Category: Digital Branding

Digital Branding

8 Essential SEO Tools for WordPress Bloggers

WordPress is one of the major, and without a doubt, one of the best content management systems in the world. The statistics on the official WordPress site says that people produce about 70 million new posts and 77 million new comments each month.

With numbers, this huge, standing out with content is quite difficult. However, by optimizing your blog posts for SEO (like adding WordPress testimonial plugin and similar optimizations – meta titles, description etc.), you can make Google notice your content and boost your search engine ranking. WordPress is just a tool and it won’t help you to get your brand awareness. But, WordPress makes it as simple as possible to optimize your website for SEO, even if you are a complete newbie.

“The best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google.” – WPcookhouse

In this guide, I have collected the best SEO tools for WordPress users that will crush famous SEO by Yoast! After reading this article, you will become an SEO expert in the most popular CMS in the modern world.

1. SEOpress

SEO by Yoast is a popular solution for on-page SEO when it comes to blog posts. However, there are tons of unnecessary features you never use. For example, do you need Yoast’s Readability analysis which tells you if your sentences are too long or too short? Or, do you need Text Link Counter when you can use Google Search Console and see what content is indexed in Google.

There are numerous alternatives to Yoast which helps you to control titles, meta descriptions, URLs, and snippets, such as SEOpress. It is a fast and straightforward tool that can also handle a Twitter card, redirections in a blog post, remove stop words and more. SEOpress also lets you set-up SEO-friendly permalinks which helps both Google and your readers identify the topic of your content.

2. WP Smush It

Images are usually an overlooked part of SEO strategy. By taking care of image titles and Alt tags, you can get extra traffic because people often use Image search engines to find something they are looking for.

Try to rename all your images depending on your blog post topic and keywords. For instance, if someone is looking for skin retouching tutorials, it’s evident that image with name skin-retouching-tutorial.jpg will get way more traffic than the image named IMG123.jpg.

Also, your page loading speed is important regarding SEO. As a rule, images have considerable size, and they slow down the loading speed. You need to reduce image size before uploading to WordPress, which can be quickly done with online tools like WP Smush It. The plugin optimizes and compresses images for free.

3. Google Analytics for WordPress

This powerful tool from Google allows you to track almost everything about your website traffic. And, it also shows you more in-depth information, such as top pages, keywords used to find your website, people’s behavior, and demographics, referral sources, social media performance, and much more.

You can use your Gmail account to sign in to Google Analytics. Go to “Acquisition” – “Search Console” – “Landing Pages”, this way you will see the pages of your site which get the most of clicks and impressions from Google. With over, 2M installs this plugin is really worth your attention.

4. All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack is similar to Yoast and SEOpress plugins. It automatically optimizes your title, generates meta tags, notifies search engines about any changes on your site. Besides, it has XTM sitemaps and Google Analytics support.

All in One SEO Pack is a perfect solution for beginners since it works out-of-the-box. All you have to do is just install and activate the plugin.

5. W3 Total Cache

Caching is a great thing that can help you increase your page speed and improve your SEO. The plugin claims at least 10 times improvement in whole website performance and many reviews prove that statement.

W3 Total Cache provides a lot of features, such as Page Cache, Minify, Database Cache, Object Cache, Browser Cache, CDN, Varnish, and Monitoring. You can turn on or off the major features of the plugin on the General settings page.

6. SECockpit

SECockpit is an advanced tool that will help you to find long-tail keywords with low competition. These types of keywords are the best for getting on the top of Google search results. It enables you to find more keyword ideas that are better than ones of your competitors.

You will get keyword suggestions like with any other similar tool, but it will also show you the best keywords for ‘buying’, keywords for AdSense, and low-traffic keywords. This service is premium, but you can give it a test drive for 30 days for free.

7. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the best link analyzing tools out there. It has a vast index which means you can analyze almost any link on the web using the tool.

With a bunch of tools Ahrefs provides, such as Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, Content Explorer, Rank Tracker and Alerts which allows you to track the most popular content, find gaps in content for other blogs, find keywords, set alerts for brand mentions, track position of different links, and find out the best content of your competitors.

8. Google Mobile-Friendly Test

Do you know that the number of smartphone users is going to grow up to 5 billion people in 2019? It means your website should be mobile-friendly in this smartphone-addicted world. Google Mobile-Friendly Test helps you to know if your website is mobile-friendly.

It’s dramatically important since a lot of people browse the web using their smartphones. Yes, I know, this list has a lot of tools from Google, but believe me, it’s not sponsored! (It’s a joke) But, no kidding, Google is a major, most popular search engine in the world these days.

Over to You

We hope this list of plugins will come in handy for you. Beside Yoast and any other plugin, super-useful content will eventually perform better because:

1) people share it on social media, for example, Instagram posts;

2) you optimized your snippets and titles;

3) you use the long-tail keyword with low competition.

And these WordPress plugins will help you with your WordPress SEO routine. What SEO tool for WordPress have I missed out? Share with us in the comment field below.

About the author

Nancy Young is a passionate writer with over 8 years of experience. She writes inspirational articles on web design and photography. Nancy Young love reading books, travel, and learn SEO. Nancy runs a blog for graphic designers OneDesBlog.

Digital Branding

The Best Website Development Methodologies for 2020

At this point, there are more than a billion websites available on the internet, and each one of them has a reason to exist. Some of them offer products/services, some cater to crucial problems, while some are there for fun and entertainment. In a situation like this, it is straightforward to say that every concept, effect, and design on the internet has been used up at someplace or the other.

That is why developers find it tricky to cook up something new to develop a website, and this development sometimes doesn’t come that easy- innovation is crucial. The fact that website development yearns for something new has to make web development companies here think about some new website development hacks of 2020.

Every year brings a plethora of changes in the world of codes and lines of data, and the best way to keep up with the change is to brew with it. Keeping that in mind, we are going to ponder over the best website development strategies and methodologies that surely will be up a developer’s sleeve this year. After all, a proper website isn’t the one that has every effect in the rulebook, but one that is built with good bits of creativity and newness.

Newest Trends for Website Development in 2020

Progressive Web Applications (PWA)

Progressive Web Applications, aka PWA, are websites that work in a very nifty way. They are websites that work like mobile applications, and they take the user experience to another level. With HTML5 at their leverage, PWA gets businesses the compatibility of a site along with a background as good as that of an application. Mobile apps are known for their flexibility, but not everyone is a fan of downloading them.

Progressive Web Apps save them from the hassle of downloading anything altogether. Some of the plus points that PWA technologies have are an application shell structure that reduces the loading time, transport layer security that has privacy and data integrity, and app manifest files that has a home screen access.

Robots, AI and Their Kind

These have been the buzzwords of 2020 among the digital world, and although artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robots are being massively used, they will continue to be an online venture’s obsession.

AI and machine learning are now being used for every business operation, then why not web development? It has been predicted that most business operations and interactions will be without human beings in 2020, and it will probably stay the same.

Now that AI can replicate man’s work and probably do it more efficiently; they have the concoctions to offer greater customer satisfaction. Not only that, but it saves time, money, and all the other things along with it. With reduced human errors and an increased customer base, a website development company won’t see a reason not to switch to a newer strategy of web development.

The Web Assembly Breakthrough

The biggest problem with massive lines of codes that goes with programs is that it compromises performance. Users always want even heaviest of apps and games on a website URL, but it wasn’t possible until now. There was a performance indicator that dragged applications and games to the native app profile. But as of now, that problem is solved with Web Assembly.

As web developers might be aware, Web Assembly is a nifty hack to compile the programming language code into byte-code, which can quickly run in the browser. Web Assembly is highly aspirational and harnesses hardware capabilities so that they are portable and efficient.

Also, the modular binaries are built in such a manner that it utilizes imports and exports in a particular way. Web Assembly is a great thing to use if web applications need a boost.

Reduce Load-time with Single Page Apps

What’s the simplest way to reduce the reloading requirements for web pages? Web apps that run on a single page. The websites are getting loaded, and there’s no extra waiting time needed to render web pages in the browser. Want to think of some of the best examples of single-page apps? Google is an avid user of this technology.

Conclusion

It is crucial to stay in trend in terms of the latest innovations, technology, and hacks concerning website development. You have a starting point to look at the latest trends in web development, now’s the time to pep up your website and give the world something new to witness. After all, real innovation lies in creativity that comes straight from the developer’s heart, soul, and code.

Digital BrandingPersonal Branding

Where Is Content Marketing Going in 2020?

 

In the field of internet, promoting your content is a race, and ‘content marketing’ is leading this race. 

Yes, SEO has made gains in this race over the years, but content marketing is still at the forefront. In fact, other areas of marketing exist only because of content.

Everyone is fisting off content. Isn’t it? Think about it. What would you have optimized if there was no content for search engines to index?

Similarly, if there was no content, what would you post on social media? Nothing. If there was no content, then how would you communicate a message that resonates with an audience?

In content marketing, ‘you never know everything.’ New tactics and strategies emerge every day, and there are thousands of them. You ‘can’t use them all.’ You have to decide on useful trends and include them in their strategies.

In this blog, we will focus on the ‘most popular trends’ of content marketing and what direction it might be headed in 2020 and beyond.

1. Tell your story through visuals

Visual content has been trendy for a long time, and it will remain that way, because, honestly, we’d rather see images than reading. Internet users, especially the millennial generation and Generation Z, are always short on time.  You must appeal to their imagination through your interactive content. 

According to Pew Research, social platforms that feature visual content, like YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram, reign supreme among adults. In fact, YouTube continues to be the most popular and widely used platform among U.S. adults. The video-sharing platform is used by 73 percent of adults, topping even Facebook. 

Source

Additionally, a HubSpot survey revealed that 56 percent of users aged 25-34 years prefer video content from the businesses they support. The numbers are telling you that visual content is trendy, and more marketers will use it in 2020.

But wait, if everyone is using visual content, then how can you stand out in the flock? Simple answer: engage the readers with catchy visuals. Be ingenious and tell your story.

2. Purposeful content

When we look for something on the internet, we only want the content that gives us ‘the exact answer we need.’  In 2020, marketers will increasingly target queries to provide a purposeful answer for users.

They will come up with content tailored to the interests and desires of people. You have to find a balance between the information and the promotional message of the brand.

As the competition in the digital landscape gets fiercer, brands will find it harder to rank for popular keywords. If everyone is creating quality content, marketers will need to adopt ways to set their content apart from the lot.

To stand apart, your content must carry certain qualities. According to Growth Proton.com, effective content must adhere to three core values:

  • Efficiency
  • Accuracy
  • Excellence

Keep your content unique. Add some numbers in it. Keep the tone conversational. You do that, and you will have satisfied customers with answers to all their queries.

3. Memes

Add memes. We all like to chuckle. Don’t we? Memes have emerged as engaging marketing content. It can hit all the right spots in people’s minds. It has a personalized effect that is reflective of your brand’s personality.

Memes are so effective that they are can make you presidents of the U.S. According to Bloomberg, presidential candidates have a meme strategy to reach out to millennials and Generation Z. 

Now you know how vital memes are?

The viral tendency of memes makes it a useful tool to increase your reach and widen the customer base. If I like a meme, I will share it. Right? There is your chance of free promotion.

4. Podcasts

Podcasts have been growing exponentially over the past few years. According to the UK’s Office of Communication, 1 in 8 people now listen to podcasts each week. This indicates an increase of 24 percent over 2018, and it will only grow from here.

Statista also reported that the number of podcast listeners in the U.S. has almost tripled within a decade. Podcast publishers now achieve millions of streams and downloads per month.

Increasing demand for audio content means that it is now essential for marketers to initiate a podcast and help their brand establish some credibility within their field of expertise.

5. Optimize content for voice search

The use of voice search is rising thanks to voice assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa. If I can search with voice, why would I write?

According to Voicebot.ai, 33 percent of users searched through voice every month in 2019. In September 2018, the same number was 25 percent. Stats are telling you that people are talking more than they are writing.

Since Google voice search and AI-powered assistants work differently, content marketers need to optimize their content for voice search. Engage with the audience conversationally and create content based on those conversations. Such content will incorporate long-tail keywords and address voice queries of the audience. 

6. Double down on your SEO efforts

Your content can be great, but you still have to tell it to people. It will only happen when you rise to the top of SERPs. Now, the focus is on SEO strategies and to deliver an excellent user experience.

This decade will also see more investments in tools that can automate and make SEO easier. Businesses will compete to show up in the featured snippets (also known as Position 0) to stand out from their competitors.

The sky is the limit here. You can achieve ‘top ranking in the search’ through an effective content marketing strategy that addresses the audiences’ needs.

Final words

The above content marketing trends will likely be on every marketer’s mind this year and the years to come. However, businesses don’t need to abandon the strategies that have worked for them in the past.

Utilize these trends and bring simple changes to improve their understanding of your audience and their needs. As they say, “Sometimes, the simple changes bring great success.”

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Digital Branding

8 of the Best WordPress Automation Plugins for Advertising That You Need to Know

Gone are the days when you need to do everything manually in order for your business to run. Nowadays, you can simply install automation plugins on your WordPress website, and then let it do its magic.

Doing so allows you to free up some time that you can use for things that matter to make your business grow. Migrating from Shopify to WooCommerce has become a great automation process which can be easily done almost by everyone.

8 Best WordPress Automation Plugins

That said, we have listed down eight best WordPress automation Plugins that you need to know:

SEO on WordPress

1. Yoast SEO

Search engine optimization takes time before you can see the results. However, you can make it less cumbersome with the help of the Yoast SEO plugin.

What this WordPress plugin does is that it automatically runs your content to check for any SEO-related issues. This includes knowing whether you generously used your primary and secondary keywords.

It also runs a readability test on your content to ensure that you can provide top-quality content to your site visitors.

But more than anything else, Yoast SEO is known for making it easy for you to optimize every content on your website.

For one, it allows you to easily add keyword-rich title tags and meta descriptions. Second, this plugin comes with a snippet preview, which lets you show how your title tags and meta descriptions will look on search engine results.

2. Social Warfare

Although Google would not admit it, it appears that there is a positive correlation between social signals and search engine ranking. Hence, you will need a social sharing plugin such as Social Warfare to help you generate all the social signals that you can get.

Here’s the thing: If you want to drive tons of traffic to your website, you will need to employ social media marketing. And this is where Social Warfare could come in handy.

It features customizable and mobile-responsive social sharing buttons that are both beautiful and fast. It allows you to connect most of the popular social networks on your website, and then you can choose where you would like the social buttons to appear.

But what makes this WordPress plugin popular with the best Facebook advertising agency is the fact that it does not slow down your website.

3. AdSanity

This is a beginner-friendly ad management plugin that lets you insert ads anywhere on your website. You can do this using AdSanity’s widgets and ad inserter button.

In addition, this plugin allows you to keep tabs on your ads’ views and click-throughs. That way, you would know how to optimize your campaigns.

The basic plan costs $49 per year that comes with a license each for a public domain and local domain.

As long as your website runs on WordPress 3.9 or later, MySQL 5, and PHP 5.6, you can make AdSanity run on your site.

Wordpress plugins

4. Ad Inserter

If you are looking for a solid and well-developed advertising plugin for WordPress, you might want to know what Ad Inserter can do for you.

It allows you to add an ad or a line of programming code on your WordPress website. This means you can use this plugin for different kinds of ads, from AdSense to Affiliate ads.

But what’s great about Ad Inserter is that it lets you insert ads at any point on your post without writing a single line of code. You can also exclude a page in case you do not want it to have any ads.

5. Advanced Ads

Meanwhile, if you are looking for something lightweight, you might want to give Advanced Ads a spin.

This plugin does not only let you manage your ads, but it also allows you to optimize it. That way, you can get the most out of your campaign and get as much ROI as you can.

Advanced Ads come with ad rotation, ad injection, and ad widgets support, plus the following features:

  • Manage and display unlimited ads
  • Duplicate and schedule ads
  • Set expiry times on ads
  • Inject ads from any ad network
  • Get Google AMP support
  • Inject ads anywhere on your content

6. Ads Pro Plugin

Available in Codecanyon as a premium plugin, Ads Pro Plugin lets you manage, sell, and display advertising space on your WordPress website. It is like BuySellAds, but without the third-party.

This WordPress plugin also comes with a template and grid system. That way, you can see matched and user-friendly ads on your site. You can also run targeted display ads based on location, schedule your ads, and you can choose on which device your ads will appear.

The best part? It is 100% free from Adblocker!

Meaning, you have more than 20 ways to display your banners ‒ including Google AdSense.

Wordpress user in action

7. Quick Adsense

Quick Adsense is a well-known free WordPress plugin you can use for ad management. And it is not just limited to Google Ad Network. You can use the plugin to display hosted ads and third-party ads as well.

The cool thing about this ad management plugin is that it is easy to set up, and its settings page allows you to manage ad codes and choose how and where you want to display your ads. Mind you, you can display your ads on the sidebar using the custom ad widgets.

Here’s a caveat, though: Quick Adsense does not come with advanced features. And you can only save 10 ad codes at most.

8. DoubleClick by Google

Powered by Google, as the name implies, DoubleClick is a web-based ad selling and serving platform. It gives publishers an edge when it comes to reliability and cost-effectiveness.

But what makes DoubleClick great is that you can run a competition for the same ad spots, be it on Adsense or on third-party ad networks. And then the ad management platform will automatically select which is the best-paying ad for the spot.

It also comes with a reporting tool, which allows you to measure how your ads are performing. That way, you have an insight into the effectiveness of your campaigns. The only issue with DoubleClick is that it can get a bit complicated to setup.

Do you know other WordPress plugins that can help a website owner to run display ads effectively? We’d like to know it in the comments!

Digital Branding

SEO for Recruitment

So recently I came across a post on Reddit and that’s what led me to write this blog.

But first, what is Recruitment SEO?

Those to know what it is, please skip this part.

SEO is a concept which generally talks about optimizing your website so that your website can be found by the right type of audience. In your case, it might be people who are looking for jobs, but to be specific you would likely want to target people who are looking for a specific type of job, the one you are willing to advertise. Or the one which is vacant and you don’t feel like spending money on. That’s SEO in a nutshell. 

Moving on, now what you know what Recruitment SEO, you should also know what SEO is, a lot of people relate SEO to Google, which is not. SEO is Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is generally performed on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and etc. You need to choose in which Search Engine you’re interested in. For this blog, we are going to proceed with Google.

For this article, I assume you already have a website, if not, you can proceed to read these two articles:

  1. How to create a Recruitment Website?
  2. How to host a jobs page on my Website?

Moving on, SEO is full of myths, you have to try and literally experiment each and everything because how SEO really works in only known to those Google Engineers who are working on Google Search Engine, others are simply guessing. 

1. Fix Performance Issues

The very first thing you should do is to check how good your website is performing:

Just to GTMetrix & enter your website name there and press go. You’ll get a report, which is something like this:

If it’s not A, don’t worry. You can read a few basic things over here:

Simply reading these will help you figure out what needs to be done. Google loves fast websites, and this will ensure you’ve got a snappy website.

2. Fix your title and description

Next is working on your meta titles and meta descriptions, you need to need to have these for your website, this is what Google reads and your website visitors as well. You can edit this part by looking into your website code. Make sure to keep Meta title under 60 characters and meta description under 160 characters. The best idea to create appealing meta title and meta description is to use keywords in the description and also in the meta title. Keywords are those words that your audience might find useful. For example: If you have vacancies for an iOS Developer, you can add “iOS Developer” in your meta title and meta description.

3. Verify your website on Google Search Console

This will help you understand your website visitors. GSC helps you to collect valuable keyword data which can be used to understand what people are using to reach your website. Click on this link and then click on add property to add your website https://search.google.com. It’s simple as compared to its benefits.

4. Make sure you have these files are on your website

Robots.txt and Sitemap.

You need to have these two files in your website directory. To wrap it up in short, robots file will get Google to know whether to scan your website or not and a sitemap will let Google know how to read your website.

5. Get Backlinks

The secret ingredient is backlinks. A backlink is a link coming from other websites to your website. You can’t simply create a good looking website and hope for candidates to flow in. Get backlinks, but how? 

Create content and exchange your content among other blogs. Ask your friends to link your website when you give them a piece of content. The more, the better. Do the above and you’ll notice a significant change in your candidate flow.

About the Author

Sagar works at Recruit CRM (Recruitment Agency Software) as a Product Marketing Manager. He looks after its Digital Marketing Activities all day long.

Digital Branding

5 Best Twitter Marketing Tips for Your Startup

Twitter does not just claim one of the top spots as a Social Media Platform, it is also one of the best platforms used by the business for promotions.

While it is being already used by most businesses for promotions, there is no doubt that new and growing businesses can make use of it for more business and increased reach among the masses.

Twitter can play a crucial role in scoring new clients and business for many start-ups that keep popping up almost every day. Several innovative startups begin with great motives and ideas that could really make a difference; however, because of the lack of proper marketing, many of them fail to gain recognition.

Here in this piece, we take a look at the top Twitter Marketing Tips for Startups that can help you make your business flourish, starting right from scratch.

1. Use Right Hashtags: In order to make tweets, you need to find out the hashtags around which you will be creating content. The top priorities should be tweeting with trending hashtags that belong to your industry. This needs constant monitoring of trending hashtags and being creative in order to find a connection between the hashtags and your business. You can also go to the extent of using hashtags that do not belong to your field yet is a hot trending topic.

One more thing that you need to take care of is to make sure not to use more than 2 hashtags in a single tweet. Tweets with 2 or fewer hashtags get more than 20% engagement than the tweets with 3 or more hashtags. You can always make new tweets with fresh content with the other hashtags that you wished to use.

2. Create Engaging Content: We all know Content is the King, and the same applies to Twitter as well. A successful Twitter Marketing Strategy always prioritizes short, crisp, informative, and engaging content. Try to create content that revolves around your brand and the products/services you offer.

The maximum text limit of a tweet is 140 characters; however, it is always recommended to accommodate your content within 100-110 characters. Tweets falling in this category get higher engagement.

Also, try to include photos, videos, and links in your tweets for more engagement. You can even build a tweet around an image or video. You can use multimedia to provide more information to the audience than a tweet allows.

3. Build a Great Profile: Your startup’s profile plays an important role in getting new followers and building trust around your brand.

A great profile has an attractive profile picture, a cover picture with additional information about your startup, a crisp and straight forward bio, your website, and other useful information. You can even add your startup’s location on your profile.

You can also use your profile to pin an important tweet to the top which you would wish the visitors see.

A great profile always helps to build rapport among visitors and pushes them to follow your profile.

4. Engage with Audience and Influencers: Twitter is an engagement-driven community. The more you engage with people, the more you will be noticed. You can mention users in your tweets, reply to their tweets, and even retweet their content for engagement. With more engagement, you will be visible to more Twitter users from different user communities.

Along with your followers and other users, it is also important for you to engage with influencers in your field. These influencers may have many followers interested in your startup and you can gain new followings by regularly being visible with great content.

5. Use Twitter Analytics: Twitter Analytics is a very important tool that can help a startup with more followers and building your business. Analytics will provide engagement information for every tweet made by you. By using Twitter Analytics you will get information regarding which sort of tweet gets more engagement. This way, you can plan and create a Twitter Marketing Strategy with the kind of tweets that will get you more engagement.

Startups can really make use of Twitter to grow their business multiple folds. You can even go for paid promotions on Twitter to get more engagement. I hope these Twitter Marketing tips for startups were helpful. Feel free to contact us in case of any doubt.

Digital Branding

8 Tips to Protect Your Startup from Cyberattacks

Tech is evolving fast and you more or less have no choice but to digitize your business to compete. However, this is not without its demerits as organized hackers and criminals have come out full throttle to take the slightest benefit from any security loopholes in business systems. That is why, as a startup owner, you need to take serious considerations of the security measures to put in place to evade cybersecurity attacks. Now, let’s explore the crucial steps that you can consider implementing to protect your business from cybercrime.

Ways to Protect your Business from Cyber Attacks

Use secure file sharing

While sharing files over the internet, you are at risk of attackers or even malware that may distort your documents. To ensure that your data is safe from any form of attack, go for secure file sharing with secure data room as you collaborate on files in your work environment. Go for a service that offers end-to-end encryption that will protect you from external hackers while letting you take control of your data

As a rule of thumb, you can always double-check permission settings so that you can determine who to allow to view your documents. Moreover, you can run audits on your files to see who is accessing them. If you no longer need the file, you can opt to remove it from the cloud altogether.

Update your software regularly

Outdated software is prone to cyber-attacks, malware, and viruses. To keep the files of your startup safe, you need to ensure that the software you are using to carry out your business transactions is up to date and patched for vulnerabilities frequently. That will deny any unauthorized third parties access to your system via the bugs in outdated software.

Enforce the use of strong passwords

Ensure that all your team members with corporate emails and profiles on your website create strong passwords for accessing the system. Remember, hackers take advantage of weak passwords to gain entry into a system, thereby corrupting your data and stealing your information. You should encourage your workers to create a strong password of about ten characters long, with a mix of letters and numbers. Additionally, forbid your team members from sharing their passwords with unauthorized parties. They should also keep changing their passwords frequently.

Educate your team members about email and email use

Make sure to teach your team members about malware and phishing attacks and urge them not to open attachments from unknown sources. Ask them to report any suspicious emails that they may receive. This will ensure that they don’t get to fall into the traps of hackers.

Backup your files

The need to have a backup for all your business files cannot be overstated. You should make sure to back up your files as often as you can. Remember that the backup drives should only connect to the machine during the backup, and after that, you should disconnect to minimize the risk that they may be affected. Ideally, go for automated backups to make things a little easier for you.

Use a reliable antivirus software suite

Choose a good antivirus software, whether free or paid, that provides maximum protection against viruses, malware, and internet threats. Ensure to take a lot of caution so that each time a USB stick is inserted into your business PC, you should make sure to scan it before using it. Always turn on the safe browsing feature of the antivirus to avoid accidentally visiting any malicious websites.

Take caution while visiting websites

You should also switch to HTTPS from HTTP as far as your site is concerned. The HTTPS protocol for browsing uses encryption techniques and is more secure than HTTP. Make sure that essential places like the ones for email and financial payments contain the secure HTTPS protocol.

Find the best security solutions for your business

Choosing the right security solution is essential as it gives you a chance to get the desired level of protection necessary for your business. Top cybersecurity solutions are designed in a way that gives protection to your business against things like Man in The Middle (MITM) attacks, and other vulnerabilities. So, find a security solution that’s ready and simple to use. You can hire experts to find vulnerabilities in your business and implement the best solutions.

Conclusion

While technology has come in handy to make running business easy, the challenge of cybersecurity threat cannot be underestimated. You should ensure that you take the necessary measures to protect your business from any threats. Don’t wait for a breach that can destroy your business!

Digital BrandingLegal BrandingPersonal Branding

How Can SEO Online Marketing Bring About a Transformation in Your Business?

With the number of marketing strategies that are available for your business, it is probably one of the most difficult jobs to decipher the ones that are going to be the best fit for the organization. Before you decide to spend a bulk amount on any particular strategy, it is a must that you know about all the strategies that are available for your business, especially important ones, which include search engine optimization. Nobody in the business world can deny that SEO is necessary. However, most of them have a similar question, what SEO online marketing is and what is the working pattern? According to https://www.entrepreneur.com, not having a proper strategy for onsite content is not a good idea when it comes to SEO online marketing.

SEO online marketing

SEO is a popular marketing strategy and it is extremely effective as well. The results of search engine optimization can indeed take a little time to show up but it is going to be worth your wait. Search engine optimization helps in improving the online presence of your business, which helps in making sure that you are having a good ranking in the search engines. 

When your website has a high rank in search engines, it is undoubtedly going to yield a lot more clicks from all the users. Based on the clicks that you are receiving, people are going to look at the website, and when they look at the website, they will come across services and products that are going to interest them. 

Apart from that, when your site has a high rank, you are going to come across important revenue and conversions. Online SEO marketing is known to combine both off the page as well as on-page strategies, which work together to make sure that the job is done.

On-page SEO is the change that can be made physically to the website to make sure that the website has a high rank. This includes:

  • Targeting keywords and implementing them
  • Creation of content
  • Optimizing page speed

Off-page SEO refers to the different strategies, which do not take place on the website for increasing ranking. The examples include:

  • Link building
  • Email marketing
  • Marketing on social media

When you decide to hire professionals of online impact marketing, they are going to use both so that you get the ideal results.

Given below is a list of the reasons why online marketing can help in changing the business for good.

Thousands of people are searching in Google constantly

When you are implementing online SEO within the marketing strategy, you are marketing the business to numerous people, and the figure is almost 67000 people per second. When you are using SEO for marketing services and products, you are making the offerings of your company available to a huge user base, which will provide the chance of making sure that customers are interested in your business. This is going to result in better and higher conversions. Without SEO, there is hardly any chance that the target audience is going to stumble upon your website and purchase products.

People ignore paid advertisements

Few paid advertisements indeed provide an amazing way of advertising the business but according to statistics, 80% of the users do not pay attention to paid advertisements that appear within the search results. This means that you have a much better chance of target consumers clicking on the website if it is getting displayed organically within the search results. Organic ranking means that the website has to be there as a result right below the paid advertisements. You will not have to invest money if you are interested in ranking organically, however, one important requirement that you cannot avoid is a great SEO campaign. 

Companies are constantly implementing SEO

If you are interested in staying many steps ahead of the competitors, search engine optimization is undoubtedly a must. 61% of organizations have stated that the biggest priority that they have is growing the campaigns. This is undoubtedly a high percentage and if you are not opting for SEO campaigns, your business is going to fall behind. It is going to be overshadowed by those companies, which focus on SEO strongly. This is why you need to make sure that you have a great campaign prepared. 

SEO helps in boosting conversions

When compared with traditional marketing, the rate of conversion of search engine optimization is extremely high. With the help of any traditional marketing strategy, you are going to see a 1.7% conversion rate. However, when it comes to search engine optimization, you are going to observe the conversion rate of 14.6%. This is a huge difference and illustrates the reason why SEO is a great marketing strategy. 

Local SEO is effective

If you are running your business locally, SEO has to be added to the marketing strategy without any second thoughts. After the users search for a local business, 88% are going to visit the business and make a decision within the next 24 hours. Therefore, to make this happen, you need to ensure that you are implementing a great SEO strategy. 

Can SEO online marketing be done by the business?

You need to understand that there are several dynamic parts associated when we are discussing SEO. Most of the business owners have one question, which is whether SEO can be handled within the organization itself. It is important to know that a single person can handle the campaign but to make sure that the results are coming; enormous hard work has to be put in. SEO is not at all a strategy that you set and forget about, you have to take constant care and monitor the results. Since the business has different aspects to be taken care of, it is always suggested that a professional does the job. However, if you want to do it on your own, make sure that you are focusing on the changing tactics and strategies of SEO constantly. 

Conclusion

Without ideal SEO strategies, your business will hardly get the limelight that you are interested in getting for it. Make sure that you understand all that has been mentioned above so that you can plan your strategies and implement them accordingly.

Digital Branding

Top 5 Website’s Features to Become Mandatory in Following Years

Internet marketing is the most important way of reaching new customers today. Web design is the presentation of your expertise, the way you approach new users or clients, so it is indeed extremely important that quality your website is optimized for your target group. Before we go deeper into the most influential aspect of Internet marketing – features for your website, let’s discuss how a good website is different from a great website.

Is Your Website Good or Great?

Today, it is way easier than 5 years ago to design and develop a decent website within a few days. Progress of different tools made it now, more than ever, possible to launch a fine looking website with less coding than before. Website builders, templates, themes, and layouts are there as well to help you upgrade a simple site to the professional one. Plus, with improving your website you are enhancing your business opportunities!

Considering all listed above, and the fact that internet users are accustomed to seeing websites all the time, on all their devices, it is necessary to have a superior quality website in terms to keep your customers interested! Everyone browsing the internet today can draw a distinction between cheap (PBN, community) site or custom and highly efficient one. Aesthetics have been improving over the last few years, so now we all want impressive features and super cool design.

Besides visuals, a “great” website provides smooth handing – what is also important nowadays to point out: “user friendly experience”. There is no space for a great site to “fail to perform” – it has to keep going on any task with no glitch.

Here are the 5 features we found extremely important to keep implemented and up-to-date to your site in order to rock it up on the www:

1. Invest in your site – chose features smart!

One of the main issues a lot of small or new businesses face at the first stage of developing their online appearance is – lowering the cost for the website in terms of having more budget for the following stages. If you really want to offer tangible value to your visitors and potential shoppers, then don’t hesitate to invest in certain features for your website. Your website should offer tangible value for visitors – so use interactive features to utilize the services available on the site. Customers love to create a sense of interaction, so think about the optimization of emails and offering them the news they are really in need of! Browse for the best WordPress web-design company which can help you with a custom website with totally unique features!

2. Keep in touch – chose the right and unique contact forms

Let’s not keep in look at how your content should be relevant and awesome in terms of visitors to assign to your contact forms. Also, let’s imagine that you did your homework and almost everyone wants an update from your awesome website!

Contact forms are there to help you get through your audience, and keep them informed. You should use them to introduce on-trend new features, frequently asked questions, personal touch or some “unique” offer for loyal customers!

3. Everybody loves Polls!

Here human nature already played a big role! All of us love to participate in discussions. More than ever, on the internet, those discussions can be “anonymous” – well not quite anonymous but you can “hide” under some pseudonym if needed.

Your site is there for people, so what people need- you provide! Make amazing polls from time to time or some other interactive features where people can vote or choose and that way feel needed from your site. Make people more involved in your business and they will come back to you!

4. What is going on behind the scenes?

No need for explaining this in detail – everyone loves to gossip and to see what it is “really” like to do something. So for having people more interested in what you do, a smart move is to do behind the scenes videos or blog posts or images, where you can share some of your funnies and fails. We are all human beings, we all fail – so why not share your weak spot with others?

It can only make you stronger 🙂 Also – don’t forget to add value to those videos, for instance why you chose to do that type of business and what exactly inspired you.

5. Reveal-Based Features

Sometimes we are attracted to things we can’t have. These characteristics are of great value when we talk about customer engagement and online marketing. One way to use this for your business is to introduce a sense of excitement among the visitors. For this purpose, you could try introducing reveal-based features. For instance, you can add games that require all the users to do a certain action prior to accessing the promotion.

Maybe those certain spots made you think more about why is it mandatory to have a super great and highly effective website, in the ocean of average or decent sites. Measure pros and cons and get into the game of “how to engage more”! Many Software development company in Houston follow the above mentioned principlesin roder to attract the visitors.

Digital Branding

How Business Branding Affects Talent Recruitment

There is no doubt that as an employer, you want to hire the greatest talent from the pool of job seekers. This may seem an easy task on paper, but finding the right talent is easier said than done. Now, did you know that branding affects talent recruitment? Yes, you need to present to prospective job seekers the best image of your organization through active branding. Let’s expound more on how fine-tuning branding can help improve your talent recruitment.

How Branding Affects Recruitment

Talent attraction

For starters, branding is a valuable strategy in conveying that ubiquitous experience to clients, employees, and even job seekers! Branding announces to everyone your identity as a business, your mission, and your vision. Your brand also expresses the qualities you uphold, your workplace culture and what makes it great to work in your organization.

In other words, branding gives prospective employees a reason to yearn and desire to join your organization. Branding inspires people to want to work for your organization.  As such, when you put up an opening, you will have top talents eager to join your team.

Quick employee referrals

Branding also involves developing and providing the best work experience for your employees. This is to say that branding starts internally from within the organization. This is achieved through rewarding the talents that are already working in your organization by compensating them satisfactorily, providing a humane working environment, and also creating deep and necessary interpersonal skills and networking. This affects the recruitment process in a straightforward albeit interesting way: when a position opens up, the employees are confident in recommending and making referrals to the best talent for the post, as they understand the culture of the organization and also the capabilities of the prospective employees so that they know he or she is a great fit for the position. This makes the process of recruiting new hires less tedious and saves on time and money that could otherwise have been spent on advertising and conducting the interviews.

Easy to reach potential candidates

Now, having a great presence on social media in this time and age is a great way of branding an organization. This is also a nice way to attract top talent. Why? Well, most job seekers have social media accounts these days. They can interact with your brand directly through them and that desire to join your team can sprout from what they see in your profiles.

You will even attract a lot of applications from which you are likely to get great talent. Of course, this can only happen if you can sieve through a large number of applications that might come through, to find the right fit. As a recruiting HR team, find out what an HRIS is and how it can assist in handling the recruitment and onboarding process. Basically, this is one useful system that fine-tunes human resource functions in a centralized paradigm. With An HRIS tool like this one, human resources management can be much more efficient and streamlined.

Creating industry networks for more accurate hiring

Part of branding also involves attending events related to your niche. This is important in giving your company visibility. You get to interact with other industry players, create personal contacts and connections. It is obvious that with subsequent follow-ups, you get to create great relationships and relevant information sources that have the power to build both the corporate and employer brands. Well, inter-organizational networks can also prove very resourceful when looking for top employees in areas that you will find it hard to recruit.

Candidate Job readiness

On the part of the prospective employee, branding affects them in the sense that they get to know what exactly is needed for one to work for the organization they desire. This means that when an opening comes up, they are already in line with the right documents, skills, and experience to translate to their workplace. It also means that the employees know what to expect in terms of perks, compensation, and the kind of culture to find ahead.

As such, they are not only driven by the colossus salary or monetary value, but by their passion to be part of the organization. Research has shown that people are driven by passion work more efficiently and post greater results than those working for money. It will, therefore, be a win for your organization as you are bound to recruit employees eager to be part of your team.

Final word

In a nutshell, branding can help in refining the hiring process. It does so by attracting the best talent to work for the company. Having a good image out there can help you attract passionate employees, thus translating to productivity.