s Future

Right at the beginning of the new financial year, think of little things that you can do in 2017 that might have a huge impact on your children in the next ten-fifteen years.

 

You can fund a 529 account for college or invest in the 529 ABLE accounts for children with disabilities. Start a trust fund or fund a small investment account that will become a safety net for their college education. Remember that the small acts today will go a long way in helping your kids in the long run.

Wrapping Up!

These are some of the most basic financial advice for 2017. Remember there is the power to planning, so get a plan set up and follow it. Plan for the future and stick to it. Automate your investment strategies and savings whenever there is scope for the same.

Review your steps beforehand and seek financial help whenever you deem it necessary. There’s nothing more foolish than risking things simply because you didn’t know what to do. Seek the help of a financial planning professional and get ready for the new financial year.

Let me know your thoughts in the comment box. If you have any queries, contact us on our official Facebook Page.

Effective ways of Link building without content?

Of course, content plays a crucial role in link building, and we all know that. The nature of the content, makes the link builder’s job easier. However, we have learnt not to generalize things when it comes to marketing strategies. Content is important, but it isn’t necessary to build links. In fact, experts suggest that there are more tactics than content that goes into helping you acquire useful links.

Link building is no rocket science. All you have to do is find a relevant link and convince them to link. Now comes the next question, and an important one at that. Why would the other site link to yours? The other site might link to you for a variety of reasons:

1. Because there is a relationship between these two sites
2. Because the site is talking or discussing about your product
3. Because you are valuable to their customer base and they don’t want to miss the opportunity to connect with more customers
4. Because you are involved in the same community events.

While its known that content doesn’t necessarily play the key role when it comes to link building, it should be kept in mind that you need to work on existing relationships and connections if you want to build links without creating content. You will have to provide some value if you want to earn links. It will be difficult to earn links if the other site doesn’t feel you are valuable enough for them and their online business.

Remember, link-building tactic can be easily abused and you shouldn’t inculcate relationships with other websites solely for securing their links. When you pursue links only for the SEO value, you get yourself into a strained relationship, which could go on to damage your brand’s reputation. Subsequently, you end up with low quality links, which does more harm than good for you.

The key here is to first deliver value when you are looking to build links without content. When you do so, you are guaranteed of good links as an added benefit.

Given below are 10 great ideas to build links without content.

Mentions

The easiest and most convenient way to secure links without new content is to resort to online mentions. People need to be talking about your company and your offline marketing and PR will have to come up with strategies to build the brand further. Brand mentions are the most common form of mentions. Your business brand, executives, products and services will have to be frequently mentioned online. Mention opportunities are derived from:

• Well-known products
• Prominent employees
• Company buildings
• Proprietary images
• Sponsored events
• Brand representatives and spokespeople
• Slogans, taglines and catchphrases

It should be noted that even controversies with media coverage will help build links. If someone makes a reference to your company online, in any way, it creates a link opportunity for you. These references are usually ignored and this is where your PR and marketing team plays a crucial role. You can take the assistance of Google Alerts, Rankur and similar tools to find relevant mentions.

 

Relevant Niche Directories

Before the existence of search engines, directories were used to navigate the web. Directories focus on websites as a whole, rather than specific parts of the content and hence you don’t need to create new material. When you link your website to a directory, you can get valuable traffic. While directories have fallen in relevance because of their diminishing quality and assurance, you can still build links when you connect with relevant directories.

 

Partnerships

Meaningful partnerships with other companies that include referral business, cooperative marketing, product collaboration, lead to link opportunities. Another effective way to use partnerships would be to co-author content. Your offline partners can also help you in link building online, without creating new content. Making your company part of a professional network or association also helps in building links. Offline partners already have a connection and it helps to make it evident online.

 

Reviews and Testimonials

Before Google came into prominence, online reviews were the place to cite useful information and credibility. When you get a review somewhere it automatically becomes a great place to link your website. You also get the opportunity to show your users the positive review that the company received. When you become reviewed, you not only build links, but also get credited as a reputable company.

Make sure that you provide testimonials only if you believe in the company that you are endorsing and not just for the purpose of building a link. Yes, writing a testimonial or review is considered as content creation, but adding a short quote or description requires less number of resources than writing an infographic or blog post. You can get potential reviews and testimonials from:

• Distributors
• Merchandise suppliers
• Local Vendors

 

Community Involvement

If you want to build links without content, becoming a part of the community is a great place to start. The moment you become a part of the community, helping it better, you get the chance to partner with other brands in the industry and this increases the visibility. Partnerships forged while giving back to the community is a great way to build links.

While relationships and community activities are a great way to build links, make sure that you don’t give preference to your needs more than that of the company and the society.

Here are some ways in which you give back to the community and earn your right to build links:

• Scholarships to students
• Charity work
• Hosting local events
• Sponsorships

You can also become a part of an online community like Quora, Reddit, Google+ Communities and other social network platforms.

 

Contests

Another great way to build links is to associate with the marketing activity of another company, be it in the form of content creation, and authority building. Contests are another great way to do so. They are ideal in boosting your online engagement since you get social media shares and mentions. These go a long way in building good links. If you are thinking of interesting ways to acquire more links, then you cannot miss out on the contests.

 

Roping in Outdated Resources

Outdated resources would be the sites that had a niche like yours, but stopped updating their website and changed their brand names, or dropped the product or services similar to yours, or have completely shut their business down.

There is a high chance that many sites are using the outdated resource to link, without having any idea that they are no longer updated or that the business has closed its shop. If you end up using the outdated link, you automatically link to these pages.

 

Broken Link Building

Broken link building is the best tactic for building strong links. The practice involves finding broken links that point to pages and sites that are similar to yours. You can then connect with them and tell them that you would want to showcase the broken link on your website. You can also use broken links to reach those who are linking the old link and show them your latest and superior content. Using broken links is extremely popular right now.

 

Image Links

If you have images that have found their way into other websites, it is time to stop being angry. Instead use the incident to your benefit. When you find out that the website with your images and logos is worth linking with, ask them to convert these images on their websites to links. There are different tools you can use to track down-convert these images into links.

 

Help A Reporter Out

Help a Reporter Out is a website that helps reporters find quotes and sources. HARO helps by alerting a company if a journalist is looking for a quote in your field. You can immediately respond and provide the journalist with the quote that they are looking for. There is no denying the power of the press and the resulting publicity that you would get. You need to work with HARO if you are looking to secure yourself as a strong contender in your industry.

 

Before You Go!

The guide with the ten ideas to help build link without content has been tried by different companies. You have to consider the option of building links without new content critically. The content will never fade out in importance, but the published content can be a great way to boost the brand.

You have put in your time on to the content and there is no need to rush and change it every time you want to build links. Content promotion is as crucial as writing a new piece of content and you need to explore different strategies for the same. Make sure that marketing your content generates more lead and increases your index so play it smart when it comes to content. Check out our link building packages at much affordable and reasonable rates.

Rewriting isn’t always the clue to success.

Do you think these 10 strategies can help you build links without generating fresh content? I’d love to know your thoughts.

Drop me a comment below or contact us via our Official Facebook Page.

Blogging can be a great hobby, but then all bloggers would agree that scouting for interesting ideas for the blog content can tend to get a tad tiring. To keep connecting with the reader, you have to come up with new ideas for the different posts. The grind can be exhausting, especially if you are wracking your brain for all the ideas.

The struggle is genuine and especially if you churn many posts each week. You know that without quality content, even the best marketing strategies to get people in will fail. So how do you think of great content ideas for your blogs and keep the readers happy?

The answer is simple. You need to find out the type of content that will click with the readers. There are two types of basic content ideas:

• Ideas that come out of nowhere
• Ideas that are derived from demand

Each of these ideas can be used to make the content of your blog an instant hit. However, if you are looking to address a specific goal with your blog, then it is a better idea to stick to the second option.

Even if you have like a stream of great ideas for your blog posts, there isn’t any guarantee that these will be appreciated by the readers. The opinion of a few people doesn’t help in getting an idea about the large number of readers that you want to connect with. In such a situation, you need a tool that will help you validate your ideas with the help of human interaction, search queries and forum posts. The tools help you understand the interest of a larger audience and makes your posts more viable.

Try the different tools listed below to help you generate ideas for your content. There is no guarantee that all of them will click for you, but there isn’t any harm in giving it a try.

 

Google Suggest

This is the easiest and most convenient way to find out what’s trending. All you have to do is enter the keywords and let Google suggest variations of these terms, based on the search carried out by others. If you go to the bottom of the page, you will get links to additional related searches as well.

 

MagicRecs

MagicRecs helps you find out the latest areas of interest with the help of Twitter. You can find out which account majority of your followers are following and help you get ideas that will enable you to connect with them.

HubSpot’s Topic Generator

 

HubSpot generates topics quickly and is a no-brainer when it comes to learning how to use it. The tool is so efficient that you will have five blog post ideas within seconds. The tool generates topics based on the nouns you enter. The moment you enter the three nouns, HubSpot will list five topics for you.

Isn’t that awesome?

 

Google Keyword Planner

The tool was launched in place of the old Google Keyword tool. The tool is used to search keywords and ad ideas. All you have to do is simply add a keyword or phrase, the URL of the landing page and the Google Keyword Planner will come up with relevant keywords.

These keywords are the ones that your readers have been searching for. Once you know what your readers are looking for, you have the content idea for your blog posts. You can also enter keyword combinations and generate potential blog post titles.

 

Quora

Quora is one of the leading questions and answer sites and is one of the most effective ways to get an idea about what your readers would want to read about. With this tool, you can search for all the queries related to your keywords. When you register to Quora, you have to pick your selected categories, which would include your areas of interest.

 

Delicious

This is one tool that will keep churning great ideas for your blog posts. The tool gives you a comprehensive list of all the trending topics on the web. You will get an idea of the topics that people have been discussing on the internet and you can take your pick from there to craft your blog post.

You can also enter a keyword and get related topics that are currently being discussed. These lists are curated by people, so you can trust their popularity.

 

BuzzSumo

Another great tool that will help you generate ideas for your blog posts is BuzzSumo. The tool does more than just share content ideas with you.

• It can show you the number of shares and social engagements each topic received
• Identify key sharers via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+
• Show you trending topics and contents
• Displays backlinks

The tool helps you decide the angle that you need to adopt in your blog post on a particular topic so that you strike with the reader better.

 

Alltop

Alltop is a news aggregator that lets you know about the trending news online. It covers a wide range of topics that includes, sports, religion, science, and even fashion. If you are a part of Alltop, you will always be on the top of the trending topics. If you go through only the homepage of the tool, you will get a lot of great ideas for your posts, depending on the area you want to focus on.

 

UberSuggest

This is a simple and straightforward tool that generates title ideas based on the keywords you enter. You will get thousands of phrases with your preferred keyword and are free to select the ones that are worth writing about on your blog. Many feel that UberSuggest is similar to the Google Keyword Planner, but a lot more streamlined and sorted.

 

Technorati

Among all the tools listed here, Technorati is one of the best tools for researching. The tool is up-to-date and helps you find out about the latest blog post ideas searched by SEOs. It helps bring out the most relevant posts so that you can be a part of the current debate and discussion.

 

Wrapping Up!

Creating a content plan and sticking to it is a challenging task. Every blogger inevitably comes to a point where they suffer writer’s block or get bored about writing or simply fail to feel the pulse of the readers.

There is no shame in being in such a situation, but you should be willing to experiment and try finding inspiration in other sources. Try to craft your content differently, explore different resources and optimize your strategies. Give these tried and tested tools a try when you feel stuck and aren’t able to create quality content for your blog. The ten tools provide you with a variety of ideas, so play around with them and see what works and what doesn’t. Simply do not follow them since they have been suggested. Workaround and find your comfort space. Don’t be scared to experiment while creating amazing content ideas. After all, no one can resist something that’s a little different from the usual run-of-the-mill stuff that we find on different blogs. Also, Feel free to add to our list of tools!

Have you heard of the term “web hosting?” Before we get into understanding the concept of “web hosting,” let’s understand what hosting means. Hosting is the physical computer where the website is situated. Or in other words, it’s the server that delivers the files that the visitors of the site require.

Web hosting can end up being a tad confusing, especially if you want to launch your website and have no idea how to go about it. Yes, the concept is extremely technical and might be completely strange to you, but it is fun once you get the hang of it!

If you are planning on launching a website, the first thing that you must do is hosting. Hosting will provide the place where you will put all the information that will be displayed on the website. It should be kept in mind that a great host will make your website fast.

A Study from Hostingfacts found that

Now if you want to launch a website, but aren’t being able to wrap your head around concepts like Apache, PHP Load, and PHP, it’s suggested that you entitle the task to a tech expert. If you are looking for a tech expert to help you with the website host, then look no further, since we are here to help.

We will help you understand the concept with basic terms and explanations and make the technical jargon easy to comprehend. Not only will we break down the technical concepts to help you get a better idea, but also help you understand the basic things that you need to consider when hunting for a host. We assure you that the whole idea might sound daunting, but with our help, it will be a cakewalk!

Know What You Need

Before you start figuring out about web hosting, you need to know exactly what you want. To understand your requirement for a web host, you need to answer certain fundamental questions that will help you get a clearer idea of your requirements.

1. Will You Lose Income or Visitor If Your Site Droops Down?

This question is crucial since you will face the ramification whenever your site goes down. The option you pick will help you decide the hosting you need to invest in.

2. What Kind of Traffic Will Your Site See?

Give some thought to the present level of traffic that your site experiences and make a future projection based on it.

3. How Fast Do You Want the Site to Be?

The kind of host you use impacts the speed of your website. You will need to decide if a slow site will hamper things or create a bigger problem and go ahead with a particular host.

4. How Much Space Does the Site Need?

The kind of content your site contains will determine the space it requires. If your site doesn’t have much media-centric content, you will make do with limited space, but if it includes images and videos, then storage needs to be considered.

5. What Are Your Specific Needs?

You need to decide if your need is based on other sites that need hosting. If you have several URL redirects or have e-commerce wants and even allow space for email, then your hosting preference will change accordingly.

6. How Much Control Do You Require?

The hosting will depend on what kind of control you need. You can choose between being an average user, or going ahead and testing many configurations, or even making advanced installations.

7. How Do You Plan to Seek Help?

There are lots of ways to ask for help. You can either go for the phone, email, online forums, or ticket-support systems. Which one you favor for the particular website will determine the hosting you need.

It might not be possible to have all the answers before you start, but if you have a basic idea about these seven questions, the selection process for web hosting will be easier.

What Are the Different Types Of Hosting?

There are different types of hosting, and each one is unique. Given below is a basic outline of the various types of hosting, which will help you get a better idea about the concept before you start working on it.

1. Shared

Shared hosting would be the most common and inexpensive hosting. Most people start with shared hosting and works well for most of websites. Shared hosting involves multiple sites using the same server. Each customer website gets a chunk of the server and must remain within the set limit.

Possible drawback:

While the price for shared hosting is cheaper than the rest, it comes with some major problems. The first and foremost would be the issue of space. With many websites sharing a single server, it might so happen that one site enjoying a lot of traffic will slow down the rest. Overloading issues shouldn’t occur with a good host, but it is one of the biggest problems faced when using shared hosting.

Pricing: $4-15 per month.

2. Virtual Private Server

The Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a hosting that uses software to run quite a few sites on a single server, in a way that they function like dedicated servers. Even though multiple sites share the same server, the software in place makes it feel like a dedicated server for the website. Even though the VPS server is costlier than Shared server, it is customizable, faster, and more secure. Since the server doesn’t slow down other sites, because of increased traffic on any one site, it is an excellent choice for growing websites.

Pricing: $15-150 per month.

3. Dedicated Hosting

If you have a site that requires a lot of space, then Dedicated Hosting is the best choice for you. This host will offer your site its very private server, where you don’t have to share with anyone. Dedicated Hosting ensures a more secure site with faster speed. Users will also not face any impact from other websites. There are plenty more options to pick from for different price ranges.

When you pick Dedicated Hosting, you have the option to choose between managed and unmanaged dedicated hosting. When you go for managed hosting, the hosts provide you with technical help who assists you to handle the server and carry out upgrades. In unmanaged hosting, you have to perform these tasks on your own.

Pricing: $100-250 per month.

4. Cloud Hosting

This is a new method of hosting that has recently gained a lot of importance. In Cloud Hosting, your site is not associated with a single server; it is linked to different servers in several locations. Cloud hosting minimizes the downtime for the website since it is readily available in the cloud. It is the perfect choice for websites that cannot have downtime.

Possible drawbacks:

Setting up Cloud Hosting tends to be complex. It is also more expensive than the other hosting options available in the market.

17 Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Web Host

Deciding on which web hosting option to pick can be a difficult one, especially if you are a newbie when it comes to running a website. Multiple companies in the market promise to fulfill all your requirements and offer similar prices. In such a situation, it can be tough to pick one company out for your hosting option. Given below is a list of factors that will help you make the right decision when it comes to selecting a web hosting company. Most reliable web hosting companies have a dedicated page, where they mention the perks of joining their company. However, you should still do your due diligence and find out whether what they claim is true or not.

• Price: The first factor we consider when we pick anything is pricing. However, it isn’t the right way to head when it comes to web hosting. When you choose a company that offers you low prices, you need to be prepared for a service that meets the bill. You have to realize that employing a suitable host costs money and you cannot get the best non-outsourced support and hardware at a low price. Do not compare solely based on prices. Compare the services that the companies are providing and then consider the pricing. Another thing you need to keep in mind is the purpose of the website. If your site is meant for personal reasons, then going for free hosting makes more sense for you.

If you are confused, you can always head to HostMonk, which is a website that offers a comprehensive list of all the hosting companies along with their different packages. WHReviews is another good site to head to before making your decision.

Tips: Small businesses can consider domain hosting, colocation or standard paid hosting. When you go for domain hosting, you only have to pay for the domain name of your website. This is the perfect option for those running on a small budget and who want to use a site with Tumblr or WordPress.

• Specialties Offered: There is a host of companies offering you web hosting services. However, you need to realize that not all of them are suited for your need. Each customer has a unique need, and they should head to a company that can meet them. The key factor determining your choice of hosting company should be one that caters primarily to your needs and the specialty of your website. Talk to customers who have already availed of the services of these companies to get a better idea.
• Technical Specifications: How your site functions will go a long way in determining the web hosting company you would want to associate with. If your website is rich in content or is an e-commerce site, then you shouldn’t go for a cheap plan since that won’t have enough RAM and processing power to support your traffic. Select wisely to avoid downtime and load issues. Before zeroing in on a host, check if they charge for additional domains, support, and backups. You need to contact the company and be very clear about how you want your website to grow and make sure that understand your vision completely.
• Technical Support Offered: Since you do not have a clear idea about your host, it will be difficult for you to deal with the technical problems for the same. When you go ahead and pick up a company, make sure that you can access a real person during a crisis. This individual would help you realize what’s the problem and also help you solve it.

You need to check on the customer reputation of the company. See how they can be contacted and whether they are available 24X7 since you never know when you might need them for your website! Just like host companies are different when it comes to their pricing, they are different in their technical support as well. Carry out some extensive research to pick your preferred company.

• Features Offered: When it comes to choosing between so many host companies, it always boils down to what extra the company offers that the others don’t. Several companies will go the extra mile to win a potential customer. They might offer you multiple data centers, free domain privacy, data backups, energy-saving practices, and much more. If you find a company that offers services and features that you require, beyond and above what they usually offer, you will know that you have found a good host company.
• Additional Features Offered: The hosting companies might entail more cost, but they are worth it. Some of the extra services that these companies offer include email services, where you can create your email address. This goes a long way in making your business more professional. An e-commerce website needs a secure server where the customers can carry out safe transactions. These services help build a reputation for your company and will assist you in the long run.
• Hardware: What kind of hardware the company uses will decide on the quality of the service provided by them. If the company isn’t very open about the server that they use, it is time to look for other options. A company that uses modern, state-of-the-art machines as compared to one that uses chicken wires and spare parts, will offer you a better service.
• Customer Reviews: The most honest opinion about a particular hosting company can be derived from the customers. You need to connect with the existing customers and also carry out a blog search on the internet to find out reviews on the different hosting companies. The customers will honestly tell you if the technical support is easily reachable, and what is the average time for them to respond to, and what is the kind of service that they provide. You can visit websites like Web Hosting Talk, LifeHacker, and Web Hosting Jury for customer reviews.
• Reputation: The customer reviews will help you get a clearer idea about the reputation of the web hosting companies. Make sure that you get a clear picture of the company’s reputation before you start working with them. Each of these companies will have their testimonials and statistics mentioned. Check out hosting forums also to see how they are perceived by the text experts.

When you are trying to get a clear idea about the company’s reputation, also check up on their uptime statistics. The uptime percentage will help you see how frequently the hosting company’s sites are live. The higher the percentage, the better it is. Make sure that you go for a company that has a rate close to 100% since an issue with the hosting company will slow down your website. If the website is slow, the visitor will not be able to access the site and are then less likely to return for the second time, and you lose out on traffic.

• Spam and Email Practices: If you have an email option in the website then make sure that your hosting company has a solution to tackle spam problems. Consider their spam solutions and email practices before you decide to work with them.
• User Interface: No matter how technically sound you are, there are some issues about web hosting that might not be your cup of tea. If you don’t know how to install WordPress or set up an email or FTP account, you need to find a hosting company that will do it for you without any additional cost. Make sure that the company has cPanel or Plesk for updates and doesn’t use the complex interface that might be difficult to figure out. Since you will be the one to work on them, it will be difficult if you can’t find your way through them.
• Space for Growth: Another crucial thing that you need to consider when selecting a hosting company is whether they can fit into your plans. What might be adequate for you now, won’t be so in the future, when the website grows. As a web-based entrepreneur. you need to focus on growth and hence shouldn’t consider hosting companies that won’t accommodate the future growth in the company. If you are availing of Shared Hosting, check if the company offers VPS and Dedicated Hosting solutions and how easy would it be to update your account.
• Usability: Usability will be important if you are new to the world of web hosting and have no clue about coding and other technical know-how. Usability can also give you more freedom to customize the website and offers more hosting options. When you are considering usability make sure that the hosting company offers you Plesk, cPanel, ISPConfig or ispCP. These programs will help you customize and set up your website even if you are unfamiliar with the file transfer protocol. FTP is necessary if you want to upload files to the site, which include header images and logos.
• Don’t Just Go By The Big-Names: Just like cheap hosting companies might not offer all the services you want, the big names might also not offer you everything you want. These web hosting companies might have built their brand, but it is easy to get blindsided by their success and not pay attention to their hosting solutions. Don’t go for a company simply because they have a good reputation in the market, make sure that they offer you the services that you require.
• Security Strength: Since you are placing all your website’s information in the host, it is mandatory that you consider a company that offers the best security strength. The customers will share all their information with you, and it is your responsibility to secure them. When considering security strength, look into the daily backups of the web hosting company. You cannot afford to lose the content of the website without a backup to retrieve them! Keep an eye on the SSLs. When you design an e-commerce website but don’t plan on using third-party service for the client’s payment data, you will need SSLs. You also need to scan for malware and help the site from being blacklisted. A SiteLock will take care of this and will also help you gain the trust of the customers.
• High Traffic: If you are looking to create a website that will see a huge amount of traffic, you must consider a company that has the capability to handle that amount of traffic and doesn’t cause the site to crash.
• Zero Downtime: Downtimes will make your website slow. It doesn’t matter even if that happens in the middle of the night since a site will be accessed by visitors from all over the world. The downtime will make things difficult for your website, and you will have to make sure that you go for a hosting company that upgrades their system to avoid downtime.

How to Choose the Right Host for Your Site

Now that you have a comprehensive list of all the factors that you need to consider when picking a host for your website, it is time to get some nuggets of advice that will help you select the right hosting company. Given below is a list of wisdom that will assist in making the selection process easier.

1. Reputation:

You might have understood by now that the reputation of the company is of prime importance. How long a company has been around and how quickly they respond to complaints and whether they offer immediate technical support, will help you make sure that you get the best service. Be very direct with the host, ask them questions, and satisfy all your queries. If you find them lacking somewhere, don’t hesitate to keep looking.

2. Find the Limit of the Unlimited Package:

Even before you get into the world of websites, you must realize that there’s nothing called “unlimited.” Even the unlimited has a limit, so don’t be fooled by the hosts that offer you unlimited storage and data transfer. It is bait waiting for you. The limits are mentioned in the service agreements and contracts, and you might have to plow through them to find it out, but be rest assured that it is there! There are chances that the host company might keep changing their limits without warning or leave things undefined, so you should be very clear about it from the beginning. While storage and data transfer numbers are crucial, what matters primarily is the PHP memory, which you will run out of first.

3. Be Sure About the Uptime Guarantees:

Before you sign a contract with a web hosting company find out their uptime guarantee. Even if they offer 99.9% uptime ensure that still includes eight hours of downtime every year. Analyze if your business can function with this. This might not pose a threat to smaller businesses but could become a major deal-breaker for larger ones.

4. Be Sure About the Refunds:

It might so happen that the hosting company might not be able to provide you with satisfactory service or you might find a better deal else. In such a situation, it would help if you can avail of a refund. Make things very clear with the web hosting company from the very beginning. What if they mess things up or if their server crashes or if you ever want to end the contract with them, if you can avail a refund.

5. Location:

Yes, you read that right! Location does matter even if the website is global. If your server is located on the other side of your primary customers, then things will slow down. If you are concerned about the speed, then you need to place importance on the location of the servers used by the hosting company.

6. Be Open to Moving:

There’s no harm in moving your site. If you feel that the service of the hosting company isn’t good enough or that the service is too expensive, you can easily move your website. If you find the price steep in the initial months, this expense will only increase with time, and you should switch to a cheaper option if you don’t want to keep paying the steep amount.

7. Customer Service:

The one aspect if always tend to look past is the customer service offered by a company. However, this cannot be the case when you select your web hosting company. If your website crashes at 3 am, customer service will be the first one you will try and contact. No service will matter if you cannot get instant help when your website is in a crisis. Firstly, you shouldn’t face many problems, and even if you do, you need to be confident about 24X7 customer service for the same.

So How Will You Decide If the Customer Service Is Best Suited for You?

• They will be prompt. The best customer service is one that responds to your problems instantly. Depending on the situation, a wait time of an hour is the maximum you can afford for your website. You would not want to be associated with a company that offers a wait time of 24 hours for a crisis.
• They should be helpful. Customer service will be the first point of contact when you face a crisis, and they should be capable of making you understand the problem and offering you a quick solution. If they are evasive or cannot provide useful information, then you will be in trouble.
• The customer service should function as you want them to. Some companies send in technical support to work things out for you, or there are some that respond and offer solutions via telephone and chat. Go with the one that suits you best.

8. Security:

Security is another aspect we don’t give much importance to until something goes wrong. You will realize that most of the host companies don’t talk about the security option. This is because they don’t want everyone to know about their system. However, some hosts brag about their system, and that is when you know that they have something unique and are using it as a selling point.

• Check online and read reviews to find out about the kind of security offered by the company.
• You should check for network firewall, intrusion prevention system, server firewall, and access lists to make sure that the hosting company is providing the best security.
• The best option is multiple layers of security.
• Also, make sure that the company updates its security patches at regular intervals.

9. Amount of Control You Enjoy:

Since it is your website that we are talking about, you will have some amount of control over it. However, the amount of control you enjoy depends on the level that the host company offers. If you are using shared hosting, you might not enjoy the same amount of control as you would enjoy with a dedicated server. No matter what type of hosting you go with, a good host makes sure that you have an ample amount of control and access to your website.

• Many hosts offer a control panel with a lot of functionality. While you may not need so many, it is always better to have access to these. You may end up requiring them when you least expect it.
• Make sure that the control panel you have access to is a cPanel since they are the best and the most popular. If you are clueless about the cPanel, you can go through the online tutorials for the same, to gather your information. Given the popularity of the cPanel, you might not have to relearn a new system in case you change the host.

10. Avoid Overloading:

One of the primary problems faced by the world of web hosting is overloaded servers. Many hosts cram too many sites into a shared server to increase their earning, and this often ends up affecting the websites. The overloaded server only makes your site slow and unavailable because other websites are enjoying all the traffic and bandwidth. The only problem is that you cannot find out if your company is overloading the server.

• Check the other websites on the server and see what their speed is. Also, check the speed of the host’s site to see how fast it is running.
• You can also ask around or read the reviews.

11. Check If the Company Offers FTP Access:

Find out if the host company offers FTP access. It is the easiest way to connect with your site and upload files. You will need FTP even if you want to install WordPress yourself. If the web hosting company doesn’t offer FTP, they will allow you to upload the files with the help of a web interface. The method works, but FTP is quicker and easier to access.

12. Check for Upgrades:

You need to remember that your website will not remain this small in the years to come. You have a big dream, and you should make sure that your hosting can make that a reality. Before you associate with the company, check on their upgrade options. You might not need them right now, but you will need them in the future, and it doesn’t harm to have an idea about it.

• Don’t believe whatever the company tells you and don’t upgrade if you see that the next package offers an “unlimited” option. You don’t need it right now, and it will only cost you money.

13. Email:

The easiest way to make your business look professional is to make your business email. Most of the host companies offer emails, but it always helps to clarify them in the beginning. See what features they offer and if it serves your daily needs.

• Make sure that the company allows all emails to be rerouted to your domain.
• Check for the availability of autoresponders.
• See if you can forward your emails to an existing account. This is helpful you already have an email address and don’t want to keep a tab on multiple accounts.
• Make sure that you can access your email via IMAP and/or POP3. The POP3 access will help you check your email via Outlook.
• Also, look for web-based solutions.

While the aforementioned points should be considered before selecting the host company, here are some more points that will help you pick between two options that are equally perfect for you.

14. One-Click WordPress Install:

WordPress is easy to install, but it becomes easier when you have a hosting company that offers one-click WordPress installation. This helps if you want a hassle-free approach when setting up the website. Here’s the catch- if you go for one-click installations, you usually have to make do with security issues and slower upgrades.

15. Reselling Options:

Host reselling is a feature that will help advanced users. Reselling is a common practice for web developers since it gives them the opportunity to build the site and host it. If you want this option, look for the reselling opportunities offered by the host. Many hosts offer unbranded solutions for you to make the hosting environment suitable for your branding. Privilege server offers great reseller hosting packages to get you started.

16. Affiliate Cash:

If you aren’t planning to resell hosting, you might be offered affiliate dollars by the host company. The affiliate cash will help pay off in the long run. You can also make do without managing ads or links and can still end up making some cash.

17. Registration of Domain Name:

Some hosts allow you to register your domain name. While it might be a good option to combine your hosting and domain registration, this might become a problem if you want to change hosts in the future. Many hosts own their URL and license it to the website, so it might be difficult to transfer the URL to another host if there are billing issues. It is a smarter move not to combine host registration and domain name since that might force you to remain with the host even if you want an out.

18. Domain Parking:

This is a rather common practice in the world of web hosting. Companies end up purchasing all the domains that are similar to their name, including the misspelt ones so that they can get the traffic. Host allow domain parking, but there might be some limits on how many URLs you can redirect.

19. Backup:

It is crucial to have a backup system on your site. This will help you if you delete a folder accidentally while tinkering around the FTP program. Trust us when we say that these blunders have to even the most technically sound person. To avoid such situations, hosts offer daily backups, which will restore whatever gets deleted. Be very clear about the backup options provided by the company, and it is safer to have your backup options in place, like the BackupBuddy.

20. E-Commerce:

If you want some additional functionality like e-commerce, you will be able to get them from your host company if you ask them for it. These out-of-the-box solutions may not be customizable like many WordPress plugins, but they will work fine for any basic requirements.

21. One Place for All Sites:

If you have a long list of websites and can’t stop buying interesting domain names, then it is best that you host all of them together in the same space. Many companies offer options to keep multiple sites, which is called Addon Domains. Check and confirm if the company you want to work it offers the feature.

10 Questions to Ask Your Web Hosting Provider Before You Make the Final Decision

You cannot compromise on your website and the security of your customers. One of the key points to remember before you go ahead and create your online presence is the choice of the web hosting company that you associate with. Many factors determine your decision. Here is a list of 10 questions that you might ask the hosting company, to make an informed decision.

1. What Is the Security Policy That You Follow?

The security policy followed by a hosting company will offer you an insight into the company. There a lot of varieties to pick from. Many companies offer you server space and a connection while deciding to give you free rein when it comes to the security of the content. On the other hand, some companies carry out malware scans, monitor the traffic of the site and offer denial-of-service mitigation. You also need to be sure that the security updates happen very frequently.

2. How Do You Handle Breaches in Security?

One of the key security concern is when the security precautions fail in certain cases. In such a situation, it is often the hosting company that finds out beforehand and needs to ensure the safety of the visitors. It is important to know how and whether the provider will attempt to tackle the situation and how long will they take to identify the crisis and work to solve it. Also, what happens if you find out about a breach and how soon can you get a reply from the company after you report the issue to them?

3. What Is the Platform Under My Application?

Closely related to the issue of security is the server platform used for your website. You need to know which server your CMS application is installed on and how it is secured from breaches. Generally, the underlying platform is protected by server software like IIS and Apache. A knowledge of this is crucial since these platforms often require to be restarted for maintenance and you will not know how to do so if you don’t have any idea about the platform. Every time you restart for maintenance you cause downtime, and you will have to maintain the delicate balance between operations and security.

4. Is SSL (HTTPs) Offered?

SSL is usually offered as a premium hosting service and not as default. It so happens that the cost for the SSL is not considered when you are looking for the price of the server and the end figure might drastically change once it is factored in. In such a situation, it is important that you know whether it is required. The SSL will make the website secure, especially if you plan on employing username and password, as in many e-commerce sites. The HTTPS will ensure that the data fed in by the customers become encrypted before they are sent across the internet. There are different levels of SSL certificates that you can consider.

5. Do You Backup?

Backups are crucial for security and continuity of the website. The backups help if there is equipment failure at the host’s end and if there is a security compromise in the website. When you know that your data is backed and you can restore it easily, you will have the option to deal calmly with such situations. Injecting an SQL will compromise the website easily, and a backup will help recover the database and restore the files in the web folder. Lastly, make sure that the backup data is located off-site since keeping it on the site might subject it to the same risk as the website.

6. Who Is Responsible for CMS Platforms and Installations?

Most of the hosting sites have pre-installed content management software. However, it is crucial to know if the installed version is the latest build and whether it gets security updates regularly. Many hosts allow users to upload their CMS platform and they also provide the option to allow the customers to keep the software updated.

7. Can I Disable Applications and Service Not Required?

This question might sound simple, but it is important, If you want a blog and not a forum, you might want the option to remove it. Unused applications might only increase the threat of an attack. There are initial server configurations that allow you to select the applications you want to use with the option to make changes in the future. You can also disable the unused features.

8. Who Will Update the Applications and Software?

Attackers love unpatched applications. WordPress, Joomla, Movable Type have all seen vulnerabilities. If you leave these vulnerabilities unpatched, then you allow attackers to compromise your website. Most of the malicious websites are in fact victims of a compromise. You need to be clear about whether the host will offer to update applications that they don’t provide.

9. What Kind of Security Monitoring Is Employed?

If your site is compromised, how will you find it out? This is where the security monitoring comes into the picture. It would be better if you were the first one to find this out rather than your visitors finding it out via security software. The situation becomes a lot less embarrassing, and you can fix the problem immediately.

10. How Are Uploads Secured?

The content of the website is crucial, and you need to ensure that only you have access to it. The content is usually updated by FTPs, but they aren’t secured, and there have been cases where FTP credentials have been stolen. A better option then would be to use Secure FTP for the content.

Before You Go!

If you have any doubt about hosting options that will be best suited for your requirements you can hit me up in the comments section below, contact me via our Facebook page.

Till then,

Happy Hosting!

Have you guys ever been browsing your favorite website or playing an online game and all of a sudden, the stream starts to be all shaky, and your connection seems slow as a snail. You might quickly go and try another website on the browser only to find every other website loads just fine, but the one you want to surf – those %$@%^s need to upgrade their server connection? (So, you think), but what may actually be a totally different scenario is that the website is likely being hit by a Denial of Service Attack.

Well, unusually high traffic can also make a website server load slow for you, but in most cases, if the slowness is persisting for a little more than comfortable, it may be a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack.

Such was the same case with one of our clients on 17^th January 2017. Just as he was about to checkout after ordering a Local SEO Pack from our website, BOOM! The website got stuck, and then came the “white-screen-of-nothingness.”

Alike every other unaware visitor, Andrew (I am sure he won’t mind) was a bit frustrated with the experience. And the next moment he was writing a tantrum in Gmail, complaining about how we should upgrade our Servers and get more capacity for traffic, and how our website sucked!

Rest assured Andrew; we surely don’t run our company on shared environments. Sharanyan Sharma, our founder wasn’t too surprised to receive the email, as just at that moment we were hit by a Layer 4 (Syn Flood) DDoS Attack, the size of 6.2 GBpS. To read more about our experience and how we tackled it click here.

And that was our 2^nd DDoS Attack in the last 4 years. The first one we faced wasn’t any close to this magnitude. But 6.2 GBpS, I tell you this is pretty freaking BIG.

Since the past decade, Denial of Service attacks have been on the rise. Experts say, that such attacks in any magnitude cannot be fully stopped, as you can never truly find and control the core of these attacks, but the damaged can be minimized by taking controlled measures and letting Denial of Service Mitigation Experts handle the situation.

And when I say, Mitigation Experts, I am not in any way referring to Cloud Flare, I am talking Incapsula, Arbor, Verisign, Nexusguard. You get the drift. These folks charge $10000s by the hours (for starters). We have tried quite a few Mitigation Services, and one thing we can conclude is that there is nothing called Cheap DDoS Mitigation. You either get someone good and pay for it, or do not bother at all.

DDoS Alert Report from Splunk (primeone.global Impacted January 2017)

 

We looked at the Cyber Security and Risks Threat Survey of Arbor, Neustar, Kaspersky and Incapsula only to find very strict similarities in their research. Neustar has conducted research amongst 1000s of managers, directors, CTOs, CSOs, CISOs and other chief executives to understand the impact of Denial of Service Attacks on their organization and what measures they are taking to mitigate such attacks.

The majority of these respondents belong to the IT, Finance or Retail Industry. The respondents taking part in these surveys accrue anywhere from $100M to $1B per year. For these companies the risk picture is magnanimous. The cost of an hourly downtime for such organizations ranges anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 subject to peak traffic and sales seasons.

Annual Revenue of Respondent Organizations

 

Global Data at a Glance

• 73% of all organizations interviewed suffered a DDoS attack.
• 85% of attacked organizations were subjected to multiple DDoS attacks.
• 44% of attacked organizations were hit six or more times.
• 49% of respondents would lose $100k or more per hour during peak periods due to a DDoS attack.
• 33% would lose $250k or more during the same periods.
• 76% of organizations are investing more in response to the threat of DDoS attacks.
• 38% are investing more in DDoS defence, but acknowledge the investment should be even greater.
• 39% of respondents took three or more hours to detect a DDoS attack.
• 25% detected the DDoS attack between three and five hours.
• 53% of attacked organizations were breached as a result of a DDoS attack.
• 46% reported finding a virus after the breach

(Source Neustar 2016 DDoS Report)

In their IT Risks Survey Thread of DDoS Attacks survey report, Kaspersky states:

20% of companies with less than 50 employees have been a victim of DDoS Attack at least once in their lifetime. The top three Industries affected by DDoS Attacks, are not surprisingly, IT, Financial Services and Telecommunications.”

DDoS Attacks cost a lot of businesses. Apart from financial loss and business downtime, more than two-thirds of DDoS Attack victims have reported another type of security threat directly coinciding with the main attack. (Thankfully, we belong to the one-third). Although DDoS Attacks don’t say and happen and are enough to take large scale websites down, combining such attacks with other security intrusions only helps to multiply the collateral damage, apart from the significant loss of business downtime and reputation.

In the Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report, Arbor states…

• There is a steady growth in the size of DDoS Attacks YOY. In 2015, 20% of service based companies reported attacks, an average of 50Gbps. In 2016, nearly 33% of Service providers reported attacks the size of 100Gbps on average. Which only means to say that the top-end size of these attacks is nearly doubling every year.
• The largest attack in 2016 reported 1 TBPS. Octave Klaba, the founder of OVH, reported in a Tweet.

@Dominik28111 we got 2 huge multi DDoS: 1156Gbps then 901Gbps pic.twitter.com/NyFTr6KLCC

— Octave Klaba / Oles (@olesovhcom) September 19, 2016

The tweet exclaims there were simultaneous attacks the size of 100 Gbps on OVH, which totalled more than 1TBps. And the largest single attack on OVH peaked at 799 Gbps and 93MBps.

• In the majority of the cases, Customers are the number target for DDoS Attacks.
• The proportion of survey service provider respondents noticed cloud-based attacks, which have grown from 19% in 2012, to 29% in 2014 and 33% last year – again a clear trend.
• Amongst the different types of Attacks, Application Layer Attacks seem to be the most popular at 93% in 2016, a significant rise from the 90% is 2015 and 86% in 2013.
• The most common service targeted by these Application Layer Attacks is DNS, which hasn’t been much targeted
• The most common top motivation behind criminals giving DDoS Attacks is “to show-off their attack capabilities,” with the second and third most common reason being “gaming” and “extortion.”
• A growing proportion of respondents claim that they are noticing malware and virus, along with Data theft after DDoS Attacks, which means to say that these attacks are being done merely as a means of distraction.
• There is also a significant growth in SIP/VoIP based attacks, which is up from 9% in 2015, to 19% in 2016.

Increased interest in DDoS Mitigation and Detection Services continue this year due to these ever-increasing attacks.

DDoS Attacks can cause even more damage if organizations aren’t prepared. 74% of the respondents in the Arbor survey claimed that they were spending more on Mitigating the attacks than their overtime loss due to the attacks, and even acknowledged that they needed to pay more to better handle such attacks. Therefore, the number one business impact due to DDoS is increased operational expense, followed by Revenue Loss, Customer Churn, Employee Turn Over and others. See image below.

Time Is Money, And Money is the Game!

The harsh truth is that, nobody can afford a Successful DDoS Attack and neither anybody can mitigate a DDoS Attack complete – well, at least an attack of that stature.

Increasingly, DDoS Attacks are being deployed in conjunction with other illicit activities in order to distract or misguide organizations on the actual motive of such attacks, which is usually to install malware, ransomware or viruses.

After the Storm

The aftermath of the storm leaves behind a strong sense of vulnerability, that nobody on the Internet is safe. Where some organizations are turning to one another for guidance and exchange of information, others are taking refuge in the comfort of Security Consultants and a majority of these organizations are working in conjunction with Law Enforcement to get to the root of these attacks in lieu of previous attacks or to simply ward of impending attacks.

Before You Go!

All data sources point to one and only one fact. 2017 is already witnessing a multitude of DDoS Attacks around the globe, and these attacks will only continue to increase as time passes.

“It is not about when these attacks will happen, it is about HOW MANY TIMES.”

Taking into account the new type of smokescreen attacks, Denial of Service has started resembling ransomware attacks more than anything else. SMBs are the ones that suffer the most under the pressure of such attacks, and the technology behind such attacks is Simple, but the measures to fend them are complex and resource-intensive.

The average financial damage of a DDoS is quite significant, which still turns out to be less than the cost of mitigating such attacks. So, most Small Media Businesses that have spent money on DDoS Mitigation services claim that they would rather strengthen the security of their infrastructure to prevent a data breach than spend more money on mitigating these never-ending attacks.

Has your organization faced a DDoS attack in the last 12 Months? If so, how bad was the attack and what are you doing to wade off such attacks from happening in future? Data security is a big concern and we would surely love to know what and how you are tackling these unfortunate events.

As of 2017 rolls out, the need to improve on last year’s digital marketing only becomes greater, thanks to the increasing competition for customer engagement throughout the industry. Digital marketers today are faced with the double hurdle of attracting different kinds of customers to their product/service and engaging them until they reach the buying stage.

In trying to take advantage of changing marketing trends, many digital marketers are focusing their energy on the wrong tactics and leaving proven strategies behind. Others are grabbing at too many strategies all at once without maximising the potential of each. Such mistakes led to major declines in sales and conversions for many companies in 2016.

Here are a series of expert tips and solutions to help you and your team steer clear of the common digital marketing mistakes in 2017.

1. Create a strategy for mobile
2. Integrate email marketing with other marketing strategies
3. Monitor the stats from each campaign
4. Set the goals for each marketing campaign before you start
5. Generate better content that is relevant for customers
6. Step out of your social media comfort zone
7. Base your marketing strategies on actual data and statistics, not intuition and gut feelings
8. Target the right audience for your product/service
9. Diversify your content
10. Reexamine your social media marketing strategy
11. Analyse your customer base and understand how different they are
12. Consider only necessary data from analytics when drawing a strategy, not everything
13. Research each new marketing trend before jumping on it
14. Develop a sound reengagement strategy for distracted customers
15. Keep ahead of yourself with upcoming trends in your industry, top news and announcements

Create A Strategy for Mobile

It’s no secret that mobile is gaining a larger share of the market as of 2017, which is why digital marketers that aren’t integrating it into their marketing strategies are seeing less favorable results. A large percentage of customers are now completing their online purchases on mobile devices, right from doing product research and comparison to actual purchasing.

Marketers need to draw a mobile marketing strategy that covers factors including website responsiveness for mobile devices, content creation for mobile users and the option of creating an app if their marketing campaigns are to convert as planned.

 

Integrate Email Marketing with Other Marketing Strategies

Even with the rise of new ‘hotly tipped’ digital marketing trends such as social media marketing, email marketing still remains a formidable and influential player in the field of digital marketing. Without considering the consequences, many digital marketers have turned their back on it, opting for the newer trends with much more promise.

The fact is that email marketing is still the most effective online marketing alternative available with millions of customers making purchase decisions everyday within a marketing email or newsletter. Digital marketers have to understand that and learn to integrate it with other marketing strategies when drawing their strategies for 2017.

 

Monitor the Stats from Each Campaign

It’s surprising to learn that many digital marketers actually pay very little attention to the statistics from their online marketing efforts, choosing not to pay heed to them. Others continue to post various forms of content on different platforms without checking the stats to identify which performs best and when.

Marketers today have to regularly monitor their statistics with the help of analytics tools such as Google Analytics and look out for those patterns that define consumer behavior and interests. It’s these numbers and patterns that determine how each campaign is converting and what needs to be changed before it’s too late. The figures also help marketers to identify which form of content works for which group of customers and at what time of the day.

 

Set the Goals for Each Marketing Campaign Before You Start

A marketing campaign without set goals is like a journey without a destination. Some digital marketers set out on marketing campaigns with rough estimates of the results they want to see without ever putting factors such as their customers’ financial abilities and their competitors into consideration. They never realise that their campaigns are underperforming until it’s too late to turn around.

It’s more than just important to set goals for aspects such as social shares, sign ups, followers, likes, sales, conversions, etc. They are the major determinants of how effective your campaign is and provide a measuring scale for how much ROI and engagement you get out of each.

See Also: Top 10 Free Project Management Software Of 2017

 

Generate Better Content That Is Relevant for Customers

Many digital marketers make the mistake of creating content just for the sake of having something to share and use for marketing their products. In today’s digital marketing world, consumers go to the internet to look for answers and solutions to their problems, not to read for leisure or pass the time. That is why marketers have to put the time into creating content that is when dissected, emotionally viable, relevant, helpful and engaging to read.

Creating such content on a regular basis may prove tedious with all other marketing aspects and time constraints considered, but you can always use the tips below to generate new content for your marketing campaign.

• You can outsource it

Affordable freelancers are always available for hire, with price quotes depending heavily on the content in question. You can also make use of guest bloggers, which is additionally advantageous for your link building profile.

•  You can share from other websites in your niche

Top quality content can be found all over the internet, and in most websites in your niche. Take time to read content on other related websites and share that which you find relevant for your readers. It’s a double win for you; you get good content at a fraction of or no cost at all. Just remember to give credit to the website you shared it from.

• You can re-purpose it

The good thing about content is that you can reuse it after some time without appearing repetitive. Evergreen content can always be updated and republished or converted to ebooks, reports, and whitepapers that you can give out to your readers and subscribers for free.

• Publish user-generated content

See Also: Best Content Marketing Strategies from 9 Content Marketing Experts

Step Out of Your Social Media Comfort Zone

Gone are the days when creating content and posting it on social media was enough to attract traffic to your website, generate enough leads for you and guarantee conversions. Many marketers still stop at posting content on social media and don’t use the channel to the maximum.

Marketers need to reimagine their social media campaigns by;

• Creating actual relationships with their followers and not just posting content, which involves replying to comments, encouraging debate and showing genuine interest in readers’ comments.
• Reaching out to influencers and others interacting with other businesses’ social media pages through shares, retweets, and reposts of their content, which helps when they decide to share their content too.
• Managing their own social media accounts, rather than having someone else promote their brand for them.

Base Your Marketing Strategies on Actual Data and Statistics, Not Intuition and Gut Feelings

It might seem inevitable for some to keep their gut out of making decisions, but it’s the figures that rule when it comes to online marketing. Following gut feelings is akin to gambling, and that exposes the whole marketing campaign to the kind of risk that is wholly avoidable.

For successful marketing campaigns, marketers have to learn to use the statistics from their previous marketing campaigns as the foundation on which their build their next strategies and not gut, intuition or hearsay. They have to get solutions from the mistakes that threatened their earlier strategies and use patterns in the statistics to come up with comparable data on their customers’ purchase mannerisms.

 

Target the Right Audience for Your Product/Service

It’s a common notion among many digital marketers today that marketing campaigns targeted at larger audiences in the same niche have higher conversion rates. While it may sound true hypothetically, the numbers tend to say otherwise.

For 2017, digital marketers have to stop looking wide and target the right audiences for their campaigns to produce more conversions. They should employ A/B testing to gauge the performance of each marketing email or post heading before actually getting it sent or published, and send the versions of each that show more promise when tested.

 

Diversify Your Content

Many digital marketers make the mistake of sticking to one form of content, say either short form or long form articles, throughout their campaigns, which doesn’t always work to their expectations.

This year, digital marketers should embrace the idea of diversified content by leveraging the power of different forms of content including video, images, infographics, long form articles, case studies etc. Mix between long form/detailed posts and shorter ones, with the former being used to target customers making their final purchase decision and the latter catering for those looking for a quick solution to a problem. Take advantage of short informative videos when reviewing products; they have rather high conversion rates. Such varied content makes the customer-to-buyer conversion process much easier and quicker.

 

Re-examine Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media marketing might be one of the most profitable marketing channels right now, but its benefits many never be realized if it’s not maximized fully.

Go back to basics when drawing the social media marketing strategy of your marketing campaign for this year. Pick the social media platforms you intend to work with depending on how each has performed in the past for your campaigns. Identify how to maximise each social media platform by determining which content type performs best on which platform. Consider the different time zones at which content performs best on each platform, and start scheduling your content to go live at that time. Base on past stats and metrics for these conclusions, and use them to come with alterations to each platform’s strategy.

 

Analyse Your Customer Base and Understand How Different They Are

Digital marketers should point out the differences in their customer bases, and strive to develop different marketing strategies based on the varying interests of each customer grouping. They should also use analytics reports to develop rewards and incentives based on these differences.

 

Consider Only Necessary Data from Analytics When Drawing a Strategy, Not All of It

There is a lot of data to collect from consumers about their behavior during any digital marketing campaign, and marketers are faced with the trouble of wading through it all to come up with conclusions and figures that they may need for future strategies. Many digital marketers make the mistake of troubling themselves with every piece of data they collect, thinking it necessary for their next strategy.

In reality, that approach is a waste of time. The importance attached to any sort of data collected on consumer behavior cannot be under looked; nevertheless, not all data needs to be brooded over all night long. Marketers have to learn to pick out only the necessary statistics from the pile of data they collect, i.e. the metrics that clearly define consumer buying habits, and use that to work their way through their next strategies.

 

Research Each New Marketing Trend Before Jumping on It

There is always a new marketing trend in the digital marketing world, and marketers are faced with the temptation of trying out something new before it loses steam.  While these new trends and techniques may sound effective and promise higher ROIs, they need to be researched first to identify whether they are worth investing in. Every digital marketing team should research the pros and cons of each new trend to gauge its effectiveness and determine the costs involved before embarking on using it.

 

Develop A Sound Re-engagement Strategy for Distracted Customers

Many e-commerce platforms experienced the abandonment of shopping carts during the shopping process last year while others faced the issue of customers never opening their marketing emails.

The smart solution to this is for digital marketers to create a sound re-engagement strategy to use for attracting back customers after they are slightly distracted during shopping or otherwise. It might involve sending out an immediate email to customers when they abandon their cart, asking what the problem was, reminding them to complete their purchase or offering an incentive for them to come back and complete the transaction. The success rate will vary, but it’s better than doing nothing at all.

 

Keep Ahead of Yourself with Upcoming Trends in Your Industry, Top News and Announcements

The best way for digital marketers to keep up with upcoming trends in the digital marketing world is by immersing themselves in the industry and keeping track of the latest news and developments. This can be achieved through following and commenting on influencer blogs, forums, and websites, and joining the conversation on social media.

 

In this blog, I am essentially going to discuss Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your wix websites. If you are unaware of what SEO means for a website, it is the process of improving your website’s rankings in Search Engine Results.

Managing your websites Search Engine performance is one of the most important and cost effective ways you can go about promoting it.

Being able to rank for Industry Specific keywords will give you an edge over other competitors in your niche, bringing in a recurrent inflow of highly qualified traffic that is interested in what you have to offer i.e., your core services.

But Before I Talk About Wix SEO…

I would like to clear a big misconception about the Wix vs. WordPress war. WordPress is undoubtedly one of the most popular website building platforms on the Internet, the primary reason for this is, it being an open-source platform, which introduces the possibility of crowd sourcing.

However, this popularity doesn’t contribute to any Search Engine Ranking Factor. To put it clearly, I haven’t come across any clear evidence yet that WordPress websites are given more priority in Search Engines than Wix Websites.

And neither is this fact true that, Wix websites are impossible to rank in Search Engines. I see numerous webmasters complaining about the fact that Wix Websites never rank. The fault, my dear friends, is not in the website builder, it is in the website optimization.

To give you some food for thought, I have found some great websites built using the Wix platform. I will show you the websites, along with some very popular keywords that they rank for…

Here They Are…

The first website on the list is www.bakeuhappy.com

Here is the built report of the website to prove that it is a Wix website.

Now, that you can see the website is using a Wix builder. Let me show you some of the keywords for which it is ranking on the serps..

Keywords	Position In Search Engine
cake jars for sale	3
jar cakes for sale	3
mini cupcakes near me	3
cupcakes santa clarita	4
bakeries in santa clarita	5
mason jar cakes for sale	7
custom shortbread cookies	8

In total, this website is ranking for over 500+ Organic Keywords. And that’s not too bad, is it?

If you have a Wix Website, and are wondering how to get traffic from Search Engines irrespective of your efforts, then you must be doing something WRONG, the thing that these successful businesses have done right.

I am going to walk you through some of the Search Engine best practices that these websites are following…

First and foremost, (refer point 1), Provide Your Contact Information and Business Hours Clearly

Firstly, Never Use Pre-Designed Logos or Text Logos for Your website that are provided in the Wix repository.

By using such images that are publicly available, your website will be lost amongst a pool of thousands of other websites who are using the same graphics for their business as well.

To be found by search engines, you need to differentiate your business from the rest, you need to do what others aren’t doing, and show effort.

Always use Custom Designed Logos for your website, and don’t forget to give an appropriate Alt-text to your Logo Image, which will help search engine robots understand more about your business.

In this case.. BakeUHappy Uses The Alt Text “Bake You Happy – Cupcakes, Cake Pops, Custom Cakes, and Cookies,” which clearly tells search engines that their Business Website is about CupCakes, Cake Pops, Customized Cakes and Cookies.

Takeaway:  Remember to use Alt Text For All Important Images On Your Website, Not Only Your Logo Image. Alt Text Helps Search Engines Decipher the Topic of The Images and add value to the keywords or niche that you might want to rank for.

Secondly (refer to point 2), Link Out To The Most Important Inner Pages On Your Website From Homepage.

You will notice that I have ignored the Main Menu Bar of the website.

I do not consider that as a part of advanced optimization because it is taken for granted, any website, be it Wix, or WordPress or Joomla, Opencart anything, must always have a clear and concise Navigation Structure, with all pages of the site being accessible in not less than three clicks from any location.

With, that being said, I will move onto the second point. BakeUHappy has clearly provided links to all its important inner pages. Some of which ..Cupcakes Santa Clarita, Custom Shortbread Cookies…it is already ranking for, and I can bet my last penny that these Homepage Links are a major contributing factor to those rankings…

Takeaway:  Remember to link to your most important inner landing pages from the homepage that will get home the bacon at the end of the day. As the Homepage is undoubtedly one of the most linked-to pages on your website, sending links to inner pages helps pass the link juice your website acquires overtime to these important pages as well.

Third and Fourth (refer point 3 and 4), Provide Your Location, Contact Information, Email Address and Working Hours (if applicable) on your homepage…

Doing this not only fetches you SEO benefits, but it also helps build credibility for your website in the eyes of your visitors.

When curious visitors who are looking for services that you offer come to your website, your Physical Address, Working Hours, Phone Number and Email Address, work as a trust signal about the integrity of your business operations.

Along with that, this information is also at times picked up by search engines in this form…

Takeaway:  Provide Clear Contact Details and Working Hours On Your Homepage. This builds trust and credibility for your brand, not only in the eyes of Search Engines, but also for your actual visitors.  

Fifth, Provide All Your Contact Information In The Footer Of Your Website,

This maybe a re-iteration of the 3^rd and 4^th point, but there is a slight difference. The above contact Information was provided in the main area of the page, which helped visitors instantly get all the information they need without scrolling to the bottom of the page.

The Contact Information here, is provided in the Footer Section, You can ideally also include your Working Hours in the footer section as well, as skip having it in the main content area altogether.

The bottom line is that you should provide these details on each and every page on your website, not only on your contact us and homepage. So Footer is the best route to go, because putting this information in the footer will help you make it available site-wide.

Takeaway:  You can provide Contact Details and Working Hours in the Footer of your website, which makes it available site wide, so that people can access this information from any part of your website.   

Sixth, Add Social Icons to Your Website to Connect Your Wix Site to All Your Social Profiles…

Doing this not only adds a bunch of colorful icons to your website and makes it visually appealing to visitors, but it also links all of your Business Social Profiles to your website. Meaning, whatever activity you do on your social profiles, contributes in one way or the other to the rankings of your Wix Website.

Being Active on social media is a powerful ranking signal for any website, and it is no difference for your Wix website. Search Engines want to display those types of results where the website owners also care about their visitors, and are not just bent on selling their services.

By including links to your various Social Profiles, you show search engines that your business is based around discussions, engagements and betterments, instead of mindless sales pitches.

Takeaway:  Don’t forget to Add Social Icons To Your Website, preferably in the Secondary Header Menu or your Footer Menu. This not only let’s visitors reach your social profiles faster and be able to interact with your business, but is also a major ranking signal for Search Engines.

Let me show you a few more examples of Wix Websites nailing their SEO Game…

The second website I am going to show you is a bridal boutique… http://www.ladiesoflineage.com/

This website is also made with Wix, here is the built report screenshot.

Another great example of a Wix website,

Let’s take a look at some of the keywords this website is ranking for in the serps..

Keywords	Position In Search Engine
charlotte bridal	3
wedding dress shops in charlotte nc	5
bridal shops in charlotte nc area	6
charlotte nc wedding dress	6
charlotte bridal shops	7
bridal boutiques charlotte nc	8
wedding dress boutiques charlotte nc	8

Pretty amazing, eh? This website too ranks for over 800+ Keywords in search engines..

Apart from the afore-mentioned points that BakeUHappy is following. Let’s take a look at another important point that should be taken into consideration when making your website SEO Friendly…

And this example I will give you with the help of our Bridal Boutique website… Ladies of Lineage.

When you type Bridal Dress Shop in NC, their home page is ranking on the 3^rd spot. Needless to say, they have done a fantastic job at including their Primary Keyword in their Homepage Title.

That is one of the reasons why their website is ranking for such a high qualified Buyer Intent term for customers in NC looking for Bridal Boutiques in their area. Right?

Takeaway: Every page on your website, or at least the most important landing pages on your website should have a properly optimized Header Title, which is also displayed in the search engine results pages. These titles should not target more than one or two Page Specific Keywords.

Now.. moving onto..

And the Last One for Today…

…is a restaurant website… www.chiles-grill.com, apart from doing their Mexican Food right, they are also doing good SEO!

Here are some of the 600+ Organic Keywords that they rank for…

Keywords	Position In Search Engine
mexican food tokyo	3
mexican restaurant in japan	5
mexican restaurants tokyo	10
japanese mexican food	6
harajuku food	7

You get the idea, right?

Now let’s take a look at some more ranking signals, but this time with the help of our Mexican Food search winners!

When we type, Mexican Food Tokyo in Google Search, guess who pops up? You guessed it right.. Chiles Grill,

And they are not just ranking for the term, they are doing it in style. Chiles Mexican Grill is ranking on the 4-5^th spot for Mexican Food Tokyo (a hot search term), which has over 4 Million Results.

I checked their Website and found they have everything in place,

• Image Alt Tags, Check
• Contact Information, Check
• Inner Page Links, Check
• Social Profile Links, Check
• Optimized Header Titles, Check.

Well you can confirm this by going to their website itself. Take a look at the Screenshot of the Search Results page, they have got their Hearder Titles Optimized, and also their Meta Description.

This is what it reads..

“Chiles Mexican Grill – Mexican Food in Tokyo!

Mexican Food in Tokyo. Chiles Mexican Grill brings the fresh and authentic taste of Mexican home cooking in Harajuku. Mexican Food in Harajuku, Tokyo!”

They have properly optimized their meta description for the Keyword Mexican Food in Tokyo, Mexican Food Tokyo, Harajuku Food, and they are successfully ranking for all these terms.

You can do a reverse check for these terms in the Search Engine, but be sure to conduct the search in an Incognito Window, so that Google doesn’t display you results based on your location and tracking.

Takeaway:  You should write a proper Meta Description for all the important landing pages of your website. This not only assures your chances of Ranking Higher in Search Engines, but will also insure a higher click through rate than other unoptimized websites when you do.

Secondly, Don’t Forget To Use Page Specific Keywords, and Target Not More Than One – Two Keywords Per Page…

This above screenshot is taken from their homepage. I have highlighted some terms, which they have used on their homepage, to make their website rank for them.

Takeaway: It is not only important to use your Primary Focus Keywords in the Title Tags and Meta Descriptions of every page, but also inside the content of the page. Don’t over use the keywords, or stuff them in the pages as it might do more harm than good to the readability and rankings of your website. Instead focus on evenly spreading them across the page, in the Titles, H2, H3, H4 Tags, Paragraphs, Bulleted Points etc.

So, that’s about it for my Advanced Guide to On-page Optimization for Wix Websites. I hope you take inspiration from these examples that I have given and use it to better the rankings of your websites.

Before You Go…

Let’s do a quick recap of all the things that we learnt and I will also include some basic things that I did not mention in this post. To be able to properly on-page optimize a Wix Website, you should focus on doing these things:

1. Select right URL
2. Tailor Google Titles for Your Pages
3. Create descriptions for each page
4. Employ anchor text
5. Add alt text to all your images
6. Use right headers
7. Write Quality Content
8. Use Page Specific Keywords
9. Use a 301 Redirect

If you are wondering what a 301 Redirect is, it is a form of redirection that is used to direct (maybe) your old website, to your newer version, to retain its SEO juice. This is primarily used by businesses who change their domain name or delete some old pages of their websites that were essentially getting a lot of traffic or ranking on Search Engines.

You should also know that On-page Optimization is just one side of the SEO Coin. Most of the things in On-page optimization can be done by a webmaster (such as yourself). The other side of the SEO Coin is the Off-page optimization, which holds a little more emphasis in the Search Engine Ranking Algorithms.

Off-page Optimization requires a lot of industry knowledge, depth, research and expertise, all of which my SEO Team can provide for you. In case you have a Wix Website, and are stuck on the SEO process, we will help you get stuck.

You can reach out to me on our Official Facebook Page, or drop a message in the comments section below and I can help you make a complete Online Marketing Plan for your Wix Website, that will help you get targeted visitors and convert them into successful leads of your business.

I hope you have success in your Online Business Venture, till we meet again! Stay Healthy and Have a good day!

When it comes to content marketing, there is always something new to learn. In fact, thanks to the internet, there seems to be a lot more to learn about how to make perfect marketing strategies and how to make existing strategies work that might overwhelm the average reader. For this article, we looked at the top digital marketing experts on the internet and saw what they had to reveal about everything you need to make each Content Marketing Strategies work. And there’s no doubt here; what the experts say is usually what you need to hear.

Who you’ll hear from

1. Jeff Bullas
2. Joe Pulizzi
3. Steve Cartwright
4. Neil Patel
5. Matthew Woodward
6. Sujan Patel
7. Larry Kim
8. Sam Hurley
9. Randy Fishkin

Jeff Bullas

Expert content marketer Jeff Bullas emphasizes the need for every content marketer to watch the data from their content marketing campaigns and look out for particular signals that mean a lot such as;

Time spent on web pages. Discover where people are spending more time with closer scrutiny to the pages having key content pieces and gauge the change in time spent on pages with eye-catchers such as visual links, different formatting, etc.

The bounce rate of each page. Determine which pages are having the highest bounce rates, and correlate the stats with other stats for other pages to highlight the cause of high bounce rates. (could be poor headlines, CTAs)

Monitor your returning visitors, as it translates to rate of engagement and conversion achieved. Dig around to discover why, if the percentage of returning visitors goes down.

Track your referral sources regularly and identify the ones whose stats are higher and more regular. Then engage those referral sources with additional content in the form of guest posts.

Dissect social media metrics and track down major aspects including engagement, number of shares, the scope of followers reached and the sentiment aroused by your content

Watch out for how traffic to your content is converted into leads when you publish content and look for new ways of repurposing highly performing content to make it more converting.

Watch the comments when you get them. See what your readers are saying and take part in the conversation.

See Also: Top 10 Conversion Rate Optimization Tools to Increase Your ROI

Joe Pulizzi

From contentmarketingimstitute.com, digital marketing guru Joe Pulizzi reveals a series of tips you can base on when drawing your content marketing strategy for 2017, based on upcoming trends.

You’ve got to give a reason why readers would need your content or how they would be affected before publishing it.

There is a growing trend of less content and more promotion. That is because marketers have no more room for generating content that no one gets to see.

Our strongest mode of communication is still text-based, which means writing new content is still as necessary as ever.

It’s important to have a steady and sound strategy before going along with a particular technology for your content marketing.

The time for mobile is now. More than ever, marketers need to ensure that their websites are optimized for mobile before publishing any content.

There is immense need nor adequately trained teams and proper workflow for any content marketing strategy to perform.

It’s never been more necessary to start building and marketing strategy for your content based on the video.

See Also: Why Everyone’s Focusing on Content Marketing in 2017 and You Should Too!

Steve Cartwright

Steve from www.website-designs.com approaches to content marketing with a common strategy, one that focuses on how to reuse and repurpose old content for better marketing. He offers the following tips

You can merge many old (and related) articles into a report on the same topic and complete it with an introduction, conclusion and some polishing to make it stand out and look new.

You can always update your old articles including the evergreen ones with up to date factual data and new content.

You can merge related series of articles together to form an ebook. You can also break down free ebooks into smaller articles or blog posts with a little editing

You can group old content into reports or group old reports into sizeable ebooks. You can add value to them by adding work sheets, checklists and flow charts plus an introduction and a conclusion for formality.

Neil Patel

From quicksprout.com, expert digital marketer Neil Patel emphasizes the possibility of making your content marketing successful with a smaller budget and provides a few tips on how to make it possible.

Focus on the content types that are most efficient to produce. He explains that you determine the cost of producing each form of content and evaluate the performance of each based on your competitors, before choosing one to go with.

Focus on producing quality content rather than generating lots of articles in a given period( quantity). There’s only as much quality as any content piece can have, and marketers should learn to avoid going overboard when trying to perfect theirs.

You can always reuse/ repurpose your old content and make it more useful, instead of creating new content from scratch every day with the hassle of research, time and writing.

Learn how to be more efficient when marketing your content, such that you use less time to do more.

See Also: Top 10 Free Project Management Software Of 2017

Skip the sections of content marketing that don’t matter as much. Concentrate your efforts on the marketing strategies and tactic that return the results you need such as traffic, sales, etc.

Specialize on a particular content marketing strategy and a particular audience throughout your marketing campaign.

Start a guest blogging campaign and use it to get free top notch content for your platform.

Learn to make your content promotion more effective by being selective in choosing who you promote it to ( i.e., very interested readers)

Matthew Woodward

Matthew’s strategy is based on finding highly viewed content, digging up the hundreds of people that shared it and contacting them to request them to share yours too. He breaks down his strategy in a few steps

Finding popular content that is similar to yours. You can use tools such as BuzzSumo and top keywords to discover the best performing or shared content in your niche.

Looking for the people that shared or linked to that post. The keyword here is influencers. This involves finding which industry influencers that shared the post with their followers or linked to it because they are most likely yo share yours too.

Finding each influencer’s contact information and sending them a small message to encourage them to read and share your content.

Sujan Patel

At sujanpatel.com, Sujan Patel reveals some really important tips every content marketer needs to be successful. Some of his tips for a successful marketing strategy include;

Making use of social ads to boost content on social media

Build content that attracts the audience rather than forcing it toward the content

Make your posts longer (1000+ words) for better search ranking and traffic

Make use of guest blogging on top industry sites

Always consider shorter SEO optimized headings rather than longer ones

Create a buyer persona first before making promotional content

Post content regularly and share it yourself on social media

Make use of your older content by repurposing it and publishing it

Always refer to influencers in your niche within your content linking to their content

Track your stats with every post you publish

Larry Kim

Larry Kim is another experienced marketer with advice for content marketers as regards social media advertising strategies.

Improve your content’s quality score through increasing engagement rates so as to get a higher ad impression share for a lower cost per engagement but on the same budget.

Target only particular sections of your audience with each post to increase engagement on social media, not everyone of your fans.

Pay for only the result that matters to your business such as views follows, likes, etc. whenever you run a social media content marketing campaign, not everything on offer.

Promote tour best performing videos on social media and make sure they are short enough and can get their message across even without sound.

Consider the custom audiences of each social platform and get your content out on more than just one social platform.

Use both social media ads and paid search ads at once to increase your content’s visibility.

Sam Hurley

Sam Hurley is an expert digital marketer and is Head of Search Marketing at Midas Media. He reveals a few of his content marketing tips and strategies.

Incorporate influencer outreach in your content marketing campaign when using social media and take a genuine interest in your audience because they can see it.

Every content marketing campaign should be well optimized for search engines if it’s to be visible in search engine result pages.

For continuous success in every content marketing endeavor, content marketers should carry out audience research, apply multidimensional content, consider where their target audience can access their content, integrate SEO and social media, track results whenever you publish and promote and repeat the process.

Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin from Moz’s Whiteboard Fridays reveals a couple of essential marketing lessons that every marketer should learn to incorporate and follow. Some of them are shown below;

Metric dashboards should be created basing on three major aspects; on awareness achieved i.e. through social mentions, followers and fans, press mentions and referring links, on first visits and on returning visits

Some old school SEO techniques are no longer that effective such as stuffing meta descriptions with keywords, using unfocused, non-strategic link baits, having several domains that cover a single niche, heavy use of anchor text on internal links and using a single page to target several related keywords.

When you have the wrong page rank for the right keyword, correct the issue by creating a relevant page or making the right page even more relevant, degrading the wrong page and redirecting internal pages to the relevant page or, as a last resort, using a 301 redirect.

Optimize your web pages by considering searcher intent, site speed, user experience, keyword targeting, amplification, snippet optimization and using the related content.

See Also: Top 25 Inbound Marketing Influencers You Need to Follow in 2017

Before you go!

Drawing the perfect content marketing strategy isn’t the most complex thing in the world. These experts have done it, and so can you. If you have been looking to get your content out to the right audience and see your efforts get rewarded, these are the tips you should use.

Happy marketing!

LinkedIn, The popular social platform for employers and job seekers around the world, has started rolling out as LinkedIn User Interface in 2017, complete with both sleek brand new features and glaring omissions.

And while it’s expected to only roll out fully by May 2017, a few LinkedIn users, especially the new ones have already been given a feel of the new site. For some, the downside already lies in the fact that once you are given access to the newly redesigned platform, there is no turning back to the old one.

The new design is notable in its similarity to the mobile app in both placement and naming of some features, which serves to resound the idea that the design overhaul was aimed at making user transition from mobile app to desktop/laptop version seamless and easy.

If you haven’t noticed the changes yet when using the platform, you still have time to adapt before the changes come knocking. With new features being replaced and repositioned all over the interface, it is important to get ahead of the situation by knowing where to find what.

This article shows you the major changes that the team at Microsoft has bestowed upon LinkedIn User Interface and functionality, plus how it’s most likely to affect your activities.

For those that haven’t got the new ‘LinkedIn Experience’ yet, here’s a quick tour by LinkedIn Expert and Author Viveka von Rosen.

Check out the video below:

Summary

The Major Changes

1. Overall Layout of the Homepage

• Positioning of summarized profile
• Redesigned feature Icons
• Repositioning of ‘Publish an article’ and ‘Share an article, photo’ features
• Colour Theme

2. Your Profile (Viewing and Editing It)

• Renaming of section to ‘Me’ section
• Renaming of the Profile section
• Reduced number of characters in Profile Summary
• Bare URLs for linked articles and content
• New ‘Views’ section

3. Your Connections

• Renaming of section to ‘My Network’
• No sorting or tagging feature
• Reduced number of tags to use

4. Search Options and Filters

• The Advanced Search feature is gone
• Deeper filters have been removed

5. The New ‘More’ Section

• Renaming of section to ‘More’ section
• More features in one place

6. Your Notifications

• Bigger space for notifications

7. Other Features

 

1. Overall Layout of the Homepage

When you log into your account, the first thing you notice is its changed layout, whose overall appearance is closely similar to Facebook’s, with its side section that features summarized info about your profile, a middle/main segment that features the latest articles from your connections and a right side section that has the usual LinkedIn ad space.

A summarized section of your profile is positioned in the left section of the homepage, complete with your professional title and name, your profile picture, and the number of people who’ve viewed your articles and profile so far.

In the middle section where you usually view the articles recently posted by your connections, a slight change has been made as regards how you can publish your own article or share a photo, video, or article. The ‘Publish an article’ feature is now directly below the ‘Share an article, photo or update’ feature, and while users may confuse them to serve the same purpose due to their close proximity, they each serve different independent purposes.

Other Homepage Changes to Note

New Menu Bar Icons

Some of the icons on the homepage’s menu bar have been changed, most notably the ‘notifications’ flag that is now in the form of a bell. Similarly, the ‘Inbox’ icon has been renamed ‘Messaging,’ which should be easier to understand.

Colour and Theme

The website’s new interface comes with a darker teal theme, which is quite different from the blue, white, and grey colour theme of the older version.

 

2. Your Profile (Viewing and Editing It)

The first change you’ll notice in the ‘Profile’ section is that it has been renamed the ‘Me’ section. The latter function the same way as before when opened, allowing you to edit your profile, settings, and language preferences or upgrade to a premium account.

Another distinct change you should brace for is the lower number of characters that appear in the ‘Summary’ section. In contrast with the old interface, this feature allows only less than 240 characters, which translates to only two lines of your profile summary being visible to someone when they check out your profile.

What You Need To Do

Make the first two lines of your profile summary catchy and engaging, such that the reader is attracted to read more of it.

For users that always placed customized web links with an attractive call to action on their profiles, the new LinkedIn User Interface has done away with all that. You can no longer customize or gloss them up with attractive CTAs. Now, web links appear as they are (in URL form) with your would-be description appearing next to them in parentheses and a different colour.

While the Education, Volunteer, Experience, Recommendations, Skills, and Endorsements sections are still available, you can no longer reorder depending on which weighs heavier than the other. They are now fixed in place (in their own order).

The Recommendations section has also been repositioned under the “Me” section from its former place above your profile. It still works the same way, with recommendations of people you may know, profiles you should check out, etc.

There’s also a new section titled “Accomplishments’ that you can add to the profile. It is meant to include the honors, awards, courses, publications, etc. that you have achieved over your career.

The other addition to the Profile section is the ‘views’ subsection, where you can see who’s viewed your articles and profile in detail.

 

3. Your Connections

You can still see your connections in the ‘My Network’s new interface, which is cleaner and more spacious. The left side of the page shows your total number of connections while the middle/main section contains the ‘People you may know’ and ‘Received invitations’ subsections.

The downside is that you can no longer sort, tag, or view your connections’ details when you click on them, like before. As of now, clicking on your connections allows you two courses of action; sending them messages or removing them.

Similarly, the old tagging options that you could use to sort your connections according to relevance, the level of acquaintance, profession, etc. have been removed. Only a few tags for sorting based on ‘first name’, ‘last name’, and ‘recently added’ have been left.

 

4. Search Options and Filters

There’s a lot that’s changed with how you can use the search feature. Previously, LinkedIn offered an ‘Advanced Search’ option with additional filters for your searches based on location (with zip codes), title, keyword, etc.

The ‘Advanced Search’ option is no longer available, as are most filters. You can still filter your searches using general location, companies, schools, and by connection level (i.e. whether 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd)

 

5. The New ‘More’ Section

Don’t get lost or confused by this new section. Its icon is similar to that used in the mobile app.

The former ‘Interests’ section has been rebranded into the ‘More’ section which, in consideration of its sub-features is the perfect name. Click on it and you will access other LinkedIn features including ‘Post a job,’ ‘ProFinder, ‘Lookup,’ ‘Slideshare,’ ‘Learning’ and ‘Group.’ You can also upgrade to ‘Talent Solutions’ or ‘Sales Solutions’ in the ‘More’ section.

 

6. Your Notifications

Within the new LinkedIn UI, your notifications have now been given a bigger section of their own. You can still see notifications of new connections and endorsements, plus those of new features such as anniversaries, profile mentions, profile publications, etc., and easily reply to them.

 

7. Other Changes to Note

There’s been an update to the messaging feature, similar to that of Facebook Messenger for easier chatting and scheduling of events with the integrated Google Calendar.

• LinkedIn posts are now called ‘articles,’ and not all your connections are notified whenever you post a new one as it was before.
• Your recommended background photo size has changed to 1536 × 768 pixels, although smaller ones of 1800 × 300 should work just fine.
• Profiles now appear in summarized form. Just like with the limitations in the Profile Summary, only a sample of a person’s profile is shown. One must click on the ‘See more’ feature to get more and more profile details.
• You can now export your LinkedIn profile connections only on request, not by just copying them into a spreadsheet file.
• The Education button is no more; nevertheless, you can still find it in the Learning section or by searching, especially if you’re looking for a school
• Saved searches and tagging your connections are no more.

 

Finally

For all the changes, LinkedIn’s user interface is still as intuitive as ever and usable once you learn the ropes. One main similarity you will find is that the desktop layout now bears extreme similarity to the mobile app, which should make the transition from either device seamless and easy.

And while some old features have been removed, repositioned, or merged –  the new features are quite easy to navigate and should make your time easier and swifter. If the team at LinkedIn were looking to make the platform better from a user point of view, they are just about to achieve that.

It’s obvious that there will be more changes to the interface as the rollout goes on, and we will be on hand to explain each to you.