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The Ultimate Email Marketing Guide For Beginners in 2020

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Email marketing is an old school digital marketing tactic.

In fact, it’s been almost 50 years since the first email was sent out…back in 1971.

Yet, despite it’s old age in a rapidly evolving industry, a solid email list still has tremendous value. It’s one of the only digital marketing channels that give you a direct line to your subscriber’s inbox.

It’s no wonder that:

The average email subscriber is worth $37.66
The ROI for email marketing is 38:1

So while social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and even TikTok get all the buzz today, email marketing is well worth the investment, especially when email converts 40x more leads into customers than both Facebook and Twitter combined.

Think of it this way.

When someone chooses to become a subscriber, they expect to hear from you.

It’s the start of a new relationship, between your brand and your prospect or customer. That’s why the average email open rate is 20.81% higher than the engagement from a Facebook post.

So if you’re ready to make more sales with email marketing, keep reading below.

Ultimate Email Marketing Guide

1. Email Marketing 101
2. How to Build an Email List
3. Choosing an Email Service
- Get Response
- MailerLite
- ConvertKit
- LeadPages
- MailChimp
- Aweber
4. Boost Open Rates
5. Write Amazing Copy
6. Ensure Your Emails Are Read
- Remove Non-Openers
- Keep Spam Complaints To A Minimum
7. Segment and Automate Email Campaigns
Conclusion

1. Email Marketing 101

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is one segment of digital marketing that involves sending emails to communicate and build relationships with leads and customers.

By providing value and gaining the trust of your leads and customers, you can boost:

Sales
Customer Loyalty
Customer lifetime value (CLV)

…and create a thriving business.

Over the past 40 years, email marketing grew from numerous static email blasts to sell and promote products or services, to a digital marketing channel focused on building customer relationships.

This evolution in email marketing reflected the changing times, as customers wanted brands to provide value even before they started selling.

That’s why, today, email marketing is a fantastic direct channel for businesses to develop relationships and show appreciation to customers. Emails became more segmented, personalized, and automated, so they can be delivered to the right people at the right time.

Benefits of Email Marketing

As I mentioned above, email marketing can boost your bottom line.

It can help you do so by ensuring you:

1. Make better-informed decisions: Email marketing is a fantastic channel to collect customer feedback. You can begin by asking your subscribers about the content they’d like to hear and their personal experiences with the product or service.

This data is extremely useful when it comes to understanding your subscriber’s interests and can give you a major leg up when you need to make crucial decisions.

2. Exploit Product Life Cycles: Products generally have a certain lifespan. For example, personal care products like shampoo, conditioner, or even hairspray often last a few months while expensive gadgets like the latest smartphone exist until the latest version is out.

By applying personalized email marketing tactics, you can notify your customers (who are interested in certain products) that the latest upgrade is available, or that their 3-month health vitamins are about to finish. It’s a fantastic way to help your customers get their hands on the item while boosting your sales!

3. Share the Love with your customers: Everyone wants to feel appreciated. With email marketing, you can praise and reward customers for being loyal by providing special rewards or discounts on their birthday, or at key milestones (like being a VIP member for over 1 year).

4. Specialize your marketing efforts: If you can combine shopping data with email marketing, you can help your shoppers find great deals in their fields of interest. For example, if Group A shoppers are interested in female soccer shoes, you can send out a promotional email for female soccer shoes that are on sale for a limited time only, or even offer a discount on an item they were looking at.

With targeted email marketing, you can boost customer subscriber retention and add further value to each of your subscribers because:

You’re giving them vital information about their specific interests
You’re not spamming their inbox

How to Get Started

1. Define your goals: To begin, you need to understand the purpose of your email marketing campaign.

It can be:

To boost brand visibility
Acquire new customers
Build relationships with existing customers
Boost website traffic

You can have more than one goal. However, it’s best to outline a key objective because this will help you remain focused when it’s time to implement your strategy.

2. Develop a strategy: Before you dive into the details, you need to understand how email marketing affects your other marketing initiatives like:

Traditional marketing
Social media marketing
Content marketing
Influencer marketing

You should also map out the customer journey and see what role email marketing can play for your organization.

When you’re developing a strategy, you’ll need to show how you can:

Build your email list
Optimize your campaigns
Automate your efforts

Optimizing and automating email marketing efforts is an activity you’ll need to consistently revisit and tweak. The more you A/B test and improve your campaigns, the more successful your email marketing efforts can be.

3. Select an email service: There are many email service providers in the market, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. It’s best to explore multiple options to see which provider is the best fit for you.

4. Implement your strategy: Once you have a solid strategy and email service provider, it’s time you get started. Build your email list, optimize your campaigns, and automate your email marketing efforts. If your strategy ends up changing and evolving over time, don’t worry. These things tend to happen when you gain more data and experience.

2. How to Build an Email List

The key to building a strong, large list of email subscribers, is to provide a lot of value to your readers.

Let me show you why.

Readers generally subscribe because they want to:

Hear more from you
Gain valuable information from
Get frequent news updates
Access restricted content
Gain a special discount or reward

Therefore, to begin building your email list, you need to first add so much value, that your readers choose to opt-in. Then you need to continue adding a lot of value so they remain on your subscriber list and even come back to your website.

The ideal situation is that these prospects gain so much value from your emails, that they develop trust with the company and become loyal customers and even promoters of your brand.

So, how can we start gaining our first few subscribers?

Include Opt-in Forms On Your Site

You can begin by creating exceptional content and adding opt-in forms on your site.

It’s rare to find quality content online these days, so readers that opt-in would want to receive or hear about new articles you’ve recently published. You can also offer exclusive tips to email subscribers to entice readers to sign up.

Produce Lead Magnets

If you want to build an email list quickly, look to lead magnets. Unlike website opt-in forms, lead magnets offer readers something they can use right away.

Your lead magnet can include a:

Free e-book
Checklist
Case study
Template
Cheat sheet

… or even provide access to exclusive tools.

Generally, the more valuable your lead magnet, the more signups you’ll get.

Offer Content Upgrades

If you have blog posts that receive a lot of traffic, try to figure out what the readers want.

For example:

If you’re a website that lists healthy recipes and you have a lot of readers looking at your post on ‘5 fast and healthy breakfast options,’ you could consider offering a PDF downloadable version so your readers can view the content offline. In exchange for this, you can collect their emails!

Install Exit Intent Pop-Ups

Pop-ups can be annoying.

However, not all pop-ups are the same. Exit-intent pop-ups (pop-ups that give you something valuable as you leave the page) won’t attack your readers and don’t distract them from your content. In fact, they encourage users to stay on the page longer and also offer them something valuable, in exchange for their email.

3. Choosing an Email Service

Gone are the days of using Outlook or Gmail to send bulk emails.

If you’re sending emails to subscribers and customers, you need to make sure they:

Appear friendly and professional
Are delivered at the right time
Provide you valuable data
Can be segmented and personalized
Can be automated

…because these differences can make or break your email marketing campaigns.

But the thing is…there’s no one single best email marketing provider.

So how do you choose?

Each provider has specific advantages and disadvantages. Some are better for startups and small businesses that want to appear friendly, warm, and welcoming, while other options are fantastic for corporations with large email lists who need to stay on-brand. Below, I’ll go through the top six email marketing service providers in the market.

Get Response

Get Response is an all-in-one marketing software with a suite of online campaign management tools.

These include:

Email marketing features
Landing page builders
Conversion funnels
Webinars
Forms and surveys
Ecommerce features

Their plans start from $15/month and they offer a 30-day trial. Get Response is a great option for digital marketers working with a small business or startups because they’re highly affordable and have a variety of tools that can help you get started.

MailerLite

MailerLite is an email marketing platform that helps you build and manage email campaigns, design stunning landing pages, and automate your email marketing efforts.

If you want:

Stunning visual templates
Highly customizable email newsletter builder
Highly customizable landing page builder

…to create on-brand email campaigns, Mailer Lite is for you.

MailerLite doesn’t have a fixed plan. Their plans become more expensive as your subscriber count grows. While you can start for free (<1,000 email subscribers) it can become quite expensive as you scale. However, it’s a fantastic option if you want to keep all customer-facing material on-brand.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit is an email marketing tool designed specifically for content creators.

Unlike other email marketing tools, ConvertKit only allows text-based emails. While some find this feature limiting, ConvertKit believes that simple text-based emails have higher deliverability and conversion rates than designed templates.

ConvertKit also has sophisticated features like :

Workflow automation
Workflow tagging
Email segmenting

ConvertKit recently introduced a free plan (<500 email subscribers). However, if you want to access to email workflow automation and other features, you need to sign up to a paid plan, which starts from $29/month. Their plans become more expensive the more subscribers you have.

LeadPages

LeadPages is a lead-generation platform with a suite of tools to help you gain leads.

These include:

Pop-up Forms
Alert Bars
Landing Pages

…which can help you capture leads and email subscribers.

You should explore LeadPages if capturing and nurturing leads is a critical component in your business. It’s quite an expensive tool, starting from $37/month. If you want to gain access to all of their features, you’ll need to sign up to the Pro $79/month plan.

MailChimp

MailChimp was one of the most popular email marketing tools in the market. They’ve expanded to become an all-in-one integrated marketing platform for small businesses.

MailChimp’s platform can help you build an audience with their:

Marketing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool
Branded content tool
Email Marketing Features
Social Media Campaign Tools

…and gain an in-depth understanding of your progress with their reports and data analytics.

Best of all, the basic essentials are free. If you want to upgrade to the standard plan, it’s also only $14.99/month. MailChimp is a fantastic option for small businesses that want an all-in-one tool that can cover a lot of ground.

Aweber

Aweber is an email marketing tool designed to help small businesses grow.

While Aweber has a lot of key features like:

A drag-and-drop email designer
A drag-and-drop landing page builder
Template library
Campaign automations

…their platform is built around an email marketing tool that is easy-to-use and reliable for sending out emails.

Aweber starts from $19/month. You can also try out any plan with their 30-day free trial.

4. Boost Open Rates

Once you’ve finished:

Implementing an email marketing strategy
Selecting an email service provider
Building your email list

…it’s time to optimize your efforts.

You may have noticed that your open rates are pretty low.

This is common.

Just to let you know the average:

Open rate is 17.8%
Click-through rate is 2.6%
Click to-open rate is 14.3%

The industry average isn’t so high. So whether you’re below, on, or above average, there’s always room to improve and boost your stats.

Let’s begin with open rates!

Send a Fantastic Welcome Email

We all know that most companies send open emails. However, how many actually leave a good first impression? The key is to send an amazing email that adds value and keeps your subscribers in the loop.

For example:

First, you should greet someone warmly for joining. Reassure your readers that they’ve made the right decision to subscribe.
Second, let them know when they can expect to hear from you (e.g. once every week, Saturday morning) and what you’ll share.
Finally, end with a solid call-to-action. Since it’s a welcome email, don’t make any hard sales. Instead, you should recommend a few resources from your website or even ask your subscribers what their pain points are and what you can help with.

Structuring your welcome email like this, keeps your subscribers in the loop and gets them in the habit of taking action.

Optimize Subject Title

If you look at your email snippet, you can see:

Who it’s from
The subject title
A little snippet of your email

That’s why it’s crucial you choose your words wisely. Writing the wrong subject line can lead to deleted emails. In fact, 69% of email recipients report emails as spam based solely on its subject line.

To optimize your subject line you need to:

Make it short and direct
Personalize the subject
Create a sense of urgency
Stimulate curiosity
K.I.S.S (Keep it short and simple)

I recommend A/B testing and trying out a few different variations first. After several A/B tests, you should have a better understanding of what your audience prefers.

If you need to access an A/B testing calculator, you can find it here.

Optimize the Time You’re Sending Out Emails

It’s best you don’t send emails first thing in the morning.

Why?

Because everyone’s inboxes are flooded with emails. Instead, you should send emails when your subscriber’s inboxes are empty. This way, your newsletter will be at the top of their inbox.

Once again, it’s hard to know when the best time is. Here, you’ll need to A/B test different times to see and measure the emails that get the highest open rate.

Follow the 80/20 Rule

When it comes to email marketing the rule is:

80% of emails should provide value
20% of emails should be focused on pitching products and services

…so your subscribers don’t always feel as if they’re being sold to.

Think of it this way.

If you’re sending valuable, high-quality emails the majority of time, your subscribers will be grateful and develop greater trust with your organization. So everytime you send an email, your subscribers know that your emails are worth opening, reading, and clicking on.

5. Write Amazing Copy

Getting your subscribers to open your emails is one thing.

But getting them to:

Read your content
Be interested enough to click on your link

…is another.

Here, it’s not just about optimizing subject lines and email snippets. You have to create persuasive and amazing copy to boost click-through rates.

To help you out, I’ll go through a few common emails you’d send to your subscribers. I’ll show you what you should include in these emails and what to avoid, so you have a better understanding of how to structure these emails and write amazing copy.

Let’s begin.

The content newsletter is a regular email sent out to subscribers informing them of any updates to your business, products, services, and the industry. The email should sound as if it’s coming from a trusted friend or colleague and provide value to your readers. Make sure you don’t pitch any products in the email.

If there aren’t any specific updates, you can provide:

A list of handy tips
Links to the best resources available
A personal experience your readers can learn from

For the email content newsletter, you’ll need:

An intriguing subject line to arouse curiosity and get people to click.
An interesting opening to hook readers early on. Starting with a small story is a great start.
Valuable Content like updates, valuable lessons, actionable steps, or fantastic resources to earn your readers’ trust.
Call to Action to get readers into the habit of taking action. Even though you’re not pitching, you can ask your readers to share their opinions and thoughts.

Special Offer

The special offer email is designed to push your subscribers into making a purchase. These purchases are not frequent and only appear for a limited time only.

For the special offer email, you’ll need:

A Direct subject line to tell your readers what you’re offering.
An Outline of the offer to get your readers to take notice now.
A List of the details concerning your offer. Here you can include things like the benefits of the product or service, when the special offer begins and ends, and why you’re having the offer. However, don’t overwhelm people with all the details. You need people to be eager enough to click on the CTA. You’ll need to continue selling on the actual webpage, so you can include further details there.
A Call to Action to show people where they need to go to get the deal.

Major Announcements

The announcement email is reserved for only large announcements like:

A brand new product of service
The new version of a popular product
Limited-time product release
Important additional features to an existing product.

With major announcements, you don’t want to send these emails too often (twice a year).

Your announcement needs to include:

Subject Line that Introduces the announcement to make this email seem like a big deal. (E.g. Introducing, announcing, etc).
Compelling Lead to jump straight into the special announcement.
The Key Details regarding the announcement and why it’s important.
Clear Call to Action so your subscribers know how to buy a product, sign up for a special release, or get involved asap.

Blog Post Promotion

If you’ve recently published a post that you know will be significantly helpful to your readers, you can send out an email promoting that post.

The email promoting your blog post will require:

A Simple Subject line that introduces your blog post topic. (e.g. having your blog post topic as the title line).
A lead to reflect your blog post’s topic. If the post is topical and relevant to the news, you can mention recent events. Alternatively, if it’s a personal story, you can begin with an anecdote.
A Bulleted list, like listing 3-4 things your readers can learn from the post. Don’t reveal the entire post but build up excitement for your readers.
A Link to the post so your readers can access your content.

6. Ensure Your Emails Are Read

Once you’ve optimized:

Open rate
Content Copy
Click-through rates

…it’s time to focus on email deliverability.

Email deliverability is one of the most important aspects of email marketing. There’s no point A/B testing copy and subject lines if no one is receiving your emails.

So how do you ensure that your emails are getting delivered?

Remove Non-Openers

While a long list of email subscribers is impressive, you need to delete unengaged subscribers.

Why?

Because you want to make sure your content isn’t landing in the spam box. Make sure you delete subscribers that haven’t opened or clicked on an email in around 3-4 months to ensure your open rates are high. This prevents your emails from going into spam.

Keep Spam Complaints To A Minimum

If your emails are being marked as spam, it means that your subscribers don’t want to read your content.

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Email service providers (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) take these spam complaints seriously, so make sure you reduce spam complaints by making it easy for people to unsubscribe. This way, instead of hitting the spam button, they can unsubscribe.

You should also limit the number of emails you’re sending. Many people hit spam because they don’t want to receive your emails anymore. So don’t send more than one email a week (unless that’s what your subscribers asked for.)

7. Segment and Automate Email Campaigns

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Did you know that 56% of people unsubscribed because the content wasn’t relevant?

If you want to further boost your open and click-through rates, you should consider segmenting your subscribers and automating your email campaigns.

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To segment is to divide subscribers into groups based on key information like their interests, demographics, or preferences.
To automate is to send triggered or timed emails based on a specific schedule or if key conditions are met.

If you can combine segmentation with automation, you can get your message to appear in front of the right people at the right time.

Here’s how to start.

Collect the Right Type of Data

To segment emails, you need to collect data from your subscribers.

But even before you collect data, you need to know:

How you want to segment your email subscribers
The type of data you need to collect from your subscribers to segment them effectively

You can segment subscribers by their preferences, interests, location, open rate, inactivity, lead magnet they opted in with, abandoned shopping cart, purchase history…and many more.

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To collect the data, you’ll need to ask your subscribers about their preferences and interests or take into account their shopping data. If you’re collecting shopping data, you need to let your readers and customers know and ensure they give you permission and consent to collect their data.

Organize Your Subscribers

You also need to make sure your email marketing service provider offers sophisticated segmentation options. Some email service providers prioritize segmentation over others.

I recommend you spend a good amount of time studying how to segment your subscribers with your provider because if you’re collecting data to improve email marketing campaigns, your readers will expect more personalized and targeted emails.

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Customize Your Messages

Once you’ve separated your subscribers into their lists, you can begin customizing the messages you’re sending out.

To customize your messages, make sure you:

Write relevant email subject lines
Leverage the data you have to make the emails more personalized

You can use the templates above. However, you should use the information you have to make the necessary tweaks and changes to your copy where possible.

Create Autoresponder Sequences

If you’re new to email automation, you should begin with autoresponder sequences.

An autoresponse sequence is a series of emails that is automatically sent out to email subscribers. While an autoresponder sequence looks different for every organization, they all have a very similar structure.

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Try out a basic autoresponder first, and then test different autoresponders for different segments. Make sure you take into account the 80/20 rule (80% valuable content and 20% promotional content) when you’re planning out email sequences.

Conclusion

Email marketing is seen as an old-school digital marketing tactic.

However, it remains one of the most valuable marketing channels for many businesses because:

You’re in control of the distribution channel
You have a direct line to your subscriber’s inbox
Your subscribers are expecting to hear from you

That’s why email marketing is one of the best ways to build customer loyalty, customer relationships, website traffic, sales, revenue…and profits!

Remember, once you finish setting up your campaign, you’ll need to continue working on optimizing your email campaigns. Treat this process as a journey. You’ll need to continuously add value and build trust to win over your subscribers and customers.

What are you waiting for?

Get started today!

Best Video Editing Software on Windows and on Mac

Fri, 01 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Whether you’re creating videos for your product pages, or you want to invest in the power of video marketing, you need the right tools.

Having a high-quality camera and microphone is a good start, but even the most beautifully shot videos will often require a little polishing.

Whether you are video editing for Youtube or creating video content for a brand awareness campaign, post-production is a necessary part of video content creation.

That’s where video editing software comes in. The right video editing app can ensure that everything from your Instagram stories to your Facebook ads look slick, professional, and compelling.

The question is, which software solutions should you consider?

We’ve put together this insightful list into some of the highest-rated options on the scene today. I’m pleased to say it contains serious options for video editing on Mac as well as video editing on Windows 10 and Linux.

There are also several FREE video editing software programs listed, so there is plenty of choice for any budget.

Let’s dive right in!

Best Video Editing Software

DaVinci Resolve (Studio)
Lightworks
Openshot
Avidemux
iMovie
Kdenlive
Adobe Premiere Pro
Final Cut Pro X
Adobe Premiere Elements
Corel Video Studio Ultimate
VideoPad
Which Video Editing Software is Right For You?

DaVinci Resolve (Studio)

Davinci Resolve, now in version 16, is a professional video editing software tool complete with access to a range of amazing tools, including color correction, audio post-production, and even 8K editing.

It runs on Windows, Mac or Linux operating systems.

DaVinci Resolve

The free version, simply called DaVinci Resolve is a highly capable video editor.

Davinci Resolve Studio is the Premium and paid for version. It’s the only video editing software in this list that is specifically designed for multi-user collaboration. You can work on your content with your editors and FX artists, for instance.

Despite the wide range of advanced video tools in the software, DaVinci remains a highly intuitive and accessible piece of software. You should still be able to get used to it with time even if you’re a beginner. However, you might find that the technology is a little too complex for basic video editing.

Features include:

Dual timelines
Intelligent editing
4K and 8K video support
Fast review
Portable editing
Adjustment clips
Facial recognition
Keyframe curve editors

Pricing: There’s a free version of the DaVinci Resolve for people who want to access basic visual effects, motion graphics, and color correction tools. Upgrading to the DaVinci Resolve Studio will cost over $300, but it is a one-off price (rather than subscription based pricing) and you will have access to multi-user collaboration, HDR grading, film grain, blur effects, and neural engine features.

Pros:

Intuitive interface
Stunning range of advanced features
Incredible intelligent components
Great for audio mastering too
Ideal for advanced projects
Free version available

Cons:

Can be a bit overwhelming for beginners
Quite expensive premium version
Not all tutorials are free to use

Get started with DaVinci Resolve

Lightworks

Lightworks is a video editing software solution available on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Designed to deliver incredible editing services for a low price tag, Lightworks is packed full of amazing features, and there’s also a free version to get you started.

Since Lightworks has been available for around 25 years now (constantly evolving over the years), it’s got a pretty impressive background. Lightworks has been used to make some films for the big screen, like Hugo, Pulp Fiction, and the Wolf of Wall Street.

Features include:

Simple user interface
Royalty-free video and audio content
Exporting options
Real-time FX
Easy editing, timeline, and trimming
Wide file format support

Pricing: There’s a free version to get you started, or you can upgrade to the pro version for additional tools, for $25 per month. The more advanced features available for the premium price tag include 4K video support.

Pros:

Great tutorials for beginners
Excellent for all-round editing
Very powerful performance
Free version available
Easy to use

Cons:

Maximum export format 720p (1280x720) in free version
Only get 4K support in paid version
Takes a while to learn more advanced features, like GPU and histogram tools

Get started with Lightworks

Openshot

Openshot is an entirely open-source solution for video editing.

That also means that Openshot is one of the most flexible and appealing tools available for a wide selection of users. The fact that Openshot is open-source means that you can access it for free. What’s more, there’s a host of amazing features to help you upgrade the quality of your videos.

Openshot

For instance, Openshot technology works on virtually any environment, including Mac, Windows, and Linux. With it, you can add as many layers as you like, unlock watermarks, and even implement unique video effects. The free editor packs a lot more features than you’ll get elsewhere, and it also comes with a simple interface that’s great for beginners.

Features include:

Cross-platform performance
Trim and slice technology
Keyframes and animation tools
Unlimited tracks
Video effects (inverting, brightness adjusting etc)
Audio waveforms

Pricing: Openshot is free to use forever, making it a top choice for businesses that have a limited budget to spend on their video content.

Pros:

Easy to access and use
Lots of features for a free service
Available to use on any platform
Access to audio as well as video editing
Regular updates and improvements

Cons:

Not a lot of tutorials
No advanced features like 4K editing

Get started with Openshot

Avidemux

At first glance, Avidemux doesn’t look like much. Their project page on SourceForge looks like a 1996 website throwback. Don’t let that put you off too much though.

Available on Linux, Mac, and Windows, it’s a video editing software app specifically designed to appeal to beginners without a lot of experience in their field.

If you’re entirely new to video editing, then this will give you a good place to get started.

You can unlock various basic tasks, including encoding, filtering, and simple cutting components, so you can add and remove aspects from your movies.

However, it’s worth noting that there aren’t nearly as many features here as you would get with other tools.

Of course, Avidemux is free to use, so it could be a good option if you’re on a budget.

Features include:

Basic cutting
Encoding
Multi-file support
Cross-platform support
Filtering

Pricing: Free to use

Pros:

Affordable
Easy to use for beginners
Basic tools for video editing
No real need for technical knowledge

Cons:

Limited in features
Missing out on advanced options
UI seems a bit clunky

Get Avidemux here

iMovie

As the name might indicate, iMovie is a solution designed for Mac users only. And it comes free with any Mac.

Apple iMovie

Like most native software from Apple, this video editor benefits from an intuitive interface that’s very easy to navigate and use. There’s drag-and-drop editing available for beginners, and you can also find plenty of tutorials and resources online to help you jump in.

It’s one of the few video editing sotware packages that also has a free video editing app for iPhone and iPad.

However, as easy as iMovie is to learn, it is quite basic. As you begin to develop your skills, you’ll likely search for something more advanced.

Features include:

Support for 4K movies
Very easy to use interface
Drag and drop editing
Studio-quality titles
Special effects included
High-fidelity filters
Soundtrack support

Pricing: Free for Mac users and also available for free on the Apple store for iPhones and iPads.

Pros:

Easy to learn and use
Audio editing included
Lots of pre-made filters and transitions
4K resolution support
Split-screen editing
iPad, iPhone, and iMac access

Cons:

Only available on Apple Mac and iOS devices
Limited on advanced features
Render times can be a bit slow

Get started with iMovie

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is another excellent tool for video editing designed for beginners and those with expanding codebase knowledge. The Kdenlive solution comes with access to a comprehensive toolbox, which is great if you’re just learning how to use tech like this for the first time.

There’s also an active community of people to turn to for guidance.

Features of this service expand from multi-track video editing, to title makers, and a timeline preview for social media. You can automatically backup your videos as you make them and customize your interface and shortcuts to suit you.

Features include:

Multi-track video editing
Support for a wide range of video/audio solutions
Customizable shortcuts and interface
Timeline preview access
Proxy editing technology
Keyframe effects
Automatic backups

Pricing: Free for Windows, Mac and Linux

Pros:

Great for anyone on a budget
Good community for learning
Cross-platform support
Audio technology included
Automatic backup

Cons:

Limited functionality
No 4K and above support

Give Kdenlive a try here

Adobe Premiere Pro

It’d be hard to produce an entire article about video editing tools without discussing the software from Adobe. Adobe Premiere Pro is often regarded as the industry standard for video.

If you’re a Windows user and you don’t mind dedicating some time to learning about the basics of Adobe, then this is the tool for you.

Aside from giving you a wide selection of amazing tools to choose from, including uncapped numbers of video tracks, and access to special effects, Adobe often provides discounts and offers for its software.

Adobe Premiere Pro

You can import content from virtually any source. There’s also a companion app for the Premiere Pro technology called Rush, which allows you to work with the footage you capture on your phone.

Features include:

Industry-leading tool for video edits
Integrations with other apps and services
Uncapped video streams
Access to plenty of extra features
Import from any source
Smartphone app available

Pricing: You can keep costs relatively low by buying Premiere Pro on its own for only $20.99 per month. However, if you’re doing a lot of photo, video, and animation editing, you might be better off upgrading to a full Creative Cloud membership. Access to all of the apps at once is $52.99, which might seem expensive. However, it does provide access to more than 20 apps at once.

Pros:

Excellent industry-standard performance
Amazing selection of smart features
Uncapped on video streams
Access to various integrations and extra tools
Plenty of offers from Adobe

Cons:

Expensive to access all the features
Can be difficult to learn at first

Get started with Adobe Premiere Pro

Final Cut Pro X

Final Cut Pro, latest version being Final Cut Pro X (10), is another video editing software solution specifically designed for Mac users. The main difference between this software and iMovie, is that Final Cut Pro is a lot more advanced.

Apple Final Cut Pro

It comes with a fantastic intuitive interface, just like iMovie, and it’s great for anyone who’s already used to the Mac OS. There’s even the option to sign up for a free trial to begin with, so you can make sure the tech is right for you.

If you’re already invested in the Apple ecosystem, the Final Cut Pro solution comes with everything you need to take your videos to the next level. You can even coordinate your video editing tools with iTunes and photos collections that you have saved on your devices.

Main features of Final Cut Pro X include:

Fast performance that’s constantly upgraded
Optimized for Mac OS
Multi-cam access
Motion graphics
Organizing tools for your content
Audio and noise reduction tools
Advanced color correction

Pricing: Final Cut Pro is one of the more advanced options on the market today. If you’re looking for state-of-the-art editing technology, you’ll need to pay a one-time price of $299.99. A much better deal than getting locked-in to a monthly subscription fee like with Adobe Premiere Pro. The good news is that you also get a significant free trial period which lasts at least 30 days.

Pros:

Plenty of advanced features
Leading industry standard technology
Fast and easy to use
Fantastic for audio and noise reduction

Cons:

Only available for Mac users
Can be quite expensive

Get started with Final Cut Pro

Adobe Premiere Elements

Another great offering from Adobe comes in the form of Adobe Premiere Elements.

Designed as an affordable but professional way to edit videos and animations, Adobe Premiere Elements makes editing your video content as simple as possible.

You can enjoy auto-generated creations for your product images and websites and make all your videos look amazing with in-depth editing. What’s more, Premiere Elements works with the rest of the Adobe stack too.

The Premiere Elements service from Adobe isn’t quite as complex as the Premiere Pro video editing technology. Premier Elements is more suited to occasional video creators than full-time professionals.

You can buy Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements together at a discounted price if you want video and image editing in-one.

Premiere Elements features include:

Auto creations
Easy-to-use interface
Guided edit support
Dynamic time lapsing
Animation tools
Social media integrations
Intelligent editing
Robust community

Pricing: You can purchase Elements on its own or as part of a complete selection of Adobe tools. You can buy Premiere Elements on its own for $86.56 (with VAT). If you want Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements together, the cost goes up to $130.36. Of course there is always the 30 day Free trial.

Pros:

Intuitive and easy to use interface
Fantastic for beginners
Great selection of features
30-day free trial included
Integrations with the rest of the Adobe environment

Cons:

Lacks some advanced features for pros
Can be a bit expensive

Get started with Adobe Premiere Elements

Corel Video Studio Ultimate

Corel VideoStudio Ultimate is another high-quality video editing software tool designed to support beginners.

Key features range all the way from real-time effects in your videos, to color correction.

Corel Video Studio Ultimate

You can even access a range of smart tools that are designed to help you capture customers and earn their trust.

Corel VideoStudio is either available as a stand-alone service or as part of a comprehensive collection of tools including a slide-show and image editor.

Corel VideoStudio has everything you need to expand brand awareness and enhance your digital image.

Features include:

Split screen videos
Overlays and templates
Multi-level video editing, including 4K
Chroma Key and Green Screen
Stabilization for video
Video masking
Color and lens correction
Custom real-time effects

Pricing: To get you started, there’s access to a 30 day free trial from the Corel team. However, after that, you’ll need to unlock the premium version of the tool if you want to access all the features. Pricing for Ultimate starts at $89.99.

Pros:

Easy to use
Great for beginners
Range of advanced features included
Color and lens correction
Advanced color grading
Includes screenrecording
Animation features
Good audio editing
Social media integrations

Cons:

Can be expensive
A little basic for some pros

Get started with Corel VideoStudio Ultimate

VideoPad

Next, we come to VideoPad, a video editing software system designed for Windows and for Mac users.

This video editing app has over 4 million downloads, so you know that it’s worth its salt. It’s also incredibly easy to use, with an immersive user interface.

Great for multimedia editing, this solution lets you add a host of effects to video and audio.

What’s more, with VideoPad, you can also add still images to your composition too. This can be helpful if you’re walking your audience through the features of a product, for instance.

Features include:

Comprehensive editor
Export a range of presets
Multi-media editing
Great help section for beginners
Intuitive interface
Various composition options

Pricing: Free version available for non-commercial use, and $99 for what they call the Master’s Edition.

Pros:

Very simple interface
Great for multi-media editing
4K support
Help section is very useful
Windows and Mac versions
Affordable pricing
Free for non-commercial use

Cons:

Doesn’t have a lot of advanced effects
May be too basic for advanced users

Get started with VideoPad

Which Video Editing Software is Right For You?

There are plenty of fantastic video editing tools on the market today, choosing the one that’s right for you will mean thinking carefully about the kind of functionality you need.

If you’re looking for something that’s packed full of incredible features, then the Premiere Pro software from Adobe is likely to be the best option for you. Adobe’s Premiere Pro is the go-to tech for dozens of market-leading film editors.

If you are a Mac user, start off with using iMovie first, and perhaps move onto Final Cut Pro when you need more advanced video editing features.

If you’re looking for something a little more straightforward and ready for beginners, then you might prefer to experiment with DaVinci, Corel VideoStudio or OpenShot.

Which video editing software will you be trying this year? Let us know in the comments!

5 Things To Consider When Choosing a WordPress Hosting Provider

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Choosing a WordPress Hosting Provider is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make when launching your website.

Think of it this way.

Your host houses all the files to your site. If you have a slow host it’ll take a lot longer for the host to send your site’s files to your visitor’s browser, resulting in slower loading pages.

A slow loading site can destroy your website.

It can lead to:

Lower SEO ranks
Reduced traffic
Poor conversion rates
Reduced profits

But that’s just speed.

Factor into account poor security and support, and your website could be down for days!

It can be extremely challenging knowing what to look for when it comes to choosing a good WordPress host. That’s why to help you out, I’m going to show you the 5 factors you should consider and how you can assess each provider.

WordPress Hosting

1. Speed
2. Support Quality
- What Level Of Support Do You Need?
- Comparing the Support From Each Host
3. Security
4. Price
5. Additional Features
Wrapping It Up

Let’s start with site speed!

1. Speed

How Important is Site Speed?

Speed is vital when it comes to making money online.

If your site takes longer than 3 seconds, 40% of people will abandon it immediately. Today, 47% of customers expect sites to load within 2 seconds…any longer and you’re losing customers!

But that’s not all.

Not only does speed affect user experience and conversion rates, but it’s also a Google-confirmed ranking factor. So not only will a slow loading site give you less customers, but you’ll also have fewer prospects coming to your site as well.

How Your Host Impacts Speed

When a visitor goes to your site, your host’s server needs to execute code, run database queries, and serve files so your visitors can see the site.

Here, the faster the server, the quicker the site loading time.

The hosting plan and resources dedicated to each plan, have a major impact on the server’s speed. Below are 4 common WordPress hosting plans that have varying levels of processing power and memory.

Shared WordPress Hosting is when your website is sharing a server with many other sites. It’s the most affordable and popular option and a great choice for blogs and small businesses. However, since you’re sharing with other sites on the server, they may end up consuming a lot more bandwidth, which can slow down your site.
Virtual Private Server (VPS) WordPress Hosting is when your website gets a dedicated server with multiple users. Here, your resources like CPU and bandwidth are partitioned, so unlike shared WordPress Hosting, you won’t be affected much by your sharers. Furthermore, your website is also allocated more resources. It’s best for medium-sized businesses and high traffic blogs.
Dedicated WordPress Hosting is when your website has a server all to itself. While you gain total control over the server, have a higher level of security, and better performance, it can be costly. It’s best for large high traffic blogs.

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Managed WordPress Hosting is when your host takes care of a server and other infrastructure for you to help your site run faster and more securely. The server can be shared, VPS, or dedicated. It’s a convenient and hassle-free way to maintain your site.

Comparing the Speed of Each Host

With thousands of WordPress Hosting Providers available, it can be difficult knowing where to start. Here are two ways to vet through the list of providers.

1. Online Reviews

To narrow down your search, you can crowdsource your opinion by looking at third-party review sites that aggregate thousands of reviews to give you an overall score.

For example, if you go to TrustPilot, you can filter for the top-rated web hosting companies.

Read these reviews to see what others have to say about the company and select your top 10 Wordpress hosting providers that have a:

High Trust Score
Large number of reviews
Positive reviews that highlight fast loading times

2. Specific Reviews, Other Tests and Experiments

Once you have your top 10 providers, have a look at specific reviews about the WordPress Hosting Provider.

Do the larger majority of users have fast loading times?
Are there any concerning factors regarding speed?

You should also have a look at tests and experiments others have run. For example, Matthew Woodward’s Testing The 12 Fastest WordPress Hosting Providers, is a great article that compares the speed from 12 different providers in 7 global locations.

He measured their:

GTMetrix website speed
Pingdom website speed
Host performance under stress
Performance of the actual server (not from cached results)

The founder of the review Signal’s Kevin Ohashi also has an in-depth post concerning Wordpress Hosting Performance benchmark for different price tiers. With this article, you can see which hosting companies provide the best performance based on their pricing tier.

2. Support Quality

How Important is Support Quality?

Problems are going to come up whether you’re:

Setting up your site
Installing new plugins
Redesigning the site layout
Tweaking a bit of code

That’s why it’s extremely frustrating if your host takes a really long time to get back to you. If you’re not technically trained, your website could be down for a long time.

Not only can this cost you sales and customers, but you might need to pay someone to get it up and running again!

Just look at this as an example.

Finding a web hosting provider with fast and reliable support is critical for all online businesses.

What Level Of Support Do You Need?

Before we jump into the different providers, you need to outline your personal requirements.

Hands-on-Support: If you’re unfamiliar with website development, you should consider a managed Wordpress hosting solution because they provide superior assistance.
Preferred Method of Contact: While every provider has an email and a trouble ticketing system, not all of them have phone support or live chat. If you want to talk to someone in real-time and explain your issue, consider an option with phone support. If you prefer to handle multiple tasks at once, go for a solution with live chat.
Tight Budget Restraints: If you want to be as lean as possible, you can start with a shared WordPress Hosting Solution. However, shared hosts tend to make money via upselling and hidden fees, so if you need assistance with malware removal or site migrations, you’ll need to pay extra. Cheap providers and packages also generally have slower support teams.

Comparing the Support From Each Host

Once you have a list of hosting providers that offer the support you need, it’s time to assess the quality of support from each provider.

Metrics to Evaluate Customer Support

Response Time: How long it takes for the customer support team to respond to your messages or calls is important, especially if your site is down. Ideally, your WordPress host has either phone support or live chat, since these options have a quicker response rate than email or a ticketing system. Choose a provider that has a response rate of less than 10 minutes.
Resolution Time: How long it takes to resolve issues related to your site is critical since every second your site is down can cost you customers. You should choose a hosting company with a reliable history of resolving problems quickly. Your host should be able to resolve most problems within 24 hours.
Knowledge Base: Have a look at the hosting provider’s knowledge base. There are many problems you can troubleshoot yourself. Find a provider that updates their knowledge bases often and tends to add solutions to new problems as they interact with customers.
Guarantees: Many hosts offer guarantees when it comes to support. Cross-check online reviews to see if they uphold their guarantees.
Staff Expertise: Almost every host has self-proclaimed WordPress experts. Look at review sites to see whether support staff can genuinely resolve a wide range of problems quickly.

1. Customer Reviews

Have a look at review sites like TrustPilot or G2 Crowd. But remember, don’t make your decision based on a few solid reviews.

Go through a number of different reviews from all the providers and focus on the ones concerning customer support like whether the support team:

Were quick and attentive to reply
Resolved the problem quickly
Experienced any problems or hiccups during the process

2. Other Tests and Experiments

You can also gain a better understanding by reading others’ experiences with the hosting site. For example, in ‘12 Fastest WordPress Hosting Providers,’ he asked each WordPress Host to solve 3 common problems:

Can they take care of website transfers?
Can they remove malware on my test site?
Can they stop other sites from hotlinking my images?

He measured each host’s ability to resolve the problem, comparing them with one another. This is a great way to see which host offered the level of support desired and which ones required additional payment to resolve these problems.

3. Craft Your Own Experiment

You can also assess support capability by reaching out. Even if the support team only responds to paying customers, it’s a good way to gauge response time.

Live Chat: While browsing through the hosting company’s site, ask some questions to live chat to see how quickly they respond.
Phone Call: Make a call at odd hours to see how long it takes for someone to pick up. If they respond, listen to their tone and see if they’re friendly and eager to help.
Email: Send a generic query at an unusual hour and note down their response time.

If your hosting provider doesn’t respond within 24 hours, that’s a host you want to avoid!

3. Security

How Important is Site Security?

Did you know that 30,000 new websites are hacked everyday?

Unfortunately, these websites often belong to small businesses. So if your website is not well protected, hackers can steal your information, passwords, install malicious software and send malware to your users.

Even a small hack can hurt:

Business Revenue
Profits
Brand Reputation

…especially if you’re an ecommerce site.

What Security Features Do You Need?

A good WordPress Hosting service will take additional steps to protect their servers against common threats. They’d continuously monitor their network for suspicious activity and ensure their server software and hardware is up to date.

Although you’re dependent on their word and good faith for the above activities, there are additional security features some WordPress Hosting Providers offer.

These include:

Backups: If your site is hacked, restoring a backup (the latest version of your site prior to the hack) is the fastest way to recover. You’ll need to close any security vulnerabilities first, but backups can get your site up and running in minutes. Most hosts offer daily, weekly, and monthly backups, but daily backups are the best option.
You should ask your hosts:
- If the backups are automated
- How many backups you can keep
- Whether it is easy to restore a backup
- Where the data is backed up to
- Whether there are additional costs involved
SSL Certificate: While installing an SSL certificate and running your site over to HTTPS is often overlooked, it’s vital to maintain a secure connection between a website and browser, to prevent hackers from gaining access to your site. Most hosts offer a free, quick and easy way to install a SSL Certificate, however, some hosts can charge you for it. Check whether a free SSL Certificate is included in your plan.
DDoS Prevention: DDoS is a DOS attack where multiple systems target a single system, causing a denial of service attack, which can take down your site for hours or days. While most hosts recommend you use a third party provider like Cloudflare or Sucuri, some offer DDoS protection in their plans.
Antivirus and Malware Scanning: Malware is a major problem, especially when there are over 18 million sites infected every week. While some providers require customers to purchase third party malware removal software on top of their hosting plans, a good host would remove malware for free.

If security is a large priority, I recommend you go for a managed WordPress hosting option Managed WordPress hosting companies often offer additional security features and advanced security configurations.

Comparing the Security Features From Each Host

Make sure your Wordpress provider and plan contains:

Daily automated backups
Free SSL Certificate
DDoS Protection
Daily system wide malware scans
Free malware removal from site
Option to deploy two factor authentication

Not all hosts offer these security features.

Have a look at what each provider and plan offers and see whether there are any major gaps. Enquire about any of the missing security features and see whether there are any additional fees.

Remember, while your WordPress Hosting Provider has a major impact on on-site security, site security is still the responsibility of the site owner. After choosing a reliable and secure host, you should also download WordPress security plugins like Sucuri, Wordfence, and iThemes. These plugins are free and can be easily installed on your site.

4. Price

Price Ranges and Hosting Plans

The price for hosting plans can range significantly, from $2 to thousands per month!

Here is an approximate price range for each plan:

Shared WordPress Hosting: From $2.75 - $15 per month
VPS WordPress Hosting: From $5 to $80 per month
Dedicated WordPress Hosting: From $80 - $730 per month
Managed WordPress Hosting: From $20 - $2,500 per month

While any web hosting plan can work for WordPress sites, it’s best to go with a WordPress Hosting Provider because they are specifically designed for WordPress sites.

For example, Wordpress hosts also provide features like:

One-click WordPress installation
Faster loading times
Automatic updates
WordPress specific security features
Support Staff that are well versed with WordPress

Factors That Influence Price

Web Hosting Provider: Providers can offer similar plans at different prices because each host has differing speeds, uptime, quality of customer support, and ease of use. If you want a premium service, you should steer clear from the heavy budget plans.
Level of Storage and Bandwidth: The smaller your site, the less storage and bandwidth you need. But as your business grows, you should consider upgrading to larger plans.
Level of Security: A good host generally offers additional security features for your site. Check to see which security features are included in your plan, and which ones may require extra payment.
Number of Sites: Many plans allow hosting for one website. If you want hosting for multiple sites, select a plan that gives you additional sites.
Extras Included in Your Plan: Some hosts offer additional features like ecommerce features, webmail options, daily backups, site security add-ons, and scalability options. Take into account what you need and what is provided in the plan.

Why the Most Expensive Option Isn’t Always the Best

It’s easy to think that the most expensive provider is the best option.

But there isn’t a clear correlation between quality, features and higher prices.

In fact, in Matthew Woodward’s experiment, there were cheaper WordPress Hosting Providers and Plans that outperformed the more expensive options!

That’s why, when you’re looking for a WordPress hosting provider and plan, make sure you note:

Your Requirements
Your Budget
What’s included in each WordPress Hosting Plan

This way, you’re aware of what each plan offers. If you’re bootstrapping and want to go for a more budget-friendly option, a lot of the lower priced plans will upsell additional features, so note down all the features they include in their plan.

Furthermore, WordPress hosting isn’t the only expense you have to consider. You’ll need to take into account other costs like:

Domain Name
Domain Privacy
Plugins
Themes
Web Design

5. Additional Features

Email Hosting

An email hosting service is when a hosting provider rents out email servers to its users, giving them a professional email.

A professional email includes:

A personalized domain name (yourname@yourbusiness.com),
More storage space
Robust antivirus and spam filters

… and many more.

Today, many web hosting companies bundle, sell, or include free professional email hosting.

Which providers offer email hosting?

Have a look at whether professional email hosting is included in all plans. If your host doesn’t offer or sell email hosting, you can purchase it from another provider like Office 365 of GSuite. Additional hosting is fairly affordable ranging from $2 to $6 per user.

Staging Environment

A staging environment is one that duplicates the production environment so you can test any changes to the site and address any errors before the site goes live.

Staging environments act as the bridge between the development process and live version.

With a staging environment, your visitors will never have to deal with any downtime or problems with your site when you’re changing your code. Everyone who runs a website should have a staging site, especially if your site generates income.

Which providers offer a staging environment?

See whether your hosting provider offers a staging environment in the plan. If it’s not included in your plan, you can purchase a staging environment on top. Alternatively, you can install a plugin that allows you to create staging sites like WP Staging.

Site Migrations

A site migration is an event where a website undergoes substantial changes that can affect search engine visibility. While these changes can range from structure, content, platform, and design, here, the change we’re going to focus on, is moving from one web hosting provider to another.

When you’re migrating your site, there are many things that can go wrong, which can lead to downtime or can even damage your site. Thankfully, there are WordPress hosting companies that provide free site migration services with every plan.

Which providers offer a staging environment?

Generally, site migrations can cost an additional few hundred dollars if you’re on a budget plan. So have a look and see whether free site migrations are included in every plan.

Wrapping It Up

If you’re new to website development, it’s important you take the time to understand, select, vet different WordPress hosting providers.

Remember, don’t rush the process.

If you go with a slow provider with poor support and security features, it can seriously hurt your site. Not only will a slow website lead to unfavorable SEO and lower conversion rates, but a hacked site can cost thousands to repair!

So when you’re choosing a WordPress Hosting Provider, make sure you look at their:

Speed
Support
Security
Price
Additional Features

Have a look at what others say about popular providers and note down their experiences with the company.

Do their websites load quickly?
Is the support team readily available?
Does customer support resolve problems quickly?
Does the company try to sell you many add-ons?

If you’re not too sure where to start, just hop on a third-party review site, browse around and have a read. You can also look at the WordPress Hosting Provider’s site to gain a better feel of the company’s services.

Spend a good amount of time evaluating your WordPress hosting Providers.

Your decision today can save you a lot of money tomorrow.

What are you waiting for?

5 SEO Tactics for Higher Search Engine Rankings

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Ranking on top of the SERPs is easier said than done.

There are millions of websites vying for the top positions on the first page. Gone are the days of outdated SEO techniques like keyword stuffing, paid links, and low-quality content.

That’s why, to help you boost your search engine rankings, I’ve listed 5 simple SEO tactics that are trending in 2020.

These include:

1. Strategic Internal Linking
2. SERP Position Zero
3. PR Coverage
4. Diversifying Backlinks
5. Latent Semantic Indexing

Below, I’ll go through each of these tactics and how it can help you improve your ranks.

Let’s go!

SEO Tactics

1. Strategic Internal Linking
2. SERP Position Zero
3. Gain PR Coverage
4. Diversify Your Links
5. Use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
Wrapping It Up

1. Strategic Internal Linking

What is Strategic Internal Linking?

Strategic internal linking is the process of connecting one page to another page on the site.

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Internal linking can improve the user experience because it helps users find other relevant content on your website.

Internal linking also helps with SEO because it makes it easier for Google’s crawler to:

1. Find and index your site:

To find all the pages on your website, search engine crawler bots need to access a crawlable link structure. If your site is woven together with many internal links, it’s easier for Google’s crawler to find all the content and pages you’re publishing. This also makes the crawling process faster as well.

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2. Establish a relationship between the pages, posts, and content

Internal links can help establish a site hierarchy and make it easier for search engine crawlers and users to navigate your site. Internal linking is especially helpful for pages that are several clicks away from the homepage.

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3. Distribute the ranking power to smaller pages

Internal linking helps distribute link authority, especially if you link to high priority pages because more link equity will flow to from the high priority pages to smaller pages. This makes smaller pages more discoverable to search engines.

What Do I Need To Start?

Even if you’re in the process of setting up a website and don’t have any content to link to, you can work on link building right away, like outlining your site architecture so it’s simple to crawl through.

If you’ve already built your site, then make sure it’s easy to navigate. Once you’ve set up the basic foundation, you can begin working on internal link building activities like creating more content and adding links where necessary.

How To Get Started

1. Establish a Flat Website

Flat websites are easier to crawl and navigate than deep websites because flat sites are reachable within 3-4 clicks.

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To establish a flat website, your main categories should be directly linked from your homepage. Your individual pages should be linked to each category. You can map out your site using a tool called Dynalist. This helps you visualize the categories, subcategories, and pages on your site.

2. Create a Lot of Content:

If you want many internal links, you need to have a lot of content. That’s why before you start internal linking activities, you need to build a content strategy. The strategy will help you populate your website with relevant and informative content for your users which can help you build more links. If you want to start on a content strategy, have a look at Hubspot’s Content Strategy: A Start-to-Finish Guide.

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3. Use Keyword-Rich Anchor Text

Once you’re ready to build internal links, you need to know the type of keywords you should link to. I recommend using keyword-rich anchor text because it helps users and search engine crawlers understand the subject of the page you’re linking to.

For example:

In the image below, it’s clear for users and Google crawlers that the page linked to is about “Mobile SEO.”

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4. Link Relevant, Natural and Deep Content

When you’re adding a link to your content you’re telling the search engine crawler and user that the link is an important read. This signifies that the content is really good, which helps the reader access great content while boosting your SEO. That’s why, the best internal links are the most natural and relevant links that add value to the user.

2. SERP Position Zero

What is SERP Position Zero?

SERP Position Zero is Google’s new top-ranked spot. It’s also known as the featured snippet because it provides a featured snippet of content that directly answers a query.

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Landing in Position Zero is also a great way to establish your brand and build credibility since it shows that your business can provide a definitive answer to a specific question.

There are many ways Google displays Search Position Zero:

Paragraph: A 40-60 word block of content
List: A list of instructions explaining how to perform an action
Table: A data chart like a conversion table

Marketers initially thought that SERP Position Zero would hurt website traffic because the featured snippet answered their search query already. However, SERP Position Zero improves site metrics like:

Visits
Clickthroughs
Conversions

What Do I Need To Start?

Here are a few things you need to achieve SERP Position Zero:

1. Optimize your site for desktop and mobile searches: Responsive design is a ranking factor, so make sure your site works on all screens.

2. Create a hub of amazing informative content: You’ll need long-form articles that add significant value to your user. Ideally, these pages are already on the first page of Google.

3. Boost engagement metrics: Engagement metrics like page views, time on page, average session duration, and bounce rate can play a key role in landing SERP Position Zero.

Google is looking for the best answer. The relevancy of your content will outweigh your rank if you’re already in the top ten search results.

How to Optimize for Position Zero

Once you’ve optimized your site, have a treasure trove of content, and are boosting engagement metrics, you can work on these tactics to optimize for SERP Position Zero.

1. Provide Answers to 5Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why)

A featured snippet tends to answer one of the 5Ws. But here’s the thing. If the question is too simple, Google will reference its own database. If it’s too complex, they’ll go straight to search results. You need to make sure your subject matter is simple enough that you can define in a short paragraph but complicated enough that it takes a whole page to unpack the meaning.

2. Give How-tos/Instructions

A large portion of featured snippets feature answers to How-to questions. Instructional content is great because it teaches users how to perform certain actions, boost click-through rates and improves user time spent on the page.

3. Provide a Price Breakdown

Cost breakdowns are a great way to score featured snippets. Here, you can help users compare the cost and features of certain goods. But if price tends to vary significantly, you might consider creating estimate tables instead.

4. Have a Best List

While featured snippets only appear in 12.29% of search queries, a large number of featured snippets have the term best in them. That’s because, everyone wants to know that the best brand, product, or category is. For example, best cell phone, best lotion cream, or even best car repair service near me.

3. Gain PR Coverage

What is PR Coverage?

Before we talk about gaining PR coverage, let’s look at the term Public Relations (PR). Public Relations is the actions a business takes to shape its brand image and develop relationships with key stakeholders like their customers and target audience.

If you want to gain PR coverage, you need to communicate news and story angles to gain earned media. Earned media can discuss your brand’s products and services via article, video, or other different forms of content in front of their audience to help you gain greater exposure and awareness.

Here’s an example of a successful PR campaign.

During the Ebola outbreak in 2014, Google announced that it would pledge $2 for every dollar donated through its website. They created a specific URL to invite people across the world to contribute to this cause. This CSR campaign gained significant PR coverage, with publications like TIME, BusinessInsider, NPR, and the Washington Post covering the Donation.

Getting coverage on national newspaper sites, large industry magazines, or popular regional sites can give you many long-term benefits like:

1. Better Brand Recognition: Having a recognizable brand talk about your business can give you additional high-quality backlinks and build consumer trust.

2. Reputation Management: If you have great media coverage and your prospects search you online, your page one results can include publications that mention you.

3. Social Proof: If you’ve been featured in major sites like CNN, Lonely Planet, or The National Geographic, it’s a great way to anchor your brand to other well-known organizations.

4. Increase in Traffic: One large media hit can give you a major boost in brand awareness and traffic to your site

5. Customer Loyalty: Prospects who understand the story behind your business, and can connect with it emotionally, may even become long-term loyal customers.

What Do I Need To Start?

Before you start a public relations outreach campaign, you need to position yourself well.

Remember, public relations is all about shaping your brand’s image and developing relationships with key stakeholders. Ideally, you should position your business and (yourself) in a way where you can build rapport and empathy with your audience.

Here are a few ways to get started:

What’s unique about your business and you as a person?
Was there something you or your business needed to overcome before you can achieve what you have now?
Is there something your business is dealing with right now that you want to share?

Before you pitch to any media outlets, decide on your angle. It’s not enough to create a media campaign around a new announcement. If you can craft a solid angle and story, it’ll be easily picked up by the media.

How to Gain Press Coverage?

1. Finalize Your Angle:

When you’re positioning your business, you should include information that informs your customers on who you are, what your business’ ethics, values, and history is, and what they’re buying into. Create and pitch real stories that promote all the best things about your business. Your story should define your brand identity and help your business stand out.

2. Create a Descriptive Headline

Make sure you have a keyword-driven title (inserting the keyword at the beginning of the sentence) so journalists are aware of the story’s subject matter. I recommend keeping it under 80 characters.

3. Write the Press Release

A press release is an official announcement that an organization issues to media companies. Make sure the first paragraph contains the 5Ws (who, what, when, where, and why).

The language should be understandable and the press release should include a quote. If you want a step-by-step approach to crafting a press release, here’s Hubspot’s Press Release Template.

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4. Do a Reachout Campaign

Look at local, national, and international news opportunities from newspapers, radio, TV stations, Youtube hubs, and online media groups. You should also explore media in your specialty or niche as well.

4. Diversify Your Links

What is Link Diversity?

Link Diversity is the process of gaining inbound links from a variety of different pages and domains like articles, directories, news links, social networks, Government sites, etc.

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It’s important you diversify your link building strategies because using a single strategy can lead to too many backlinks from one source which can signal manipulation to search engines and result in devaluations or even manual penalties.

Furthermore, Google also updates its algorithm frequently. If you follow a single strategy, one change in the algorithm can render your existing backlinking strategy obsolete.

What Do I Need To Start?

1. Analyze Link Profile

Before you implement a link building strategy, you need to be vigilant as toxic backlinks can lead to ranking penalties. That’s why, before you start, you need to assess your link profile.

Here, you should examine:

The type of links that point back to your site: Ideally, your backlink profile has a lot of high authority links that are relevant (no spammy links.)
The anchor text of those links: An excessive amount of keyword-rich anchor text inbound links to your site can look unnatural which can land you a penalty.
How the links were acquired: Buying links doesn’t always have to be bad, but it has to be appropriate. The link should create value for users.

To analyze your link profile, you can use Moz’s Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, Ahrefs, or Raven. Remember, it’s not always about the number of backlinks but the quality of your inbound links.

2. Deal with Toxic backlinks

To clean up your link profile you need to first, identify toxic backlinks and then remove them. You can check your backlink profile with free tools like Google Search Console and Link Profiler.

But if you need to dig deeper into your data, you can use a premium backlink tool. Personally, I like to use Ahrefs to clean up spammy links. They have a disavow option you can select top save the latest toxic links, export the list, and submit to Google.

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How to Diversify Your Links?

While there are many backlinking tactics that can help you diversify your links, it’s best to focus on no more than 3. Focussing on too many can leave you overwhelmed and frustrated.

1. Leverage Your Competitors Backlink Strategy:

If you don’t have a link building strategy, you can reverse engineer your competitors. It’s a great strategy if you’re just starting out!

Make a list of your competitors who are ranking well on the SERPs.
Use Ahref’s Site Explorer to analyze your competitor’s backlinks.

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Select the Link Type button.
Open the links and work backward to see how your competitor’s got the link.

2. Create Data-Driven Content

A way to create relevant and useful content that stands out is to use unique data.

To do this:

Find a common question/problem/pain point in your niche.
Gather data (run your own tests or aggregate the data of others) to answer the question. Alternatively, you can even take someone else’s data but present the data more effectively with the use of infographics, charts, and tables.

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3. Fix Broken Links Online

Unfortunately, websites can contain hundreds of links that break and stop working. Most website owners are unaware of this, which can affect their SEO ranks. You can use broken links as an opportunity to help the website owner fix their current broken link while gaining a high-quality link yourself.

You can start by:

Defining your target website. The best sites you can gain links from are personal blogs and small companies.
Find broken links using Ahrefs or Check My Links
Reach out to the blog manager. Here, create a relationship and build some trust with the manager. Remember, don’t do it to get a link, but to help their readers gain a great, helpful new source.

5. Use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)

What Is Latent Semantic Indexing?

Before we understand what LSI is, we need to understand how search engines operate. Search engines use complex algorithms to understand the relationship between a website’s content, context, and user’s intent to specific keywords.

For example:

If we look at the term blue, websites with this word can be anything from the color blue to the melancholy feeling of being blue, or even the boy band blue that sang the hit song, All Rise.
Search engines use LSI keywords to add context to pages that contain the keyword (e.g, blue) to provide better search results. If the website you’re browsing is about the feeling of being blue, the site’s page would include LSI keywords like feelings, being unwell, sadness, and depression.

Here’s another example below.

When it comes to the term Cold Brew Coffee, Google will scan related terms and phrases, like the ones listed below.

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Search engines tend to look for highly relevant and in-depth content concerning a query. That’s why search engines like Google, reward sites that include LSI keywords (terms and phrases and that related to the target keyword of the webpage) with better rankings and more traffic.

But including LSI keywords doesn’t just provide SEO benefits. Having additional and more accurate categorization helps with the user experience as well.

What Do I Need To Start?

Here are 3 ways you can find and include LSI keywords to your website.

1. Implement a Simple Google Search

When you’re looking for LSI keywords, a simple Google search can return fantastic results. You can find at the bottom of the search results page, a list of related searches which tell you what Google considers as other terms relevant to the search query.

Alternatively, you can also look at the phrases that show up when you enter keywords into the Google Search Bar.

2. Use Google’s Keyword Planner

You can also use Google’s Keyword Planner Tool which suggests hundreds of keywords and common search terms and phrases. Simply enter your keyword and see which related SEO keywords have low competition yet high levels of search volume. This is a great way to kick start your LSI strategy.

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How Do I Implement Latent Semantic Indexing Effectively?

By now, you should have a large list of potential LSI keywords. All you need to do is narrow down your best options that are related to your content that carry a decent amount of search volume.

1. How Do You Determine Relevance?

Selecting relevant LSI terms is a matter of thinking about your website’s content and whether the information, product, or service you offer matches the related terms.

For example:

If you sold shoes and you wanted to rank for similar terms, you can look at other related terms and see which ones relate mostly to your site or business. Let’s say, you sold premium sports shoes online, other relevant terms could be:
Brands you sell: Sports shoes Adidas, sports shoes Nike
The color and design: Sports shoes white, sports shoes black
Price and quality: Sports shoes on sale, high-quality sports shoes

If you want to know whether the term is relevant, you can see whether the pages that rank in the top 10 organic spots are similar to yours.

2. How To Find Search Volume

If no one searches for these LSI terms, then your site won’t benefit much from it. That’s why you need to make sure the LSI terms have a decent search volume. While search volume varies between different niches, the best way to assess the volume for a keyword is to use other high-traffic keywords as a benchmark.

3. How to Find the Right Intent

Whether you’re selling online or have an affiliate site, the mistake most people make is going for the keyword with the largest amount of traffic. Instead, you need to target the people at the right stage with the right intent if you want your online website (ecommerce or affiliate to grow.)

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That’s why, when it comes to intent, you should seek to attract qualified traffic.

If you’re selling goods online, you need to target people at the action phase of the funnel. You can use LSI keywords like discount, deal, coupon, or buy now.
If you’re reviewing products and helping people make decisions, you should target the Decision phase of the funnel. You can use LSI keywords like comparison, price, cheap, best, top 10, review, and compare.

4. How to Add Context But Not Overstuff Words

Remember, LSI keywords need to be highly relevant, have a decent search volume, and have the right intent. You want to avoid overstuffing your content with the LSI keywords you choose.

To do this, you can reread your keywords with the LSI terms. If the word doesn’t sound natural in the phrase, leave it out. LSI keywords are also much more than synonyms. You should use terms that describe the subject matter conceptually.

Wrapping It Up

When it comes to boosting your ranks on the SERPs, there are many strategies you can implement.

Above are 5 popular SEO tactics you can work on right away:

Strategic Internal Linking
Striving for SERP Position Zero
Gaining PR Coverage
Diversifying your Links
Using Latent Semantic Indexing.

Remember, if things get too overwhelming, just focus on a few and remain consistent with your tactics and strategies.

What are you waiting for?

Boost your SEO ranks, by getting started today!

Video Content - Build a successful Video Content Strategy with these tips

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Video is a versatile and valuable tool.

Throughout the entire customer buying journey, video content delivers easy-to-follow information and entertainment, perfect for keeping clients engaged with your brand.

Even on social media, 93% of businesses say that they’re gaining new clients thanks to video.

Unfortunately, as fantastic as visual content can be when it comes to taking your content strategy to the next level, many organizations still don’t know how to use this format properly.

To help you take the plunge into this new era of video content marketing, we’re going to show you exactly how you can create a plan that enhances your brand potential.

Let’s get to it!

Video Content Strategy

Why Video Content?
Types of Video Content: What’s Right for Your Business
How to Create Excellent Video Content
The Bottom Line on Video Content

Why Video Content?

There are plenty of excellent ways for businesses to connect with their target audience these days.

A written article packed full of useful information is excellent when you want to develop your position as a thought leader.

A podcast is wonderful when you’re trying to reach clients on their daily commute.

However, video remains to be one of the most powerful solutions for storytelling. It has an authenticity and honesty that helps companies to build better relationships with their clients.

Let’s just take a look at the stats:

Social media videos deliver 1200% more shares than ads with text and image combined
87% of online marketers use video content to connect with their customers.
54% of people would like to see more video content from marketers.
The volume of video consumption increases by more than 100% each year.

Those stats speak for themselves, anyone serious about digital marketing should become a video content creator! But there’s another reason you and your business should be investing in video content: it improves SEO ranking!

How? Let’s break it down:

Google’s algorithms prioritize websites with video content over ones without.
Original content like video means users will stick around longer, which reduces your bounce rate.
People tend to share and link to good quality video content, increasing your backlinks.

Crucially, although video has the power to deliver incredible conversions and business opportunities to almost any brand, having the right strategy in place is the only way to ensure success.

Types of Video Content: What’s Right for Your Business

We could spend this entire article listing different kinds of video content for your company to explore, from Q&A videos that answer crucial customer questions, to behind-the-scenes content that offers an insight into how your company operates.

Video is an incredibly versatile medium. Like with a lot of content, you’re really only restricted by your imagination.

Video types that work well for most brands:

Demo videos

Excellent for informing and engaging your customers, demonstration videos showcase the unique benefits of your product, and help your audience to get the most out of their investment.

You could consider anything from unboxing physical products, to providing a virtual tour of your software.

Brand videos

Often used as part of a broader advertising campaign, branded video content highlight the vision, mission, and abilities of your business.

Coca Cola Brand Video

The goal is to build awareness of what your company can do, while attracting your target audience.

Interviews

Interviews with experts are an excellent way to highlight your thought leadership in a space.

Not only do they deliver useful information for your target audience, but these interviews help your clients to associate you with other influencers in your industry.

How-to videos

Educational how-to videos are a fantastic way to provide your customers with valuable guidance. Make sure that you focus on what your customers want to learn about.

Here’s an example of a How-to video from ConvertKit, on segmenting email subscribers.

ConvertKit How-To Video

Things to consider when creating How-to videos is to check directly with your audience or your support team what your customers ask about the most, or what they have the most trouble with when using your product or service.

Behind the scenes videos

Finally, why not show your customers the people that keep the cogs turning in the back end of your business.

Behind the scenes videos make your customers feel special by giving them access to exclusive content. At the same time, they highlight the authentic nature of your brand.

Just check out this amazing behind the scenes video from Star Wars:

How to Create Excellent Video Content

Okay, now you know the basics of why you should create video content for your brand.

You also have a handy insight into some of the different types of videos that you can create. You’re ready to begin building your material.

So, how do you ensure that the video content you’re creating is going to be effective?

1. Know Why You’re Creating a Video

Amazing content, whether it’s in the form of a video, a blog, or a podcast, is never an afterthought. You need to know exactly why you’re creating your video and what you’re hoping to accomplish with it from the moment that you get started.

Ask yourself:

Who is your target audience? What kind of customer do you want to reach with this audience? Do you have a buyer persona that you can use to guide your tone of voice?
What’s the goal? What do you want to accomplish with your video? Are you hoping to increase awareness of your brand, or sell more tickets to an upcoming event? Knowing your goal will help you to plan a more effective video.
How will you measure success? How will you know if your video has been successful? Are you going to measure progress in the form of conversions, new subscriptions, or just more traffic on your site?

If you’re not sure what you should be writing about, continue sending surveys to your audience members to find out what they want to hear about.

Create a poll on social media, and engage with your audience about some of the common pain points that your they want to address. Basically: create the content your customers want!

For instance, look at this “Why use” sprout social video that makes it easy to understand the benefits of the platform:

2. Script Your Video

Off-the-cuff remarks and genuine comments are fine in a video, provided that they match your brand tone of voice. However, you can’t afford to create a video without any guidance at all.

Most business videos will require a basic script to help keep you on track.

It’s this script that will help you to figure out exactly what you need to cover, and stop you from waffling about things that your customers aren’t interested in.

Remember, keep a script timer handy when you’re writing and editing. Something that looks like a minimal amount of content on paper can add up to a lot of words in a script.

Another thing to keep in mind is that words on paper sound different than words said out-loud. Have a few people read your content to see whether it really resonates with your brand voice.

3. Get to Know Your Equipment

One of the biggest things that stops companies from experimenting with video content, is fear of the equipment that they need to use to create their films.

However, you don’t necessarily need a complicated camera to get started these days. Plenty of small businesses produce content using nothing more than an iPhone and some basic editing equipment.

Remember, if you’re planning on filming with your iPhone, make sure that your device has plenty of storage, and that you’ve turned on the do-not-disturb feature to reduce calls and notifications.

If you do want to opt for something a little more professional, then prosumer cameras can bridge the gap between advanced tech, and compact cameras.

You can also consider a DSLR if you want granular control over things like the depth of field and your lighting. However, you don’t really need to go that advanced for small business videos.

Aside from a camera, consider some of the other video equipment you may need, such as:

A tripod to help avoid shaky camera issues
Audio equipment that helps you to capture voices in high definition
Lighting that brightens up the room and makes details easier to capture

If you’re worried about shooting a video, you can always try working with an animator and using graphics instead, like Hootsuite does here:

4. Optimize Your Content

The kind of video you create for your business is up to you. For the most part, your choice will depend on the goal that you want to accomplish.

For instance, if you’re trying to get more people to sign up to an upcoming webinar, you may decide to create a video that introduces customers to some of the key topics that you’re going to cover in the webinar.

Alternatively, if you want to raise awareness about your product, a demo video could be the perfect tool.

When designing your video script, remember:

Don’t be preoccupied with perfection: Most customers won't expect your videos to be Hollywood movie quality. Although it’s important to have good lighting, and a basic knowledge of editing, don’t spend forever trying to make your video look perfect.
Pose questions and engage the audience: Get your customers involved with the video. Ask them questions so that they know you’re talking to them. Address key pain points that they’ve shared with you.
Include a call to action: Just like a blog post, make sure that your video has a call to action that lets customers know what to do next. For instance, you might want them to subscribe to your channel, check out an event page, or visit a product page.

A basic SEO strategy can be a great way to optimize your videos too. Remember, titles are an excellent way to capture the attention of the search engines, and your audience at the same time.

Adding keywords to titles and implementing them within your video description will help your videos to rank.

You can also use keyword variations in your tags. This will help your customers to find your content when searching on platforms like YouTube.

Check out the excellent description from this video by Neil Patel; it’s fantastic for SEO:

4 Design Tweaks that can boost SEO - Neil Patel

5. Know How to Edit Your Video

Once you’ve finished creating your content (and optimizing it), you need to know how to edit it.

Video editing can be one of the most complicated parts of creating your visual content. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, particularly when you see how many different kinds of software packages are available.

The good news is that there are a lot of simple choices to tap into. For instance, if you’re using your iPhone to capture video, or you’re editing on a Mac, then iMovie might be an excellent choice. You can use this service to edit everything from music to sound effects and basic colors too.

Adobe Premiere Elements is a great video editing tool that is easy to use and affordable. It runs on both Mac and Windows.

For more advanced users, Adobe offers Adobe Premiere Pro, which is another great choice for both Apple and Windows users. It comes with various templates and advanced editing tools and has even been used on movies like Deadpool and Gone Girl.

If you are mainly doing screen recordings and tutorials, software like Camtasia for Mac and Windows or ScreenFlow for Mac might do the job.

If possible, it could be helpful to download the free trial versions of some of the potential software tools you’re thinking of using.

This will help you to determine how easy-to-use your options are so that you can pick something suitable for you and your team.

6. Choose Promotion/Distribution Outlets

Once you’re finished editing your videos, it’s time to share them with the world. The good news is that the promotion options available for video content are incredibly varied.

You can upload your video and embed it into your website so that it appears on your product pages or within blog posts.

There’s even the option to add video to some email marketing tools if you have access to the right software. However, we wouldn’t recommend making your emails too heavy or they could be challenging to load.

Consider:

Using video search engines: Uploading your content to video search engines like YouTube and Vimeo will help them to be found.
Use your video on your websites: Adding product videos to your sales pages, and how-to videos to your blog posts is a great way to spruce up your content strategy.
Share on social media: Using video in social media is an excellent way to not only engage your audience but improve your chances of word-of-mouth sharing too.

You can also embed your videos in your landing pages too. Some stats indicate that adding a video to a landing page can increase your conversion rates by up to 80%.

Check out this fantastic video landing page from Outbrain for instance. The site immediately shows you what you can get from the service, boosting the chances of conversion.

OutBrain video landing page

The Bottom Line on Video Content

Remember, creating and promoting your videos is just one piece of the original content puzzle. You also need to make sure that you’re investing your cash in the right strategies.

The only way to do this is to analyze video performance and track your results. Tools like YouTube Analytics are excellent for learning more about your views, total watching time, and where your traffic is coming from. The more you measure your results, the more you’ll know where you should be placing your cash.

While it does take time and effort to create a high-performing video strategy, it’s definitely worth putting time and effort into.

If you have the right video content plan, and you’re willing to keep working on your strategy, you could benefit immensely, from improved SEO performance and wider brand awareness to a healthier bottom line in no-time.

If you’ve found this article useful, please share on social media and follow us on Twitter or Facebook, thank you!

Productivity Tools and Apps to Free up your time

Sun, 15 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In this day and age of social media and constant distraction of notifications, it can be hard to keep focus on the task in hand.

What’s worse is, if you are trading your time for money, which most workers do, it takes you extra time to get back into ‘your flow’ after such a disruption, which ultimately loses you money.

Even without distracting notifications or co-workers interrupting, there are usually also better, more efficient and more convenient ways to do our work, which can lead to freeing up a huge chunk of your time, and therefore resulting in big productivity gains.

In this article, we will list some of our favorite and best productivity tools and apps that will free up your time and make you more productive!

All the tools and apps we cover are either free or have a free version which does not expire, so what’s not to like?

Let’s jump right in and start boosting your productivity right now!

11 Free Productivity Tools

LastPass [Free]
- Improves productivity by not having to remember secure and complex passwords and avoid going through forget-password journeys.
Grammarly [Free]
- Saves time by correcting grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes real-time whilst typing.
IFTTT [Free]
- Saves time by cutting out manual and repeatable tasks by using powerful automation workflows without a line of code.
Hootsuite [Free]
- Increases productivity by managing multiple social accounts in one place and scheduling of updates.
Google Drive [Free]
- Saves time by easily sharing documents with others and keeps your important files securely in the cloud, accessible from anywhere.
Google Docs/Sheets [Free]
- Improves productivity by easily sharing documents and spreadsheets and making collaboration on the same documents a breeze.
Google Keep [Free]
- Organise your notes, to-do lists, reminders and links in one place.
Google Meet / Hangouts [Free]
- Face-to-face conversations and screen sharing functionality in one.
Slack [Free]
- Improve communication and get rid of endless email ping-pong.
Pomofocus.io [Free]
- Focus on one task at a time and use the Pomodoro technique to get things done!
StayFocusd Chrome extension
- Block specific websites for a period of time to increase your focus, stop wasting time and prevent procrastination.

LastPass [Free]

Improves productivity by not having to remember secure and complex passwords and avoid going through forget-password journeys.

Having trouble keeping up with all the various usernames and passwords you are using online?

Or even worse, are you only using a single password (or slight variations) for all your accounts? Please don’t tell me that’s the case!

LastPass can help. It offers a handy browser extension (all major browsers are supported) which will do three main things:

Generate strong and secure passwords when you create a new account on any website.
Fill in the username/password combination for you on websites where you have an account.
Synchronise these accounts across all your devices for a seamless login-experience.

The benefits are obvious: more secure and diverse passwords and not needing to remember them.

The Free version gives you access to LastPass on all your devices, allows one-to-one sharing of passwords and has multi-factor authentication.

LastPass home screen

There is a Premium version available for $3 per month, and for only $4 a month, you can jump on their family plan for up to 6 people.

The Family Plan is ideal for sharing your family passwords like Netflix, Spotify etc. in a secure way and ensuring your kids are using secure passwords for their social media and other online accounts.

Get started with LastPass

Grammarly [Free]

Saves time by correcting grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes real-time whilst typing.

If you want to be taken seriously, good spelling and correct grammar are hugely important.

Whether you are writing a blog, email or job application, poor spelling, sloppy punctuation and woeful grammar can leave a bad impression.

Luckily, this can be easily fixed. Grammarly suggests spelling, style, and grammar changes in real-time, and can even edit your content based on your business niche or genre.

Grammarly extension in action

Aside from offering a free online experience for your browser, and a web editor, Grammarly accounts also come with access with:

The Grammarly for Word Microsoft Office add-in;
Grammarly for Google Docs;
The Grammarly plagiarism checker;
The Grammarly desktop app

The Free version checks your writing style, punctuation, grammar and spelling. More advanced features like the Plagiarism Checker are available in the Grammarly Premium version.

For a more in-depth overview of Grammarly, you can check out our Grammarly review.

Get started with Grammarly

IFTTT [Free]

Saves time by cutting out manual and repeatable tasks by using powerful automation workflows without a line of code.

IFTTT stands for If This Then That, and its name emphasizes the nature of the application. It can be used for creating personal automated workflows.

For instance, “Receive a notification on your phone when your Alexa timer goes off”, or “Send me a notification before work to remind me to take an umbrella if the forecast predicts rain in the morning”.

It also offers handy automations for turning lights off or on when you leave or arrive home as well as sending messages when you leave your work location.

IFTTT Applets

Furthermore, you can create your very own personal workflows, called Applets or Recipes, where you can select from a huge number of services. Once you have selected the If This part and the trigger, you can select what you want the Then That part (the Action) to be.

IFTTT has a very intuitive and friendly user interface and is available both via their website as well as an iOS or Android App for your mobile.

All in all, a very handy addition to your free productivity tools tool-belt.

Start saving time with IFTTT

Hootsuite [Free]

Hootsuite is a platform where you can manage all your social accounts from one central place. Allowing you to simultaneously post as well as schedule updates to multiple social media platforms.

Ideal for the budding entrepreneur, it has a concept of streams, which lets you keep track of your mentions, likes etc. across your different social media accounts.

You can use their platform via the website or use the mobile app.

Hootsuite

Whilst the Free plan is not listed on their Hootsuite plans page, there is a free Hootsuite version you can signup for and that can be used for up-to 3 different social media profiles and which has a maximum of 30 scheduled messages.

If you want to skip straight past their up-selling tactics, you can go straight to creating a free Hootsuite account here.

Get started with a Free Hootsuite account!

Google Drive [Free]

Still emailing big documents back and forth? Google Drive offers you 15Gb of Free storage space in the cloud.

You can access your documents from any device, computer, tablet, mobile and you can easily share documents and folders with others.

Google Drive web interface

When you download Google Drive for your computer, it will automatically create a separate My Drive folder, and automatically synchronize this with what is stored in the cloud.

A separate App is available for your tablet or mobile, so your documents are always accessible.

Get started with Google Drive

Google Docs/Sheets [Free]

Google Docs and Google Sheets form part of Google’s web-based office suite.

As you would expect, the online word processor and spreadsheet system integrate seamlessly with Google Drive and allow you to easily share and collaborate on documents or spreadsheets with others.

Google Docs web interface

It is accessible from any mainstream browser and also from dedicated mobile apps, on Android and iOS.

Offline editing of documents can be achieved when using the Google Chrome web-browser, and the Chrome Extension Google Docs Offline.

Get started with Google Docs & Sheets

Google Keep [Free]

Organise your notes, to-do lists, reminders and links in one place.

Google Keep lets you capture notes, create to-do lists, reminders, links and you can share this with others. Keep also lets you extract text from images and you can easily save or export notes to Google Docs.

There is no concept of folders or hierarchy, but instead you can keep things organised by adding labels to the items you create.

Google Keep can be accessed from the web, using a regular web-browser but there is also an app available for mobile devices and tablets.

Google Keep web interface

There is also a handy Google Keep Chrome extension, which lets you easily save pages, images and links to your Keep board from just a simple click on the browser bar.

Get started with Google Keep

Google Meet / Hangouts [Free]

Google Meet and Google Hangouts are video conferencing and phone calling software. Google Hangouts is the free version, whilst Google Meet is available for users who have access to Google’s GSuite.

It allows you to have group video-conferencing sessions and has ability for presenting your screen to participants for purposes of demos or presentations.

Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts and Google Meet are available via a web browser as well as on mobile apps. If you are using Google Meet, you can download a neat Chrome extension, called Google Meet Grid View which lets you view all participants’ video in a gridview, a bit like Zoom does.

Get started with Google Hangouts

Slack [Free]

Improve communication and get rid of endless email ping-pong.

If you find yourself to-ing and fro-ing email all too often and struggle to get on top of a clean email Inbox, it might be time to start using Slack and introduce it to your colleagues.

Slack allows you to keep conversations organised via real-time messaging and you can set up specific channels for teams or certain projects. Shared channels can also be created which allow your company to engage as easily with third-party companies as with other teams within the organization.

A whole range of integrations for Slack like Google Drive, Office365 and others allow you to quickly run polls, synchronize your calendar, automatically publish meeting notes in specific Slack channels and much, much more.

Slack

The beauty is that with a small team, you can get started on Slack for free and remain on the free plan indefinitely.

The only limitations on the free plan are that the history of your team’s messages will be capped at 10,000 and you can install a maximum of 10 integrations.

Get started with Slack

Pomofocus.io [Free]

Focus on one task at a time and use the Pomodoro technique to get things done!

This free web-based Pomodoro timer uses the Pomodoro technique, developed in the 1980’s.

The idea is to focus on 25 minute blocks of work on a task at a time, followed by a 5 minute break and repeat the process until you have finished your task(s).

Pomofocus' Pomodoro Timer

Start using Pomofocus!

StayFocusd Chrome extension

Block specific websites for a period of time to increase your focus, stop wasting time and prevent procrastination.

In combination with Do-Not-Disturb options on your phone to avoid interrupting and distraction, the StayFocusd Chrome browser extension helps you by restricting time and access you spend trawling through Facebook posts, Twitter rants or Reddit comment threads. Let’s be honest, we’ve all been there.

StayFocusd

Use the StayFocusd Chrome extension in combination with the Pomofocus Pomodoro Timer and you’ll be productive in no time!

Get started with StayFocusd

I hope you enjoyed this list of free productivity tools and apps and hope you will give some of them a go and become more productive in the process. Let me know how you get on!

Feel free to check out my resources, services and tools for bloggers that have helped me in the process of setting up this blog.

8 Free Domain Authority and SEO Reporting Tools To Boost Your SEO!

Tue, 10 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

If you want to boost your search engine rankings, you need to leverage SEO tools.

SEO tools are a must-have when it comes to out-competing the competition on the search engine results pages (SERPs). But these tools can be very expensive, especially if you’re just starting out.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way.

In this article, I’ve compiled 8 free Domain Authority and SEO Reporting tools to help you get started. Not only can these tools show you how you’re performing, but they can conduct audits and show you where you can improve so that you can instantly boost your SEO ranks.

Let’s get started!

Free Domain Authority Tools
Free SEO Reporting Tools
Conclusion

Free Domain Authority Tools

When it comes to SEO tools, one of the most important metrics is Domain Authority (DA).

According to Moz, DA is a score that predicts a website’s ability to rank on the SERPs. The DA score ranges from one to 100. The higher your score, the greater your ability to rank and gain organic traffic from search engines.

Below are 4 free tools that show you your site’s DA score along with other top competitive SEO metrics.

1. Moz - Domain SEO Analysis Tool

Moz’s Free Domain SEO Analysis Tool is a highly popular and comprehensive free DA tool that returns metrics like your website’s DA, top pages, ranking keywords, discovered and lost linking domains, and many more.

Moz Homepage

How It Works

When you enter your domain and hit ‘Analyze Domain,’ Moz returns your DA score, linking root domains, ranking keywords and spam score.

Moz Free Domain Analyzer Tool Dashboard

You can also find your ‘Top Pages by Links’ and their respective Page Authority (PA) scores. Unlike DA, PA predicts how well the specific page will rank on the SERPs.

You can also find a graph detailing discovered and lost backlinks (a key factor affecting your DA).

Moz Graph

Moz also lists your ‘Top Ranking Keywords,’ your position in the SERPs, and the estimated clicks for each word.

Moz Tables

If you continue scrolling, you’ll see a ‘Top Featured Snippets’ section, which shows you whether you own these snippets, alongside with ‘Branded Keywords.’ The branded keywords will return the highest-volume words that reflect your website’s brand.

Moz Tables

Below is a graph that shows you the number of keywords that rank in the search results within different ranges.

Moz Keyword Ranking Distribution Graph

And if you’re wondering who your biggest competitors are, Moz lists your ‘Top Search Competitors,’ into a table, ranking them via their visibility.

Moz Top Search Competitors

You can also see the ‘Top Questions’ from the People Also Ask boxes if you’re searching for relevant keywords.

Moz Top Questions

Limitations

While the Moz Free Domain SEO Analysis Tool gives you a lot of data on your website, there’s a limit of 3 reports per day for all free users. Furthermore, the data is fairly limited. If you want more data, you’ll need to sign up for their Moz Pro plan, which starts at $99/month.

Try Moz Domain SEO Analysis

2. Moz - Link Explorer

The Moz Link Explorer lets you check the DA and backlink profile of your website.

Moz Link Explorer

According to Moz, backlinks are a vital component in boosting SEO ranks. Backlinks are like a signal, telling search engines that other websites vouch for your content.

What are backlinks

How It Works

When you enter your URL, before you can access any data, you’ll need to make a free account.

Moz - Create an Account for Free

Then, you need to activate your account (via email).

Moz - Email Activation

Once you click ‘Activate,’ you’ll be directed to Moz Pro. While you’re not paying for the Pro plan, you get 10 link queries and 50 rows of data per query every month.

Moz - Link Explorer Overview

Under ‘Overview,’ you can see metrics like your DA, linking domains, inbound links, and keywords you’re ranking for.

If you scroll down, you can see your ‘Discovered and lost linking domains,’ how your DA, PA, and linking domains are performing over time.

Moz - Graphs

At the bottom of the page, you can also see your ‘Follow versus no follow percentage,’ ‘Top followed links to the site,’ ‘Top pages on the site,’ ‘Top anchor text,’ and ‘Linking domains by DA.’

Moz - Further Tables

One of the things I love about the ‘Link Explorer’ is that the data mentioned above is only from the ‘Overview Page.’ If you look to the menu on your left, you can have a deeper look into your Inbound Links, Linking Domains, Anchor text, Top pages, Discovered and lost links, Compare link profiles, and even your Spam score.

Moz - Lefthand Menu

For example, if I wanted to look into my inbound links, or steal a competitor’s backlinking strategy, I can click on ‘Inbound links,’ and use the data here.

Moz - Inbound links

You can also have a deeper view of your ‘Top Pages.’

Moz - Top Pages

You can also perform Keyword research as well.

If you click on ‘Keyword Research,’ you can choose to explore keywords ‘By site’ or ‘By keyword.’ Here, you can find seed keywords, explore keywords for related suggestions, undergo a SERP analysis and view performance metrics.

Moz - Explore By Site

It’s a great way to see which keywords you’re ranking for and the difficulty and monthly volume for these terms as well.

Moz - Ranking Keywords

If you need some help brainstorming of other related keywords to target, you can also pop over to the ‘Keyword Suggestions’ section.

Moz -All Keyword Suggestions

Limitations

While Moz’s Link Explorer gives you a lot more data than their Domain SEO Analysis Tool, it does require your contact information like name and email address. The signup process doesn’t take too long but you will be receiving their email marketing newsletters.

The free account also has a limit. It will give you 10 link queries and 50 rows of data per query every month. You also don’t have the option to explore Moz Pro’s other features and you’re limited to only ‘Link Research’ and ‘Keyword Research.’

Get started with Moz’ Link Explorer

Did you know that Moz also has a free chrome extension?

The MozBar, an all-in-one SEO toolbar can give you advanced metrics so you can do your SEO on the go.

MozBar [Source: Moz.com]

How It Works

First, download MozBar and install it on your Chrome Browser.

MozBar - Chrome Web Store

Then log in to your free Moz Community Account. If you don’t have an account, you can quickly create a free one. You should then find the MozBar ‘M’ icon on the top right-hand corner of your chrome browser.

MozBar Toolbar Icon [Source: Moz.com]

This way, if you type a search query on Google, you can see the PA and DA of the sites ranking for this term.

MozBar - Google Searches

You can also click on the gear icon on the top right to access the ‘MozBar Settings.’ Here, you can toggle the theme and metrics.

MozBar Settings [Source: Moz.com]

You can even create profiles to make custom searches by search engine, country, region, or city.

MozBar - Add a New Profile [Source: Moz.com]

With the MozBar, not only you can look into your website’s DA score, but you can quickly view your competitors and see how they fare.

You can also explore ‘On-page Elements’ (URL, Page Title, Meta description), ‘General Attributes,’ ‘Page Markup,’ ‘Link Metrics,’ and the ‘HTTP Status’ of any website.

MozBar - Page Analysis [Source: Moz.com]

There’s also the option to highlight ‘followed,’ ‘no-followed,’ ‘external,’ or ‘internal’ links as well.

MozBar - Highlighting

Limitations

Since I’m using the free version of the Moz Bar, there are many features that are locked. These include ‘On-page Content Suggestions,’ ‘Page Optimization,’ and ‘Keyword Difficulty.’

MozBar - One Page Suggestions

These other features are extremely useful but are only available with the Moz Pro subscription.

Try the MozBar now!

4. Website SEO Checker - Domain Authority Checker

The Website SEO Checker’s DA Checker is a free tool that can give you a variety of SEO metrics, which you can use, to check the DA from many different sites.

Website SEO Checker

How It Works

After entering your website, and clicking ‘Check,’ you’ll see a list of numbers under a variety of metrics.

Website SEO Checker - Website Authority

Here are what these metrics stand for:

DA: Domain Authority
PA: Page Authority
TB: Moz’s Total Backlinks
QB: Moz’s Quality Backlinks
PQ: Percentage of Quality Backlinks
MT: MozTrust
SS: Spam Score
OS: Off-Page SEO Score
Age: Domain Age
Alexa: Alexa Global Ranking
TC: Alexa Traffic Country
TF: Majestic - Trust Flow
CF: Majestic - Citation Flow
IX: Majestic Number of Indexed URLs
DF: Majestic Do-Follow Backlinks
NF: Majestic No Follow Backlinks

There may be less data on the Website SEO Checker than Moz’ free tools, but the Website SEO Checker doesn’t require any signups or trading of contact information. The Website SEO Checker also aggregates data from Moz, Alexa, and Majestic to give you a good snapshot of your site.

Limitations

Website SEO Checker’s SEO tool is significantly simpler than the Moz tools mentioned above. While the user experience is straightforward, the website’s design seems a bit outdated.

Get started with Website SEO Checker

Free SEO Reporting Tools

Identifying your site’s DA and other competitive SEO metrics are a great start to improving your site’s SEO. But it’s important to where you can improve to boost your SEO score.

Below are 4 free SEO reporting tools that can help you audit your site so you can identify the most critical SEO issues, fix them, and boost your SERP ranks.

1. Site Checker - Website Audit

The Site Checker is an all-in-one toolkit that measures and tracks your SEO performance. While there are 8 different products, their on-page SEO checker is free for all users (no signup required.)

SiteChecker

How It Works

On the ‘On-Page SEO Checker,’ enter your URL. You should see a dashboard with a website score.

SiteChecker - Dashboard

Here, the free crawling option is limited to 150 pages. You need to upgrade your plan if you want to audit your entire website.

The great thing about the site-checker is that it breaks up the errors and issues in three categories. ’Critical errors’ are problems that have the highest impact on your overall SEO. ‘Warnings’ are less impactful, while ‘Notices’ have little or no impact but are still important to be aware of and correct.

If you scroll down, you can have a look at all the problems and toggle between ‘All Issues,’ ‘Critical Errors’ and ‘Warnings.’

SiteChecker - Critical Errors

If you’re not sure of what the issue is, you can click on the ‘What is this and how do I fix it’ to your right. SiteChecker will explain the importance of the issue, how to check the issue, and which pages are affected.

SiteChecker - Further Instructions

If you click on ’View All Affected Pages’ you can see that you’ve now moved from the ‘Site Audit Summary’ to the ‘Site Audit Issues.’

SiteChecker - Issues

Here, you can see which page has these errors. If there’s more than one error, you can see the other tags under the errors column.

If you click on ‘View Page Report,’ you have a summary of the issues on the page, what errors are on the page, and whether you can further optimize your content.

Limitations

While you can use the SiteChecker to audit your site, if you scroll down to explore all your issues, you’ll notice very quickly that you’ll need to upgrade.

SiteChecker - Upgrade required

Furthermore, SiteChecker only crawled 150 pages out of the 73,900 pages found. That’s because free crawling is limited to only 150 pages. Once again, if you want to audit the entire site, you will need to register for a paid subscription.

Get started with SiteChecker

2. Neil Patel - SEO Analyzer

Neil Patel’s SEO Analyzer points out all of the SEO errors on your website. This way, after you fix these issues, you’ll see an improvement in your SEO rankings.

SEOAnalyzer

How It Works

If you type in your website URL and hit ‘Analyze Website,’ you’ll see a dashboard that contains your On-page SEO score, organic monthly traffic, organic keywords, and backlinks.

SEOAnalyzer - Dashboard

If you sign-in with Google, you can gain further keyword suggestions, daily rank tracking, and personalized SEO suggestions.

Here, the SEO Analyzer looks at all the healthy, broken, and problematic pages and divides these issues into 3 categories: critical errors, warning, and recommendations.

SEOAnalyzer - Warnings

It also explores ‘Site Speed’ and shows you how many pages are in the excellent, good, fair, and poor range.

SEOAnalyzer - SiteSpeed

Finally, if you scroll to the bottom, you can see your ‘Top SEO issues.’ You can also click ‘See all issues,’ to view all the problems on your site.

SEOAnalyzer - Top SEO Issues

Limitations

Like SiteChecker, the SEO Analyzer only crawls through 150 pages and not your entire website. If you want to see more errors and suggestions, you’ll need to sign in with Google.

SEOAnalyzer - Limitations

Alternatively, you can opt for the PRO plan, which costs $10 a month.

Get started with SEO Analyzer

3. SEOptimer - SEO Audit and Reporting Tool

The SEOptimer is an SEO reporting tool that can give your website a comprehensive website. It’s recognized as a simple do-it-yourself SEO tool for small business owners and digital agencies.

SEOptimer

How It Works

After entering a URL address, your SEO Audit will appear like this.

SEOptimer - Dashboard

Right away, you can see how your website is performing, and how you stand on five different pillars: SEO, usability, performance, social, and security.

When you scroll down, you’ll first see your SEO results in further detail.

SEOptimer - SEO Results

The SEO Optimer looks at the HTML header, Body Content, Links, and indexing when it comes to SEO.

It goes into quite a lot of depth on key areas, shows you what you’re doing wrong and how you can fix it. An example is ‘Keyword Consistency’.

SEOptimer - Keyword Consistency

While another example is ‘Image Alt Attributes’.

SEOptimer - Image Alt attributes

What I like about the SEOptimer is that, not only do they explore SEO problems, but they look at your website as a whole. For example, they explore ‘Website Usability’.

SEOptimer - Usability

…and ‘Website Performance’.

SEOptimer - Website Performance

They even look into your ‘Social Results’.

SEOptimer - Social Results

And ‘Website Security’.

SEOptimer - Website Security

If you scroll to the bottom, there’s also ‘Recommendations’ for SEO, social, and performance.

SEOptimer - Recommendations

Limitations

I found the SEOptimer’s results to be quite limiting.

For example, if you wanted to download the report as a PDF or embed it on your website, you’d need to sign up for their plans. The White Label and Embedding plan cost $59/ month.

SEOptimer - Upgrade

If you wanted to review any child pages, you’d need to sign up as well.

SEOptimer - Child Pages

There are certain features that require signup to the Free Trial in order to explore further, for example, inspecting the number of backlinks.

SEOptimer - Backlinks

If you want to follow recommendations with guides for your CMS, you’ll also need to sign up. SEOptimer’s plans are however relatively affordable, with the cheapest plan starting from $19 per month.

Get started with SEOptimer

4. WooRank - Instant SEO Checker and Audit Tool

WooRank is an instant SEO checker and Audit Tool. Here, you can track and analyze your site’s data for SEO, social media, usability, and other critical factors.

WooRank

How It Works

After typing your website URL, you’ll see a website review.

WooRank - Dashboard

If you scroll down, there’s a ‘Marketing Checklist’ that can help you prioritize the issues found in your SEO audit. If you need assistance, you can also click on a ‘Certified Expert’ below.

WooRank - Marketing Checklist

Next, we have the ‘On-page Audit’, with content being the first section. Here, the spiraling circles under each subsection (e.g. Title tag) represent the impact, while the three screws to the right, tell you how easy the problem is to solve.

WooRank - Content

If you click on the subsection, a dropdown will appear showing you what the problem is and how you can fix it.

WooRank - Meta Description

WooRank also evaluates your website in terms of ‘Indexing’…

WooRank - Indexing

… and ‘Mobile Responsiveness.’

WooRank - Mobile

Like SEOptimer, WooRank also looks at your site’s structured data, security, performance, social profiles, and backlinks.

In addition to these factors, they also give you an idea of how much traffic you’re getting, how you’re ranking, and where your visitors are located.

WooRank - Traffic

Limitations

Like SEOptimer, WooRank gives you a lot of additional data on top of your SEO needs. While they can also give you further data related to traffic, Google analytics, mobile visits, backlinks, Facebook insights, and custom keywords, you’ll need to sign up for a paid account to access these features.

The Pro plan starts at $59.99/month. You can sign up for 1 project and can track 50 words.

Try WooRank for Free

Conclusion

SEO tools are a big must-have when it comes to optimizing your website’s SEO.

These tools can help you see how you’re ranking in comparison to your competitors, what current problems are dragging your site, and how you can improve so you can boost your ranking on the SERPs.

But SEO tools can be quite expensive, especially if you’re starting out.

That’s why you should get started with these 8 free Domain Authority and SEO Reporting Tools. They’ll help you see how you’re ranking in comparison to your competitors, identify the current problems in your site, and show you how you can fix these mistakes.

What are you waiting for?

Start today and begin ranking on SERPs!

Top 8 SEO Trends in 2020 and how to use them

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Search Engine Optimization has always been a crucial part of achieving success online.

Creating a blog or website isn’t enough to thrive in today’s digital landscape.

Once you’ve built the perfect hub for your online content, you also need the right strategy to attract more visitors to your door. That’s where search optimization comes in.

Unfortunately for newbies to the world of SEO, the rules are constantly changing.

The strategies that might have worked five years ago are no longer relevant today. What’s worse, if you’re unlucky enough to choose the wrong solutions for your SEO campaigns, you could even risk a drop in your ranking or a Google penalization.

Fortunately, we’ve put together this list of 2020 SEO trends to help you out.

The following insights will show you which Google search trends are relevant for this year, and how you can make the most of them going forward.

SEO Trends

SEO Trend #1: BERT
SEO Trend #2: Featured Snippets
SEO Trend #3: Websites Optimize for Voice
SEO Trend #4: Mobile UX Dominates Rankings
SEO Trend #5: Secure Websites Are Crucial
SEO Trend #6: Leveraging Influencers for SEO
SEO Trend #7: High-Quality Content is Still Crucial
SEO Trend #8: Build Your Brand
Are You Ready for The Google Search Trends?

SEO Trend #1: BERT

Back in 2019, Google launched a new algorithm: BERT.

Naturally, the algorithm gained a lot of attention as experts around the world struggled to optimize their sites for a new set of rules.

However, rather than focusing all of your attention on a specific algorithm and how it works, it might be better to learn about BERT, and then consider what it means for your long-term strategy. For instance, the BERT algorithm is all about understanding the topics and context behind search queries.

Google is using BERT to make sure that searchers online can get the kind of content that’s important to them in the search results.

Before and after BERT

So, how do you take advantage of this strategy?

You focus on writing content based on user intent.

Ask yourself, what do your customers really need when they’re coming to your website? When someone searches for “digital marketing” in relation to your site, are they looking for digital marketing tips, insights into the latest news, or a digital marketing tool like SEMRush?

Knowing what your customers actually need from your content will help you to reach the right audience and rank higher with the search engines.

SEO Trend #2: Featured Snippets

Another crucial consideration when it comes to Google search trends in 2020, is featured snippets.

Featured snippets are brief summaries of answers to specific search queries. They’re displayed at the top of the SERP results, above organic and paid ads.

Featured snippets have been around for a few years now. However, we’re only beginning to see their true value. Almost half of all search results end up with no clicks because customers get the answers required directly from the featured snippet. Indeed, the featured snippet gets more traffic than the first organic search result according to Ahrefs.

If you want to overcome the challenges of the featured snippets, then you need to aim to show up in this environment. That means using more question-based search queries and answers in your content. You should also use questions from the “People Also Ask” space on Google to inspire your content.

SEO Trend #3: Websites Optimize for Voice

Before the growth of smartphones, people searched for the content that they needed by typing specific words into search engine boxes on their computers. Keywords for SEO were born from this strategy.

With the growing use of mobile devices and smart speakers, however, voice searches are becoming increasingly popular among all users. By 2022, experts predict that 55% of all householders will have a smart speaker in the US.

So, how do you make sure that your Google search trends are taking advantage of voice search? It’s easier than you think. Start by thinking about what your customers are likely to say when they search for specific questions online.

Your content and keywords need to become more conversational. Rather than just ranking for “SEO trends”, try ranking for “What are the latest SEO trends?” Tools like Ahrefs can offer helpful insight into the questions that your customers are already asking when they use their smart speakers:

Ahrefs questions insights

You can also make clever use of appropriate H2 and H3 headings and phrase those as a question followed up by a to-the-point answer paragraph.

SEO Trend #4: Mobile UX Dominates Rankings

For years now, we’ve known that Google search trends have been heading towards a mobile focus.

Customers have increasingly begun to search for what they need through their smartphones. This is particularly true in the world of local search. However, in 2020, any website that doesn’t have an excellent experience to offer on mobile could lose its visitors.

4 in 5 customers conduct local searches on Google using their mobile devices. So, how do you make sure that you’re prepared for this mobile-oriented environment?

You can use Google’s handy Mobile-Friendly test to check how mobile-friendly your site and pages are.

Google's Mobile-Friendly Test

So, begin with the back-end of your website. Make sure that your pages are easy to use on any device. That means quick loading times, even on mobile, and navigation or buttons that are easy to click and use.

At the same time, don’t ignore the front-end! Responsive design is key here. Your website needs to adapt layout, UI items and other content to different screen sizes across various devices and adjust accordingly.

While you’re at it, also consider focusing more of your attention on local searches if you have a nearby audience. For instance, rank for “Digital consultant near me” or “Where’s my closest consultant?”

SEO Trend #5: Secure Websites Are Crucial

When it comes to SEO trends, it’s easy to overlook things like user experience and user safety. Companies get so caught up in ranking for keywords, that they forget about the importance of an excellent experience online.

However, if your customers don’t feel safe visiting your website, then they’re not going to stick around. That’s particularly true now that Google is labelling all websites without an SSL certificate with the “Not Secure” brand.

Google states that HTTPS helps to prevent outsiders from tampering with the connections between your users’ browsers and your websites. Gaining your own SSL certificate is an excellent way to put your customer’s minds at ease. It adds this handy padlock to all of your URLs:

HTTPS browser padlock

Other ways that you can ramp up the security on your website include:

Add security certificates to your website: If you’re accepting transactions on your site, a “verified by visa” label could significantly improve your customer’s experience.
Reviews and testimonials: Comments from other customers that are happy with your product or service make a real difference to your trustworthiness.
Use the right checkout process: Make sure that your checkout experience is quick, seamless, and packed with the right payment methods for your customers.

SEO Trend #6: Leveraging Influencers for SEO

Building the trustworthiness of your website through reviews and SSL certificates can earn you the respect of both your customers and the Google algorithms. That’s because Google search trends often revolve around the concept of EAT today.

EAT stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness.

So, how else can you show Google that you are what you EAT?

One option could be to take advantage of influencers. 17% of businesses spend more than half of their marketing budget on influencers today.

In a world where customers are frequently overwhelmed by ads, influencers offer an experience that feels genuine and authentic. With the right influencers, you can increase your visibility and amplify your content reach. At the same time, you highlight the authority of your site.

After all, if you can convince someone influential to work with your business, then you must be a worthwhile brand. Focus on harnessing the impact of influencers that already connect with your target audience, like @Dove does here:

Leverage influencers

SEO Trend #7: High-Quality Content is Still Crucial

While there are some online ads that can drive business, the truth is that the best way you can reach your audience is through the right content. 91% of total ad-spend online today is viewed for less than one second.

While quality original content might not be one of the newest SEO trends, it is one of the most essential. You need to ensure that you’re speaking to your audience about the topics that they’re genuinely interested in if you want to thrive.

So, how can you do that?

One option could be to start by checking out your competitors. Tools like the MozBar for SEO can help you to see what kind of keywords your competition is ranking for. This gives you an insight into both the topics that you should be covering and the keywords and phrases your competitors might have missed.

MozBar toolbar for SEO

Another option is to experiment with different types of content.

While written blogs and articles are still excellent, video has a massive impact on your audience too. 6 out of 10 people say that they would rather watch online videos than their television.

Make sure that you’re creating videos that speak to your audience, using the language that they use naturally and the right tone too. Additionally, think about how you can optimize your video descriptions and titles for the search engines. Keywords and properly-managed meta descriptions are vital for video content.

It’s worth noting that Google owns YouTube, so having your brand show up there with relevant keywords is likely to have a positive impact on your brand importance and ranking in the SERP’s.

SEO Trend #8: Build Your Brand

Finally, one of the biggest Google search trends that we’re likely to see in 2020 is also one that many companies are bound to overlook.

If you want to be successful in today’s digital landscape, then you can’t just write the right content. You need to connect with your audience on a deeper, more emotional level. That means building a successful and engaging brand. Remember, linkless mentions are becoming increasingly important in 2020 SEO trends. Both Google and Bing are using mentions of your company on social media and digital forums to determine your ranking.

That means that although building quality link profiles is still relevant this year; you also need to get your customers and other people talking about your brand in different ways.

Use social listening tools like Sprout Social to ensure that you’re generating the right buzz on your social media channels. Get active on platforms like Reddit and Quora to answer questions that your customers have, and direct them back to your website in the meantime.

A big part of the SEO trends that your business will be pursuing this year comes down to making sure that you spread your company’s name as far and wide as possible. The more Google sees people talking about you on other websites, the more expertise and authority you will be seen to have.

Are You Ready for The Google Search Trends?

It’s impossible to ignore the importance of SEO trends in any industry. No matter who you are and what you’re trying to sell, you need to make sure that your websites are reaching both your customers and the search engines. However, many companies can forget that there’s more to SEO than just using keywords. You also need to optimize your content for your users in a range of other ways too.

The 2020 SEO trends covered above should give you a good insight into where search engine optimization is heading this year, and what you need to do to stay ahead of the curve.

However, don’t forget to keep an eye on your own personal SEO trends too. Using the right analytical tools can give you an insight into which campaigns are driving the best results for your search strategy.

For more tips on how to make the most of your online business in 2020, stay tuned with Why Websites Work!

Landing pages that convert: LeadPages vs GetResponse vs MailerLite in-depth review

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

If you want to capture leads online, you’re better off using a landing page. Landing pages are at the heart of any solid email marketing strategy.

A landing page is a website or sometimes just a single webpage that is distinct from your homepage. Landing pages have a single purpose; to follow up on any offer you promised.

For example, a landing page can give out a special discount, provide free content or share an informative guide. The offer is given in exchange for the prospect’s contact information.

Digital landing page - Source: Hubspot.com

If you’re interested in creating landing pages for your business, the fastest and easiest way is to use a landing page builder.

To help you out, I’ve put together an in-depth LeadPages vs GetResponse vs MailerLite Review, so you can see what the most popular landing page builders in the market have to offer.

Below, I’ll explore their key features so you can gain a detailed understanding of each landing page builder and pick the right one for your needs.

Let’s begin!

1. Landing Page Platform Builders
2. Landing Page Builder
3. Design and Templates
4. Conversion Tools
5. Advertising Features
6. Support, Resources, and Integrations
- LeadPages
- GetResponse
- MailerLite
- Verdict
7. Pricing
Conclusion

1. Landing Page Platform Builders

What Is LeadPages?

LeadPages is a lead-generation platform that allows you to create amazing landing pages with their templates and easy to use drag-and-drop editor. Their suite of lead generation tools also includes pop-up forms and alert bars, which can help boost landing page conversion rates.

LeadPages HomePage

What Is GetResponse?

GetResponse is an all-in-one marketing tool that hosts a suite of email marketing and online campaign management tools. These tools include a landing page creator, which comes with mobile-responsive templates, a drag-and-drop editor, and a variety of other lead generation tools.

What is MailerLite?

MailerLite is an email marketing platform that can help you build and manage email campaigns, automate email marketing efforts, and design landing pages. The landing page feature is geared towards helping you grow your list of subscribers.

2. Landing Page Builder

LeadPages

Creating a landing page with LeadPages is easy!

Answer Quick Questionnaire

To begin, LeadPages gives you the option to create a landing page that can generate leads, make sales, or perform other functions like build brand awareness.

Afterward, LeadPages will ask you what you’re offering in exchange for contact information. If it’s none of the options above, you can jump straight to ‘Browse All Templates’ or ‘Start with a Blank Page’.

Then, you can select a layout you like best.

After answering these questions, you enter the page builder, where you can further customize your selected design.

Page Builder User-Interface

When it comes to LeadPages’ page builder, you can find your menu to your left. The menu is where you make changes to the layout and sections. To the right is your landing page, where you see all the changes updated in real-time.

You can add widgets like headlines, text, images, videos, buttons, forms, lines, or additional space between the sections.

You can also change the page’s style, by selecting the ‘styles’ button on the left. Here, you can customize the font, page background, page width, favicon, and even enable custom CSS.

To change the template’s colors into your brand colors, click on a button or any section with color and add your brand colors.

Once you’re finished customizing your landing page, click on ‘Preview’ to see what the page looks like before hitting ‘Publish’.

GetResponse

When you enter GetResponse’s dashboard, select ’Create Landing Page.’

Select Template From Gallery

Instead of a quick questionnaire, GetResponse will bring you to their Landing Page templates.

Once you select a template, you’ll meet GetResponse’s landing page builder.

Page Builder User-Interface

Here, on the right, you can access the menu and drag-and-drop desired items onto your landing page.

While the large open space makes it easy to edit the landing page, it’s hard to use GetResponse’s landing page builder. For example, on the right, there isn’t much information regarding each of the symbols. You’ll need to hover over each of them to know what they are.

GetResponse, does, however, have a convenient 24/7 chat bar on the left. This way, if you run into any difficulties, you can talk to someone right away.

MailerLite

With MailerLite, while you can create landing pages, these pages are geared towards capturing email signups. So if you want your landing page to sell a specific product, collect registrations for an event, or even send out a thankyou note, you should consider the above options.

Select Template From Gallery

To begin, choose a template from the gallery.

Page Builder User-Interface

With MailerLite’s landing page builder, to the right, you have your menu. You can visualize all your changes on the left. With MailerLite, you can add content, buttons, forms, and other sections to your page.

You can add these features by using MailerLite’s drag-and-drop editor. If you want to edit the text or images, click on the ‘Section’ button, and make your edits on the right.

One thing I liked about MailerLite’s page builder is that I can edit the success page. The success page is the landing page’s appearance once the prospect adds their contact information. GetResponse offers a success page too, however, it was easier to use MailerLite’s Page Builder.

Verdict

Overall, LeadPages’ page builder was the easiest, most flexible, and intuitive option out of the three. I found GetResponse’s page builder to be rigid and not so user-friendly. Furthermore, it took more time to create a landing page with GetResponse since the lack of the questionnaire at the beginning, made it difficult to select the right template for the right purpose. While I enjoyed using MailerLite’s drag-and-drop editor, I found that the landing pages were too limited as they were focused on capturing emails.

3. Design and Templates

LeadPages

LeadPages offers hundreds of stunning template options.

If you click on the ‘All Types Dropdown,’ you can filter the templates by category. If you’re not sure where to start, select your category (e.g author, event, or checkout) and go from there.

They’re also sorted by conversion rate, so you know which template performs the best.

GetResponse

GetResponse also offers a large variety of templates. There is a column on the left, where you can choose a template from your desired category.

You can also sort the templates by date added, popularity, and conversion rate.

At first glance, GetResponse’s templates appeared nice, professional, and modern. But the quality of these templates quickly drops, especially the ones designed a while ago.

When I sorted the landing pages by popularity, I found that the most popular template was the plain templates.

GetResponse can be quite rigid when it comes to their templates, so perhaps, starting with a plain template is best for most people who are using their landing page builder.

MailerLite

MailerLite has a significantly smaller selection of landing page templates, approximately 48. But unlike GetResponse, these templates are all modern, high-quality, and look professionally designed.

On the left, next to ‘showing,’ you can select landing page templates from different categories.

An interesting feature I liked was their Preview Option. You can view these templates in detail while browsing other template options. You don’t have to go back-and-forth from the template gallery.

MailerLite is great if your landing page is purely focused on collecting leads via email. But if you want more options, range, and flexibility, their templates are very limiting.

Verdict

Between the three, I liked LeadPages’ quality, quantity, and variety the most. LeadPages has stunning templates that make it super easy to create professional landing pages in any industry. I was disappointed to find very outdated designs in GetResponse’s gallery and found their templates too rigid and restrictive. While I liked MailerLite’s designs, their template gallery was too small. Some categories only had 1 or 2 designs. MailerLite’s landing pages were also only focussed on lead generation for email marketing.

4. Conversion Tools

LeadPages

Pop-Up Forms

You can implement three different types of pop-ups. These include a standard pop-up, a timed pop-up, and an exit pop-up.

Exit pop-ups appear when visitors are moving their mouse in a direction that looks like they will leave the website. For example, if your customer moves the mouse towards the upper right corner of the browser window, the exit pop-up will appear.

Alert Bars

Alert Bars are great ways to boost conversions in a non-intrusive manner. There are several different alert bars you can pick from.

There’s the opt-in bar layout, where you can collect opt-ins from visitors.

With the button layout, you can send visitors to an external URL.

There’s also the text bar alert option. This is a great choice if you just want to get a message and announcement out.

You can also customize your alert bar’s position, text, formatting, and background color.

Opt-in-Texts

You can also invite your audience to opt-in via text message. If your landing page has a phone number and the visitors text the code you promote, they can opt into your email lists via SMS messaging.

Trigger Link

Your prospects can also opt into your email lists and webinars without leaving their inboxes. All they need to do is to click on your trigger link, and they’ll be registered instantly.

Countdown Timer

With LeadPages, you can also include a countdown timer to indicate scarcity which can help boost signups and sales.

A/B Split Testing

You can also A/B Split-test your landing pages to see if you can increase overall conversion rates. You can split-test headlines, copy styles, background images, call-to-action buttons and many, many more.

Real-time Analytics

If you’re looking for data on your landing pages and pop-ups, you can see how your pages are doing from a birds-eye-view under the ListView function.

You can also view analytics for each landing page and pop-up, by clicking on any number in the ListView. At the top, you can find a page summary that features the total counts of views, unique views, conversions, conversion rate, and earnings.

You’ll also find a graph that shows you your views, unique views, conversions, or conversion rate performance overtime.

You can also view these changes on an hourly or daily basis.

Third-Party Analytics

If you want more data from your landing pages, you can use third-party tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel.

Leadmeter

The Leadmeter is a unique tool that can predict your page’s performance before you hit ‘Publish’. It works by analyzing all the content on your page and predicting its performance.

If you score poorly, the Leadmeter will provide step-by-step recommendations on how you can optimize each element on your page.

GetResponse

Pop-Up Forms

With GetResponse, you can have timed pop-up forms, scroll pop-up forms (a form that appears when visitors scroll down your landing page), and exit pop-up forms.

You can also create a pop-up that provides users with free downloadable content in exchange for their contact information.

Alert Bars

Like LeadPages, GetResponse allows you to have a fixed bar that captures emails. You can position it at the top or the bottom of the page as well.

Countdown Timer

You can also drag-and-drop countdown timers on your landing page.

A/B Split Testing

It’s also easy to A/B Split your website. All you need to do is create another ‘Variation Tab’ at the top, so you have both ‘Variation A’ and ‘Variation B’.

To test these pages, all you need to do is to click on ‘Next’, toggle ‘Publish’ to ‘on’, and hit ‘A/B Test’.

Analytics

To access landing page data, go to the GetResponse Landing Pages Dashboard. Here, you’ll see three key metrics: visits, contacts, and subscription rates.

Third-Party Analytics

You can plug into third-party tools to gain deeper analytics about your landing pages, like integrating with Google Analytics.

Google Analytics can give you more information about your page views, sessions, average time on page, bounce rate, conversion rate, channels, and referrals. You can also have a deeper look at your audience.

MailerLite

Since MailerLite is an email marketing platform, its conversion tools for landing pages are significantly more limited than LeadPages and GetResponse.

Countdown Timers

MailerLite allows you to drag-and-drop countdown timers anywhere on your landing page.

Other Key Features

You can include videos, testimonials, surveys, quizzes, events, Instagram feeds, and even ask for customer feedback.

A/B Testing

You can test up to 5 different combinations and split the traffic between the different landing pages.

Analytics and Metrics

With MailerLite, you can also track the results of your campaign. MailerLite gives you metrics on the number of subscribers that opted-in, page views, and conversion rates.

You can use these metrics to compare your A/B tests or all your landing pages to see which one performed the best.

Verdict

If you’re looking for a landing page builder with a lot of conversion tools, look to LeadPages. My favorite feature was the Leadmeter since it would let me know whether I was on the right path. If I wasn’t, it’d show me how to correct it. GetResponse had a variety of conversion tools too, but I didn’t like their user-interface and I found the designs of the pop-ups forms to be quite outdated. While I liked the user-experience MailerLite offered, they had too few features.

5. Advertising Features

LeadPages

Facebook Pixel

When you create a Facebook or Instagram ad inside of LeadPages, LeadPages places your Facebook Pixel automatically. This makes it much easier to track your results and optimize your ads.

Pre-Populating Content

LeadPages also pre-populates your Facebook and Instagram ads using content from your landing page. This way, your ads and landing pages are consistent with one another, which can help boost conversion and opt-in rates. All you need to do is to customize the ad to fit your needs.

For example, here’s a Facebook ad and landing page from Facebook Strategist Jackie Ellis.

GetResponse

Facebook Pixel

With GetResponse, you can also add the Facebook pixel ID to your landing pages. You’ll need to identify your Facebook Pixel first, and then paste the 15 digit code into your GetResponse’s Landing page settings.

Create Ads Within the Platform

You can create Facebook Ads within GetResponse since it’s an all-in-one marketing platform.

Here, you can integrate your Facebook ad and landing page seamlessly together, since it’s through one platform. It also makes the process of managing the ad and landing page more efficient.

MailerLite

Unfortunately, MailerLite doesn’t have too many advertising features since its focus is on capturing, segmenting, and automating your email marketing efforts.

Facebook Integration

MailerLite does, however, have a feature that allows you to integrate your landing page with Facebook.

Source

Here, you can create a form in Facebook pages via the landing pages feature. Facebook integration, however, only works on Facebook Business Pages.

Verdict

LeadPages is the most intuitive tool when it comes to add-on advertising features. However, if you’re looking for more advertising features that go beyond landing pages, you should explore GetResponse. GetResponse is an all-in-one marketing tool. While their advertising features for landing pages are somewhat limited, they have a lot of other advertising tools you can use. I wouldn’t recommend MailerLite’s advertising features since there were too few, to begin with.

6. Support, Resources, and Integrations

LeadPages

Support Team

LeadPages has a dedicated support team with priority given to advanced subscribers. If you’re under the standard plan, you’ll need to rely on chat support which operates 9-5 pm central time on the weekdays. Alternatively, you can open a support ticket and wait for their staff to get back to you.

Resources

LeadPage’s Help Center was extremely helpful, especially since they had step-by-step instructions that contained images, GIFs, and videos. They also have a resources tab that features a resource library, a blog, webinar, podcast, and customer stories.

Integrations

Here, you can integrate with numerous apps that are compatible with LeadPages or via Zapier. With Zapier, you can integrate with over 1400 different web apps.

GetResponse

Support Team

GetResponse is the first ESP to provide 24/7 chat support. They’re also available on the weekends (great for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and hustlers!). They also offer support in 7 different languages.

Resources

Their Help Center has detailed blogs, but I was disappointed to see that their answers didn’t have much visual content. They also didn’t have any video tutorials as well.

They do, however, offer additional resources like blogs, whitepapers, infographics, and courses. Unfortunately, when I looked into these resources, some of the articles and infographics were outdated. The video content was also of poorer quality than LeadPages.

Integrations

GetResponse can integrate with more than 130 different apps.

MailerLite

Support Team

MailerLite offers both email and live chat support. However, their live chat is only available for those with a premium plan.

Resources

MailerLite’s support section is helpful and it’s filled with visual and detailed video tutorials.

They also have a comprehensive guide to email marketing and host regular webinars. While their blogs and guides are detailed and interesting, the content is geared towards email marketing rather than lead generation.

Integrations

You can integrate MailerLite with more than 100+ apps.

Verdict

If you need support setting up your landing pages, I recommend GetResponse. Having 24/7 live chat support is extremely useful and handy. It’s definitely what sets it apart the competition here. If you’re confident to navigate landing pages yourself and can troubleshoot problems easily by following a simple guide, try LeadPages or MailerLite. They both have very extensive Help Centers.

7. Pricing

LeadPages

LeadPages has 4 plans.

The price increases as the number of domains you connect with grows.

Starter Plan: $19/month
Standard Plan: $37/month
Pro Plan: $79/month
Advanced Plan: $321/month

GetResponse

GetResponse also has 4 plans.

The price increases as your email list size and demand for marketing features grows.

Basic: $15/month
Plus: $49/month
Professional: $99/month
Enterprise: $1,199/month

MailerLite

With MailerLite, there are no fixed plans.

Your monthly cost increases as your subscriber count grows.

If you have a few subscribers, you pay very little. But as your subscribers increase, you’ll pay a lot more. For example, if you have 600,000 email subscribers, you’ll have to pay almost $2,000 per month.

Conclusion

In conclusion, LeadPages, GetResponse, and MailerLite have both similar and different features when it comes to creating landing pages. Each platform has its strengths and weaknesses. It’s best if you choose a platform based on your budget, requirements, and needs.

If you’re a small business owner, startup founder, or digital marketer for a small company, I recommend signing up with GetResponse. GetResponse’s landing page features are not as intuitive and easy-to-use as LeadPages, but it’s significantly cheaper, especially if you consider all the tools included in a package. It’s a great option for anyone who’s starting on a budget.

Alternatively, you can use MailerLite, since it’s free to start. But MailerLite can quickly get expensive as you scale. Furthermore, the features available for landing pages are quite limited.

If you’re investing a lot of money into lead generation, and you’re going to be using landing pages often, go with LeadPages. LeadPages isn’t cheap, considering it’s a tool mainly for landing pages. But if lead generation is an important part of your sales and marketing strategy, it’s a worthwhile investment.

If you’re not sure which option is the best fit for you, you can try LeadPages, GetResponse, and MailerLite for free.

I hope this in-depth LeadPages vs GetResponse vs MailerLite review has been helpful! If you have any other questions, please feel free to comment below, and I’ll get back to you shortly.

Best ways to make money online without risk

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s face it, for most people, the option of making money online would be a dream come true. We all love the idea of being able to leave our 9-to-5 routines behind in favor of something more convenient that works around our schedule.

However, for many years, articles about how to make money online for free often turned out to be scams or cons, tricking people into giving up their money in pursuit of an easy life.

While it’s fair to say that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, the digital world has changed drastically over the years. These days, there’s an increasingly large number of opportunities online for people who want to make money from the comfort of their own home.

And there are plenty of legit ways of making money online these days.

The key to success is making sure that you do your research, before you begin trying to earn. Fortunately, we’ve done the hard work for you. Today, we’re going to look at some of the best ways of making money online, without risking your livelihood.

1. Leverage the Gig-Economy
2. Sell Products Online
3. Earn from Affiliate Marketing
4. Get Artistic
5. Become a Virtual Assistant
6. Try Your Hand as a Consultant
7. Become an Influencer
Can You Make Money Online?

1. Leverage the Gig-Economy

The gig economy is one of the easiest and most popular ways to make money outside of the regular employment space. Essentially, it provides today’s ambitious individuals with a quick and easy way to earn more cash from home, using the skills they already have.

Whether you want to earn money creating unique content, or you’re planning on putting your skills to the test in the web development world, there’s something for everyone. For instance, here are some of the sites where you can check out the gig economy for yourself:

Task rabbit: This is an app where you can offer your services part-time to people in your area. Tasks can include everything from putting up shelves to making simple repairs.
Craigslist: The go-to site for countless people looking to make money online, Craigslist allows you to sell things, rent out space, and more. However, it can be a little shady.
Fiverr: Designed to provide people with a simple place where they can list low-cost virtual gigs, Fiverr is a great place for selling services online.
Mechanical Turk: Designed by Amazon, this is a website where you can make money doing human-intelligence tasks. You’ll be paid a small fee for any task, and you’ll need to do a lot of work to make a substantial income.
Upwork: One of the most popular sites in the gig economy, Upwork allows you to sell skills ranging from website design, to video voiceovers.

Upwork.com - gig-economy gigs!

2. Sell Products Online

Maybe you’d prefer to sell things online, rather than services.

You don’t necessarily need to go the full eCommerce route if you decide to sell products on the web. You can choose whether you’d prefer to sell through a dropshipping strategy – which means other people ship your products for you.

Alternatively, you can think about using Shopify, or WooCommerce to build a website where you source items that your customers might want and sell them for a profit. Speaking of buying and selling, websites like Flippa allow you to buy and sell virtual environments for cash.

Building your own website to sell products online can take a lot of time and effort. Even if you opt for something like selling creative items through a marketplace like Etsy, you’ve still got a lot of work to do. As well as either making or sourcing products to sell, you’ll also need to market your business to potential buyers too!

Etsy.com

3. Earn from Affiliate Marketing

Speaking of marketing, most companies in the digital world thrive on promotion. If you have a knack for convincing other people to buy products that you’ve tested out and approve of, then you might be able to earn cash through affiliate marketing.

With an affiliate marketing strategy, you partner up with other businesses and brands. Through your own website or blog, you can convince other people to purchase the products that those companies are selling. You can mention a product on a blog and link to it using a special URL.

The key here is to keep it relevant and don’t use affiliates that have nothing to do with your content and are unrelated to your niche.

Every time someone uses your special link to make a purchase, you’ll earn some money called a commission. Ultimately, you’re unlikely to make a fortune through affiliate marketing straight away. However, as you begin to gain more followers and customers online, you can quickly make a lot of cash. The good news is that there are tons of places where you can sign up for affiliate marketing too, a few of the bigger ones are Clickbank, Share-a-Sale and Commission Junction.

Clickbank.com

Another point to make in relation to affiliate marketing is to be honest. Don’t try and flog products that you don’t believe in or that do not solve a specific use-case as well as another product. Ultimately that level of honesty will result in more loyal readers and content consumers.

The other great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to worry about sourcing products and fulfilling sales on your own. You can simply use products that already exist to make money. This can save you a lot of time and effort if you don’t want to jump into the full eCommerce world.

4. Get Artistic

If you’re a creative person, then there are a lot of ways that you can make money online. When it comes to figuring out how to make money online for free, you might consider making your own products to sell on marketplaces like Etsy to be quite an expensive process. After all, you need to consider the cost of supplies and labor.

However, you can keep costs relatively low by selling other creative endeavors.

For instance, if you usually make digital designs in your free time for fun, then you can use a service like Café Press to sell your designs on the platform. This can include creating everything from logos for companies, to website pages and more.

If you’re more of a part-time photographer than a digital designer, then there are ways you can make some extra money that way too. For instance, sites like Fotolia or ShutterStock allow you to sell the photos that you’ve already taken for stock photography usage.

Fotolia.com

Notably, you will need to give other companies and individuals the right to use your photography however they choose.

The good thing about building up your creative portfolio this way, is that it can be the start of earning a nice bit of passive income on the side!

5. Become a Virtual Assistant

Not everyone wants to launch their own business online.

Sometimes, the best ways to make money online are also some of the simplest. For instance, if you’ve got a lot of free time after your typical job, then you could consider using that time to sell your services as a virtual assistant.

A VA works remotely, dealing with things like managing clients, arranging travel plans, and even scheduling appointments for clients. Virtual assistants are experts in making sure that their clients can get more done in their daily schedule, with support in everything from editing and internet research, to bookkeeping and blog management.

Zirtual.com - Virtual Assistant platform

Zirtual is one of the more popular virtual assistant options on the market today. With Zirtual, you sign up to be an assistant to a busy individual, who will send you tasks to do, like writing emails. Your base pay will start at around $11 an hour.

6. Try Your Hand as a Consultant

Do you have a skill in something that’s so profound, you would call yourself an expert?

Perhaps you’re incredibly talented at digital marketing, after years of working in the industry. One option could be to make money by creating virtual courses that people can take to learn your skills. However, this option can require a lot of extra time and effort.

A more convenient option could be to sell your services as a consultant instead. To work as a consultant in a particular niche, you’ll need to spend some time building your reputation online.

Usually, this means making the effort to write regular blog posts, and articles, or post videos on the web. You’ll also need a powerful social presence where you can share your knowledge.

The more you develop your reputation through things like content creation and networking, the more you’ll be able to convince people that you can give them value by sharing your insights with them.

This allows you to sell your services as a consultant by the hour.

7. Become an Influencer

Finally, speaking of using your reputation to make money, you could also think about making cash as an influencer. There’s more to earning from home than being able to make money writing online. If you can collect a following of dedicated and passionate customers, then you could become an influencer too.

Companies like Upfluence allow you to register yourself as an influencer online in a particular niche. You’ll need to choose an industry that you’ll want to get involved in based on your knowledge and following in a specific area. Sectors like health and beauty are often very profitable.

Upfluence.com

Though it takes time to build a large enough following that you can convince people that they want to work with you – this can be a valuable way to make money online. The more people you can get to follow you on your blog, Facebook, or Instagram, the more big-name brands will want to pay you to sponsor their products.

Basically, when you’re paid to be an influencer, you casually suggest that your followers should check out an item or service that’s aligned with your chosen niche. Your approval of that product helps the company to gain more sales, which means that you may money.

Can You Make Money Online?

Ultimately, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to finding the best ways to make money online. Some people will prefer to sell their services part-time in the gig economy. Other people might want to follow their dreams of becoming an entrepreneur and decide to design a company online.

The good news is that the digital world has made it easier for all of us to begin pursuing additional sources of income that go beyond the typical nine-to-five routine.

However, before you start jumping into any method of making money online, it’s important to ensure that you understand exactly what you’re getting into.

Although there are a lot of opportunities for earning cash on the web, not all of them are legitimate, and it isn’t always easy to separate the cons from the truly valuable opportunities.

Before you sign up for any strategy, remember:

Do your research: Find out as much as you can about the money-making opportunity. Read objective reviews and speak to other people who have taken the same route if you can.
Speak to the experts: If you’re not sure what you’re going to need to do to start making cash online, talk to the company you want to sign up with, or speak to an accountant or business professional for more guidance. There are plenty of people out there that can help you.
If something seems too good to be true, it is: Don’t fall victim to scams that tell you that they can help you to make millions online in exchange for a one-off payment. These strategies might seem exciting, but they’re often fraudulent.

How will you be making money online this year? If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below!

Why Websites Work

The Ultimate Email Marketing Guide For Beginners in 2020

Ultimate Email Marketing Guide

1. Email Marketing 101

What is Email Marketing?

Benefits of Email Marketing

How to Get Started

2. How to Build an Email List

Include Opt-in Forms On Your Site

Produce Lead Magnets

Offer Content Upgrades

Install Exit Intent Pop-Ups

3. Choosing an Email Service

Get Response

MailerLite

ConvertKit

LeadPages

MailChimp

Aweber

4. Boost Open Rates

Send a Fantastic Welcome Email

Optimize Subject Title

Optimize the Time You’re Sending Out Emails

Follow the 80/20 Rule

5. Write Amazing Copy

Email Content Newsletter

Special Offer

Major Announcements

Blog Post Promotion

6. Ensure Your Emails Are Read

Remove Non-Openers

Keep Spam Complaints To A Minimum

7. Segment and Automate Email Campaigns

Collect the Right Type of Data

Organize Your Subscribers

Customize Your Messages

Create Autoresponder Sequences

Conclusion

Best Video Editing Software on Windows and on Mac

Best Video Editing Software

DaVinci Resolve (Studio)

Lightworks

Openshot

Avidemux

iMovie

Kdenlive

Adobe Premiere Pro

Final Cut Pro X

Adobe Premiere Elements

Corel Video Studio Ultimate

VideoPad

Which Video Editing Software is Right For You?

5 Things To Consider When Choosing a WordPress Hosting Provider

WordPress Hosting

1. Speed

How Important is Site Speed?

How Your Host Impacts Speed

Comparing the Speed of Each Host

1. Online Reviews

2. Specific Reviews, Other Tests and Experiments

2. Support Quality

What Level Of Support Do You Need?

Comparing the Support From Each Host

Metrics to Evaluate Customer Support

1. Customer Reviews

2. Other Tests and Experiments

3. Craft Your Own Experiment

3. Security

How Important is Site Security?

What Security Features Do You Need?

Comparing the Security Features From Each Host

4. Price

Price Ranges and Hosting Plans

Factors That Influence Price

Why the Most Expensive Option Isn’t Always the Best

5. Additional Features

Email Hosting

Which providers offer email hosting?

Staging Environment

Which providers offer a staging environment?