As a virtual assistant, I immediately presumed the worst, digital technology is automating more of the services I offer virtually. I was relieved to read further and discover that actually, a smartphone virtual assistant, or defined on Wikipedia as an ‘Intelligent personal assistant’, are satisfying users in their search for information.
Another key aspect of an intelligent personal assistant is its ability to organise and maintain information, making it quick and easy to access.
A search for information by text or voice command, answered by a software agent via your smartphone is a smartphone virtual assistant. But they can also be used for other things, not just answering questions, listening to and downloading music, reading books.
Google Now, Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Samsung S-voice are all virtual assistants that are currently being underutilised in the new technological world. Digital virtual assistants on our desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones are there to instantly help and assist.
E-Marketer attributing this to the generation of the which the users come from and their reasons for using them are different. Taken from E-Marketer’s post on the 17th February 2017 the reasons and generations are:-
Millennials were most likely to manage alarms, play music, play audiobooks and search for movie times.
Gen Xers were most likely to look up someone’s phone number, search for a song playing on the radio, create a shopping list and check news headlines.
Baby boomers tended to use smartphone virtual assistants to play voicemail messages, look up measurement conversions, search calendar events and discover recipes.
Although the statistics in the article, based on an American survey by Higher Visibility SEO company, found that 28.7% still do not use smartphone virtual assistants.
So the next time you get out your smartphone here are just a few of the more customary search queries conducted via these assistants that you can perform, including requests to play music, manage alarms, find a weather forecast, search for a contact’s phone number or ask a fun question, the era of smarter smartphones is upon us!
In the meantime, if you smartphone virtual assistant can’t help you with those laborious tasks such as typing, or replying to emails, get a human virtual assistant such as Virtuadmin, where you can chat directly with me to discuss your virtual assistant requirements.
The Google Analytics “Traffic Sources” section can help ecommerce marketers understand how well campaigns are working and how better to invest in site content, advertising, or other forms of engagement.
Google Analytics is a free service that uses cookies — which we explain in “Cookies Make Shoppers Feel Welcome” — to monitor how visitors are interacting with a particular site. The Traffic Sources overview and its various sub-menu items describe how visitors are getting to your site.
3 Basic Traffic Mediums
The Google Analytics Traffic Sources section categorizes your site traffic as “direct” traffic, “referring” traffic, or “search engine” traffic.
The Google Analytics Traffic Sources
Direct traffic. Direct traffic represents those visitors that arrive directly and immediate on your site by: (1) typing your URL into the browser’s address bar; (2) clicking on a bookmark; or (3) clicking on a link in an email, SMS, or chat message. Direct traffic is a strong indicator of your brand strength and your success in email or text message marketing. Direct traffic can also be an indicator of offline marketing success. We offer our views on the benefits of direct traffic at “Direct Traffic is Better than Google Traffic.”
Referring traffic. Referring site traffic, which is sometimes called referrer traffic or referral traffic, counts those visitors that click a link on another site and land on your site. Referral traffic can be indicative of social media marketing success.
Search engine traffic. Search engine traffic is that traffic that comes from visitors clicking on links on a search results page for any search engine — whether Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Blekko, or similar. This traffic source is divided into organic or non-paid search engine traffic — meaning that the visitor clicked on a so-called natural search result — and CPC or paid search engine traffic, which is the traffic you purchase (via pay-per-click ads_ from search engines. Search engine traffic usually indicates that you have good or at least reasonably good content. It also can mean that you have chosen a good software platform. Be sure to learn which keywords are driving this traffic. Multi-channel merchants, as an example, may find that their brand name is a key search term. When this is the case, offline marketing is usually the real traffic driver.
In the default table for the Traffic Sources report Google Analytics shows a source followed by its medium.
Selecting “All Traffic Sources” from Google Analytics left-side navigation will show you a table listing the most active traffic sources and their medium. Direct traffic, as you would expect, has a medium of “none.” Traffic from Facebook, as an example, will have a medium of “referral.” Search engine traffic will have a medium or “organic” or “CPC” as described above.
Sometimes you will see a search engine domain, like Google.com, with the medium “referral.” This indicates that the site sent you traffic from a page other than a search engine results page. This could be a link from a Google+ account or some other Google service.
Interpreting the Traffic Sources Report
Of course, data — not interpreted and analyzed — will be unable to inform your marketing planning or investment. So take the excellent information found in the Traffic Sources section and discern what it says about a website and that site’s marketing.
Put another way, looking only at the sources that drove the most traffic will not tell you anything about why visitors are coming or whether the site is meeting expectations or making sales. Rather, you need to look at traffic sources in context in order to properly interpret them.
Using Bounce Rate with Traffic Sources
Start by navigating to the “All Traffic Sources” sub-menu. Notice the site’s “bounce rate” for the selected time period.
Bounce rate is a good indicator of visitor engagement on ecommerce sites.
The bounce rate measures the percentage of site traffic that resulted in a single page visit. A visitor landed on the site and left without clicking to any other page. Comparing a source’s bounce rate to other sources and the site average can be a good indicator of a source’s compatibility, and it will help with some marketing campaigns.
To see this in your Traffic Sources section, switch your analytics view from “table” to “comparison” by selecting the comparison icon on the right side of the page.
The comparison views shows how individual sources perform relative to the site average.
Set the “compared to site average” drop down to “Bounce” so that a source’s visits and bounce rates are compared to the site average for bounce rate.
Compare site visitors to the site average for bounces.
In the example below, Google’s organic results generated the most site traffic for the time period shown, but had a bounce rate that was greater than the site average. By contrast direct traffic generated fewer visits, but had a lower than average bounce rate. A page from another website, generated 5,946 visits but had a bounce rate 22.62 percent less than the site average.
Search engine traffic will often have a higher bounce rate than direct traffic.
So what does this mean? “Bounce rate” can be thought of as a measure of engagement. If visitors are moving around your site, they are engaged. If they are bouncing, they cannot think of a good reason to stay. There is one notable exception to this: Blogs, videos, and news sites often have higher bounce rates because a visitor reads a particular article or watches a video and then leaves. For an ecommerce site, however, you would like to see relative low bounce rates. Sources that bounce a lot are probably not providing quality traffic.
You can apply this to marketing in a few ways. If, for example, you purchase paid search advertising, you’ll want to make sure those “CPC” sources have generally low bounce rates. If a pay-per-click or cost-per-click campaign has a high bounce rate (1) check your landing page to make sure that it provides the content promised in your ad, (2) check your ad copy to ensure it is clear, and (3) check your keywords.
Bottom line, if a source has a high bounce rate, the site is probably not relevant to what the visitor clicked on.
Use Average Time on Site with Traffic Sources
Another good metric to follow in the Traffic Sources section is the “average time on site” compared to visits comparison view. This report can be found under “All Traffic Sources,” in the comparison view. In fact, this is the same place as I directed you to go for bounces, only select “Avg. Time on Site” from the drop down menu.
Switch the drop down menu to “Avg. Time on Site” for another way to measure visitor engagement.
Google measures average time on site by first collecting each visitor’s exact time on a particular page. Imagine that a visitor lands on page 1 of your site. Google places a cookie, including a unique code for the visitor and a time stamp. When that visitor clicks through to page 2 of your site, Google again notes the time, and then subtracts the time that the visitor arrived at page 2 from the time that the visitor arrived at page 1. Google then averages each and every page’s time spent to get the average time each visitor spends on the site.
It is worth noting that a visitor must click to at least one additional page for Google to capture the time spent. When a visitor bounces, Google does not include the bounced page in this calculation.
A source’s performance relative to the average time on site can be a key indicator for marketing programs.
In the example above, Google organic results drove the most total traffic for the time period in view. But the Google organic traffic source forwarded visitors that spent an average of 31.39 less time on the site than the average. Visitors coming directly to the site, by contrast, spent 51.31 percent more time on site than average.
With average time on site, it is worth taking the analysis a step deeper. Try (1) clicking on one of the individual traffic sources, (2) selecting the comparison view, and (3) setting the dimension to “keyword.”
Dimensions can be found in a drop down menu at the top left of the comparison view and serve to further refine the Traffic Sources section.]
This section is particularly helpful when looking at organic results from search engines, since it will let you know which search queries resulted in engaged traffic. Below is another example from a site that focuses on electronic components. Overall, the Google organic source was well behind the site average, but some specific search queries were actually performing better than average.
Digging deeper into the Traffic Sources section can provide specific and actionable data.
For marketing, try to monitor the traffic sources that provide visitors who spend the most time on site. For example, if you notice that Twitter is sending visitors that spend a few minutes on each page, it would be worth investigating the site’s Twitter presence.
Summing Up
The Google Analytics Traffic Sources section monitors which sources are sending traffic to a site and — with a bit of interpretation — this data can be used to measure the quality of traffic being sent.
Armed with this information, ecommerce marketers can learn why some sources might be under-performing or focus efforts on sources that drive better quality traffic. In some cases, this might mean relying less on search engines and more on social media or brand awareness. Other times the opposite could be the best course of action. Either way, the Traffic Sources section in Google Analytics can help.
In this ever changing field, you can stay ahead of the curve with my WordPress SEO tips designed to provide you with what works to achieve results.
A great way to start the New Year – I heard from a very trusted colleague and want to share these wonderful search engine optimistion tips with you. Over at www.onblast.com he got in touch to say Hi and Happy New Year. We’ve not spoken for a wee while and really happy to hear from him and guess what? Even though it has been longer that it should have been he wanted to share his latest post about WordPress and the secret tips of how to get success with blogging. I am so grateful to him for sending me this I had to share it with you…ssshh don’t tell him!
So with that being said, welcome to the ultimate resource for WordPress SEO tips this side of a Tibetan monk who understands the mind of Google (I’m fairly certain he doesn’t exist).
WordPress is arguably the best blogging platform in existence, and it provides us with a lot of SEO tools that many of you may not know about.
Of course, there are an abundance of other practices in your structure and content that will also lend to a more optimized website, but we’ll get to all of that in due time.
For now, as the salad said to the dinner: “lettuce begin!”
The Secrets to Successful WordPress SEO (You’re Welcome)
“Optimizing your WordPress site is the first step toward real blogging success” [click to tweet]
It’s hard to believe anyone would give this out for free, but I’m Matt Banner, and although most people know me through my brother Bruce, you know, the big green guy (the Hulk) I’m sporting a brain that’s equally powerful and like him I want to use my power for good.
Here’s what you’re going to learn by the end of this article:
Today’s Roadmap
A massive list of the best SEO practices out there
WordPress exclusive tips to maximize your blog’s potential
A sneak peek at the future of SEO and how you can prepare today
Step by step on How to Optimize WordPress with the Yoast Plugin
35 WordPress SEO Tips to Chew On
1) Pay attention how you structure your URL: as you create phenomenal posts, remember that WordPress allows you to tailor the structure of your permalinks (or URL) under the settings > Permalinks. You can utilize a custom structure (my recommendation) or pick something different.
Just know that the shorter, the better (i.e. onblastblog.com/get-more-traffic). You don’t need to fit every single word of your article title in the URL.
2) Install the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin: Of all the plugins out there, this is the one you need for your blog. This will help you keep track of your optimization and allow you to tailor other features of your blog without the need for multiple plugins. Yoast will keep your website clean and on track.
3) Add Internal Links: When you’re working on a new post, make sure you link to other relevant ones on your blog to increase the networking structure and keep the other posts in the limelight.
4) Optimize Images: This is relatively easy and comes included with WordPress. When you’re uploading and inserting an image on your blog, there are fields to provide an alternate text, caption, and description.
Use them all. These all add to the organic visibility of the image, so don’t forget to use them.
5) Content is for People First: Some bloggers get all caught up in throwing as many keywords into a post as possible, and while having your primary and LSI keywords present is certainly needed to help people understand what you’re talking about, ultimately the usefulness of your content will decide how well it performs in search engine results.
Make it well-written, unique, and above all else, useful for your readers.
6) Generate More Brand Mentions: Having your posts linked on other blogs is an important step in building a strong organically-focused blog.
Essentially, they are 3rd party recommendations that scream “What you’re doing is awesome”. That being said, you don’t need links from sites that aren’t in your niche or don’t relate to your topic.
Remember, your goal is ultimately about judging the usefulness of your site for users.
7) PageRank isn’t as Important as You Might Think: The way pages are viewed and ranked by search engines is part of a huge machine like algorithm. It’s been widely noted that using page rank as a ranking factor is no longer recognized.
8) Ensure your Title Tag Contains the Most Important Words: The title tag, which displays on Google and other search engines, shouldn’t just be the company name or the name of your blog. Each title tag should accurately describe what will be on that given page.
Practicing this will better improve your SEO and proudly display the content of the post.
9) Make Your Hyperlinks Keyword Phrases: This is a simple tip, but an important one. If you’re linking to an article about common mistakes bloggers make, don’t just say “click here”, use the phrase so readers know what they’re clicking on.
10) Long-Tail Keyword Phrases Beat Lonely Ones: You can pick and choose keywords like you’re the king or queen of the apple bobbing contest, but the real way to utilize these keywords is by placing them in phrases that are relevant to your topic.
If you’re talking about cooking dessert dishes, then expand on that like so: “Our detailed recipes will help you craft the finest dessert dishes.”
11) From the Beginning, Your Design Should be SEO Focused: Your blogs design, whether it’s done by you or by a web designer, needs to be focused on organic search traffic.
While fancy colors and animations are nice, the search engines are looking at text and image descriptions, they might as well be color blind. Bottom line: Don’t get too cute or too fancy with flash and javascript.
12) Get your Site Indexed: Using a tool like Google Search Console will help you establish a clear connection between your website’s content and the Google search engine.
13) Structure Your Site With Simplicity: A complicated and disorganized blog isn’t going to get a lot of readers or backlinks.
Don’t go crazy with folders and subfolders. Keep things organized and if people want to look at older posts, make sure that’s easy to do as well.
14) Always, Always Reciprocate: Not only is it common courtesy to link & reference other sites that have furthered the topic conversation you’re writing about, but doing so will help build your popularity and improve your authority (so long as they’re quality trusted sites that are applicable to the same topic) in your particular niche.
15) Content Needs to be Unique and of High Quality: You can write about the psychological profile of the common household cat all you want, but if the content isn’t of high quality (meaning no keyword stuffing, or a litany of grammar and punctuation issues) then you’re not going to see the results you want.
Creating content that does both of these things will be infinitely more noticeable to Google.
16) Choose a Single Main Keyword Phrase: Don’t try to create a single post that addresses multiple keyword phrases. Find one that most represents your content and use it sparingly in the post.
Branch off of that keyword with secondary keywords and relevant topics to further expand on the subject matter.
17) Your SEO Must Lead to a Strong CTA (Call to Action): Much like dousing logs in lighter fluid, it’s all for naught if you don’t light a match to ignite the flames. At the end of your posts, you should always leave the reader with something to do.
It could be a sign up for your newsletter, or an invitation to comment. It could also be an opportunity to purchase your products or services. Make sure this is present, and that it’s clear and concise.
18) Never Stop Researching: Anything involving SEO is only a present solution or tactic.
The landscape of this is always changing. With new updates to Google and Yahoo, the methods by which pages are displayed and ranked is always changing. Staying current on these trends and algorithms is the best way to stay ahead of the curve.
19) The Text Around Your Images Matters: As mentioned earlier, the caption, description and ALT-Text attached to your images helps them rank well in search engines.
What you’re saying when the image appears (the text around it) also matters. SEO is relying more on how things connect and less on specific keywords, so remember to make everything fit together.
20) Your Social Media Presence is Huge: Having your blog posts present on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites goes hand in hand SEO. Installing a social media plugin on your WordPress blog will also allow people to share your posts on their networks, further spreading the influence of your site.
21) Mix-Up the Types of Content on Your Blog: It’s not about text and pictures, you need to get more creative than that. Publish videos, record podcasts, and try new things with your posts. You never want to shatter the style or voice you’ve established, but that doesn’t mean you can’t stretch the types of content you deliver to other forms.
22) Use Clean and Simple Themes: Think minimal.
The more code that search engines have to search, the harder it’s going to be for your content to stand out.
Use simple themes that are light on coding and run fast. This way your content is found faster and easier by search engines and ultimately by your readers.
23) Create an XML Sitemap: This is essentially a map of your website that Google can use to properly understand what pages you have.
Creating one of these can be done using an SEO plugin, or with other sitemap specific plugins, but regardless of how you do it, this is an essential action that will make your site infinitely more readable for search engines like Google.
24) Don’t Index Every Single Page: All the pages of your blog don’t need to be indexed as some of them are just, well, there. The ones that provide value to readers, the ones with content are the ones that should be viewed by search engines. That being said, if you index your category pages on your blog, consider adding a paragraph or two about what’s in that category.
This adds value to the page, and being that’s a detailed description, it will only show up for that category, this is key because simply placing a post teaser or teasers on the page will still allow that content to appear in other searches.
25) Keep Your WordPress Up to Date: The updates for WordPress that come down the pipeline are important.
They ensure that your security is solid, but they also alter any possible errors or glitches in the coding that could be hurting your SEO ranking. You don’t want anything holding you back, but more than that you don’t want your site getting hacked.
26) Remove Defaults from Your Site: When you’re first developing your WordPress blog, you’re going to see defaults that can hurt your SEO. For example, in the beginning, the posts are categorized.
As mentioned above, you can create category pages with their own unique content and index them for an SEO boost.
In addition to things like that, consider changing default messages like “Hello World!” and others that are put there as placeholders. These look unprofessional on a live website and your readers will recognize them as they stand out from the rest of your blog’s style.
27) When Customizing your URL, Remember Keywords: I mentioned earlier changing the URL from the default setting, but there’s something to be said about customizing them yourself to include the title of your blog post that remains as small and simple as possible.
Focus on the keywords and remove things like “and” “a” and “is” from the permalink.
28) Avoid Duplicate Content by Creating a Static Homepage: Identical content is the bane of any blogger’s existence. When you setup your WordPress site, the default is posting your latest content on the homepage. The problem with this is that showing the content on the homepage and in the respective post creates that dreaded duplicate content.
To fix this, create a page for blog posts and go to the reading settings. Once you’ve done this, choose between latest posts or a static page for the front page displays.
Each article you post should be represented by an excerpt, then double check that the discourage search engines from indexing this site is not selected.
29) Track Your Progress with Google Analytics: Using an analytics tool such as Google Analytics will help you monitor your progress.
you should always be aware of how well you’re doing, and this is the way.
The results of a tracking program will help you find 404 pages, see how long people stay for, and how much traffic you’re getting from search engines.
All of this information will help you better understand what’s working, and what isn’t. When you finally find that ‘secret sauce’ based on all of your efforts and the results to prove it, then your analytics account should look something like this:
30) Make Sure You’ve Got the Date Right: New and fresh content is great for SEO, but WordPress uses a default UTC time zone when you set it up. If this time zone isn’t correct for your location, your new content may not be noticed by search engines.
When searching for new content, Google check the time set on your WordPress, not the time and date it actually went up.All you have to do to fix this, is head into the settings > General and you’ll see the time zone. If you need help figuring out which time zone is yours, Wikipedia has a handy chart.
Looking Into the Future: How SEO is Evolving (And How You Can Stay Ahead of The Curve)
With each of these updates the SEO landscape changes and we must in turn change with it. While the changes are beneficial and contribute to the overall whole, they are still radical in some aspects. Here are the updates issued in 2013:
Panda #24: First update of the year issued on January 22nd.
Panda #25: This was the last update before the Panda update was added into the core algorithm.
Hummingbird: This was a major update to the core algorithm, modifying semantic search among other SEO tactics in a big way.
Penguin 2.0./2.1: These were both minor updates that didn’t touch the main algorithm.
So, why did I show you a list of oddly named updates? Well, of the five updates, two of them were fairly major. This means that several times per year, the way we understand SEO changes. I know, that seems scary, but you needn’t be afraid.
When it comes down to it, Google is just trying to make their search results the best they can be for users. Speaking of users, don’t forget to use a handful of these WordPress plugins to improve your reader’s experience on the site.
Staying ahead of the curve isn’t about reading every last update note (that would help though if you can understand them) it’s about understanding what Google defines as a high-quality website. If you meet these standards, then the search engine is looking for you instead of you looking for it. That’s gotta be a nice confidence boost.
So, with that in mind, here are characteristics of a high-quality site in Google’s eyes:
Original, Quality and Correct Content
Trustworthy and Credible
Nothing biased or one-sided (use perspective)
Minimal to zero consumer complaints
Content should be comprehensive and thorough
A low-quality or unoptimized website has paid links everywhere, way too many ads, and little to no content.
And you know what proves all of this? Your analytics account: The average amount of time a reader stays on your website, how many pages do they visit, etc.
What About the Future?
With time flying past us, we’ll be talking about 2015’s update logs before you know it, but we’ve already seen some big changes coming down the pipeline.
In order to keep you on top of how things are going, I’m going to give you some final tips that will help you stay at the forefront of these constantly changing times.
31) Promote Your Content
I know, you’re probably thinking that you’ve heard the word “content” enough times to make your ears bleed, but hear me out on this one.
Older SEO resources will tell you that proper structure, keywords, permalinks, site mapping, and so on will be enough, but they’re not anymore. Those things are still important, in fact, they keep you afloat. They don’t, however, elevate you to greatness.
The SEO tips I’ve provided will act as your life jacket in the ocean of the internet, but you’ve got to reach out and grab something to hold onto if you want to take off.
This is done through marketing. When you write your posts, make them unique, powerful, and irresistible. Give people the power to share it with social media plugins, and spread the word! This is one of the best ways you can promote your blog and increase traffic to it.
Essentially it means that you must produce top notch content and market it to your targeted audience, as well as similar websites in your industry.
This will help contribute to building up a link profile that Google approves of, which in return will allow your site to rank higher in the search engine results pages.
32) SEO and Public Relations Are Merging
I know, it’s scary, but this is the way of the future. In a video posted by Matt Cutts of Google fame, he spoke about the importance of integrating PR tactics into your SEO:
“Over time, backlinks will become a little less important. If we could really be able to tell, you know, Danny Sullivan wrote this article…or Vanessa Fox wrote this article, something like that, that would help us understand — okay, this is something that we can tell, 1) it’s an expert, 2) it’s an expert in this particular field.”
In essence, people want to know who is writing these articles. When Google Authorship was still around, these profiles would rank incredibly high, along with Wikipedia pages, and expert news articles.
Suddenly it became about more than the content, it was about who wrote it and what their presence is on the internet. While it may seem hard to grasp, it’s important that going forward, your content is optimized, marketed, and that the author of the post has an equal presence and profile.
33) Google’s Algorithm is Smarter Than You
You may be a certified genius, but it means nothing when compared to the might of Google.
In May of 2014 they celebrated 16 years and in those years, numerous changes and modifications to the search algorithm have resulted in one singular truth: you can’t trick Google.
Back in the early days, there were tricks and workarounds that you may still see online, but check the date on those articles, because those things don’t work anymore.
A great example is co-occurrence which is one of the recent developments. This concept allows the search engine to predict how one phrase will spark other ones.
If those phrases are present, the page ranks higher for relevancy. So if I were to say “Mickey Mouse” then other phrases like “Disney World” “Magic Kingdom” and “Minnie Mouse” will relate to that original term.
34) Social Profiles Matter More Now Than Ever
When looking at sheer numbers of search inquires, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have upwards of two billion searches per day.
With all of these incoming searches, SEO is now becoming more social than ever. We always want to market our content, but now we need to market ourselves.
Just like the rise of PR in SEO, people are going to look for your presence on Facebook, Twitter, and so on.
Your persona and your reputation online through these sites will greatly affect the success of your blog.
Obviously you don’t want to be fake, but just like an embarrassing picture can sabotage a job interview, the same principle now applies to your readers. Put your best face online.
35) Future Concept: Entity Salience
A Google Research paper recently mentioned the concept of entity salience. This is some future level stuff but you can prepare for it now and it will pay off in the long run.
Beyond using keywords to determine relevance, this technique uses “entities” on the page, examining the known relationships between them to better understand the content.
Anything that is distinct or well-defined is an “entity.” If the relationship between entities is strong, it adds more relevance to the overall page.
For example, if we’re writing about HBO, we could go into shows that the channel broadcasts like Game of Thrones, but we could go even further and establish entity salience by mentioning specific characters like Jon Snow or Arya Stark, or Ned Stark, thereby strengthening the relationships between these entities.
Setting Up Your WordPress for Success
Like me, if you’ve ever tried to fully optimize your WordPress blog for success then you would know first hand that you’ve driven yourself crazy trying to figure it out.
“What chu talkin about Matt?”
What I’m talking about is the irritating plugins, themes etc. that get in the way of our optimized WordPress blog.
Here’s a quick step by step tutorial on how to optimize it specifically using Yoast:
Step 1: Descriptions & Titles
WordPress SEO by Yoast features very useful settings that give you ultimate control over title & descriptions. This applies to all post & page types.
Step 2: Indexation
Under “post types” ensure that posts and pages are both left unchecked so they are indexed. There’s no need to keep media indexed, however.
Categories do not HAVE to be indexed. Deciding whether or not to index your category pages depends on whether you anticipate those pages to rank on search engines.
In addition to that, a category page (like any indexed page) HAS to have unique and valuable content that can’t be found elsewhere.
Step 3: XML Sitemaps
Please make sure you’re not using any other plugins that handle XML Sitemaps – this can cause confusion for your WordPress.
When you’re excluding post types and taxonomies, only check mark the types of pages you DO NOT want indexed. Performing this step the right way will help you with an optimized XML Sitemap.
Step 4: Permalinks
I would strongly advise you to strip the /category/ off of category URLs. The shorter and more succinct your URLs are, the better.
I would also enforce a trailing slash on all category and tag URLs as well as removing stop words from slugs. Slug is another word for URL.
After configuring the permalinks, your Yoast plugin is all set and optimized for success! Now, on to the meat of this article, my very own WordPress tips for you to keep in your back pocket.
Constant changes on a yearly basis can be seen, and things that worked six months ago won’t work now. It’s not something to be afraid of, but it is something to be aware of.
We can prepare for the future by staying abreast of changing elements in SEO and always focusing our content on being unique and high-quality for our readers. If you’re writing for them, you’ll never fail.
Keep these tips in mind, but never let them leave yours. Now that we know how PR is affecting SEO, we can also seek to improve our social media presence as we market our content.
These are all great WordPress SEO tips, so make sure you’re using them all as your make your mark.
It’s a lot to take in, especially the concepts of Entity Salience, but I promise, you’ve got this. Keep this blog bookmarked as we continue exploring the best ways to blog, and as always don’t forget to tell me about your opinions and your SEO tips in the comments below.
What it does: SEMRush tracks over 95,000,000 keywords and over 56,000,000 domains to provide a complete competitive analysis of websites in your industry. You can find out how they rank for keywords and get an estimate of their traffic.
What it does: This tool is slightly different than the previous one. It randomly shows you a blog title idea where you can fill in your topic. You keep clicking to see more ideas, until you find the one that grabs your attention.
What it does: HubSpot is the best end-to-end Inbound Marketing platform that allows you to manage your blog, social media, email marketing, list segmentation, lead generation and scoring, landing pages, and more.
What it costs: 30-day free trial; plans start at $200 per month
What it does: Google drive is a cloud storage software that allows you to create and collaborate on word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, and drawings.
What it does: A service that lists your blog posts under “relevant articles” or “promoted stories” on major websites such as CNN, TechCrunch, and ESPN.
What it does: A free tool from HubSpot that lets you track user behaviors, convert visitors into email subscribers or leads, and provides detailed contact information.
What it costs: Free
Bob Ruffolo
Bob is the founder and CEO of IMPACT, an agency he formed in 2009 to help people and their organizations succeed by changing the way they market themselves online. Since its founding, IMPACT has achieved its status as one of HubSpot’s first Platinum Partners in less than 2 years, and secured its place as one of the top inbound marketing agencies in the country.
Social Media Tools for Virtual Assistants and More
This is the largest and most comprehensive list of social media tools online. Trust me, I did some digging.
Sure, there are countless lists floating around that have 10, 25, or even 100 social media tools listed. At best, you typically get the same top social media tools mentioned across these lists.
But you and I both know that there are hundreds of other little known social media tools out there that can help with your social media marketing initiatives. However, who has time to curate all of these tools in one place?
Lucky for you, I have compiled over 500 social media tools into a single list. So we’re off to a good start.
What I have found in list posts is that the longer the list, the more frustrated I get when endlessly scrolling to uncover a hidden gem that will do what I need it to.
I’m sure you can agree that this is not the best use of your time.
So here’s what I did:
Instead of throwing out a bunch of links to tools in some random order, I have made it drop-dead simple to zero in on tools that will solve your pain points.
With this list of social media tools, you can:
See which tools work on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Twitter
Use the search filter to identify specific needs a tool serves, specific social media channels it will work, or the particular name of a tool you are interested in learning more about
Upvote or downvote your favorite or least favorite social tools
Sort the table alphabetically by name, whether or not it is free or paid (or both), or which tools have to most or least upvotes
Some things to note is that the term “social media tool” can be somewhat vague. What I mean is that even though a tool might serve a primary purpose for something else, it doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be used to help your social media activities in some way.
For example, one such tool is Google Analytics. While it is definitely not intended to be a social media tool, you can most certainly use it to more accurately track your social media initiatives.
So please keep an open mind when sifting through these results.
Why You Need Multiple Social Media Tools
Whether most people admit it or not, you should be using various tools to help with your social media activities. By no means should you fully automate your social media presence, but you should look at ways to help streamline your efforts.
The numbers for social media are staggering. Twitter recently published that they have 316,000,000 (that’s 316 million) monthly active users. That pales in comparison to Facebook which has 1,900,000,000 monthly active users. Yep, that’s 1.9 billion.
Here is the full chart with all the industries tracked:
Of course your social channel focus will be influenced by your audience. If your business falls within one of these categories, you can have a good idea of where your competitors are focusing their efforts. You might choose to develop a presence on channels where your competitors are. Or perhaps, you take a contrarian approach and go after a less saturated social media channel.
No matter what social channels you want to be active on, to get the most out of your initiatives you will probably want consider a social media tool or two that will help you be more efficient.
Unfortunately, there is not a single software or tool that can tackle all your needs on each social media channel. The good news is that with this list of social media tools having the ability to be filtered, you can easily narrow down the results.
Many of these tools work across multiple social networks, which is not surprising.
Out of the social media tools in this list, we can see that the majority of them will work on Twitter and the fewest being Pinterest. Twitter has had an API open to developers for years, while Pinterest is just starting to roll out access to their API.
Number of Tools Per Social NetworkFacebookGoogle+InstagramLinkedInPinterestTwitter0125250375500
Social Network
# of Tools Supported
Facebook
326
Google+
215
Instagram
158
LinkedIn
233
Pinterest
119
Twitter
427
Cost to use these tools vary. Some are free, some are paid, and some offer both free and paid options.
The majority of tools listed here do cost something to use. It takes a lot of time, resources, and money to put together many of these tools.
Here’s the pricing breakdown:
Cost StructurePaidFreeFree, Paid47.6%19.3%33.1%
Cost
# of Tools
Paid
239
Free
166
Free, Paid
97
Current List of Social Media Tools
As you can imagine, there are no doubt more tools that I have yet to find. So I can definitely use your help. If you know of a tool that is worth using and not on this list, please tell me about it here. I’ll be sure to check out the tool/service and update this list accordingly.
If you happen to come across an item in the list that is inaccurate or incorrect, please let me know so that I can fix it. Many of these tools require paid access to use, and unfortunately I don’t have access to some of them to really know the ins and outs of them. So if you are a user of a particular tool, let me know if I described one incorrectly.
I’d like to ask for your help in maintaining this list. Various social media tools come and go, and there’s nothing more annoying that clicking on a link to a tool to find out it is no longer available.
So, if you come across a tool that has seen better days, leave a comment below and I’ll update the list.
Don’t forget to leave a comment below about your favorite social media tools!
P.S. You will be asked to sign in to List.ly in order to vote for your favorite tools – don’t worry it’s easy and you sign in using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+.
Digital marketing is a multifaceted beast that evolves and gets more complicated every week. With so many different ways to reach your audience, it’s important to stay on top of the latest tactics and trends.
From content and social to analytics and retargeting, you’re staying up to date on it all. It’s a lot easier when you can do so with simple, easy-to-digest guides. So I’ve pulled together 30 cheat sheets and checklists to keep your digital marketing fresh and make your life easier.
This periodic table is a unique chart highlighting the important terms in content marketing. it covers everything you need to keep an eye on. From content strategy to metrics, it’s an all-inclusive index that can help you deliver great content.
2. The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Awesome Marketing Emails
Email marketing is a key element of any campaign. From the subject line to the email footer, every section of your email contributes to its overall ability to convert. If you think you’re having trouble with your email outreach, this cheat sheet from HubSpot can help you dissect your emails and optimize each aspect of your campaign to obtain the best results.
3. A Detailed Guide to Photo and Image Sizes on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and More
When it comes to social media, great visuals increase engagement. But this only applies when your pictures are relevant, eye-catching, and of course, optimized. With so many types of images to choose from, it’s not easy to keep track of the rules for each network.
This handy infographic shows you all the different images in your social media profiles, along with what they’re used for. It includes recommended sizes, image scale, etc. to make it easier for you to get the most out of your images.
4. Advanced Content Promotion Checklist
Writing content is hard, but promoting it is even harder. With all the distribution tools and channels available to you, it gets tough to keep track of where you’ve promoted your piece and where you’ve yet to share it.
And that’s after figuring out what to do in the first place. Process Street has created a great checklist to streamline content promotion, originally made for themselves before giving us all access.
5. Google Analytics Cheat Sheet
Google Analytics is an absolute essential for any marketer, and this cheat sheet from Portent has you covered. From setting up your account to tracking your goals and conversions, this cheat sheet can really help you get the best out of Google Analytics.
This cheat sheet simplifies the process of retargeting your customers. It covers the basics to get you started, along with advanced tactics and tips to help you succeed.
7. The Ultimate SaaS Metrics Cheat Sheet
Chart Mogul created this cheat sheet with every important metric you need to know for your SaaS. What’s covered: which ones are important, why they’re important, and how they’re measured. All condensed into a simple 2-pager.
Moz, an industry leader in SEO, created this fantastic cheat sheet for SEO newbies and professionals alike. It’s constantly updated by the Moz team, and is great help for web developers to keep their work SEO-friendly and up to date.
9. The Ultimate Inbound Marketing Checklist
This comprehensive checklist covers all the essentials of inbound marketing. Drafted like an ebook, it not only tells you what to do, but how to do it. This guide is a must-have for any marketer’s toolbox.
This PDF from Copy Hackers contains all the dos and don’ts of writing great copy that converts, from how to order your bulleted lists, to which famous authors should inspire your copywriting.
11. Google Adwords Cheat Sheet
Google Adwords can get a bit confusing, so Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd came together to create a resource to help. It shows you how to set up, the rules you need to keep in mind, and how to write ad copy that works. It also goes on to define some of terms that might have seemed like gibberish when you first got started.
11. Local SEO Checklist
This checklist is a great way to keep track of your local optimization. From on-page SEO to social signals, this list covers every aspect your SEO to manage your process in the easiest way.
12. Social Media Marketing Checklist
Social media is an essential channel for marketers and this infographic can help you manage your efforts and make sure you don’t miss a beat!
This fill-in-the-blank infographic will guide you through setting up the beginnings of a social media marketing strategy, from identifying your audience through measuring your results.
13. A Complete Conversion Rate Optimization Checklist
Conversion science can get messy when you don’t know what exactly brings you conversions. This checklist helps you streamline the process and identify the factors that can be optimized to improve your overall CRO, from choosing KPIs through designing A/B/ tests.
14. Google Analytics Metrics and Dimensions Cheat Sheet
Google analytics can be confusing to a beginner. It can take forever to discover all the data it’s tracking without a guide. This PDF helps you understand the metrics and dimensions you need to figure out the various aspects of your customers’ interaction with your website.
15. The Ultimate SEO Checklist
The Ultimate SEO Checklist from Leapfroggr covers on-page and off-page SEO for anyone who’s looking to make sure that their website has a good foundation for their digital marketing strategy.
But unlike most other SEO checklists, it’s not a list of the ranking factors or how to optimize for them. It’s fully covers creating an SEO strategy, from performing market research to reputation management.
16. The Shelf’s Blogger Outreach Checklist
When it comes to reaching out to bloggers or influencers, any old email just will not do. This checklist from The Shelf covers the essentials of your outreach for the best results, including best practices and sample outreach emails.
17. Site Audit Checklist
Site audits can be intimidating, but Annie Cushing (aka Annielytics) makes it easy with her site audit checklist. It’s in the form of a Google Spreadsheet, so you can quickly make a copy and start tracking things yourself.
It becomes a lot less daunting to check track your work one section at a time. The sheet includes the initial data pulls, architecture, analytics, e-commerce, and pretty much everything you need to make your audit a breeze.
18. Universal Analytics Cheat Sheet
This comprehensive cheat sheet simplifies Google Analytics. It has three sheets that cover general usage, method and field reference, and limits and quotas.
The Startup Launch List is an amazing compilation for budding entrepreneurs. Its reading list gives insights into each aspect of building a startup – from the initial idea to raising finances from investors. These tidbits from experienced hands can help you get your idea up and running.
20. The Social Platform Cheat Sheet
There are so many social channels out there, and they’re constantly changing. This cheat sheet guides you through the main platforms, who’s on them, and how to engage them.
21. .htaccess Cheat Sheet
Redirecting pages can get a little tricky for anyone without a technical background. This cheat sheet teaches you the basics for redirection, security, and other rules.
22. The Ultimate Guide to Twitter Advanced Search
Twitter’s one of the best ways for a brand to engage with its customers. And advertising there has proven awesome for many marketers. Even if your company doesn’t even have a Twitter handle yet (but it does, right?), you can find leads, track brand mentions, follow important topics, etc.
This Zapier guide is your way into the world of tweets, with its step-by-step guide to using advanced search to get real time data about your customers.
23. The Google Guide to Making Search Easier
Google advanced search is an essential skill for any marketer. This search guide can help you use search operators to get specific search results on Google.
You can use this to find really specific content, search unique mediums, and perform any kind of research faster.
24. A 50-Point Checklist for Creating The Ultimate Landing Page
When your landing page is your key to conversions, it’s important to make sure that you’re not missing any key elements. This Unbounce checklist highlights all the essentials of a great landing page so that while you’re building one, you don’t miss anything.
25. Website Usability Checklist
Building websites can be difficult for marketers, and in the process of making a beautiful site, it’s easy to lost sight of usability when you’re not an expert.
The website usability checklist covers the common problems faced by users on a website. From forms to navigation, it helps you make sure that your site is not only well designed, but also user-friendly.
26. The Ultimate Google Algorithm Cheat Sheet
Google is constantly updating its algorithm to provide a better user experience. Neil Patel has created a cheat sheet to simplify these changes and help marketers make sense of the ranking factors and how they can affect your website.
27. The Keyword Research Cheat Sheet
As a marketer, you know how important SEO is. This keyword research cheat sheet covers the basics of the way keywords work and how you can use the best ones to bring in relevant, converting traffic.
28. The SEO Cheat Sheet for WordPress
WordPress is the easiest way for marketers to get their blog out there. By using themes, connecting your blog to useful plugins, and a few other tricks covered in this resource, you can optimize any page.
29. Website Launch Checklist
The launch of a website is stressful enough as it is, without the hassle of forgetting something simple like checking links. Launchlist makes sure that you’ve got all your bases covered before your site goes live.
Prepare Yourself
Most marketing missteps come from skipping a step, rather than actually not knowing what to do. We’re busy, we’re stressed, and we handle it really well most of the time. And with checklists to ensure accuracy, we can handle it well all the time. [Source:http://www.business2community.com/marketing/29-checklists-cheat-sheets-make-marketers-lives-easier-01399754#D5RKwYfTEchq047U.99]
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