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amigoreviews · 5 years ago

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How to Install a premium WordPress theme

This will be another newbie, friendly guide on how to install a premium WordPress theme on your WordPress installation. And for this tutorial, I will be using the WordPress installation on my Windows 10 computer. But, the same procedure is valid if you are installing a premium WordPress theme on your cPanel. Installing a premium WordPress theme can be a difficult task if you are new to the WordPress ecosystem, and I have had multiple real-life experiences and failed several times. The purpose of this guide is to make you aware of the process and give you a headstart. Learning from real-life experiences is the best teacher of all, and let’s get to it.

Why I need a premium WordPress theme?

If you are just starting your WordPress journey, I suggest you read the guide I did on Installing WordPress in less than 30 minutes. And I also did a guide on installing WordPress on your Windows 10 computer. Installing WordPress on your local machine is the most economical way of learning WordPress. Yes, it literally costs you nothing!

Okay, then, let’s answer the burning question, why I need a Premium WordPress theme!

There are plenty of Free WordPress themes, and if you are good enough, you can make those free themes way better than a Premium WordPress theme. The thing is, it is not as easy as it looks.

Especially if you a newbie and struggling to get a professional-looking WordPress site for your business, then a free WordPress theme may not be the ideal for you.

None like most of the free WordPress themes, Premium WordPress themes are well documented. If you can read, you can do almost all the customizations to your WordPress website at ease!

I can list several reasons why they should go for a Premium WordPress theme instead of a Free WordPress theme. But, before that, you should keep in mind that Premium WordPress themes come with a price. They are not free. And for every penny spend, a Premium WordPress theme should worth the money.

And if you have long term goals (You should Have to have longterm goals), then your digital properties (Your Website especially) should follow your goals. And using a free WordPress theme creates a stressful situation when the developer of the free WordPress theme stops updating the theme. If you are not getting updates, then you are basically missing a lot.

One of the biggest reasons that you should go for a premium theme is, you will be getting frequent updates, and you can always stay up to date with WordPress’s core update.

Premium themes are bundled with pre-made sites

Yes, almost all the premium WordPress themes come with pre-made websites. Before purchasing the theme, you better take a closer look at the theme’s demo. You should check all the demo-sites the come with the theme. If the site you planned on doing is already a template of the theme you looked, then you should purchase that premium theme.

With one-click demo import options, you can literally have the basic structure of the website ready in a matter of seconds. Having this much flexibility is one of the most significant advantages of purchasing a theme for your website.

Once the site and the demo content imported, you can start editing the content to the way you need your website to be. When you import the demo content, it will not just get you a ‘ready to edit’ site. It will also get you a professional website ready within a matter of minutes. All the hard work put into work by the designers and the developers of the theme should be valued, and that’s why we pay for the theme.

Where to buy a Premium WordPress theme?

If you are thinking of going for a premium WordPress theme, then you should look for a place to buy it. The Internet can be a misleading place if you don’t adhere to the basics. Always purchase the theme from the original theme publisher or buy from an authorized, reputed marketplace.

Usually, a modern WordPress theme may cost you around $40-$60/year. But, if you check on the Internet, multiple websites are offering premium WordPress themes for a crazy low price. I’ve seen some are selling themes for as little as $5/theme for life. That is too good to be true, and you should never ever purchase. Themes purchased from these sites may come with ‘backdoors,’ and hackers may exploit these backdoors to gain access to your site. If that happens, they will insert malicious codes into your WordPress, and that is the end of your website.

My goto place for WordPress premium themes and plugins is Themeforest.

Themeforest is known for its reputation, and that is the biggest marketplace for purchasing high quality, authentic WordPress themes.

Also, MyThemeShop is another famous publisher for WordPress themes and Plugins. They are known for their lightning-fast, Lightweight WordPress themes, and of course, Rank Math is one of their amazing products. (If you are wondering what Rank Math is, well Rank Math is Yoast Killer. If you are into SEO and you should try Rank Math, instead of Yoast and you know what, Rank Math is absolutely free)

NOTE: When you purchase a premium theme, the publisher will give you Updates for a year without charging you any extra money. Also, the theme comes with support for up to 6 months in most cases. So the margin of error is literally ZERO if you go for a premium WordPress theme.

10 Things to consider before buying a Premium theme

1. Design

One of the biggest reasons to buy a premium WordPress theme is design. Selecting a well-designed theme will save you time and money as you can simply complete your website without hiring or outsourcing expensive designers.

2. Updates

Always check the changelog of the sales page of the theme and check whether the theme publisher release updates frequently. If a publisher rarely releases updates, that is not a good sign, and I’d rather avoid such themes.

3. Support

Before buying a Premium WordPress theme, always check the publishers’ support form. Most of the theme publishers have their own support forums, and you should check for these forums if the publisher is addressing the issues accordingly. If you see an unanswered customer request for weeks, then that is not a good sign and avoid such themes and publishers.

4. Feedback from buyers

One major thing that you should take into consideration is customer feedback. When you see a theme with a large number of positive feedback, then it is a pretty good sign that the theme you look is a better one. And if you see a theme with a 5-star rating from just 10 customer feedback and a 4.2-star rating from 3000 feedback, you should go for the second theme. I don’t have to explain why you should go for the second one, right?

5. Compatibility with the latest WordPress updates

No matter how good your theme is, if it is not compatible with WordPress, then the theme is good for nothing. Compatibility issues become serious as WordPress released ‘WordPress 5.0’ Gutenberg. It is highly recommended to check whether the theme is compatible with the latest WordPress release.

6. Compatibility with new plugins

Since WordPress is highly customizable, plugins play a vital role in all these customizations. If you are going for a theme that is not compatible with the latest WordPress updates, you are highly likely to get lots of plugin compatibility issues. Make sure you select a premium theme that is compatible with WordPress updates, and ultimately the theme will be compatible with the plugins.

7. SEO friendliness

Selecting a theme that is optimized for Google (Or Search Engines) is vital. I know for a fact that many people mainly think of the design of the theme. Which is fine. But, if you have long term goals with your website, then you should think of SEO. Because of No SEO, no long run. It is that simple. Always look for a theme with better SEO compatibilities. And the Good news is, theme developers are fine-tuning their themes for SEO. If you are buying from a reputed seller, it is highly likely that your theme is ready for almighty Google!

8. Mobile compatibility

The way people access the Internet has changed with the rise of smartphones. If your theme is not ‘Mobile-friendly,’ then you are giving your mobile users bad browsing experience. Always go for a theme that is mobile friendly. And having a Mobile-friendly site is also good for your site’s ranking as well. With the rise of Google’s ‘Mobile-first indexing,’ now Google is giving higher credibility to your content when your site is ‘Mobile-friendly.’

9. Theme performance

You should be selecting a theme that loads fast (r). Even though you purchased your premium theme from a reputed vendor, still there’s a chance that you are not going to get a high performing theme for your needs. Always do your background check before buying. Themes like Astra, are well-known for their light-weight and lightening loading speed. When you chose a high performing theme, you almost created a high performing website.

10. Theme options

When your theme has lots of options, sometimes people think that it is too complicated for them. But, that is not always the truth. What I think is, when a theme has lots of options, that gives you a lot of control over your theme, and ultimately it will give you more control on your site.

How to Install Premium WordPress theme on your WordPress

Let’s get to it. The process is simple and easy to follow

1. Download theme from Vendor

The first thing you should do is purchase the theme you like and download the theme from the Vendor. In this guide, I will be explaining the process of downloading a theme from Themeforest. If you have purchased your theme from a different vendor, then the process might be a little different. But it is easy to learn.

How to download a theme from Themeforest

Log into your Themeforest account and hover the mouse over your username. There will be a menu and click on ‘download.’

In the download page, you’ll find all your ThemeForest purchases (If you have purchased other plugins, themes, etc. Themeforest.

Find the theme you need to download (If you just purchased the theme, your download list will only have the theme you purchased) and click on the download button. Once you click, it will give you several options.

If you select ‘all files and documentation,’ it will download the theme and the associated files.

I personally see it is somewhat troublesome if you are new.

So, I recommend you click on the ‘Installable WordPress file only’ option.

Once you have downloaded the WordPress files, then you can start installing a premium theme on your WordPress.

2. Installing the Premium Theme on WordPress

It will take you to a new window.

This is where you can install a new theme for your WordPress.

The interface is almost self-explanatory!

First, click on ‘Add New,’ and in the next windows, click on ‘Upload Theme.’

Once you click on Upload Theme, you will be asked to browse or select the theme file you want to install.

Browse and locate the theme file you downloaded from Themeforest and select it and click on ‘Install Now.’

Once the installation completed, click on ‘Activate’ and congratulations, you just installed a Premium WordPress theme!

Once you activated the installed theme, it will be your active theme, and you can quickly see the new changes in your site as soon as you completed the activation.

3. How to find your Themeforest License Key

If you purchased your Theme from Themeforest, you should download your license key from ThemeForest and activate the theme. This way, you can get updates for your theme as they updated. And sometimes, finding the license key may be a difficult task. But it’s not.

All you have to do is, go to your ThemeForest download area and click on the green download button. In the dropdown, click on License Certificate and Purchase Code (either text or PDF) and download your license key.

Once you have your license key ready, you should enter your license key where it is requested.

Your license key looks like this 1ce734-6c15-55da-4n5j-bc4f3e666666

Enter your Themeforest username and the license key to activate your theme properly, and you are done!

FAQ: How to Install a premium WordPress theme

How do I install a ThemeForest theme?

The process is super simple and easy to learn. Log into your Themeforest and go to the download area. And download the Installable WordPress files from ThemeForest. Then log into your WordPress backend. Go to Appearance, then theme. Click on Add New and then Upload. You will be asked to browse for the theme file. Locate the file and click on Install. Finally, activate the theme and done!

Should I update my WordPress theme?

Yes, you should update your WordPress theme whenever there’s an update. In a way, Updates are here to correct the existing errors, add new functionality to the theme, or maybe to improve the theme’s functionality. That’s why you should update your WordPress theme. But before updating the theme, make sure to back up your WordPress site. If something goes wrong, you can restore your site to normal if you back up your WordPress site before updating the theme.

How can I download paid ThemeForest themes for free?

Literally, there’s no way of doing such. But I’ve seen there are plenty of market places, which are not authorized by the theme developer to sell their themes are selling these premium themes for crazy low prices. You shouldn’t purchase themes or anything digital from such marketplaces. Because almost all these digital products are altered, and they may contain malicious codes in them. If you use such a theme (or any digital product) with your WordPress, then you are exposing your website to hackers.

How to install a WordPress theme manually?

There are several ways to install a Premium WordPress theme. One method is using an FTP to upload the theme to cPanel. If you are not a ‘Tech-Person,’ then FTP may not be the answer you need. Uploading the Zipped WordPress theme directly into your WordPress backend is the easiest way to install a new WordPress theme manually.

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Conclusion: How to Install a premium WordPress theme

WordPress CMS can be tricky and sometimes hard-to-learn platform. But, it is not always the case. When you step into the WordPress ecosystem, you should look for a well-designed website with a userfriendly interface. Sometimes it is hard to achieve everything with a free WordPress theme. That’s why people love to spend some money on a premium WordPress theme. Purchasing a theme is easy, yet Installing the theme on WordPress can be tricky. This simple guide was prepared to keep such people in mind.

You should pick a theme that suits all your needs. Premium themes aren’t free. They come with a price and don’t afraid or hesitate to pay the fee. It will make sure you get the best out of your theme, and it will also keep the developer of the theme encouraged.

Never ever buy thems for crazy low prices form anyone but the theme developer or an authorized vendor. Cybersecurity is one of the major concerns these days. If you are using a ‘nulled’ theme for a crazy low price, you are risking your digital property.

Almost all the premium themes come with support and at least up to 1 year of free updates. That is a good sign that your money is in safe hands. I hope this guide on How to Install a premium WordPress theme has provided value to your WordPress journey and feel free to share your comments and suggestions to improve this super simple guide.

from WordPress https://amigoreviews.com/how-to-install-a-premium-wordpress-theme/

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flyingvgroupca · 6 years ago

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What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or Blog

You're thinking about starting a blog, podcast or vlog. Weeks and months pass by, and you’re still no closer to your goals. You want to be heard. You have a message, and you’re anxious to impact the world with your real estate listings, findings, insights and experience, but… I know... You don't want to look or sound unprofessional You don’t have enough time to dedicate to a regular content marketing schedule You don’t have a budget to outsource this process or have not even considered doing it You don’t know where to start, or what to talk about first Let’s face it. Every real estate business needs a website, and every website should have a blog. (1) But most don’t. (2) Or they’re not regularly updated. (3) Or their content is uninspiring and dull. That’s where YOU come in! Here’s what I mean. We both know that nobody likes to read average articles, stuffed with keywords, and posted on a poorly designed website. If you’re reading this, then you already know your real estate business requires: (1) A pro website design You’re losing money and trust if you go with an average, ‘me too’ website look because... A professional website design reflects your real estate brand and vice-versa. So, it has to reflect a color combination and layout elements that are in sync with your real estate company’s mission, core team values, and principles. (2) An SEO blog setup with Wordpress (preferable) Wordpress is ideal for real estate websites because you get a fast, secure, and easily manageable platform to future-proof build and grow your real estate business. (3) A series of high-quality and highly relevant articles AND blog posts, meant for both humans and Google. If your website is the KING, then your content marketing is the QUEEN. What is high-quality content, and how can you ensure that you create more impactful content even when you lack time?

The Secret to Creating Content of Value as a Busy Real Estate Agent or CEO.

Transform your real estate agency into a micro multi-media agency. Here’s how to accomplish this: Start by producing micro-video content. This less-practiced method saves you plenty of time because you don’t have to manually type in new content. The simple solution is to jot down some ideas, create 3 slides, and expand on the pillar concepts, while you record your screen and speak. Imagine this. 10 minutes worth of recorded video can provide you with enough content for multiple blog posts and short email follow-ups. You can load these into your autoresponder service or CRM to convert prospects into leads, and transform leads into customers, via email and SMS, for many months to come. Here’s what you need to do: You can simply answer the most common and frequently asked questions from your target audience while recording yourself with Screencastify, or other screencast recording platforms. They’re so easy to use and make you look and sound professional, without costing an arm and a leg. The free version has some limitations, but you’re ready to go within seconds to start broadcasting your way to the top. This video content may include questions on what to consider when processing approvals for loans, searching for a house, or even buying a new apartment in your city or county. You get the idea, but you know your audience better than I do, so you’ll know what their requirements are or what key topics to focus on. Prepare a list of the most common questions that prospects might have about your service and listed properties, within the realm of your specific Real Estate location. Here is one simple and proven tool (website) that can help you come up with quick ideas for your top FAQ list: visit Quora. With Quora, you can search for questions and the results will show the responses of others. You can identify the related questions, and get an idea of what people are asking.

Next, record yourself for an hour at the beginning of each month, and answer all the relevant questions. You’ll have enough content for 30+ days to post to your website or blog. You can take this idea a step further, and hire a VA or have someone from your team distribute this content to your YouTube channel, as well as engage with prospects via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. The best invention ever is social media. If used correctly, it can capture attention your target market attention and start significant conversations. All you have to do is hit the record button, and start sharing your screen and slides (you can find lots of slide templates online for free). Ultimately, these amazing video messages will be your best lead generator and traffic machines. Here are some amazing additional content ideas to help you create premium video content and blog posts to attract your ideal audience. Using these, you can convert prospects into leads, and turn leads into customers - for many years. 100+ Topics and Ideas for Your Real Estate Blog 72 Rock Solid Real Estate Blogging Ideas With Examples 25 Best Real Estate Blog Ideas & Examples (Expert Insights) 7 creative ideas for successful real estate blog posts Real Estate Blog Topics You Can Write About in Less than 30 Minutes Your video content should encourage and entice your prospects to join your lead magnet, and subscribe to your mailing list. This is where most real estate marketers fail miserably. They have their website, location and phone number listed in the video description, or at the end of the video presentation. However, they lack a lead capture offer, or button in the video itself. So, they get stuck, unable to comprehend why their video marketing generate only minimal or no results. However, setting up this lead gen machine doesn’t mean your done. Most automated email campaigns fail, due to multiple reasons. I’ll cover one of the most important ones next.

Here’s why the standard follow-up ‘drip email’ strategy is exceedingly ineffective, and how to create high-converting emails for your real estate campaigns instead

Plenty of these emails are written in an extremely professional way but lack a personal touch. Drip emails are automated and really reduces you to feeling like a number in a mailing queue. If you are sending these emails, the person on the receiving end will not feel any warmth or love, and will definitely know that no-one took the time to craft the message with care. With the rapid development of automation and artificial intelligence, you need to separate yourself from all the other real estate professionals, while using the same technology.

Here’s how to make this strategy work for you instead, and increase your chance to bond create trust, and forge new relationships with leads, from day one, week after week, month after month: Stop trying to be perfect. Consider the tone of the email, and create it to sound like it’s meant for a human, instead of creating a mechanical ‘do this, or else…’ demand that will just end up in the ‘deleted’ folder or recycle bin. Therefore, your prospects should feel respected, and not like their intelligence is being underestimated. Use very short, personal email messages. These friendly ‘letters’ will create a personal connection with your prospects or previous clients. This will exude an aura of ‘they care about me’ and would encourage the person to respond, attend your event or refer a friend, colleague or family member. Here are some examples of brief and friendly email messages you can model that actually have a chance of receiving that “tell me more!” reply:

You can also send out these messages via text / SMS to further build trust and remain in the mind of your prospects, for longer than those from your competitors. Long gone are the days when real estate CEOs and agents wanted to sound like a big corporations whose only intention was to impress and ‘close the sale’ as fast as possible. What happens if people still don’t respond? Or, how do you reactivate previous clients or lost leads? What is the secret, really? The answer may surprise you. It is so simple, yet you rarely hear that real estate agents use it with any significant results. Here’s what I’m referring to...

How to Bring Real Estate Leads Back from the ‘Dead’

The tips I’m sharing with you to help revive leads that have point blank refused to move forward with you before, are often overlooked by most real estate professionals since they are more interested in generating new leads, instead of taking care of lost opportunities. That goldmine sitting right under your nose can be your most precious asset. Call them. As simple as that, it works wonders. In the conversation, you should always share how you acquired the lead, whether from Trulia, Realtor or maybe Facebook. This will remind the lead that they once inquired about buying a home, finding a location, etc. Be ultra-specific, relaxed, and don’t hide the context. This may lead you to responses like, ‘Already bought a home,’ ‘Still saving my money for a down payment,’ or ‘Fixing my credit.’ With these clients, there is a possibility that they will buy, dive or unsubscribe. It should be noted that there is a small fortune to be had if the follow-up is done right, with a proven strategy on paper, and kept consistent. That’s the KEY. What to do if bad things happen. Like for e.g., … It often occurs that the lead does not pick up your call, in which case you should leave a voicemail. Despite their busy schedule, the lead might find time to listen to your message and act on it. Voice mail messages can make or break your lead gen campaign. That’s why it is so crucial for you to spend a few minutes, maybe half an hour to perfect the irresistible voicemail message, as well as additional follow-ups. Over time you’ll get better and learn to structure these messages more naturally, while improving your response rate as you advance through life and business.

Private message (PM) leads on their most active social media platform.

Some individuals are faster to reach on Twitter, or Linkedin, while others may prefer Facebook. Take advantage of all platforms, go ‘fishing’ where they can easily be found. Testing your message across all these different channels will help you make an informed decision, while eventually perfecting your approach. This method will help you address the fast-paced life of leads and everyone else. If somebody is active and ready to go, they will reach out to you. If not, there are enough leads for you to consider, and you’ll never look back.

What to say in order to catch the fishes and profit from leads:

Offer time-sensitive or exclusive information that is not available on the top sites or in the local markets. This will pique their interest since everyone would like to be the first to acquire the information before it is distributed to the rest. Be a natural ‘actor,’ improve your role playing, and show passion when delivering your messages, one person at a time. If you know someone who does not know what to do with their list of ‘dead’ leads, you may consider buying the list from them, and apply the above tips to win and/or revive some of these back into your funnel. Or, you can partner up with them, and create a joint venture where you split the profits from all revenue generated. Sounds like a win-win situation, right? There is money and opportunities in ‘dead’ leads. Get out there with a simple, and consistent plan. Use the best CRM available for real estate and follow-up extensively. Here are some more drip email & follow-up ideas: 17 Best Real Estate Email Templates & Scripts (I simply love the 2nd idea!) 14 Real Estate Email Templates to Use (Hubspot knows their game) 10 Real Estate Email Templates for Building Leads & Selling Listings (you may want to pay close attention to the very first template because it usually gets the highest response rate) 10 Real Estate Lead Conversion Emails (don’t overlook the first two examples) From learning about…

What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or Blog

You’ve discovered how to rapidly create high-quality content, using the 10-minute micro-video formula. More importantly, you learned how to properly follow-up with prospects and leads - even during busy days. This is one of the best ways to stand out in a crowded, busy, and mechanical real estate market. Remember: make it your #1 goal and vision to transform your real estate company into a micro-content multi-media agency. Thank you so much for reading What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or Blog. We really appreciate it! If you have any questions about our article, or can suggest any other topics you think we should explore, feel free to let us know. Be sure to sign-up for our newsletter to receive monthly emails on all of the latest trends and happenings in the digital marketing space. You will also receive our FREE E-Book with the Amazing Marketing Tools for Powerful Business Growth. Sign-up below! Also, if you received some value out of this article, please share with your friends or colleagues, or leave a comment/question below. We really appreciate you reading our blog and every share/comment means the world to us and allows us to continue producing valuable tools to help you grow your business! Share this PostAbout the Author

Robb Fahrion Facebook Twitter Google+Robb Fahrion is the Co-Founder and a Partner of Flying V Group. He is passionate about helping businesses grow using the power of the internet. Robb graduated from Chapman University in Orange, CA and currently resides in Costa Mesa, CA. Robb enjoys writing about digital marketing, helping his clients turn their dreams into reality, and is a HUGE Mike Trout fan. The Best Strategy to Increase Traffic and Leads to Your Real Estate Website without Any Referrals, Facebook or Paid AdsNovember 25, 2019What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or BlogNovember 19, 2019Real Estate SEO Tools Exposed: SEMrush vs Ahrefs vs MozPro Review (2019)November 11, 2019

Discover the Best Digital Business Growth Strategies! Join 10,000+ Other Digital Marketers, Consultants, and SEO Experts Now: Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. var formDisplay=1;var nfForms=nfForms||;var form=;form.id='35_1';form.settings={"objectType":"Form Setting","editActive":true,"title":"IN USE - 16 Tools - non-sidebar - copy GLOBAL BLOCK EMAIL GLOBAL","created_at":"2018-10-02 23:58:52","form_title":"Top Ten List Blog - non-sidebar - copy - copy","default_label_pos":"above","show_title":"0","clear_complete":"1","hide_complete":"1","logged_in":"0","wrapper_class":"","element_class":"","add_submit":"0","changeEmailErrorMsg":"Please enter a valid email address!","changeDateErrorMsg":"Please enter a valid date!","confirmFieldErrorMsg":"These fields must match!","fieldNumberNumMinError":"Number Min Error","fieldNumberNumMaxError":"Number Max Error","fieldNumberIncrementBy":"Please increment by ","formErrorsCorrectErrors":"Please correct errors before submitting this form.","validateRequiredField":"This is a required field.","honeypotHoneypotError":"Honeypot Error","fieldsMarkedRequired":"Fields marked with an * are required","currency":"","unique_field_error":"A form with this value has already been submitted.","not_logged_in_msg":"","sub_limit_msg":"The form has reached its submission limit.","calculations":,"formContentData":,"order":0,"type":"part","clean":true,"title":"Part Title","key":"sysrdshp"}],"drawerDisabled":false,"key":"","mp_breadcrumb":1,"mp_progress_bar":1,"mp_display_titles":0,"allow_public_link":0,"embed_form":"","ninjaForms":"Ninja Forms","fieldTextareaRTEInsertLink":"Insert Link","fieldTextareaRTEInsertMedia":"Insert Media","fieldTextareaRTESelectAFile":"Select a file","formHoneypot":"If you are a human seeing this field, please leave it empty.","fileUploadOldCodeFileUploadInProgress":"File Upload in Progress.","fileUploadOldCodeFileUpload":"FILE UPLOAD","currencySymbol":"$","thousands_sep":",","decimal_point":".","siteLocale":"en_US","dateFormat":"m\/d\/Y","startOfWeek":"1","of":"of","previousMonth":"Previous Month","nextMonth":"Next Month","months":,"monthsShort":,"weekdays":,"weekdaysShort":,"weekdaysMin":,"currency_symbol":"","beforeForm":"","beforeFields":"","afterFields":"","afterForm":""};form.fields=,"old_classname":"","wrap_template":"wrap"},{"objectType":"Field","objectDomain":"fields","editActive":false,"order":3,"type":"submit","label":"Sign Up","processing_label":"Processing","container_class":"","element_class":"","key":"sign_up_1556741674462","drawerDisabled":false,"id":"188_1","beforeField":"","afterField":"","value":"","label_pos":"above","parentType":"textbox","element_templates":,"old_classname":"","wrap_template":"wrap-no-label"}];nfForms.push(form); {{{ data.renderProgressBar() }}} {{{ data.renderBreadcrumbs() }}} {{{ data.renderPartTitle() }}} {{{ data.title }}} {{{ data.renderNextPrevious() }}} Read the full article

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clearperception-blog1 · 8 years ago

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Why Businesses & Developers Choose WordPress

WordPress Website Designer and Developer in Andheri

The design of your company website plays a critical role in determining the overall growth and thus success. Would you then want any visitor to get irritated after seeing your website or would you want to face a situation where visitors hardly spend a few seconds scanning the web pages. Well this certainly is a good move, but at the same time it is suggested that all through the designing stages you be closely involved with the design company in Versova and make sure your web outlook is in line with the objectives.

When it comes to website designing, the domain is huge. Basically there are too many features to pay attention to. However, a professional and experienced web designing company wouldn’t essentially go all wrong. A well selected firm would know its job well and thus will pay attention to the execution. In best interests of your company, thus you can narrow down the work and pay attention to the 3C’s of website design – Creativity, Content and Cross browser Compatibility.

Good Website Design attracts visitors, visitors increase conversion, conversion ensures your business growth in Versova. In short, the growth of your business depends upon the Website Designing as it plays the most important role in making or breaking your brand image. As we all know every great journey starts with a single step and building your own website is your first step to cover the journey of miles.

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A sensible alternative will be to ensure that the website design company conceptualizes a website which is compatibility or looks great and functions well, irrespective of the browser. Again a completely flash website design will not be cross browser compatible. Many handhold devices miss out on flash support and a number of users opt not to install plug-ins. In the name of an interesting website design, would you want your company to miss out?

The process of implementing and providing a website to a client undergoes a series of test with standards of accuracy and ensure a trouble-free operation of the page. Maintaining a tab on the latest available technologies, we create a responsive web design to adapt to the layout of any device With our trust in relationships, we continue to accept recommendations from professionals globally for our artful contribution in website development and promotional SEO services. Our work doesn’t stop here, we continue to offer promotional activities, with SEO particulars to help our clients reach a wider audience.

Best Website Development Company in Virar

As if your website is not optimized for search engines that mean it has no presence in the eyes of Google and if anything not visible on Google’s first page means there is no way to grow. So, you should start it right away in an order to save your brand value. So, now you know what are the major slip ups – don’t you? Make your path and focus on avoiding them, so, you can attain the goal you want to.

Which is Best Website Designer in Versova?

We are Best Blog Website Designing and Development Company . Website Designing attracts visitors, visitors increase conversion, conversion ensures your business growth. In short, the growth of your business depends upon the website designing as it plays the most important role in making or breaking your brand image. As we all know every great journey starts with a single step and building your own website is your first step to cover the journey of miles.

It works as a mirror that reflects your personality to the customers and gives them a reason to get connected with your brand. However, just to save some penny, people take the risk and create their website at own and lack of professionalism may actually cost them the way higher than they even think.

Which is the Top Website Designing Company in Versova?

When you are getting the same quality of services at a lower price, there is no reason why you shouldn't outsource web development services to India. Once you have entrusted this job to an offshore company, you can focus entirely on your core operations and make the most on that front.

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We are Best WordPress Website Designing and Development Company. Choosing the right website designer is the foremost important thing for your business. It requires creativity for a designer to understand the requirements of a client, so that he can come up with the most effective strategy for business. Sometimes, disputes arise between the clients and designers due to miscommunication between them. A common issue faced by them is the differences in cultures, mostly when the client belongs to a foreign country. But a good web designer overcomes such problems by providing quality work along with timely submissions. However, there are certain things that a client needs to work on, for getting clarity of the exact requirements of web designing. This involves creation of a sitemap by the client. A sitemap is like a rough estimate of the pages and links that are to be included in the website. This can be better understood with the reference of a company's website, which includes different pages like- company's profile, products and services offered, contact us page etc. The client can create a brief of company's background including the pictures of company, its products etc.

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hotelregalenclave-blog · 8 years ago

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Why Businesses & Developers Choose WordPress

WordPress Website Designer and Developer in Andheri

Website Developer Company in Thane

Best Website Development Company in Virar

Which is Best Website Designer in Versova?

Which is the Top Website Designing Company in Versova?

Top Web Design And Development Services

#wordpress #website #developer #wordpressdeveloper #development #designing

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packersandmoversinakola-blog · 8 years ago

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Why Businesses & Developers Choose WordPress

WordPress Website Designer and Developer in Andheri

Website Developer Company in Thane

Best Website Development Company in Virar

Which is Best Website Designer in Versova?

Which is the Top Website Designing Company in Versova?

Top Web Design And Development Services

#wordpress #website #developer #wordpressdeveloper #development #designing

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mumbaipunetaxiservices-blog · 8 years ago

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Why Businesses & Developers Choose WordPress

WordPress Website Designer and Developer in Andheri

Website Developer Company in Thane

Best Website Development Company in Virar

Which is Best Website Designer in Versova?

Which is the Top Website Designing Company in Versova?

Top Web Design And Development Services

#wordpress #website #developer #wordpressdeveloper #development #designing

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mumbainashiktaxiservices-blog · 8 years ago

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Why Businesses & Developers Choose WordPress

WordPress Website Designer and Developer in Andheri

Website Developer Company in Thane

Best Website Development Company in Virar

Which is Best Website Designer in Versova?

Which is the Top Website Designing Company in Versova?

Top Web Design And Development Services

#wordpress #website #developer #wordpressdeveloper #development #designing

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alphinelifesolutions · 8 years ago

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Why Businesses & Developers Choose WordPress

WordPress Website Designer and Developer in Andheri

Website Developer Company in Thane

Best Website Development Company in Virar

Which is Best Website Designer in Versova?

Which is the Top Website Designing Company in Versova?

Top Web Design And Development Services

#wordpress #website #developer #wordpressdeveloper #development #designing

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worldfunaba-blog · 8 years ago

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Why Businesses & Developers Choose WordPress

WordPress Website Designer and Developer in Andheri

Website Developer Company in Thane

Best Website Development Company in Virar

Which is Best Website Designer in Versova?

Which is the Top Website Designing Company in Versova?

Top Web Design And Development Services

#wordpress #website #developer #wordpressdeveloper #development #designing

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puneairporttoshirditaxi-blog · 8 years ago

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Why Businesses & Developers Choose WordPress

WordPress Website Designer and Developer in Andheri

Website Developer Company in Thane

Best Website Development Company in Virar

Which is Best Website Designer in Versova?

Which is the Top Website Designing Company in Versova?

Top Web Design And Development Services

#wordpress #website #developer #wordpressdeveloper #development #designing

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medicaltourismiraqdubai · 8 years ago

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Why Businesses & Developers Choose WordPress

WordPress Website Designer and Developer in Andheri

Website Developer Company in Thane

Best Website Development Company in Virar

Which is Best Website Designer in Versova?

Which is the Top Website Designing Company in Versova?

Top Web Design And Development Services

#wordpress #website #developer #wordpressdeveloper #development #designing

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troikamanagement · 8 years ago

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Why Businesses & Developers Choose WordPress

WordPress Website Designer and Developer in Andheri

Website Developer Company in Thane

Best Website Development Company in Virar

Which is Best Website Designer in Versova?

Which is the Top Website Designing Company in Versova?

Top Web Design And Development Services

#wordpress #website #developer #wordpressdeveloper #development #designing

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thelmasirby32 · 5 years ago

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SEO on a shoestring budget: What small business owners can do to win

30-second summary:

There is a common and long-held belief that getting results from SEO takes at least six months. How true is that?

SEO can be costly and requires big dollars and a huge team to succeed. Should you ever compete with the biggies at all?

SEO is highly technical, changes from time to time with Google algorithm updates, hence, making it unpredictable.

This piece answers those questions in detail and further debunks two common myths regarding the time it takes to get results from SEO and the unpredictable nature of SEO. It is, in sum, about how small businesses can play and win in the big league with SEO on a budget.

Pretty much everything you think you know about SEO today will be out of date tomorrow. This makes the online world an exceptionally volatile environment, where big fishes swallow the small ones.

In spite of this, many small businesses with a small budget for SEO are finding their feet in the online marketing world. How are they doing it?

Research and experience have shown that domain age, numerous (quality) backlinks, and quality content are among the competitive advantages of businesses that are dominating the online marketing world.

And given that getting these things cost time and money, they present a formidable entry barrier to small business owners who want to get into the SEO game with a small budget.

For small business owners with little budget for SEO, chances are their website is relatively new, they do not have a budget for backlink building and even the job of creating content for their websites rests entirely on them.

Before you turn away from SEO, remember the classic of Ryan Holiday,

“The Obstacle is the Way.”

The last decade is replete with stories of how savvy business owners found their ways to go face to face with the giants and, sometimes, defeat them.

The online world is not very different in that aspect. If you can follow the following steps, Internet marketing success, against all odds, can be made-to-order.

In this guide, I will show you what small businesses are doing to defy the stereotype and make SEO success on a shoestring budget, in a relatively short time.

1. The low-hanging fruit strategy

If you have been tinkering around with SEO for a while, you’ve probably heard of the term “long-tail keyword”.

Long-tail keywords refer to the specific keywords searchers are likely to use when they are close to making a purchase online.

To put this in perspective, here is an example.

If you want to start a blog on how to start a blog, for example, chances are you will not get found on Google given that the key phrase is too broad.

But if you break this down a little bit further and try to rank for “How to Start a Blog for Free,” your chances of ranking high on SERPs become brighter because you are targeting a fraction of the audience of the first key phrase.

Another example is, if you are selling shoes, keywords like “shoes” are short-tail keywords, and trying to rank for them means you are probably going to be competing against Amazon and Gucci.

You don’t want to melt away like a snowflake under the sun, do you?

But if you try narrowing it down to more specific keywords such as “mens shoes,” or “best holiday shoes,” you have a better chance of getting to number one on Google SERPs for this kind of keywords.

I ran the word “shoe” on a keyword research website. Here is what the result looks like:

The number in that red shape refers to the level of organic competition of that keyword, otherwise known as Keyword Difficulty (KD).

While the keyword “shoe” has a very high traffic potential, you do not have the wherewithal to weather the cutthroat competition of that field.

Now, look at the image below.

You can see that another keyword “men’s shoe” KD is a little above 32. That is your long-tail keyword and anything that falls into that category.

When you look at the number of organic traffic, you’d find that you can receive up to 38,000 monthly organic traffic for that keyword. For a small business owner with a limited budget for SEO like you, this is not too bad.

All you need to do now is to find as many of these long-tail keywords as possible and use them to plan your content calendar.

Now that you have found the low-hanging fruits, what is it that you are supposed to do with them?

Follow through with the next step.

2. Keyword research

This sounds obvious, or like something you have just done, but wait a moment.

Now let’s take one of our short-tail keywords and plug it back to the keyword finder and see what we’ve got.

As you can see, even under the keyword “mens shoe,” we still find potential keywords that you can place strategically under your post and rank for or use to develop an independent blog post.

That is why it makes sense to do thorough keyword research to further see what other keywords you can place in your blog post for your major keyword and rank for as well.

While it is advisable these days to keep every single blog post focused around one keyword, having two major keywords to rank for in a single blog post is not a bad idea, according to Hubspot.

Well, on certain occasions, I have seen a single blog post that ranks for multiple keywords.

3. Write in-depth blog posts

According to a 2016 research, the average blog posts that rank number one on Google has about 1,900 words.

In the past, what it takes to rank on Google is a string of keywords. In other words, keyword stuffing WAS all it took.

Not anymore. Thin content was one of the primary targets of Google’s Panda. For a post to rank on Google, it is well understood that thoroughness is a sine qua non.

Posts that make it to the number one position on Google are in-depth and full of trusted sources. But do not mistake a long post for an in-depth post.

An in-depth post proffers value — every single word in it.

Embedding posts with visuals such as videos, infographics, and photos might mean additional advantages to boot.

While there is no denying that relevancy is what matters, most posts that meet the standard of relevancy required to please searchers are the long ones that offer more than vague answers.

And of all people, a little unknown business owner who wants to do SEO on a small budget needs to offer all the value she can.

4. Keyword related and non-keyword related on-site SEO

The bedrock of your on-site SEO efforts is your content which, I believe, we have discussed as incisive as possible.

However, on-site SEO involves more. Much more.

Let’s look at the most important things you need to pay attention to in your on-site SEO efforts.

5. Keyword-rich content

You know we talked about keyword research earlier in this post. But when I say keyword-rich, I do not intend “keyword-stuffed.”

Assuming you’ve now found the keyword around which you want to base your blog post, it is time to use this keyword strategically in your writing to tell Google what the post stands for.

Lucky for you, this doesn’t have to be much of a struggle if you are using WordPress. All you need to do is install Yoast SEO on your dashboard and it will help guide you in writing a keyword-driven article.

6. Mobile-friendly web page

Do I even need to mention that? Nearly 60 percent of searches made online are now from mobile devices. And that Google continues to change its algorithm to suit this trend in search method is telling enough.

Optimize your site for mobile-friendliness and you are on your way to a better ranking on Google. This article gives you clear steps as to how you can achieve a mobile optimized site.

7. Page load speed

When Google announced their Google Mobile-First Index, they further made it clear that site speed has become a ranking factor. Several findings have since shown that this is true.

If you are going to reap the benefits of your SEO efforts, then your site speed is something you must pay attention to.

How, then, do you increase your site speed? Ways abound, and some of these ways can be dauntingly technical.

So, if you are doing SEO on a small budget and, like me, you suck at coding, I will advise you to allocate a huge part of your lean budget for the technical aspects.

I will, nonetheless, tell you what it takes and my recommendation for you as someone who is doing SEO on a shoestring budget.

8. Minifying CSS, Javascript, and HTML

Our websites are constituted of some little tiny ugly codes (Sorry, programmers, they are ugly to us).

Those little tiny objects are made up of unintelligible commas, spaces, numbers and all sorts of nebulous characters.

If you are a techie, then it wouldn’t cost you much to remove unused code, code comments, unnecessary spaces as well as other characters.

But for the uninitiated like me, you’d stand a better chance if you outsource this to professional web designers.

9. Image optimization

Image is another element that can take a lot of space and clutter up your website, thereby making the loading time a bit slower than is desirable.

As much as visuals are important for a successful blog post, keep in mind that the average image recommended for a blog post is 1200 x 628 pixels.

To optimize your image for SEO, you want to do it in such a way that it doesn’t compromise the quality of your image neither does it impact your SEO in a negative way.

There are many image optimization tools online. Look them up here.

10. URL structure

When it comes to SEO, you cannot afford to have a URL that looks like an HTML code.

An SEO-friendly URL must be one that’s easy to read for search engines and gives humans the idea of what they are about to click.

Research has shown that URLs are among the key elements searchers consider before they click on a link.

In the olden Internet days, it would not be too hard to see URLs that look like specks of dirt, but such URLs these days are but condemnable heresies in the sight of lord Google.

Take a look at the illustration below to get an idea of what you should and should not do when it comes to URLs.

Source: Neil Patel

Here is a checklist of what you should have in your URL

Use your keywords in your URL: For example, if you have a blog post about where to find the best dog food, your URL should look like this: www.blog.com/where-to-find-best-dog-food. You can see it looks almost like a complete sentence. Here is an example from a blog I wrote about podcast hosting platforms: https://contentmarketingprofit.com/10-best-podcast-hosting-sites-and-everything-you-need-to-succeed/. Notice how it gives you an idea of what you are about to click.

Keep it short and simple: Keeping it below 60 characters has always been the recommendation. Short and sweet doesn’t mean you should overdo it though. Always try not to go beyond 60 characters.

Hyphens are better used as a separator in a URL than an underscore according to Google.

11. Link internally (with caution)

Linking to your other blog posts from a relating one has become a rule of thumb in writing blog posts.

And in case you don’t know, it isn’t just a fad designed to make you look like a professional blogger.

Its benefits include delivering link juice to other pages, showing Google the relevancy of posts to one another, making it easy for Google bots to crawl and index your pages and of course, keeping humans on your site longer.

But the “with caution” above means, when cross-linking internally, be wary of using too much exact-match anchor text in your links.

If you do, Google might think it’s an attempt to manipulate and penalize you for it.

12. Copy: Good, relevant, great copy

Yes, I know I’m supposed to write that as “metadata” here, but metadata isn’t particularly a ranking factor.

It’s just a clicking factor which, indirectly, makes it a ranking factor.

What you put in your metadata matters. Bear in mind that aside from your title, your metadata is what tells users whether to click or scroll down.

As such, do your best to ensure that your metadata hits home. Create short, concise, quality descriptions that convey value to the user searching the internet for either information, purchase, feedback, or any other reason.

13. Go for the big link

It’s been many years since Google started using link signals as an important ranking factor. Links are still the most important external factor in SEO, and they aren’t about to go away anytime soon.

Now it’s time to start building backlinks, first, for your site as a whole, and, second, for your money pages in particular.

While this looks like a straightforward venture, be careful and observe the following rules in building links or you might run into a problem.

But before we go into the rules, let me quickly take you back to our first step in this journey.

Remember I clearly stated that you must find the long-tail keywords around which you are going to build your blog posts? Now, it’s time to hit your competitors where they are most vulnerable.

What this means is that for every least competitive keyword you find, your competitor has the least number of backlinks going to that.

Analyze their link profile using tools like Ahrefs and try outdoing them with backlinks on those ones.

To put it this plain text, if your shoe-selling competitor has a blog post about “mens shoe” just like you do, and the number of backlinks that goes into that is twenty, to outrank them at that one on Google, all you need is twenty-one backlinks to a similar blog post on your site.

If you have nailed your on-page SEO already, consider this a silver bullet on outsmarting your competitor.

Now let’s quickly run through some link building best practices.

A. Quality, not quantity

If you go after low domain authority sites in the interest of haste, you risk hurting your SEO.

While it’s not necessary to only go after sites with the highest domain authority, learn to go after sites with great domain authority. Anything from 60 DA and above is okay.

But even sites with 40 DA are also useful so long as they aren’t too many. Your best chances though lie in getting sites with 60+ DA by your side.

B. Have a healthy mix of anchor text

For someone who wants to rank a site for a keyword such as podcast platforms, for instance, you may be tempted to want to build a link profile with those two keywords: podcast platforms.

But I guarantee you that there is no faster and surefire way to get your site penalized. Google suspects an unnatural amount of links with the same anchor text pointing to the same source.

If you must build a link profile, then have some diversified anchor texts.

C. Avoid black hat link-building no matter the glamour

And I can’t stress that enough.

There are many link vendors on the Internet who sell you on quick generic links that will get you penalized rather than rank.

The struggle to build links can be overwhelming for someone on a little budget and the lures are all there. But patience to do the right thing never gets too much. Don’t be in a haste to rank a rank that will truncate your well-planned efforts.

Even if those generic links work for you in the short term, what it will take for all these gains to disappear is Google penalizing you.

Avoid buying links, PBNs, as well as all other kinds of black hat link building that are being touted on the Internet.

In the end, build a huge and healthy link profile around your low-hanging fruits. This can be achieved by becoming a guest post rockstar and willing to withstand a lot of virulent rejections.

Or better still, create likeable assets in terms of valuable articles that bloggers may naturally want to refer to.

Need an example? Link Building for SEO: The Definitive Guide

Another thing that will help you in your link building campaign is bloggers outreach. Heaps of articles exist on the Internet teaching you how to go about these things in detail.

As you build this up, your domain authority significantly improves, arming you with the experience and money to go big and eventually share the field with your big competitors.

And from the very beginning, the purpose of this blog post is to teach you how to start small and go big with a thin budget for SEO.

It is a piece of article written with a simple philosophical understanding in mind, that is; sometimes, you have to take one step back to potentially take two forward.

Conclusion

If you’ve been searching online to seek answers for how long it takes to rank on Google, you might have come across articles that saunter a little bit around and end up saying six months.

That might have been true in the past but not anymore. Whenever Google updates her algorithm, there will be traffic losses and gains. Most times, these are not due to correctness or error from your end.

But SEO has lived long enough to have fundamentals and so far as we know, the things identified in this blog post have stayed long enough to become hard and fast rules in search ranking efforts.

If there is anything we’ve learned in the past decade, it is a simple truth that big dollars are not always the sole winning ingredient — anymore.

Will, innovation, grit, unceasing creativity, and a touch of luck are all you sometimes need to win. When you plan to use some SEO marketing for your business but you have a little budget, you aren’t expected to exit the stage.

You can still win, but only if you try.

Ali Faagba is a copywriter, content marketer, and a tech freelance writer. He’s been featured in Entrepreneur, Thrive Global, and others. You can reach him on Twitter @contentmints.

The post SEO on a shoestring budget: What small business owners can do to win appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digital Marketing News https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/06/04/seo-on-a-shoestring-budget-what-small-business-owners-can-do-to-win/

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sempiternalsandpitturtle · 6 years ago

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Practical wisdom for businesses that are ready to take blogging seriously

If you’re reading this, you’re likely sold on the merits of business blogging. Whether your goal is to build brand awareness, drive top-of-funnel traffic, cultivate thought leadership or all of the above, right now you’re more interested in the “how” of blog management than the “why”.

So let’s cut to the chase.

What you’ll need

Besides realistic expectations and a willingness to not half-bake this thing?

Writers

We need to acknowledge the obvious before we talk strategy or search engine optimisation: blogs need written copy. Even a video blog needs words to give pretext to the audience, and to Google (because search engines parse text). And for that, you need writers.

Do you hire in-house? Handle the writing on your own? Contract freelancers? Outsource to a blog management agency?

If you are your brand (a motivational speaker, a musician, a personal trainer) and you have writing chops, you may get away with handling the bulk of your blog writing.

Even then, you’ll need an editor – someone eagle-eyed and attentive to detail to keep you honest (are you being consistent with your use of title case or lack thereof? Are you using Oxford commas? Are you rambling? Are you sure it’s a good idea to post that?).

If you’re a business with an actual marketing team, you probably don’t have time to ideate, create, edit and post high-quality blog content, in which case, you’ll have to weigh a few options:

Creating an internal blog management team is expensive. As well as the salaries you have all the other costs and risk that come with hiring people. Maybe not the best route, especially for SMBs.

There’s no shortage of interns seeking experience, but they tend to be seasonal and unseasoned. A mixed bag, at best.

Freelancers are a good, cost-effective and low commitment option, but you’ll need someone internally to assign, curate, edit and post blogs (same goes for interns).

Finally, you could commission a firm that staffs agency writers, editors, strategists and project managers.

Generally, any business that’s serious enough to have a formal marketing budget will get more bang their buck going the agency route (and we’re not just saying this because we have skin in the game). You get more than just writers with a blog management service, which is a perfect segue into the second thing you’ll need …

Tools and technology

You need an actual blog. That means you need a web content management system for uploading and posting content.

WordPress is the undisputed lord of open source CMS. A third of the top 10 million websites are powered by WordPress, and no wonder: WordPress is easy to set up and it has a plugin for just about everything under the sun. You have to pay for domain and hosting (but you probably already knew that). Other great CMS (which we meticulously graded in a recent post) include:

HubSpot.

Joomla.

Drupal.

Squarespace.

Moving on to Google Analytics – the single-most important content marketing tool in the known universe. It shows you, among other things:

Pageviews.

Number of new and returning visitors.

Traffic sources.

Bounce rate (aka, number of users who split after viewing one page.)

Average session duration.

Conversions.

A skilled content strategist looks at this data and uses it to diagnose what you’re doing wrong on your blog, what you’re doing right and what you can do to improve (this will be important when we talk about commercial goals later on).

Other blogging functions that require some solid tools?

Keyword and topic analysis

We recommend:

Google Trends: Search for a phrase and see how it’s trending. Totally free.

SEMrush: Not free, but worth it if you want to perform competitive keyword analysis and identify new key phrases that pertain to your products and services.

MarketMuse: Again, not free but worth the cost. Identifies topics, secondary keywords, average word count (a good indicator of depth) and top-performing pages for a given keyword.

Ideation resources

For inspiration (and affirmation) as you develop blog ideas:

AnswerThePublic: This free tool analyses Google and Bing to generate a list of questions that actual searchers have asked pertaining to your chosen keywords.

Buzzsumo: If you go the freemium route you’re limited to two free daily searches; otherwise it’ll cost you. This nifty tool shows you, among other things, the topics that have performed well on specific social media channels.

When all else fails there’s a Google search. Scroll to the bottom of the page for “Searches related to” your query.

Apparently, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Google seems to think that people who search for “apples” aren’t looking for fruit.

Writing tools

Seems obvious, but worth pointing out.

Google Docs: A free alternative to Microsoft Office (which Google now seamlessly integrates with). Enables track changes, formatting, version control and the whole nine yards. Google Sheets also comes in handy as an organisational tool.

A style book: We recommend AP Style (not free), but you can create your own in-house style guide if you want. This will help multiple writers create more polished, uniformly styled content across a blog.

Graphics

Because grownups like pictures, too.

Giphy: It’s easy enough to liven up a blog post with a free, relatable GIF.

Canva: With 8,000 design templates, two folders to help organise designs, 2 gigabytes of storage and more, Canva makes it pretty darn easy to create custom imagery for your blog content.

Conversion tools

For gathering emails and building a list of subscribers. Below is a list of free pop-up contact forms:

WPForms (lite version).

List Builder for Sumo.

MailMunch.

If you handle some or all of your blogging in house, there’s a laundry list of free resources to get you started, which is refreshing given the time commitments and costs of operating and managing a blog in house.

Also worth pointing out: The tools you actually need will be influenced by your strategy, so let’s talk a bit more about that.

A strategy

We won’t go into too much detail here, because we’ve already done that elsewhere.

But the abridged version is as follows:

Every blog is evidently driven by a clear commercial goal. But every commercial goal is an end; smart blogging is about identifying the right means to that end. Let’s say the leads you get are good, but you need more of them. Your immediate blogging goal, then, should be to increase traffic. Verify that your efforts are working by tallying monthly visitors prior to launching your blog campaign, and then a month or two into the campaign to track progress. You can concurrently drive traffic and build out lead gen strategies if you have the means. But if you’re short on resources and can’t do everything at once, get the traffic part down pat, and then evolve to lead gen.

Be analytical as you implement your strategy. Say you have good traffic but poor session duration. This could signify poor keyword selection (note that sometimes searchers don’t use the correct name when they look for things). It could also mean your content isn’t covering a keyword in enough depth. Start analysing content that’s performing best for the keywords your brand is targeting (could be from competitors, some of your own content, from industry blogs and so on). Identify topics they may be covering that you aren’t (again, MarketMuse is an excellent tool for this).

In that same vein, you need a clear picture of your target audience. Create detailed reader personas. Identify those readers’ objectives and their pain points, the types of industries they work in, their professional titles, their age, how they like to consume their content and so on. This will help you figure out the types of content that will be of greatest value to your audience. It will also help you nail down your writing voice, use appropriate pop culture references, etc. (Many a “Lethal Weapon” reference will be lost on 25-year-olds.)

Putting all the pieces together

Ok, so we have writers, some tools and a strategy built around a commercial goal. Good start, but you’ll also need someone to manage the strategy and someone to manage the execution.

Respectively, that translates to:

A content strategist or consultant: These experts use your commercial goals and website metrics to orient your blogging efforts but also your content marketing strategy at large. For instance, SEO is crucial if you’re attempting to drive more traffic to your website. If your traffic is steady but your list of leads is thin, you might need to create a new mechanism for bringing visitors deeper into the funnel (e.g., links to gated collateral in your blog content). Whatever the case, you need someone in your organisation who is Google Analytics certified to identify the surest path to success for a given goal, track the results of your efforts and reorient based on outcomes.

A project manager: A project manager works as closely with strategists as the writers and designers who produce blog content. They oversee every phase of execution, from the ideation of content to any supporting functions (orchestrating interviews with subject-matter experts, communicating strategist’ keyword research findings to writers, setting deadlines, proofing drafts, posting content, distributing content and, eventually, promoting content).

The relationship between writers, project managers and strategists needs to be open and collaborative. Put them in silos, and you’re asking for friction and misalignment of expectations (trust us, we’ve learned from experience).

This is partly because content marketing is cyclical. You strategise based on the status quo and a projected end goal. You do. You review. And then you revisit based on what you’ve learned. This means processes, workflows and tool sets may need to change rather extensively between campaigns.

Sometimes you may even have to pivot quickly on a project, and if the stakeholders involved in that project don’t have clarity into the “why,” they’ll be dubious of directives that come from other departments. Point is, you can be the most SEO-savvy person in your hemisphere and still fail at coordinating a well-oiled blog management machine. The big picture: Blog management is about more than your blog.

What do we mean by this?

Here’s an example: Blogs can be great for capturing emails if you incorporate a “subscribe” button or a contact form somewhere on the page. But you will need to give your visitor something in exchange, like a whitepaper, infographic, eBook or industry analysis report. Are you budgeting time, money and effort for those downloadable assets that allow your blog to drive deeper-funnel interactions?

And even before that, do you have enough of a web presence to actually generate any blog traffic in the first place? Think about it from the perspective of a social media marketer. You need blog content so you have something to share with followers. But you need social media channels so you have followers in the first place to promote your blog content to. It’s impossible to tease the two apart.

This is to say, anyone can create a blog. Anyone can write. Anyone can do keyword research. But blog management isn’t just about blogging.

It’s about your business and how you create value during the entirety of your sales cycle – from first contact, all the way to post-sale engagements.

That takes more than incisive writers, creative designers, diligent editors, SEO tools, an effective strategy and the staff to orchestrate the whole thing.

It takes vision, it takes corporate buy-in, it takes time and, most importantly, it takes commitment.

Like we said, no half-baked efforts here.

from http://bit.ly/2EV2URB

#content marketing

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dorothydelgadillo · 6 years ago

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Should You Insource or Outsource Your Website Developer?

Whether you’re a startup looking to develop your very first website or an established company that’s in dire need of a refresh, the decision of whom should take on the development can be daunting.

In-house development team or outsource to a web dev firm?

In many cases, making the wrong decision can be costly, either because the initial cost is higher or because you don’t see any return on your investment -- or both.

It’s important to examine what you need and expect.

What do you want to accomplish with the new site? What does success look like, exactly? Do you have the means to measure success? What plans do you have for growth? Have you thought about a budget? How quickly do you need a return on that investment?

These are all questions you and your leadership team will need to ask yourselves regardless of which way you’re leaning.

But, Back to the Task At Hand…

In general, this decision of in-house development versus outsourced should be based on a number of different factors.

You’ll want to weigh the cost, timeline, efficiency, accountability, and your own capacity to handle the project either as an overseer or implementor, as all of these factors will have both short-term and long-term repercussions.

Let’s take a look at each of the options more intricately with these in mind.

What Does An Outsourced Web Development Firm/Agency Offer?

Expert Support & Experience

Established firms are most certainly going to have a whole group of people to work on your project.

Here are some key roles that are likely to be fulfilled when hiring an outsourced firm:

A marketing guru with a ton of digital expertise to guide the strategy. This person will be responsible for defining target audiences and devise a way to measure success. This is a person that can take company revenue and growth goals and tell you how many visitors and subsequent leads you’ll need to achieve those goals.

Next, a rockstar web designer who understands that web design is not the same as print design. This person needs to fully understand your target persona and how they use the web. Furthermore, they understand how to design ways to convert your target depending on where they are in the buyer’s journey.

To keep everyone in line and watch over timeline, budget, and input from key stakeholders from the various departments, there’d also be a strict project manager. Someone that isn’t afraid to push back on leadership when their focus starts to shift away from your customer, their experience, their questions, and their needs.

Next, you’ll of course have a talented web developer with a thorough understanding of web efficiency and who is up-to-date with the latest best practices, accessibility requirements, code standards, etc. They’ll typically know how to implement a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress or HubSpot to give your content implementers/creators an easy way to update your site going forward. Mastering responsiveness is a must so your visitors can consume your content on any device and page speed, which is critical for SEO and your overall site experience. For extra credit, this developer should also have some experience with web reporting, CRMs, and some form of marketing automation so your marketing and salespeople have access to leads making it easy for them to follow up and track them through the buyer's journey.

Efficiency

Overall, when you work with an outsourced firm, the professionals above bring accumulated experience responding to the needs of the spectrum of clients they’ve represented in the past, as well as, the expertise that comes from years of following the latest in web best practices.

These professionals bring a sense of efficiency that an in-house team may not.

Accountability

In a similar vein, the top agencies fundamentally understand that their success comes exclusively from your success.

They’ll see themselves as partners rather than vendors. These that demonstrate this sense of responsibility and accountability are the ones you really want in your consideration.

The one drawback, which usually becomes the focal point of any buying process, however, is price.

Outsourced development firms tend to be more expensive.

I’d say if you’re in a position to hire an outside firm, it’s best to look at the expenditure as an investment versus an expense.

Remember that the website is going to produce or help produce income. It’s not a set-it and forget-it expense.

Done right, it just might become the most important investment a growing company can make to catapult their engagement and lead generation efforts.

Here are some questions to ask/things to look for when looking to hire a digital agency:

Do you build responsive sites? This is super important due to the increasing importance of having a site that is easy to consume on any device (phone, tablet or desktop).

Do you have a portfolio of your work? This is probably going to cost a bunch of money and you want to make sure that your site can be molded to your brand and that the capabilities are there should you need a highly customized site.

Is there a place I can see how your previous customers felt about their collaboration with you like a bank of reviews? Some firms have social proof and some don’t but, as I’m sure you’ve experienced, getting any customer (large or small) to take the time out of their day to leave you a review somewhere is tough. Firms that have been successful in this typically have super happy clients that jump at the chance to express their excitement.

What are your SEO practices? You’ll need a firm that understands how important this is to your site’s overall success. They don’t have to get too far into the weeds on this subject but you need to know that a process/methodology exists for this.

What CMS do you recommend and why? A content management system is the platform where you and your team are going to live when making updates to the site. It’s super important that the interface you’ll be provided is easy to use and far away from cumbersome. You’ll want to be able to quickly assemble pages, landing pages, and forms to capture the data you want -- when you want it.

How is security handled on your recommended CMS? Everyday it seems there’s a new story about a breach in some system that’s stolen user passwords and identity information so you’ll want to make sure that your customer’s information is safe. Aside from that, you want to know your site is going to be fully functional, lean, and mean at all times.

What is your process to ensure optimization for speed and search engines? There is a direct correlation with page speed and customer experience. It’s estimated that a page that takes more than two seconds to load will be abandoned by Google when crawling and almost certainly by an impatient customer. This is super important.

What other services do you offer to compliment your design and development? Lots of agencies offer support services like marketing consulting, content coaching, and social media services to complement their dev services. These may be worth your while if it means you’ll compound the effect it has on your new site’s traffic.

What are our responsibilities to ensure we keep the build on-track? You’ll want an agency that is up-front about this and willing to guide you to success. It’s important that you know how much of the work is going to fall on you and your staff. Not only will this help determine if you have enough resources to accomplish those responsibilities, but you’ll also be able to weigh the effort (internal time investment, for example) against the fee you’ll be charged.

How long will the project take? You’ll want a full plan in place and that cannot exist without a realistic timeline. This way you’ll also be able to honor your responsibilities on time and avoid being a bottleneck that derails that plan.

What About In-House?

In the case of an in-house undertaking -- The cost may be lower, and you’ll have the advantage of having people who truly know your business working solely on your project; not spreading their attention around multiple clients as an outsourced firm might.

With this, however, tracking progress, quality assurance, and management of the project is all going to fall on you and your internal team.

Even if its not their area of expertise, your team will have to jump in and high-level stakeholders will have to take this seriously and be accountable for outcomes.

You should also expect that your timeline will be impacted resulting in a longer road to delivery.

There’s going to be a lot more pre-work on your team’s part to research the most efficient ways to proceed in any given of the project whether it’s how you’ll design to your core customer or which CMS / hosting platform to use and how these will impact your site’s overall success.

Are You Prepared to Bring This In-House?

Before you can decide either way, you’ll need to take a hard look at your staff, their skill sets and their capacity to take on something like this. Do you have the necessary people in place? Do you know where to look if you need to start hiring?

Like I mentioned before, it is going to take a smorgasbord of different expertise to get this done effectively.

If you’ve got all or most of these roles filled and those people have everything they need, then I don’t see any reason to look outside to get your brand new site complete.

However, if any of this feels like it’s too much of a task and you’re already feeling overwhelmed, then it just may be best to look for an established firm with a documented track record showing success for their clients.

And Don’t Forget About Content...

One thing almost never discussed when starting a web development project is who will be producing content. This is often overlooked and misguidedly downgraded in importance.

On the web, content is king, and it’s going to be your content that drives traffic to the site. For this reason, one thing I absolutely, categorically recommend is that you do NOT outsource your content production.

I know that sounds crazy on the surface, but think about it -- No one knows your company and your customers like you and your team do.

It’s super important for you to take the reins and establish your own voice, communicate your corporate philosophy and how you want to speak to your customers.

Focus on them and what they need, ask and want. It’s mostly about them and very little about you. If you think of a site visit as a conversation between the user and the site, then the site that has the most answers for that user will do better from the initial search all the way through to the conversion.

My recommendation is that you look to your in-house copywriters.

If you don’t have any, look into hiring one. You’ll want them to be fully versed in the vision you and your leadership have for the future of your company and how you communicate with your customers.

This person will have a full understanding of your company's unique value within your industry and what sets you apart from the rest. From a technical standpoint, you’ll want this person to have some experience writing for search engine optimization, too, to make sure all of this amazing content gets found.

I recommend you also consider hiring someone (either internally or externally) that specializes in shooting and editing video.

Video is quickly becoming the most effective way to garner trust from your customers.

It instantly provides a personalized feel and, instinctively conveys the idea that your company is, at its core, nothing more than a group of human beings with their customers best interests at heart.

There’ll also be a whole bunch of people to ensure quality assurance. You’ll want to be super open to their feedback, especially any feedback that pertains to your target persona or demographic.

It’s a Tough Decision...

As with any fork in the road, the same path is not best for everyone. Each company’s individual needs, resources, patience, and goals play a factor in making the right decision here.

I’d go out on a limb and say that most small to medium-sized businesses should typically follow the outsource route and keep their internal teams leaner while enjoying the benefits of the experience a digital firm inherently brings.

For larger businesses, it’s probably 50/50 where some will benefit from immediate gains in web traffic, leads, and revenue with an outsourced team while others can patiently grow their internal teams to meet the qualifications necessary to achieve those gains.

No matter what, first and foremost, you need a clear marketing plan with predetermined goals to ensure your new site is poised for generating traffic, awareness, engagement and even sales, in the case of an eCommerce site.

With a vision and goal in mind, making the decision is that much easier.

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/should-you-insource-or-outsource-your-website-developer

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